Lara Adrian
The Midnight Breed Series
Kiss of Midnight
Kiss of Crimson
Midnight Awakening
Midnight Rising
Veil of Midnight
Ashes of Midnight
Shades of Midnight
Taken by Midnight
Dell Books
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Praise for Lara Adrian s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Epilogue
Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Excerpt from Deeper Than Midnight
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
A Dell Book / May 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Lara Adrian
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33667-9
v3.0
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
For John, whose faith in me has never faltered, and whose love, I hope, will never fade.
With much gratitude to my agent, Karen Solem, for helping chart the course, and for brilliant navigation under all manner of conditions.
My wonderful editor, Shauna Summers, rightly deserves her own page of acknowledgments for all of her support and encouragement, not to mention the superb editorial vision that always finds the heart of every story and helps bring it into focus.
Thanks also to Debbie Graves for enthusiastic critiques, and to Jessica Bird, whose talent is surpassed only by her amazing generosity of spirit.
Lastly, a special nod of appreciation to my audial muses during much of the creation of this book: Lacuna Coil, Evanescence, and Collide, whose stirring lyrics and amazing music never failed to inspire.
Prologue
TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO
Her baby wouldn’t stop crying. She’d started fussing at the last station, when the Greyhound bus out of Bangor stopped in Portland to pick up more passengers. Now, at a little after 1 A.M., they were almost to the Boston terminal, and the two-plus hours of trying to soothe her infant daughter were, as her friends back in school would say, getting on her last nerve.
The man beside her in the next seat probably wasn’t thrilled, either.
“I’m real sorry about this,” she said, turning to speak to him for the first time since he’d gotten on. “She’s usually not this cranky. It’s our first trip together. I guess she’s just ready to get where we’re going.”
The man blinked at her slowly, smiled without showing his teeth. “Where you headed?”
“New York City.”
“Ah. The Big Apple,” he murmured. His voice was dry, airless. “You got family there or something?”
She shook her head. The only family she had was in a backwoods town near Rangeley, and they’d made it clear that she was on her own now. “I’m going there for a job. I mean, I hope to find a job. I want to be a dancer. On Broadway maybe, or one of them Rockettes.”
“Well, you sure are pretty enough.” The man was staring at her now. It was dark in the bus, but she thought there was something kind of weird about his eyes. Again the tight smile. “With a body like yours, you ought to be a big star.”
Blushing, she glanced down at her complaining baby. Her boyfriend back in Maine used to say stuff like that, too. He used to say a lot of things to get her into the backseat of his car. And he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, either. Not since her junior year of high school when she started swelling up with his kid.
If she hadn’t quit to have the baby, she would have graduated this summer.
“Have you had anything to eat yet today?” the man asked, as the bus slowed down and turned into the Boston station.
“Not really.” She gently bounced her baby girl in her arms, for all the good it did. She was red in the face, her tiny fists pumping, still crying like there was no tomorrow.
“What a coincidence,” the stranger said. “I haven’t eaten, either. I could do with a bite, if you’re game to join me?”
“Nah. I’m okay. I’ve got some saltines in my bag. And anyway, I think this is the last bus to New York tonight, so I won’t have time to do much more than change the baby and get right back on. Thanks, though.”
He didn’t say anything else, just watched her gather her few things once the bus was parked in its bay, then moved out of his seat to let her pass on her way to the station’s facilities.
When she came out of the restroom, the man was waiting for her.
A niggle of unease shot through her to see him standing there. He hadn’t seemed so big when he was sitting next to her. And now that she was looking at him again, she could see that there was definitely something freaky about his eyes. Was he some kind of stoner?
“What’s going on?”
He chuckled under his breath. “I told you. I need to feed.”
That was an odd way of putting it.
She couldn’t help noticing that there were only a few other people around in the station at this late hour. A light rain had begun, wetting the pavement, sending stragglers in for cover. Her bus was idling in its bay, already reloading. But in order to get to it, she first had to get past him.
She shrugged, too tired and anxious to deal with this crap. “So, if you’re hungry, go tell it to McDonald’s. I’m late for my bus—”
“Listen, bitch—” He moved so fast, she didn’t know what hit her. One second he was standing three feet away from her, the next he had his hand around her throat, cutting off her air. He pushed her back into the shadows near the terminal building. Back where nobody was going to notice if she got mugged. Or worse. His mouth was so close to her face, she could smell his foul breath. She saw his sharp teeth as he curled his lips back and hissed a terrible threat. “Say another word, move another muscle, and you’ll be watching me eat your brat’s juicy little heart.”
Her baby was wailing in her arms now, but she didn’t say a word.
She didn’t so much as think about moving.
All that mattered was her baby. Keeping her safe. And so she didn’t dare do a thing, not even when those sharp teeth lunged toward her and bit down hard into her neck.
She stood utterly frozen with terror, clutching her baby close while her attacker drew hard at the bleeding gash he’d made in her throat. His fingers elongated where he gripped her head and shoulder, the tips cutting into her like a demon’s claws. He grunted and pulled deeper at her with his mouth and sharp teeth. Although her eyes were wide open in horror, her vision was going dark, her thoughts beginning to tumble, splintering into pieces. Everything around her was growing murky.
He was killing her. The monster was killing her. And then he would kill her baby, too.
“No.” She gulped in air, but tasted only blood. “Goddamn you—No!”
With a desperate burst of will, she snapped her head into his, cracking the side of her skull into her attacker’s face. When he snarled and reared back in surprise, she tore out of his grasp. She stumbled, nearly falling to her knees before she righted herself. One arm wrapped around her howling child, the other coming up to feel the slick, burning wound at her neck, she edged backward, away from the creature that lifted his head and sneered at her with glowing yellow eyes and bloodstained lips.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, sick at the sight.
She took another step back. Pivoted, prepared to bolt, even if it was pointless.
And that’s when she saw the other one.
Fierce amber eyes looked right through her, but the hiss that sounded from between his huge, gleaming fangs promised death. She thought he would lace into her and finish what the first one had started, but he didn’t. Guttural words were spat between the two of them, then the newcomer strode past her, a long silver blade in his hand.
Take the child, and go.
The command seemed to come out of nowhere, cutting through the fog of her mind. It came again, sharper now, spurring her into action. She ran.
Blind with panic, her mind numb with fear and confusion, she ran away from the terminal and down a nearby street. Deeper and deeper, she fled into the unfamiliar city, into the night. Hysteria clawed at her, making every noise—even the sound of her own running feet—seem monstrous and deadly.
And her baby wouldn’t stop crying.
They were going to be found out if she didn’t get the baby to quiet down. She had to put her to bed, nice and warm in her crib. Then her little girl would be happy. Then she’d be safe. Yes, that’s what she had to do. Put the baby to bed, where the monsters couldn’t find her.
She was tired herself, but she couldn’t rest. Too dangerous. She had to get home before her mom realized she had missed curfew again. She was numb, disoriented, but she had to run. And so she did. She ran until she dropped, exhausted and unable to take another step.
When she woke sometime later, it was to feel her mind coming unhinged, cracking apart like an eggshell. Sanity was peeling away from her, reality warping into something black and slippery, something that was dancing farther and farther out of her reach.
She heard muffled crying somewhere in the distance. Such a tiny sound. She put her hands up to cover her ears, but she could still hear that helpless little mewl.
“Hush,” she murmured to no one in particular, rocking back and forth. “Be quiet now, the baby’s sleeping. Be quiet be quiet be quiet….”
But the crying kept on. It didn’t stop, and didn’t stop. It tore at her heart as she sat in the filthy street and stared, unseeing, into the coming dawn.
CHAPTER
One
PRESENT DAY
Remarkable. Just look at the use of light and shadow….”
“You see how this image hints at the sorrow of the place, yet manages to convey a promise of hope?”
“…one of the youngest photographers to be included in the museum’s new modern art collection.”
Gabrielle Maxwell stood back from the group of exhibit attendees, nursing a flute of warm champagne as yet another crowd of faceless, nameless, Very Important People enthused over the two dozen black-and-white photographs displayed on the gallery walls. She glanced at the images from across the room, somewhat bemused. They were good photographs—a bit edgy, their subject matter being abandoned mills and desolate dockyards outside Boston—but she didn’t quite get what everyone else was seeing in them.
Then again, she never did. Gabrielle merely took the photographs; she left their interpretation, and ultimately, their appreciation, up to others. An introvert by nature, it made her uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of this much praise and attention…but it did pay the bills. Quite nicely, at that. Tonight, it was also paying the bills for her friend Jamie, the owner of the funky little art gallery on Newbury Street, which, at ten minutes to closing, was still packed with prospective buyers.
Numb with the whole process of meeting and greeting, of smiling politely as everyone from moneyed Back Bay wives to multipierced, tattooed Goths tried to impress one another—and her—with analyses of her work, Gabrielle couldn’t wait for the exhibit to end. She had been hiding in the shadows for the past hour, contemplating a stealth escape to the comfort of a warm shower and a soft pillow, both waiting at her apartment on the city’s east side.
But she had promised a few of her friends—Jamie, Kendra, and Megan—that she would join them for dinner and drinks after the showing. As the last couple of stragglers made their purchases and left, Gabrielle found herself gathered up and swept into a cab before she had a chance to so much as think of begging off.
“What an awesome night!” Jamie’s androgynous blond hair swung around his face as he leaned across the other two women to clutch Gabrielle’s hand. “I’ve never had so much weekend traffic in the gallery—and tonight’s sales receipts were amazing! Thank you so much for letting me host you.”
Gabrielle smiled at her friend’s excitement. “Of course. No need to thank me.”
“You weren’t too miserable, were you?”
“How could she be, with half of Boston falling at her feet?” gushed Kendra, before Gabrielle could answer for herself. “Was that the governor I saw you talking with over the canapés?”
Gabrielle nodded. “He’s offered to commission some original works for his cottage on the Vineyard.”
“Sweet!”
“Yeah,” Gabrielle replied without much enthusiasm. She had a stack of business cards in her pocketbook—at least a year of steady work, if she wanted it—so why was she tempted to open the taxi window and scatter them all to the wind?
She let her gaze drift to the night outside the car, watching in queer detachment as lights and lives flickered past. The streets teemed with people: couples strolling hand in hand, groups of friends laughing and talking, all of them having a great time. They dined at café tables outside trendy bistros and paused to browse store window displays. Everywhere she looked, the city pulsed with color and life. Gabrielle absorbed it all with her artist’s eye and, yet, felt nothing. This bustle of life—her life as well—seemed to be speeding by without her. More and more lately, she felt as if she were caught on a wheel that wouldn’t stop spinning her around, trapping her in an endless cycle of passing time and little purpose.
“Is anything wrong, Gab?” Megan asked from beside her on the taxi’s bench seat. “You seem quiet.”
Gabrielle shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m just…I don’t know. Tired, I guess.”
“Somebody get this woman a drink—stat!” Kendra, the dark-haired nurse, joked.
“Nah,” Jamie countered, sly and catlike. “What our Gab really needs is a man. You’re too serious, sweetie. It’s not healthy to let your work consume you like you do. Have some fun! When’s the last time you got laid, anyway?”
Too long ago but Gabrielle wasn’t really keeping track. She’d never suffered from a shortage of dates when she wanted them, and sex—on those rare occasions she had it—wasn’t something she obsessed over like some of her friends. As out of practice as she was right now in that department, she didn’t think an orgasm was going to cure whatever was causing her current state of restlessness.
“Jamie is right, you know,” Kendra was saying. “You need to loosen up, get a little wild.”
“No time like the present,” Jamie added.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gabrielle said, shaking her head. “I’m really not up for a late night, you guys. Gallery showings always take a lot out of me and I—”
“Driver?” Ignoring her, Jamie slid to the edge of the seat and rapped on the Plexiglas that separated the cabbie from his passengers. “Change of plans. We decided we’re in the mood for celebrating, so ixnay on the restaurant. We wanna go where all the hot people are.”
“If you like dance clubs, there’s a new one just opened in the north end,” the cabbie said, his spearmint chewing gum cracking as he spoke. “I been takin’ fares over there all week. Fact, took two already tonight—fancy after-hours place called La Notte.”
“Ooh, La No-tay,” Jamie purred, tossing a playful look over his shoulder and arching an elegant brow. “Sounds perfectly wicked to me, girls. Let’s go!”
The club, La Notte, was housed in a High Victorian Gothic building that had long been known as St. John’s Trinity Parish church, until recent Archdiocese of Boston payouts on priest sex scandals forced the closings of dozens of such places around the city. Now, as Gabrielle and her friends made their way inside the crowded club, synthesized trance and techno music rang in the rafters, blasting out of enormous speakers that framed the DJ pit in the balcony above the altar. Strobe lights flashed against a trio of arched stained-glass windows. The pulsing beams cut through the thin cloud of smoke that hung in the air, pounding to the frenetic beat of a seemingly endless song. On the dance floor—and in nearly every square foot of La Notte’s main floor and the gallery above—people moved against one another in writhing, mindless sensuality.
“Holy shit,” Kendra shouted over the music, raising her arms and dancing her way through the thick crowd. “What a place, huh? This is crazy!”
They hadn’t even cleared the first knot of clubbers before a tall, lean guy swooped in on the spunky brunette and bent to say something in her ear. Kendra gave a throaty laugh and nodded enthusiastically at him.
“Boy wants to dance,” she giggled, passing her handbag to Gabrielle. “Who am I to refuse!”
“This way,” Jamie said, pointing to a small, empty table near the bar as their friend trotted off with her partner.
The three of them got seated and Jamie ordered a round of drinks. Gabrielle scanned the dance floor for Kendra, but she’d been devoured in the midst of the crowded space. Despite the crush of people all around, Gabrielle could not dismiss the sudden sensation that she and her friends were sitting in a spotlight. Like they were somehow under scrutiny simply for being in the club. It was nuts to think it. Maybe she had been working too much, spending too much time alone at home, if being out in public could make her feel so self-conscious. So paranoid.
“Here’s to Gab!” Jamie exclaimed over the roar of the music, raising his martini glass in salute.
Megan lifted hers, too, and clinked it against Gabrielle’s. “Congratulations on a great exhibit tonight!”
“Thanks, you guys.”
As she sipped the neon yellow concoction, Gabrielle’s feeling of being observed returned. Or rather, increased. She felt a stare reach out to her from across the darkened distance. Over the rim of her martini glass, she glanced up and caught the glint of a strobe light nicking off a pair of dark sunglasses.
Sunglasses hiding a gaze that was unmistakably fixed on her through the crowd.
The quick flashes from the strobes cast his stark features in hard shadow, but Gabrielle’s eyes took him in at once. Spiky black hair falling loosely around a broad, intelligent brow and lean, angular cheeks. A strong, stern jaw. And his mouth…his mouth was generous and sensual, even when quirked in that cynical, almost cruel line.
Gabrielle looked away, unnerved, a rush of warmth skittering along her limbs. His face lingered in her head, burned there in an instant, like an image set to film. She put down her drink and braved another quick glance to where he stood. But he was gone.
A loud crash sounded at the other end of the bar, jerking Gabrielle’s attention over her shoulder. At one of the crowded tables, liquor seeped onto the floor, spilled from several broken glasses that littered the black-lacquered surface. Five guys in dark leather and shades were having words with another guy wearing a Dead Kennedys wife-beater tank and torn, faded blue jeans. One of the thugs in leather had his arm slung around a drunk-looking platinum blond, who seemed to know the punker. Boyfriend, apparently. He made a grab for the girl’s arm, but she slapped him away and bent her head to let one of the thugs put his mouth on her neck. She stared defiantly at her furious boyfriend, all the while playing with the long brown hair of the guy fastened to her throat.
“That’s messed up,” Megan said, turning back around as the situation escalated.
“Sure is,” Jamie added as he finished off his martini and flagged a server to bring another round. “Evidently that chick’s mama forgot to tell her it’s bad news not to leave with the guy who brought you.”
Gabrielle watched for another moment, long enough to see a second biker move in on the girl and descend on her slackened mouth. She accepted both of them together, her hands coming up to caress the dark head at her neck and the pale one that was sucking her face like he meant to eat her alive. The punker boyfriend shouted a string of obscenities at the girl, then turned around and shoved his way into the spectating crowd.
“This place is creeping me out,” Gabrielle confided, just now noticing some clubbers openly doing lines of cocaine off the far end of the long marble bar.
Her friends didn’t seem to hear her over the driving pound of the music. They also didn’t seem to share Gabrielle’s unease. Something wasn’t quite right here and Gabrielle could not shake the feeling that eventually the night was going to get ugly. Jamie and Megan began talking between themselves about local bands, leaving Gabrielle to sip what was left of her martini and wait on the other side of the small table for an opportunity to break in and make her excuses to leave.
Essentially alone at the moment, her gaze drifted over the sea of bobbing heads and swaying bodies, as she surreptitiously searched for the sunglass-shaded eyes that had been watching her before. Was he with the other thugs—one of that gang of bikers still stirring up trouble? He was dressed like them, certainly carried the same dark air of danger about him.
Whoever he was, Gabrielle saw no trace of him now.
She leaned back in her chair, then nearly jumped out of her skin when a pair of hands came to rest on her shoulders from behind.
“Here you are! I’ve been looking all over for you guys!” Kendra said, sounding breathless and animated at the same time, as she leaned over the table. “Come on. I’ve got a table for us on the other side of the club. Brent and some of his friends want to party with us!”
“Cool!”
Jamie was already on his feet, ready to go. Megan took her fresh martini in one hand, Kendra’s and her pocketbooks in the other. When Gabrielle didn’t rush to join them, Megan paused.
“You coming?”
“No.” Gabrielle stood up and looped the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “You go on, have fun. I’m beat. I think I’m just going to catch a cab and head back home.”
Kendra gave her a little-girl pout. “Gab, you can’t go!”
“You want some company for the ride home?” Megan offered, even though Gabrielle could tell she wanted to stay with the others.
“I’ll be fine. Enjoy yourselves, but be careful, right?”
“You’re sure you won’t stay? Just one more drink?”
“Nah. I really need to take off and get some air.”
“Suit yourself, then,” Kendra chided with mock venom. She stepped in and planted a quick peck on Gabrielle’s cheek. As she withdrew, Gabrielle caught a whiff of vodka, and, beneath that, something less obvious. Something musky, queerly metallic. “You’re a buzzkill, Gab, but I still love you.”
With a wink, Kendra looped her arms with Jamie’s and Megan’s, then playfully tugged them toward the churning mass of people.
“Call me tomorrow,” Jamie mouthed over his shoulder as the trio were slowly engulfed by the crowd.
Gabrielle immediately started her trek for the door, anxious to be out of the club. The longer she had stayed, the louder the music seemed to get, drumming in her head, making it hard to think. Hard to focus on her surroundings. People pushed at her from all sides as she tried to pass through them, squeezing her into the press of dancing, flailing, gyrating bodies. She was jostled and nudged, pawed at and groped by unseen hands in the dark, until, finally, she stumbled into the vestibule near the club’s entrance, then out the heavy double doors.
The night was cool and dark. She drew in a deep breath, clearing her head of the noise and smoke and the unsettling atmosphere of La Notte. The music still throbbed out here, the strobe lights still flashed like small explosions behind the tall stained-glass windows above, but Gabrielle relaxed a bit now that she was free.
No one paid her any mind as she hurried down to the curb and waited to hail a ride home. Only a few people were outside, some passing by on the sidewalk below, others filing up the concrete steps and into the club. She spotted a yellow cab coming her way, and thrust out her hand to call it over.
“Taxi!”
As the empty cab navigated across the lanes of nighttime traffic and roared up beside her, the doors of the nightclub burst open with the force of a hurricane.
“Hey, man! What the fuck!” Behind Gabrielle on the steps, a male voice rose to an octave just north of fear. “Touch me again, and I’ll fuckin’—”
“You’ll fuckin’ what?” taunted another voice, this one low and deadly, and flanked by several others that were chuckling in amusement.
“Yeah, tell us, you little asswipe punker piece of shit. What’re ya gonna do?”
Her fingers gripping the door handle of the cab, Gabrielle swiveled her head, half in alarm, half in knowing dread of what she would see. It was the gang from the bar, the bikers or whatever they were, in black leather and shades. The six of them circled the punker boyfriend like a pack of wolves, taking turns jabbing at him, toying with him like prey.
The kid threw a swing at one of them—missed—and the situation went from bad to worse in the blink of an eye.
All at once, the scuffle came crashing toward Gabrielle. The gang of thugs threw the punker up against the hood of the cab, slamming their fists into the kid’s face. Blood splattered like raindrops from his nose and mouth, some of it hitting Gabrielle. She took a step back, stunned and horrified. The kid scrabbled to get away but his attackers stayed on him, beating him with a fury Gabrielle could hardly fathom.
“Get off my goddamn car!” the cabbie shouted out his open window. “Jesus Christ! Take it somewhere else, you hear me!”
One of the assailants turned his head toward the cabbie, smiled a terrible smile, then brought his large fist down on the windshield, shattering the glass into a spiderweb of cracks. Gabrielle saw the cabbie cross himself, his mouth working soundlessly within the car. There was a grinding of gears, then a piercing screech of tires as the taxi jerked into reverse, dislodging the burden from its hood.
“Wait!” Gabrielle screamed, too late.
Her ride home—her escape from this brutal scene—was gone. With a cold lump of fear lodged in her throat, she watched the cab speed off, careering into the street and its taillights disappearing into the dark.
And on the curb, the six bikers were showing their victim no mercy, too preoccupied with beating the punker senseless to give Gabrielle more than a passing thought.
She turned and bolted up the steps to La Notte’s entrance, all the while fishing in her pocketbook for her cell phone. She found the slim device, flipped it open. Punched in 911 as she threw open the doors of the club and skidded into the vestibule, panic rising in her breast. Above the din of music and voices, and the thundering pulse of her own heart, Gabrielle heard only static on the other end of her cell. She pulled the phone away from her ear—
Signal faded.
“Shit!”
She tried 911 again. No luck.
Gabrielle ran for the main area of the club, shouting into the noise in desperation.
“Someone, please help! I need help!”
No one seemed to hear her. She tapped people’s shoulders, tugged on sleeves, practically shook the arm of a tattooed military-looking guy, but no one paid any attention. They didn’t even look at her, merely continued dancing and talking as if she wasn’t even there.
Was this a dream? Some twisted nightmare where only she was aware of the violence taking place outside?
Gabrielle gave up on strangers and decided to search out her friends. As she wended through the dark club, she kept hitting Redial, praying for a decent signal. She couldn’t get one, and she soon realized she would never find Jamie and the others in the thick crowd.
Frustrated and confused, she ran back to the club’s exit. Maybe she could flag down a motorist, find a cop, anything!
Frigid night air hit her face as she pushed open the heavy doors and stepped outside. She dashed down the first set of concrete steps, panting now, uncertain what she was walking into, a woman alone against six, probably drugged-out gang members. But she didn’t see them.
They were gone.
A group of young clubbers came strolling up the steps, one of them playing air guitar while his friends talked about hitting a rave later that night.
“Hey,” Gabrielle said, half expecting them to walk right past her. They paused, smiling at her, even though at twenty-eight she was likely a decade older than any of them.
The one in the lead nodded his head at her. “’Sup?”
“Did any of you—” She hesitated, not certain she should be relieved that this was not, evidently, a dream after all. “Did you happen to see the fight that was going on out here a few minutes ago?”
“There was a fight? Awesome!” said the headbanger of the group.
“Nah, man,” answered another. “We just got here. We ain’t seen nothin’.”
They passed by, climbing the rest of the steps while Gabrielle could only watch, wondering if she was losing her mind. She walked down to the curb. There was blood on the pavement, but the punker and his attackers had vanished.
Gabrielle stood under a streetlamp and rubbed a chill from her arms. She pivoted to look down both sides of the street, searching for any sign of the violence she had witnessed a few minutes before.
Nothing.
But then…she heard it.
The sound drifted from a narrow alley to her right. Flanked by a concrete shoulder-high wall that acted as an acoustic aid, the almost lightless walkway betrayed its occupants whose faint animal-like grunts carried out to the street. Gabrielle could not place the sick, wet sounds that froze her blood in her veins and tripped off instinctual alarms in every nerve in her body.
Her feet were moving. Not away from the source of those disturbing sounds, but toward it. Her cell phone was like a brick in her hand. She was holding her breath. She didn’t realize she wasn’t breathing until she had walked a couple of paces into the alleyway and her gaze had settled on a group of figures up ahead.
The thugs in leather and sunglasses.
They were crouched down on their hands and knees, pawing at something, tearing at it. In the scant light from the street, Gabrielle glimpsed a tattered scrap of fabric lying near the carnage. It was the punker’s tank top, shredded and stained.
Gabrielle’s finger, poised over the Redial button of her cell phone, came down silently onto the tiny key. There was a quiet trill on the other end, then the police dispatcher’s voice shattered the night like cannon fire.
“911. What is your emergency?”
One of the bikers swung his head around at the sudden disturbance. Feral, hate-filled eyes pinned Gabrielle like daggers where she stood. His face was bloody, slick with gore. And his teeth! They were sharp like an animal’s—not teeth at all, but fangs that he bared to her as he opened his mouth and hissed a terrible-sounding foreign word.
“911,” said the dispatcher once again. “Please state your emergency.”
Gabrielle couldn’t speak. She was so shaken, she could hardly breathe. She brought the cell phone up to her mouth, but could not make her throat form words.
Her call for help was wasted.
Knowing this with a certain, bone-deep dread, Gabrielle did the only logical thing that came to her. With trembling fingers, she turned the device toward the gang of sadistic bikers and clicked the image-capture button. A small flash lit up the alley.
They all turned toward her now, raising their hands to shield their sunglass-shaded eyes.
Oh, God. Maybe she still had a chance of escaping this hellish night. Gabrielle clicked the picture button again and again and again, all the while making her retreat back up the alley to the street. She heard murmured voices, snarled curses, the movement of feet on pavement, but she didn’t dare look back. Not even when a sharp hiss of steel rang out behind her, followed by unearthly shrieks of agony and rage.
Gabrielle raced into the night on adrenaline and fear, not stopping until she reached a standing taxi on Commercial Street. She jumped in and slammed the door. She was panting, out of her mind with fear.
“Take me to the nearest police station!”
The cabbie slung his arm over the back of the seat and turned around to stare at her, frowning. “You okay, lady?”
“Yeah,” she replied automatically. Then, “No. I need to report a—”
Jesus. What did she intend to report? A cannibalistic feeding frenzy by a pack of rabid bikers? Or the only other possible explanation, which wasn’t any more believable?
Gabrielle met the cabbie’s anxious eyes. “Please hurry. I just witnessed a murder.”
CHAPTER
Two
Vampires.
The night was thick with them. He had counted more than a dozen in the dance club, most of them trolling the half-dressed, undulating crowds, selecting—and seducing—the women who would Host their thirst that night. It was a symbiotic arrangement that had served the Breed well for more than two millennia, a peaceful cohabitation that depended on the vampires’ ability to scrub the memories of the humans on whom they fed. Before the sun came up, a good deal of blood would be spilled but in the morning, the Breed would be returned to their Darkhavens in and around the city, and the humans they had enjoyed tonight would be none the wiser.
But that was not the case in the alley outside the nightclub.
For the six blood-gorged predators there, their unsanctioned kill would be their last. They were careless in their hunger; they hadn’t detected that they were being watched. Not when he was observing them in the club, nor when he had trailed them outside, surveilling them from the ledge of a second-story window of the converted church.
They were lost to the high of Bloodlust, the disease of addiction that had once been epidemic among the Breed, causing so many of their kind to turn Rogue. Like these, who fed openly and indiscriminately from the humans who lived among them.
Lucan Thorne had no particular affinity for humankind, but what he felt for the Rogue vampires before him was even less. To see one or two feral vampires in a single night’s patrol of a city the size of Boston was not uncommon. To find several working in tandem, feeding in the open as these did, was more than a little troubling. The Rogues were growing in numbers again, becoming more bold.
Something had to be done.
For Lucan and several others of the Breed, every night was a hunting expedition aimed at routing out the diseased few who would jeopardize all that the vampire race had worked so hard to achieve. Tonight, Lucan tracked his prey alone, not caring that he was outnumbered. He had waited until the opportunity to strike was prime: once the Rogues had greedily fed the addiction that ruled their minds.
Drunk on more blood than they could safely consume, they had continued to savage and fight over the body of the young man from the club, snarling and snapping like a pack of wild dogs. Lucan had been poised to dispatch quick justice—and would have, if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of a ginger-haired female in the darkened corridor. In an instant, she had thrown the entire night off course: following the Rogues to the alley, then unwittingly drawing their attention away from their kill.
As the light from her cell phone’s flash exploded in the dark, Lucan descended from the shadowed ledge of the window and landed on the pavement without a sound. Like the Rogues, Lucan’s sensitive eyes were partially blinded from that sudden spark of light amid the dark. The woman fired a series of piercing flashes as she fled the carnage, those few panicked clicks likely all that spared her from the wrath of his savage kin.
But where the other vampires’ senses were clouded and sluggish with Bloodlust, Lucan’s were ruthlessly clear. From beneath his dark trenchcoat, he drew his weapons—twin blades wrought of titanium-edged steel—and swung to claim the head of the nearest Rogue.
Two more followed, the bodies of the dead thrashing as they began their swift cellular decomposition from oozing acidic pulp to incinerated ash. Animal shrieks filled the alleyway as Lucan severed the head of one more, then swung around to impale another Rogue through the torso. The Rogue hissed through bared, bloody teeth, its fangs dripping gore. Pale-gold eyes held Lucan in contempt, the huge irises swelled in hunger, swallowing up pupils that were narrowed to thin vertical slits. The creature spasmed, long arms reaching for him, its mouth stretched into a hideous, alien sneer as the specially forged steel poisoned its Rogue blood and reduced the vampire to smoldering stain on the street.
Only one remained. Lucan whirled to meet the large male, both blades raised to strike.
But the vampire was gone—fled into the night before he could slay it.
Damn.
He’d never let one of the bastards escape his justice before this. He shouldn’t now. He considered chasing the Rogue down, but it would mean leaving the scene of the attack unsecured. That was the greater risk here, letting the humans know the full measure of the danger that lived among them. Because of the savagery of the Rogues, Lucan’s kind had been persecuted and hunted by humans throughout the Old Times; the race might not survive a new age of retribution, now that man had technology on his side.
Until the Rogues were suppressed—better yet, eliminated entirely—humankind could know nothing of the existence of the vampires living all around them.
As he set about cleaning the area of all traces of the killing, Lucan’s thoughts kept returning to the woman with the sunlit hair and sweet, alabaster beauty.
How was it she had been able to find the Rogues in the alley?
Although it was widely held among human folklore that vampires could disappear at will, the truth was only slightly less remarkable. Gifted with great agility and speed, they could simply move faster than human eyes could register, an ability that was augmented by the vampires’ advanced hypnotic power over the minds of lesser beings. Oddly, this woman seemed immune to both.
Lucan had seen her in the club, he realized now. His gaze had been drawn away from his quarry by a pair of soulful eyes and a spirit that seemed nearly as lost as his own. She had noticed him, too, staring at him from where she sat with her friends. Even through the crowd and the stale odor of the club, Lucan had scented the trace notes of perfume on her skin—something exotic, rare.
He smelled it now as well, a delicate note that clung to the night, teasing his senses and calling to something primitive within him. His gums ached with the sudden stretching of his fangs, a physical reaction to need—carnal, or otherwise—that he was powerless to curb. He scented her, and he hungered, little better than his Rogue brethren.
Lucan tipped his head back and dragged the essence of the woman deeper into his lungs, tracking her across the city with his keen sense of smell. The sole witness to the Rogues’ attack, it was more than unwise to let her keep the memory of what she had seen. Lucan would find the female and take whatever measures were necessary to ensure the protection of the Breed.
And in the back of his mind, an ancient conscience whispered that whoever she was, she already belonged to him.
“I’m telling you, I saw the whole thing. There were six of them, and they were tearing at the guy with their hands and teeth—like animals. They killed him!”
“Miss Maxwell, we’ve been over this numerous times already tonight. Now, we’re all tired and the night is only getting longer.”
Gabrielle had been at the police station for more than three hours, trying to give her account of the horror she witnessed outside La Notte. The two officers she spoke with had been skeptical at first, but now they were getting impatient, almost adversarial. Soon after she had arrived, the cops had sent a squad car around to the club to check out the situation and recover the body Gabrielle had reported seeing. The call had come up empty. No reports of a gang altercation and no evidence whatsoever of anyone having met with foul play. It was as if the entire incident had never happened—or had been miraculously swept clean.
“If you would just listen to me…if you would just look at the pictures I took—”
“We’ve seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you’ve said tonight checks out—not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone.”
“I’m sorry if the quality is lacking,” Gabrielle replied, acidly. “The next time I’m witnessing a bloody slaughter by a gang of psychos, I’ll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses.”
“Maybe you want to rethink your statement,” suggested the elder of the two officers, his Boston accent tinged with the Irish brogue of a youth spent in Southie. He stroked a chubby hand over his thinning brow, then slid her cell phone back across the desk. “You should be aware that filing a false police report is a crime, Miss Maxwell.”
“This is not a false report,” she insisted, frustrated and not a little angry that she was being treated like the criminal here. “I stand by everything I’ve said tonight. Why would I make this up?”
“That’s something only you can answer, Miss Maxwell.”
“This is unbelievable. You have my 911 call.”
“Yes,” agreed the officer. “You did, indeed, make a call to emergency dispatch. Unfortunately, all we have is static on the recording. You didn’t say anything, and you didn’t respond to the dispatcher’s requests for information.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to find the words to describe seeing someone get their throat ripped out.”
He gave her another dubious look. “This club—La Notte? It’s a wild place, I hear. Popular with the goths, the ravers…”
“Your point being?”
The cop shrugged. “Lotta kids get into some weird shit these days. Maybe all you saw was a little fun getting out of hand.”
Gabrielle exhaled a curse and reached for her cell phone. “Does this look like fun getting out of hand to you?”
She clicked the picture recall button and looked again at the images she had captured. Although the snapshots were blurry, diffused by the flash, she could still plainly see a group of men surrounding another on the ground. She clicked forward to another image and saw the reflective glow of several eyes staring back at the lens, the vague outlines of facial features peeled back in animal fury.
Why didn’t the officers see what she did?
“Miss Maxwell,” interjected the younger police officer. He strolled around to the other side of the desk and sat on the edge before her. He had been the quieter of the two men, the one listening in careful consideration where his partner spewed nothing but doubt and suspicion. “It’s obvious that you believe you saw something terrible at the club tonight. Officer Carrigan and I want to help you, but in order for us to do that, we have to be sure we’re all on the same page.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Now, we have your statement, and we’ve seen your pictures. You strike me as a reasonable person. Before we can go any further here, I need to ask if you would be willing to submit to a drug test.”
“A drug test.” Gabrielle shot out of her chair. She was beyond pissed off now. “This is ridiculous. I am not some tripped out crackhead, and I resent being treated like one. I’m trying to report a murder!”
“Gab? Gabby!”
From somewhere behind her in the station, Gabrielle heard Jamie’s voice. She had called her friend soon after she arrived, needing the comfort of familiar faces after the horror she had witnessed.
“Gabrielle!” Jamie dashed up to her and surrounded her in a warm hug. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but I was already home when I got your message on my cell. Jesus, sweetie! Are you all right?”
Gabrielle nodded. “I think so. Thanks for coming.”
“Miss Maxwell, why don’t you let your friend here take you home,” said the younger officer. “We can continue this at another time. Maybe you’ll be able to think more clearly after you get some sleep.”
The two policemen rose, and gestured for Gabrielle to do the same. She didn’t argue. She was tired, bone weary, and she didn’t think even if she stayed at the station all night she’d be able to convince the cops of what she witnessed outside La Notte. Numbly, Gabrielle let Jamie and the two officers escort her out of the station. She was halfway down the steps to the parking lot when the younger of the men called her name.
“Miss Maxwell?”
She paused, looking back over her shoulder to where the officer stood beneath the floodlight of the station.
“If it will make you rest any easier, we’ll send someone around to check in on you at your home, and maybe talk to you a bit more, once you’ve had some time to think about your report.”
She didn’t appreciate his coddling tone, but neither could she find the anger to refuse his offer. After what she had seen tonight, Gabrielle would gladly take the security of a police visit, even a patronizing one. She nodded, then followed Jamie out to his waiting car.
From a quiet corner desk in the precinct house, a file clerk hit the print key on his computer. A laser printer whirred into action behind him, spitting out a single page report. The clerk drained the last swallow of cold coffee from his chipped Red Sox mug, rose from his rickety, putty-colored chair, and casually retrieved the document from the printer.
The station was quiet, emptied out for the midnight shift break. But even if it had been hopping with activity, no one would have paid any attention to the reserved, awkward intern who kept very much to himself.
That was the beauty of his role.
It was why he’d been chosen.
He wasn’t the only member of the force to be recruited. He knew there were others, though their identities were kept secret. It was safer that way, cleaner. For his part, he couldn’t recall how long it had been since he first met his Master. He knew only that he now lived to serve.
With the report clutched in his hand, the clerk shuffled down the hallway in search of privacy. The break room, which was never empty no matter the time of day, was currently occupied by a couple of secretaries and Carrigan, a fat, loud-mouthed cop who was retiring at the end of the week. He was bragging about the primo deal he had gotten on some backwater Florida condo while the women basically ignored him, the two females lunching on day-old, frosted yellow party cake and washing it all down with Diet Coke chasers.
The clerk ran his fingers through his pale brown hair and walked past the open doorway, toward the restrooms at the end of the corridor. He paused outside the men’s room, his hand on the battered metal handle, as he casually glanced behind him. With no one there to see him, he moved to the next door down, the station’s janitorial supply closet. It was supposed to be kept locked, but seldom was. Nothing much worth stealing in there anyway, unless you had a thing for industrial-grade toilet paper, ammonia cleanser, and brown paper towels.
He twisted the knob and pushed the old steel panel inward. Once inside the dark closet, he clicked the pushbutton lock from within and retrieved his cell phone from the front pocket of his khakis. He pressed speed dial, calling the sole number that was stored in the untraceable, disposable device. The call rang twice, then fell into an ominous silence as his Master’s unmistakable presence loomed on the other end of the line.
“Sire,” the clerk breathed, his voice a reverent whisper. “I have information for you.”
He spoke quickly and quietly, divulging all of the details of the Maxwell woman’s visit to the station, including the specifics of her statement about a gang killing downtown. The clerk heard a growl and the soft hiss of breath skating across the cell phone’s receiver as his Master absorbed the news in silence. He sensed fury in that slow, wordless exhalation, and it chilled him.
“I ran her personal data for you, Sire—all of it,” he offered; then using the dim glow of the cell’s display, he recited Gabrielle’s address, unlisted phone number, and more, the servile Minion so very eager to please his dreaded and powerful Master.
CHAPTER
Three
Two full days passed.
Gabrielle tried to put the horror of what she had witnessed in La Notte’s alleyway out of her mind. What did it matter, anyway? No one had believed her. Not the police, who had yet to send anyone to see her as they had promised, and not even her friends.
Jamie and Megan, who had seen the thugs in leather harassing the punker inside the club, said the group left without incident sometime during the course of the night. Kendra had been too involved with Brent—the guy she picked up on the dance floor—to notice any trouble elsewhere in the club. According to the cops at the station Saturday night, the story had been the same from everyone their dispatched patrol had questioned at La Notte. A brief scuffle at the bar, but no reports of violence in or outside of the club.
No one had seen the attack she reported. There had been no hospital or morgue admissions. Not even a damage report filed by the cabbie at the curb.
Nothing.
How could that be? Was she seriously delusional?
It was as if Gabrielle’s eyes were the only ones truly open that night. Either she alone had witnessed something unexplainable, or she was losing her mind.
Maybe some of both.
She couldn’t deal with all the implications in that idea, so she sought solace in the one thing that gave her any joy. Behind the sealed door of her custom-built darkroom in the basement of the townhouse, Gabrielle submerged a sheet of photo paper in the tray of developing solution. From pale nothingness, the image began to take shape beneath the surface of the liquid. She watched it come to life—the ironic beauty of strong ivy tentacles spreading over the decayed brick and mortar of an old Gothic-style asylum she had recently discovered outside the city. It came out better than she had hoped, teasing her artist’s fancy with the potential of an entire series centered on the haunting, desolate place. She set it aside and developed another photo, this one a closeup of a pine sapling sprouting from between a crack in the crumpled pavement of a long-abandoned lumberyard.
The images made her smile as she lifted them out of the solution and clipped them to the drying line. She had nearly a dozen more like these upstairs on her worktable, wry testaments to the stubbornness of nature and the foolishness of man’s greed and arrogance.
Gabrielle had always felt something of an outsider, a silent observer, from the time she was a kid. She chalked it up to the fact that she had no parents—no family at all, except the couple who had adopted her when she was a troubled twelve-year-old, bounced from one foster home to another. The Maxwells, an upper-middle-class couple with no children of their own, had kindly taken pity on her, but even their acceptance had been at arm’s length. Gabrielle was promptly sent to boarding schools, summer camps, and, finally, an out-of-state university. Her parents, such as they were, had died together in a car accident while she was away at college.
Gabrielle didn’t attend the funeral, but the first serious photograph she took was of two maple-shaded gravestones in the city’s Mount Auburn Cemetery. She’d been taking pictures ever since.
Never one to mourn the past, Gabrielle turned off the darkroom light and headed back upstairs to think about supper. She wasn’t in the kitchen two minutes before her doorbell rang.
Jamie had generously stayed over the past two nights, just to make sure Gabrielle was all right. He was worried about her, as protective as a big brother she never had. When he left that morning, he had offered to come by again, but Gabrielle had insisted she would be fine by herself. She was actually in need of some solitude, and as the doorbell sounded again, she felt a niggle of mild annoyance that she might not have any alone time tonight, either.
“Be right there,” she called from inside the apartment’s foyer.
Habit made her check the peephole, but instead of seeing Jamie’s blond sweep of hair, Gabrielle found the dark head and striking features of an unfamiliar man waiting on her stoop. A reproduction gaslight stood on the sidewalk just off her front steps. The soft yellow glow wrapped itself around the man like a golden cloak draped over night itself. There was something ominous, yet compelling, about his pale gray eyes, which were staring straight into the narrow cylinder of glass as if he could see her on the other side, too.
She opened the door, but thought it best not to remove the chain lock. The man stepped in front of the wedge of open space and glanced at the tight chain length that stretched taut between them. When his eyes met Gabrielle’s again, he gave her a vague smile, as if he thought it amusing she would expect to bar him so easily if he truly wanted in.
“Miss Maxwell?” His voice stroked her senses like rich, dark velvet.
“Yes?”
“My name is Lucan Thorne.” The words rolled past his lips in a smooth, measured timbre that eased some of her anxiety at once. When she didn’t say anything, he went on. “I understand you had some difficulty a couple of nights ago at the police station. I wanted to come by and make sure you were all right.”
She nodded.
Evidently the police hadn’t completely blown her off after all. Since it had been a couple of days with no word from them, Gabrielle had not expected to see anyone from the department, despite the promise to send a patrol out to look in on her. Not that she could be certain this guy, with his sleekly styled black hair and chiseled features, was a cop.
He looked grim enough, she supposed, and apart from his dark, dangerous good looks, he didn’t seem intent on causing her any harm. Still, after what she’d been through, Gabrielle thought it wise to err on the side of caution.
“Have you got ID?”
“Of course.”
With deliberate, almost sensual movements, he opened a thin leather billfold and held it up to the crack of space at the door. It was nearly dark outside, which was likely why it took a second for Gabrielle’s eyes to focus on the shiny policeman’s badge and the picture identification card next to it, bearing his name.
“Okay. Come in, Detective.”
She freed the chain lock, then opened the door and let him enter, watching as his broad shoulders filled the doorway. His presence seemed to fill the entire foyer, in fact. He was a large man, tall and thickly hewn beneath the drape of his black overcoat, his dark clothes and silky jet hair absorbed the soft light of the pendant lamp overhead. He had a confident, almost regal bearing about him, his expression gravely serious, as if he would be better suited to commanding a legion of armored knights than schlepping out to Beacon Hill to handhold a hallucinatory female.
“I didn’t think anyone was going to come. After the reception I got down at the station this weekend, I figured Boston’s finest had written me off as a nutcase.”
He didn’t acknowledge or deny it, merely strode into her living room in silence and let his gaze roam freely over the place. He paused at her worktable, where the roughs of some of her latest images had been arranged. Gabrielle trailed after him across the room, casually watching for his reaction to her work. One dark brow quirked as he perused the photographs.
“Yours?” he asked, turning his pale, piercing eyes on her.
“Yes,” Gabrielle replied. “They’re part of a collection I’m calling Urban Renewal.”
“Interesting.”
He looked back to the array of images and Gabrielle felt herself frown slightly at his careful, yet indifferent response. “They’re just something I’m playing around with right now—nothing I’m ready to exhibit yet.”
He grunted, still considering the photographs in silence.
Gabrielle moved closer, trying to get a better handle on his reaction, or lack thereof. “I do a lot of commissioned work around the city. In fact, I’ll probably be taking some pictures of the governor’s place on the Vineyard later this month.”
Shut up, she admonished herself. Why was she trying to impress this guy?
Detective Thorne didn’t seem overly impressed. Saying nothing, he reached out, and with fingers entirely too elegant for his profession, gently rearranged two of the images on the table. Inexplicably, Gabrielle found herself imagining those long, deft fingers touching her bare skin, splaying into her hair, cupping the back of her skull…guiding her head back until it rested on his strong arm and his cool gray eyes drank her in.
“So,” she said, snapping herself back to reality. “I’ll bet you’d rather have a look at the pictures I took outside the club Saturday night.”
Without waiting for him to reply, she walked to the kitchen and grabbed her cell phone off the counter. She flipped it open, brought up an image, and held the device out to Detective Thorne.
“That’s the first shot I took. My hands were shaking, so it’s a little blurry. And the light from the flash washed out a lot of the detail. But if you look closely, you’ll see six dark shapes huddled low to the ground. That’s them—the killers. Their victim is that lump they’re tearing at in front of them. They were…biting him. Like animals.”
Thorne’s eyes held fast to the image; his expression remained grim, unchanging. Gabrielle clicked to the next photograph.
“The flash startled them. I don’t know—I think it might have blinded them or something. When I clicked these next few shots, some of them stopped to look at me. I can’t really make out features, but that’s the face of one of them. Those weird slits of light are the reflection of his eyes.” She shuddered, recalling the yellow glow of vicious, inhuman eyes. “He was looking right at me.”
More silence from the detective. He took the cell phone from Gabrielle’s fingers and clicked through the remaining pictures.
“What do you think?” she asked, hoping for confirmation. “You can see it, too, can’t you?”
“I see…something, yes.”
“Thank God. Your buddies at the precinct tried to make me think I was crazy, or that I was some drugged-out loser who didn’t know what I was talking about. Not even my friends believed me when I told them what I saw that night.”
“Your friends,” he said with careful deliberation. “Do you mean someone other than the man you were with at the station—your lover?”
“My lover?” She laughed at that. “Jamie is not my lover.”
Thorne looked up from the cell phone’s image display to meet her gaze. “He spent the past two nights with you alone, here in this apartment.”
How did he know that? Gabrielle felt a jolt of outrage at the prospect of being spied on by anyone, including the police, who probably would have done so more out of suspicion than as a means of protecting her. But as she stood beside Detective Lucan Thorne in her living room, some of that anger seeped out of her, replaced by a feeling of calm acceptance. Of subtle, languid cooperation. Strange, she thought, but found herself fairly unfazed by the idea.
“Jamie stayed with me for a couple of nights because he was concerned about me after what happened this weekend. He’s my friend, that’s all.”
Good.
Thorne’s mouth didn’t move, but Gabrielle felt certain she had heard his reply. His unspoken voice, his pleasure at her denial of a lover, seemed to echo from somewhere deep inside of her. Wishful thinking, maybe. It had been a long time since she’d had anything close to a boyfriend, and merely being in the presence of Lucan Thorne was doing strange things to her head. Or rather, her body.
As he stared at her, Gabrielle felt a pleasant knot of warmth begin to pool in her belly. His gaze penetrated like heat itself, physical and intimate. A picture suddenly formed in her mind: she and him, naked and writhing together in the moonlit dark of her bedroom. An instant blast of heat flooded her. She could feel his hard muscles beneath her fingertips, his firm body moving over her…his thick shaft filling her, stretching her, exploding deep within her.
Oh, yes, she thought, practically squirming where she stood. Jamie was right. She really had been celibate for too long.
Thorne blinked slowly, his thick black lashes shuttering stormy silver eyes. Like a cool breeze skating over flushed bare skin, Gabrielle felt some of the tightness in her limbs dissipate. Her heart was still pounding; the room still seemed oddly warm.
He turned his head away from her, and her eyes were drawn to the base of his scalp, where his hair met the collar of his tailored shirt. He had a tattoo on his neck—at least, she thought it was a tattoo. Intricate swirls and geometric-looking symbols rendered in ink just a few shades darker than his skin came up the back of his neck and around the side, disappearing beneath the thick growth of his dark hair. She wondered what the rest of it looked like, and if there was some special meaning to the beautiful pattern.
She had an almost irrepressible urge to trace the interesting markings with her fingertip. Maybe her tongue.
“Tell me what you told your friends about the attack you witnessed at the club.”
She swallowed on a dry throat, shaking her head to bring herself back to the conversation. “Yes. Right.”
God, what was wrong with her? Gabrielle dismissed the peculiar race of her pulse and focused on the events of the other night. She recounted the story for the detective, as she had for the other officers, and, later, her friends. She told him every horrific detail, and he listened carefully, letting her relay it all uninterrupted. Under the cool acceptance of his gaze, Gabrielle’s memory of the slaying seemed more precise now, as if the lens of her recollection had been sharpened, the details magnified.
When she finished, she found Thorne clicking through the pictures on her cell phone once more. The line of his mouth had gone from grim to grave.
“What exactly do you think these images show, Miss Maxwell?”
She glanced up and met his look, those wise, piercing eyes of his boring into her. In that instant, a word skated through Gabrielle’s head—incredible, laughable, terrifyingly clear.
Vampire.
“I don’t know,” she said lamely, speaking over the rising whisper in her head. “I mean, I’m not sure what to think.”
If the detective didn’t suspect she was nuts yet, he would if she blurted out the word that was now swimming through her mind, chilling her to the bone. It was the only explanation she had for the gruesome slaying she witnessed that night.
Vampires?
Christ Jesus. She really was crazy.
“I’ll need to take this device, Miss Maxwell.”
“Gabrielle,” she offered. Her smile felt awkward. “Do you think forensics, or whoever does that sort of thing, will be able to clean up the images?”
He gave her a slight incline of his head, not quite a nod, then pocketed her cell phone. “I will return it to you tomorrow evening. You will be home?”
“Sure.” How was it he could make a simple question sound more like an order? “I appreciate you coming by, Detective Thorne. It’s been a rough few days.”
“Lucan,” he said, studying her for a moment. “Call me Lucan.”
Heat seemed to reach out to her from his eyes, along with a stoic understanding, as if this man had seen more horrors than she could ever comprehend. She could not name the emotion that passed through her in that moment, but it sped her pulse and made the room feel sapped of all its air. He was still looking at her, waiting, as if expecting her to comply at once with his request to speak his name.
“All right…Lucan.”
“Gabrielle,” he replied, and the sound of her name on his lips sent a quiver of awareness shooting through her veins.
Something on the wall behind her caught his attention. He glanced to where one of Gabrielle’s most acclaimed photographs hung. His mouth pursed slightly, a sensual quirk of his lips that hinted at amusement, perhaps surprise. Gabrielle pivoted to look at the image of an inner city park that was frozen and desolate beneath a blanket of thick December snow.
“You don’t like my work,” she guessed.
He mildly shook his dark head. “I find it…intriguing.”
She was curious now. “How so?”
“You find beauty in the most unlikely of places,” he said after a long moment, his attention focused now on her. “Your pictures are full of passion….”
“But?”
To her bewilderment, he reached out, stroked a finger along the line of her jaw. “There are no people in them, Gabrielle.”
“Of course there…”
She started to blurt out a denial, but before the words reached her tongue, she realized that he was right. Her gaze lit on each framed photograph she kept in her apartment, her memory touching on all the others that hung in galleries and museums and private collections around the city.
He was right. The images, no matter their subjects were all empty places, lonely places.
Not one of them contained a single face or even a shadow of human life.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, stunned at the revelation.
In just a few moments, this man had defined her work as no one ever had before. Not even she had seen the obvious truth in her art, but Lucan Thorne had inexplicably opened her eyes. It was as if he had peered into her very soul.
“I must go now,” he said, already making his way to the door.
Gabrielle followed him, wishing he would stay longer. Maybe he would come back later. She nearly asked him to, but forced herself into maintaining at least a modicum of cool control. Thorne was halfway out the door when he abruptly paused on the threshold. He turned toward her, too close in the cramped space of the foyer. His large body crowded her, but Gabrielle didn’t mind. She didn’t so much as breathe.
“Is something wrong?”
His fine nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. “What kind of perfume are you wearing?”
The question flustered her. It was so unexpected, so personal. She felt heat rise to her cheeks, though why she should be embarrassed she had no idea. “I don’t wear perfume. I can’t. I’m allergic.”
“Really.”
His mouth curved into a harsh smile, as if his teeth had suddenly become too full for his mouth. He leaned toward her, slowly bending his head down until it was hovering at her neck. Gabrielle heard the soft rasp of his breath—felt it caress her skin in coolness then in warmth—as he drew her scent into his lungs and released it through his lips. Heat seared her throat, and she could have sworn she felt the swift pressure of his mouth brushing over her pulse, which lurched into an erratic beat as the dark head lingered so intimately close to her. She heard a low growl rumble near her ear, something very near a curse.
Thorne came away at once, and did not meet her startled gaze. He didn’t offer any excuse or apology for his strange behavior, either.
“You smell like jasmine,” was all he said.
And then, without looking at her, he stepped out the door and strode into the darkened street outside.
It was wrong to pursue the woman.
Lucan knew this, even as he had waited on Gabrielle Maxwell’s apartment steps that evening, showing her a detective’s badge and photo ID card. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t real, in fact, only a hypnotic manipulation that made her human mind believe he was who he had presented himself to be.
A simple trick for elders of his kind, like himself, but one he seldom stooped to use.
Yet now, here he was again, some time past midnight, stretching his slim personal code of honor even thinner as he tried the latch on her front door and found it unlocked. He knew it would be; he’d given her the suggestion while he had talked with her that evening, when he had shown her what he wanted to do with her and read the surprised, but receptive, response in her soft brown eyes.
He could have taken her then. She would have Hosted him willingly, he was certain, and knowing the intense pleasure they would have shared in the process had nearly been his undoing. But Lucan’s first duty was to his Breed and the warriors who had banded together with him to combat the growing problem of the Rogues.
Bad enough that Gabrielle had witnessed the nightclub slaying and reported it to the police and her friends before her memory of the event could be erased, but she had also managed to take pictures. They were grainy, almost unreadable, but damning just the same. He needed to secure the images, before she had a chance to show them to anyone else. He’d made good on that, at least. By rights, he should be back at the tech lab with Gideon, IDing the Rogue who had escaped outside La Notte, or riding shotgun around the city with Dante, Rio, Conlan, and the others as they hunted down more of their diseased brethren. And so he would be, once he finished this last bit of business with lovely Gabrielle Maxwell.
Lucan slipped inside the old brick building on Willow Street and closed the door behind him. Gabrielle’s tantalizing scent filled his nostrils, leading him to her now as it had the night outside the club and at the police station downtown. He silently navigated her apartment, through the main level and up the stairs to her bedroom loft. Skylights in the vaulted ceiling summoned the moon’s pale glow, which played softly over Gabrielle’s graceful curves. She slept nude, as though awaiting his arrival, her long legs wrapped in twisted sheets, her hair spread out around her head on the pillow in luxurious waves of burnt gold.
Her scent enveloped him, sweet and sultry, making his teeth ache.
Jasmine, he thought, curling back his lips in a smile of wry appreciation. An exotic flower that opens its fragrant petals only under the coaxing of night.
Open for me now, Gabrielle.
But he wouldn’t seduce her, he decided, not like this. He wanted only a taste tonight, just enough to satisfy his curiosity. That was all he’d permit himself. When he was through here, Gabrielle would have no memory of meeting him, nor of the horror she had witnessed in the alley a few nights ago.
His own need would have to wait.
Lucan went to her and eased his hip onto the mattress beside her. He stroked the burnished softness of her hair, brushed his fingers along the slender line of her arm.
She stirred, moaning sweetly, rousing at his light touch. “Lucan,” she murmured sleepily, not quite awake, yet subconsciously aware that he had joined her in the room.
“Just a dream,” he whispered, astonished to hear his name on her lips when he had used no vampire guile to place it there.
She sighed deeply, settling against him. “I knew you would come back.”
“Did you?”
“Mm-hmm.” It was a purr of sound in her throat, raspy and erotic. Her eyes remained closed, her mind still caught in the web of her dreams. “I wanted you to come back.”
Lucan smiled at that, tracing his fingers over her placid brow. “You do not fear me, beauty?”
She gave a small shake of her head, nuzzling his palm against her cheek. Her lips were slightly parted, small white teeth gleaming in the scant light overhead. Her neck was graceful, proud, a regal column of alabaster above the fragile bones of her shoulders. How sweet she would taste, how soft against his tongue.
And her breasts…Lucan could not resist the peachy dark nipple that peeked out from under the sheet draped haphazardly across her torso. He teased the little bud between his fingers, tugging it gently and nearly growling with need as it puckered into a tight bead, hardening at his touch.
He was hardening as well. He licked his lips, growing hungry, eager to have her.
Gabrielle squirmed languidly beneath the tangled sheet. Lucan slowly drew the cotton coverlet away, baring her to him completely. She was exquisite, as he knew she would be. Petite, yet strong, her body was lithe with youth, supple and fair. Firm muscle shaped her elegant limbs; her artist’s hands were slender and expressive, flexing mindlessly as Lucan trailed his fingers along her sternum and down to the concave dip of her belly. Her skin here was velvet and warm, too tempting to resist.
Lucan moved over her on the bed, and slid his palms beneath her. He lifted her to him, gently arching her up off the mattress. He kissed the sweet curve of her hip, then let his tongue play across the small valley of her navel. She gasped as he plumbed the shallow indentation, and the fragrance of her need wreathed his senses.
“Jasmine,” he rasped against her heated skin, his teeth dragging lightly as his kiss ventured lower.
Her moan of pleasure as his mouth invaded her sex sent a violent jolt of lust through his veins. He was already stiff and erect; his cock throbbed beneath the constricting barrier of his clothes. She was wet and slick against his lips, her cleft a heated sheath against his questing tongue. Lucan suckled her as he would sweet nectar, until her body convulsed with the coming of her release. And still he lapped at her, bringing her to the crest of another climax, and then another.
She’d gone slack in his arms, boneless and trembling. Lucan trembled as well, his hands shaking as he carefully eased her back down onto the bed. He’d never wanted a woman so badly. He wanted something more, he realized, bemused by the impulse that he had to protect her. Gabrielle panted softly as her last climax subsided, and she curled onto her side, as innocent as a kitten.
Lucan stared down at her in silent fury, heaving with the force of his need. Dull pain tightened his mouth as his fangs stretched out from his gums. His tongue was dry. Hunger knotted in his gut. His vision sharpened as lust for blood and release slung its seductive coils around him, and his pupils elongated to catlike slivers in his pale eyes.
Take her, urged that part of him that was inhuman, unearthly.
She is yours. Take her.
Just a taste—that was what he had vowed. He would not harm her, only heighten her pleasure as he took a bit of his own. She wouldn’t even remember this moment, come the dawn. As his blood Host, she would give him a sustaining sip of life, then awake later, drowsy and sated, but blissfully unaware of its cause.
It was a small mercy, he told himself, even as his body quickened with the urge to feed.
Lucan bent over Gabrielle’s languid form, and tenderly swept aside the riot of ginger waves concealing her neck. His heart was hammering in his chest, urging him to slake his burning thirst. Just a taste, no more. Only pleasure. He came forward, his mouth open, his senses swamped with her intoxicating female scent. His lips pressed down against her warmth, settling over the delicate pulse that beat against his tongue. His fangs grazed the velvet softness of her throat, throbbing now, like another demanding part of his anatomy.
And in the instant before his sharp teeth penetrated her fragile skin, his keen vision lit on a tiny birthmark just behind Gabrielle’s ear.
Nearly undetectable, the diminutive mark of a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon made Lucan rear back in shock. The symbol, so rare among human females, meant only one thing…
Breedmate.
He withdrew from the bed as though touched by fire, hissing a furious curse into the dark. Hunger for Gabrielle still pounded through him, even as he grappled with the ramifications of what he might have done to them both.
Gabrielle Maxwell was a Breedmate, a human gifted with unique blood and DNA properties that complemented those of his kind. She and the few numbers like her were queens among other human females. To Lucan’s kind, a race comprised solely of males, this woman was a cherished goddess, giver of life, destined to bond in blood and bear the seed of a new vampire generation.
And in his reckless lust to taste her, Lucan had nearly claimed her for his own.
CHAPTER
Four
Gabrielle could count on one hand the number of erotic dreams she’d had in her life, but never had she experienced anything as hot—not to mention, real—as the sexfest fantasy she had enjoyed the night before, courtesy of the virtual Lucan Thorne. His breath had been the night breeze, sifting through the open window of her bedroom loft. His hair was the obsidian darkness that filled the skylights over her bed, his silver eyes the pale glow of the moon. His hands were the silken bonds of her bedsheets, twined around her splayed wrists and ankles, spreading her open beneath him, holding her fast.
His mouth had been pure heat that seared every inch of her skin, licking her like an unseen flame. Jasmine, he had called her in the dream, and the soft hum of the word had vibrated against her damp flesh as his warm breath stirred the flossy curls between her legs.
She had writhed and whimpered under the skill of his tongue, submitting to a torment that she hoped might have no end. But it had ended, too soon. Gabrielle had awakened in her bed, alone in the dark, gasping Lucan’s name, her body wrung out and listless, aching for more.
She still ached and that bothered her even more than the fact that the mysterious Detective Thorne had stood her up.
Not that his offer to come by her place tonight was anything close to a date, but she had been looking forward to seeing him again. She was interested to know more about him since he seemed so adept at deciphering her with a single glance. Aside from getting some more answers about what she had witnessed the night outside the club, Gabrielle had been hoping for a little conversation with Lucan, maybe some wine or dinner. The fact that she shaved her legs twice and wore some sexy black lingerie beneath her long-sleeved silk blouse and dark jeans was purely incidental.
Gabrielle had waited for him until well after nine, then finally gave up on the idea and called Jamie to see if he would have dinner with her downtown.
Seated across the table from her in a windowed alcove at Ciao Bella bistro, Jamie set down his glass of pinot noir and eyed her nearly untouched frutti de mare. “You’ve been pushing that same piece of scallop around your plate for ten minutes, sweetie. Don’t you like it?”
“No, it’s great. The food is always amazing here.”
“So, it’s just the company that sucks?”
She glanced up at him and shook her head. “Not at all. You’re my best friend, you know that.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, smiling. “But I don’t compare to your wet dream.”
Gabrielle’s face warmed as one of the patrons at a neighboring table looked their way. “You’re a shit sometimes, you know that?” she whispered to Jamie. “I shouldn’t have told you about it.”
“Oh, honey. Don’t be embarrassed. If I had a nickel for every time I woke up torqued and screaming some hot guy’s name…”
“I wasn’t screaming his name.” No, she was gasping and moaning it, both in bed and in the shower a short while later, when she still couldn’t get Lucan Thorne out of her system. “It was like he was there, Jamie. Right there, in my bed—so real I could touch him.”
Jamie sighed. “Some girls have all the luck. Next time you see your dream lover, be a dear and send him my way when you’re through.”
Gabrielle smiled, knowing that her friend was hardly lacking in the romance department. For the past four years, he’d been happily monogamous with David, an antiques dealer, who was currently out of town on business. “You want to know the strangest thing about this, Jamie? When I got up this morning, my front door was unlocked.”
“So?”
“So, you know me, I never leave it unlocked.”
Jamie’s tawny, manicured brows knit into a scowl. “What are you saying, you think this guy broke in while you were asleep?”
“Sounds crazy, I know. A police detective coming into my house in the middle of the night to seduce me. I must be losing my mind.”
She said it casually, but this wasn’t the first time she’d questioned the soundness of her own sanity. Not the first time by a long shot. She fidgeted absently with the sleeve of her blouse while Jamie observed her. He was quietly concerned now, which only increased her discomfort with the subject of her possible shaky mental stability.
“Look, hon. You’ve been under a lot of stress since the weekend. That can do strange things to your head. You were upset and confused. You must have forgotten to lock the door.”
“And the dream?”
“Just that—a dream. Just your harried mind trying to tell you to chill out, to relax.”
Gabrielle bobbed her head in an automatic nod of agreement. “Right. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
If only she could accept that the explanation was as reasonable as her friend made it sound. But something in the pit of her stomach rejected the idea that she might have carelessly left her door unlocked. It was something she simply would not do, no matter how stressed out or confused she was.
“Hey.” Jamie reached across the table to clasp her hand. “You’re going to be okay, Gab. And you know you can call me anytime, right? I’m here for you, always will be.”
“Thanks.”
He let her go and picked up his fork to gesture at her frutti de mare. “So, are you going to eat any more of that or can I scavenge it now?”
Gabrielle traded her half-eaten plate of food for his empty one. “It’s all yours.”
As Jamie went to work on her cold meal, Gabrielle leaned her chin on her hand and took a long sip of her wine. As she drank, her fingers moved idly over the faint marks she had found on her neck this morning after her shower. The unlocked front door wasn’t exactly the strangest thing she had discovered, the twin welts below her ear took that prize, no contest.
The small nicks had not been deep enough to break her skin, but they were there. Two of them, evenly spaced, at the place where her pulse beat strongest against her fingertips. At first, she had wondered if she’d scratched herself in her sleep, maybe been swept up in the strange dream she’d had and raked her nails across her skin.
But the marks didn’t look like scratches. They looked like something…else.
Like someone, or something, had nearly taken a bite out of her carotid.
Crazy.
That’s what it was, and she needed to snap herself out of that kind of thinking before she did any further harm to herself. She had to get her head together and stop manufacturing paranoid fantasies about midnight visitors and horror-movie monsters that couldn’t possibly exist in real life. If she wasn’t careful, she might end up like her birth mother…
“Ohmigod, smack me right now because I am a complete and utter dolt,” Jamie exclaimed suddenly, breaking into her thoughts. “I keep forgetting to tell you this! I got a call at the gallery yesterday about your photographs. Some bigwig downtown is interested in a private showing.”
“Seriously? Who is it?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know, sweetie. I didn’t actually talk to the potential buyer, but based on the snooty attitude of the guy’s assistant, I’d say whoever your admirer is, he—or she—is dripping with money. I’ve got an appointment down at one of the buildings in the Financial District tomorrow night. We’re talking penthouse office, darling.”
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, incredulous.
“Uh-huh. Trés cool, girlfriend. Pretty soon you’re gonna be too good for small-time art peddlers like me,” he joked, grinning with shared excitement for her.
It was hard not to be intrigued, especially given everything she had been through the past few days. Gabrielle had achieved a respectable following and had won some very nice accolades for her work, but a private showing for an anonymous buyer was a first.
“Which pieces did they ask you to bring?”
Jamie lifted his wine glass and tipped it at her in mock salute. “All of it, Miss Thang. Every single piece in the collection.”
From the rooftop of an old brick building in the city’s busy theater district, moonlight gleamed off the lethal sneer of a black-clad vampire. Crouched in position near the ledge, the Breed warrior pivoted his dark head, then held out his hand, and gave a covert signal.
Four Rogues. One human prey. Heading straight for them.
Lucan nodded to Dante and stepped off the fifth-floor fire escape that had been his lookout perch for the past half hour. He descended to the street below in one fluid motion, landing quietly as a cat. Dual combat blades were sheathed crisscross on his back and thrust out over his shoulders like the bones of demonic wings. Lucan drew the titanium-edged weapons with barely a hiss of sound as he eased into the shadows of the narrow side street to await the evening’s action.
It was just around 11 P.M., several hours past the time he should have been stopping by Gabrielle Maxwell’s apartment to return her cell phone like he’d told her he would. The device was still at the tech lab with Gideon, who was processing the images and running them against the Breed’s International Identification Database.
As for Lucan, he had no intention of returning the phone to Gabrielle, personally or otherwise. The images of the Rogues’ attack had to stay out of human hands, and after the near fiasco he’d had in her bedroom, the farther he stayed away from the female, the better.
A goddamned Breedmate.
He should have known. Thinking back on it, there had been a few things about her that should have clued him in to the fact right away. Like her ability to see through the veil of vampire mind control permeating the dance club that night. She had seen the Rogues—Bloodlusting in the alley, and in the scrambled images of her cell phone—when other humans could not. Then, at her apartment, she had even proven resistant to Lucan’s own efforts to bend her thoughts with mental suggestion, and he suspected she had succumbed more out of her own unconscious desire for the pleasure he offered than anything else.
It was no secret that human females with the genetic makeup unique to Breedmates possessed keen intelligence and flawless health. Many possessed uncanny extrasensory skills or paranormal talents that would amplify once a Breedmate was blood-bonded to a vampire male.
As for Gabrielle Maxwell, it appeared that she was gifted with a special vision that let her see what other humans could not, though just how far that vision went was anyone’s guess. Lucan wanted to know. His warrior’s instinct demanded he get to the bottom of it without delay.
But getting involved with the female in any form or fashion was the very last thing he needed.
So why couldn’t he shake himself loose of her sweet scent, her soft skin…her sultry sensuality? He hated that the woman had brought out such weakness in him, and his current mood was hardly improved by the fact that his body was aching with the need to feed.
The only bright spot in his night was the steady clip of Rogues’ boot heels on pavement somewhere near the mouth of the side street, coming his way.
The human turning the corner a few paces ahead of them was male. Young, healthy, garbed in black-and-white houndstooth pants and a stained white tunic that reeked of a greasy restaurant kitchen and sudden, anxious perspiration. The cook checked over his shoulder where the four vampires were gaining ground. A hushed, nervous-sounding expletive hissed in the dark. The human swung his head back around and walked faster, fists clenched at his sides, his rounding eyes rooted to the lightless stretch of asphalt at his feet.
“No need to run, little man,” one of the Rogues taunted, his voice scraping like gravel.
Another made a shrill, mocking squeal as he loped ahead of his three companions. “Yeah, don’t run away now. It ain’t like you’re gonna get far.”
The Rogues’ laughter echoed against the buildings flanking the narrow street.
“Shit,” the human whispered under his breath. He didn’t turn around again, just plowed ahead at a swift clip, two seconds from breaking into a flat-out, but pointless, run.
As the frightened human neared, Lucan took a slow step out of the gloom, bracing his feet wide beneath him. Arms extended out at his sides, he blocked the street with his menacing body and twin swords. He shot a cold smile at the Rogues, his fangs stretched long in anticipation of the fight to come. “Evening, ladies.”
“Oh, Jesus!” gasped the human. He made an abrupt stop, staring up into Lucan’s face in horror as one of his knees buckled beneath him. “Shit!”
“Get up.” Lucan gave him the briefest flick of a glance as the young man scrambled to find his feet. “Get out of here.”
He scraped his two blades together before him, filling the darkened street with the harsh metallic grate of steel sliding over hard-edged, lethal steel. Behind the four Rogues, Dante leaped to the asphalt in a crouch, then drew himself up to his six-and-a-half-foot height. He had no sword, but circling his waist was a leather belt studded with a collection of deadly, hand-to-hand weaponry, including a pair of razor-sharp, curved blades that performed as hellish extensions of his dazzlingly fast hands. Malebranche, he called them, and evil claws they were. Dante had them poised in his grasp in an instant, one mean-ass vampire who was always ready for a round of up-close-and-personal combat.
“Oh, my God,” the human cried, his voice wobbling as he took in the danger that surrounded him. Gaping up at Lucan, the man went for his wallet, hands trembling as he pulled the worn billfold out of his back pocket and tossed it to the ground. “Take it, man! You can have it. Just don’t kill me, I’m begging you!”
Lucan kept his eyes trained on the four Rogues, who were checking their positions, going for their own weapons. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”
“He’s ours,” one of the Rogues hissed. Yellow eyes fixed on Lucan in pure hatred, the pupils permanently narrowed to hungered, vertical slits. Long fangs dripped with saliva, further evidence of the vampire’s advanced Bloodlust addiction.
Just like a human could fall dependent on a powerful narcotic, Bloodlust was as destructive for the Breed. The tipping point between the necessary assuaging of hunger and reckless overdose of blood was easily breached. Some vampires went willingly into that abyss, while others succumbed to the disease through inexperience or a lack of personal discipline. Gone too far, and for too long, a vampire would turn Rogue, like these feral beasts snarling before Lucan now.
Eager to smoke them, Lucan slapped his long blades together, smelling the spark of heat as one length of steel crashed against the other.
The human was still standing there, idiotic in his fear, his head swinging between the advancing Rogues and Lucan’s unwavering stance. The hesitation was sure to cost the man, but Lucan shrugged off the knowledge with cold dispassion. The human wasn’t his concern. Eradicating these bloodsuckers, and the rest of their diseased kind, was all that mattered.
One of the Rogues wiped a dirty hand across his slavering mouth. “Back off, asshole. Let us feed.”
“Not tonight,” Lucan growled, “not in my city.”
“Your city?” The rest of them sniggered as the Rogue in the lead spat on the ground at Lucan’s feet. “This city belongs to us. Won’t be long and we’re gonna own it all.”
“That’s right,” added another of the four. “So, looks like you’re the one trespassin’ here.”
Finally, the human had gathered his wits and started to make a break. He didn’t get far. Moving with incredible speed, one of the Rogues lashed out a hand and grabbed the man by the throat. He jerked him off his feet and held him aloft, letting the human’s black hightop sneakers dangle six inches off the ground. The human grunted and squirmed, struggling wildly as the Rogue squeezed harder, slowly strangling him with his bare hand. Lucan stared, unfazed, even as the vampire dropped his twitching prey and tore a hole in the man’s neck with his teeth.
In his periphery, Lucan saw Dante creep up silently behind the Rogues. Fangs bared, the warrior licked his lips, eager to get busy. He wouldn’t be disappointed. Lucan struck first, and then the street erupted with the clash of metal and the crush of breaking bone.
Where Dante fought like a hell-spawned demon, malebranche blades flashing, war cries splitting the night, Lucan maintained a cold control and deadly precision. One by one, the Rogues fell to the warriors’ punishing blows. The kiss of titanium-laced steel sped through the Rogues’ corrupted blood systems as poison, accelerating death and bringing on the swift stages of decomposition characteristic of the Rogues’ demise.
With their enemies dispatched, their corpses reducing from flesh and bone to fine, drifting ash, Lucan and Dante surveyed the other carnage in the street.
The human was unmoving, bleeding profusely from the tattered wound in his throat.
Dante knelt beside the man, sniffing at the savaged form. “He’s dead. Or will be, in another minute.”
The smell of spilled blood reached Lucan’s nostrils like a fist slamming into his gut. His fangs, already extended in rage, now throbbed with the urge to feed. He glared down at the dying human in disgust. Although the taking of blood was necessary to him, Lucan despised the idea of accepting Rogue leavings, in any form. He preferred to draw his sustenance from willing Hosts of his own choosing whenever he could, although those meager tastes only staved off the deeper hunger.
Sooner or later, every vampire had to kill.
Lucan didn’t try to deny his nature, but on the occasions when he killed, it was by his choice, by his own rules. When he sought prey, he took primarily criminals, drug dealers, junkies, and other lowlifes. He was judicious and efficient, never slaughtering simply for the sake of it. All of the Breed adhered to a similar code of honor; it was what separated them from their lawless Rogue brethren.
His gut tightened as another whiff of blood trailed into his nose. Saliva surged into his parched mouth.
When was the last time he’d fed?
He couldn’t recall. It had been a while. Several days, at least, and not enough to last him. He’d thought to curb some of his hunger—both the carnal and the systemic—with Gabrielle Maxwell last night, but that idea had taken a quick turn south. Now he was shaking with the urge to feed, and too far gone to consider anything but the necessity of his body’s basic needs.
“Lucan.” Dante pressed his fingers to the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. The vampire’s fangs were extruded, sharp from the battle and the physiological reaction to the scent of pooling crimson life. “If we wait much longer, the blood will be dead, too.”
And no use to them, for it was only fresh blood, pumping through human veins, that could quench the vampires’ hunger. Dante waited, even though it was obvious he wanted nothing more than to drop his head and take his fill of the human who had been too stupid to flee when he had the chance.
But Dante would wait, even to the point of wasting prey, for it was an unwritten protocol that later generation vampires did not feed in the presence of an elder, particularly when that elder was Gen One Breed and starving.
Unlike Dante, Lucan’s sire was one of the Ancients, one of eight alien warriors who came from a distant, dark planet only to crash-land thousands of years ago on unforgiving, inhospitable Earth. To survive, they had fed on the blood of humans, decimating entire populations with their hunger and savagery. In rare instances, these foreign conquerors had successfully bred with human females—the first Breedmates—who spawned a new generation of the vampire race.
Those savage, otherworldly forebears were all gone now, but their progeny lived on, in Lucan and a few scattered others. They were the closest things to royalty in vampire society—respected, and not a little feared. The vast majority of the Breed were younger, born of second, third, and some countless dozens later generations.
The hunger was strongest in Gen Ones. So was the propensity to give in to Bloodlust and turn Rogue. The Breed had learned to live with the danger. Most had learned to manage it, taking blood only when needed, and in the smallest quantities required to sustain. They had to, for once lost to Bloodlust, there was no coming back.
Lucan’s slitted eyes fell to the twitching, shallowly breathing human on the pavement. The animal snarl he heard came from his own dry throat. As Lucan strode toward the scent of spilled, life-giving blood, Dante gave a slight but deferential bow of his dark head and backed off to let his elder feed.
CHAPTER
Five
He hadn’t even bothered to call and leave her a message last night.
Typical.
Probably had a big date with his remote control and ESPN, or maybe after he left her place the other evening, he’d met someone else and gotten a more interesting offer than schlepping Gabrielle’s cell phone back out to Beacon Hill. Hell, he might even be married, or involved with someone. Not that she’d asked, and not that asking would have guaranteed he’d have told her the truth. Lucan Thorne probably wasn’t any different than any other guy.
Except he was…different.
He struck her as being very different from anyone she had ever met before. A very private man, almost secretive. Definitely dangerous. She could no more see him sitting in a recliner in front of the television than she could envision him tied down with a serious girlfriend, let alone a wife and family. Which brought her back to the idea that he must have gotten a better offer elsewhere and decided to blow her off, an idea that stung a lot more than it should have.
“Forget about him,” Gabrielle scolded herself under her breath as she edged her black Cooper Mini to the side of the quiet rural road and cut the ignition. Her camera bag and gear sat beside her in the passenger seat. She gathered it up, grabbed a small flashlight from the glove compartment, pocketed her keys in her jacket, and got out of the car.
She closed the door quietly and cast a quick look around. Not a soul in sight, not surprising given that it was just nearing 6 A.M. and the building she was about to enter illegally and photograph had been shut down for about twenty years. She walked along the empty stretch of cracked pavement and cut a sharp right, heading down through a ditch then up into a pine-and-oak wooded lot that stood like a thick curtain wall around the old asylum.
Dawn was just beginning to creep over the horizon. The lighting was eerie and ethereal, a misty haze of pink and lavender shrouding the Gothic structures with an otherworldly glow. Even bathed in soft pastels, the place held an air of menace.
The contrast was what had brought her out to the location this morning. Shooting it at dusk would have been the more natural choice, capitalizing on the haunted quality of the abandoned structures. But it was the juxtaposition of warm dawn light against a cold, sinister subject that appealed to Gabrielle as she paused to retrieve her camera from the bag slung over her shoulder. She snapped off a half-dozen shots, then clapped the lens cap back on, and continued her trek toward the ghostly buildings.
A tall wire security fence loomed in front of her, barricading the property against nosy explorers like herself. But Gabrielle knew its hidden weakness. She had found it the first time she had come to the place to take exterior pictures. She hurried along the line of the fence until she reached the southwest corner, then squatted down near the ground. Here, someone had discreetly severed the links with a wire cutter, creating a breach just large enough for a curious adolescent to wriggle through—or a determined female photographer who tended to view No Trespassing and Authorized Personnel Only signs more as friendly suggestions rather than enforceable laws.
Gabrielle pushed open the flap of snipped fence, shoved her gear inside, and scrambled spiderlike on her belly through the low opening. A shiver of apprehension coursed along her limbs as she came up on the other side of the fence. She should be used to this type of covert, solitary exploration; her art often depended on her courage to seek out desolate, some might argue dangerous, places. This creepy asylum could certainly classify as the latter, she thought, her gaze drifting to graffiti spray-painted next to an exterior door that read, BAd VIBeS.
“You can say that again,” she whispered under her breath. As she brushed the dirt and dried pine needles off her clothes, her hand drifted automatically to the front pocket of her jeans for her cell phone. It wasn’t there, of course, still in the possession of Detective Thorne. Just one more reason to be pissed at him for standing her up last night.
Maybe she should cut the guy a little slack, she thought, suddenly eager to focus on something other than the ominous feeling that pressed down on her now that she was inside the asylum grounds. Maybe Thorne had been a no-show because something bad happened to him on the job.
What if he’d been injured in the line of duty and didn’t come by as promised because he was incapacitated in some way? Maybe he hadn’t called to apologize or to explain his absence because he physically couldn’t.
Right. And maybe she had checked her brain into her panties from the second she first laid eyes on the man.
Scoffing at herself, Gabrielle picked up her things and walked toward the soaring architecture of the main building. Pale limestone climbed skyward in a steep central tower, capped by peaks and spires worthy of the finest gothic cathedral. Surrounding this was a sprawling compound of red-brick walled and tile-roofed outbuildings arranged in a batwing layout, connected by covered walk-ways and cloisterlike arches.
But as awe-inspiring as the structure was, there was no dismissing its air of slumbering menace, as if a thousand sins and secrets loomed behind the chipped walls and smashed mullioned-glass windows. Gabrielle strode to where the light was best and took a few pictures. There was no current point of entry here; the main door had been bolted shut and boarded up tight. If she wanted to get inside to take interior shots—and she definitely did—she had to go around to the back and try her luck with a ground-level window or basement door.
She skirted down a sloping embankment, toward the anterior of the building and found what she was looking for: wooden shutters concealed three windows that likely opened into a service area or crawl space of the structure. The shutter’s rusty latches were corroded but not locked, and they broke away easily with a little encouragement from a rock Gabrielle found nearby. She pulled the wooden covering away from the window, lifted the heavy glass panel, and propped it open with the window brace.
After a perfunctory sweep of her flashlight to make sure the place was empty and not about to cave in on her head, she shimmied through the opening. As she hopped down from the window casement, the soles of her boots crunched broken glass and years of accumulated dust and debris. The foundation of gray cinderblock bricks ran about four yards in, disappearing into the gloom of the unlit basement. Gabrielle shot the thin beam of her flashlight into the shadows at the other end of the space. She ran it back along the wall, holding the light steady when she came across a battered old service door bearing the stenciled words No General Access.
“Wanna bet?” she whispered as she approached the door and found it unlocked.
She opened it and shone some light around the other side into a long, tunnel-like corridor. Broken fluorescent light fixtures hung down from the ceiling; some of the panel coverings had fallen to the industrial-grade linoleum floor, where they lay shattered and dust-coated. Gabrielle stepped into the dark space, not certain what she was looking for, and a bit apprehensive of what she might find in the deserted bowels of the asylum.
She passed an open room off the corridor and her flashlight skimmed across a red vinyl dentist’s chair, a little worse for wear, and poised in the center of the room as if awaiting its next patient. Gabrielle removed her camera from its case and took a couple of quick shots. She moved on, passing more examination and treatment rooms in what must have been the medical wing of the building. She found a stairwell and climbed two flights, pleased to find herself in the central tower where tall windows brought in generous amounts of soft morning light.
Through her camera lens, she looked out over wide lawns and courtyards flanked by elegant brick and limestone buildings. She snapped a few pictures of the faded glory of the place, appreciating both the architecture and the warm play of sunlight against so much ghostly shadow. It was strange looking out from the confines of a building that had once held so many disturbed souls. In the eerie silence, Gabrielle could almost hear the voices of the patients, people who had not been able to simply walk away like she could now.
People like her birth mother, a woman Gabrielle had never known beyond what she had heard as a kid through hushed conversations between social workers and the foster families who would, eventually, one by one, return her into the system like a pet that had proved more trouble than it was worth. She lost track of the number of places she’d been sent to live, but the complaints against her when she was bounced back were always the same: restless and withdrawn, secretive and untrusting, socially dysfunctional with self-destructive tendencies. She’d heard the same labels applied to her mother, along with the added distinctions of paranoid and delusional.
By the time the Maxwells came into her life, Gabrielle had spent ninety days in a group home, under the supervision of a state-appointed psychologist. She’d had zero expectations and even less hope that she might actually make another foster situation stick. Frankly, she’d been past the point of caring. But her new guardians had been patient and kind. Thinking it might help her cope with her emotional confusion, they had helped Gabrielle obtain a handful of court documents pertaining to her mother.
The young woman had been a teenage Jane Doe, presumably homeless, with no ID, and no known family or acquaintances, except for the newborn baby girl she had left, squalling and distressed, in a city garbage bin late one August night. Gabrielle’s mother had been brutalized, bleeding from deep puncture wounds in her neck that had been made worse by her hysteria and panicked clawing at the injury. While she was being treated at the emergency room, she slipped into a catatonic state and never recovered.
Rather than prosecute her for the crime of abandoning her infant, the courts had deemed the woman incompetent and sent her away to a facility probably not much different from this one. Not a month into her institutionalization, she had hanged herself with a knotted bedsheet, leaving behind countless questions that would never have answers.
Gabrielle tried to shake off the weight of those old hurts but standing there, looking out the hazy glass windows, brought her past into tighter focus. She didn’t want to think about her mother, or the misfortune of her birth, and the dark, lonely years that had followed. She needed to concentrate on her work. That’s what always got her through, after all. It was the one constant in her life, sometimes all she truly had in this world.
And it was enough.
Most of the time, it was enough.
“Get a few shots and get the hell out of here,” she scolded herself, bringing the camera up and taking a couple more photos through the subtle metalwork that was meshed between the double panes of glass in the window.
She thought about leaving the same way she had come in, but wondered if she might find another exit somewhere on the main floor of the central building. Going back down to the dark basement was not exactly appealing. She was creeping herself out with thoughts about her crazy mother, and the longer she lingered in the old asylum, the more her skin was beginning to crawl. She opened the stairwell door and felt a little better to see dim light filtering in through windows in some of the empty rooms and at the end of the adjacent hallway.
Evidently the “bad vibes” graffiti artist had made it in here, too. On each of the four walls, strange scroll-like symbols had been rendered in deep black paint. Probably gang markings, or the stylized signatures of the kids who’d been here before her. A discarded spray-paint canister lay in the corner, along with a smattering of cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, and other debris.
Gabrielle took out her camera and looked for a good angle for the shot she had in mind. The light wasn’t great, but with a different lens it might prove interesting. She fished around in her bag for her lens cases, then froze when she heard a distant whirring noise coming from somewhere beneath her feet. It was faint, but it sounded impossibly like an elevator. Gabrielle stuffed her gear back into the bag, her ears tuned to the vague sounds around her, every nerve flooded with a chilling sense of foreboding.
She was not alone in here.
And now that she was thinking about it, she felt eyes on her from somewhere nearby. The prickling awareness raised the fine hairs at the back of her neck and sent a spray of goosebumps along her arms. Slowly, she pivoted her head and looked behind her. It was then that she saw it: a small closed-circuit video camera mounted in the shadowed upper corner of the corridor, monitoring the stairwell door she had just come through a few minutes before.
Maybe it wasn’t working, just a leftover from the days when the asylum was still in operation. It might have been a comforting thought, except the camera looked too well-maintained and compact to be anything less than current issue, state-of-the-art surveillance. To test that idea, Gabrielle took a long step toward it, placing herself almost directly beneath the camera. Soundlessly, its base mount tilted, angling the lens until it was staring Gabrielle in the face.
Shit, she mouthed into that black, unblinking eye. Busted.
From deep within the empty compound, she heard the metal creak and crash of a heavy door. Evidently the abandoned asylum wasn’t quite abandoned after all. They had security at least, and the Boston PD could take a few response-time lessons from these folks.
Footsteps pounded at a steady clip as whoever was on guard started coming for her. Gabrielle turned back into the stairwell and took off sprinting down the steps, her gear bouncing against her hip. As she descended, light grew scarce. She gripped the flashlight in her hand, but hated to use it for fear of creating a beacon for security to follow. She hit the last stair, pushed open the metal door, and plunged into the dark of the lower-level corridor.
Back on the stairs, she heard the monitored door swing open with a bang as her pursuer thundered down behind her, running hard and gaining on her fast.
Finally, she reached the service door at the end of the corridor. Throwing herself against the cold steel, she rushed into the dank basement, and raced for the small window that was open to the outside. A blast of fresh air gave her strength as she slapped her hands onto the casement and hoisted herself up. She vaulted through the window and tumbled onto the pebbled earth outside.
She couldn’t hear her pursuer now. Maybe she had lost him in the dark twisting hallways. God, she hoped so.
Gabrielle shot to her feet and ran for the breached corner of the perimeter fence. She found it quickly. Diving to her hands and knees, she scrambled under the snipped section of wire, heart pounding in her ears, adrenaline jetting through her veins. She was too panicked: in her haste to flee, she scraped the side of her face on a rough edge of wire. The cut burned her cheek and she felt the hot trickle of blood running near her ear. But she ignored the searing sting and the bruising crush of her camera case as she wriggled on her belly through the fence and out toward freedom.
Once clear of the fence, Gabrielle leaped up and made a mad dash across the wide, rough lawn of the outer grounds. She spared only the barest glance behind her—long enough to see that the huge security guard was still there, having exited from somewhere on the ground floor and was now bounding after her like a beast straight out of hell. Gabrielle swallowed a knot of sheer panic at the sight of him. The guy was built like a tank, easily 250 pounds and all of it muscle, capped off by a large square head, his hair buzzed military style. The big man ran up to the tall fence and stopped at last, smashing his fist against the links as Gabrielle sped into the thick cover of trees separating the property from the road.
Her car was on the side of the quiet stretch of pavement, right where she had left it. With trembling hands, Gabrielle fumbled with the locked door, petrified that G.I. Joe on steroids might catch up to her yet. Her fear seemed irrational, but that didn’t stop the adrenaline from pouring through her. Dropping down into the leather seat of the Mini, Gabrielle slammed the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. Heart racing, she threw the little car into drive, stomped on the gas pedal, and ripped out onto the road, making her escape in a screech of spinning tires and burning rubber.
CHAPTER
Six
At midweek in the height of the summer tourist season, Boston’s parks and avenues were clotted with humanity. Commuter trains sped people in from the suburbs, to workplaces and museums, and to the countless historic sites located around the city. Camera-toting gawkers clambered onto excursion buses and horse-drawn carriages to putter around town, while others lined up to board over-priced, overcrowded charter tours that would haul them by the hundreds out to the Cape.
Not far from the daytime bustle, secreted some three-hundred feet beneath a heavily secured mansion outside the city, Lucan Thorne leaned over a flat-panel monitor in the Breed warriors’ compound and muttered a ripe curse. Vampire identification records scrolled up the screen’s display with machine-gun speed as a computer program searched a massive international database for matches against the photos Gabrielle Maxwell had taken.
“Anything yet?” he asked, slanting an impatient look at Gideon, the machine’s operator.
“Zip, so far. But my search is still clocking. IID’s got a few million records to scan.” Gideon’s sharp blue eyes flashed over the rims of sleek silver shades. “I’ll get a lock on your suckheads, don’t worry.”
“I never do,” Lucan replied, and meant it. Gideon had an IQ that was off the charts, compounded by a streak of tenacity that ran a mile wide. The vampire was as much relentless bloodhound as he was flat-out genius, and Lucan was damned glad to have him on his side. “If you can’t flush them out, Gideon, no one can.”
Beneath his crown of cropped, spiky blond hair, the Breed’s computer guru bared a cocky, confident grin. “That’s why I get the big bucks.”
“Yeah, something like that,” Lucan said, drawing away from the screen’s nonstop roll of information.
None of the Breed warriors who had signed on to protect the race from the scourge of the Rogues did so for any kind of payback. They never had, not from the first forming of their alliance in what was mankind’s medieval era to now. Each warrior had his reasons for choosing this dangerous way of life, and some of them were, admittedly, more noble than others. Like Gideon, who had worked the field independently until seeking out Lucan after his twin brothers—little more than children—were killed by Rogues outside the London Darkhaven. That was three centuries ago, give or take a few decades.
Even then, Gideon’s skill with a sword had been rivaled only by his rapier-sharp mind. He had slain many Rogues in his time, but much later, devotion and a private pledge to his Breedmate, Savannah, had made him give up combat in exchange for wielding the weapon of technology in service to the Breed.
Each of the six warriors who currently fought beside Lucan had their personal talents. They had their own personal demons as well, though none of them were the touchy-feely types looking to have Dr. Phil crawl up their ass with a flashlight. Some things were better left to the dark, and probably the only one of them who felt that more than Lucan himself was the Breed warrior called Dante.
Lucan acknowledged the young vampire as he strode into the tech lab from one of the compound’s numerous chambers. Dante, wrapped in his standard basic black attire, was wearing biker’s leathers and a fitted tank that showcased both his inked tattoos and his more elaborate Breed markings. His thick biceps were banded with intricate scrollwork, which, to human eyes would seem oddly abstract, a series of interlocking symbols and geometric designs rendered in deep henna hues. Vampire eyes would see the symbols for what they truly were: dermaglyphs, naturally occurring marks inherited from the Breeds’ forebears, whose hairless skin had been covered in the changeable, camouflaging pigments.
Glyphs typically were a source of pride for the Breed, unique indications of lineage and social rank. Gen Ones like Lucan bore the marks in greater numbers and deeper saturation. His own dermaglyphs covered his torso, front and back, stretched down onto his thighs and along his upper arms, with still more running up the back of his neck and onto his scalp. Like living tattoos, the glyphs changed hues according to a vampire’s emotional state.
Dante’s were currently deep russet-bronze, indicating satiation from a recent feeding. No doubt, once he and Lucan had parted company after hunting Rogues the night before, Dante had gone on to find the bed—and the ripe, juicy vein—of a willing female Host topside.
“How goes it?” he asked, dropping into a chair and putting one large booted foot up on the desk in front of him. “Figured you’d have those bastards bagged and tagged for us already, Gid.”
Dante’s voice held the trace accent of his eighteenth-century Italian ancestry, but tonight the cultured tone bore a rough edge that said the vampire was restless and itching for action. As if to make the point, he drew one of his ever-present signature curved blades from the sheath at his hip and began idly toying with the polished claw of steel.
Malebranche, he called the arced blades, a reference to demons inhabiting one of the nine levels of hell, though sometimes Dante wryly adopted the word as a surname for himself when he was out among humankind. That was about all the poetry the vampire had in his soul; everything else inside of him was unapologetic, cold, dark menace.
Lucan admired that about him, and had to admit watching Dante in combat with those ruthless blades was a thing of beauty, enough to put any artist to shame.
“Nice work last night,” Lucan said, well aware that praise from him was rare, even when it was deserved. “You saved my ass out there.”
He wasn’t talking about the confrontation with the Rogues, but what had happened afterward. Lucan had gone too long without feeding, starvation being something almost as dangerous to their kind as the addictive overindulgence that plagued the Rogues. Dante’s look said he understood the meaning, but he let the fact slide with his usual cool nonchalance.
“Shit,” he replied, drawing the word out around a deep chuckle. “After all the times you’ve had my back? Forget it, man. Just returning the favor.”
The lab’s glass entry doors slid open with a smooth hiss as two more of Lucan’s brethren strode in. They were quite a pair. Nikolai, tall and athletic, with sandy hair, strikingly angular features, and piercing ice-blue eyes a shade colder than the winter of his Siberian homeland. The youngest of the group by far, Niko had come of age during the height of the humans’ so-called Cold War. A gearhead right out of the cradle, he was a high-octane thrill-seeker and the Breed’s first line of defense when it came to things like guns, gadgets, and everything in between.
Conlan, by contrast, was soft-spoken and serious, a consummate tactician. He was as graceful as a big cat next to Niko’s brash swagger, a wall of bulky muscle, his copper hair shorn beneath the black triangle of silk that wrapped his skull. The vampire was late generation Breed—a youth by Lucan’s standards—his human mother the daughter of a Scottish chieftain. The warrior carried himself with a bearing that was nothing short of regal.
Hell, even his beloved Breedmate, Danika, affectionately referred to the highlander as My Lord a lot of the time, and the five-eleven female was hardly the subservient type.
“Rio’s on the way,” Nikolai announced, his mouth widening into a sly grin that put twin dimples in his lean cheeks. He gave Lucan a nod of his head. “Eva said to tell you we can have her man only after she’s done with him.”
“If there’s anything left,” Dante drawled, holding out his hand to greet the others with a smooth grazing of palms, then a knock of briefly connected knuckles.
Lucan met Niko and Conlan with like respect, but he settled in with mild annoyance at Rio’s delay. He didn’t begrudge any vampire his chosen Breedmate, but Lucan personally saw no point in strapping himself down with the demands and responsibilities of a blood-bonded female. It was expected of the general population of the Breed to take a woman to mate and bear the next generation, but for the warrior class—those select few males who willingly shunned the sanctuary of the Darkhavens in favor of a life of combat—Lucan saw the process of blood-bonding as sentimental at best.
At its worst, it was an invitation to disaster if a warrior was tempted to put feelings for his mate above his duty to the Breed.
“Where’s Tegan?” he asked, his thoughts leading naturally to the last of their number at the compound.
“Not yet returned,” Conlan answered.
“Has he called in his location?”
Conlan exchanged a look with Niko, then gave a slight shake of his head. “No word.”
“This is the longest he’s been MIA,” Dante remarked to no one in particular, running his thumb over the curved edge of his blade. “What’s it been—three, four days?”
Four days, going on five.
But who the hell was counting?
Answer: they all were, but no one spoke up to voice the concern that had been running through their ranks of late. As it was, Lucan had to work hard to stifle a surge of venom that rose in him when he thought about the most reclusive member of their cadre.
Tegan had always preferred to hunt alone, but his secretive nature was beginning to wear on the others. He was a wild card, more and more lately, and Lucan, frankly, was finding it hard to trust the guy, not that mistrust was anything new when it came to Tegan. There was bad blood between the two of them, no question, but that was ancient history. It had to be. The war they had both pledged themselves to so long ago was more important than any animosity they held for each other.
Still, the vampire bore close watching. Lucan knew Tegan’s weaknesses better than any of the others could; he wouldn’t hesitate to make a move if the male stepped so much as a toe out of line.
The lab’s doors whisked open again and in came Rio at last, tucking the loose tail of a sleek, white, designer shirt into tailored black pants. Some of the buttons were missing from the crisp silk, but Rio wore his postsex dishevelment with the same air of cool that hung over him in everything he did. Under the hank of thick dark hair that swung over his brow, the Spaniard’s topaz-colored eyes danced. When he smiled, the tips of his fangs glimmered, not yet receded after the passion with his lady had drawn them out. “I hope you saved a few Rogues for me, my friends.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m feeling good, ready to party.”
“Have a seat,” Lucan drawled, “and try not to bleed all over Gideon’s computers.”
Rio’s long fingers went up to the crimson rosebud mark at his throat where Eva had apparently bitten him with her blunt human teeth and sipped from his vein. Even though she was a Breedmate, she was still genetically Homo sapiens. Despite the long years that she and others like her would share through the blood-bond with a mate, none of her kind would grow fangs or take on any other traits of the vampire males. It was a widely accepted practice that a vampire would feed his mate from a self-inflicted gash on his wrist or forearm, but passions ran wild in the ranks of the Breed warriors. And in their chosen women. Sex and blood were a potent combination—sometimes, too much so.
Grinning, unrepentant, Rio threw himself into a loose sprawl in one of the swivel chairs and leaned back, propping his big bare feet on the clear Lucite console. He and the other warriors began reviewing the previous night’s tallies, exchanging laughs as they one-upped one another and discussed the finer techniques of their profession.
While hunting their enemies gave some of the Breed pleasure, Lucan’s own drive was based in hatred, pure and simple. He didn’t try to hide it. He despised everything that the Rogues were and had vowed, long ago, that he would eradicate their kind, or die trying. Some days, he didn’t really care what came first.
“Here we go,” Gideon said finally, when the records scrolling on his monitor came to a stop. “Looks like we hit pay dirt.”
“What’ve you got?”
Lucan and the others turned their attention to an oversized flat-screen panel above the lab’s bank of microprocessors. The faces of the four Rogues slain by Lucan outside the nightclub came up on the display next to those of Gabrielle’s cell phone images of the same individuals.
“IID records have all of these down as missing persons. Two from the Connecticut Darkhaven last month, another out of Fall River, and the last one is local. They’re all current generation, the youngest wasn’t even thirty years old.”
“Shit,” Rio said, whistling low. “Stupid kids.”
Lucan said nothing, felt nothing, for the loss of young lives gone Rogue. They weren’t the first, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. Living in the Darkhavens could seem pretty dull to an immature male with something to prove. The allure of blood and conquest was deeply in-grained, even in the later generations, who were the furthest removed from their savage forebears. If a vampire went looking for trouble, particularly in a city the size of Boston, he generally found it in spades.
Gideon punched a quick series of commands on his computer keyboard, bringing up more photos from the database. “Here are the last two records. This first individual is a known Rogue, repeat offender here in Boston, although he’s apparently been keeping low under the radar for more than three months. That is, he was, until Lucan smoked him in the alley over the weekend.”
“And what about him?” Lucan asked, eyeing the last remaining image, that of the only Rogue who’d managed to elude him outside the club. His photo record came up in the form of a video still, presumably captured during some sort of interrogation session, based on the restraints and electrodes the vampire was wearing. “How old is this image?”
“About six months,” Gideon replied, calling up the date stamp. “Came out of one of the West Coast operations.”
“L.A.?”
“Seattle. But according to the file, L.A.’s got a warrant for him, too.”
“Warrants,” Dante scoffed. “Fucking waste of time.”
Lucan had to agree. For most of the vampire nation in the United States and abroad, enforcement of the law and apprehension of individuals gone Rogue was governed by specific rules and procedures. Warrants were written, arrests were made, interrogations were conducted, and, given ample evidence and due process, convictions were handed down. It was all very civilized. And rarely effective.
While the Breed and its Darkhaven populations were organized, motivated, and mired in layers of bureaucracy, their enemies were rash and unpredictable. And unless Lucan’s gut was wrong, after centuries of anarchy and general chaos, the Rogues were gearing up to recruit.
If they weren’t already months into the process.
Lucan stared at the image on screen. In the video still, the captured Rogue was strapped to an upright metal table, stripped naked, his head shaved bald to better accommodate the currents that were likely being sent into his skull during his questioning. Lucan felt no sympathy for the torture the Rogue had undergone. Interrogations of that nature were often necessary, and like a human jacked up on heroin, a vampire afflicted with Bloodlust could take ten times the pain of his Breed brethren without breaking.
This Rogue was big, with a heavy brow and thick, primitive features. He was snarling in the video frame, his long fangs gleaming, his amber eyes wild around the elliptical slashes of his fixed pupils. He was draped with wires from the top of his huge head and corded neck to his muscle-girded chest and hammerlike arms.
“Assuming ugly’s not a crime, what did Seattle bust him for?”
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Gideon spun back to his bank of computers and brought a record up on another screen. “Picked him up for trafficking—weapons, explosives, chemicals. Oh, this guy’s a bloody charmer. Into some real nasty shit.”
“Any idea whose arms he’s been running?”
“Nothing listed here. They didn’t get that far with him, evidently. The record states he broke out of containment right after these images were taken. He killed two of his guards during the escape.”
And now he’d escaped again, Lucan thought grimly, wishing to hell he had popped the SOB when he had him in his sights. He didn’t tolerate failure well, least of all in himself.
Lucan glanced to Niko. “You ever run across this guy?”
“No,” said the Russian, “but I’ll check him out with my contacts, see what I can find.”
“Get on it.”
Nikolai gave a curt nod and headed out of the tech lab, already dialing someone on his cell phone.
“These are damning pictures,” Conlan said, peering over Gideon’s shoulder at the photos Gabrielle had taken during the slaying outside the nightclub. The warrior blew out a curse. “Bad enough humans have witnessed some of these Rogue slayings over the years, but now they’re pausing to take snapshots?”
Dante put his feet down with a thump, stood up, and started pacing, as if he was growing restless with the inactivity of the meeting. “Whole world up there thinks they’re friggin’ paparazzi.”
“The guy who took these shots must’ve pissed himself real good when he saw two-hundred pounds of Breed warrior gunning for him,” Rio added. Grinning, he looked at Lucan. “Did you bother to scrub his memory first, or did you just take the sucker out on the spot?”
“The human who witnessed the attack that night was female.” Lucan stared into the faces of his brethren, revealing none of his feelings about the news he was about to impart. “Turns out she’s a Breedmate.”
“Madre de Dios,” Rio swore, raking his fingers through his dark hair. “Breedmate—you’re sure?”
“She bears the mark. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“What did you do with her? Cristo, you didn’t…”
“No,” Lucan replied sharply, agitated by the implication in the Spaniard’s hedging tone. “I didn’t harm the woman. There is a line that even I won’t cross.”
He hadn’t claimed Gabrielle as his own, either, although he’d come damned close to it that night in her apartment. Lucan clamped his teeth together, a wave of dark hunger hitting him when he thought about how tempting Gabrielle had looked, curled up and dreaming in her bed. How bloody sweet she had tasted against his tongue….
“What will you do with her, Lucan?” This time the concern was coming from Gideon’s direction. “We can’t very well leave her topside for the Rogues to find her. She’s certain to have gotten their attention when she snapped these pictures.”
“And if the Rogues should realize she’s a Breedmate…” Dante added, his trailing comment drawing grim nods from the other warriors.
“She’ll be safest here,” Gideon said, “under Breed protection. Better still, she should officially be admitted to one of the Darkhavens.”
“I know the protocol,” Lucan growled. He felt too much anger at the thought of Gabrielle in the hands of the Rogues, or those of another member of the Breed if he were to do the right thing and send her off to one of the nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries. Neither option seemed acceptable to him at the moment, thanks to the streak of possessiveness that was burning through his veins, unbidden and unwanted.
He delivered a cold stare to his warrior brethren. “The female is my responsibility for now. I will decide how best to proceed in this.”
None of the others spoke up to contradict him, nor did he expect they would. As Gen One, he was elder; as the founder of the warrior class within the Breed, he was the most proven, by blood and by steel. His word was law, and all in the room respected that.
Dante got to his feet, flipping the malebranche blade between long, nimble fingers, and sheathing it in one fluid motion. “Four hours to sunset. I’m outta here.” He shot an arch look over at Rio and Conlan. “Anyone game to spar before things get interesting topside?”
Both males rose eagerly to the idea, and with respectful nods in Lucan’s direction the three big warriors strode out of the tech lab and into the corridor leading to the compound’s weapons training area.
“You got anything more on this Rogue out of Seattle?” Lucan asked Gideon, as the glass doors slid closed and just the two of them remained in the lab.
“I’m running a cross-check of all record sources right now. Should only take a minute to come back one way or the other.” The keys clacked as he typed a flurry of strokes, then, “Bingo. Got a hit from a West Coast GPS feed. Looks like intel gathered prior to our boy’s arrest. Have a look.”
The monitor screen filled with a series of nighttime satellite images homed in on a commercial fishing wharf off Puget Sound. The surveillance focused on a long black sedan that sat idling behind a dilapidated building at the end of the docks. Leaning into the back passenger window of the car was the Rogue who had managed to escape Lucan a few days ago. Gideon scrolled through the next few frames of feed that showed an apparently lengthy conversation between the Rogue and whoever was concealed behind the vehicle’s darkened windows. As the images advanced, they showed the rear door opening from within to admit the Rogue inside.
“Hold up,” Lucan said, his gaze narrowing on the hand of the hidden passenger. “Can you tighten this frame at all? Zoom in on the open car door.”
“Let me try.”
The image magnified incrementally, although Lucan hardly needed a better visual to confirm what he was seeing. Barely discernible, but there it was. In the slice of exposed skin between the passenger’s big hand and the French cuff of his long-sleeved shirt was an impressive array of Gen One dermaglyphs.
Gideon saw them now, too. “I’ll be damned, will you look at that,” he said, staring at the monitor. “Our Seattle suckhead was keeping some interesting company.”
“Maybe still is,” Lucan replied.
They didn’t come more badass than a Rogue with first generation vampire blood in its veins. Gen Ones fell to Bloodlust faster and harder than the later Breeds, and they made deadly vicious enemies. If one of them had designs on leading the Rogues in an uprising, it would be the start of a hellacious war. Lucan had fought that battle once before, long ago. He had no wish to do so again.
“Print everything you’ve got, including some zooms of those glyphs.”
“You got it.”
“Anything else you dig up on these two individuals, bring it directly to me. I’ll handle it personally.”
Gideon nodded, but the glance he flicked over the tops of his silver shades was hesitant. “You can’t expect to take them all out single-handedly, you know.”
Lucan pinned him with a dark look. “Says who?”
No doubt the vampire had a dissertation on probability and the law of averages perched at the tip of his genius tongue, but Lucan wasn’t in the mood to hear it. Night was coming, and with it another chance to hunt his enemies. He needed to use the remaining hours to clear his mind, prepare his weapons, and decide where best to strike. The predator in him was pacing and hungry, but not for the battle he should be craving with the Rogues.
Instead, Lucan found his thoughts drifting to a quiet Beacon Hill apartment, back to a midnight visit that never should have happened. Like her jasmine scent, the memory of Gabrielle’s soft skin and warm, willing body coiled itself around him. He tensed, his sex rousing at the very thought of her.
Damn it.
This was the reason he hadn’t already brought her under Breed protection here at the compound. At a distance, she was distracting. In close quarters, she would prove a bloody disaster.
“You all right?” Gideon asked, his chair spun around, so that he faced Lucan. “That’s some major fury you’re wearing, buddy.”
Lucan snapped out of his dark musings long enough to realize that his fangs had begun to lengthen in his mouth, his vision sharpened by the slivering of his pupils. But it wasn’t rage that transformed him. It was lust, and he was going to have to slake it, sooner than later. With that thought pounding in his veins, Lucan grabbed Gabrielle’s cell phone from the desktop where it lay, and stalked out of the lab.
CHAPTER
Seven
Ten more minutes to heaven,” Gabrielle said, peering into her opened oven and letting the rich aroma of homemade baked manicotti waft into the kitchen of her apartment.
She closed the windowed door, reset the digital timer, then poured herself another glass of red wine and carried it with her into the living room. An old Sarah McLachlan CD was playing softly on the sound system. At a few minutes past seven in the evening, Gabrielle was finally beginning to unwind from her little morning adventure at the abandoned asylum. She had gotten a couple of decent shots that might amount to something, but best of all, she had managed to escape the scary-looking bruiser who’d apparently been running security detail for the place.
That alone was worth celebrating.
Gabrielle folded herself into the cushioned corner of her sofa, her skin warm beneath dove-gray yoga pants and a pink, long-sleeved tee-shirt. Her hair was still damp from her recent bath, loose tendrils slipping out of the careless ponytail fixed haphazardly at the nape of her neck. Freshly scrubbed and chilling out at last, she was more than glad to settle in for the night and enjoy her solitude.
So when the doorbell rang not a minute later, she cursed under her breath and considered ignoring the unwanted intrusion. It rang a second time, insistent, followed by a sharp rap delivered by a rather powerful hand that didn’t sound like it was going to take no for an answer.
“Gabrielle.”
She was already on her feet and cautiously walking halfway to the door when she heard a voice she recognized at once. She shouldn’t know it with such certainty, but she did. Lucan Thorne’s deep baritone came through the door and into her bones like a sound she’d heard a thousand times before, soothing her even as it kick-started her pulse into a sudden flutter of anticipation.
Surprised, more pleased than she wanted to admit, Gabrielle unfastened the multiple locks and opened the door to him.
“Hi.”
“Hello, Gabrielle.”
He greeted her with an unsettling familiarity, his eyes intense beneath the dark slashes of his brows. That piercing gaze traveled a slow, downward path, from the top of her mussed head, to the silk-screened peace sign stretched across her braless chest, to the bare toes peeking out from the flared legs of her low-slung pants.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.” She said it as an excuse for her appearance, but Thorne didn’t seem to mind. In fact, as his attention came back to her face, Gabrielle felt a sudden flush of heat fill her cheeks for the way he was looking at her.
Like he wanted to devour her where she stood.
“Oh, you have my cell phone,” she said, blurting out the obvious when she spotted the gleam of silver metal in his big hand.
He held it out to her. “Later than intended. My apologies.”
Was it her imagination, or did his fingers deliberately brush hers as she took the device from his grasp?
“Thanks for returning it,” she said, still caught in the hold of his gaze. “Were you, ah…were you able to do anything with the images?”
“Yes. They were very helpful.”
She exhaled a sigh, relieved to hear that the police might, at last, be on her side in this. “Do you think you’ll be able to catch the guys in the photos?”
“I’m certain of it.”
His tone was so dark, she didn’t doubt him for a second. Actually, she was getting the feeling that Detective Thorne was a bad guy’s worst nightmare.
“Well, that’s great news. I’ve got to admit, this whole thing has been making me a little jumpy. I guess witnessing a brutal murder will do that to a person, right?”
He gave her only the barest nod of agreement. A man of few words, evidently, but then who needed conversation when you had soul-stripping eyes like his?
To her relief and annoyance, from behind her in the kitchen, the oven timer started beeping. “Shit. That’s, um—that’s my dinner. I’d better grab it before the smoke alarm goes off. Wait here for a sec—I mean, do you want to—?” She took a calming breath, unused to being so rattled by anyone. “Come in, please. I’ll be right back.”
Without hesitation, Lucan Thorne stepped inside the apartment as Gabrielle turned to set down her cell phone and liberate her manicotti from the oven.
“Am I interrupting something?”
She was surprised to hear him in the kitchen with her so quickly, as if he had been silently on her heels from the instant she invited him in. Gabrielle lifted the pan of steaming pasta out of the oven and set it down on the range top to cool. She stripped off her hot mitts and turned to give the detective a proud grin.
“I’m celebrating.”
He cocked his head to regard the quiet space around them. “Alone?”
She shrugged. “Unless you want to join me.”
The mild incline of his chin seemed guarded, but he removed his dark coat and draped it over the back of a counter stool. He was a peculiar, distracting presence, all the more so now that he was standing in her small kitchen—this heavily muscled stranger with the disarming gaze and slightly sinister good looks. He leaned back against the counter and watched her attend to the bubbling dish of baked pasta. “What are we celebrating, Gabrielle?”
“I sold some of my photographs today, in a private showing at a chichi corporate office downtown. My friend Jamie called about an hour ago with the news.”
Thorne smiled faintly. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She pulled an extra glass from the cupboard, then held up her opened bottle of chianti. “Would you like some?”
He shook his head slowly. “Regretfully, I cannot.”
“Ah. Sorry,” she said, reminding herself of his profession. “On duty, right?”
A muscle jumped in his strong jaw. “Always.”
Gabrielle smiled, reaching up to hook some of her loose, curling hair behind her ear. Thorne’s gaze followed the movement, and narrowed on the small scratch that marred her cheek.
“What happened to you?”
“Oh, nothing,” she replied, not thinking it was a good idea to tell a cop how she spent part of the morning trespassing out at the old asylum. “Just a scrape—hazard of the job from time to time. I’m sure you know how that goes.”
She laughed lightly, a bit nervously, because suddenly he was moving toward her, his expression very serious. Just a few smooth paces brought him right up in front of her. His size—his obvious strength—was overwhelming. This close, she could see the thick slabs of muscle that bunched and moved under his black shirt. The fine knit fabric clung to his shoulders, arms, and chest, as if tailored to fit him perfectly.
And he smelled amazing. She didn’t detect cologne, only the trace scents of mint and leather, and something darker, like an exotic spice she could not name. Whatever it was, it drenched her senses in something elemental and primal that drew her closer to him when she probably should be backing away.
She sucked in her breath as he reached out to her, the tips of his fingers tenderly grazing her jaw. Heat spread out from that bare contact, flooding her neck as he splayed his hand along the sensitive skin below her ear and around to her nape. With his thumb, he traced the abrasion on her cheek. The scrape had stung when she cleansed it earlier in the day, but now, under his unexpectedly soft caress, she felt no discomfort. Nothing but languid warmth and a slow, swirling ache at her very core.
To her astonishment, he leaned down and dropped a kiss on her marred cheek. His lips lingered there, long enough for her to understand that this was meant as a prelude to something more. She closed her eyes, heart racing. She didn’t move, hardly breathed, as she felt Lucan’s mouth drift toward hers. He kissed her lips meaningfully, a faint bite of hunger cushioned within the warm press of his mouth. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her. His gaze held an animal wildness that sent a thrill of anxiousness shooting up her spine.
When she finally found her voice, it came out in a small, breathless rasp. “Should you be doing this?”
That penetrating gaze stayed rooted on her. “Oh, yes.”
He bent down to her again, brushing his lips over her cheeks, her chin, her throat. She sighed, and he caught her little gasp with a searing kiss, thrusting his tongue between her parted lips. Gabrielle took him in, vaguely aware that his hand was behind her now, slipping beneath the hem of her tee-shirt. He stroked the arch of her bare back, his fingers tenderly brushing her spine. His caress traveled lazily downward, over the fabric of her pants. His strong fingers cupped the curve of her ass, squeezed her tightly. She didn’t resist at all as he kissed her deeper and gradually pulled her forward, until her pelvis mashed against the hard muscle of his thigh.
What the hell was she doing? What was she thinking here?
“No,” she said, her conscience struggling to surface. “No, wait. Stop.” God, how she hated the sound of that word when his mouth was feeling so damned good on hers. “Are you…Lucan…are you with someone?”
“Look around, Gabrielle.” His lips dragged over hers as he spoke, making her dizzy with want. “It is only you and me.”
“A girlfriend,” she blurted between kisses. It was probably a little late to be asking, but she had to know, even if she wasn’t at all sure how she would deal with an answer she didn’t want to hear. “Do you have a girlfriend? Are you married? Please don’t tell me you’re married….”
“There is no one else.”
Only you.
She was pretty sure he hadn’t said those last couple of words, but Gabrielle heard them echo in her mind, warm and provocative, stripping her of any resistance.
Oh, he was good. Or maybe she was just that desperate for him, because that spare, unadorned pledge was all he gave her—that, and the dizzying combination of his tender hands and hot, hungry mouth—and yet she believed him without a shred of doubt. She felt as if his every sense was trained on her alone. As if there was only her, only him, and this burning thing that existed between them.
Had existed, from the moment he first showed up on her doorstep.
“Ohh,” she gasped as the breath left her lungs in a slow sigh. She sagged against him, reveling in the feel of his hands on her skin, caressing her throat, her shoulder, the arch of her spine. “What are we doing here, Lucan?”
His low growl of humor hummed beside her ear, deep as night. “I think you know.”
“I don’t know anything, not when you’re doing that. Oh…God.”
He broke their kiss for an instant, looking into her eyes as he ground into her with a slow, meaningful thrust. His sex was rigid at her abdomen. She could feel the solid length of him, could feel the sheer size and strength of his shaft, even through the barrier of their clothes. A flood of moist heat surged between her legs at the thought of taking him inside of her.
“This is why I came here tonight.” Lucan’s voice rumbled beside her ear. “Do you understand, Gabrielle? I want you.”
The feeling was more than mutual. Gabrielle moaned, her body writhing against his with a heat she had no power to control.
This wasn’t happening, not really. It had to be another crazy dream, like the one she’d had after the first time she met him. She wasn’t actually standing in her kitchen with Lucan Thorne, letting this man she hardly knew beyond his name seduce her. She was dreaming—had to be—and before long she was going to wake up on her sofa, alone as usual, with her glass of red wine dumped on the carpet and her dinner burning in the oven.
But not yet.
Oh, God, please…not yet.
Feeling him stroke her skin, burning under the skill of his tongue, was better than any dream, even the delicious one she’d had of him before, if that could be possible.
“Gabrielle,” he whispered. “Tell me you want this, too.”
“Yes.”
She felt his hand working between them, urgent tugging, his breath hot against her neck. “Feel me, Gabrielle. Know how badly I need you.”
His fingers were light on hers, guiding her to where his stiff erection protruded, freed from its confines. Gabrielle wrapped her hand around him and gave the velvety shaft a slow, admiring stroke. He was large here as everywhere, and brutally strong, yet so very smooth. The weight of his sex in her hand intoxicated her like a drug. She tightened her grasp and pulled the hard flesh, her fingertips skimming over the thick head.
As she worked her hand along his length and girth, Lucan’s body jerked. She felt his hands shake a bit as he moved them from her hips to the loose ties of her pants. He yanked at the knotted cord, his hot exhalation feathering across her scalp in a foreign-sounding oath. There was a rush of cool air against her belly, then the sudden heat of Lucan’s palm as he slid his hand inside her panties.
She was wet for him, out of her mind and burning with desire.
His fingers slipped easily through the narrow thatch of curls between her legs, then into her slippery cleft, teasing her with the play of his hand against her aching flesh. She cried out as hunger washed over her in a shivering wave.
“I need you, too,” she confessed, her voice threadbare, raw with desire. In response, he eased one long finger inside of her, then another. Gabrielle writhed around that questing, not quite filling caress. “More,” she gasped. “Lucan, please…I need…more.”
A dark growl boiled out from between his lips as he leaned down and claimed her mouth in another hungry kiss. Her pants came off in a hasty tug of falling fabric. Her panties were next, thin lace snapping under the strength of Lucan’s impatient hands. Gabrielle felt air hit her suddenly naked skin, but then Lucan sank down to his knees in front of her and she was on fire before she could take her next breath. He kissed her and licked her, his hands braced hard and unrelenting against her inner thighs, spreading her wider for his carnal desires. The feel of his tongue spearing her flesh, suckling her deep into his mouth, turned Gabrielle’s limbs to liquid.
She came swiftly, harder than she could have imagined. Lucan held her firmly in his hands, pressing her damp core to him, giving no quarter as her body quivered and bucked, her breath falling to a strangled gasp as he stroked her toward the crest of another climax. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back on her shoulders, surrendering to him, and to the insanity of this most unexpected encounter. Gabrielle clawed at Lucan’s shoulders to hold herself up while her legs went boneless beneath her.
Release bore down on her again. It seized her in a fierce grasp, spun her high into a sensual dreamland, then let her go, and she was falling, falling….
No, she was being lifted she realized from within her sexual daze. Lucan’s arms held her tenderly, curved beneath her back and under her knees. He was naked now, and so was she, though she couldn’t recall taking off her shirt. She looped her arms around his neck as he carried her out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Sarah McLachlan’s voice poured out of the speakers, singing about holding someone down and kissing their breath away.
The soft crush of chenille cushioned her as Lucan placed her down on the sofa and braced himself above her. It wasn’t until that moment that she was able to see him fully, and what she saw was magnificent. Six-and-a-half feet of solid muscle and sheer masculine power caging her beneath him, his strong arms hemming her in on either side.
And as if the raw beauty of his body wasn’t enough, Lucan’s gorgeous skin was decorated with a jaw-dropping array of intricate tattoos. The complex design of arcing lines and interlocking patterns swirled around his pecs and ribbed abdomen, up over his broad shoulders, then down his thick biceps. Their color was elusive, variegated in shades of sea green, sienna, and wine-dark red that seemed to pulse toward richer hues the longer she stared at them.
When he tilted his head downward to lavish attention on her breasts, Gabrielle saw the tattoo that stretched up the back of his neck and into his dark hairline. She had wanted to trace the intriguing markings the first time she saw Lucan. Now, she gave in to the urge with abandon, letting her hands travel all over him, marveling at both the mysterious man and the unusual art he wore.
“Kiss me,” she begged him, reaching down to clutch at his tattooed shoulders.
He started to rise up over her and Gabrielle arched into him, fevered with hunger, needing to feel him inside her. His erection was a heavy length of steely heat where it pressed between her thighs. Gabrielle slid her hands down and stroked him, lifting her hips to welcome him in.
“Take me,” she whispered. “Fill me, Lucan. Now. Please.”
He did not deny her.
The thick head of his sex pulsed, hard and demanding, at the entrance of her body. He was trembling, she realized dimly. His massive shoulders shook beneath her hands, as if he had been holding himself back all this time and was now about to burst. She wanted him to come apart like she had. She needed to have him inside her or she was going to die. He gave a strangled groan, his mouth at the sensitive crook of her neck.
“Yes,” she urged him, shifting beneath him so that the shaft of his cock now cleaved the center of her. “Don’t be gentle. I won’t break.”
His head reared up at last, and for an instant he stared down into her eyes. Gabrielle looked up at him from beneath heavy lids, startled by the untamed fire that met her gaze. His eyes fairly glowed, twin flames of palest silver, engulfing his pupils and boring into her with preternatural heat. The bones of his face seemed sharper, his skin stretched taut across his angular cheeks and stern jaw.
It was so peculiar, the way the dim light of the room played across his features….
That thought had hardly formed before the living room lamps blinked off as one. She might have considered it strange, but as the dark settled around them, Lucan breached her body with a deep, mind-numbing thrust. Gabrielle could not bite back her moan of pleasure as he filled her, stretched her, impaled her to her core.
“Oh, my God,” she nearly sobbed, accepting every hard inch of him. “You feel so good.”
He dropped his head to her shoulder and grunted as he drew back, then plunged even farther than before. Gabrielle clutched at his strong back, pulling him closer, as she lifted her hips to meet his hard thrusts. He cursed under his breath, and it was a black, feral sound. His cock leaped within her, seeming to swell even greater with each relentless flex of his hips.
“I need to fuck you, Gabrielle. I’ve needed to fuck you from the moment I first saw you.”
The frank words—his admission that he’d wanted her as much as she had wanted him—only inflamed her more. She twined her fingers in his hair, gasping wordless, pleasured cries as his tempo increased. He thrust and withdrew, pistoning between her legs now. Gabrielle felt the rush of orgasm coiling in her belly.
“I could do this all night,” he growled, his breath hot against her neck. “I don’t think I can stop.”
“Don’t, Lucan. Oh, God…don’t stop.”
Gabrielle held on to him as he pumped into her. It was all she could do as a raw scream tore from her throat and she was coming and coming and coming again.
Lucan stepped off Gabrielle’s front stoop and headed down her dark, quiet street on foot. He’d left her sleeping in her bedroom loft, her breathing rhythmic and sated, her delectable body spent after more than three nonstop hours of passion. He had never fucked so hard, so long, or so completely.
And still he was hungry for more.
More of her.
That he’d been able to conceal the lengthening of his fangs and the wild, desire-swamped cast of his eyes from her was a miracle.
That he hadn’t given in to the relentless, pounding need to sink his sharp teeth into her sweet throat and drink to inebriation was even more astounding.
Nor did he trust himself to linger anywhere near her when every fevered cell in his body ached to do just that.
Coming to see her tonight had likely been a monstrous mistake. He had thought that sex with her would purge some of the heat she fueled in him. He’d never been more wrong. Taking Gabrielle, being inside of her, had only further exposed his weakness for her. He had wanted her with an animal need, and had pursued her like the predator he was. He wasn’t sure he would have taken no for an answer. He didn’t think he would have been capable of leashing his desire for her.
But she hadn’t denied him.
Christ, no.
In retrospect, it would have been an act of mercy if she had. Instead, Gabrielle had accepted every measure of his sexual fury, demanding he give her nothing less.
If he turned around right now and stalked back into her apartment to wake her, he could spend another few hours between her gorgeous, welcoming thighs. That would at least satisfy part of his need. And if he could not slake the other, growing torment within him, he could wait out the sun and let the killing rays scorch him into oblivion.
If duty to the Breed didn’t have such a hold on him, he might consider that option as a damned attractive possibility.
Lucan hissed a curse as he turned out of Gabrielle’s neighborhood and strolled deeper into the nightscape of the city. His hands were shaking. His vision was sharp, his thoughts sliding toward feral. His body was twitchy, anxious. He snarled with frustration, knowing the signs well enough.
He needed to feed again.
It was too soon since the last time when he had taken enough blood to sustain him for a week, maybe more. That had been just a few nights ago, yet his stomach gnawed as though starving. For a long time, his cravings had been getting worse. Close to unbearable, the harder he tried to suppress them.
Denial.
That’s what had gotten him through this far.
Sooner or later, he was going to reach the end of that rope. And then what?
Did he really think he was so different from his father?
His brothers hadn’t been, and they’d both been older, stronger, than him. Bloodlust had ultimately claimed them both: one took his life by his own hand when the addiction became too much; the other went deeper still, turning Rogue, and then losing his head to the killing blade of a Breed warrior.
Being born first generation had gifted Lucan with a great deal of strength and power—and instant respect that he knew he didn’t deserve—but it was every bit as much a curse. He wondered how much longer he could fight the darkness of his own savage nature. Some nights, he grew goddamned tired of the fact that he had to.
Passing among the evening population on the streets, Lucan let his gaze roam. Although he was stoked for battle if he found it, he was pleased there were no Rogues in sight. Only a scattered number of late-generation vampires from the area’s Darkhaven: one pack of young males mixing with a giggly group of human partygoers and surreptitiously trolling, as he was now, for viable blood Hosts.
He saw the youths nudge each other, heard them whisper the words warrior and Gen One as he moved toward them on the stretch of pavement. Their open awe and curiosity were annoying, though not unusual. Vampires born and raised in the Darkhavens rarely had the opportunity to see one of the warrior class, let alone the founder of the once-vaunted, now long-antiquated Order.
Most knew the old stories of how, several centuries past, eight of the fiercest, most lethal Breed males came together as a group to slay the last of the savage Ancients and the army of Rogues who served them. Those warriors became legendary, and in the time since, their Order had gone through many changes, increasing in numbers and locations under periods of Rogue conflict, only to trail off during the long stretches of peace between.
Now, the warrior class was comprised of a covert handful of individuals around the globe, operating largely independently, and not without a little contempt from the society as a whole. In this enlightened age of fair treatment and due process within the vampire nation, warrior tactics were considered renegade, and but a shade this side of the law.
As if Lucan, or any of the warriors on the front lines with him, gave a shit about public relations.
With a snarl tossed in the direction of the gaping youths, Lucan cast out a mental invitation to the nattering human females the vampires had been chatting up on the street. Every pair of feminine eyes latched on to the raw power he was knowingly throwing off in waves. Two girls—a chesty blonde and a redhead just a degree or two lighter than Gabrielle’s tresses—immediately broke away from the pack to approach him, their friends and the other males instantly forgotten.
But Lucan needed only one of them, and the choice was easy. He dismissed the blonde with shake of his head. Her companion settled under his arm, petting him as he led her off the street and into a discreet, unlit alcove of a nearby building.
He got down to business without hesitation.
Sweeping the girl’s smoke-and-beer scented hair away from her neck, Lucan licked his lips, then plunged his extended fangs into the flesh of her throat. She spasmed under his bite, her hands coming up instinctively as he pulled the first long draught from her vein. He sucked hard, no desire to draw things out. The female moaned, not in alarm or discomfort, but in the pleasure that was unique to the letting of blood under the thrall of a vampire.
Blood surged into Lucan’s mouth, warm and thick.
Against his will, he flashed on a mental picture of Gabrielle in his arms, letting himself imagine for the briefest second that it was her neck he suckled now.
Her blood, coursing down the back of his throat and into his body.
God, to think what it would be like to draw from her vein as his cock pumped into her heat, spilling deep within her…
Christ.
He thrust the fantasy away with a vicious snarl.
Never gonna happen, he warned himself harshly. Reality was a bitch, and he’d better not lose sight of it.
Fact was, this wasn’t Gabrielle, but an anonymous stranger, just the way he preferred it. The blood he took now wasn’t the jasmine-tinged sweetness he craved, but a bitter copper tanginess, corrupted by some mild narcotic his Host had recently ingested.
He didn’t care what she tasted like. All he needed was to smooth the edge off his hunger, and for that, anyone would do. He drew more from her and drank it down with haste, expedient in his feeding as was always his way.
When he finished, he smoothed his tongue over the twin punctures to seal them, then backed out of the unwanted embrace. The young woman was panting, her mouth slack, her body languid as though fresh off an orgasm.
Lucan put his palm on her forehead and let it drift down to close her dazed, heavy-lidded eyes. That touch would scrub all recollection of what just occurred between them.
“Your friends are looking for you,” he told the girl when his hand came away from her face and she blinked up at him in confusion. “You should go home. The night is full of predators.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding agreeably.
Lucan waited in the shadows as she wobbled back around the corner of the building to find her companions. He sucked in a deep breath through teeth and fangs, every muscle in his body tense, tight, pulsing. His heart was hammering in his chest. Just thinking about what Gabrielle’s blood might taste like in his mouth had given him a raging hard-on.
His physical appetite might be calmer now that he’d fed, but he was hardly content.
He still…wanted.
With a low growl, he stalked out into the street once more, surlier than ever. He set his sights on the roughest part of town, hoping he’d meet up with a Rogue or two before dawn started to rise. He suddenly needed a fight in a bad way. Needed to hurt something—even if that something ended up being himself.
Whatever it took to keep him far as hell away from Gabrielle Maxwell.
CHAPTER
Eight
At first, Gabrielle thought it had just been another erotic dream. But waking up late that next morning, naked in her bed, her body spent, parts of her aching in all the right places, she knew that Lucan Thorne had definitely been there, in the flesh. And God, what amazing flesh it had been. She’d lost track of how many times he’d made her climax. If she added up every orgasm she’d had for the past two years, it probably wouldn’t even come close to what she’d experienced with him last night.
Yet she’d been wishing for just one more as she dragged her eyelids open and realized with disappointment that Lucan hadn’t stayed. Her bed was empty, the apartment was quiet. He’d evidently left sometime during the night.
As exhausted as she was, Gabrielle could have slept a full day, but lunch plans with Jamie and the girls got her out of the house and downtown about twenty minutes after noon. As she wandered into the Chinatown restaurant, she felt heads turning in her direction: appreciative glances from a group of advertising types over at the sushi bar, half a dozen suited young executives watching her stroll past them as she made her way toward her friends’ booth near the back.
She felt sexy and confident in her dark red V-neck sweater and black skirt, and she didn’t care if it was obvious to everyone in the place that she’d just had the most incredible sex of her life.
“Finally, she graces us with her presence!” Jamie exclaimed as Gabrielle reached the table and greeted her friends with quick hugs.
Megan bussed her cheek. “You look great.”
Jamie nodded. “Yeah, you do, sweetie. Love the outfit. Is it new?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just plopped back down into the booth and wolfed down a fried dumpling in one gulp. “I was starving, so we already ordered a few appetizers. Anyway, where’ve you been? I was just about to send a posse out for you.”
“Sorry. I slept in a little today.” She smiled and sat down next to Jamie on the paisley vinyl bench. “Isn’t Kendra coming?”
“MIA again.” Megan took a sip from her teacup, and shrugged. “Not that it matters. She’s all about her new boyfriend lately—you know, that guy she picked up at La Notte last weekend?”
“Brent,” Gabrielle said, weathering a jolt of unease at the mention of that terrible night.
“Yeah, him. She even managed to switch her shift from graveyard to days at the hospital so she can spend every night with him. Evidently, he has to travel a lot for work or something and is generally out of touch during the day. I can’t believe Kendra is letting some guy dictate her life like this. Ray and I have been dating for three months, but I still make time for my friends.”
Gabrielle raised her brows. Of the four of them, Kendra was the most free-spirited, unapologetically so. She preferred to maintain a stable of ready dates and was committed to staying single at least until she turned thirty. “You think she’s in love?”
“Lust, honey.” Jamie pinched the last dumpling with his chopsticks. “It can make you do crazier things than love sometimes. Trust me, I’ve been there.”
As he chewed on his appetizer, Jamie’s gaze held Gabrielle’s for a long moment, before it swept over her loosely tousled hair and suddenly flushing cheeks. She attempted a casual smile, but couldn’t keep her secret from betraying her to him in the happy gleam of her eyes. Jamie set his chopsticks down on his plate. He cocked his head at her, his bobbed blond hair swinging around his chin.
“Oh. My. God.” He grinned. “You did it.”
“Did what?” A soft laugh bubbled out of her mouth.
“You did it. You got laid, didn’t you?”
Gabrielle’s laughter dissolved into a blushing, girly giggle.
“Oh, sweetie. You’re wearing it well, I must say.” Jamie patted her hand, laughing along with her. “Let me guess; Detective Dark-and-Sexy of the Boston PD?”
She rolled her eyes at the silly nickname, and nodded.
“When?”
“Last night. Practically all night.”
Jamie’s whoop of enthusiasm drew attention from some of the surrounding tables. He simmered down, but beamed at her like a proud mother hen. “He was good, huh?”
“Amazing.”
“Okay, how come I don’t know anything about this mystery man?” Megan interjected now. “And he’s a cop? Maybe Ray knows him. I could ask—”
“No.” Gabrielle shook her head. “Please don’t say anything about this to anyone, you guys. It’s not like I’m dating Lucan. He came over last night to return my cell phone, and things just got…well, out of control. I don’t even know if I’ll see him again.”
She had no idea about that, actually, but God, she hoped so.
Part of her warned that what happened between them was reckless behavior, foolish thinking. It was. She couldn’t really argue that. It was crazy. She had always considered herself a reasonable, careful person—the one who would caution her friends against careless impulses like the one she’d indulged in last night.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And not just because she’d allowed herself to get so caught up in the moment that she had forgone any kind of protection. Getting intimate with a practical stranger was seldom a good idea, but Gabrielle had the terrible feeling that it would be a very easy thing to lose her heart to a man like Lucan Thorne.
And that, she was sure, was nothing short of idiotic.
Still, sex like she’d had with him didn’t happen all the time. At least, not for her. Just thinking about Lucan Thorne made her insides twist with sweet longing. If he happened to walk into the restaurant right now, she’d probably leap over the tables to jump him.
“We had an incredible night together, but right now, that’s all it is. I don’t want to read anything more into it.”
“Uh-huh.” Jamie put his elbow on the table and leaned in conspiratorially. “Then why can’t you stop smiling?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Lucan smelled Tegan before he saw the vampire round the corner of the residence corridor inside the compound. The male had been hunting recently. He still carried the metallic, sweet odor of blood on him—both the human and Rogue variety.
When he saw Lucan waiting for him outside one of the apartments, he paused, his hands fisted in the pockets of his low-slung jeans. Tegan’s gray tee-shirt was shredded in places, filthy with dirt and splattered blood. His pale green eyes were hooded, ringed with dark circles. Long, unkempt tawny hair drooped into his face.
“You look like shit, Tegan.”
He glanced up from under that hank of light brown hair and smirked, wiseass, as usual.
Glyphs tracked up his forearms and thick biceps. The scrolling, elegant markings were just a shade darker than his own golden skin tone, their color betraying nothing of the vampire’s current mood. Lucan didn’t know if it was sheer will that kept the male’s attitude locked on permanent apathy, or if the darkness of his past had truly deadened all feeling in him.
God knew, he’d been through enough to break a full cadre of warriors.
But Tegan’s personal demons were his own. All that mattered to Lucan was making sure the Order remained strong and on point. There was no room for weak links in the chain.
“You’ve been out of contact for five days, Tegan. I’ll say it again, where the fuck have you been?”
He scoffed. “Piss off, man. You’re not my mother.”
When he started to walk away, Lucan closed the space between them with blinding speed. He seized Tegan by the throat and shoved his back against the corridor wall to get his attention.
Lucan’s fury was ripe: in part for the general disregard Tegan showed the others in the Order lately, but more for the sorry lack of judgment that had made Lucan think he could spend one night with Gabrielle Maxwell and then put her out of his mind.
Neither blood nor the extreme violence he’d brought down on two Rogues in the hours before dawn had been enough to dim the lust for Gabrielle that still pounded through him. Lucan had prowled the city like a wraith all night and came back to the compound in a seething, black rage.
The feeling persisted as he closed his fingers around his brethren’s throat. He needed an outlet for his aggression and Tegan, feral-looking and secretive, was more than prime for the role.
“I’m tired of your shit, Tegan. You need to get a grip on yourself, or I’ll do it for you.” He squeezed tighter on the vampire’s larynx, but Tegan hardly flinched under the certain pain. “Now tell me where you’ve been all this time, or you and I are going to have real problems.”
The two males were evenly sized, and a more than fair match in terms of strength. Tegan could have fought back, but he didn’t. He showed no emotion whatsoever, just stared at Lucan with steely, indifferent eyes.
He felt nothing, and even that pissed off Lucan.
With a snarl, he took his hand away from the warrior’s throat, trying to clamp a lid on his rage. It wasn’t like him to lash out like this. It was beneath him.
Christ.
And he was standing there telling Tegan to get a grip?
Great advice. Maybe he ought to take it himself.
Tegan’s flat gaze said pretty much the same thing, although the vampire wisely kept his mouth shut.
As the two uneasy allies considered each other in dark silence, behind them some distance down the hallway, a glass door slid open with a hiss. Gideon’s sneakers squeaked on the polished floor as he came out of his private quarters and into the corridor.
“Hey, Tegan, great work on the recon, man. I ran some surveillance on the T after we talked last night. That hunch you had about Rogues staking out the Green Line seems like a good one.”
Lucan didn’t so much as blink while Tegan held his stare, scarcely acknowledging Gideon’s praise. Nor did Tegan rise to defend himself against the erroneous suspicion. He just stood there for a long minute, saying nothing. Then he strode past Lucan and continued his progress down the compound’s corridor.
“You’ll want to check this out, Lucan,” Gideon said as he headed for the lab. “Looks like something’s about to go down.”
CHAPTER
Nine
Holding the warm cup in both hands, Gabrielle sipped her weak oolong tea while Jamie polished off the last of her lo mein. He would wheedle her fortune cookie away from her as well—he always did—but she didn’t mind. It was nice simply to be out with her friends, life getting back to some sense of normalcy after everything that had happened last weekend.
“I have something for you,” Jamie said, breaking into Gabrielle’s thoughts. He fished around in a cream-colored leather bag that sat between them on the bench and pulled out a white envelope. “Proceeds from the private showing.”
Gabrielle tore open the seal and pulled out the gallery check. It was more than she expected. A few grand more. “Wow.”
“Surprise,” Jamie singsonged, grinning broadly. “I highballed the price. Figured what the hell, you know. And they pounced on it without any haggling whatsoever. Think I should have asked for more?”
“No,” Gabrielle said. “No, this is, um…wow. Thanks.”
“Nothing to it.” He pointed to her fortune cookie. “You gonna eat that?”
She slid it across the table to him. “So, who’s the buyer?”
“Ah, that remains a big mystery,” he said, crushing the cookie inside its plastic wrapper. “They paid in cash, so obviously they were serious about the ‘anonymous’ part of the sale. And they sent a cab over to pick me up with the collection.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Megan asked. She stared at the two of them, frowning in confusion. “I swear, I am the last to know everything.”
“Our talented little artiste here has a secret admirer,” Jamie supplied with ample drama. He pulled out the fortune, read it, and rolled his eyes as he discarded the slip of paper onto his empty plate. “What happened to the days when these things actually meant something? Anyway, a few nights ago, I was summoned to present Gabby’s entire collection of photographs to an anonymous buyer downtown. They purchased them all—every last one.”
Megan’s eyes widened in Gabrielle’s direction. “That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you, sweetie!”
“Whoever it was that bought them has a serious cloak-and-dagger fetish.”
Gabrielle glanced at her friend as she slipped the check into her purse. “What do you mean?”
Jamie finished munching a shard of broken fortune cookie, then brushed the crumbs off his fingers. “Well, once I arrive at the address they gave me—one of those corporate suite places, with multiple tenants—I’m met in the lobby by some kind of bodyguard. He doesn’t say anything to me, just mumbles something into a wireless mouthpiece, then leads me into an elevator that takes us up to the top floor of the building.”
Megan’s brows rose. “The penthouse?”
“Yeah. But here’s the thing. The place is empty. All the lights are on in the suite, but there are no people inside. No furniture, no equipment, nothing. Just walls of windows, looking out over the city.”
“That’s bizarre. Don’t you think so, Gabby?”
She nodded, a creeping sense of unease spreading over her as Jamie continued.
“So, the bodyguard tells me to take the first photograph out of the portfolio and walk it over to the north bank of windows. It’s dark outside, and I’ve got my back to him now, but he tells me that I am to hold each photo up in front of me until he instructs me to put it aside and get another.”
Megan laughed. “With your back to him? Why would he want you to do that?”
“Because the buyer was watching from another location,” Gabrielle answered softly. “Somewhere in view of the penthouse windows.”
Jamie nodded. “Apparently so. I couldn’t hear anything, but I’m sure the bodyguard—or whatever he was—was taking directions through his earpiece. To tell you the truth, I was getting a little nervous about the whole thing, but it was cool. In the end, no harm done. All they wanted were your photographs. I only made it to the fourth one before they asked me for a price on all of them. So, like I said, I pitched high and they took it.”
“Weird,” Megan remarked. “Hey, Gab, maybe you’ve caught the interest of a devastatingly handsome, but reclusive, billionaire. This time next year, we could be dancing at your lavish wedding on Mykonos.”
“Ugh, please,” Jamie gasped. “Mykonos is so last year. All the pretty people are in Marbella, darling.”
Gabrielle shook off the odd niggle of wariness that was gnawing at her from Jamie’s strange account. Like he said, no harm done, and she had a fat check in her purse besides. Maybe she would treat Lucan to dinner, since the meal she’d made in celebration last night went to waste on her kitchen counter.
Not that she could summon the slightest bit of remorse for the loss of her manicotti.
Yeah, a romantic dinner out with Lucan sounded great. Hopefully, they’d have dessert in…breakfast, too.
Her mood instantly lightened, Gabrielle laughed along as her friends continued trading outlandish ideas about who the mysterious collector might actually be, and what it could mean to her future and by association, theirs as well. They were still at it after the table was cleared and the bill was paid, and the three of them exited the restaurant to the sunlit street outside.
“I have to dash,” Megan said, giving Gabrielle and Jamie each a quick hug. “See you guys soon?”
“Yes,” the two replied in unison, waving as Megan started up the sidewalk toward the office building where she worked.
Jamie raised his hand to hail a cab. “You heading right home, Gabby?”
“No, not yet.” She patted the camera case that hung from her shoulder. “I thought I’d walk over to the Common, maybe burn a little film for a while. You?”
“David’s due back from Atlanta in about an hour,” he said, smiling. “I’m playing hooky for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow, too.”
Gabrielle laughed. “Give him my best.”
“I will.” He leaned in and bussed her cheek. “It’s good to see you smiling again. I was really worried about you after last weekend. I’ve never seen you so shook up. You’re gonna be all right, right?”
“Yes. I’m fine, really.”
“And you have Detective Dark-and-Sexy looking after you now, so that’s not half bad.”
“No. That’s not bad at all,” she admitted, warmed again just thinking about him.
Jamie embraced her in a brotherly hug. “Well, honey, if there’s anything you need that he can’t give you—which I highly doubt—you just give me a call, you understand? I love you, sweetie.”
“Love you, too.” They separated as a taxi pulled up to the curb. “Have fun with David.” She lifted her hand to wave goodbye as Jamie climbed into the cab and the car eased back into the busy lunchtime traffic.
It took only a few minutes to walk the handful of blocks from Chinatown to the park at Boston Common. Strolling along the expansive grounds, Gabrielle snapped off a few photographs, then paused to observe a group of children playing blindman’s bluff in a grassy picnic area. She watched the girl in the center of the game, eyes covered with a blindfold, her blond pigtails bouncing as she spun first one way, then another, her hands outstretched as she tried to tag her dodging friends.
Gabrielle lifted her camera and lined up a shot of the darting, giggling kids. She zoomed in, following the fair-haired girl’s blindfolded face with her lens, hearing the peals of laughter that fell from the children’s lips and carried across the park. She didn’t take any pictures, just watched the carefree play from behind her camera and tried to remember a time when she might have felt so content and secure.
God, had she ever?
One of the adults supervising the kids from nearby summoned them to lunch, breaking up their raucous game. As the children dashed over to the picnic blanket to eat, Gabrielle swung her camera’s focus back across the Common. In the blur of movement through the lens, she glimpsed someone looking back at her from within the shade of a large tree.
She brought her camera away from her face and glanced to where a young man stood, partially concealed by the trunk of the old oak.
He was an unremarkable presence in the busy park, albeit a vaguely familiar one. Gabrielle noted his mop of ashy brown hair, his drab button-down shirt and standard-issue khaki pants. He was the type of person who’d blend in easily in a crowd, but she was certain she’d seen him somewhere recently.
Hadn’t he been at the police station last weekend when she’d given her statement?
Whoever he was, he must have realized she’d spotted him because he pulled back suddenly and ducked around the back of the tree to begin heading out of the park toward Charles Street. He dug a cell phone out of his pants pocket, then threw a glance over his shoulder at her as he strode at a fast clip toward the street.
The back of Gabrielle’s neck tingled with suspicion and a sinking feeling of alarm.
He had been watching her—but why?
What the hell was going on here? Something was definitely up, but she wasn’t about to stand around and guess at it any longer.
With her eyes trained on the guy in khakis, Gabrielle started after him, stuffing her camera back into its case and shrugging the straps of the small padded backpack up onto her shoulders as she walked. The kid was ahead of her about a block by the time she cleared the park’s wide lawn and stepped onto Charles.
“Hey!” she called after him, breaking into a jog.
Still on his phone, he pivoted his head to look at her. He said something urgent into the receiver, then flipped the cell closed and fisted it in his hand. Turning away from her, his quick pace became a full-on sprint.
“Stop!” Gabrielle shouted. She drew the curious attention of other people on the street, but the kid continued to ignore her. “I said stop, damn it! Who are you? Why are you spying on me?”
He tore up crowded Charles Street, vanishing into the sea of strolling pedestrians. Gabrielle followed, dodging tourists and office workers on lunch break, her eyes fixed on the bobbing bulk of the kid’s backpack. He turned down one street, then another, wending deeper into the city, away from the shops and businesses on Charles and back toward the tightly clustered area of Chinatown.
She didn’t know how far she’d tracked the kid, or even where exactly she’d ended up, but all of a sudden she realized she’d lost him.
She spun around near a busy corner, utterly alone, unfamiliar surroundings closing in on her. Shopkeepers stared at her from under shaded awnings and doors left open to welcome the summer air. Passersby threw her annoyed looks as she stood stockstill in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the flow of foot traffic.
It was then she felt a menacing presence behind her on the street.
Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder and saw a black sedan with dark-tinted windows slowly moving between the other cars. It moved gracefully, deliberately, like a shark cutting through a school of minnows in search of better prey.
Was it coming toward her?
Maybe the kid who’d been spying on her was inside. Maybe his appearance, and that of this ominous-looking car, had something to do with whomever had purchased her photographs from Jamie.
Or maybe it was something worse.
Something to do with the horrific attack she had witnessed last weekend. Her report to the police. Maybe it had been a gang slaying she stumbled upon after all. Maybe those vicious creatures—she couldn’t quite convince herself that they were men—had decided she was their next target.
Icy fear lanced through her as the vehicle veered into the near lane, which hugged the sidewalk where she still stood.
She started walking. Picked up her pace.
Behind her, the car’s accelerator roared.
Oh, God.
It was coming after her!
Gabrielle didn’t wait to hear the peal of rubber being laid behind her. She screamed, and took off in a blind run, her legs pumping as fast as they could.
There were too many people around. Too many obstacles in her direct path. She dodged the milling pedestrians, too rattled to offer apologies as some of them clucked their tongues and swore at her in reproach.
She didn’t care, certain this was life or death.
A quick look behind her would prove to be disastrous. The car was still roaring through the traffic, hot on her heels. Gabrielle put her head down and dug in harder, praying she could make it off the street before the vehicle plowed into her.
In her haste, her ankle twisted beneath her.
She stumbled, losing balance. The ground came up and she fell hard onto the rough concrete. Her bare knees and palms broke the worst of her tumble, both getting chewed up in the process. The searing burn of torn flesh brought tears to her eyes, but she ignored it. Gabrielle surged to her feet. She was hardly up off the ground before she felt the hard clamp of a stranger’s hand gripping her at the elbow.
She sucked in a sharp gasp, panic pouring through her.
“You okay, lady?” The grizzled face of a municipal worker swung into her line of vision. His wrinkled blue eyes flicked down at her abrasions. “Aw, jeez. Look at that, you’re bleedin’.”
“Let go of me!”
“Didn’t you see those pylons right there?” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the orange cones she’d blown right past. “I got this section of sidewalk all torn up here.”
“Please, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
Caught in his helpful but hindering grasp, Gabrielle looked just in time to see the dark sedan pull up to the corner where she’d been standing only a moment ago. It rocked to an abrupt halt at the curb. The driver’s door opened and a broadly built, towering man stepped out.
“Oh, God. Let go!” Gabrielle yanked her arm away from the man who was trying to assist her, her gaze rooted on that monstrous black car and the danger that was crawling out of it. “You don’t understand, they’re after me!”
“Who is?” The muni worker’s voice was incredulous. He looked to where she was gaping and let out a laugh. “You mean that guy? Lady, that’s the friggin’ mayor of Boston.”
“Wha—”
It was true. Her eyes were wild as she watched the activity at the corner with new understanding. The black sedan wasn’t after her at all. It had pulled up to the curb and the driver now waited, holding open the back door. The mayor himself came out of a restaurant, flanked by suited bodyguards. They all climbed into the backseat of the vehicle.
Gabrielle closed her eyes. Her raw palms were burning. Her knees, too. Her pulse was still pounding, but all the blood seemed to have drained from her head.
She felt like a complete fool.
“I thought…” she murmured as the driver closed the door, got in the front, then eased the official’s car back into traffic.
The worker let go of her arm. He walked away from her, back to his sack lunch and coffee, shaking his head. “What’s a matter with you? You crazy or somethin’?”
Shit.
She wasn’t supposed to see him. His orders had been to observe the Maxwell woman. Note her activities. Determine her habits. Report everything back to his Master. Above all, he was to avoid detection.
The Minion spat another curse from where he was hiding, his spine flat against the inside of a nondescript door in a nondescript building, one of many such places nestled among the Chinatown markets and restaurants. Carefully, he drew open the door and peered around it to see if he could spot the woman somewhere outside.
There she was, right across the busy street from him.
And he was pleased to see that she was leaving the area. He could just make out her coppery hair as she wended through the traffic on the sidewalk, her head down, her pace agitated.
He waited there, watched her until she was well out of sight. Then he slipped back onto the street and headed in the opposite direction. He’d blown more than an hour on lunch break. He’d better get back to the police station before he was missed.
CHAPTER
Ten
Gabrielle ran another paper towel under the cold water running in her kitchen sink. Several others lay discarded in the basin already, sopping wet, stained pink with her blood and gray with grime from the sidewalk grit she’d washed out of her palms and bare knees. Standing there in her bra and panties, she squirted some liquid soap onto the wad of damp toweling, then gingerly scrubbed at the abrasions on each of her palms.
“Ow,” she gasped, wincing as she ran over a sharp little stone embedded in the wound. She dug it out and tossed it into the sink with the other shards of gravel she’d recovered in her cleanup.
God, she was a mess.
Her new skirt was torn and ruined. The hem of her sweater was frayed from scraping the pavement. Her hands and knees looked like they belonged to a clumsy tomboy.
And she’d make a public, total ass of herself besides.
What the hell was wrong with her, freaking out like she had?
The mayor, for chrissake. And she had run from his car like she feared he was a…
A what? Some kind of monster?
Vampire.
Gabrielle’s hand went still.
She heard the word in her mind, even if she refused to speak it. It was the same word that had been nipping at the edge of her consciousness since the murder she’d witnessed. A word she would not acknowledge, even alone, in the silence of her empty apartment.
Vampires were her crazy birth mother’s obsession, not hers.
The teenaged Jane Doe had been deeply delusional when the police recovered her from the street all those years ago. She spoke of being pursued by demons who wanted to drink her blood—had, in fact, already tried, as was her explanation for the strange lacerations on her throat. The court documents Gabrielle had been given were peppered with wild references to bloodthirsty fiends running loose in the city.
Impossible.
That was crazy thinking, and Gabrielle knew it.
She was letting her imagination, and her fears that she might one day come unhinged like her mother, get the best of her. She was smarter than this. More sane, at least.
God, she had to be.
Seeing that kid from the police station today—on top of everything else she’d been through the past several days—just set something off in her. Although, now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t even be sure the guy she saw in the park actually was the clerk she’d seen at the precinct house.
And so what if he was? Maybe he was out in the Common having lunch, enjoying the weather like she was. No crime in that. If he was staring at her, maybe he thought she looked familiar, too. Maybe he would have come over and said hi to her, if she hadn’t charged after him like some paranoid psycho, accusing him of spying on her.
Oh, and wouldn’t that be lovely, if he went back to the station and told them all how she’d chased him several blocks into Chinatown?
If Lucan were to hear about that, she would absolutely die of humiliation.
Gabrielle resumed cleansing her scraped palms, trying to put the whole day out of her head. Her anxiety was still at a peak, her heart still drumming hard. She dabbed at her surface wounds, watching the thin trickle of blood run down her wrist.
The sight of it soothed her in some strange way. Always had.
When she was younger, when feelings and pressures built up inside of her until there was nowhere for them to go, often all it took to ease her was a tiny cut.
The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been paring an apple at one of her foster homes when the knife slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn’t felt panic or fear.
She’d felt fascination.
She’d felt an incredible sort of…peace.
A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it frequently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound sense of calm.
She needed it now, when she was anxious and jumpy as a cat, her ears picking up every slight noise in the apartment and outside. Her head was pounding. Her breath was shallow, coming rapidly through her teeth.
Her thoughts were careening from the flash-bright memories of the night outside the club to the creepy asylum she’d taken pictures of the other morning, to the confusing, irrational, bone-deep fear she’d experienced this afternoon.
She needed a little peace from all of it.
Even just a spare few minutes of calm.
Gabrielle’s gaze slid to the wooden block of knives sitting on the counter nearby. She reached over, took one in her hand. It had been years since she’d done this. She’d worked so hard to master the strange, shameful compulsion.
Had it truly ever gone away?
Her state-appointed psychologists and social workers eventually had been convinced that it had. The Maxwells, too.
Now, Gabrielle wondered as she brought the knife over to her bare arm and felt a surge of dark anticipation wash over her. She pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy part of her forearm, though not yet firm enough to break the skin.
This was her private demon—something she had never openly shared with anyone, not even Jamie, her dearest friend.
No one would understand.
She hardly understood it herself.
Gabrielle tipped her head back and took a deep breath. As she brought her chin back down on the slow exhale, she caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The face staring back at her was drawn and sorrowful, the eyes haunted and weary.
“Who are you?” she whispered to that ghostly image in the glass. She had to choke back a sob. “What’s wrong with you?”
Miserable with herself, she threw the knife into the sink and backed away as it clattered against the stainless basin.
The steady percussion of helicopter rotors chopped through the quiet of the night sky above the old asylum. From out of the low cloud cover, a black Colibri EC120 descended, coming to a soft touchdown on a flat expanse of rooftop.
“Cut the engine,” the leader of the Rogues instructed his Minion pilot after the craft had settled on its makeshift helipad. “Wait here for me until I return.”
He climbed out of the cockpit, greeted at once by his lieutenant, a rather nasty individual he’d recruited out of the West Coast.
“Everything is in order, sire.” The Rogue’s thick brow bunched over his feral yellow eyes. His large bald head still bore the scars from electrical burns inflicted during a bout of Breed interrogation he’d undergone about a half a year ago. However, amid the rest of his hideous features, the numerous scorch marks were merely a footnote. The Rogue grinned, baring huge fangs. “Your gifts tonight have been very well-received, sire. Everyone eagerly awaits your arrival.”
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he was led into the building’s top floor, then on toward an elevator that would take him into the heart of the facility. They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the Rogue lair.
As for the leader himself, he’d been based in private quarters elsewhere in Boston for the past month, privately reviewing operations, assessing his obstacles, and determining his strongest assets in this new territory he meant to control. This was to be his first public appearance—an event, as was fully his intention.
It wasn’t often he ventured into the filth of the general population; vampires gone Rogue were a crude, indiscriminate lot, and he had come to appreciate finer things during his many years of existence. But an appearance was due, however brief. He needed to remind the beasts of whom they served, and so he had given them a taste of the spoils that would await at the end of their latest mission. Not all of them would survive, of course. Casualties tended to mount in the midst of war.
And war was what he was selling here tonight.
No more petty conflicts over turf. No more divisive in-fighting among the Rogues or pointless acts of individual retribution. They would unite and turn a page not yet imagined in the age-old battle that had forever split the vampire nation in two. For too long, the Breed had ruled, striking an unspoken treaty with the lesser humans while striving to eliminate their Rogue kin.
The two factions of the vampire race were not so different from each other, separated only by degrees. All that stood between a Breed vampire fulfilling his hunger for life and the Bloodlust addiction of the Rogue’s unquenchable thirst for blood was a mere few ounces. The bloodlines of the race had diluted in the time since the Ancients, as new vampires grew to adulthood and paired with human Breedmates.
But no amount of human genetic corruption would completely obliterate the stronger vampire genes. Bloodlust was a specter that would haunt the Breed forever.
The way the leader of this budding war saw it, one could either fight the innate urge of his kind, or use it to one’s best advantage.
He and his lieutenant guard had reached the end of the corridor now, where the pulsing drone of loud music reverberated through the walls and under their feet. Behind battered steel double doors, a party raged. In front of those doors, a Rogue vampire on watch sank down heavily on one knee as soon as his slitted pupils registered who waited before him.
“Sire.” There was reverence in the gravel of his rough voice, deference in the way he did not glance up to meet the eyes shaded behind dark glasses. “My lord, you honor us.”
He did, in fact. The leader gave a slight nod of acknowledgment as the watchman came to his feet. With a grimy hand, the guard pushed open the doors to permit his superior entry to the raucous assembly gathered within. The leader dismissed his companion, freeing himself to private observation of the place.
It was an orgy of blood and sex and music. Everywhere he looked, Rogue males groped and rutted and fed on a rich assortment of humans, both men and women. They knew little pain, whether or not they attended this event willingly. Most had been bitten at least once, drained enough to be riding a wave of lightheaded, sensual bliss. Some were further gone, slumped like pretty cloth dolls into the laps of wild-eyed predators who would not cease feeding until there was nothing left to devour.
But then, that was to be expected when one threw tender lambs into a pit of ravenous beasts.
As he strode into the thick of the gathering, his palms began to sweat. His cock tightened behind the carefully pressed fall of his tailored pants. His gums began to throb and ache, but he bit his tongue in an effort to keep his fangs from stretching long in hunger the way his sex had so greedily responded to the erotic barrage of sensory stimulation hitting him from all angles.
The mingled scents of sex and spilling blood called to him like a siren’s song—one he knew well, though that was in his very distant past. Oh, he still enjoyed a good fuck and a juicy open vein, but those needs no longer owned him. It had been a hard road back from the place he’d once been, but in the end, he had won.
He was Master now, of himself, and, soon, much, much more.
A new war was beginning, and he was poised to deliver Armageddon itself. He was cultivating his army, perfecting his methods, aligning allies who would later be sacrificed without hesitation on the altar of his personal whim. He would wreak a bloody vengeance on the vampire nation and the human world that existed only to serve his kind. When the great battle was over, the dust and ash finally cleared, there would be none to stand in his way.
He would be a goddamned king. As was his birthright.
“Mmm…hey, handsome…come in and play with me.”
The husky invitation reached his ears over the din of noise. From out of the writhing pit of slick, naked bodies, a female hand had risen to grasp at his thigh as he walked past. He paused, glancing down at her with open impatience. There was a faded beauty under her smeared dark makeup, but her mind was utterly lost to the delirium of the orgy. Twin rivulets of blood ran down her pretty throat and over the tips of her perfect breasts. She had other open bites elsewhere as well: at her shoulder, on her belly, and on her inner thigh, just below the narrow strip of hair that shadowed her sex.
“Join us,” she begged, pulling herself out of the twisting jumble of arms and legs and rutting, howling Rogue vampires. The woman was all but drained, a scant few ounces this side of dead. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her movements were languid, as if her bones had turned to rubber. “I have what you want. I’ll bleed for you, too. Come, taste me.”
He said nothing, merely pried the pale, bloodstained fingers from the fine weave of his expensive silk pants.
He frankly wasn’t in the mood.
And like any successful dealer, he never touched his own product.
With his large hand flat against her chest, he pushed the woman back into the churning fray. She squealed as one of the Rogues caught her in a rough hold, then savagely flipped her over his arm to bear her down beneath him and enter her from behind. She shrieked and moaned as he rammed into her, but choked silent an instant later, when the Bloodlusting vampire sank his huge fangs into her neck and sucked the last drop of life from her depleted body.
“Enjoy these spoils,” said the one who would be king, his deep voice ringing out magnanimously over the animal roars and the skull-battering blast of the music. “Night is on the rise, and you will soon earn all of the rewards I see fit to give you.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
Lucan rapped on Gabrielle’s apartment door again.
Still no response.
He had been standing on her front stoop in the dark for about five minutes, waiting for her either to open the damn door and invite him in, or curse him as a bastard from behind the perceived safety of her multiple locks and tell him to get lost.
After the hard-core moves he’d put on her the night before, he wasn’t sure which reaction he deserved. Probably the irate kiss-off.
He dropped his knuckles onto the door once more, hard enough that the neighbors likely heard it, but there was no movement from within Gabrielle’s apartment. Only quiet. Too much stillness on the other side.
She was in there, though. He could sense her through the layers of wood and brick that stood between them. And he smelled blood, too—not a lot, but trace amounts somewhere near the door.
Son of a bitch.
She was inside, and she was hurt.
“Gabrielle!”
Concern ran like acid through his arteries as he calmed his mind enough to focus his mental powers on the chain lock and double bolts that were set on the other side of the door. With effort, he turned one lock, then the other. The chain slid free of its channel, swinging loose against the doorjamb with a metallic scrape.
Lucan threw open the door, his boots pounding over the tiled foyer. Gabrielle’s camera bag lay directly in his path, likely fallen where she dropped it in her haste. The jasmine-sweet scent of her blood slammed into his nostrils just an instant before an erratic trail of small crimson splatters caught his eye.
A bitter tang of fear laced the air of the apartment as well. Its odor had faded, some hours old, but lingering like fog.
He strode through the living room, about to head for the kitchen where the blood droplets continued. As he stalked farther inside, his gaze snagged on a stack of photos lying on the sofa table.
They were rough cuts, an odd assortment of images. Some he recognized from Gabrielle’s work-in-progress, the one she was calling Urban Renewal. But there were a few shots he hadn’t seen before. Or maybe hadn’t looked close enough to notice.
He noticed them now.
Goddamn, did he ever.
An old warehouse near the wharf. An abandoned paper mill just outside the city. Several other forbidding-looking structures that no human—let alone an unsuspecting woman like Gabrielle—ought to be getting anywhere near.
Rogue lairs.
Some of them were defunct now, forced into that status by Lucan and his warriors, but a few others were active cells. He spotted several that Gideon currently had under surveillance. Sifting through the others, he wondered how many other photos she had here of Rogue locations not yet on the Breed’s radar.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered tightly, fingering through a couple more images.
She even had some exterior shots of local Darkhavens, obscure entryways and masking signage meant to conceal the vampire sanctuaries from easy detection, whether from nosy humans or the enemy Rogues.
Yet Gabrielle had found all of these places. How?
It sure as hell wasn’t by chance. Her extraordinary visual sense must have led her to them. She had already proven to be all but immune to the regular tricks of vampire guile—mass hypnotic illusion, mind control…now this.
With a curse, Lucan shoved a few pictures into the pocket of his leather jacket, then tossed the rest back onto the table.
“Gabrielle?”
He moved into the kitchen, where something even more disturbing waited for him.
The scent of Gabrielle’s blood grew stronger here, drawing him to the sink. He froze in front of it, something cold clamping down around his chest as he stared into the basin.
It looked like someone had tried to clean up a crime scene, and had done a piss-poor job of it. More than a dozen waterlogged, bloodstained paper towels were clumped in the sink along with a paring knife that had been removed from the wooden block on the counter.
He picked up the sharp blade and gave it a quick inspection. It hadn’t been used, but all the blood in the sink and spattered on the floor from the foyer to the kitchen belonged solely to Gabrielle.
And the torn clothing that lay in a discarded heap near his foot carried her scent, too.
God, if anyone had touched her—
If anything had happened to her…
“Gabrielle!”
Lucan followed his senses down to the basement level of her apartment. He didn’t bother with lights; his vision was most acute in the dark. Tearing down the stairs, he called her name into the quiet.
At the back corner of the space, Gabrielle’s scent grew strongest. Lucan found himself standing before another closed door, this one framed in thick weatherstripping to block out all exterior light. He tried the latch, rattling the door on its meager lock.
“Gabrielle. Can you hear me? Baby, open the door.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He didn’t have the patience for that, or the focus to carefully release the hook and eye closure on the other side. With a growl of fury, Lucan smashed his shoulder into the door and burst inside.
His eyes instantly found her in the lightless space. Her body was curled up on the floor of the cramped darkroom, naked except for a skimpy lace bra and bikini underwear. She jerked awake with the sudden crash of his arrival.
Her head came up fast. Her eyelids were heavy, puffed from recent crying. She’d been sobbing in here, and for some length of time by his guess. Exhaustion poured off her in waves. She looked so small, so vulnerable.
“Ah, God. Gabrielle,” he whispered, dropping into a low crouch beside her. “What the hell are you doing in here? Did somebody hurt you?”
She shook her head, but didn’t answer right away. With dragging hands, she pushed her hair out of her face, trying to find him in the dark. “Just…tired. I needed quiet…peace.”
“So you locked yourself down here?” He blew out a sharp breath, relieved, except for the fact that her body did bear injuries that had only recently stopped bleeding. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
She nodded, listing toward him in the dark.
Scowling, Lucan reached for her, smoothed his palm over the top of her head. She seemed to take his touch as an invitation, crawling into his arms like a child in need of comforting and warmth. It wasn’t good, how natural it felt to hold her, how strong the inclination was to reassure her that she was safe with him. That he would protect her as his own.
His own.
Impossible, he reminded himself. More than impossible; it was ludicrous.
He looked down, silently considering the soft bundle of warm, beautiful woman wrapped around him in a delicious state of near nakedness. She couldn’t have any inkling of the dangerous world she was now involved in—not least of all, from the deadly vampire male who held her against him now.
He was the last one who should offer a Breedmate protection from harm. With Gabrielle, just the faintest scent of her brought his blood hunger raging into the danger zone. He stroked her neck and shoulder, trying to ignore the steady beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips. He had to fight like hell to ignore the memory of when he’d last been with her, or how badly he needed to have her again.
“Mmm, you feel good,” she murmured dazedly into his chest, her voice a sleep-heavy purr that sent a jolt of heat down his spine. “This another dream?”
Lucan groaned, incapable of answering. It wasn’t a dream, and personally he didn’t feel good at all. He felt every bit the ancient, haggard beast as she nestled into him even more, all tender trust and innocence.
Searching for distraction, he found one all too quickly. A glance up over their heads made every muscle in his body go rigid with a new kind of tension.
His eyes locked onto more of Gabrielle’s photographs clipped to a drying line in the darkroom. Hanging among various other insignificant shots were a handful more taken of vampire locations.
For God’s sake, she even had a photograph of the warriors’ compound. The daylight shot had been taken from the road outside the secured estate. There was no mistaking the enormous, scrolled wrought-iron gate that blockaded the long drive, and the high-security mansion at its end, from the public at large.
Gabrielle must have been standing right outside the property to take this picture. Based on the leafy summer foliage of the surrounding trees, the image couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. She’d been there, just a few hundred yards from where he lived.
He had never been one to subscribe to the notion of fate, but it seemed pretty damned clear that one way or another this female was meant to cross his path.
Oh, yeah. Cross it like a black cat.
Just his luck that after centuries of dodging cosmic bullets and messy emotional entanglements, the twisted sisters of fate and reality would decide to put him on their shit lists at the same time.
“It’s all right,” he told Gabrielle, even though things were quickly progressing way south of that point. “Let’s get you upstairs and dressed, then we’ll talk.” Before the continued sight of her in those flimsy scraps of lace and satin did him in.
Lucan gathered her into his arms, then carried her out of the darkroom and up the stairs to the main floor. Holding her this close, his keen senses registered the details of the sundry wounds she bore: raw scrapes on her hands and knees, evidence of a pretty vicious fall.
She had been running away from something—or someone—in terror when she had taken a spill. Lucan’s blood boiled to know who had caused this harm, but there would be time for that soon. Gabrielle’s comfort and well-being was his primary concern now.
Lucan walked with her through her living room, to the steps to her bedroom loft. His intent was to help her into some clothes, but as he passed the adjoining bathroom, he mentally flipped on the water. The two of them really needed to talk, and things probably would go down a bit easier for her after she’d had a warm soak.
With Gabrielle’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, Lucan carried her into the bathroom. A small nightlight gave off an ambient glow, just enough illumination for his liking. He brought his languid armload over to the tub and seated himself on the edge, balancing Gabrielle in his lap.
He unsnapped the front closure on the wispy piece of satin, baring her breasts to his suddenly fevered eyes. His hands itched to touch her, so he did, brushing his fingertips along the buoyant curves, flicking his thumb over the dusky pink of her nipples.
God help him, the soft mewl of pleasure that curled up from her throat hardened his cock to painful degrees.
He skimmed his palm down her torso, to the matching scrap of glossy fabric that covered her sex. His hands were too large, too careless with the flimsy satin, but he somehow managed to peel the panties off and slide them down Gabrielle’s long legs.
Blood surged through him like molten lava at the sight of her, nude before him once more.
Maybe he should feel guilty for finding her so incredibly desirable even in her current vulnerable state, but he wasn’t much better at bowing to shame than he was at playing the nurturer. And he’d already proven to himself that trying to muster any kind of control around this particular female was a battle he might never win.
Next to the tub sat a bottle of liquid bubble bath. Lucan poured a generous dollop under the stream of running water. As the lather built, he carefully eased Gabrielle down into the warm bath. She moaned with clear appreciation as she sank into the foaming water, her limbs going visibly slack, her shoulders drooping against the towel Lucan quickly supplied as a cushion to keep her back from resting against cold tile and porcelain.
The small bathroom was filled with steam and Gabrielle’s own faintly jasmine scent.
“Comfortable?” he asked her, as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the pedestal sink.
“Mmm,” she moaned.
He couldn’t resist putting his hands on her. With a gentle caress of her shoulder, he said, “Slide farther down and wet your hair. I’ll wash it for you.”
She obeyed, letting him guide her head under the water, then back up, her long ginger tresses darkened to a sleek auburn. She was silent for a long moment, then she slowly lifted her eyelids, smiling at him as if she had just come back to consciousness and was surprised to find him there. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What time is it?” she asked around a stretch and a stifled yawn.
Lucan shrugged. “Around eight, I guess.”
Gabrielle sank back against the tub, closing her eyes with a moan.
“Bad day?”
“Not one of my best.”
“So I gathered. Your hands and knees are a little worse for wear.” Lucan reached over and turned off the water. He grabbed a tube of shampoo from nearby and squeezed some into his hands. “Wanna tell me what happened?”
“I’d rather not.” A crease formed between her slim brows. “I did something stupid this afternoon. You’ll hear all about it soon enough, I’m sure.”
“How so?” Lucan asked, working up the lather in his palms.
As he massaged the thick foam into her scalp, Gabrielle opened one eye and slid him a sideways glance. “The kid from the station didn’t say anything to anyone?”
“What kid?”
“The one who clerks down at the precinct house. Tall, lanky, kind of average-looking? I don’t know his name, but I’m pretty certain he was there the night I gave my statement about the murder. Today I saw him in the Common. I thought he was watching me, actually, and I…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I ran after him like a crazy person, accusing him of spying on me.”
Lucan’s hands stilled in her hair, his warrior’s instincts coming to full attention. “You what?”
“I know,” she said, obviously misinterpreting his reaction. She dispersed a mound of bubbles with a sweep of her hand. “I told you it was stupid. Anyway, I chased the poor kid all the way into Chinatown.”
Although he didn’t say as much, Lucan knew that Gabrielle’s initial instincts had been spot-on about the stranger watching her in the park. Since the incident had occurred in broad daylight, it couldn’t have been the Rogues—a small blessing—but the humans who served them could be equally dangerous. The Rogues employed Minions in all corners of the world, humans enslaved by a draining bite of a powerful vampire that rid them of their conscience and free will, leaving only unquestioning obedience in its wake.
Lucan had no doubt whatsoever that the man who had been observing Gabrielle was doing so in service to a Rogue who commanded him.
“Did this person hurt you? Is that how you got those injuries?”
“No, no. That was my own doing. I got myself all freaked out over nothing. After losing track of the kid in Chinatown, I just lost it. I thought a car was coming after me, but it wasn’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
She gave him a sheepish look. “Because it was the mayor, Lucan. I thought his chauffeured car was coming after me and I started running. To top off a perfectly awful day, I fell flat on my face in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and then had to limp home with bloodied hands and knees.”
He cursed under his breath, realizing just how close she had come to danger. For chrissake, she had actually gone after the Minion by herself. The thought chilled Lucan more than he’d like to admit.
“You need to promise me you’ll be more careful,” he said, knowing he was scolding but unwilling to bother with politeness when she might have gotten herself killed today. “If something like this happens again, you need to tell me right away.”
“It’s not going to happen again because it was my mistake. And I wasn’t about to call you or anyone else at the station about this. Wouldn’t they just love it if I phoned in to report that one of their file clerks was stalking me for no apparent reason?”
Shit. His lie about being a cop was tripping him up damned good now. Even worse, it might have put her in jeopardy if she’d called the station looking for “Detective Thorne” and attracted the attention of an embedded Minion instead.
“I’m going to give you my cell phone number. You can always reach me there. I want you to use it anytime, understand?”
She nodded as Lucan turned on the faucet, then ran clear water into his hands and over her silky, burnished waves.
Frustrated with himself, he grabbed a washcloth from an overhead shelf and thrust it down into the water. “Now let me see your knee.”
She lifted her leg from under the flotilla of bubbles. Lucan held her foot in one palm, carefully washing the angry-looking abrasion. It was just a scrape, but it was bleeding again now that the warm water had soaked the wound. Lucan ground down hard on his jaw as the fragrant, scarlet threads wove a delicate trail down her skin and into the pristine foam of the bath.
He finished cleansing both of her injured knees, then gestured for her to let him attend her palms next. He didn’t trust his voice to work when the combined one/two punch of Gabrielle’s nude body and the scent of her fresh, trickling blood was slamming into his skull like a jackhammer.
With an economy of attention, he dabbed at the scrapes on her palms, painfully aware of her rich, dark gaze following his every movement, the pulse at her wrist beating quickly under the pressure of his fingertips.
She wanted him, too.
Lucan started to release her, but as her arm twisted slightly on its retreat, he spotted something troubling. His eyes lit at once on a series of faint marks that spoiled the flawless peach skin. The marks were scars, tiny slices cut into the underside of her forearms. And she had more on her thighs.
Razor cuts.
As if she’d endured repeated and hellish torture when she was little more than a girl. “Jesus Christ.” He swiveled his head back to look at her, fury no doubt rampant in his expression. “Who did this to you?”
“It’s not what you think.”
He was fuming now, not about to let this one slide. “Tell me.”
“It’s nothing, really. Just forget—”
“Give me a name, goddamn it, and I swear, I will kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands—”
“I did it,” she blurted out in a quiet rush of breath. “It was me. No one did this, just me.”
“What?” Holding her fragile wrist in his hand, he turned her arm over once more so he could inspect the faded network of crisscrossing, purplish scars. “You did this? Why?”
She withdrew from his loose grasp and sank both arms under the water, as if to shield them from his further inspection.
Lucan swore low under his breath, and in a language he rarely spoke anymore. “How often, Gabrielle?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, avoiding his gaze now. “I haven’t done it in a long time. I got over it.”
“Is that why there’s a knife lying in the sink downstairs?”
The look she gave him was pained and defensive. She didn’t like him prying, no more than he would like it himself, but Lucan wanted to understand. He could hardly fathom what might drive her to dig a blade into her own flesh.
Over and over and over again.
She scowled, staring at the dissipating suds surrounding her. “Look, can we just drop the subject? I really don’t want to talk about—”
“Maybe you should talk about it.”
“Oh, sure.” Her small laugh held an edge of irony. “Is this the part where you suggest I need to see a shrink, Detective Thorne? Maybe go someplace where I can be put in a medicated stupor and under a doctor’s close watch for my own good?”
“Did that happen to you?”
“People don’t understand me. They never have. I don’t understand myself sometimes.”
“Don’t understand what? That you have a need to hurt yourself?”
“No. That’s not it. That’s not why I did it.”
“Then why? Good God, Gabrielle, there must be upwards of a hundred scars.”
“I didn’t do it because I wanted pain. It wasn’t painful to me.” She drew in a breath and pushed it out between her lips. It took her a second to speak, and when she did, Lucan could only stare at her in stunned silence. “It was never about causing hurt, not to anyone. I wasn’t burying traumatic memories or trying to escape some kind of abuse, despite the opinions of several so-called experts appointed by the state. I cut myself because…it soothed me. Bleeding calmed me. It didn’t take much, only a small cut, never very deep. When I’d bleed, everything that was out of place and strange about me suddenly felt…normal.”
She held his unwavering gaze with a new air of defiance, as if a gate had been opened somewhere deep inside her and a heavy burden had been freed. In some small way, Lucan realized that was just what he’d witnessed here. Except she still was missing a crucial piece of information that would make things click into place for her.
She didn’t know that she was a Breedmate.
She couldn’t know that one day a member of his race would take her as his eternal beloved and show her a world unlike she had ever dreamed of. Her eyes would be opened to a pleasure that only existed between blood-bonded pairs.
Lucan found himself hating that nameless male who would have the honor of loving her.
“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. “I am not thinking that at all.”
“I despise pity.”
“So do I,” he said, detecting the warning in her words. “You don’t need pity, Gabrielle. And you don’t need medicine or doctors, either.”
She had been retreating into herself from the moment he had first discovered her scars, but now he felt her hesitation, her tentative trust in him slowly returning.
“You don’t belong to this world,” he told her, not sentiment but fact. He reached out, cupping her face in his palm. “You are far too extraordinary for the life you’ve been living, Gabrielle. I think you’ve known it all along. One day, it will all make sense to you, I promise. Then you’ll understand, and you will find your true destiny. Maybe I can help you find it.”
He meant to resume bathing her, but the awareness that she was watching him made his hands still. The profound warmth in her answering smile put an ache in his chest. Snared in her tender regard, he felt his throat constrict strangely.
“What is it?”
She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m surprised, that’s all. I didn’t expect a big tough cop like you to speak so romantically about life and destiny.”
The reminder that he had, and was still, coming to her under false pretenses jolted some of his wits back into his brain. He plunged the washcloth back into the soapy water and let it float among the suds. “Maybe I’m just full of shit.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t give me so much credit,” he said, forcing a casualness into his tone. “You don’t know me, Gabrielle. Not really.”
“I’d like to know you. Really.” She sat up in the water, the tepid little waves lapping around her nude body the way Lucan wanted to do with his tongue. The tops of her breasts rode just above the surface, pink nipples hard as buds, surrounded in frothy white foam. “Tell me, Lucan. Where do you belong?”
“Nowhere.” The answer slipped out of his mouth in a growl, a confession closer to the truth than he cared to admit. Like her, he despised pity and was relieved that she was looking at him more in curiosity than sympathy. He ran his finger along the pert, freckle-spattered bridge of her nose. “I am the original misfit. I’ve never really belonged anywhere.”
“That’s not true.”
Gabrielle’s arms circled around his shoulders. Her soft brown eyes held his gaze tenderly, with the same care he’d given her as he’d brought her out of the locked darkroom and into the warm bath. She kissed him and, as her tongue swept his lips, Lucan’s senses were swamped with the heady perfume of desire and sweet, feminine affection.
“You’ve taken such good care of me tonight. Let me take care of you now, Lucan.” She kissed him again, a deep plundering with her slick little tongue that forced a groan of pure male pleasure from deep within him. When she finally broke contact, she was breathing hard, her eyes afire with carnal need. “You’re wearing too many clothes. Take them off. I want you naked with me in here.”
Lucan obeyed, shucking his boots, socks, pants, and shirt to the floor. He wore nothing else, standing before Gabrielle fully nude.
Fully engorged and eager for her.
He was careful to keep his eyes tilted away from hers now that his pupils had narrowed with hunger, and he was mindful of the throbbing press of his fangs, which had stretched long behind his lips. If not for the bare trace of light from the night lamp near the sink, she would have surely seen him in all his ravenous glory.
And that would be quite a buzzkill for an otherwise promising moment.
He wasn’t about to take that chance.
With a sharp mental command, he shattered the small bulb behind the night light’s plastic cover. Gabrielle startled at the sudden pop, but then she sighed as blissful darkness surrounded them. Her body was making lovely, slippery noises in the tub.
“Turn on another light, if you want.”
“I’ll find you without it,” he promised, speech a tricky thing now that lust had a firm hold on him.
“Then come,” bid his siren from the warm pool of her bath.
He stepped into the water, sinking down to face her in the dark. He wanted nothing more than to haul her close—drag her into the cradle of his thighs and sheath himself to the hilt in one long stroke. But he would let her set their pace for now.
Last night he had come there hungry and taking; tonight he would give.
Even if the restraint killed him.
Gabrielle glided toward him through the thinning clouds of foam. Her feet went around his hips and linked loosely over his ass. She bent forward at the waist, her fingers finding his thighs beneath the surface of the bath. She squeezed the taut muscles, kneaded them, then firmly rode their length in slow, delicious torment.
“You should know, I’m not usually like this.”
His groan of interest sounded strained in his ears. “You mean, hot enough to reduce any male to cinder at your feet?”
She exhaled a soft laugh. “Is that what I do to you?”
He brought her teasing hands up to the jutting thickness of his cock. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re amazing.” She didn’t withdraw her touch after his hands left hers. She traced his shaft and balls, then lazily brought her fingers up around the bulbous head that more than breached the surface of the bathwater. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known. And what I meant was, I’m not usually so…well, aggressive. I don’t date a lot.”
“You don’t take a lot of men to your bed?”
Even in the dark, he sensed her sudden blush. “No. It’s been a very long time.”
In that moment, he didn’t want her to take any other male—human or vampire—into her bed.
He didn’t want her fucking anyone else ever again.
And God help him, he would hunt down and disembowel the Minion bastard who might have harmed her today.
The thought hit him with a savage rush of possessiveness as her fingers squeezed his sex, wringing a drop of slick wetness from the tip. When she bent down over him and drew his cock into her mouth, suckling him deeply, he arched up as tight as a bowstring.
Forget tearing out the Minion’s entrails, he would settle for nothing less than flat-out, bloody murder.
Lucan lowered his hands onto Gabrielle’s shoulders as she worked him into a mindless frenzy. Her fingers, her lips, her tongue, her breath rasping against his bare abdomen as she took him deeper and deeper into her hot mouth—all of it driving him to the brink of extraordinary madness. He couldn’t get enough. When she drew off of him, he swore roundly at the loss of her sweet suction.
“I need you inside me,” she told him, panting.
“Yes,” he snarled. “God, yes.”
“But…”
Her hesitation confused him. Angered that part of him that was more savage Rogue than considerate lover.
“What’s wrong?” It came out more of a demand than he meant.
“Shouldn’t we…? Last night, things got out of hand before I could mention it…but shouldn’t we, you know, use something this time?” Her discomfort sliced through his passion-drenched mind like a blade. He grew still, and she pulled away from him as if to get out of the tub. “I have some condoms in the other room….”
His hand clamped down around her wrist before she could move to rise.
“I can’t make you pregnant.” Why did that sound so harsh to him now? It was plain truth. Only bonded pairs—Breedmate women and the vampire males who exchanged blood from each other’s veins—could successfully produce offspring. “As for anything else, you don’t have to worry about protecting yourself. I’m healthy, and nothing we do together will hurt either one of us.”
“Oh. Me, too. And I hope you don’t think I’m prudish for asking—”
He drew her closer to him, silencing her awkwardness with a slow kiss. When their lips parted, he said, “I think, Gabrielle Maxwell, that you’re an intelligent woman who respects her body and herself. I respect you for having the courage to be careful.”
She smiled against his mouth. “I don’t want to be careful when I’m near you. You make me wild. You make me want to scream.”
With her hands splayed on his chest, she pushed him down, until he was leaning against the back of the tub. Then she rose up over the heavy spear of his sex and moved her slick cleft along its length, sliding up and down, almost—but fuck, not quite!—sheathing him in her warmth.
“I want to make you scream,” she whispered near his ear.
Lucan groaned with the pure agony of her sensual dance. He fisted his hands at his sides in the water to keep from grabbing her and impaling her on his nearly bursting erection. She kept up her wicked game, until he felt his climax knotting in his shaft. He was about to spill, and she was still teasing him mercilessly.
“Fuck,” he swore through gritted teeth and fangs, tipping his head back. “For chrissake, Gabrielle, you are killing me.”
“I want to hear it,” she coaxed.
And then her juicy sex was inching down over the head of his cock.
Slowly.
So damned slowly.
His seed boiled up, and he shuddered as a trickle of hot liquid spurted into her body. He moaned, never so close to losing it as he was just then. And Gabrielle’s tightness enveloped him further. The tiny muscles inside her clenched at him as she sank lower on his shaft.
He could hardly bear any more.
Gabrielle’s scent surrounded him, wafting on the steam of the bath and mingling with the intoxicating perfume of their joined bodies. Her breasts bobbed near his mouth like fruit just ripe for his picking, but he didn’t dare sample them when his control was so near to snapping. He wanted to pull her peachy mounds into his mouth, but his fangs were throbbing with the need to draw blood—a need only heightened in the midst of sexual release.
He turned his head aside and let out a howl of anguish, torn in so many tempting directions, not the least of which was the pressure to come inside Gabrielle, filling her with every drop of his passion. He shouted a curse, and then he truly was screaming, roaring a deep oath that only gained in strength as she sank down hard on his starving cock and wrung him dry, her own orgasm following quickly behind his.
Once his head stopped ringing and his legs regained strength enough to hold him, Lucan wrapped his arms around Gabrielle’s back and started to rise with her, holding her in place on his already rousing erection.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve had your fun. Now I’m taking you to bed.”
The shrill ring of his cell phone jolted Lucan out of a heavy sleep. He was in bed with Gabrielle, both of them spent. She was curled up beside him, her naked body gloriously draped over his legs and torso.
Jesus, how long had he been out? Had to be hours, which was amazing considering his usual itchy state of insomnia.
The phone rang again and he was on his feet, heading for the bathroom, where he’d left his jacket. He dug the cell out of one of the pockets and flipped it open.
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” It was Gideon, and there was something odd about his voice. “Lucan, how fast can you get to the compound?”
He looked over his shoulder to the adjacent bedroom loft. Gabrielle was sitting up now, drowsy from sleep, her bare hips wreathed in tangled sheets, her hair a wild mess around her face. He’d never seen anything so bloody tempting. Maybe it was better that he did leave soon, while he still stood a chance of getting away before the sun came up.
Wrenching his gaze away from the arousing sight of her, Lucan growled an answer into the phone. “I’m not far. What’s going on?”
A lengthy silence stretched on the other end.
“Something’s happened, Lucan. It’s bad.” More quiet, then some of Gideon’s natural calm cracked. “Ah, fuck, there’s no easy way to say it. We lost one tonight, Lucan. One of the warriors is dead.”
CHAPTER
Twelve
The sounds of a female’s mourning reached Lucan’s ears as soon as he stepped out of the elevator that had delivered him to the subterranean depths of the compound. Heart-rending cries of deep anguish, the Breedmate’s keening sorrow was raw, palpable, the only thing audible in the stillness of the long corridor.
It clawed at Lucan, the stunning weight of loss.
He didn’t know yet which of the Breed warriors had perished that night. He wouldn’t strive to guess. His footsteps were brisk, all but running toward the infirmary chambers from where Gideon had called him a few minutes ago. He rounded a bend in the corridor just in time to see Savannah leading a grief-stricken, wailing Danika from one of the rooms.
A fresh wave of shock hit him.
So, it was Conlan who was gone, then. The big Highlander with the easy laugh and deep, unfailing honor…dead now. Soon to be dust.
Jesus, he could hardly grasp the hard truth of it.
Lucan paused, respectfully bowing his head low to the warrior’s widow as she passed him. Danika was clinging hard to Savannah, the latter’s strong, mocha-skinned arms seeming to be all that prevented Conlan’s tall blond Breedmate from collapsing in despair.
Savannah acknowledged Lucan where her weeping charge was unable. “They’re awaiting you inside,” she told him gently, her deep brown eyes glistening with tears. “They will need your strength and guidance.”
Lucan gave Gideon’s woman a sober nod, then took the few short strides that would bring him into the infirmary.
He entered in silence, unwilling to disturb the solemnity of the fleeting time that he and his brethren would have to spend with Conlan. The warrior had sustained staggeringly severe injuries; even from across the room, Lucan could smell terrible blood loss. His nostrils filled with the foul, mingled odors of gunpowder, electrical heat, twisted metal shrapnel, and melted flesh.
There had been an explosion, with Conlan caught in the center of it.
Conlan’s remains lay on a shroud-draped examination table, his body divested of clothing except for the wide strip of embroidered white silk that covered his groin. In the short while since he’d been returned to the compound, Conlan’s skin had been cleaned and annointed with a fragrant oil, all in preparation for the funeral rites that would take place with the next rising of the sun, not a few hours from now.
Around the table that held the warrior, the others had gathered: Dante, rigid in his stoic observation of death; Rio, head bent down, fingers clutching a string of rosary beads as he moved his lips silently to the words of his mother’s human religion; Gideon, attending cloth in hand, dabbing carefully at one of the many savage lacerations that had torn open nearly every inch of Conlan’s skin; Nikolai, who had been on patrol that night with Conlan, his face paler than Lucan had ever seen it, his wintry eyes stark, his skin marred with soot and cinder and small, bleeding cuts.
Even Tegan was there, paying respects, although the vampire stood just outside the circle of the others, his eyes hooded, sullen in his solitude.
Lucan strode up to the table to take his place among his brethren. He closed his eyes and prayed over Conlan in prolonged silence. Some longtime later, Nikolai broke the quiet of the room.
“He saved my life out there tonight. We’d just smoked a couple of suckheads outside the Green Line station and were heading back when I saw this dude get on the train. I don’t know what made me look at him, but he shot us this big, shit-eating grin, like he was daring us to come after him. He was packing some kind of gunpowder on him. He stank of that and some other shit I didn’t have time to get a read on.”
“TATP,” Lucan said, scenting the acrid stuff on Niko’s clothing even now.
“Turned out the bastard was carrying a belt of wired explosives on him. He jumped off the train just before we started rolling, and took off running down one of the old tracks. We chased him, Conlan cornered him. That’s when we saw the bombs. They were on a sixty-second clock, and it was counting down below ten. I heard Conlan roar at me to get back, and then he launched himself at the guy.”
“Christ,” Dante swore, raking a hand through his black hair.
“A Minion did this?” Lucan asked, figuring it to be a safe presumption.
The Rogues had no qualms about spending human lives like dust in order to carry out their petty turf wars or to settle matters of personal retribution. For a long time, human religious fanatics weren’t the only ones to employ the weak of mind as inexpensive, expendable, yet highly effective tools of terror.
But that didn’t make the ugly reality of what happened to Conlan any easier to swallow.
“This wasn’t a Minion,” Niko replied, shaking his head. “This was a Rogue, wired up with enough TATP to take out half a city block by the look and stench of it.”
Lucan wasn’t the only one in the room to grind out a savage curse at that bit of troubling news.
“So, they’re not content sacrificing just Minion pawns anymore?” Rio remarked. “Now the Rogues are moving bigger pieces on the board?”
“They’re still pawns,” Gideon said.
Lucan glanced to the quick-witted vampire and understood what he was getting at. “The pieces haven’t changed. But the rules have. This is a new brand of warfare, not the minor firefighting we’ve been dealing with in the past. Someone within Rogue ranks is bringing a degree of order to the anarchy. We’re coming under siege.”
He turned his attention back to Conlan, the first casualty of what he feared was to be a new dark age. In his aged bones, he felt the violence of a long ago past rising up to repeat itself. War was brewing again, and if the Rogues were making moves to organize, to go on the offensive, then the entire vampire nation would find itself on the front lines. The humans, too.
“We can discuss this more at length, but not now. This time is Conlan’s. Let us honor him.”
“I’ve said my goodbyes,” Tegan murmured. “Conlan knows I respected the hell out of him in life, as I do in death. Nothing’s ever gonna change on that score.”
A heavy wave of anxiety swept the room as everyone waited for Lucan to react to Tegan’s abrupt departure. But Lucan wasn’t about to give the vampire the satisfaction of thinking he’d pissed him off, which he had. He waited for the retreat of Tegan’s boot falls to fade down the corridor, then he nodded to the others to resume the rite.
One by one, Lucan and each of the four other warriors sank down on their knee to pay further respects. They spoke a single prayer, then rose together, and began to withdraw to await the final ceremony that would put their fallen comrade to rest.
“I will be the one to carry him up,” Lucan announced to the departing vampires.
He caught the exchange of looks between them, and knew what it meant. Elders of the vampire race—Gen Ones, especially—were never asked to bear the burden of the dead. That obligation fell to the later generation Breed who were further removed from the Ancients, and who, as such, could better withstand the burning rays of the rising sun for the time required to lay a vampire to proper rest.
For a Gen One like Lucan, the funeral rite would be a torturous eight minutes of exposure.
Lucan stared at the lifeless form on the table, unwilling to look away from the damage Conlan had suffered.
Damage suffered in his place, Lucan thought, sick with the knowledge that it should have been him on patrol with Niko, not Conlan. Had he not sent the Highlander out at the last minute as his own replacement, Lucan might have been lying on that cold metal slab, his limbs and face and torso charred from hellish fire, his gut blasted open with shrapnel.
Lucan’s need to see Gabrielle tonight had trumped his duty to the Breed, and now Conlan—his grieving mate, as well—had paid the ultimate price.
“I will take him topside,” he repeated sternly. He slid a bleak scowl at Gideon. “Summon me when the preparations are completed.”
The vampire inclined his head, granting Lucan more respect than he was due in that moment. “Of course. It won’t be long.”
Lucan spent the next couple of hours alone in his private quarters, kneeling in the center of the space, head dropped in prayer and somber reflection. Gideon arrived at the door, as promised, nodding to indicate that it was time to remove Conlan from the compound and surrender him to the dead.
“She’s pregnant,” Gideon said grimly as Lucan rose. “Danika is three months with child. Savannah just told me. Conlan had been trying to work up the courage to tell you that he was leaving the Order once the baby arrived. He and Danika were planning to withdraw to one of the Darkhavens to raise their family.”
“Christ,” Lucan hissed, feeling even worse for the happy future Conlan and Danika had been robbed of, and for the son who would never know the man of courage and honor who had been his father. “Everything is in preparation for the ritual?”
Gideon inclined his head.
“Then let’s do this.”
Lucan strode forward. His feet and head were bare, as was the rest of his body beneath a long black robe. Gideon was robed as well, but wearing the formal belted tunic of the Order, as were the other vampires who awaited them in the chamber set aside for all manner of Breed ritual—from marriages and births, to funerals, like this one. The three females of the compound were present as well, Savannah and Eva in ceremonial hooded black gowns, Danika garbed in the same manner, but in deepest scarlet, to signify her sacred blood-bond with the departed.
At the front of the gathering, Conlan’s body lay on an ornate altar, cocooned in a thick shroud of snowy silk wrappings.
“We begin,” Gideon announced simply.
Lucan’s heart was heavy as he listened to the service, to the symbolism of infinity in each of the ceremony’s rites.
Eight ounces of perfumed oil to anoint the skin.
Eight layers of white silk shrouding the body of the fallen.
Eight minutes of silent, daybreak attendance by one member of the Breed, before the dead warrior would be released to the incinerating rays of the sun. Left alone, his body and soul would scatter to the four winds as ash, a part of the elements forever.
As Gideon’s voice came to a slow pause, Danika stepped forward.
Turning to face the gathering, she lifted her chin and spoke in a hoarse, but proud, voice. “This male was mine, as I was his. His blood sustained me. His strength protected me. His love fulfilled me in all ways. He was my beloved, my only one, and he will be in my heart for all eternity.”
“You honor him well,” came the hushed, unison reply from Lucan and the others.
Danika now turned to meet Gideon, her hands extended, palms upturned. He unsheathed a slim golden dagger and placed it in her hands. Danika’s hooded head dipped down in acceptance, then she turned to stand over Conlan’s wrapped form. She murmured soft, private words meant only for the two of them. Her hands came up near her face, and Lucan knew that the Breedmate widow was now scoring her lower lip with the edge of the blade, drawing blood that she would then press to Conlan’s mouth from over the shroud as she kissed him one final time.
Danika bent toward her lover and remained there for a long while, her body shaking with the force of her grief. She came away from him sobbing into the back of her hand, her scarlet kiss glowing fiercely on Conlan’s mouth amid the field of white that covered him. Savannah and Eva brought her into a joined embrace, leading her away from the altar so that Lucan could continue with the one task that yet remained.
He approached Gideon at the fore of the assembly and pledged to see Conlan depart with all the honor that was due him, the vow spoken by all of the Breed who walked the same path that awaited Lucan now.
Gideon stepped aside to grant Lucan access to the body. Lucan took the massive warrior into his arms and turned to face the others as was required.
“You honor him well,” murmured the low chorus of voices.
Lucan progressed solemnly and slowly across the ceremonial chamber to the stairwell leading up and out of the compound. Each long flight, each of the hundreds of steps he took, bearing the weight of his fallen brother, was a pain he accepted without complaint.
This was the easiest part of his task, after all.
If he were going to break, it would be in a few minutes from now, on the other side of the exterior door that loomed ahead of him just a dozen more paces.
Lucan shouldered the steel panel open and drew the crisp air into his lungs as he walked to the place where he would lay Conlan to rest. He went to his knees on a patch of crisp green grass, slowly lowering his arms to place Conlan’s body down on terra firma before him. He whispered the prayers of the funeral ritual, words he’d only heard a scant few times over centuries long passed, yet called up now by rote.
As he spoke them, the sky began to glow with the coming of dawn.
He bore the light in reverent quiet, training all thought on Conlan and the honor that had marked his long life. The sun continued to stretch over the horizon, less than halfway through the ritual. Lucan dropped his head down, absorbing the pain as Conlan surely would have done for any one of the Breed who fought alongside him. Searing heat washed over Lucan as dawn rose, ever stronger.
His ears filled with the repeated words of the old prayers, and, before long, the faint hiss and crackle of his own burning flesh.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
Police and transportation officials still aren’t certain what caused the apparent explosion last night. However, I spoke with a representative for the T just a few moments ago who assured me that the incident was isolated to one of the old, unused tracks, and that no injuries were reported. Stay tuned to Channel Five for more news on this breaking story as it—”
The dusty, late-model television mounted to a wall rack clicked off abruptly, cowed into silence solely by the force of the vampire’s supreme irritation. Behind him, across the length of a bleak, dilapidated room that had once been the asylum’s basement cafeteria, two of his Rogue lieutenants stood, fidgeting and grunting, as they awaited their next orders.
There was little patience in the pair; Rogues, by their addictive natures had puny attention spans, having abandoned intellect to pursue the more immediate whims of their Bloodlust. They were wanton children, little better than hounds in need of regular whippings and spare rewards to keep them obedient. And to remind them of whom they currently served.
“No injuries reported,” sniggered one of the Rogues.
“Maybe not to the humans,” added the other, “but the Breed took a damn big hit. I hear there wasn’t much left of the dead one for the sun to claim.”
More chuckling from the first idiot, followed by an expulsion of foul, blood-soured breath as he mimicked the detonation of the explosives that had been set off in the tunnel by the Rogue bomber assigned to the task.
“A pity the other warrior with him was left to walk away.” The Rogues fell silent as their leader turned at last to face them. “Next time, I’ll put the two of you to the task, since you find failure so amusing.”
They scowled, grunting like the beasts they were, their slitted pupils wild within the engulfing yellow-gold sea of their fixed irises. Their gazes turned down as he began to stride toward them with slow, measured paces. His anger was tempered only by the fact that the Breed had, indeed, suffered a healthy loss.
The warrior who fell to the bomb was not the actual target of last night’s assignment; however, any dead member of the Order was good news for his cause. There would be time to eliminate the one called Lucan. Perhaps he might even do it himself, face-to-face, vampire to vampire, without the benefit of weapons.
Yes, he thought, there would be more than a little pleasure in taking that one down.
Call it poetic justice.
“Show me what you’ve brought me,” he ordered the Rogues before him.
The two departed at once, pushing open a swinging door to retrieve the baggage left in the corridor outside. They returned an instant later, dragging behind them several lethargic, nearly bled-out humans. The men and women, six in all, were bound at their wrists and loosely shackled at their feet, though none appeared fit enough to even consider an attempt at escape.
Catatonic eyes stared off into nowhere, slack mouths incapable of screaming or speech drooped on their pale faces. At their throats, bite marks scored their skin where their Rogue captors had struck to subdue them.
“For you, sire. Fresh servants for the cause.”
The half-dozen humans were shuffled in like cattle—for that they were, flesh and bone commodities that would be put to work, or to death, whenever he deemed it useful.
He looked over the evening’s catch with little interest, idly sizing up the two men and four women by their potential for service. He felt an itchy impatience as he drew near to the lot of them, some of their bitten necks still oozing with a lazy trickle of fresh blood.
He was hungry, he decided, his assessing look lighting on a petite brunette female with a pouty mouth and ripe, full breasts straining against the dull teal green of her baglike, ill-fitting hospital garb. Her head lolled on her shoulders, too heavy to stay upright, although it was apparent that she was struggling against the torpor that had already claimed the others. Her irises were listless, rolling upward into her skull, yet she fought the pull of catatonia, blinking dazedly in an effort to remain conscious and aware.
He had to admire her pluck.
“K. Delaney, R.N.,” he mused, reading from the plastic name tag that rode the plump swell of her left breast.
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face up for his persual. She was pretty, young. And her freckled skin smelled sweet, succulent. His mouth watered greedily, his pupils narrowed behind the cover of his dark glasses.
“This one stays. Take the rest down to the holding cages.”
At first, Lucan thought the piercing trill was just part of the agony he’d been living for the past several hours. His entire body felt scorched, flayed, and lifeless. His head had, at some point, ceased pounding and now plagued him with a prolonged bell of pain.
He was in his private quarters at the compound, in his own bed; that much he knew. He recalled dragging himself there with his last ounce of strength, after he had stayed with Conlan’s body topside for the full eight minutes required of him.
He had stayed even longer than that, another searing few seconds, until the dawn’s rays had ignited the fallen warrior’s shroud and erupted in an awesome shower of light and flames. Only then did he move for the cover of the compound’s subterranean walls.
The extra time exposed had been his personal apology to Conlan. The pain he endured now was to let him never forget what truly mattered: his duty to the Breed and to the Order of honorable males sworn likewise into that same service. There was no room for anything else.
He’d let that oath slip last night, and now one of his best warriors was gone.
Another blast of shrill ringing from somewhere in the room assailed him. Somewhere too near where he rested; the splitting grate of it jackhammered into his already caving skull.
With a hissed curse that barely made it out of his parched throat, Lucan peeled his eyes open and glared into the dark of his private bedchamber. A small light blinked from within the pocket of his leather jacket as the cell phone rang again.
Stumbling, his legs lacking their usual athletic control and coordination, he dropped out of his bed and made a graceless lunge for the offending device. It only took him three tries to finally find the small key that would silence the ringer. Furious for the taxing that the brief series of movements had on him, Lucan held the glowing display up to his swimming vision and forced himself to read the caller’s number.
It was a Boston exchange…Gabrielle’s cell phone.
Beautiful.
Just what he fucking needed.
He’d resolved on the climb with Conlan’s body up those several hundred stairs to the outside that whatever he was doing with Gabrielle Maxwell had to stop. He hadn’t been entirely sure what he was doing with her anyway, short of exploiting every available opportunity he could find to get her on her back beneath him.
Yeah, he’d been brilliant at that tactic.
It was the rest of his objectives he was beginning to suck at, so long as Gabrielle was in the picture.
He had it all planned out in his head, the way he was going to deal with the situation. He would have Gideon go to her apartment that night, tell her in logical, understandable terms all about the Breed and about her destiny—her true belonging—within the vampire nation. Gideon had a lot of experience dealing with females, and he was a consummate diplomat. He would be gentle, and he sure as hell had a better way with words than Lucan himself. He could make sense of it all for her, including the very real need for her to seek sanctuary—and, eventually, a suitable mate—at one of the Darkhavens.
As for Lucan, he was going to do what was required for his body to heal. A few more hours of recovery, a much-needed feeding tonight—once he was able to stand up long enough to hunt—and he would come back stronger, a better warrior.
He was going to forget he’d ever met Gabrielle Maxwell. For his own sake, if not for the Breed as a whole.
Except…
Except, he had told her just last night that she could reach him on his cell phone whenever she needed him. He had promised he would always answer her call.
And if she was trying to get a hold of him now because the Rogues or their walking-dead Minions had come sniffing around her again, he figured he damned well needed to know.
Lying in a supine sprawl on the floor, he punched the Talk button.
“Hello.”
Jesus, he sounded like shit. Like his lungs were made of cinder and his breath was ash. He coughed and felt his head split with pain.
Silence held for a second on the other end, then Gabrielle’s voice, hesitant, anxious. “Lucan? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” He worked to force sound from his arid throat. “What is it? You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I hope it’s all right that I called. I just…Well, after the way you left last night, I’ve been a little worried. I suppose I just needed to know that nothing had happened to you.”
He didn’t have the energy to speak, so he lay back, closed his eyes, and merely listened to the sound of her voice. The clear, rich tones washed over him like a balm. Her concern was an elixir, something he had never tasted before—hearing that someone was worried about him. The affection was unfamiliar, warm.
It soothed him, despite his fierce need to deny it.
“Time…” he croaked, then tried again. “What time is it?”
“Not quite noon. I wanted to call you as soon as I got up this morning, but since you generally work the evening shift, I waited as long as I could. You sound tired. Did I wake you up?”
“No.”
He attempted to roll onto his side, feeling stronger just for the few minutes on the phone with her. Besides, he needed to get his ass out of its sling and back onto the street, starting tonight. Conlan’s murder had to be avenged, and he meant to be the one to dispense justice.
The more brutal that justice, the better.
“So,” she was saying now, “everything’s okay with you, then?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Good. I’m relieved to hear that, actually.” Her voice took on a lighter, teasing tone. “You ran out of my place so fast last night, I think you left skid marks on the floor.”
“Something came up. I had to go.”
“Hmm,” she said, after he let the silence stretch out, not volunteering to elaborate. “Top secret detective business?”
“You could say that.”
He struggled to put his feet beneath him, and winced, both at the pain lancing through his body and for the truth he couldn’t tell Gabrielle about what had really made him race out of her bed. The stark reality of the war that lay ahead of him and the rest of his kind would land on her plate soon enough. Tonight in fact, when Gideon paid her a visit.
“Listen, I have yoga class tonight with a friend of mine, but it lets out around nine. If you’re not on duty, would you like to come over? I could cook you dinner. Think of it as a raincheck for the manicotti you missed earlier this week. Maybe we’ll actually eat the food this time.”
His facial muscles burned with the involuntary pull of his mouth as Gabrielle’s flirty humor wrung a smile from him. The suggestion of the passion they’d shared together was wringing something else from him as well; and the flare of his arousal amid all of his other agony didn’t hurt half as bad as he wished it had.
“I can’t see you, Gabrielle. I have…things I must do.”
Chief among them, getting some blood into his depleted cells, and that meant keeping her as far away from him as possible. Bad enough she tempted him with the promise of her body; in his current state, he would be a danger to any human who was fool enough to get near him.
“Don’t you know what they say about all work and no play?” she asked, a world of invitation in the purr of her voice. “I’m a bit of a night owl, so if you get off work and decide you want some company—”
“I’m sorry. Maybe another time,” he said, knowing full well there would be no other time. He was standing on wobbly legs now and managing a halting, painful step toward the door. Gideon would be in the lab and that was all the way at the end of the corridor. Sheer hell to make that in his condition, but Lucan was more than willing to try. “I’m sending someone over to see you tonight. He’sa…an associate of mine.”
“What for?”
His breath rasped out of him in a labored wheeze, but he was walking. His hand swung out and caught the latch of the door. “Things are too dangerous topside right now,” he said in a strained rush of words. “After what happened to you downtown yesterday…”
“God, can we forget that? I’m sure I was just overreacting.”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ll feel better knowing you’re not alone…having someone look in on you.”
“Lucan, really. It’s not necessary. I’m a big girl. I’m fine.”
He ignored her protests. “His name is Gideon. You’ll like him. The two of you can…talk. He will help you, Gabrielle. Better than I can.”
“Help me—what do you mean? Has something happened with the case? And who is this Gideon guy? Is he a detective, too?”
“He will explain it all to you.” Lucan stepped out into the corridor where dim lights illuminated polished tile floors and crisp chrome and glass fixtures. From behind the door of another private apartment, Dante’s metal music thumped heavily. Trace smells of oil and recently fired weaponry filtered out from the training facility down one of many hallways that spoked off the main corridor. Lucan weaved on his feet, unsteady amid the sudden barrage of sensory stimulation. “You’ll be safe, Gabrielle, I swear to you. I have to go now.”
“Lucan, wait a second! Don’t hang up. What is it you’re not telling me?”
“You’re going to be all right, I promise. Goodbye, Gabrielle.”
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Gabrielle’s call to Lucan, and his strange behavior on the other end of the line, had troubled her all day. It still bothered her, as she and Megan came out of yoga class that evening.
“He just sounded so weird on the phone. I can’t decide if he was in extreme physical pain, or if he was trying to find a way to tell me that he didn’t want to see me anymore.”
Megan sighed, waving her hand in dismissal. “You’re probably reading too much into it. If you really want to know, why don’t you go down to the station and pop in on him?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, what would I say?”
“You say, ‘Hi, baby. You sounded so down this afternoon, I thought you could use a little pick-me-up, so here I am.’ Maybe bring him coffee and a doughnut for good measure.”
“I don’t know….”
“Gabby, you’ve said yourself the guy has been nothing but sweet and caring when he’s with you. From what you told me about your conversation with him today, he sounds very concerned about you. So much so, that he would send one of his buddies over to look in on you while he’s on duty and can’t be there himself.”
“He did stress how dangerous it was topside—and what do you suppose topside means? That doesn’t sound like cop talk, does it? What is it, some kind of military terminology?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s a lot about Lucan Thorne that I just don’t know.”
“So ask him. Come on, Gabrielle. At least give the guy the benefit of the doubt.”
Gabrielle considered her black yoga pants and zippered hoodie, then felt to see how wilted her ponytail had become during the forty-five minute session of stretches. “I should go home first, at least take a quick shower, change my clothes….”
“Wow! I mean, really, wow.” Megan’s eyes went wide and bright with amusement. “You’re afraid to go down there, aren’t you? Oh, you want to, but you probably have a million excuses ready for why you can’t. Admit it, you really like this guy.”
It wasn’t as if she could deny it, even if her sudden smile didn’t give her away. Gabrielle met her friend’s knowing look and shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I do. I like him. A lot.”
“Then what are you waiting for? The station is three blocks away, and you look gorgeous as always. Besides, it’s not like he hasn’t seen you a little sweaty before. He might actually prefer this look on you.”
Gabrielle laughed along with Megan, but inside, her stomach was twisting. She really did want to see Lucan—didn’t want to wait another minute, in fact—but what if he had been trying to let her down gently when they spoke that afternoon? How ridiculous would she look then, traipsing into the police station like she thought she was his girlfriend? She would feel like an idiot.
No more so than if she got the news secondhand from his friend Gideon, sent to see her on some pity mission.
“Okay. I’m going to do it.”
“Good for you!” Megan slung the strap of her rolled yoga mat up on her shoulder, beaming. “I’m meeting Ray at my place after his shift, but call me first thing in the morning and tell me how it went, you hear me?”
“All right. Tell Ray I said hi.”
As Megan dashed off to make the 9:15 train, Gabrielle headed for the police station. Along the way, she remembered Megan’s advice and made a quick pit stop, picking up a sweet roll and a cup of coffee: full-strength black, since she had a hard time thinking Lucan would be the type to wuss his down with cream, sugar, or decaffeination.
With these gifts in hand as she reached the door of the precinct house, Gabrielle took a courage-building breath, then stepped over the threshold and strode casually inside.
The worst of his burns had begun to heal by nightfall. New skin grew firm and healthy beneath the feathery peels of the old as the outward damage sloughed away. His eyes, still hypersensitive to even artificial light, registered no pain in the cool darkness topside. Which was good, because he needed to be out here to quench the searing thirst of his recuperating body.
Dante stared at him as the two of them emerged from out of the compound and prepared to part company for a night of recon and hell’s own retribution on the Rogues.
“You don’t look so good, man. You say the word, I’m out there hunting for you, bring you back something young and strong. You sure as shit need it. And no one has to know you didn’t score the sustenance on your own.”
Lucan swung a grim look at the male and bared his teeth in a sneer. “Fuck you.”
Dante chuckled. “Had a feeling you’d say that. You want me to ride shotgun for you, at least?”
The slow shake of his head sent a knife of pain lancing through his head. “I’m good. Be better, once I feed.”
“No doubt.” The vampire was silent for a long moment, just looking at him. “You know, that was pretty friggin’ impressive, what you did for Conlan today. He wouldn’t have seen that coming in a hundred years, but damn, I wish he knew you were the one walking those final steps with him. Way to honor him, man. Truly.”
Lucan absorbed the praise without letting it warm him. He’d had his reasons for performing the funeral rite, and winning the admiration of the other warriors wasn’t one of them. “Give me an hour to hunt, then contact me back here with your location so we can deal some death to our enemies tonight. In Conlan’s memory.”
Dante nodded, and rapped his knuckles against Lucan’s fist. “You got it.”
Lucan hung back as Dante retreated into the dark, his long-legged stride cocky in anticipation of the battles that awaited him on the streets. He drew his twin weapons from their sheaths and raised the curved malebranche blades high over his head. The gleam from those claws of polished steel and Rogue-slaying titanium sparked in the thin glow of moonlight overhead. With a low whoop of a battle cry, the vampire vanished into the shadows of the night.
Lucan followed not long after, taking a similar path into the lightless arteries of the city. His stealthy gait held less bravado than purpose, less eager arrogance than stone-cold need. His hunger was worse than it ever had been, and the roar he sent up into the canopy of stars above was filled with feral rage.
“Can you spell that last name again, please?”
“T-H-O-R-N-E,” Gabrielle told the station receptionist, who had already come up empty on her first search of the directory. “Detective Lucan Thorne. I don’t know what department he works in. He came to my house after I was in here reporting an attack I witnessed last weekend—a murder.”
“Oh, so you want homicide, then?” The young woman’s long manicured fingernails clacked over the keyboard in rapid strokes. “Hmm…nope, sorry. He’s not listed in that department, either.”
“That can’t be right. Could you check again for me? Doesn’t that system let you search on just the name?”
“It does, but I have no listing anywhere for a Detective Lucan Thorne. You sure he works out of this precinct?”
“I’m certain of it, yes. Your computer system must be out of date or—”
“Oh, hold on! There’s someone who can help you out,” the receptionist interjected, gesturing toward the entrance doors of the station. “Officer Carrigan! You got a second?”
Officer Carrigan, Gabrielle registered miserably. The aging cop who had given her such a hard time last weekend, all but calling her a liar and a cokehead as he refused to believe her statement about the nightclub slaying. At least now, with Lucan having processed her cell phone pictures with the police lab, she could take comfort in knowing that, regardless of this man’s input, the case was moving forward in some fashion.
Gabrielle had to fight to contain her groan as she turned her head and saw the rotund officer taking his sweet time to strut over. When he saw her standing there, the expression of arrogance that seemed so natural on his fleshy face took on a decidedly contemptuous edge.
“Ah, Jay-zuss. You again? Just what I don’t need, my last day on the job. I’m retiring in four more hours, darlin’. You’ll have to tell it to someone else this time.”
Gabrielle frowned. “Excuse me?”
“This young lady is looking for one of our detectives,” said the receptionist, sharing a sympathetic look with Gabrielle at the officer’s dismissive demeanor. “I can’t find him in the system, but she thinks he might be one of yours. Do you know Detective Thorne?”
“Never heard of him.” Officer Carrigan started to walk away.
“Lucan Thorne,” Gabrielle said with force, setting Lucan’s coffee and bagged danish down on the reception counter. She took an automatic step after the cop, nearly reaching for his arm when it seemed he was simply going to leave her standing there. “Detective Lucan Thorne—you must be familiar with him. You folks sent him to my apartment earlier this week to get some additional information on my statement. He brought my cell phone photos into the lab for analysis—”
Carrigan was chuckling now, having paused to look at her as she blurted out the details of Lucan’s arrival at her home. She didn’t have the patience to deal with the officer’s belligerence. Not when her nape was crawling with the feeling that things were about to get weird.
“Are you telling me that Detective Thorne hasn’t shared any of this with you?”
“Lady. I’m telling you that I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’ve been working out of this station for thirty-five years, and I’ve never heard of any Detective Thorne, let alone sent him out to your place.”
A knot began to form in her stomach, cold and tight, but Gabrielle refused to process the dread that was taking shape beneath her confusion. “That’s not possible. He knew about the murder I witnessed. He knew I’d been here, at the station, filing a statement about it. I saw his ID badge when he came to my house. I just talked to him today, he said he was working tonight. I have his cell phone number….”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. If it will get you outta my hair any faster, let’s give your Detective Thorne a call,” Carrigan said. “That ought to clear things right up, eh?”
“Yes. I’ll call him now.”
Gabrielle’s fingers were trembling a little as she dug her cell phone out of her pocketbook and punched in Lucan’s number. It rang, unanswered. She tried again, waiting for an agonizing eternity while her call rang and rang and rang, and Officer Carrigan’s expression smoothed from dubious impatience to a tentative, sympathetic look she’d seen on more than one social worker’s face when she was a kid.
“He’s not there,” she murmured as she brought the phone away from her ear. She felt awkward and confused, made all the worse for the careful expression on Carrigan’s face. “I’m sure he’s just tied up with something. I’ll try him again in a minute.”
“Ms. Maxwell, do you have anyone else we can call? Family, maybe? Someone who can help us make sense of what you might be going through?”
“I’m not going through anything.”
“Seems to me like you are. I think you’re confused. You know, sometimes people invent things to help them cope with other problems.”
Gabrielle scoffed. “I’m not confused. Lucan Thorne is not a figment of my imagination. He’s real. These things that have been happening around me are real. The murder I saw last weekend, those…men…with their bloody faces and sharp teeth, even that kid who was watching me the other day at the Common…he works here at the station. What did you do, send him to spy on me?”
“Okay, Ms. Maxwell. Let’s see if we can work this out together.” Evidently, Carrigan had finally found a scrap of diplomacy underneath the crust of his boorish nature. But there was still a big dose of condescension in the way he took her by the elbow and tried to guide her toward one of the lobby benches for a seat. “Let’s just take a few deep breaths, here. We can get you some help.”
She shook him off, pulling away. “You think I’m crazy. I know what I saw—all of it! I’m not making this up, and I don’t need any help. I just need the truth.”
“Sheryl, honey,” Carrigan said to the receptionist who was staring at them with apprehension in her eyes. “You wanna give Rudy Duncan a quick call for me? Tell him I could use him down here.”
“Meds?” she inquired lightly, the phone already hugged between her ear and shoulder.
“Nah,” Carrigan replied, looking back to Gabrielle. “No cause for alarm just yet. Ask him to come down to the lobby, nice and easy, have a little talk with Ms. Maxwell and me.”
“Forget it,” Gabrielle said, rising off the bench. “I’m not staying here another second. I have to go.”
“Look, whatever you’re going through, there are people who can help you—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish, simply gathered what was left of her dignity, then strode over to the receptionist desk to retrieve the cup and bag from the countertop, and pitched both into the trash on her way out the door.
The night air was crisp against her flushed cheeks, soothing her somewhat. But her head was still spinning. Her heart was still pounding hard with confusion and disbelief.
Had the whole world gone mad around her? What the hell was going on?
Lucan had been lying to her about being a cop, that was pretty much a no-brainer. But just how much of what he’d told her—God, how much of what they’d done together—had been part of that deception?
And why?
Gabrielle paused at the bottom of the concrete steps leading out of the precinct house and took deep lungfuls of air. She blew it out slowly, then looked down to find her cell phone still clutched in her hand.
“Shit.”
She had to know.
This strange ride she was on had to stop right now.
The Redial button brought up Lucan’s number. She sent the call, then waited, uncertain what she was going to say.
It rang six times.
Seven.
Eight…
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Lucan grabbed his cell phone from out of his leather jacket, a curse rolling hard off his tongue.
Gabrielle…again.
She had called him earlier as well, but he’d had to let it go unanswered. He’d been stalking a drug dealer whom he’d first spotted selling crack to a teenaged streetwalker outside a seedy tavern. Lucan had mentally steered his prey down a quiet back alley, and was just about to lunge in attack when Gabrielle’s first call of the night had rung like a car alarm going off in his pocket. He had clicked the device into silent mode, berating himself for the uncustomary lack of sense that had made him carry the damned thing on his hunt in the first place.
Hunger and injury had made him careless. But the sudden bark of noise in the darkened street had proved a benefit to him in the end.
His strength was subpar and the cagey dealer had scented danger on the wind, even though Lucan had kept to the shadows, trailing his quarry unseen. The guy had been twitchy, anxious. He’d drawn a handgun halfway down the narrow street, and while bullet wounds were seldom fatal to Lucan’s kind—unless you were talking a head shot, delivered at pointblank range—he wasn’t sure his compromised, recovering body would be able to absorb the impact of a further injury today.
Not to mention the fact that it just would have pissed him off, and he was already in a seriously foul mood.
So, when the ring of the cell phone sent the dealer into a startled left-right-left spin as he tried to determine the source of the noise behind him, Lucan had sprung on him. He had taken the guy down fast, sinking his fangs into the vein in the human’s neck, which bulged tautly in that instant before terror forced breath enough through the man’s lungs for him to scream.
Blood gushed against his tongue, nasty with the taint of drugs and disease. Lucan choked it down, swallow after swallow, clutching at his convulsing, gasping prey without mercy. He would kill this one, and he wouldn’t care less. All that mattered was feeding the hunger. Assuaging the pain of his mending body.
Lucan fed quickly, drinking his fill.
More than his fill.
He nearly drained the dealer, and still he was ravenous. But it would be pushing it to feed any more than he already had tonight. Better to give this nourishment a chance to take hold before he risked getting greedy, and taking a tailspin toward Bloodlust.
Lucan stared with scorn at the phone ringing in his hand, knowing he ought to just let the damned thing go unanswered.
It kept on, insistent, and in the second before it cut off, he picked up. He said nothing at first, just listened as the soft sound of Gabrielle’s exhale blew across the receiver. Her breath shook a little, but her voice was strong, despite the fact that she was obviously pretty upset.
“You’ve been lying to me,” she said by way of greeting. “How long, Lucan? About how much? Everything?”
Lucan took in the lifeless body of his prey with contempt. He crouched low, making a quick search of the greasy lowlife. He found a rubber-banded wad of cash, which he would leave for the street vultures to fight over. The dealer’s party favors—a couple grand worth of crack and heroin—would take a bath down one of the city’s sewer drains.
“Where are you?” he barked into the cell phone, thinking no more of the predator he’d eliminated. “Where’s Gideon?”
“Aren’t you even going to try to deny it? Why would you do something like this?”
“Put him on the phone, Gabrielle.”
She ignored his demand. “There’s another thing I’d like to know: how did you get into my apartment last night? I had all the locks set, including the chain. What did you do, pick them somehow? Did you steal my keys when I wasn’t looking and have another set made?”
“We can talk about this later, once I know you’re safe at the compound.”
“What compound?” Her sharp gasp of laughter took him aback. “And you can cut the benevolent protector act. I know you’re not a cop. All I want is a little honesty. Is that too much to ask, Lucan? God—is that even your real name? Is anything you’ve told me remotely close to the truth?”
Suddenly Lucan knew that this anger, this hurt, wasn’t coming at him as a result of Gabrielle getting a crash course from Gideon on the Breed or her destined role within it. A role that wasn’t going to include Lucan.
No, she didn’t know any of that yet. This was something else. This wasn’t fear of the facts. This was a fear of the unknown.
“Where are you, Gabrielle?”
“What do you care?”
“I do…care,” he admitted, albeit reluctantly. “Damn it, I don’t have the head for this right now. Look, I know you’re not at your apartment, so where are you? Gabrielle, you need to tell me where you are.”
“I’m at the police station. I came down here tonight to see you, and guess what? Nobody’s ever heard of you.”
“Ah, Christ. You asked for me there?”
“Of course I did. How could I have known you were playing me for a fool?” Again the brittle scoff. “I even brought you coffee and a sweet roll.”
“Gabrielle, I will be there in a few minutes—less than that. Do not move. Stay where you are. Stay someplace public, somewhere inside. I’m coming for you.”
“Forget it. Leave me alone.”
Her sharp command drew him up short on the street. Just before his boots started hitting the pavement at a determined clip.
“I’m not sticking around to wait for you, Lucan. In fact, you know what? Just stay the hell away from me.”
“Too late,” he drawled into the phone.
He was already rounding the last corner before he would turn onto the street where the police station was located. He moved over the concrete and through the thin knots of milling pedestrians like a ghost. He felt the blood he’d ingested begin to merge with his cells, adhering to muscle and bone, strengthening him, until he was nothing but a cold draft on the back of the necks of those he passed.
But Gabrielle, with her Breedmate’s extraordinary perception, saw him at once.
He heard the sudden intake of air skate across the receiver of her cell phone. She drew the device away from her ear as though in slow motion, disbelief widening her eyes as she stared at his swift approach.
“My God,” she whispered, the sound of it reaching his ears a mere second before he was standing in front of her, reaching out to take her by the arm. “Let go of me!”
“We need to talk, Gabrielle. Not here. I’ll take you someplace—”
“Like hell you will!” She wrenched herself out of his grasp and backed away from him on the sidewalk. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You are not safe out here anymore, Gabrielle. You’ve seen too much. You’re a part of it now, whether or not you want to be.”
“A part of what?”
“This war.”
“War,” she echoed, doubt lacing the word.
“That’s right. It’s a war. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to pick a side, Gabrielle.” He ground out a curse. “No. Screw that. I’m choosing a side for you right now.”
“Is this some kind of joke? What are you, one of those military rejects who gets off on acting out authority fantasies? Maybe you’re something worse than that.”
“This is no joke. It’s not a goddamned game. I have seen a lot of combat and death in my time, Gabrielle. You can’t even begin to imagine all that I’ve seen, all that I’ve done. But it’s nothing like the current storm that’s building. And I’m not going to stand by and watch you get caught in the crossfire.” He thrust out his hand. “You’re coming with me. Now.”
She dodged his reach. Fear and outrage clashed in her dark eyes. “Touch me again, and I swear I’ll get the cops. You know, the real ones back there in the station house. They carry real badges. And real guns.”
Lucan’s temperature, already high, began to rise. “Do not threaten me, Gabrielle. And don’t think the police can give you any kind of protection. Certainly not from the danger that’s pursuing you. For all we know, half the precinct could be infested with Minions.”
She shook her head, adopting a calmer stance. “Okay, this conversation is going from strange to deeply disturbing. I’m done with it, understand?” She was speaking to him slowly and quietly, as if attempting to soothe a frothing dog that was crouched before her, ready to spring in attack. “I’m going to leave now, Lucan. Please…don’t follow me.”
When she took the first step away from him, what little was left of Lucan’s control snapped its tether. He locked his gaze down hard on hers and sent a fierce command into her mind, ordering her to cease resisting him.
Give me your hand.
Now.
For a second, her legs stopped moving. Her fingers grew a little restless at her side, then, slowly, her arm began to lift toward him.
And, suddenly, his hold on her broke.
He felt her force him out of her thoughts, disconnecting him. The power of her will was an iron gate slamming down between them, one he would have had a hard time penetrating even if he’d been in optimal condition.
“What the hell?” she gasped, registering the trick for what it was. “I heard you, just now, inside my head. My God. You’ve done this to me before, haven’t you?”
“You’re not leaving me much choice, Gabrielle.”
He tried again. Felt her push against him, more desperate this time. More afraid.
The back of her hand came up against her mouth, but could not quite stifle the broken cry that leaked out of her.
She stumbled back off the curb.
Then bolted across the darkened street to escape him.
“Yo, kid. Grab the door for me, will ya?”
It took a second for the Minion to realize he was being spoken to; he’d been so distracted by the sight of the Maxwell woman on the street below the police station. Even now, as he pulled open the door to let a pizza delivery guy carrying four steaming pie boxes enter, his attention remained rooted on the woman as she stepped off the curb and ran across the street.
Like she was trying to leave someone in the dust behind her.
The Minion looked to where a huge figure in black stood, watching her flee. The male was immense—easily six-and-a-half-feet tall, shoulders beneath his dark leather jacket like they belonged on a linebacker. He radiated an air of menace that could be felt all the way from the street to where the Minion now stood, dumbstruck, still holding the station door open, even though the pizzas were currently parked at the receptionist desk inside.
Although he had never seen one of the vampire warriors his Master so openly despised, the Minion knew without a doubt that he was witnessing precisely that now.
It was an opportunity sure to win him much esteem, alerting his Master to the presence of both the woman and the vampire with whom she seemed familiar, if not a little terrified.
The Minion stepped inside the precinct house, his palms moist with anticipation of the glory that awaited him. Head down, positive in his ability to move around all but ignored, he started across the lobby at a hasty clip.
He didn’t even see the pizza guy moving into his path until he had crashed into him, head-on. A cardboard box jabbed into his midsection and emitted a blast of garlic-ripe steam before tumbling to the filthy linoleum, spilling its contents around the Minion’s feet.
“Aw, man! That’s my next delivery you’re standing on. Don’t you watch where you’re goin’ dude?”
He didn’t apologize, or even pause to kick the greasy cheese and pepperoni off his shoe. Shoving his hand into the pocket of his khakis, the Minion found his cell phone and searched for somewhere private to make his important call.
“Hold up a second, sport.”
It was the aging, balding officer standing in the lobby who shouted after him now. Stuffed into his uniform for what he’d boasted was his final few hours on the job, Carrigan had been wasting time bullshitting with the lobby receptionist.
The Minion disregarded the cop’s thunderous voice behind him and kept walking, dropping his chin down and making a beeline for a stairwell door located near the public john just off the lobby.
Carrigan puffed out his chest and gaped with obvious disbelief as his self-perceived authority was utterly ignored.
“Hey, pencil neck! I’m talking to you. I said, get back here and help clean this mess up—and I mean now, shit-for-brains!”
“Clean it up yourself, you arrogant slob,” the Minion muttered under his breath, then shoved open the metal door to the stairs and began a quick jog down to a level below.
Above him, that same door crashed open, hitting the other side of the wall and shaking the steps like a sonic boom. Carrigan leaned over the rail, his jowls corpulent with rage. “What’d you just say to me? What the fuck did you just call me, asshole?”
“You heard me. Now leave me alone, Carrigan. I have better things to do.”
The Minion took out his cell phone, intending to contact the only one who truly commanded him. But before he could press the speed-dial button that would connect him to his Master, the burly cop was launching himself down the stairwell. A hamlike hand cuffed the side of the Minion’s head. His ears rang, vision swimming with the impact, as the cell phone jettisoned out of his grasp and clattered onto the floor, several steps below.
“Thanks for giving me something to smile about my last day on the job,” Carrigan taunted. He ran a fat finger around the front of his too-tight collar, then casually reached up to pat the sole remaining wisps of hair on his brow back down where they’d been pasted before. “Now, get your scrawny ass back up those stairs before I hand it to you on a platter. Ya get me?”
There was a time, before he’d met the one he called Master, that a challenge like that—particularly from a blowhard like Carrigan—would not have gone unmet.
But the sweating, sputtering cop glaring down on him now was insignificant in light of the duties entrusted to chosen ones like himself. The Minion simply blinked a few times, then turned to retrieve his cell phone and continue with his task at hand.
He only made it down two stairs before Carrigan was on him again, heavy fingers clamping down hard on his shoulder and forcibly wheeling him around. The Minion’s eyes lit on a fancy ballpoint pen stuck into the shirt pocket of Carrigan’s uniform. He recognized the commemorative service emblem on the clip as he took another hard knock to the skull.
“What are you, deaf and dumb? Get the hell outta my sight, or I’ll—”
The abrupt choke and wheeze of Carrigan’s voice snapped the Minion back to his senses. He saw his own hand clutching the officer’s pen as it came down for a second brutal plunge, the point of it burrowing deep into the fleshy skin of Carrigan’s neck.
The Minion struck again and again with the makeshift weapon, until the cop sank down to the floor in a savaged, lifeless heap.
He loosened his fist and the pen dropped into a pool of blood on the stairs, all but forgotten in the instant it took him to dash down and grab up his cell phone once more. He meant to place his crucial call immediately, but his eyes kept drifting to this new mess he’d made, something that wasn’t going to get swept away as easily as the pizza in the lobby.
This had been a mistake, and any approval won from informing his Master of the Maxwell woman’s whereabouts could be lost once it was discovered that he’d acted so impulsively here. Killing without sanction might negate everything.
But perhaps there was an even more certain path into his Master’s good graces—a path that could be paved by apprehending and delivering the woman to his Master in person.
Yes, thought the Minion, that was a prize bound to impress.
Pocketing the cell phone, he turned back to extract Carrigan’s weapon from its holster. Then he stepped over the corpse and hurried out a back entrance to the station parking lot.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
He should let her go.
He’d screwed things up so badly, he didn’t think there would be any reasoning with Gabrielle tonight. Maybe not ever.
From the opposite curb, he watched her taking long strides down the other side of the street, heading God knew where. She looked ashen and stunned, like she’d just taken a sucker punch to the chest.
Which she had, he admitted darkly.
Maybe it was for the best that he let her run off thinking he was a liar and a dangerous lunatic. The assumption was not all that far from fact, after all. But her opinion of him wasn’t key here, anyway. Getting a Breedmate to safety was.
He could let her go home, give her a few days to cool off, take some time to come to terms with his deception. Then he could send Gideon to smooth things over and bring her calmly under Breed protection where she belonged. Gabrielle could choose a new life in any one of the Darkhavens secreted around the world. She could be happy, secure, and find a mate who would be a true partner for her.
She wouldn’t even have to see him again.
Yeah, he thought, that was the best course of action at this point.
But regardless, he found himself stepping off the curb and into the street after her, unable to just walk away from Gabrielle now, even if that’s what she needed most.
As he crossed the lanes of light evening traffic, his attention was wrenched to the squeal of car tires up ahead of him. A late model American rust bucket tore out of a side alley near the police station and careened into the middle of the street. The accelerator roared, laying rubber as the driver stomped on the gas and aimed the nose of the rumbling beast toward his target up the road.
Gabrielle.
Son of a bitch.
Lucan vaulted into a dead run. His boots chewed up the pavement, moving with all the speed he could summon.
The car launched up onto the curb a few feet in front of Gabrielle, blocking her path. She jolted to a stop. A low command came at her from the open window of the car. She shook her head violently, then screamed, her face going stark with recognition as the vehicle door opened and a human male jumped out.
“Jesus Christ. Gabrielle!” Lucan shouted, his mind grasping for a hold on her assailant and getting nothing but disconnect, unreachable, dead air.
Minion, he realized with contempt. Only the Rogue Master who owned this human could command his thoughts. And the mental effort Lucan had spent attempting to do so had slowed him physically. A few seconds lost, but too damned many.
Gabrielle made a fast break to her left, racing into a small playground with her pursuer right on her heels.
Lucan heard her cry out, saw the human that was chasing her suddenly throw out his hand and grab a fistful of the ponytail swinging behind her.
The bastard dragged her down to the ground. Fumbled a pistol out from the back waistband of his khakis.
Thrust the barrel of the weapon into Gabrielle’s face.
“No!” Lucan roared, coming right up on them and kicking the human off of her with one fierce blow of his booted foot.
The weapon went off as the guy rolled, a wild shot firing up into the trees. But Lucan smelled blood. The metallic odor of it clung to both Gabrielle and her attacker. Not hers, he determined quickly, and with relief, as he noted the absence of Gabrielle’s unique jasmine scent.
The spilled blood was fresh on the front of the Minion’s shirt, and hunger flared in that deadly part of Lucan that was still starving and trying to heal. His mouth throbbed in response to the feeding impulse, but rage burned hotter at the idea of Gabrielle being harmed by this scum. His stare locked in deadly heat on the Minion, Lucan offered Gabrielle his hand to help her up from the ground.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head no, but a small sound caught in her throat, half sob, half hysterical moan. “He’s the one, Lucan—the one I saw watching me in the park the other day!”
“He’s a Minion,” Lucan said, growling the word through gritted teeth. He didn’t care who the human was. In a few minutes it would be history, anyway.
“Gabrielle, you need to get out of here, sweetheart.”
“W-what? You mean leave you with him? Lucan, he has a gun.”
“Go now, baby. Just run back out the way you came and get yourself home. I’ll make sure you’re safe there.”
The Minion was doubled over on the ground, still clutching the handgun, coughing in an effort to catch the breath Lucan had kicked out of him. He spat a mouthful of blood, and Lucan’s stare tightened on the crimson spray soaking into the dirt. His gums ached with the stretching of his fangs.
“Lucan—”
“Goddamn it, Gabrielle! Leave!”
The command rushed out of him in a furious snarl, but there was little he could do to contain the beast within him. He was going to kill again—his anger was so out of control, he needed to—and he refused to let her see it.
“Run, Gabrielle. Go now!”
She ran.
Head reeling, heart practically exploding, Gabrielle took off at Lucan’s bellowed command.
But she wasn’t about to go home like he said and leave him all alone. She fled the playground area, praying that the street and the station house full of armed cops, wouldn’t be far. Part of her hated leaving Lucan at all, but another part of her—a part that was desperate to do what she could to help him—sent her legs flying out beneath her.
As mad as she was at his deception, as frightened as she was of everything she didn’t understand about him, she needed him to be all right.
If anything were to happen to him—
The thought was cut short as a round of gunfire cracked behind her in the dark.
She froze, all the breath sucked out of her lungs.
She heard a strange, animal roar.
Another two shots rang out, rapid sequence, then…nothing.
Only a heavy, wrenching silence.
Oh, God.
“Lucan?” she screamed. Panic lodged in her throat. “Lucan!”
She was running once more, back where she’d come from. Back to where she feared her heart was going to shatter into a million pieces if Lucan wasn’t standing there unharmed when she reached him.
She felt a vague sense of worry that the kid from the police precinct—Minion, that was the odd word Lucan had called him—might be waiting for her, or already coming after her to finish her off as well. But concern for her own personal safety was shoved aside as she neared the little corner of the moonlit playground.
She just needed to know that Lucan was okay.
Above everything else in that moment, she needed to be with him.
She saw the silhouette of a dark figure on the grassy yard—Lucan, standing with legs braced apart, arms held down at his sides in a menacing angle. He stood over his assailant who was evidently ass-planted on the ground in front of him and attempting to scrabble out of Lucan’s reach.
“Thank God,” Gabrielle whispered under her breath, instantly relieved.
Lucan was all right, and now the authorities could deal with the deranged psychotic who might have killed them both.
She hurried a little closer.
“Lucan,” she called, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
Towering over the man at his feet, he bent at the waist and reached down to grab him. Gabrielle’s ears registered a queer strangling sound, and she realized with not a little shock that Lucan was holding the man by the throat.
Hauling him up off the ground with one hand.
Her steps slowed, but she couldn’t halt them altogether as her mind struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.
Lucan was strong, there was no doubting that, and the kid from the police station probably weighed only about fifty pounds more than she did, but to lift him with the power of one arm alone…she could hardly imagine it.
She watched in peculiar detachment as Lucan raised his arm higher, letting the man squirm and fight the clawing grip that was slowly cutting off his air. A terrifying roar began to fill her ears, building slowly, until everything else faded away.
In the moonlight, she saw Lucan’s mouth. It was open, teeth bared. His mouth, making that terrible, otherworldly noise.
“Stop,” she murmured, her eyes rooted on him now, suddenly sick with dread. “Please…Lucan, stop.”
And then the keening howl went silent, replaced by a new horror as Lucan brought the spasming body down before him and calmly sank his teeth into the flesh below the man’s jaw. A jet of blood spurted from the deep puncture, crimson rendered black against the darkness of night that surrounded the terrible scene. Lucan remained fixed, holding the gushing wound to his mouth.
Feeding from it.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned, her hands trembling as she brought them up to hold back a scream. “No, no, no, no…Oh, Lucan…no.”
His head came up abruptly, as if he’d heard her quiet misery. Or maybe he’d suddenly sensed her presence not a hundred yards from where he stood, savage and terrifying, looking like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Not true, her stricken mind contradicted.
She had seen this brutality once before, and if reason had forbade her from giving a name to the horror then, it rose up within her now like a cold, bleak wind.
“Vampire,” she whispered, staring at Lucan’s bloodstained face and feral, glowing eyes.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
The smell of blood wreathed him, pungent and metallic, his nose swamped with the sweet, coppery tanginess. Some of it was his own, he realized with a dull sense of curiosity, grunting as he looked down and noted the gunshot wound to his left shoulder.
He felt no pain, only the swelling energy that always filled him after he fed.
But he wanted more.
Needed more, came the answering cry of the beast within him.
That voice was rising. Demanding. Urging him toward the edge.
But then, hadn’t he been heading there for a long time, anyway?
Lucan clamped his jaws together so hard his teeth should have shattered. He had to get a grip, had to get the hell out of there and back to the compound, where he might be able to pull his shit together.
He had been walking the darkened streets for two hours, and still his blood was drumming hard in his temples, rage and hunger still ruling all but a sliver of his mind. He was a danger to all in this condition, but his restless body would not be still.
He stalked the city like a wraith, moving without conscious thought even though his feet—his every sense—led him on a purposeful path toward Gabrielle.
She hadn’t gone home. Lucan wasn’t sure where she had run, until the unseen thread that connected him to her by scent and senses brought him in front of an apartment building in the city’s North End. A friend of hers, no doubt.
A light was on in an upstairs window, that bit of glass and brick was all that separated him from her.
But he wasn’t going to try to see her, and not merely because of the red Mustang parked outside with the police light propped on the dash. Lucan didn’t have to see his reflection in the windshield to know that his pupils were still narrow in the center of his huge irises, his fangs still protruding behind the rigid set of his mouth.
He looked every bit the monster he was.
The monster Gabrielle had seen firsthand tonight.
Lucan growled, forced to remember her horrified expression again and again since he’d slain the Minion.
He could still see her take a faltering step backward, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion. She had seen him for what he truly was—had even flung the word at him in accusation the instant before she’d fled.
He hadn’t tried to stop her, not with words or by force.
All he’d known in that moment was the pure rush of fury as he drained his prey dry. Then he’d dropped the body like the rubbish it was, feeling a further surge of rage when he considered what might have happened to Gabrielle had she fallen into Rogue hands. Lucan had wanted to tear the human apart—nearly had, he acknowledged, vividly recalling the savagery he had wrought.
He, the cool one, so fierce in his control.
What a fucking joke.
His carefully held mask had been slipping from the moment he had first met Gabrielle Maxwell. She made him weak, exposed his flaws.
Made him want things he could never have.
He stared up at that second-floor window, chest heaving as he battled a fierce urge to leap up there, smash his way in, and take Gabrielle someplace where he could keep her all to himself.
Let her fear him. Let her despise him for what he was, so long as he could press her warm body down beneath him, easing his pain as only she could do.
Yes, the beast within him snarled, knowing only want and need.
Before the impulse to have her could win out, Lucan fisted his hand and brought it down hard on the hood of the off-duty police officer’s car. The vehicle alarm howled, and as curtains parted in every nearby window at the disturbance, Lucan leaped off the curb and jogged into the shadows of the waning night.
“Everything’s okay,” Megan’s boyfriend said, coming back into her apartment after he’d gone out to investigate the sudden trip of his car alarm. “Damn thing’s always had a hair trigger. Sorry ’bout that. Not like we needed any added tension tonight, eh?”
“Probably just kids causing trouble,” Megan added from beside Gabrielle on the sofa.
Gabrielle nodded in vague agreement at her friend’s attempt to soothe her, but she didn’t believe it for a second.
It was Lucan.
She had felt him outside with an inner sense she couldn’t begin to describe. It wasn’t fear or dread, just a marrow-deep awareness that he was close by.
That he needed her.
Wanted her.
God help her, but she had actually been hoping he’d come to the door, haul her out of there, and help her make sense of the horror she had witnessed a short while ago.
He was gone now, however. She felt his absence as strongly as she’d known he had followed her to Megan’s.
“Are you warm enough, Gabby? Would you like more tea?”
“No, thanks.”
Gabrielle held on to the tepid cup of chamomile with two hands, feeling a chill inside of her that no amount of blankets or hot water could chase away. Her heart was still racing, her head still reeling from confusion and stark disbelief.
Lucan had torn open that guy’s throat.
With his teeth.
He’d put his mouth to the wound and drank the blood that gushed out over his face.
He was a monster, like something out of a nightmare. Like those same fiends who attacked and killed the punker outside the nightclub—something that seemed so far in her past now that she could hardly believe it happened.
But it had, just as tonight’s slaying had happened, too: this time with Lucan at the center of it.
Gabrielle had gone to Megan’s out of desperation, needing to be somewhere familiar, yet too afraid to go to her own apartment in case Lucan’s friend might be waiting for her there. She had told Megan and her boyfriend, Ray, how she’d been accosted on the street by the psycho from the police station. She’d relayed the facts that he’d also been spying on her a few days earlier, and when he’d confronted her tonight, he did so with a gun in his hand.
She wasn’t sure why she’d left Lucan entirely out of the story, crucial as his presence was. She supposed it was partly because regardless of his methods, he had killed tonight in order to protect her, and she felt a need to offer some of the same consideration to him.
Even if he was a vampire.
God, it sounded ridiculous even to think it.
“Gab, honey. You need to report what happened. The guy sounds seriously unhinged. The police need to hear about this, they need to get him off the street. Ray and I can take you. We’ll go downtown and find your detective friend—”
“No.” Gabrielle shook her head, setting her cold tea onto the sofa table with only the slightest quiver in her hands. “I don’t want to go anywhere tonight. Please, Megan? I just need to rest for a little while. I’m so tired.”
Megan took Gabrielle’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Okay. I’ll get you a pillow and another blanket. You don’t have to go anywhere until you’re ready, sweetie. I’m just so glad you’re all right.”
“You were fortunate to get away,” Ray interjected as Megan picked up Gabrielle’s cup and carried it into the kitchen before heading to a linen closet down the hall. “Someone else might not be so lucky. Now, I’m off duty, and you’re Meg’s friend, so I’m not gonna force the issue, but you have a responsibility not to let this guy get away with what he did tonight.”
“He’s not going to hurt anyone else,” Gabrielle whispered. And even though they were all talking about the man who’d pulled a gun on her, she couldn’t help thinking that they could have been saying the same things about Lucan.
He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten back to the compound, or even how long he’d been there. Based on the sweat he’d worked up in the weapons room of the training facility, he had to guess it to be hours.
Lucan hadn’t bothered with the lights. His eyes were killing him enough in the dark, anyway. All he needed was the burn of his muscles as he forced them to work, to regain control of his body as his system slowly came down from a high that had been perilously close to Bloodlust.
Lucan reached for one of the daggers on the counter beside him, his fingers testing the razor-sharp edge as he turned back toward the alleylike corridor of the practice range. He could sense, more than see, the target at the end, and when he let the blade loose into the dark, he knew the hard thump meant a dead-center hit.
“Hell, yeah,” he murmured, his voice still rough, his fangs not yet receded.
His aim had much improved. He hadn’t been a hair off a killing strike in the past several tries with the blades. He wasn’t about to quit until he had shaken off the last of the effects of his feeding. That could take a while yet, he thought, still feeling ill from the near overdose of blood he’d consumed.
Lucan strode down the length of the practice range to retrieve his weapon from the target. He pulled the dagger free, noting with satisfaction the deep set of the wound he would have delivered had the target been a Rogue or Minion, and not a practice dummy.
As he turned to start back for another round, there was a soft click somewhere ahead of him in the range, then searing light flooded the length and breadth of the training facility.
Lucan recoiled as his head exploded with the sudden assault. He tried to blink some of his daze away, squinting into the glare of light that bounced off the mirrored walls lining the defense and weapons training section adjacent to the practice range. It was there he saw the large form of another vampire, leaning a thick shoulder against the wall.
One of the warriors had been watching him from out of the shadows.
Tegan.
Jesus. How long had he been standing there?
“Feeling all right?” he asked, apathetic as ever in his dark tee-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “If the light is too much for you—”
“It’s fine,” Lucan growled. Stars blinded him as he struggled to adjust to the harsh illumination. He lifted his head and forced himself to meet Tegan’s stare across the room. “I was just about to leave, anyway.”
Tegan’s eyes stayed rooted on him, his gaze too knowing as he stared at Lucan. Tegan’s nostrils flared infinitesimally, and the wry twist of his mouth took on an edge of surprise. “You’ve been hunting tonight. And you’re bleeding.”
“So?”
“So, it’s not like you to take a hit. You’re too fast for that, usually.”
Lucan exhaled a curse. “You mind not sniffing around my ass right now? I’m not in the mood for company.”
“No shit. Feeling a little tense, are we?” Tegan swaggered forward to peruse the weapons laid out for training. He wasn’t looking at Lucan now, but he read his torment as if it were spread before him on the table along with the collection of daggers, knives, and various other blades. “Got some aggression you need to work out? Hard to concentrate with all that buzzing in your head, I’ll bet. Blood gets running so fast, it’s all you can hear. All you can think about is the hunger. Next thing you know, it owns you.”
Lucan tested the heft of another blade in his hand, trying to appreciate the tang and balance of the handcrafted dagger. His eyes couldn’t focus for longer than a second. His fingers itched to use the weapon for something more than target practice. With a snarl, he cocked his arm back and let the dagger fly down the range. It struck hard in the dummy at the other end, a direct chest shot, right through the heart.
“Get the fuck out of here, Tegan. I don’t need the commentary. Or the audience.”
“No, you don’t like anyone watching you too closely. I’m beginning to see why.”
“You don’t know dick.”
“No?” Tegan stared at him for a long moment, then slowly shook his head, exhaling a low curse. “Be careful, Lucan.”
“Jesus Christ,” he spat harshly, turning on the vampire in a black rage. “You giving me advice, T?”
“Whatever.” The male lifted his shoulders in a negligent shrug. “Maybe it’s a warning.”
“A warning.” Lucan’s bark of laughter echoed into the cavernous space. “That’s fucking rich. Coming from you.”
“You’re walking the edge, man. I can see it in your eyes.” He shook his head, tawny hair falling down around his face. “The pit is a deep one, Lucan. I’d just hate to see you fall.”
“Spare me the concern. You’re the last person I need to hear it from.”
“Yeah, you’ve got it all under control, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Lucan. Maybe you’ll believe it. Because looking at you now, I sure as hell don’t.”
The accusation spiked Lucan’s anger off the chart. In a blur of speed and fury, he fell on the other vampire, fangs bared in a vicious hiss. He didn’t even realize he had a blade in his hand until he saw the silver edge of it pressing hard into Tegan’s throat. “Get the fuck out of my face. You reading me clearly now?”
“You wanna cut me, Lucan? You need to make me bleed? Do it. Fucking do it, man. I could give a rat’s ass.”
Lucan threw the dagger down and roared, grabbing two fistsful of Tegan’s shirt. Weapons were too easy. He needed to feel flesh and bone under his hands, feel them tearing and cracking, bowing to the beast that was so close to ruling his mind.
“Shit.” Tegan started chuckling, his insolent gaze latching onto the frenzied wildness that was surely flashing in Lucan’s eyes. “You’ve already got one foot in the hole. Don’t you?”
“Fuck you,” Lucan growled to the vampire who had once, long ago, been a trusted friend. “I should kill you. I should have killed you then.”
Tegan didn’t so much as flinch from the threat. “You’re looking for enemies, Lucan? Then take a look in the mirror. That’s the one son of a bitch who’s going to beat you every time.”
Lucan hauled Tegan around and slammed him against the opposite wall of the training room. The mirrored glass crunched with the impact, shattering outward around Tegan’s shoulders and torso like a haloing starburst.
Despite his efforts to deny the truth in what he was hearing, Lucan caught his own savage reflection, replicated a hundred times in the network of broken pieces. He saw the slivered pupils, the glowing irises—a Rogue’s eyes—staring back at him. His huge fangs were stretched long in his open mouth, his face contorted into a hideous mask.
He saw everything he hated, everything he had pledged his life to destroy, just like Tegan said he would.
And now, coming through the doors behind him and into the many reflections that had so transfixed him, Lucan saw Nikolai and Dante, their expressions wary as they strode into the training facility.
“Nobody told us we’re having a party,” Dante drawled, even though the look he shot between the two would-be combatants was anything but casual. “What’s going on? Everything cool here?”
A long, tense silence fell over the room.
Lucan released Tegan from the punishing hold, slowly drawing away from him. He lowered his eyes, a knee-jerk reaction meant to shield their wildness from the other warriors. The shame he felt was something new to him. He didn’t like the bitter taste of it; he couldn’t speak for the bile that rose up from within him.
Finally, Tegan broke the silence. “Yeah,” he said, his stare never leaving Lucan’s face. “We’re cool.”
Lucan whirled away from Tegan and the others, his thigh smashing into the table of weapons and sending it into a metallic shudder as he stalked toward the exit.
“Damn, he’s jacked up tonight,” Niko murmured. “Smells like a fresh kill, too.”
As he stepped through the training facility’s doors to the hall outside, Lucan heard Dante’s quiet reply. “No, man. He smells like overkill.”
CHAPTER
Eighteen
More,” the human female moaned, draping herself over his lap and arching her neck up under his mouth. She pulled at him with greedy hands at his nape, her eyes drooping as though drugged. “Please…take more of me. I want you to take it all!”
“Perhaps,” he promised idly, already growing bored with his pretty toy.
K. Delaney, R.N., had proven entertaining enough sport the first several hours he’d had her in his private quarters, but like all humans gripped by the power of a vampire’s draining kiss, she had eventually stopped fighting and now craved an end to her torment. Naked, she writhed against him like a feline in heat, rubbing her bare skin across his lips, whimpering when he refused to give her his fangs.
“Please,” she said again, whining now, and beginning to annoy.
He couldn’t deny the pleasure he’d taken with her, both in her willing body and the delicious, deeper fulfillment as she Hosted him at her sweet, succulent throat. But he was finished with that now. Finished with her, unless he meant to sap the last of the female’s humanity and make her one of his Minion servants.
Not yet. He might decide to play again.
But if he didn’t remove himself from her current needy grasping, he might be tempted to drain Nurse K. Delaney past that delicate tipping point and right into death.
He dumped her off his lap without ceremony and rose to his feet.
“No,” she complained, “don’t go.”
He was already crossing the room. The sumptuous folds of his silk robe skated around his calves as he strode out of the bedchamber and into his study across the hall. This room, his secret sanctuary, was filled with every luxury he desired: exquisite furnishings, priceless art and antiques, rugs that had been woven by Persian hands at the height of Earth’s religious crusades. All mementoes of his own past, objects collected over countless ages for the pleasure they gave him, and recently brought here, to the New England base of his budding army.
There was another recent artistic acquisition, too.
This one—a series of contemporary photographs—did not please him at all. He stared at the black-and-white images of various Rogue lairs around the city and could not contain his snarl of fury.
“Hey…those aren’t yours….”
He flicked an irritated glance to where the female now sat, having crawled after him from the other room. She slumped on the palace rug behind him, her face screwed into a little-girl pout. Head lolling on her shoulders and blinking dully as if scarcely able to hold her focus, she was staring at the collection of photographs.
“Oh?” he asked, not really interested in playing games, but curious enough to know what it was about the images that had managed to sink through her muddled head. “Whom do you think they belong to?”
“My friend…they’re hers.”
His eyebrows rose in response to the innocent revelation. “You know this artist, do you?”
The young woman nodded sluggishly. “My friend…Gabby.”
“Gabrielle Maxwell,” he said, turning around, his attention distracted truly now. “Tell me about your friend. What is her interest in these places she photographs?”
He had been rolling that question over in his mind since Gabrielle had first come to his attention as an inconvenient witness to a killing carelessly perpetrated by some of his new recruits. He’d been irritated, though not alarmed, to hear about the Maxwell woman from the Minion at the police station. Seeing her inquisitive face on the asylum’s closed-circuit security feed hadn’t exactly pleased him, either. But it was her apparent attention to documenting vampire locations that piqued a dark sort of interest in him.
He had, until now, been occupied with other, more crucial things that required his attention. He’d been focused elsewhere, and had been satisfied with merely keeping a close eye on Gabrielle Maxwell. Perhaps her interest and activities might bear closer scrutiny. She might, in fact, warrant hard interrogation. Torture, if it pleased him.
“Let’s talk about your friend.”
His tiresome playmate tossed her head, then flopped back on the rug, throwing out her arms like a petulant child being denied something she wanted. “No…don’t talk about her,” she murmured, as her hips arched up off the floor. “Come here…kiss me first…talk about me…about us…”
He took a step toward the female, but his intentions were hardly obliging. The slivering of his pupils might have fooled her into thinking he desired her, but it was anger pulsing through his body. There was contempt in his hard grasp as he stood over her and hauled her to her feet before him.
“Yes,” she sighed, nearly his to command already.
With the flat of his palm, he guided her head back onto her shoulder, baring the pale column of skin that was still scored and bleeding from his last taste of her. He lapped roughly at the wound, his fangs surging with rage.
“You’ll tell me everything I want to know,” he whispered, lethal in his control as he stared into her bleary gaze. “From this moment forward, you, Nurse K. Delaney, will do whatever I tell you to do.”
He bared his teeth, then struck as fiercely as a viper, draining every last bit of her conscience and her feeble human soul in one savage bite.
Gabrielle made a perimeter check of her apartment, taking care that all the locks on her doors and windows were secure. She had been back home since mid-afternoon, having left Megan’s place in the morning after her friend went to work. Meg had offered for her to stay as long as she wanted, but Gabrielle couldn’t hide forever, and she hated the idea that she might drag her friend any deeper into a situation that was becoming more terrifying and unexplainable by the hour.
At first, she’d avoided returning to her apartment and had walked around the city in a paranoid haze, all but giving in to the rising hysteria. Instinct warned her to prepare herself for a fight.
One that she knew would be coming sooner than later.
She worried that she’d find Lucan, one of his bloodsucking friends, or something even worse waiting for her when she arrived home. But it had been broad daylight, and she’d returned, at last, to find her apartment empty, not a thing out of place.
Now, as darkness settled outside, her anxieties returned tenfold.
Wrapping her arms around her cocoon of an oversized white sweater and jeans, she walked back into the kitchen where her answering machine was blinking with two new messages. They were both from Megan. She’d been phoning for the past hour, since her original message about the body recovered in the playground area where Gabrielle had been assaulted the night before.
Megan was frantic, telling Gabrielle about the police report she’d gotten from Ray, describing how her attacker had apparently been mauled by animals not long after he’d tried to hurt Gabrielle. And there was more. A police officer had been murdered in the station; it was his weapon recovered from the savaged body found on the grounds of the children’s park.
“Gabby, please call me as soon as you get this. I know you’re scared, honey, but the police really need your statement. Ray’s about to go on break from duty. He says he can come and pick you up, if you’d feel safer—”
Gabrielle hit the erase button.
And felt the hairs at the back of her neck begin to rise.
She was no longer alone in the kitchen.
Heart lurching into overdrive, she whirled around to face her intruder, not at all surprised to see that it was Lucan. He stood in the door from the living room, watching her in thoughtful silence.
Or maybe he was just sizing up his next meal.
Curiously, Gabrielle realized she wasn’t so much afraid of him as she was angry. He looked so normal, even now, standing there in a dark trenchcoat, tailored black pants, and an expensive-looking shirt that was a few shades darker than the mesmerizing silver of his eyes.
There was no trace of the monster she had witnessed last night. Just a man. The dark lover she only thought she knew.
She found herself wishing that he would have shown up with fangs bared and fury sparking in his strangely transformed eyes, as the terror he’d betrayed himself to be last night. It would have been more fair than this outward semblance of normalcy that made her want to pretend everything was all right. That he was actually Detective Lucan Thorne of the Boston Police, a man pledged to protect the innocent and uphold the law.
A man she might have been able to fall in love with—perhaps already was.
But everything about him had been a lie.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to come here tonight.”
Gabrielle swallowed hard. “I knew you would. I know you followed me last night, after I ran from you.”
Something flickered within his penetrating gaze, which held her too intensely. Too much like a caress. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, now.”
“Then leave.”
He shook his head. Took a step forward. “Not until we’ve talked.”
“You mean, not until you’ve made sure I won’t talk,” she replied, trying not to be lulled into complacency simply because he looked like the man she had trusted.
Or because her body—even her idiot heart—responded to him on sight.
“There are things you need to understand, Gabrielle.”
“Oh, I do understand,” she said, amazed that her voice held no tremor. Her fingers came up near her neck, feeling for the cross pendant she hadn’t worn since her first communion. The delicate talisman seemed like ridiculously flimsy armor now that she was standing in front of Lucan, with nothing to separate them except a few strides of his long, muscular legs. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s taken me a while, granted, but I think I finally understand it all.”
“No. You don’t.” He came toward her, pausing to notice the knot of chalky white bulbs tied above his head in the door of the kitchen. “Garlic,” he drawled, and exhaled an amused chuckle.
Gabrielle retreated a pace from him, her Keds squeaking on the kitchen tiles. “I told you, I was expecting you.”
And she’d done a bit of other prep work before he arrived. If he looked around, he would find the same threshold decoration in every room of the apartment, including the front door. Not that he seemed to care.
Multiple locks hadn’t stopped him and neither had this further attempt at a security measure. He walked under Gabrielle’s homemade vampire repellant unfazed, his eyes dark and fixed on her intently.
As he stepped closer, she backed up farther into the kitchen, until the counter came up behind her. A trial-sized mouthwash bottle lay on the polished granite top. It no longer contained Scope but a little something else she had picked up on her way home that morning, when she’d stopped in at St. Mary’s for a long overdue confession. Gabrielle grabbed the plastic bottle off the counter and held it close to her chest.
“Holy water?” Lucan asked, coolly meeting her gaze. “What are you going to do with that, throw it on me?”
“If I have to.”
He moved so quickly, she saw only a dizzying blur in front of her as he reached out and snatched the small vial out of her grasp and emptied it into his hands. He smoothed his dripping fingers over his face and into his glossy black hair.
Nothing happened.
He tossed the useless container aside and took another step toward her.
“I’m not what you think, Gabrielle.”
He sounded so reasonable, she almost believed him. “I saw what you did. You murdered a man, Lucan.”
He calmly shook his head. “I killed a human who was no longer a man—hardly human at all, in fact. What had once been human in him was bled out by the vampire who made him into a Minion slave. He was as good as dead already. I merely finished the job. I regret that you had to see it, but I cannot apologize. And I won’t. I would kill anyone, human or otherwise, who means to do you harm.”
“Which makes you either dangerously overprotective, or just plain psychotic. To say nothing of the fact that you sliced that guy’s throat open with your teeth, and drank his blood!”
She waited for another composed reply. Some other rational explanation that might make her consider that even something as unbelievable as vampirism could actually make sense—could actually exist—in the real world.
But Lucan didn’t give her any such response.
“This isn’t how I wanted things to go between us, Gabrielle. God knows, you deserve better.” He muttered something low under his breath, in a language she could not understand. “You deserve to be brought into this gently, by a male who will say the right words, and do the right things for you. That’s why I wanted to send Gideon—” He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “I am no emissary for my race. I am a warrior. At times, an executioner. I deal in death, Gabrielle, and I am not accustomed to making excuses to anyone for my actions.”
“I’m not asking you for excuses.”
“What, then—the truth?” He gave her a wry smile. “You saw the truth last night when I killed that Minion and drained him dry. That was truth, Gabrielle. That is who I truly am.”
She felt a keen sickness in her belly that he hadn’t even tried to deny the horror of what he was telling her. “You’re a monster, Lucan. My God, you’re something out of a nightmare.”
“According to human superstitions and folklore, yes. Those same stories would tell you to fight my kind with garlic or holy water—all farce, as you’ve just seen for yourself. In fact, our races are very closely intertwined. We are not so different from each other.”
“Really?” she scoffed, hysteria clutching at her as he took a step closer, forcing her to retreat again. “Last time I checked, cannibalism wasn’t high on my to-do list. Then again, neither was screwing the undead, but I seem to be doing that with a bit of regularity lately.”
He exhaled a humorless laugh. “I assure you, I am not undead. I breathe, like you. I bleed, like you. I can be killed, though not easily, and I have been living for a long, long time, Gabrielle.” He came toward her, closing the small distance that separated them in the kitchen. “I am every bit as alive as you are.”
As if to prove it, his warm fingers closed around hers. He brought her hand up between their bodies and pressed her palm against his chest. Through the soft fabric of his shirt, his heart pounded strong and steady. She felt his breath flowing in and out as his lungs expanded and contracted, the warmth of his body seeping into her fingertips, permeating her weary senses like a soothing balm.
“No.” She pulled away from him. “No, damn you! No more tricks. I saw your face last night, Lucan. I saw your fangs, your eyes! You said that was who you truly are, so what is this? Everything you present yourself to be now—everything I feel when I am near you—are they illusions?”
“I am real, as I stand here now…and as you saw me last night.”
“Then show me. Let me see the other you again instead of this one. I want to know what I’m really dealing with, it’s only fair.”
He scowled as though her mistrust wounded him. “The change cannot be forced. It is a physiological one that comes on with hunger, or during times of intense emotion.”
“So, how much of a head start will I have before you decide to rip open my jugular and go for broke? A couple of minutes? A few seconds?”
His eyes flashed at her provocation, but his voice remained level. “I will not hurt you, Gabrielle.”
“Then why are you here? To fuck me again, before you turn me into something awful like you?”
“Jesus,” he ground out harshly. “That’s not how it—”
“Or are you going to make me your personal vampire slave, like that one you killed last night?”
“Gabrielle.” Lucan’s jaw went rigid, as if his teeth were clenched hard enough to shatter steel. “I came here to protect you, goddamn it! Because I need to know that you are safe. Maybe I’m here because I see that I’ve made mistakes with you, and I want to try to fix this somehow.”
She stood immobile, absorbing his unexpected candor, and watching the play of emotion on his harsh features. Anger, frustration, desire, uncertainty…she read all of it in his penetrating gaze. God help her, but she felt all of that and more churning like a tempest within herself as well.
“I want you to leave, Lucan.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I never want to see you again!” she cried, desperate for him to believe her. She raised her hand to slap him, but he caught her easily, before she could strike. “Please. Just get out of here, now!”
Ignoring her completely, Lucan took the hand that would have lashed out at him, and brought it tenderly to his mouth. His lips parted slowly as he pressed her palm into his hot, sensual kiss. She felt no bite of fangs, only the tender heat of his mouth, the moist caress of his tongue as it teased the sensitive flesh between her fingers.
Her head swam with the delicious feel of his lips on her skin.
Her legs weakened beneath her, her limbs, and her resistance, beginning a slow meltdown that started at her core.
“No,” she said, hurling the word at him as she pulled her hand out of his loose grip and shoved him away from her. “No. I can’t let you do this to me, not now. Everything between us has changed! It’s all different now.”
“The only thing different, Gabrielle, is that you see me now with your eyes open.”
“Yes.” She forced herself to look at him. “And I don’t like what I see.”
His smile held no mercy whatsoever. “You only wish you could say the same about how I make you feel.”
She wasn’t sure how he did it—how he could move so fast in the time it took for her to blink—but in that same instant, Lucan’s breath was skating close below her ear, his deep voice rumbling along her neck as he pressed his body against hers.
It was too much to process: this terrifying new reality, the questions she didn’t even know how to begin asking. And then there was the other disorientation brought on by the exquisite power of Lucan’s touch, his voice, his lips softly grazing her tender skin.
“Stop it!” She tried to push him, but he was a wall of muscle and cool, dark purpose. He withstood her anger, and the futile blows she threw at his massive chest didn’t seem to faze him in the least. His placid expression remained as unmoving as his body. She backed away from him in frustration, in anguish. “God, what are you trying to prove here, Lucan?”
“Only that I am not the monster you want to believe I am. Your body knows me. Your senses tell you that you are safe with me. You need only listen to them, Gabrielle. And listen to me, when I tell you that I did not come here to frighten you. I will never strike you, nor will I ever take your blood. On my honor, I will never harm you.”
She let out a choked laugh, a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a vampire possessing anything close to honor, let alone pledging it to her now. But Lucan was unwavering, solemn. Maybe she was crazy, because the longer she held his silver stare, the weaker her grasp on the doubt she wanted so desperately to cling to.
“I am not your enemy, Gabrielle. For centuries, my kind and yours have needed each other to survive.”
“You feed on us,” she whispered brokenly, “like parasites.”
Something dark moved across his features, but he did not rise to the contempt in her accusation. “We have protected you as well. Some of my kind have even cherished yours, sharing life together as blood-bonded mates. It is the only way the vampire race continues. Without human females to bear our young, we would eventually be extinct. It is how I came to be, and how all those like me came into being as well.”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t you…mix with women of your own kind?”
“Because there are none. Through a genetic failure, Breed offspring are solely male, from the very first of the line, down through hundreds of generations.”
This last revelation, among all the other astonishing news she was hearing, gave her pause. “So, that means your mother is human?”
Lucan gave a slight nod. “She was.”
“And your father? He was…”
Before she could say the word vampire, Lucan replied. “My father, and the seven other Ancient Ones like him, were not of this world. They were the first of my kind, beings from another place, very different from this planet.”
It took her a second to absorb what she had heard, particularly on the heels of everything else she was coming to grips with at the moment. “What are you saying—they were aliens?”
“They were explorers. Savage, warminded conquerors, in fact, who crash-landed here a very long time ago.”
Gabrielle stared at him. “Your father was not only a vampire, but an alien besides? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
“It is the truth. My father’s people did not call themselves vampires but, by human definition, that is what they were. Their digestive systems were too advanced for Earth’s crude protein. They could not process the plants or animals as humans did, so they learned to take their nourishment from blood. They fed without restraint and wiped out entire populations in the process. You’ve heard of some of them, no doubt: Atlantis. The Mayan kingdom. Countless other unnamed, unrecorded civilizations that vanished seemingly overnight. Many of the mass deaths historically attributed to plagues and famine were not that at all.”
Good Lord.
“Assuming you can be taken seriously about any of this, you’re talking about thousands of years of carnage.” A chill spread over her limbs when he said nothing to deny it. “Do they they…do you—God, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Do vampires feed on any living thing, like each other maybe, or are we humans the main course?”
Lucan’s expression was grave. “Human blood alone contains the specific combinations of nutrients we need in order to survive.”
“How often?”
“We must feed every few days, a week sometimes. More is required if we are injured and need strength to heal from wounds.”
“And you…kill when you feed?”
“Not always, seldom, in fact. Most of the race feeds from willing human Hosts.”
“People actually volunteer to let you torture them?” she asked, incredulous.
“There is no torture involved, unless we will it. When a human is relaxed, the bite of a vampire can be very pleasurable. When it’s over, the Host recalls nothing because we leave no memory of ourselves behind.”
“But you do kill sometimes,” she said, finding it hard not to sound accusing.
“At times, it is necessary to take a life. The Breed shares an oath never to prey on the innocent or infirm.”
She scoffed. “How noble of you.”
“It is noble, Gabrielle. If we wanted to—if we gave ourselves over to that part of us that is still the warring conqueror of our forebears, we could enslave all of mankind. We could be kings, with every human existing only to feed and amuse us. That very idea is at the core of a long, deadly battle between my kind and our enemy brothers, the Rogues. You saw some of them yourself, that night outside the dance club.”
“You were there?”
As soon as she said it, she knew he had been. She recalled the striking face and sunglass-shaded eyes that had watched her through the crowd. She’d felt a connection to him even then, in that brief glance that had seemed to reach out to her through the smoke and darkness of the club.
“I’d been tracking that group of Rogues for about an hour,” Lucan said, “watching for the prime opportunity to move in and take them out.”
“There were six of them,” she remembered vividly, seeing in her mind the half-dozen terrible faces, their glowing, feral eyes and snapping fangs. “You were going to confront them by yourself?”
His shrug seemed to say that it was not unusual odds, him against many. “I had some help that night—you and your cell phone camera. The flash surprised them, gave me the chance to strike.”
“You killed them?”
“All but one. I’ll get him, too.”
Looking at his fierce expression, Gabrielle had no doubt that he would. “The cops sent a squad car out to the club after I reported the killing. They didn’t find anything. No evidence at all.”
“I made sure they wouldn’t.”
“You made me look like a fool. The police insisted I was making all of it up.”
“Better that, than tipping them off to the very real battles that have been taking place on human streets for centuries. Can you imagine the wide-scale panic if substantiated reports of vampire attacks were to start making news around the world?”
“Is that what’s happening? These kinds of killings are going on all the time, everywhere?”
“More and more, lately. The Rogues are a faction of blood addicts that care only about their next fix. At least, that had been their mode until very recently. Something’s going on now. They’re preparing. Becoming organized. They’ve never been more dangerous than they are now.”
“And thanks to the pictures I took outside that club, these Rogue vampires are coming after me.”
“The incident you witnessed brought you to their attention, no doubt, and any human makes good sport for them. But it is the other pictures you’ve taken that have likely put you in the most jeopardy.”
“What other pictures?”
“That one.”
He indicated a framed photograph hanging on the wall of her living room. It was an exterior shot of an old warehouse in one of the sketchier parts of town.
“What made you decide to photograph that building?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” she said, not even sure why she had decided to frame the picture. Just looking at it now gave her a little chill down her spine. “I never would have set foot in that part of town, but I remember I’d taken a wrong turn that night and ended up lost. Something just drew my eye to the warehouse—nothing I can really explain. I was nervous as hell to be there, but I couldn’t leave without taking a few shots of the place.”
Lucan’s voice was gravely serious. “I, along with several other Breed warriors who work with me, raided that location a month and a half ago. It was a Rogue lair, housing fifteen of our enemies.”
Gabrielle gaped at him. “There are vampires living in that building?”
“Not anymore.” He strode past her to the kitchen table, where a few other shots lay, including some from the abandoned asylum, taken just a couple of days ago. He picked up one of the photographs and held it out to her. “We’ve been surveilling this location for weeks. We have reason to believe it might be one of the largest colonies of Rogues in New England.”
“Oh, my God.” Gabrielle stared at the image of the asylum, a slight tremble in her fingers as she set it back down on the table. “When I took these pictures the other morning, a man found me there. He chased me off the property. You don’t think he was—”
Lucan shook his head. “Minion, not a vampire, if you saw him after dawn. Sunlight is poison to us. That much of the old folklore is true. Our skin burns quickly, like yours would if you held it under a very powerful magnifying glass at the height of morning.”
“Which is why I’ve only seen you in the evening,” she murmured, thinking back on each of Lucan’s visits, from that very first time when he began his deception with her. “How could I have been so blind when all the clues were right in front of me?”
“Maybe you didn’t want to see them, but you knew, Gabrielle. You suspected that the slaying you witnessed was something more than what your human experiences could explain. You nearly said as much to me, the first time we met. On some level of your consciousness, you knew it was a vampire attack.”
She did know, even then. But she had not suspected that Lucan was a part of it. Part of her still wanted to reject the idea.
“How can this be real?” she moaned, dropping into the nearest chair. She stared at the pictures scattered on the table in front of her, then looked back up at Lucan’s grim face. Tears threatened, burning in her eyes, a knot of desperate denial forming in her throat. “This can’t be real. God, please tell me that this is not really happening.”
CHAPTER
Nineteen
He had laid a lot on her to deal with—not everything, but more than enough for one night.
Lucan had to give Gabrielle credit. Aside from a bit of irrationality with the garlic and holy water, she had maintained an amazingly level head through a conversation that was, no doubt, pretty hard to swallow. Vampires, ancient alien arrivals, the rising war with the Rogues, who, by the way, were gunning for her now, too.
She had taken it all in with a stalwartness that most human men would not possess.
Lucan watched her struggling to process the information as she sat at the table with her head in her hands, stray tears only just beginning to stream down her cheeks. He wished there was a way to make her path easier. There wasn’t. And things were going to go from bad to worse for her, once she learned the full truth of what lay ahead of her.
For her own safety and that of the Breed, she was going to have to leave her apartment, her friends, her career. Leave behind everything that had been a part of her life so far.
And she was going to have to do it tonight.
“If you have any other photographs like these, Gabrielle, I need to see them.”
She nodded, lifting her head. “I have everything on my computer,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face.
“What about the ones in the darkroom?”
“They’re on disk, too, along with every image I’ve sold through the gallery.”
“Good.” Her mention of art sales tripped an alarm in his memory. “When I was here a few nights ago, you mentioned having sold an entire collection to someone. Who was it?”
“I don’t know. It was an anonymous purchase. The buyer arranged a private showing in a rented penthouse suite downtown. They looked at a few images, then paid cash for all of them.”
He swore and Gabrielle’s already stressed expression slipped toward true terror.
“Oh, my God. Are you thinking it was the Rogues who bought them?”
What Lucan was thinking was that if he were the one standing at the helm of the Rogues’ current operation, he would be most interested in acquiring a weapon that could home in on his opponents’ locations. To say nothing of crippling his enemies’ ability to use said weapon for their own gain.
Gabrielle would be an extraordinary asset in Rogue hands, for many reasons. And once they had her in their possession, it wouldn’t take them long to discover her Breedmate mark. She would be abused like the meanest brood mare, forced to take their blood and bear their spawn until her body simply gave out and died. It could take years, decades, centuries.
“Lucan, my best friend took those photographs into the showing that night, by himself. It would have killed me if anything had happened to him. Jamie walked in there without knowing anything about the danger he was in.”
“Be glad for that, because it’s probably the only reason he walked out alive.”
She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. “I don’t want my friends getting hurt because of what’s happening to me.”
“You’re in more danger than anyone right now. And we need to get moving. Let’s download those pictures off your computer. I want to take all of them into the lab at the compound.”
Gabrielle led him over to a neat corner desk in her living room. She powered up the desktop workstation and as it cycled through its startup, she pulled a couple of flash memory sticks out of their store packaging and popped one into the computer’s USB drive.
“You know, they said she was crazy. They called her delusional, a paranoid schizophrenic. They locked her away for believing she had been attacked by vampires.” Gabrielle laughed softly, but it was a sad, empty sound. “Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all.”
Behind her, Lucan moved closer. “Who would that be?”
“My birth mother.” After beginning the copying procedure, Gabrielle spun around in her chair to look up at Lucan. “She was found late one night in Boston, injured, bloody, disoriented. She didn’t have a wallet or purse, or any kind of ID on her, and in the brief periods when she was lucid, she couldn’t tell anyone who she was so the police processed her as a Jane Doe. She was just a teenager.”
“She was bleeding, you say?”
“Multiple throat lacerations—presumably self-inflicted, according to the official records. The courts deemed her incompetent to stand trial and locked her away in a mental institution once she was released from the hospital.”
“Jesus.”
She gave a slow shake of her head. “But what if everything she said was true? What if she wasn’t crazy at all? Oh, God, Lucan…all these years, I’ve blamed her. I think I’ve hated her, even, and now I can’t help but think—”
“You said the police and the courts processed her. You mean, for some kind of crime?”
The computer beeped to indicate the memory stick was full. Gabrielle turned back to continue with the next copying function, and she stayed there, giving him her back. Lucan put his hands down gently on her shoulders and brought the swivel chair back around.
“What was your mother charged with?”
For a long moment, Gabrielle didn’t say anything. Lucan saw her throat working. There was a great deal of hurt in her soft brown eyes. “She was charged with abandoning her child.”
“How old were you?”
She shrugged, shook her head. “Young. An infant. She stuffed me in a trash bin outside an apartment building. It was only about a block from where the police picked her up. Fortunately for me, one of the cops decided to check the surrounding area. He heard my crying, I guess, and took me out of there.”
Holy Christ.
A jolt of recollection flashed hard in Lucan’s mind as she spoke. He saw a dark street, wet pavement gleaming in the moonlight, a wide-eyed female standing in transfixed horror as a Rogue vampire sucked at her throat. He heard the shrill wailing of the tiny baby nestled in the young mother’s arms.
“When did this happen?”
“A long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago this summer, to be exact.”
To one of Lucan’s age, twenty-seven years ago was a blink of time. He clearly remembered interrupting the attack at the bus station. Recalled stepping between the Rogue and its prey, sending the terrified female off with a stern mental command. She’d been bleeding profusely, some of it raining down on her baby.
After he’d killed the Rogue and cleared the scene, he had gone to look for the woman and her child. He hadn’t found them. He’d often wondered what had happened to the both of them, and cursed himself for not having been able to at least remove the horrific memories of the assault from the victim’s mind.
“She committed suicide in the mental facility not long afterward,” Gabrielle said. “I was already a ward of the state.”
He couldn’t stop himself from touching her. Gently sweeping aside her long hair, he cupped the delicate line of her jaw, stroked the proud lift of her chin. Her eyes were moist, but she didn’t crack. She was a tough one, all right. Tough and beautiful and so incredibly special.
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her as much.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it with utmost sincerity. And regret, something he wasn’t used to feeling. But, then, since he’d first laid eyes on her, Gabrielle made him feel a lot of things that were entirely new to him. “I’m sorry for both of you.”
The computer beeped again.
“That’s all of them,” she said, reaching up as if she might stroke his hand, but couldn’t quite bring herself to touch him yet.
He let her back out of his caress and felt a sharp pang of remorse for the way she silently turned away.
Shutting him out like the new stranger he was.
He watched her remove the last memory stick and place it with the other. When she began to close the application, Lucan said, “Not yet. I need you to delete the image files from the computer and from any backups you might have. The copies we take out of here have to be the only ones remaining.”
“What about print copies? The ones on the table there, the ones I have downstairs in my darkroom?”
“You wrap up here. I’ll get the prints.”
“Okay.”
She got right to work, and Lucan made a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment. He gathered all the loose snapshots and took down her framed images as well, wanting to leave nothing behind that could be of use to the Rogues. He found a large duffel bag in Gabrielle’s bedroom closet and brought it downstairs to load it up.
As he finished packing and zipping the bag closed, he heard the low rumble of a muscle car coming to a stop outside the townhouse. Two doors opened, then slammed shut, followed by urgent footsteps coming toward the apartment.
“Someone’s here,” Gabrielle said, sending him a stark look as she shut down her computer.
Lucan’s hand was already inside his trenchcoat and snaked around to the base of his spine, where a custom Beretta 9mm was tucked into the back waistband of his pants. The gun was loaded with maximum blast, Rogue-smoking, titanium rounds—one of Niko’s latest innovations. If a Rogue stood outside that door, the Bloodlusting son of a bitch was about to get a belly full of hurt.
But it wasn’t Rogues, he realized at once. Not even Minions, which also would have given Lucan a bit of satisfaction in blowing away.
There were humans on the front stoop. A man and a woman.
“Gabrielle?” The doorbell rang several times in rapid succession. “Hello? Gabby! Are you in there?”
“Oh, no. It’s my friend Megan.”
“The one you went to last night?”
“Yes. She’s been calling here most of the day, leaving messages. She’s worried about me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“She knows about the assault in the park. I told her how I was attacked, but I didn’t tell her anything about you…what you did.”
“Why not?”
Gabrielle shrugged. “I didn’t want her involved. I don’t want her to be put in any danger because of me. Because of all this.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Maybe I didn’t want to say anything about you until I had some answers for myself.”
The doorbell rang again. “Gabby, open up! Ray and I need to talk to you. We need to know that you’re okay.”
“Her boyfriend’s a cop,” Gabrielle said softly. “They want me to file a report about what happened last night.”
“Is there a back way out of here?”
She nodded, then seemed to change her mind and shook her head. “The slider opens onto a shared backyard, but there’s a tall fence—”
“No time,” Lucan said, discarding the option. “Go to the door. Let your friends come in.”
“What are you going to do?” She saw that his hand had just slipped back out of his trenchcoat, easing off the weapon concealed behind him. Panic flooded into her expression. “Do you have a gun back there? Lucan, they won’t do anything to you. I’ll make sure they don’t say anything.”
“I won’t have to use the weapon on them.”
“Then what will you do?” After so deliberately avoiding any physical contact with him, now she finally did touch him, her small hands clutching at his arm. “God, please tell me you won’t hurt them—”
“Open the door, Gabrielle.”
Her legs moved sluggishly beneath her as she approached the front door. She twisted the deadbolt and heard Megan’s voice on the other side.
“She’s in there, Ray. She’s at the door. Gabby, open up, honey! Are you all right?”
Gabrielle slid the chain free, saying nothing. Not sure whether she should assure her friend that she was okay, or shout for Megan and Ray to get the hell out of there.
A look behind her at Lucan gave her no indication either way. His sharp features were emotionless and still. His silver eyes were rooted on the door, cool and unblinking. His powerful hands were empty, down at his sides, but Gabrielle knew he could spring into motion with no warning at all.
If he wanted to kill her friends—even her, for that matter—it would be done before any of them knew to take the first breath.
“Let them in,” he told her in a low growl.
Gabrielle slowly turned the knob.
The door was barely open a crack before Megan pushed inside, her boyfriend, still in uniform, right behind her.
“Holy shit, Gabby! Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Why haven’t you returned my calls?” She pulled her into a fierce hug, then released her, only to frown at Gabrielle like a frantic mother hen. “You look tired. Have you been crying? Where have you—”
Megan broke off abruptly, her eyes, and Ray’s, catching a sudden glimpse of Lucan in the middle of the living room behind Gabrielle.
“Oh…I didn’t realize you had someone here….”
“Everything okay here?” Ray asked, stepping past the two women and letting his hand rest lightly on his holstered weapon.
“Fine. Everything’s fine,” Gabrielle quickly replied. She held her hand out toward Lucan. “This is, uh…a friend of mine.”
“Going somewhere?” Megan’s boyfriend strolled forward, and gestured to the stuffed duffel bag that lay on the floor beside Lucan’s feet.
“Um, yeah,” Gabrielle interjected, walking swiftly past Ray and putting herself between him and Lucan. “I’ve been a little shaken up tonight. I thought I’d go to a hotel and chill out. Lucan stopped by to give me a ride.”
“Huh.” Ray was trying to peer around her to where Lucan remained rudely stoic and silent. Lucan’s scathing stare said he had already sized up the young cop—and dismissed him in that same instant.
“I wish you hadn’t come, you guys,” Gabrielle said. And that was the God’s honest truth. “Really, you don’t have to stay.”
Megan walked over and took Gabrielle’s hand protectively in hers. “Ray and I were hoping you’d consider coming with us to the police station, honey. It’s important. I’m sure your friend would agree with us. You’re the detective Gabby’s mentioned, right? I’m Meg.”
Lucan shifted a step. The small movement brought him right up in front of Megan and Ray. It was such a slight flex of muscle, so fast, time seemed to slow around him. Gabrielle saw him take those handful of impossibly quick strides, but her friends blinked and found Lucan standing in their faces, crowding them with his massive size and a menace that vibrated in the air around him.
Without any warning at all, he lifted his right hand and took Megan by the forehead.
“Lucan, no!”
Meg cried out, a half-uttered noise that died in her throat as she stared into Lucan’s eyes. With viper speed, he reached out with his left hand and clamped Ray in a similar hold. The officer struggled for a mere second before his face drooped into a trancelike stupor. Lucan’s strong, clutching fingers seemed to be all that was holding the pair upright.
“Lucan, please! I’m begging you!”
“Get the memory sticks and the duffel bag,” he told her, his voice calm. Coldly commanding. “I have a car waiting outside. Get in, and wait for me. I’ll be right out.”
“I’m not going leave you here to bleed my friends dry.”
“If that had been my intent, they’d already be dead on the floor.”
He was right. God, but she had no doubt that this man—this dark being she had admitted into her life—was dangerous enough to do just that.
But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t; she trusted that much about him.
“The pictures, Gabrielle. Now.”
She jolted into action, hefting the bulky duffel bag over her shoulder and dropping the two flash drives into the front pocket of her jeans. On the way out, she paused to look at Megan’s blank face. Her eyes were closed now, as were Ray’s. Lucan was murmuring something to them in a voice so low she could hardly hear it.
The tone of his words didn’t sound threatening, but oddly soothing, persuasive. Almost lulling.
With one last glance at the bizarre scene taking place in her living room, Gabrielle dashed out the open front door and down onto the street. A sleek sedan waited at the curb, parallel parked in front of Ray’s red Mustang. It was an expensive vehicle—incredibly expensive, from the looks of it—and the only other car around.
As she approached, the front passenger door opened as if it had been willed to do so.
Willed by the sheer strength of Lucan’s mind, she knew, wondering just how far his preternatural powers might reach.
She slid into the deep leather seat and closed the door. Not two seconds later, Megan and Ray appeared on her front stoop. They calmly walked down the steps and right past her on the sidewalk, eyes straight ahead of them, neither of them saying a word.
Lucan was directly behind them. He closed the apartment door and came around the car where Gabrielle waited. He climbed in, stuck a key in the ignition, and started the Maybach’s engine.
“Not a good idea to leave these behind,” he said, dropping her purse and camera bag into her lap.
Gabrielle stared at him across the subtly lit cockpit of the vehicle. “You did some kind of mind control on them, like you’ve tried to do with me before.”
“I suggested to your friends that they had never been at your apartment tonight.”
“You erased their memory?”
He inclined his head in a vague nod. “They won’t recall anything about this evening, or your having been at Megan’s apartment last night after the Minion’s attack on you. Their minds are no longer burdened with any of it.”
“You know, right now, that sounds pretty damn good. So, what do you say, Lucan? Will you do me next? You can start erasing right before I made the terrible decision to go to that nightclub a couple of weeks ago.”
He held her gaze, but she didn’t feel him so much as trying to get into her head. “You aren’t like those two humans, Gabrielle. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t change any of the things that have happened to you. Your mind is stronger than most. In many ways, you are…different from most.”
“Gee, I feel so lucky.”
“The best place for you now is with us, where the Breed will protect you as one of our own. We have a secured compound in the city. You can stay there to start.”
She frowned. “What, you’re offering me the vampire equivalent of the Witness Protection Program?”
“It’s a bit more than that.” He turned his head, looking out through the windshield. “And it is the only way.”
Lucan hit the gas and the sleek black car shot up the narrow road with a low, silky growl. Clutching the leather seat on the passenger side, Gabrielle swung her head around to watch as darkness slowly swallowed up her residential block on Willow Street.
As the distance grew wider, she saw the vague silhouettes of Megan and Ray getting into his Mustang to leave her apartment, none the wiser. Gabrielle felt a sudden jolt of panic that made her want to leap out of the car and run back to them, back to her old life.
Too late.
She knew that.
This new reality had her in a tight grasp, and she didn’t think there would be any turning back, only a steady march forward. She turned away from the rear window and sank into the seat’s butter-soft leather, staring straight ahead as Lucan wheeled sharply around the corner and drove her deep into the night.
CHAPTER
Twenty
She didn’t know how long they’d been driving, or even in what direction. They were still in the city, that much she could tell, but the many turns and back alley routes that Lucan took had since become a jumble in Gabrielle’s mind. She stared out the dark-tinted window of the sedan, vaguely aware that they were slowing down at last, approaching what appeared to be the expansive grounds of an old estate.
Lucan braked outside a tall, black-iron gate. Twin beams of red light shot down from a pair of small devices perched on both sides of the high-security perimeter fence. Gabrielle blinked away the sudden shot of light that flashed in front of her face, then watched as the heavy gate began to slide open.
“This is yours?” she asked, turning to speak to Lucan for the first time since they’d left her apartment. “I’ve been here before. I took a photograph of this gate.”
They rolled through, then up a long, curving, tree-lined driveway.
“The estate is part of our compound. It belongs to the Breed.”
Evidently, being a vampire was quite lucrative. Even in the dark, Gabrielle could see the old-money quality of the well-tended grounds and the ornately carved limestone work on the pale façade of the mansion as they approached. Double rotundas flanked the lacquered black doors and soaring portico of the main entrance, above which rose four elegant stories.
Ambient light glowed from many of the arched windows, but Gabrielle hesitated to call the effect welcoming. The mansion loomed like a watchful sentry in the gloom of the surrounding night, stoic and forbidding, with its collection of snarling gargoyles that stared down from the roof and twin balconies overlooking the drive.
Lucan wheeled past the front entrance and around to a large hangar in the back. A gate lifted, and he rolled the purring Maybach to a stop inside, then cut the engine. A row of lights went on as the two of them climbed out of the car, the soft clicks of motion sensors illuminating a fleet of glossy, high-end machinery.
Gabrielle gaped in astonishment. Between the Maybach, which cost about as much as her modest Beacon Hill condo, and the collection of cars, SUVs, and motorcycles, she had to be looking at millions of dollars’ worth of vehicles. Multimillions.
“This way,” Lucan said, the duffel bag of photographs gripped in his hand as he guided her past the impressive fleet to an unmarked door near the back of the garage.
“Just how rich are you people?” she asked, trailing after him in amazement.
Lucan gestured for her to enter as the door opened then he followed her inside the elevator and pushed a button on the console. “Some members of the vampire nation have been around a very long time. We’ve learned a few things about managing our money wisely.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, feeling a little off balance as the elevator began a smooth but swift descent, down, and down, and down. “How do you keep all of this hidden from the public? What about the government and taxes? Or are you strictly a cash-and-carry operation?”
“The public can’t get past our security, even if they tried. The entire perimeter of the grounds is wired. Anyone foolish enough to get close to the compound would get a fourteen-thousand-volt ass kicking and a mind scrub. We pay our taxes—through fronted corporations, of course. Our properties around the world are owned by private trusts. Everything the Breed does is legit and aboveboard.”
“Legit and aboveboard. Right.” She laughed, a bit nervously. “Just nevermind all the bloodsucking or the extraterrestrial lineage.”
Lucan leveled a dark glance on her, but she was relieved to see the corner of his mouth lift in something that might have passed for a smile.
“I’ll take the backups now,” he said, his penetratingly clear gray eyes watching her as she dug the memory sticks out of her jeans pocket and placed them in his hand.
He let his fingers close around hers for a second. Gabrielle felt heat in his touch, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. She didn’t want to admit what just the slightest brush of his skin made her feel, even now.
Especially now.
The elevator finally came to a stop, and the door slid open to reveal a pristine room constructed of glass walls reinforced with gleaming metal frames. The floor was white marble, inlaid with a series of geometric symbols and interlocking designs. She recognized some of the designs as similar to the ones that Lucan bore on his body—those strange, beautiful tattoos that covered his back and torso.
No, not tattoos, she realized now, but something…else.
Vampire markings.
On his skin, and here, in this underground bunker where he lived.
Beyond the elevator, a corridor stretched and wended along a path that must have been several hundred yards long. Lucan paused to look at Gabrielle when she hesitated to follow him.
“You’re safe here,” he said, and God help her, but she actually believed him.
She walked out onto the snowy marble with Lucan, holding her breath as he placed his palm against an authentication panel and the glass doors ahead of him opened. Cool air bathed Gabrielle and she could hear a muffled rumble of male voices talking somewhere down the hall. Lucan led her toward the deep rhythm of conversation, his long stride sharp and purposeful.
He paused in front of another glass door, and as Gabrielle drew next to him, she saw what appeared to be a control room of sorts. There were monitors and computers lining a long, U-shaped console, digital readers flashing some kind of coordinates from another bank of equipment, and in the center of it all, moving on his rolling chair between the many workstations like a concert maestro, was a geeky-looking young man, his cropped blond hair spiked around his head in amusing disarray. He glanced up, crisp blue eyes registering a greeting, and then mild surprise, as the door slid open and Lucan strode inside with Gabrielle beside him.
“Gideon,” Lucan said, inclining his head in a nod.
So, this was the associate he had spoken of, Gabrielle thought, noting the easy smile and friendly demeanor of the other man. He got up from his chair and nodded his head at Lucan and then at Gabrielle.
Gideon was tall and lean, with boyish good looks and obvious charm. Nothing like Lucan. Nothing at all like she would imagine a vampire to be, not that she had a lot of experience in that area.
“Is he—”
“Yes,” Lucan answered, before she could whisper the rest of her question. He put the duffel bag down on a table. “Gideon is of the Breed. As are the others.”
It was then that Gabrielle noticed the conversation she’d heard in the room on their approach had since gone silent.
She felt more eyes on her from somewhere at her back, and as she turned to face the source of the sensation, all the breath seemed to be sucked from her lungs. Three large men occupied the space behind her: one in dark, tailored pants and a loose silk shirt, elegantly sprawled in a leather club chair; another wearing head-to-toe black leather, thick arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the back wall; and the last, in jeans and a white tee-shirt, was hunched over a table where he’d been cleaning the disassembled parts of some complicated type of handgun.
They were all staring at her.
“Dante,” Lucan said, indicating the broody one in leather, who gave her a slight nod of greeting—or maybe it was more of a male appraisal, based on the lift of his dark brows as his sly gaze returned to Lucan.
“The gearhead over there is Nikolai.” At Lucan’s introduction, the sandy-haired male offered Gabrielle a quick smile. He had starkly cut features, amazing cheekbones, and a strong, stubborn jaw. Even as he looked at her, his nimble fingers were working flawlessly on the weapon, as if he knew the components of the piece instinctually.
“And that’s Rio,” Lucan said, turning her attention to the smolderingly handsome one with the immaculate sense of style. From his casual lounge in the chair, he sent her a dazzling smile that oozed with innate sex appeal, with an unmistakable current of danger behind his topaz-colored eyes.
That threat emanated from each of them, their muscular builds and unconcealed weapons giving the distinct warning that despite their relaxed appearances here, these were men accustomed to battle. They might even thrive on it.
Lucan placed his hand on the small of Gabrielle’s back, startling her with the sudden contact as he brought her closer to him before these three other males. She wasn’t totally sure she trusted him yet, but as it stood, he was her sole ally in a room full of armed vampires.
“This is Gabrielle Maxwell. For the time being, she will be staying at the compound.”
He left the statement hanging without further explanation, as if he dared any one of the lethal-looking men to question him. None did. Watching Lucan, a commanding force in the midst of so much dark strength and power, Gabrielle realized that he was not merely one of these warriors.
He was their leader.
Gideon was the first to speak. He had come around from behind the computers and monitors and offered Gabrielle his hand. “Good to meet you,” he said, his voice tinged with a vaguely English accent. “Fast thinking, getting those cell pictures of the attack you witnessed. They’ve been a big help to us.”
“Um, no problem.”
She briefly shook his hand, surprised to find him so personable. So normal.
But then, Lucan had seemed relatively normal to her as well, and look how that turned out. At least he hadn’t been lying entirely when he told her he’d taken her cell phone into the lab for analysis. He’d only neglected to tell her it was a vampire CSI lab, and not the Boston police.
A loud beep sounded from the bank of computers nearby, spurring Gideon into a quick jog back to his monitors.
“Yes! You beautiful bucket of bolts,” he shouted, dropping into a spin in his chair. “Guys, you’ll want to see this. Especially you, Niko.”
Lucan and the other warriors gathered around the monitor that bathed Gideon’s face in a pale blue glow. Gabrielle, feeling a bit awkward standing alone in the center of the room, slowly trailed over as well.
“I just hacked into the security feeds over at the T,” Gideon said. “Now, let’s see if we can get some footage from the other night, maybe find out what the bastard who took out Conlan was really about.”
Gabrielle watched quietly from the periphery as several computer screens filled with closed-circuit images from a handful of the city’s train platforms, the feed scrolling by in fast-forward motion. Gideon rolled his chair along the line of workstations, pausing to type commands onto several of the keyboards before continuing on to the next, and then the next. Finally, his frenetic energy came to a halt.
“Okay, here we go. Green Line, coming up.” He backed away from the monitor in front of him, allowing the others a clear view. “This is footage of the platform beginning three minutes before the confrontation.”
Lucan and the others closed in as the feed displayed an influx of people pouring on and off the train. Peering between the massive sets of shoulders, Gabrielle caught the now familiar face of Nikolai on the monitor screen as he and his companion, a menacingly large male outfitted in dark leather, strode onto the commuter car. They had hardly gotten seated before one of the other passengers caught the attention of Nikolai’s companion. The two warriors stood up, and just before the doors closed for departure, the guy they’d been watching suddenly leaped out of the car and onto the platform. Onscreen, Nikolai and the other man jumped to their feet, but Gabrielle’s attention was rooted on the person they meant to follow.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “I know that guy.”
Five pairs of hard male eyes turned toward her in question.
“I mean, I don’t know him personally, but I’ve seen him before. I know his name. It’s Brent—at least, that’s what he told my friend Kendra. She met him at the dance club the night I witnessed the killing. She’s been seeing him every night since, pretty seriously, in fact.”
“You’re certain?” Lucan asked.
“Yes. That’s him, I’m positive.”
The warrior called Dante hissed a violent oath.
“He’s a Rogue,” Lucan said. “Or rather, was. A couple of nights ago, he walked onto the Green Line train wearing a belt of explosives. Niko and another of our brethren chased him down an old track. He blew himself up before they could take him out. One of our best warriors died with him.”
“Oh, God. You mean that unexplained explosion I heard about on the news?” She looked at Nikolai, whose hard jaw was clamped tight. “I’m very sorry.”
“If not for Conlan throwing himself on that suckhead coward, I wouldn’t be standing here. That’s for damn sure.”
Gabrielle was truly saddened for the loss Lucan and his men had suffered, but a new dread had lodged itself in her chest when she thought of how close her friend had come to the kind of evil Brent had apparently delivered.
What if Kendra was hurt? What if he had done something to her, and she needed help?
“I have to call her.” Gabrielle started digging in her purse for her cell phone. “I have to call Kendra right now and make sure she’s all right.”
Lucan’s hand clamped down around her wrist, firmly yet beseechingly. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I can’t let you do that.”
“She’s my friend, Lucan. And I’m sorry, but you can’t stop me.”
Gabrielle flipped open the phone, more resolved than ever to make the call. Before she could dial Kendra’s number, the device flew from her fingers and appeared in Lucan’s hand. He closed it, then slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.
“Gideon,” he said conversationally, even while his steely gaze remained locked on Gabrielle. “Ask Savannah to come and see Gabrielle to more comfortable quarters while we finish here. Get her something to eat.”
“Give it back to me,” Gabrielle said, ignoring the current of surprise that ran through the other men when she challenged Lucan’s attempt to control her. “I need to know that she’s okay, Lucan.”
He came toward her, and for a second she feared what he might do to her as he reached out to touch her face. In front of the others, he stroked her cheek tenderly, possessively. He spoke softly. “Your friend’s well-being is out of your hands. If she’s not yet been bled dry by this Rogue—and believe me, that’s a very real possibility—then he poses no further danger to her now.”
“But what if he did something to her? What if he turned her into one of those Minions?”
Lucan shook his head. “Only the most powerful of our kind can create Minions. That gutter trash who blew himself up in the tunnel was incapable. He was nothing but an expendable pawn.”
Gabrielle moved out of his caress despite the comfort his touch gave her. “What if that’s how he saw Kendra? What if he turned her over to someone who does have more power than him?”
Lucan’s expression was grim, but unwavering. His tone was as gentle as she’d ever heard it, which only made his words harder to accept. “Then you should forget her entirely, because she is already as good as dead.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
I hope the tea isn’t too strong. If you’d like a little milk in it, I can get you some from the kitchen.”
Gabrielle smiled, truly warmed by the hospitality of Gideon’s mate. “The tea is perfect, thank you.”
She had been surprised to learn that there were other women in the compound, and felt she’d made an instant friend in the beautiful Savannah. As soon as she’d arrived to fetch Gabrielle on Lucan’s order, Savannah had gone to great lengths to ensure that Gabrielle was comfortable and relaxed.
As relaxed as she could be, at any rate, surrounded by heavily armed vampires in a maximum-security bunker housed several hundred feet below the ground.
Not that she would have guessed that, seated as she was now, across from Savannah at a long, dark cherry table in a tastefully appointed dining room, sipping an exotic, spicy tea from a delicate bone china cup while music played softly in the background.
This chamber, and the spacious residential suite adjoining it, belonged to Gideon and Savannah. From all appearances, they lived as a normal couple within the compound, in comfortable living quarters, surrounded by sumptuous furniture, countless books, and beautiful objets d’art. Everything was of the finest quality and all of it impeccably maintained, no different than one might expect to find in a pricey Back Bay brownstone. If not for the absence of windows, it would have been close to perfect. And even that lack was compensated for, with a breathtaking collection of paintings and photographs adorning nearly every wall.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
Savannah gestured to a silver tray of pastries and cookies that lay between them on the table. Next to that was another gleaming platter of dainty finger sandwiches and aromatic sauces. Everything looked and smelled wonderful, but Gabrielle had pretty much lost her appetite the night before when she’d watched Lucan shred the Minion’s throat with his teeth and then proceed to drink his blood.
“No, thank you,” she said. “This is more than enough for me right now.”
She was amazed she could hold down anything at all, but the tea was hot and soothing, and she welcomed its warmth both inside and out.
Savannah watched her drink in silence from across the table, her dark eyes friendly, her thin brows knit into a sympathetic furrow. She wore her tight black curls short against her shapely skull, but the effect was more sophisticated than gamine when paired with her striking features and pretty, feminine curves. She had the same open, easy demeanor as Gideon, something Gabrielle greatly appreciated, after having dealt with Lucan and his dominating ways the past few hours.
“Well, maybe you can resist temptation,” Savannah said, reaching for one of the crumbly scones, “but I can’t.”
She spooned a dollop of thick cream onto the biscuit then broke off a piece and moaned happily as she popped the bite into her mouth. Gabrielle knew she was staring, but could hardly help it.
“You eat real food,” she said, more a question than the statement it sounded like.
Nodding, Savannah dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Yes. Of course. A girl has to eat.”
“But I thought? If you and Gideon…Aren’t you like him?”
Savannah frowned, shaking her head. “I’m human, same as you. Didn’t Lucan explain anything to you?”
“Some.” Gabrielle shrugged. “Enough to make my head spin, but I still have a lot of questions.”
“Of course, you do. Everyone does, when we’re first introduced to this new, other world.” She reached out, gave Gabrielle’s hand a gentle squeeze. “You can ask me anything. I’m one of the newer females myself.”
The disclosure made Gabrielle sit up with piqued interest. “How long have you been here?”
Savannah glanced upward for a moment, as if counting time. “I left my old life in 1974. That’s when I met Gideon, and fell madly in love.”
“More than thirty years ago,” Gabrielle wondered aloud, taking in the youthful features, radiant mocha skin, and bright young eyes of Gideon’s woman. “You don’t look even twenty years old to me.”
Savannah’s smile beamed. “I was eighteen when Gideon took me as his mate. He saved my life, actually. He took me away from a bad situation, and so long as we are bonded, I will remain as I am now. Do I really look so young to you?”
“Yes. You’re beautiful.”
Savannah giggled softly as she took another bite of her scone.
“How…?” Gabrielle asked, hoping it wasn’t rude to press, but she was so curious and astonished that she couldn’t help blurting out questions. “If you’re human, and they can’t turn us into…what they are…then, how can this be? How is it that you haven’t aged?”
“I am a Breedmate,” Savannah answered, as if that should explain it all. When Gabrielle frowned, confused, Savannah went on. “Gideon and I are bonded, mated. His blood keeps me young, but I’m still one hundred percent human. That never changes, even after we are bonded to one of them as his mate. We don’t grow fangs, and we don’t crave blood in the same way that they do in order to survive.”
“But you gave up everything to be with him, like this?”
“What have I given up? I am spending my life with a man I completely adore, and who loves me just as much. We’re both healthy, happy, surrounded by others like us, who are our family. Aside from the threat of the Rogues, we have no worries here. If I have sacrificed anything, it pales to what I have with Gideon.”
“What about sunlight? Don’t you miss it, living down here as you do?”
“None of us are forced to remain in the compound all of the time. I spend a lot of time in the gardens of the estate during the day, when I want to. The grounds are very well-secured, and so is the mansion, which is huge. I must have spent three weeks exploring it when I first came here.”
From the brief glimpse Gabrielle had gotten of the place, she could imagine it would take some time to get familiar with everything.
“As for going into town during the day, we do that sometimes, too—not very often, though. Anything we need can be ordered over the internet and delivered to us.” She smiled, giving a little shrug of her shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong, I love salon time and shopping as much as the next girl, but it’s always something of a risk to venture outside the compound without the protection of our mates. And they worry when we are somewhere they cannot provide for us. I suppose females living in the Darkhaven sanctuaries have a bit more daytime freedom than those of us who are bonded to members of the warrior class. Not that you will hear any of us complaining.”
“Are there more Breedmates living here?”
“There are two others, besides me. Eva is bonded to Rio. You’ll like the both of them—they’re the life of any party. And Danika is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet. She was Breedmate to Conlan. He was killed recently, in a confrontation with a Rogue.”
Gabrielle nodded soberly. “Yes, I heard about that just before you came to bring me here. I’m sorry.”
“It’s different without him, quieter. I’m not sure how Danika’s going to cope, to be honest with you. They were together for many, many years. Conlan was a good warrior, but an even better mate. He was also one of the oldest members in this compound.”
“How old do they get?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Very old, by our standards, anyway. Conlan was born to the daughter of Scottish chieftain around the time of Columbus. His father was a Breed vampire of that current generation, five-hundred years ago.”
“You’re saying Conlan was five-hundred years old?”
Savannah lifted a slender shoulder. “Give or take, yes. There are some much younger, like Rio and Nikolai, who were both born in the 1900s, but none of them are as long-lived as Lucan. He’s first generation, born to one of the original Ancients and the first line of Breedmates to carry their alien seed to full term. From what I understand, those first Breed offspring occurred long after the Ancients arrived here, by many centuries, according to the history. The Gen Ones were conceived unpleasantly and entirely by chance, when the vampires’ wholesale rapes happened to include human females whose unique blood properties and DNA were strong enough to sustain a hybrid pregnancy.”
Gabrielle got an instant, sickening picture of the brutality that must have taken place at that time. “They sound like animals, the Ancients.”
“They were savages. The Rogues operate in much the same way, and with the same disregard for life. If not for warriors like Lucan, Gideon, and the few others of the Order who hunt them down around the world, our lives—all of human life—would be very bleak.”
“And what about Lucan?” Gabrielle asked softly. “How old does all of this make him?”
“Ah, he is a rarity, if for his lineage alone. There are few left of his generation.” Savannah’s expression held a trace of awe and more than a little respect. “Lucan can be no less than nine-hundred years, possibly more.”
“Oh, my God.” Gabrielle fell back against her chair. She laughed at the absurdity of the idea, and yet realized that it made perfect sense. “You know, the first time I saw him, I thought he looked like he should be on horseback, brandishing a sword and leading an army of knights into battle. He just has that carriage about him. Like he owns the world, and has seen so much that nothing surprises him. Now, I know why.”
Savannah was looking at her sagely, her head tilted. “I think you’ve been something of a surprise to him.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“He brought you here, to the compound. He’s never done that, not in all the time I’ve known him, and not before either, from what I gathered from Gideon.”
“Lucan says he’s brought me here for my own protection, because the Rogues are after me, now. God, I didn’t want to believe him—about any of this—but it’s all true, isn’t it?”
Savannah’s smile was warm, sympathetic. “It is.”
“I saw him kill someone last night—a Minion. He did it to protect me, I know, but it was so violent. It was horrific.” A shiver snaked its way up her limbs when she pictured the gruesome scene that took place in the children’s park. “Lucan bit into the man’s throat and fed off him like some kind of…”
“Vampire,” Savannah answered softly, with neither accusation nor condemnation in her voice. “That’s what they are, Gabrielle, how they were born. It’s not a curse or a disease. It’s just the way they live, a different kind of consumption than what we as humans have grown to accept as normal. And vampires don’t always kill to feed. In fact, that’s rare, at least among the Breed’s general population, including the warrior class. It’s completely unheard of with blood-bonded vampires, like Gideon or Rio, since their nourishment is provided regularly by their Breedmates.”
“You make it sound so normal,” Gabrielle said, frowning as she ran her finger around the edge of her teacup. She knew that what Savannah was telling her had a certain logic, despite its surrealism, but accepting it was not going to be easy. “It terrifies me to think about what he really is, how he lives. I should despise him for it, Savannah.”
“But you don’t.”
“No,” she confessed quietly.
“You care for him, don’t you?”
Gabrielle nodded, reluctant to speak the words.
“And you’re intimately involved with him.”
“Yes.” Gabrielle sighed, and shook her head. “And really, how stupid is that? I don’t know what it is about him that makes me want him like I do. I mean, he’s lied to me and deceived me on so many levels I can’t begin to count them, but even still, just thinking about him makes my knees weak. I’ve never known this kind of need with another man.”
Savannah was smiling over the rim of her cup. “They are more than men, our warriors.”
Gabrielle took a sip of her tea, thinking that it probably wasn’t wise to consider Lucan as her anything, unless she planned to put her heart under his boot heels and watch as he ground it to dust.
“These males are passionate in all they do,” Savannah added. “And there is nothing that can compare to the giving and receiving of the blood-bond, especially while making love.”
Gabrielle shrugged. “Well, the sex is amazing, I won’t even try to deny that. But I haven’t shared any kind of a blood-bond with Lucan.”
Savannah’s smile faltered slightly. “He hasn’t bitten you?”
“No. God, no.” She shook her head, wondering if she should feel more appalled than she did. “He hasn’t even tried to take my blood, as far as I know. Just tonight he swore to me that he never would.”
“Oh.” Savannah carefully set down her teacup.
“Why? Do you think he will?”
Gideon’s mate seemed to consider that for a moment, then gave a slow shake of her head. “Lucan has never made a promise lightly, nor would he about something like this. I’m sure he means exactly what he told you.”
Gabrielle nodded, relieved, yet curious why Savannah’s assurance sounded almost like a condolence.
“Come,” she said, rising from the table and indicating for Gabrielle to follow. “I’ll show you the rest of the compound.”
“Anything come back yet on those glyphs we spotted on our West Coast subject?” Lucan asked, tossing his leather jacket over one of the chairs next to Gideon.
It was just the two of them alone in the lab now, the other warriors having gone to chill out for a few hours before Lucan gave orders for the night’s sweep of the city. He was glad for the relative privacy. His head was beginning to pound with the onslaught of another splintering headache.
“I got squat, sorry to say. Nothing came up on the criminal check, or the census search. Apparently our boy’s not in the system, but that’s not so unusual. The IID records are vast, but far from perfect, especially when it comes to you Gen Ones. There are only a few of you around anymore, and for various reasons, most have never volunteered to be processed or catalogued—yourself included.”
“Shit,” Lucan hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose but feeling no relief from the pressure building in his head.
“You feeling all right, man?”
“It’s nothing.” He didn’t look at Gideon, but he could sense the vampire watching him with concern. “I’ll get over it.”
“I, ah…I heard about what happened the other night between you and Tegan. The guys said you came back off a hunt, looking a bit ragged. Your body’s still recovering from those solar burns, you know. You’ve got to take things easy, feed the healing—”
“I said, I’m fine,” Lucan snapped, feeling his eyes flash anger, his lips curled back off his teeth in a snarl.
Between the prey he’d taken in the street and the Minion he’d drained in the park, he’d had more than enough blood to sustain him through his recovery. The fact was, despite his physical satiation, he still craved more.
He was on damned slippery ground, and he knew it.
Bloodlust was just a careless stumble away.
Keeping a lid on his weakness was getting harder all the time.
“Got a present for you,” Lucan said, anxious to change the subject. He slapped the two memory sticks down on the Lucite workspace in front of Gideon. “Load them up.”
“Really? A gift for me? Darling, you shouldn’t have,” Gideon said, back to his jovial self. He was already popping one of the portable drives into a USB port of the machine nearest to him. A folder opened onscreen, displaying a long list of file names on the monitor. Gideon turned and shot Lucan a pensive look. “These are image files. Gads, a friggin’ lot of them.”
Lucan gave a slight nod. He was pacing now, growing edgy and too warm in the bright lights of the room. “I need you to go through each one, compare it against every known Rogue location in the city—past, present, and suspected.”
Gideon clicked open a random image and blew out a low whistle. “This is the Rogue lair we took out last month.” He opened two more, tiling them on the monitor’s display. “And the warehouse we’ve been watching for a couple of weeks…Jesus, is this other one a shot of the building that fronts the Quincy Darkhaven?”
“There’s more.”
“Son of a bitch. Most of these images are of vampire locations—both Rogue and Breed.” Gideon scrolled through a dozen more photos. “She took all of these?”
“Yeah.” Lucan paused to look at the screen. He pointed to a number of files with date stamps from the current week. “Go to this group.”
Gideon brought up the photos with a series of fast clicks. “You gotta be kidding me. She’s been out to the asylum, too? That place might house hundreds of suckheads.”
Lucan’s gut clenched at the idea, dread mixing with the acid burn already swimming in the pit of his stomach. His insides were cramping up, gnarled with the need to feed. He mentally forced the hunger down, but his hands were trembling, and a sheen of sweat was breaking out on his brow.
“A Minion found her, chased her off the property,” he said, his voice rough gravel in his throat, and not just because his body was under full assault. “She was damned lucky to get away.”
“I’ll say. How did she find this location? How did she find any of them, for that matter?”
“She says she doesn’t know why she’s drawn to them. It’s a unique instinct of some sort. Part of the same Breedmate ability she has that exempts her from vampire mind control, and lets her see us move where other humans don’t.”
“Call it what you will, skills like hers could be damned useful to us.”
“Forget it. We’re not going to involve Gabrielle anymore than she already is. She’s not a part of this, and I won’t put her in any further danger. She won’t be staying here long, anyway.”
“You don’t think we can protect her?”
“I won’t have her sitting on the front lines while there’s a war brewing just outside our gates. What kind of life would that be?”
Gideon shrugged. “Seems to be working out all right for Savannah and Eva.”
“Yeah, and it’s been a fucking laugh riot for Danika lately, too.” Lucan shook his head. “I don’t want Gabrielle anywhere near this violence. She’s going to go to one of the Darkhavens as soon as possible. Someplace far away, remote, where the Rogues won’t ever get to her.”
And where she would be safe from him, as well. Safe from the beast that was churning inside of him, even now. If Bloodlust finally claimed him—and lately, he felt it was more a question of when than if—he wanted Gabrielle as far away from the fallout as possible.
Gideon was very still as he looked at Lucan. “You care for her.”
Lucan glared at him, feeling like he wanted to punch something. Destroy something. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean, she’s beautiful, and clearly she’s as courageous as she is creative, so it’s not hard to see why anyone would be attracted to her. But…damn. You really care about her, don’t you?” Evidently, the vampire didn’t know when to give it a rest. “Never thought I’d see the day that you’d let a female get under your skin like this—”
“Do I look like I want to join the same pathetic hearts-and-flowers club that you and Rio did? Or Conlan, with his fatherless whelp on the way? Trust me, I have no interest in binding myself to this woman or any other one.” He ground out a furious curse. “I’m a warrior. My first—my only duty—has always been to the Breed. There’s never been room for anything else. As soon as I secure a place for her at one of the Darkhavens, Gabrielle Maxwell is gone. Forgotten. End of story.”
Gideon was quiet for a long while, just watching him pace and fume and roar with an uncharacteristic lack of control.
Which only spiked Lucan’s temper further into the red.
“You got something else to add, or can we get off this dead topic now?”
The vampire’s wise blue eyes held him in a maddeningly level stare. “I’m just wondering who it is you need to convince more. Me or yourself?”
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
Gabrielle’s tour of the warriors’ labyrinthine compound took her past private living quarters, meeting facilities, a training room outfitted with an astounding assortment of weaponry and combat equipment, a banquet room, some sort of chapel, and countless other hidden chambers of various purposes that had since begun to blur in her mind.
She’d met Eva as well, who was everything Savannah said she’d be. Vivacious, charming, and as beautiful as a supermodel. Rio’s Breedmate had insisted on hearing all about Gabrielle and her life topside. Eva was from Spain, and talked one day of returning there with Rio where the two of them might raise a family in time. It had been a pleasant introduction, interrupted only by the arrival of Rio himself. Once he showed up, Eva was lost to her mate and Savannah had steered Gabrielle on toward other parts of the compound.
It was impressive, how immense yet efficient the headquarters were. Any notions she might have had about vampires living in cavernous, musty old crypts were blown away by the time she and Savannah had concluded their casual stroll.
These warriors and their mates were living in high-tech style, with virtually every luxury one could want, although none appealed to Gabrielle as much as the chamber where she and Savannah were now. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined two of the room’s tall walls, the polished dark wood containing easily thousands of volumes. No doubt, most of them were rare, given the number of heavily tooled leather bindings, and the gold inlay on their spines, which gleamed in the soft light of the library chamber.
“Whoa,” she gasped, walking into the center of the room and turning around to admire the staggering collection of books.
“You like it?” Savannah asked, lingering at the open door.
Gabrielle nodded, too busy taking it all in to speak. As she pivoted, her gaze landed on a lush tapestry that covered the back wall. It was a nighttime depiction of a huge knight in black and silver chain mail, seated on a dark, rearing horse. The knight’s head was uncovered, leaving his long ebony hair flying in the wind, like the pennants snapping at the tip of his bloodied lance and on the parapet of the smoldering hilltop castle in the background.
The needlework was so intricate and precise, Gabrielle could make out the man’s piercing, pale gray eyes and lean, angular cheekbones. There was a familiar twist to his cynical, almost contemptuous mouth.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Is that supposed to be—”
Savannah answered with a shrug of her shoulder and an amused little laugh. “Would you like to stay in here for a while? I need to check on Danika, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave, if you’d rather—”
“Sure. Yes. I’d love to hang out in here, are you kidding? Please, take your time, and don’t worry about me.”
Savannah smiled. “I’ll be back shortly, then we’ll see about making up a guest room for you.”
“Thanks,” Gabrielle replied, in no rush at all to be taken out of this unexpected haven.
As the other woman stepped away, Gabrielle didn’t know what to look at first: the treasure trove of literature, or the medieval work of art starring Lucan Thorne, circa what appeared to be the fourteenth century.
Both, she decided, plucking a gorgeous—and, presumably, first edition—volume of French poetry from the shelf and carrying it over to a leather reading chair arranged beneath the tapestry. She set the book down on a delicate antique table, and for a minute, all she could do was stare up at Lucan’s likeness, woven so expertly in silk threads. She reached out, but didn’t dare touch the museum-quality piece.
My God, she thought, awed, as the incredible reality of this strange other world sank in fully.
All this time, they had existed alongside the human world.
Incredible.
And how small her own world felt in light of this new knowledge. Everything she thought she knew about life had been eclipsed in a matter of hours by the long history of Lucan and the rest of his kind.
A sudden stirring of the air around her sent a clamor of alarm through Gabrielle’s limbs. She whirled away from the tapestry, startled to find the real, flesh-and-bone Lucan standing behind her at the room’s threshold, one massive shoulder leaning against the doorjamb. His hair was shorter than the knight’s, his eyes perhaps a bit more haunted now, not as mercilessly eager as they had been rendered by the artist’s needle.
Lucan was far more handsome in person, radiating an innate power even in stillness. Even scowling at her in broody silence, as he was now.
Gabrielle’s heart accelerated with a mix of anticipation and fear as he moved away from the door frame and walked into the room. She looked at him, really looked at him, for what he was: ageless strength, wild beauty, unfathomable power.
A dark enigma, both seductive and dangerous.
“What are you doing in here?” There was a note of accusation in his tone.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly. “Well, to be honest, I couldn’t help admiring some of these beautiful things. Savannah’s been showing me around the compound.”
He grunted, his scowl still in place as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“We had some tea together, and talked a bit,” Gabrielle added. “Eva joined us, too. They’re both very nice. And this place is really impressive. How long have you and the other warriors lived here?”
She could tell he had little interest in conversation, but he answered, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Gideon and I established this location in 1898 as a headquarters for hunting Rogues who had moved into the region. From there, we recruited a team of the best warriors to fight alongside us. Dante and Conlan were the first. Nikolai and Rio joined us later. And Tegan.”
This last name was completely unfamiliar to Gabrielle. “Tegan?” she said. “Savannah didn’t mention him. He wasn’t there when you introduced me to the others, either.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
When he didn’t elaborate, curiosity got the best of her. “Is he one you’ve lost, like Conlan?”
“No. Not like that.” Lucan’s voice was clipped when he spoke of this last member of his cadre, as if the topic was a sore one that he preferred not to open.
He was still staring intently at her, still standing close enough that she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the bands of hard muscle expanding beneath his fitted black shirt, the warmth of his body radiating toward her in waves.
Behind him on the wall, his needleworked likeness stared out from the tapestry with fervent purpose, the young knight grimly determined, sure to conquer whatever prize lay in his path. Gabrielle saw a darker shade of that determination in Lucan now, as his gaze slowly took her in from head to toe.
“This weaving is amazing.”
“It’s very old,” he said, staring at her as he came nearer. “But I guess you know that, now.”
“It’s beautiful. And you look so fierce, like you were ready to take on the world.”
“I was.” He glanced at the wall hanging, scoffing lightly. “I had the piece made a few months after the death of my parents. That castle burning in the background belonged to my father. I razed it to ash after I took his head for killing my mother in a fit of Bloodlust.”
Gabrielle gasped. She hadn’t been expecting anything like that. “My God. Lucan…”
“I found her lying in a pool of gore in our great hall, her throat savaged. He didn’t even try to fight me. He knew what he’d done. He’d loved her, as much as one of his kind could, but his thirst was stronger. He couldn’t deny his nature.” Lucan shrugged. “I did him a favor by ending his existence.”
Gabrielle looked at his cool expression, feeling as stricken by what she’d just heard as she was by the blasé tone in which he relayed it. Any romantic appeal she had imagined in the tapestry just a minute ago dimmed under the weight of the tragedy it truly depicted.
“Why would you want to have a beautiful reminder of such a terrible thing?”
“Terrible?” He shook his head. “My life began that night. I never had much of a purpose until I stood up to my ankles in my family’s blood and realized I had to change things—for myself, and for the rest of my race. That night, I declared war on the last remaining Ancients of my father’s alien kind, and on all the members of the Breed who had served them as Rogues.”
“That’s a long time to be fighting.”
“I should have started a lot sooner.” He pierced her with a steely stare. Gave her a chilling smile. “I’ll never stop. It’s what I live for—dealing death.”
“Someday you’ll win, Lucan. Then all the violence can finally be over.”
“You think so,” he drawled, a trace of mockery in his tone. “And you know this to be certain, based on what? A short twenty-eight years of life?”
“I base it on hope, for one thing. On faith. I have to believe that good will always come out on top. Don’t you? Isn’t that why you and the others here do what you do? Because you have hope that you can make things better?”
He laughed. Actually looked straight at her, and laughed. “I kill Rogues because I enjoy it. I’m damn good at it. I won’t speak for anyone else’s motives.”
“What’s going on with you, Lucan? You seem…”—Pissed off? Confrontational? A tad psychotic?—“You’re acting different here than you were with me before.”
He pinned her with a scathing glare. “In case you hadn’t noticed, sweetheart, you’re in my domain now. Things are different here.”
The callousness she was seeing in him now took her aback, but it was the rage burning in his eyes that really put her on edge. They were too bright, hard as crystals. His skin was flushed, too tight across the stark cut of his cheekbones. And now that she was looking closer, she could see a thin sheen of sweat on his brow.
Pure, white-hot anger rolled off of him in waves. Like he wanted to tear something apart with his bare hands.
And, as it happened, the only thing in his path at the moment was her.
He walked past her in silence, toward a closed door near one of the tall bookcases. It opened without him touching the latch. Inside, it was so dark, she thought it was a closet. But then he stepped into the gloom and she heard his hard footsteps falling on a stretch of hardwood as he strode down what was apparently a hidden corridor of the compound.
Gabrielle stood there, feeling like she’d just missed being trampled by a brutal storm. She released a pent-up breath. Maybe she should let him go. Count herself lucky just to be out of his way right now. He sure didn’t seem to want her company, and she wasn’t all that sure she wanted his when he was like this.
But something was up with him—something was seriously wrong—and she needed to know what it was.
Swallowing past her own prickling of fear, she followed after him.
“Lucan?” There was no light at all in the space beyond the door. Only blackness, and the steady clip of Lucan’s boot heels. “God, it’s so dark in here. Lucan, wait a second. Talk to me.”
There was no change in his brisk pace ahead of her. He seemed more than eager to ditch her. Desperate to get away from her.
Gabrielle navigated the lightless path as best she could, hands extended out at her sides to help her follow the snaking corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“What for?”
“I told you.” A latch clicked open from where his voice now sounded. “I’ve got a job to do. Been lax as hell about doing it lately.”
Because of her.
He didn’t say it, but there was no mistaking his meaning.
“I need to get out of here,” he tossed back at her curtly. “High time I add a few more suckheads to my tally.”
“The night’s already half over. Maybe you should get some rest instead. You don’t seem well to me, Lucan.”
“I need to fight.”
She heard his footsteps stop, heard a shift of fabric somewhere ahead of her in the dark, as if he’d paused and was stripping out of his clothes. Gabrielle kept moving toward the sound of him, her hands searching, trying to get her bearings in what was an endless pitch blackness. They were in another chamber now; there was a wall to her right. She used it as a guide, sidling along with careful steps.
“In the other room, your face looked flushed. And your voice is…strange.”
“I need to feed.” The words were low and deadly, an unmistakable threat.
Did he sense that she shrank back as he said it? He must have, because he chuckled, brittle with wry humor, as though amused by her unease.
“But you did feed,” she reminded him. “Just last night, in fact. Didn’t you take enough blood when you killed that Minion? I thought you said you only needed to feed every few days?”
“An expert on the subject already, are you? I’m impressed.”
Boots hit the floor with a careless thump, one, then the other.
“Can we turn on some lights in here? I can’t see you—”
“No lights,” he snapped. “I can see you just fine. I can smell your fear.”
She was afraid, not so much for herself right now, but for him. He was worse than on edge. The air around him seemed to pulse with raw fury. It came at her through the dark, an unseen force pushing her back.
“Have I done something wrong, Lucan? Should I not be here at the compound? Because if you’ve changed your mind about that, I have to tell you that I’m not sure it was a good idea for me to come here, either.”
“There is no other place for you right now.”
“I want to go back home to my apartment.”
She felt a blast of heat skating up her arms as if he had just turned a deadly look on her. “You just got here. And you can’t go back there. You’ll stay until I decide otherwise.”
“That sounds an awfully lot like a command.”
“It is.”
Okay, now he wasn’t the only one bristling with anger. “I want my cell phone, Lucan. I need to call my friends and make sure they’re okay. Then I’m going to call a cab, and I’m going to go home, where I can try to make sense out of the mess my life has become.”
“It’s out of the question.” She heard the metallic clink of weaponry, the rough scrape of a drawer opening. “You’re in my world now, Gabrielle. I am law here. And you are under my protection until I deem it is safe to release you from it.”
She sucked in the curse that raced to the tip of her tongue. Barely. “Look, the benevolent overlord attitude might have gone a lot further for you back in the day, but don’t even think you can use it on me.”
The livid snarl that lashed out of him made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. “You won’t survive a night out there without me, do you understand? If not for me, you wouldn’t have survived your first goddamned year!”
Standing there in the dark, Gabrielle went utterly still. “What did you say?”
Only a long silence answered.
“What do you mean I wouldn’t have survived….”
He swore through gritted teeth. “I was there, Gabrielle. Twenty-seven years ago, when a helpless young mother was attacked by a Rogue vampire at a Boston bus station, I was there.”
“My mother,” she murmured, her heart thudding hollowly in her chest. She felt for the wall behind her, and leaned against it for support.
“She’d already been bitten. He was draining her when I smelled blood and found them outside the terminal. He would have killed her. Would have killed you, too.”
Gabrielle could hardly believe what she was hearing. “You saved us?”
“I gave your mother a chance to get away. She was too far gone from the bite. Nothing was going to save her. But she wanted to save you. She ran away with you in her arms.”
“No. She didn’t care about me. She left me. She put me in a trash bin,” Gabrielle whispered, her throat burning as she spoke the words, felt the old hurt of abandonment all over again.
“The bite would have put her in a state of shock. It’s likely she was disoriented, thinking that she was putting you someplace safe. Sheltering you from danger.”
God, how long had she wondered about the young woman who’d given birth to her? How many scenarios had she concocted to explain, to herself at least, what might have happened the night she was recovered on the street, as an infant. Never had she imagined this.
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care. She was just another victim of the Rogues. I hadn’t thought about any of it until you mentioned your mother tonight at your apartment.”
“And me?” she asked, trying to put everything together. “When you first came to see me after the killing I’d witnessed, did you know I was the baby you saved?”
He exhaled a dry laugh. “I had no idea. I came to you because I smelled your jasmine scent outside the nightclub and I wanted you. I needed to know if your blood would taste as sweet as the rest of you.”
Hearing those words made her think of all the pleasure Lucan had given her with his body. Now she wondered how it would have felt to have him suckling from her neck as he thrust inside of her. To her shock, she realized she was a lot more than curious. “But you didn’t. You haven’t…”
“And I won’t,” he replied, his words clipped. Another curse came from his direction in the dark, this one a pained hiss. “I never would have touched you at all, if I’d known…”
“If you’d known what?”
“Nothing, forget it. Just…Christ, my head is pounding too much for me to talk. Just get out of here. Leave me alone now.”
Gabrielle stayed right where she was. She heard him moving again, a stiff shuffling of feet. Another rumbling, animal growl.
“Lucan? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he snarled, sounding anything but. “I need…ah, fuck.” He was breathing harder now, almost panting. “Get out of here, Gabrielle. I need to be…by myself.”
Something heavy hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud. He sucked in a sharp breath.
“I don’t think you need to be alone right now at all. I think you need help. And I can’t keep talking to you in the dark like this.” She smoothed her hand over the wall, blindly searching for a light. “I can’t see any—”
Her fingers brushed a switchplate, flipped it on.
“Oh, my God.”
Lucan was doubled over on the floor near a king-sized bed. His shirt and boots were off, and he was writhing as though in extreme pain, the markings on his bare back and torso livid with color. The intricate swirls and arcs changed from deep purples to reds to black as he spasmed, clutching his abdomen.
Gabrielle raced to his side and kneeled down beside him. His body contracted savagely, pulling him into a tight ball.
“Lucan! What’s going on?”
“Get out.” He snarled when she tried to touch him, lashing out like a wounded animal. “Go! Not your…concern.”
“The hell it’s not!”
“Get…aagh!” A convulsion gripped him again, worse than the last. “Just get away from me.”
Panic flooded her to see him thrashing with such pain. “What is happening to you? Tell me what to do!”
He flipped onto his back like invisible hands had tossed him over. The tendons in his neck were stretched taut as cables. Veins and arteries bulged on his biceps and forearms. His lips were peeled back in a grimace, baring his sharp white fangs. “Gabrielle, get the fuck out of here!”
She backed off to give him space, but she wasn’t about to leave him suffering like this by himself. “Should I get someone for you? I can go tell Gideon—”
“No! Don’t…can’t tell. Not…anyone.” When he lifted his eyes to her, she saw that his pupils were thin slits of black, swamped by pools of glowing amber. That feral gaze went to her throat. Locked onto the place where she could feel her pulse hammering. Lucan shuddered, squeezed his eyes shut. “It will pass. It always does…eventually.”
As if to prove his point, after a long moment, he started to drag himself to his feet. It was hard going and graceless, but the growl he sent Gabrielle’s way when she tried to help him convinced her to let him do it on his own. By sheer force of will, he got up and flopped onto his stomach on the edge of the bed. He was still panting, his body still tense and heaving.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Go.” He blew the word out on an anguished gasp. “Just…stay away.”
She remained right where she was. Braved a light touch on his shoulder. “Your skin is on fire. You’re burning up with fever.”
He didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure he was capable of words when all his energy was focused on grounding himself and getting free of whatever it was that had him in such a fierce hold. He’d told her he needed to feed tonight, but this seemed to be something deeper than basic hunger. This was suffering on a level she’d never seen.
A chill thought ran through her head, carried there by a term Lucan had used earlier tonight.
Bloodlust.
That was the addiction he had described as being a hallmark of the Rogues. All that separated the Breed from their savage brethren. Looking at him now, she had to wonder how difficult it might be to feed a hunger that could also destroy you.
And once Bloodlust had you by the throat, how long before it pulled you under completely?
“You’re going to be all right,” she told him softly, stroking his dark hair. “Just relax. Let me take care of you, Lucan.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
He was lying in cool shade, a soft breeze sifting through his hair. He didn’t want to wake up from the deep, dreamless sleep. It wasn’t often that he found this kind of peace. Never like this. He wanted to nestle down into it, sleep for a hundred years.
But the faint trace of jasmine floating close by made him stir. He sucked the sweet scent into his lungs, tasting it in the back of his parched throat. Savoring it. He peeled open his heavy lids, looked up, and saw beautiful brown eyes gazing back at him.
“Feeling better?”
He was, actually. The searing headache was gone. His skin no longer felt like it was being shredded off of him. The twisting pain in his gut had faded to a hollow gnawing, uncomfortable as hell, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
He tried to tell her he was better, but his voice came out in a hoarse croak. He cleared his throat, pushed sound out of his mouth. “I’m okay.”
Gabrielle was seated on the bed with him, holding his head in her lap. She pressed a cool, damp cloth softly to his forehead and cheeks. With her other hand, she was stroking his hair, her fingers gentle and soothing.
It felt good. So incredibly good.
“You were in pretty bad shape. I was worried about you.”
He groaned at the reminder of what had happened. The attack of blood hunger had knocked him on his ass. He’d been reduced to a sputtering, feeble ball of pain. And she had seen it all. Jesus, he wanted to crawl in a dark hole and die for letting anyone see him laid low like that. Particularly Gabrielle.
Humiliation over his own weakness hit him hard, but it was the sudden jolt of dread that made him rise up, fully awake. “Christ. Gabrielle, I didn’t…did I hurt you?”
“No.” She touched his jaw, not a trace of fear in her eyes or her tender caress. “I’m fine. You didn’t do anything to me, Lucan.”
Thank God.
“You’re wearing my shirt,” he said, just now noticing that her sweater and jeans were gone and her slender curves were draped in a shroud of his black tee-shirt. All he wore were his pants.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, pulling at a loose thread. “I put this on a while ago, when Dante came by looking for you. I told him you were in bed, asleep.” She blushed a little. “I thought he’d be less inclined to ask questions if I answered the door in this.”
Lucan sat back, frowning at her. “You lied for me.”
“It seemed pretty important to you that nobody see you…like you were.”
He looked at her, sitting there so trusting with him, and he was leveled with admiration. Anyone else who’d have witnessed him like that would have put a titanium blade through his heart—and rightly so. But she hadn’t been afraid. He’d fought through one of his worst bouts so far, and Gabrielle had been there with him the whole time. Taking care of him.
She had protected him.
His chest tightened with respect. With deepest gratitude.
He had never known what that could feel like, being able to trust someone like that. He knew that any one of his brethren would have his back in battle, as he would theirs, but this was different. This was someone looking out for him. Protecting him at his most vulnerable.
Even when he’d been spitting and snarling at her, trying to drive her away. Letting her see him for the true beast he was.
She had stayed beside him, despite all of that.
He didn’t have the words to thank her for something so profoundly generous. Instead, he leaned in and kissed her, as softly as he could, with all the reverence he could never adequately express.
“I should get dressed,” he said, groaning at the thought of leaving her. “I’m better now. I should go.”
“Go where?”
“Topside, to take out a few more Rogues. I can’t let the others do all of my work.”
Gabrielle moved toward him on the bed, putting her hand on his forearm. “Lucan, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. It’s daylight up there.”
He swiveled his head to the bedside clock and saw that she was right. “Shit. I slept through the night? Dante’s going to ride my ass for a while about this one.”
Gabrielle’s lips curved into a sensual smile. “Actually, he’s under the impression that you were riding mine all this time. Remember?”
Arousal sparked inside him like flame on dry tinder.
Goddamn.
Just the thought…
She was sitting with her legs folded beneath her, the black tee-shirt bunched high on her thighs, giving him a shadowed glimpse of tiny white panties at the top of all that peachy skin. Her hair fell around her face and shoulders in sumptuous waves, making him want nothing more than to bury his hands in it as he sank down into her body.
“I hate that you had to lie for me,” he said, growling the words. He smoothed his hand along the silky curve of her thigh. “I should make an honest woman of you.”
She caught his fingers, and held them still. “Do you really think you’re up to that?”
He chuckled with dark humor. “Oh, I’m more than up to it.”
Although her eyes were warm with interest, she gave him a dubious look. “You’ve been through a lot. Maybe we should talk about what happened. It might be a better idea for you to get some more rest.”
The last thing he wanted to do was talk about his problems, especially when Gabrielle was looking so tempting in his bed. His body was recovered from its earlier trial, and his sex came easily to life. As usual, whenever he was near her. Whenever he so much as thought of her.
“You tell me if I need more rest.”
Taking her hand in his, he guided her toward the hard ridge of his erection, which bulged against the zipper of his pants. She rubbed the aching bulk of his shaft, then rotated her wrist to cup him in her palm. He closed his eyes, losing himself to her touch and the warm perfume of her own arousal as she edged into his arms.
He kissed her, long and deep, a slow joining of their mouths. Lucan slipped his hands under the tee-shirt, letting his fingers travel up the silky skin of her back, then around to her ribs, and the delicious swell of her breasts. Her nipples pinched tight as he stroked them, little buds just begging to be suckled.
She arched into his hands, moaning. Her own fingers were working the button and fly at his waist. Unzipping his pants. Sliding in, then pulling his length into the hot palm of her hand.
“You are so dangerous,” he whispered against her mouth. “I like seeing you here, in my domain. I didn’t think I would. God knows, I shouldn’t.”
He gathered up the hem of the tee-shirt, drew it over her head, and tossed it aside so that he could gaze with open appreciation at her nude body. He swept aside her hair, and tenderly stroked the side of her neck with the backs of his knuckles.
“Am I really the first woman you’ve brought here?”
He smiled wryly, caressing her soft skin. “Who told you that? Savannah?”
“Is it true?”
He bent forward and took one of her rosy nipples into his mouth. Pressed her down beneath him with the weight of his body while he quickly shucked off his pants. His fangs began to stretch out from his gums, desire swiftly burning out of control, pumping through him in hot waves.
“You’re the only one,” he said thickly, giving her that honesty in return for the trust she had given him hours before.
Gabrielle would be the last female he’d bring here, too.
He couldn’t imagine having anyone else in his bed, now. He would never permit anyone into his heart again. Because he had to face some hard facts, here—that’s what he’d done. For all his careful control and years of self-imposed solitude, he had let his emotional guard slip, and Gabrielle had filled his void like no other ever could again.
“God, you are so soft,” he said, caressing her, trailing his fingers down her side and abdomen, to the delicate flare of her hip. He pressed a kiss to her lips. “So sweet.”
His hand traveled lower, between her thighs, coaxing her legs apart for his questing touch.
“So wet,” he murmured, plumbing her mouth with his tongue as his finger delved past her panties, into the slick folds of her cleft.
He penetrated her, just a tease at first, then deeper. She clutched at him, arching up as two more fingers entered her body, caressing the plush sheath that gripped him so fiercely. He broke their kiss and removed the lace that covered her sex. Then he inched down the length of her, pushing her legs apart and sinking down between them.
“So beautiful,” he rasped, mesmerized by the flushed perfection of her. He pressed his face against her, opening her to him with his fingers, tonguing her clit and the wet crevices that surrounded it. He brought her to a swift climax, relishing the hard tremors that rolled over her as she curled her fingers into his shoulders and cried out in release.
“God, you wreck me, woman. I can never get enough of you.”
He was so fevered to be inside of her, he hardly heard her little gasp as he came back up to cover her with his body. He registered the sudden stillness of her, but it was her voice that made him freeze above her.
“Lucan…your eyes…”
Instinctively, he turned his face away from her. Too late. He knew that she had glimpsed the hungered glow of his transformed gaze. It was the same feral look she had seen in him last night—or, rather, close enough that her human eyes would have difficulty telling the difference between blood hunger and the heated intensity of desire.
“Please,” she said gently. “Let me see you….”
Reluctantly, bracing himself over her on his fists, he brought his eyes back to hers. He saw the flicker of alarm but she didn’t flinch from him. She looked closely, studying him.
“I won’t harm you,” he said, his voice raspy and thick. He let her see his fangs as he spoke, unable to conceal any of his body’s reaction to her now. “This is need, Gabrielle. Desire. You do this to me. Sometimes just thinking about you—” He broke off, cursing low under his breath. “I don’t want to frighten you, but I can’t stop the change. Not when I want you so damned much.”
“And all the other times we’ve been together?” she whispered, frowning. “You’ve hidden this from me? You always shielded your face, kept your eyes averted, when we made love before?”
“I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you to see what I was.” He scoffed. “You’ve seen everything anyway.”
She slowly shook her head, her hands coming up to hold his face still. She looked at him deeply, taking in every part of him. Her eyes were moist, glittering, incredibly bright. Tender with affection, and all of it pouring out for him. “You are beautiful to me, Lucan. I will always want to see you. There’s nothing you ever need to hide from me.”
Her earnest declaration moved him. She held his wild gaze as she stroked his rigid jaw, her fingers tracing down to play across his parted lips. His fangs ached, elongating further as she explored his face with her tender touch.
As if to prove something to him—or maybe, to herself—she slipped her finger past his lips, into his mouth. Lucan groaned deep in his throat, a harsh, wordless snarl. His tongue pressed hungrily against her fingertip, his teeth grazing her skin with tender restraint as he closed his lips and sucked her deeper into his mouth.
He watched Gabrielle swallow hard. He smelled adrenaline jetting through her, mixing with the scent of her desire.
She was so damned beautiful, so soft and giving, so courageous in everything she did, he couldn’t help but feel awed by her.
“I trust you,” she told him, her dusky eyes darkening with passion as she slowly withdrew her finger from between his sharp teeth. “And I want you. Every part of you.”
It was more than he could take.
With an animal grunt of lust, he came down on her, positioning his pelvis between her thighs and spreading them wide with his knees. Her sex was slick and hot against the head of his cock, a welcome he couldn’t resist. With a deep thrust, he impaled her, sliding as deep as he could go. She took every last inch of him, her tight channel gripping him like a fist, bathing him in wondrous, wet heat. Lucan hissed sharply as the walls of her sex shuddered with his first slow withdrawal. He filled her again, hooking her knees over his arms so he could get even closer, delve ever deeper.
“Yes,” she coaxed him, moving with him in a tempo that was becoming anything but gentle. “God, Lucan. Yes.”
He knew his face was harsh with the force of his lust; he had likely never looked more beastly than at that moment, when his blood was running molten, summoning the part of him that was the curse of his father’s brutal lineage. He fucked her hard, trying to ignore the thrumming, rising need within him that called for something more than this immense pleasure.
His focus latched on to Gabrielle’s throat, where a strong vein pulsed beneath her delicate skin. His mouth watered feverishly, even as the pressure built in the base of his spine, signaling his coming release.
“Don’t stop,” she said without the slightest tremor in her voice. God help her, but she actually pulled him closer to her, holding his feral gaze as her warm fingers stroked his cheek. “Take as much of me as you need. Just…Oh, God…don’t stop.”
Lucan’s nostrils filled with the erotic scent of her, and the faintly copper tanginess of the blood that was coloring her breasts and flushing the pale skin of her neck and face. He roared in agony, fighting to deny himself—deny them both—the ecstasy that could be had only through a vampire’s kiss.
Wrenching his eyes away from her throat, Lucan drove into her body with renewed vigor, bringing her, and then himself, to a shattering climax.
But his release only abated one part of his need.
The other, deeper one remained, worsening with each strong pulse of Gabrielle’s heart.
“Damn it.” He rolled away from her on the bed, his voice raw and fevered.
“What’s wrong?” Gabrielle put her hand on his shoulder.
She moved closer to him, and he felt the plush warmth of her breasts crushing against his spine. Her pulse hammered audibly, vibrating through flesh and bone until it was all that he could hear. All that he knew.
“Lucan? Are you all right?”
“Goddamn it,” he growled, shrugging from under her light grasp on his shoulder. He threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, putting his head in his hands. His fingers trembled as he shoved them through his hair. Behind him, Gabrielle was silent; he turned and met her questioning gaze. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You feel too right, and I have to…I can’t get enough of you right now.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. I shouldn’t be with you like this, when I need…” You, his body answered. “Holy Christ, this is just no good.”
He turned away again, about to get up off the bed.
“Lucan, if you’re hungry…if you need blood…”
From behind him, she moved closer. Put her arm over his shoulder, her wrist hovering just under his chin.
“Jesus, don’t offer it to me.” Reflexively, he recoiled from her, like he would from poison. He got up, threw on his pants. Started pacing. “I’m not going to drink from you, Gabrielle.”
“Why not?” She sounded hurt, rightfully confused. “You obviously need it. And I’m the only human around at the moment, so I guess you’re stuck with me.”
“That’s not it.” He shook his head, eyes squeezed closed to force the feral part of him to heel. “I can’t do it. I won’t bind you to me.”
“What are you talking about? It’s okay to screw me, but the thought of taking my blood turns your stomach?” She gave a sharp laugh. “My God. I can’t believe I actually feel insulted over that.”
“This isn’t going to work,” he said, furious at himself for digging them into a deeper hole because of his own lack of control around her. “This isn’t going to come out right. I should have set things straight between us from the start.”
“If you have something to tell me, I wish you would. I know you have a problem, Lucan. Pretty hard to miss it, after seeing you last night.”
“That’s not it.” He cursed. “It’s part of it. I don’t want to hurt you. And by taking your blood, I will. Sooner or later, if you are bound to me in blood, I will hurt you.”
“Bound to you,” she said slowly. “How?”
“You bear the mark of a Breedmate, Gabrielle.” He gestured toward her left shoulder. “It’s there, just below your ear.”
She frowned, her hand drifting up to the precise place where the diminutive teardrop and crescent moon rested on her skin. “This? It’s a birthmark. I’ve had it ever since I can remember.”
“Every Breedmate has borne the same mark somewhere on her body. Savannah and the other females have it. My own mother as well. You all do.”
She had gone very still, now. Her voice was very small. “How long have you known this about me?”
“I saw it the first night I came to your apartment.”
“When you took my cell phone pictures?”
“After,” he said. “When I came back later, and you were sleeping in your bed.”
Understanding dawned in her expression, a mix of surprise and emotional violation. “You were there. I thought I had dreamed you.”
“You’ve never felt a part of the world you live in because it’s not your world, Gabrielle. Your photographs, the way you’re drawn to places that house vampires, your confusion over your feelings about blood and the compulsion to let it—these are all parts of who you truly are.”
He could see her struggling to accept what she was hearing, and he hated that he wasn’t able to make things easier. Might as well get everything out on the table and be done with it.
“One day, you’ll find a worthy male and take him as your mate. He will drink from you alone, and you from him. Blood will bind the two of you as one. It’s a sacred vow among our kind. One that I can’t give you.”
He might as well have slapped her from the look of injury on her pretty face. “You can’t…or you won’t?”
“Does it matter? I’m telling you that it’s not going to happen because I won’t permit it. If we share a blood bond, I will be drawn to you for as long as I have breath in my body and you in yours. You would never be free of me because the bond will compel me to seek you out wherever you run.”
“Why do you think I would run from you?”
He exhaled dryly. “Because, one day, this thing I’m fighting is going to get me, and I can’t bear the idea that you might be in my path when it does.”
“You’re talking about Bloodlust.”
“Yes,” he said, the first time he had ever truly acknowledged it, even to himself. All these years, he’d been able to hide it. Not from her. “Bloodlust is the greatest weakness of my kind. It is an addiction—a damnable plague. Once it has you in its grasp, few vampires are strong enough to escape it. They go Rogue, and then they are lost for good.”
“How does it happen?”
“It’s different for everyone. Sometimes, the disease moves in, little by little. The hunger grows, and so you feed it. You feed it whenever it calls, and one night you realize the need is never filled. For others, one careless indulgence can tip them past breaking.”
“And how is it for you?”
His smile grew tight, more a baring of his teeth and fangs. “I have the dubious honor of carrying my father’s blood in my veins. If the Rogues are beasts, they are nothing compared to the scourge that started our entire race. For Gen Ones, the temptation is always there, drumming harder in us than in any others. If you want to know the truth of it, I have been staving off Bloodlust since my first taste.”
“So, you have a problem, but you got through it last night.”
“I was able to hold it back, thanks in no small part to you, but each time it gets worse.”
“You can get through it again. We’ll get through it together.”
“You don’t know my history. I’ve already lost both of my brothers to the disease.”
“When?”
“A very long time ago.” He scowled, thinking back on a past he didn’t like to dredge up. But the words came quickly now, whether he wanted to relive them or not. “Evran, the middle born of us three, went Rogue soon after he reached adulthood. He was killed in combat, fighting for the wrong side in one of the old wars between the Breed and the Rogues. Marek was the eldest, and the most fearless. He and Tegan and I were part of the first cadre of Breed warriors to rise up against the last of the Ancients and their armies of Rogues. We formed the Order around the time of the great human plague in Europe. Less than a hundred years later, Bloodlust claimed Marek; he sought the sun to end his misery. Even Tegan had a close brush with the addiction long ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You’ve lost so much to it. And to this conflict with the Rogues. I can see why it terrifies you.”
He had a flippant reply perched at the tip of his tongue—some line of bullshit he wouldn’t hesitate to trot out for one of the other warriors if they were presumptuous enough to think him afraid of anything. But the dismissive retort stayed stuck in his throat as he looked at Gabrielle, knowing that better than anyone in all his long existence, she understood him best.
She knew him on a level no one else ever had, and part of him was going to miss that once the time came to send her away to the future that awaited her in the Darkhavens.
“I didn’t realize Tegan and you went back so far,” Gabrielle said.
“He and I go all the way back, to the beginning. We’re both Gen One, both sworn in our duty to defend our race.”
“You’re not friends, though.”
“Friends?” Lucan laughed, considering the centuries of animosity that simmered between the two of them. “Tegan doesn’t have friends. And if he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t count me among them.”
“Then why do you let him stay here?”
“He’s one of the best warriors I’ve ever known. His commitment to the Order goes deeper than any hatred he harbors for me. We share the belief that nothing is more important than protecting the future of the Breed.”
“Not even love?”
He couldn’t speak for a second, caught off guard by her frank question and unwilling to consider where it might lead. He had no experience with that particular emotion. The way his life was going currently, he didn’t want to get close to anything resembling it, either. “Love is for the males who choose to lead soft lives in the Darkhavens. Not for warriors.”
“Some of the others in this compound might argue that with you.”
He met her gaze with a level stare. “I’m not them.”
Her chin dropped at once, long lashes shuttering her eyes from his view. “So, what does all of this make me? Am I just a way of passing time for you between killing Rogues and trying to pretend you’ve got everything under control?” When she looked up, tears were swelling in her eyes. “Am I just some little toy that you turn to whenever you need to get off?”
“I haven’t heard you complain.”
Her breath caught, a tiny gasp snagging in her throat as she gaped at him, clearly appalled and having every right to be. Her expression fell, then hardened into something as brittle as glass. “Fuck you.”
Her contempt for him in that moment was understandable, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. He would never take such a verbal beating from anyone. Before now, no one had ever had the nerve to try him. Lucan, the aloof one, the stone-cold killer who tolerated weakness in no form whatsoever—least of all in himself.
For all the conditioning and discipline he had mastered in his centuries of living, here he stood, being torn wide open by the only woman he had been foolish enough to let get close to him. And he cared for her, too, far more than he should. Which made hurting her now seem all the more repugnant, regardless of the fact that last night made it clear to him that it was necessary he push her away. It was unavoidable, and he would only make it worse by trying to pretend she would ever fit into his way of life.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Gabrielle, and I know that I will.”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?” she whispered, a slight hitch in her voice. “You know, I believed you. God, I actually believed every lie you’ve fed me. Even that bullshit about wanting to help me find my true destiny. I really thought you cared.”
Lucan felt helpless, the coldest kind of bastard for letting things get so out of hand with her. He strode over to a bureau, took out a fresh shirt and put it on. Heading for the door that led to the hallway outside his private apartments, he paused to look back at Gabrielle.
He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to try to make things better somehow, but he knew that would be a mistake. One touch and he would have her in his arms again.
Then he might not be able to let her go.
He opened the door, about to walk out.
“You have found your destiny, Gabrielle. Just like I said you would. I never told you it would be with me.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
Lucan’s words—all the astonishing things he’d told her—were ringing in Gabrielle’s ears as she came out from under the steaming water in his bathroom shower. She cut the tap and toweled off, wishing the hot water could have melted away some of the hurt and confusion she felt. There was so much to deal with, not the least of which was that Lucan had no intention of being with her.
She tried to tell herself he hadn’t made any promises to begin with, but that only made her feel like a bigger fool. He had never asked her to put her heart under his boot heels; she’d done that all on her own.
Leaning in toward the mirror that ran the entire width of the bathroom suite, Gabrielle moved her hair back to have a closer look at the crimson-colored birthmark below her left ear. Or rather, the Breedmate mark, she corrected herself, peering at the little teardrop that appeared to be falling into the bowl of a crescent moon.
By some twisted sort of irony, she was connected to Lucan’s world by the tiny mark on her neck, and yet, it was also the very thing preventing her from being with him.
Maybe she was a complication he didn’t want or need, but it wasn’t like meeting him had made life a bowl of cherries for her, either.
Thanks to Lucan, she was involved in a bloody underworld war that made the worst inner city gangbangers look like playground bullies. She had all but abandoned one of the sweetest condos in Beacon Hill and would lose it altogether if she didn’t get back and get to work so she could pay her bills. Her friends had no idea where she was, and telling them now would probably only put them in danger of losing their lives.
To top it all off, she was half in love with the darkest, deadliest, most emotionally closed-off man she’d ever known.
Who just so happened to also be a bloodsucking vampire.
And, what the hell, since she was being honest, she wasn’t half in love with Lucan. She was full-on, flat-out, head-over-heels, never-going-to-get-over-this-one, in love with him.
“Way to go,” she told her miserable reflection. “Just frigging brilliant.”
Yet even after everything he’d said to her, she still wanted nothing more than to go to him wherever he was in the compound and wrap herself in his arms, the only place she’d ever found any kind of comfort.
Yeah, like she really needed to add public humiliation to the very personal one she was still trying to deal with. Lucan had made it pretty clear: whatever they had together—if they’d ever truly had anything beyond the physical—was over.
Gabrielle walked back into his bedroom and retrieved her clothes and shoes. She dressed quickly, wanting to be out of his personal quarters before he came back and she did something really stupid. Well, she amended, glancing at the mussed bedsheets still in disarray from their lovemaking, something even more stupid.
With the idea that she would look for Savannah and maybe try to find a phone line out of the compound, since Lucan hadn’t seen fit to return her cell, Gabrielle ducked out of his bedroom. The corridor was confusing, no doubt by design, and she had taken several wrong turns before she finally recognized her surroundings. She was near the training facility, judging by the sharp staccato crack of rounds hitting targets.
She cleared a corner and was stopped abruptly by an unyielding wall of leather and weapons standing in her path.
Gabrielle looked up, and up some more, and met with a chilling blast of menace coming at her from a narrowed green gaze. Those cool and calculating eyes locked onto her through a careless fall of tawny hair, like a jungle cat lurking behind golden reeds as it sized up its prey. She swallowed hard. A palpable danger radiated from the vampire’s large body and from within the depths of his unblinking predator’s eyes.
Tegan.
Her mind supplied the name of the unfamiliar male, the only one of the compound’s six warriors she hadn’t yet met.
The one with whom Lucan apparently shared a barely concealed contempt.
The vampire warrior didn’t move out of her way. He hardly reacted at all to her crashing into him, except for the slight quirk of his mouth as he stared down to where her breasts were mashed against the plane of hard muscle just below his chest. He was wearing about a dozen weapons, the threat reinforced by no less than two-hundred pounds of hard-hewn muscle.
She backed up, then sidestepped him just to be safe. “Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
He didn’t say a word, but she felt as if everything going on inside of her had been laid bare by him in an instant—in that split-second brush of contact when her body had collided with his. He stared down at her with a chilling, emotionless gaze, like he could see her from the inside out. Although he said nothing, expressed nothing, Gabrielle felt dissected.
She felt…invaded.
“Excuse me,” she whispered.
When she moved to step by him, Tegan’s voice stopped her.
“Hey.” His voice was softer than she expected, a deep, dark rasp. It was a peculiar contrast to the starkness of his gaze, which hadn’t moved even a fraction. “Do yourself a favor and don’t get too attached to Lucan. Odds are real good that vampire’s not gonna live much longer.”
He said it without a speck of emotion in his voice, just a flat statement of fact. The warrior walked past her, stirring the air of the corridor with an apathy that seeped, cold and disturbing, into Gabrielle’s bones.
When she turned to look after him, Tegan and his unsettling prediction were gone.
Lucan tested the heft of a sleek black 9mm in his hand, then raised the weapon and squeezed off a series of rounds into the target at the far end of the firing range.
Although it felt good to be back on familiar ground around the tools of his trade, his blood seething and ready for a decent fight, part of him kept straying back to his encounter with Gabrielle. Damn, but the woman had his head in knots. Despite everything he had said to push her away from him, he had to admit that he was in deep with her.
How long did he think he could carry on with her without falling? More to the point, how did he ever think he was going to handle the thought of letting her go? Of sending her away with the idea that she would be paired with someone else?
Things were getting too goddamned complicated.
He hissed a curse. Fired off another bunch of rounds, relishing the blast of hot metal and acrid smoke as his target’s chest exploded from the impact.
“What do you think?” Nikolai asked, his crisp wintry eyes glittering. “Sweet little piece, isn’t it? Responsive as hell, too.”
“Yeah. Feels good. I like it.” Lucan flipped on the safety and gave the new handgun another look. “Beretta 92FS converted to full auto with a drop-in unit? Nice work, man. Real nice.”
Niko grinned. “I haven’t even told you about the custom rounds that bad boy’s carrying. I tricked out some hollowpoint polycarbonate-tipped bullets. Took the shot out of the poly tips, added titanium powder in its place.”
“That ought to make a nasty mess when it hits a suckhead’s blood system,” Dante added from where he sat sharpening his blades on the edge of a weapons cabinet.
No doubt, the vampire was right about that. In the Old Times, the cleanest way to kill a Rogue was by separating its head from its body. That worked fine while swords were the weapon of choice, but modern technology brought new challenges for both sides.
It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the Breed discovered the uniquely corrosive effect of titanium on the overactive blood systems of Rogue vampires. Thanks to an allergy that was amplified by cellular mutations in their blood, Rogues reacted to titanium the way Alka-Seltzer reacted to water.
Niko took the weapon back from Lucan and pet it like a prize. “What you got here is one kickass Rogue blaster.”
“When can we test it out?” Rio asked.
“How about tonight?” Tegan strode in without making a sound, but his voice cut through the room like the growl of a coming storm.
“You talking about that location you scouted down by the harbor?” Dante asked.
Tegan nodded. “Probable lair, housing maybe a dozen individuals, give or take. I’m guessing they’re still green, just turned Rogue. Be no big thing to take them out.”
“Been a while since we cleaned house on a raid,” Rio drawled, his smile broad and eager. “Sounds like a party to me.”
Lucan passed the weapon back to Niko and gave the others a scowl. “Why the hell am I just hearing about this?”
Tegan slid a flat stare his direction. “You need to do a little catch-up, man. While you were holed up with your female all night, the rest of us were topside doing our jobs.”
“That’s a low blow,” Rio said. “Even for you, Tegan.”
Lucan considered the slam in measured silence. “No, he’s right. I should have been up there taking care of business. I had some things to handle back here. And now they’re handled. It’s not going to be an issue anymore.”
Tegan smirked. “Is that right? Because I gotta tell you, when I saw the Breedmate in the hall a few minutes ago, she was looking pretty upset. Felt like someone had torn the poor girl’s heart out. Felt to me like she needed someone to make things better for her.”
Lucan roared up on the vampire in a furious, black rage. “What did you say to her? Did you touch her? So help me, if you did anything to her—”
Tegan chuckled, genuinely amused. “Easy, man. No need to come off your chain about it. Your female’s none of my concern.”
“You remember that,” Lucan said. He whirled around to meet the curious gazes of the other warriors. “She’s no concern for any of you, are we clear? Gabrielle Maxwell is under my personal protection while she is in this compound. Once she leaves for the Darkhavens, she’ll no longer be my concern, either.”
It took him a minute to simmer down and not give in to the urge to go head-to-head with Tegan. One day, it was probably going to come to that. And Lucan couldn’t totally blame the male for holding a grudge. If Tegan was a mean-ass soulless bastard, Lucan was the one who helped make him that way.
“Can we get back to business now?” he snarled, daring someone to stoke him further. “I need to hear facts about this harbor location.”
Tegan launched into a description of what he’d observed about the likely Rogue lair, and offered his suggestions for how the group of them could go about raiding it. Although the source of this information bothered Lucan somewhat, he couldn’t think of a better way to cap off his black mood than with an offensive strike on their enemies.
God knew, if he ended up anywhere near Gabrielle again, all his tough talk about duty and doing what was right by her would be scattered like dust. It had been a couple of hours since he’d left her in his bedroom, and she was still foremost in his mind. Need for her still tore through him when he thought about her soft, warm skin.
And thinking about how he’d hurt her made a space like a cold pit open up in his chest. She had proven herself a true ally in covering for him with the other warriors. She had held him through his own bit of personal hell last night, standing by him, as tender and loving as any male could ever want in a cherished mate.
Dangerous thinking, no matter how he chose to look at it.
He let the discussion about the raid continue, agreeing that they needed to start hitting the Rogues where they lived, rather than picking them off individually as they ran across them in the street. “We’ll meet back in here at sundown to suit up and head out.”
The group of warriors began conversing amongst themselves as they dispersed, Tegan sauntering along at the rear.
Lucan considered the stoic loner, who took such damnable pride in the fact that he didn’t need anyone. Tegan willfully kept himself detached, isolated. But he hadn’t always been like that. Once, he’d been a golden boy, a born leader. He could have been great—had been, in fact. But all of that changed in the course of one terrible night. From there, a steep downward spiral began. Tegan hit bottom and had never recovered.
And although he had never admitted it to the warrior, Lucan would never forgive himself for the role he had played in that fall.
“Tegan. Hold up.”
The vampire paused with obvious reluctance. He didn’t turn around, just stood there in silence, his back held at an arrogant angle as the other warriors filed out of the training facility and into the corridor. When they were alone, Lucan cleared his throat and spoke to his Gen One brethren.
“You and I have a problem, Tegan.”
He exhaled sharply. “I’ll go alert the media.”
“This issue between us isn’t going to go away. It’s been too long, too much water over the dam. If you need to settle the score with me—”
“Forget it. It’s ancient history.”
“Not if we can’t bury it.”
Tegan scoffed, turning to look at him at last. “You got a point here, Lucan?”
“I just want to say that I think I’m starting to understand what it cost you. What I cost you.” Lucan slowly shook his head, ran a hand over his scalp. “T, you have to know that if there had been any other way…If things could’ve gone down differently…”
“Jesus Christ. Are you trying to apologize to me?” Tegan’s green eyes were hard enough to cut glass. “Spare me the concern, man. You’re about five-hundred years too late. And sorry doesn’t change a fucking thing, does it?”
Lucan clamped his jaws together, stunned to feel true anger rolling off the big male, instead of the usual cool apathy.
Tegan hadn’t forgiven him. Not even close.
After all this time, he didn’t think it likely that he ever would.
“No, T. You’re right. Sorry doesn’t change anything.”
Tegan stared at him for a long moment, then turned away and stalked out of the room.
Live music screamed out of refrigerator-sized amplifiers at the front of the private underground nightclub—although “music” was a generous description of the band’s pathetic caterwauling and discordant guitar riffs. The group moved robotically on the stage, slurring their words and dropping far more beats than they hit. In a word, they sucked.
But then, who could expect the humans to perform with any sort of expertise when they were playing before a crowd of bloodthirsty, feeding vampires?
From behind his concealing shades, the leader of the Rogues narrowed his eyes and scowled. He had a thrashing headache when he’d arrived a short while ago; now his temples felt as if they were about to explode. He leaned back against the cushions of his private booth, bored with the gory festivities. A slight lift of his hand brought one of his sentries jogging over. He waved dismissively toward the stage.
“Someone put them out of their misery. Not to mention mine.”
The guard nodded, then hissed in reply. He curled back his lips to reveal huge fangs protruding from a mouth that was already watering at the mere mention of more carnage. The Rogue loped off to carry out his orders.
“Good dog,” murmured his powerful Master.
He was glad for the sudden trill of his cell phone, and a reason to get up for some air. A new racket had begun on-stage, now, as the band came under the sudden assault of a pack of frenzied Rogues.
With the club erupting in full-on anarchy, the leader strode to a private backstage room, and took the ringing cell phone from his inside suitcoat pocket. He had expected to see the untraceable number of one of his many Minions, most of whom had been dispatched to gather information on Gabrielle Maxwell and her apparent involvement with the Breed.
But this was not one of them.
He could tell as much even before he flipped open the device and saw the blocked ID flashing on the display.
Intrigued, he picked up the call. The voice on the other end was not unfamiliar to him. He had done some illicit business with the individual recently and they still had a few things to discuss. At his prompting, the caller relayed details about a raid being hatched that very night on one of the smaller Rogue cells in the city.
In a matter of seconds, he was given everything he needed to make sure the raid turned in his favor—the location, the warriors’ intended method and route, their basic plan of attack—all on the condition that one member of the Breed be spared retaliation. This sole warrior was not to be exempt entirely, however, only wounded enough that he would never be able to fight again. The fate of the rest, including the nearly unstoppable Lucan Thorne, was for the Rogues to decide.
Lucan’s death had been part of their agreement once before, but execution of the task had not gone quite as planned. This time, the caller wanted assurances that the deed would, in fact, be carried out. Even went so far as to remind him that he had been given considerable compensation for the act, but had yet to make good on his part.
“I am well aware of our bargain,” he seethed into the cell phone. “Do not tempt me to demand further payment from you. I promise you will regret it.”
He snapped the device shut on a black curse, cutting short the politic backpedaling that had begun on the heels of his threat.
The dermaglyphs at his wrist pulsed with the deep hue of his rage, colors shifting within the pattern of other markings that had been tattooed on his skin as a form of disguise. He scowled at the need to hide his lineage—his birthright—with crude ink and secrecy. He loathed the necessity of his shadowy existence, almost as much as he did all those who stood in the way of his goals.
He was fuming as he stalked back inside the main area of the club. Through the dark, his gaze lit at once on his lieutenant, the only Rogue in recent history to have looked Lucan Thorne in the eyes and lived to tell about it. He gestured for the huge male to come over, then gave him orders for carrying out the night’s fun and games.
Regardless of his secret negotiations, when the smoke cleared tonight, he wanted Lucan and all of the other warriors with him to be dead.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
He avoided her the rest of the day, which Gabrielle figured was probably just as well. Now, just past dusk, Lucan and the five other warriors strode out of the training facility as a unit, each of them a picture of menace in black leather and deadly weaponry. Even Gideon was joining in tonight’s raid, going out in place of Conlan.
Waiting in the corridor to see them off, Savannah and Eva went to their mates and took them in long embraces. Soft, private words were exchanged in low, loving voices. Tender kisses spoke of a woman’s fear and a man’s strong reassurances that he would return safely to her.
Gabrielle stood some distance away in the hall, feeling so much an outsider as she watched Lucan say something to Savannah. The Breedmate nodded and he put a small object in her hand, his gaze trailing past her shoulder to light on Gabrielle. He said nothing, made no move to approach her, but his eyes lingered, drinking her in across the wide space that separated them now.
And then he was gone.
Striding ahead of the others, Lucan turned a corner at the far end of the corridor and disappeared. The rest of his cadre followed, leaving nothing but the hard clip of boot heels and the metallic jangle of steel in their wake.
“You okay?” Savannah asked, coming up to Gabrielle and wrapping a gentle arm around her shoulders.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“He wanted me to give you this.” She held out Gabrielle’s cell phone. “A peace offering of some sort?”
Gabrielle took it, nodding her head in agreement. “Things aren’t going well between us right now.”
“I’m sorry. Lucan said he trusts you’ll understand you can’t leave the compound, or tell your friends where you are. But if you need to call them…”
“Thank you.” She looked up at Gideon’s mate and managed a small smile.
“If you want some privacy, just make yourself at home anywhere you like.” Savannah hugged her briefly, then glanced to Eva as the other woman came over to join them.
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Eva said, her beautiful face drawn with worry, “but I could use a drink. Or three.”
“Maybe we all could use a little wine and company,” Savannah replied. “Gabrielle, you come join us when you’re ready. We’ll be in my place.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The two women moved off together, speaking quietly, their arms linked as they walked up the snaking corridor toward Savannah’s and Gideon’s apartments. Gabrielle wandered in the other direction, not sure where she wanted to be.
That wasn’t actually true. She wanted to be with Lucan, in his arms, but she’d better get over that desperate wish, and quick. She wasn’t about to beg him to want her, and assuming he made it back from tonight’s raid in one piece, she had better prepare herself to put him out of her mind completely.
She strolled toward an open door down one quiet, dimly lit spoke of the hallway. A candle burned somewhere inside the empty chamber, the only light in the place. The solitude, and the smells of faded incense and old wood drew her in. It was the compound’s chapel; she remembered passing it on her tour with Savannah.
Gabrielle walked between two rows of bench seats, toward a raised pedestal at the front of the chamber. It was there that the candle burned, a thick red pillar of slow-melting wax, its flame nestled deep in the core radiating a soft crimson glow. She sat down on one of the front row benches and simply breathed for a while, letting the peace of the sanctuary wash over her.
She flipped open her cell phone. The message symbol was blinking. Gabrielle hit the voicemail button and listened to the first call. It was from Megan, time stamped two days ago, around the same time she’d been calling Gabrielle’s apartment following the Minion attack in the park.
“Gabby, it’s me again. I’ve left a bunch of messages for you at home, but you haven’t called me back. Where are you? I’m really getting worried! I don’t think you should be alone after what happened. Call me back as soon as you get this—and I mean the very second you get this, okay?”
Gabrielle erased it and moved on to the next message, left last night at 11 P.M. Kendra’s voice came on, sounding a little tired.
“Hey, there. You home? Pick up if you are. Shit, I guess it’s kinda late—sorry about that. You’re probably sleeping. So, I’ve been meaning to call you guys, try to hook up for drinks or something, maybe hit another club? How about tomorrow night? Call me.”
Well, at least Kendra was safe as of a few hours ago. That took away some of Gabrielle’s concern. But there was still the matter of the guy she’d been seeing. The Rogue, Gabrielle amended, feeling a shiver of fear for her friend’s unwitting proximity to the same danger that was currently dogging her own heels.
She skipped to the last message. Megan again, from just a couple of hours ago.
“Hi, sweetie. Just checking in. Are you ever going to call me and tell me how it went at the station the other night? I’m sure your detective was glad to see you, but you know I’m dying to hear in detail just how glad he was.”
Megan’s voice was calm and teasing, perfectly normal. Completely changed from the panic of her earlier messages at Gabrielle’s home and on the cell.
God, that’s right.
Because to her, and to her cop boyfriend as well, there was no reason to be alarmed about anything since Lucan had wiped their memories.
“Anyway, I’m meeting Jamie for dinner tonight at Ciao Bella—your favorite. If you can make it, swing by. We’ll be there at seven. Save you a seat.”
Gabrielle clicked erase and checked the clock on the cell phone: 7:20.
She owed it to her friends to at least call and let them know she was all right. And part of her longed to hear their voices, her only connection to the life she knew before Lucan Thorne turned her entire world upside down. She speed-dialed Megan’s cell and waited anxiously as it rang. Muffled talking came over the receiver in the second before her friend said hello.
“Hi, Meg.”
“Oh, hey—there you are! Jamie, it’s Gabby!”
“Where is that girl? She coming, or what?”
“I don’t know yet. Gabby, are you gonna join us?”
Gabrielle listened to the familiar chaos of her friends’ chatter and wished she could be there. She wished she could go back to the way things were, before…
“I, ah…I can’t. Something’s come up, and I…”
“She’s busy,” Megan told Jamie. “Where are you, anyway? Kendra called me looking for you today. She said she went by your apartment but it didn’t look like you were home.”
“Kendra stopped by? Have you seen her?”
“No, but she wants to get together with all of us. Sounds like she’s done with that guy from the club.”
“Brent,” Jamie supplied loudly and dramatically over Megan’s voice.
“They broke up?”
“I don’t know,” Megan replied. “I asked her how it was going and she just said she’s not seeing him anymore.”
“Good,” Gabrielle said, so very relieved. “That’s really good news.”
“So, what about you? What’s so important that you can’t come out for dinner tonight?”
Gabrielle frowned, staring at her surroundings. The red candle’s flame wobbled as the air in the chapel stirred slightly. She heard soft footsteps, then a quietly indrawn breath as whomever walked in realized the chamber was occupied. Gabrielle turned and saw a tall blond in the open doorway. The woman gave Gabrielle an apologetic look, then started to turn away.
“I’m, ah…out of town right now,” she told her friends in a hushed voice. “I might be gone for a few days. Maybe longer.”
“Doing what?”
“Um, I’m on a commission job,” Gabrielle lied, hating to do it, but seeing no other choice. “I’ll give you guys a call as soon as I can. Take care of each other. I love you.”
“Gabrielle—”
She clicked off the call before she was forced to say anything more.
“I’m sorry,” the blond woman said as Gabrielle came toward her. “I didn’t realize the chapel was in use.”
“It’s not. Please stay. I was just…” Gabrielle released a pent-up sigh. “I just lied to my friends.”
“Oh.” Gentle pale blue eyes settled sympathetically on her.
Gabrielle closed the phone and smoothed her finger over the polished silver case. “I left my apartment in a rush the other night to come here with Lucan. None of my friends know where I am, or why I had to leave.”
“I see. Maybe one day you can explain everything to them.”
“I hope so. I just don’t want to put them in danger by telling them the truth.”
The halo of long, golden hair shifted as the woman nodded with understanding. “You must be Gabrielle? Savannah told me that Lucan had brought a female here under his protection. I’m Danika. I am—I was—Conlan’s mate.”
Gabrielle accepted the slender hand Danika offered in greeting. “I’m very sorry about your loss.”
Danika smiled, sadness swimming in her eyes. When she withdrew her hand from Gabrielle’s grasp, it moved absently to cradle the nearly imperceptible swell of her abdomen. “I’ve been meaning to come and find you to say welcome, but I fear I’m not the best company right now. I haven’t much had the desire to leave my quarters these past few days. It’s still very hard for me, trying to make this…adjustment. Everything is so different now.”
“Of course.”
“Lucan and the other warriors have been very generous to me. On their own, they’ve each sworn their protection if I should ever need it, wherever I am. For me, and my child.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Fourteen weeks. I’d hoped this would be the first of many sons for Conlan and me. We were so excited about our future. We’d waited a long time to start our family.”
“Why did you wait?” Gabrielle winced as soon as the question left her lips. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. I’m sure it’s none of my business.”
Danika dismissively clucked her tongue. “There’s no need to apologize. I don’t mind your questions, truly. It’s good for me to talk about my Conlan. Come, let’s sit awhile,” she said, walking with Gabrielle to one of the chapel’s long benches.
“I met Conlan when I was just a girl. My village in Denmark had been sacked by invaders, so we thought. It was actually a band of Rogues. They killed nearly everyone, slaughtered women and children, our village elders. No one was safe. A group of Breed warriors arrived in the middle of the attack. Conlan was one of them. They rescued as many of my people as they could. When my mark was discovered, I was taken into the nearest Darkhaven. It was there I learned all about the vampire nation and my place within it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my savior. As fate would have it, a few years later, Conlan came through the area again. I was so excited to see him. Imagine my shock to discover that he’d never forgotten about me, either.”
“How long ago was this?”
Danika hardly paused to calculate the time. “Conlan and I shared four hundred and two years together.”
“My God,” Gabrielle whispered. “So long…”
“It passed in a blink, if you want to know the truth of it. I won’t lie and tell you that it was always easy being the mate of a warrior, but I wouldn’t have traded a single moment. Conlan believed totally in what he was doing. He wanted a safer world, for me, and for our children to come.”
“And so you waited all this time to conceive?”
“We wouldn’t start our family so long as Conlan felt he needed to remain with the Order. The front lines are not the best place for children, which is why you don’t see families among the warrior class. The dangers are too great, and our mates need to be able to focus solely on their missions.”
“Don’t accidents happen?”
“Unplanned pregnancies are all but unheard of among the Breed, because it takes something more sacred than simple sex for us to conceive. The fertile time for blood-bonded Breedmates revolves around the crescent moon. During this crucial period, if we wish to create a child, our bodies must have both our mate’s seed and his blood flowing within us. It is a sacred ritual that no mated pair goes into lightly.”
The very image of sharing this profoundly intimate act with Lucan made Gabrielle warm deep inside her core. The thought of bonding in that way with anyone else, growing large with anyone’s child but Lucan’s was a prospect she refused to consider. She would rather be alone, and likely would be.
“What will you do now?” she asked, filling the quiet that made her imagine her own lonely future.
“I’m not sure yet,” Danika replied. “I do know that I will never bond to another male.”
“Don’t you need a mate in order to stay young?”
“Conlan was my mate. With him gone, one lifetime will be long enough. If I refuse to bond in blood with another male, I will simply age normally from now on, like I did before I met Conlan. I will simply be…mortal.”
“You’ll die,” Gabrielle said.
Danika’s smile was resolved, but not entirely sad. “Eventually.”
“Where will you go?”
“Conlan and I had been planning to retreat to one of the Darkhavens in Denmark, where I was born. He wanted that for me, but now I think I would rather raise his son in Scotland instead, so that our child can know something of his father through the land he loved so much. Lucan has already begun making arrangements for me, so that I can go whenever I decide that I’m ready.”
“That was kind of him.”
“Very kind. I couldn’t believe it when he came to find me and give me the news, along with his pledge that my child and I would always have a direct line to him and the rest of the Order if we ever need anything. It was the day of the funeral, just hours afterward, so his burns were still extremely severe. Yet he was more concerned about my welfare.”
“Lucan was burned?” Alarm snaked into her heart. “When, and how?”
“Just three days ago, when he carried out the funeral ritual for Conlan.” Danika’s fine brows lifted. “You don’t know? No, of course, you wouldn’t. Lucan would never mention a word of his act of honor, or the damage he suffered in doing it. You see, the Breed’s funeral tradition calls for one vampire to carry the body of the fallen to be received by the elements outside,” she said, gesturing to a shadowed corner of the chapel, where a dark stairwell was located. “It’s a duty of great respect, and of sacrifice, because once topside, the vampire who attends his brethren must remain with him for eight minutes as the sun rises.”
Gabrielle frowned. “But I thought their skin couldn’t tolerate solar rays.”
“No, it can’t. They burn severely and quickly, but none so much as the vampires who are first generation. The oldest of the Breed suffer the worst, even under the briefest exposure.”
“Like Lucan,” Gabrielle said.
Danika gave a solemn nod. “For him, the eight minutes of dawn must have been beyond bearing. But he did it. For Conlan, he willingly let his flesh burn. He might even have died up there, but he would let no one else carry the burden of laying my beloved Conlan to rest.”
Gabrielle thought back to the urgent phone call that had taken Lucan out of her bed in the middle of the night. He’d never said what it was about. Never shared any of his loss with her.
Pain twisted in her stomach when she thought of what he had endured by Danika’s description. “I spoke to him—that very day, in fact. From his voice, I knew something was wrong, but he denied it. He sounded so tired, beyond exhausted. You’re telling me that he was suffering from extensive ultraviolet burns?”
“Yes, he was. Savannah told me that Gideon found him not long afterward. Lucan was blistered from head to toe. He couldn’t open his eyes for the pain and swelling, but he refused any help in getting back to his quarters so that he could heal.”
“My God,” Gabrielle gasped, astonished. “He never told me, not any of this. When I saw him later that night—just hours later—he seemed perfectly normal. Well, what I mean is, he looked and acted like nothing was wrong with him.”
“Lucan’s nearly pure bloodlines made him suffer the most, but they also helped him heal more quickly from the burns. Even then, it wasn’t easy for him; he would have required a great deal of blood to replenish his system after so much trauma. By the time he was well enough to leave the compound to hunt, he would have been practically ravenous with hunger.”
And he had been. Gabrielle understood now. The memory of him feeding from the Minion he’d killed flashed through her mind, but it had a different context now, no longer the monstrous act it had appeared on the surface, but a means of survival. Everything was taking on a different context since she’d met Lucan.
In the beginning, she would have considered the war between the Breed and their enemies to be nothing more than one evil versus another, but now she couldn’t help feeling that it was her war, too. She had a stake in its outcome, and not just because her future was apparently linked to this strange otherworld. It was important to her that Lucan won not only the war against the Rogues, but also the equally devastating, very personal war he was struggling with in private.
She worried for him, and couldn’t dismiss the niggling fear that had been crawling up her spine since he and the other warriors left the compound for the raid.
“You love him very much, don’t you?” Danika asked as Gabrielle’s anxious silence stretched between them.
“I do, yes.” She met the other woman’s gaze, seeing no reason to hide the truth when it was probably written all over her face. “Can I tell you something, Danika? I have this awful feeling about what he’s doing tonight. And to make it worse, Tegan said he didn’t think Lucan was going to be alive much longer. The longer I sit here, the more afraid I am that Tegan might be right.”
Danika frowned. “You spoke with Tegan?”
“I ran into him—literally—a short while ago. He told me not to get too attached to Lucan.”
“Because he thought Lucan was going to die?” Danika let out a long breath and shook her head. “That one seems to enjoy putting others on edge. He probably said those things only because he knew it would upset you.”
“Lucan has said there is some bad blood between them. Do you think Tegan can be trusted?”
The blond Breedmate seemed to consider it for a moment. “I can tell you that loyalty is a large part of the warriors’ code. It means everything to these males, down to a one. Nothing in this world could make them violate that sacred trust.” She rose now, and took Gabrielle’s hand in hers. “Come on. Let’s go find Eva and Savannah. The wait will pass more quickly for all of us if we don’t spend it alone.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
From their observation point on the roof of one of the harbor buildings, Lucan and the other warriors watched as a small pickup truck, spitting gravel under its polished chrome wheels, roared up to the front of their target location. The driver was human. If his sweaty, slightly anxious scent didn’t announce him, the country music blaring out of his open window surely would. He got out of the vehicle carrying a stuffed brown-paper bag that reeked of steaming fried rice and pork lo mein.
“Looks like our boys are eating in tonight,” Dante drawled, while the unsuspecting delivery man checked the flapping white ticket stapled onto his order and looked around the desolated wharf with dawning wariness.
The driver approached the warehouse’s entry door, shot another nervous look around, then swore into the darkness and jabbed the buzzer. There were no lights on inside the building, only a pool of yellow shining down from the bare bulb over the door. The battered steel panel opened, revealing the dark behind it. Lucan could see the feral eyes of a Rogue staring out as the delivery man blurted the take-out order total and thrust the bag into the wedge of blackness in front of him.
“Whaddaya mean, trade for it?” the urban cowboy demanded in a thick Boston accent. “What the hell—”
A large hand seized him by the front of his shirt, jerking him off his feet. He screamed, and in his flailing panic somehow managed to rip away from the Rogue’s grasp.
“Oops,” Niko hissed from his position near the ledge, “guess he just realized it wasn’t Chinese on the menu.”
The Rogue flew at the human in a blur of shadows, taking him down from behind, tearing open his throat with savage efficiency. Death was bloody and instantaneous. When the Rogue leaped up and began to heft its kill onto its shoulder to drag it inside, Lucan got to his feet.
“Time to move. Let’s go.”
In concert, the warriors hit the ground and headed at blinding speed for the Rogues’ warehouse lair. Lucan, leading the way, was first to reach the vampire and his lifeless human burden. He slapped a hard hand onto the Rogue’s shoulder and spun him around, at the same time drawing one of his slayers’ blades from a sheath at his hip. He sliced hard and with unerring aim and severed the beast’s head in one clean stroke.
The Rogue immediately began a cellular meltdown, dropping its blood-soaked victim onto the gravel as the kiss of Lucan’s blade ran like acid through the vampire’s corrupted nervous system. A few seconds later, all that remained of the Rogue was a puddle of putrid blackness seeping into the dirt.
Up ahead at the door, Dante, Tegan, and the three other warriors were locked and loaded, braced to start the real action. On Lucan’s “go,” the six of them poured into the warehouse with weapons at the ready.
The Rogues inside had no idea what had hit them until Tegan let a dagger fly and nailed one through the throat. As the Rogue shrieked and writhed toward a smoldering disintegration, its enraged companions lunged for cover, grabbing up weapons as they scrambled to evade the barrage of bullets and razor-sharp steel that Lucan and his brethren were now raining down upon them.
Two Rogues bit it in the first few seconds of engagement, but the remaining pair had fled deep into the warehouse’s gloomy corners. One of the Rogues blasted gunfire at Lucan and Dante from behind an old pile of crates. The warriors dodged the attack and sent a little love back at the Rogue, driving him out into the open where Lucan finished him off.
At his periphery, Lucan spotted the last of the suckheads trying to make an escape through a maze of tumbled storage barrels and scattered metal pipes in the rear of the building.
Tegan hadn’t missed it, either. The vampire went after the fleeing Rogue like a freight train, vanishing into the bowels of the warehouse in deadly pursuit.
“We’re clear,” Gideon shouted from somewhere in the smoke- and dust-filled darkness.
But no sooner had he said it than Lucan sensed a new threat closing in on them. His ears picked up the quiet scramble of movement overhead. The dingy skylights above the exposed ventilation ducts and steel trusses of the warehouse were nearly opaque with grime, but Lucan was sure that something was advancing across the roof.
“Heads up!” he called to the others just as the ceiling shattered, and seven more Rogues dropped down with weapons blazing.
Where had they come from? The intel on the lair was solid: six individuals, probably turned Rogue only recently, and operating independently, without affiliation. So, who had called in the cavalry to back them up? How did they know about the raid?
“Fucking ambush,” Dante growled, voicing Lucan’s thoughts aloud.
No way in hell this fresh wave of trouble was coming in purely by chance, and as Lucan’s gaze settled on the largest of the Rogues coming at them now, he felt black fury rise to a boil in his gut.
It was the vampire who had eluded him the night of the slaying outside the dance club. The bastard out of the West Coast. The Rogue who might have killed Gabrielle, and might yet one day soon if Lucan didn’t take him out right now.
While Dante and the others returned fire on the descending group of Rogues, Lucan gunned for that one target alone.
Tonight, he would finish it.
The suckhead hissed as he approached, the hideous face stretching into a grin. “We meet again, Lucan Thorne.”
Lucan gave a grim nod. “For the last time.”
Shared hatred made both males discard their guns in favor of more personal combat. In a flash, blades were drawn, one in each hand, as the two vampires prepared to battle to the death. Lucan threw the first strike. And took a vicious slice in his shoulder as the Rogue evaded the blow with stealth speed, having moved in a blink and appearing on the other side of him now, jaws open in triumph at the spilling of first blood.
Lucan leaped around with equal agility, his blades slashing whisper close to the Rogue’s big head. The suckhead glanced down to where his right ear now lay, severed at his feet.
“Game on, asshole,” Lucan snarled.
With a vengeance.
They flew at each other in a swirl of rage and muscle and cold, deadly steel. Lucan was aware of the battle taking place around him, the other warriors holding their own against the second round of warfare. But his main focus—all of his hatred—was centered on his personal grudge with the Rogue in front of him.
He felt his fangs stretch with the force of his anger, his pupils sharpening, until he knew that there could be little difference between his face and the one snarling back at him. They were equally matched in strength, but Lucan’s blood burned hotter than his opponent’s.
All Lucan had to do was think of Gabrielle, and of the terror this beast would inflict on her, and he was on fire with rage.
He fed that fury, driving the Rogue back with blow after relentless blow. He didn’t feel the strikes he took on his own body, though there had been many. He forced his opponent down. Readied himself to deliver the final, killing blow.
With a roar, he sliced deep into the neck of the Rogue, liberating the huge head from its savaged body. Arms and legs spasmed as the vampire collapsed in a convulsing heap on the floor. Lucan’s fury was still hammering hard in his veins; he flipped his blade over in his hand and drove it hard into the suckhead’s chest, speeding the disintegration of the corpse.
“Holy hell,” Rio said from somewhere nearby, his voice wooden. “Lucan—above you, man! Got another one in the rafters!”
It happened in an instant.
Lucan wheeled around, battle fury tearing through every muscle in his body. He threw a glance up to where Rio had indicated. High above his head, another Rogue vampire was crawling through the trusses of the warehouse ceiling, holding something that looked like a small metal football under his arm. A small red light on the device blinked quickly, then began a steady burn.
“Get down!” Nikolai raised his customized Beretta and took aim. “Dude’s about to drop a fucking bomb!”
Lucan heard the sudden blast of the gunshot.
Saw the Rogue take Niko’s slug right between its glowing yellow eyes.
But the bomb was already airborne.
Half a second later, it blew.
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
Gabrielle sat up with a start, jolted out of a fitful doze on the sofa in Savannah’s living room. The women had been gathered there for the past few hours—taking comfort in one another’s company—with the exception of Eva, who sometime ago had gone to the chapel to pray. The Breedmate had been edgier than the rest of them, spending the good part of the evening pacing and chewing her lip with anxious impatience.
From somewhere above the labyrinth of corridors and rooms, muted sounds of movement and clipped male voices carried down into the living room. The muffled hum of the elevator vibrated the thick air as the vehicle began its descent to the main floor of the compound.
Oh, God.
Something was wrong.
She could feel it.
“Lucan.”
Gabrielle pushed aside the chenille throw that covered her and swiveled to put her feet on the floor. Her heart was racing, squeezing tight in her breast with every frantic beat.
“I don’t like the sound of this, either,” Savannah said, sliding a tense look around the room.
Gabrielle, Savannah, and Danika poured out of the apartment to greet the warriors, none of them saying a word, hardly breathing as they hurried toward the arriving elevator.
Even before the steel door slid open, it was apparent from the urgent sounds within that bad news was coming.
Just how bad, Gabrielle had not been prepared for.
The stench of smoke and blood hit her nose like a physical blow. She winced at the foul odor of war and death as she strained to get a clear picture of the situation in the elevator car. None of the warriors were coming out. Two were down on the floor of the car, three others were crouched around them.
“Get some clean towels and blankets!” Gideon shouted to Savannah. “Bring as many as you can, baby!” As she sprang into action, he added, “We’re gonna need some wheels, too. There’s a gurney in the infirmary.”
“On it,” Niko answered from within the elevator.
He leaped over one of the two ravaged forms lying supine on the floor. As he passed, Gabrielle saw that his face and hair and hands were black with soot. The warrior’s clothing was torn, his skin peppered with easily hundreds of bleeding abrasions. Gideon bore similar contusions. Dante, too.
But their wounds were nothing compared to the massive injuries sustained by the two Breed warriors who had been carried, unconscious, off the streets by their brethren.
Gabrielle knew from the leaden weight in her heart that one of them was Lucan. She crept forward, and caught her breath to see her fears realized.
Blood pooled beneath him, spilling wine-dark out onto the white marble of the corridor. His boots and leathers were shredded, as was most of the skin on his arms and legs. His face was an ugly mess of soot and crimson cuts. But he was alive. He curled back his lips and hissed through extended fangs when Gideon had to move him in order to apply a makeshift tourniquet to stanch a gash on his arm.
“Shit—I’m sorry, Lucan. It’s pretty deep. Jesus, it won’t stop bleeding, either.”
“Help…Rio.” The words came out in a dark growl, a direct command, even though he was lying flat on his back. “I’m good”—he broke off with a pained snarl—“Damn it…want you to…look after…him.”
Gabrielle kneeled down beside Gideon. She held out her hand to take the end of the binding from him. “I can do that.”
“You sure? It’s ugly. You really gotta get your hands right in there to pull it tight.”
“I’ve got it.” She nodded toward Rio, who lay nearby. “Do as he says.”
The injured warrior on the floor beside Lucan was plainly in agony. He, too, was bleeding profusely from torso wounds and horrific damage to his left arm. The mangled limb was wrapped in a blood-soaked rag that might have been a shirt. His face and chest were burned and lacerated beyond recognition. He started moaning, low in his throat, a piteous sound that brought hot tears to Gabrielle’s eyes.
When she blinked them away, she found Lucan’s pale gray eyes locked on her. “Nailed…the bastard.”
“Shh.” She smoothed sweat-dampened strands from his battered brow. “Lucan, just be still. Don’t try to talk.”
He ignored her, though, swallowing on a dry throat and then pushing the words out. “From the nightclub…son of a bitch was there tonight.”
“The one who got away from you?”
“Not this time.” He blinked slowly, his look as fierce as it was stark. “Can’t ever…hurt you now…”
“Yeah,” Gideon drolly piped from where he was working on Rio. “And you’re damn lucky to be alive for it, hero.”
Gabrielle’s throat constricted further as she gazed down at him. For all his protestations that his duty came first and that there never could be a place for her in his life, Lucan had been thinking of her tonight? He was bleeding and injured, partly because of something he did for her?
She picked up his hand and held it to her, cradling the part of him that she could, pressing his bent fingers close against her heart. “Oh, Lucan…”
Savannah ran up with an armful of the requested supplies. Niko followed closely behind, pushing the rolling hospital bed ahead of him.
“Lucan first,” Gideon told them. “Get him into a bed, then come back for Rio.”
“No.” Lucan groaned, a sound of determination more than pain. “Help me up.”
“I don’t think you sh—” Gabrielle said, but he was already trying to raise himself up from the floor.
“Easy, big guy.” Dante stepped in, putting a strong hand under Lucan’s arm. “You got laid pretty low out there. Why don’t you take a breather, let us wheel you down to the infirmary.”
“Said I’m good.” With Gabrielle and Dante each holding a hand, Lucan hoisted himself to a sitting position. He panted a bit, but remained upright. “Took a few hits, but damn it…gonna walk to my own bed. Not letting you…drag me there.”
Dante glanced at Gabrielle and rolled his eyes. “You know he’s thickheaded enough to mean it.”
“Yeah. I know he is.”
She smiled, grateful for the stubbornness that kept him strong. Lending the support of her body, she and Dante put their shoulders under his arms and held on to him as Lucan began a slow crawl up to his feet.
“Over here,” Gideon told Niko, who moved the gurney into position for Rio, while Savannah and Danika did what they could to stanch his wounds, remove his soiled, tattered clothing and the unneeded bulk of his weapons.
“Rio?” Eva’s voice was pitched high as she ran into the chaos, her rosary beads still clutched in her hand. She came up on the open elevator and instantly shrank back, choking on her breath. “Rio! Where is he?”
“He’s hanging in there, Eva,” Niko said, moving away from the loaded gurney to intercept Eva. He steered her away with firm hands before she could get too close to the carnage. “There was an explosion tonight. He took the worst hit.”
“No!” Her hands came up to her face in horror. “No, you’re wrong. That’s not my Rio! It can’t be!”
“He’s alive, Eva. But you’re going to have to be strong for him.”
“No!” She started screaming in wild hysteria, trying to force her way near her mate. “Not my Rio! God, no!”
Savannah came around and took Eva under her arm. “Come away now,” she said gently. “They know how to help him.”
Eva’s broken sobs filled the corridor and pierced Gabrielle with a private anguish that was a mix of relief and stone-cold fear. She worried for Rio, and it shattered her heart to think what Eva must be feeling. Gabrielle knew some of that hurt herself because it could have been Lucan in Rio’s place. A few bare millimeters—mere fractions of a second—might have been all that determined which of the two warriors would be lying in a deepening pool of blood, fighting for his life.
“Where’s Tegan?” Gideon asked, keeping his attention rooted on his own fast-moving fingers as he continued to inspect and treat the fallen warrior under his care. “Has he come back yet?”
Danika shook her head, but shot an anxious glance at Gabrielle. “Why would he be here? Wasn’t he with all of you?”
“We lost track of him soon after we hit the Rogue lair,” Dante put in. “Once the explosion went off, our main goal was getting Lucan and Rio back to the compound as quickly as possible.”
“Let’s roll here,” Gideon said, taking the head of Rio’s gurney. “Niko, help me get this thing moving.”
Questions about Tegan were eclipsed as everyone scrambled to do what they could for Rio. They all made their way down to the infirmary, Gabrielle, Dante, and Lucan moving the slowest along the corridor as Lucan swayed on his feet, holding fast to both of them and working to keep himself steady.
Gabrielle braved a glance at him, wanting so badly to caress his bruised and bleeding face. As she looked at him, heart twisting, his dark lashes flicked up, and he met her eyes. She didn’t know what passed between them in that prolonged instant of quiet amid the chaos, but it felt warm and right, despite everything that was terrible about the night’s events.
When they reached the room where Rio was being tended to, Eva stood at the side of the gurney, hovering over his broken body. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she moaned. “It shouldn’t have been my Rio. Not like this.”
“We’ll do everything we can for him,” Lucan said, his breath rasping heavily from his own injuries. “I promise you, Eva. We won’t let him die.”
She shook her head, staring down at her mate on the bed. As she pet his hair, Rio murmured incoherent words, semiconscious, and in obvious pain. “I want him out of here at once. He should be taken to the Darkhavens. He needs medical care.”
“He’s not stable enough to be moved from the compound,” Gideon told her. “I have the training and the equipment to treat him here for now.”
“I want him out of here!” Her head snapped up, her glittering gaze flitting from one warrior to another. “He’s no good to any of you now, so let me have him. You don’t own him anymore—none of you. He is all mine now! I only want what is best for him!”
Gabrielle felt Lucan’s arm tense at the hysterical outburst. “Then you need to stay out of Gideon’s way, and let him work,” he said, slipping easily into the role of leader despite his own battered condition. “Right now, the only thing that matters is keeping Rio alive.”
“You,” Eva said, her voice dry as she leveled a teary glare at him. Her eyes took on a wilder sheen, her face transformed into a mask of pure hatred. “It should be you dying right now, not him! You, Lucan. That was the deal I made! It was supposed to be you!”
A chasm opened up in the infirmary, swallowing all sound but the stunning truth of what Rio’s mate had just confessed.
Dante and Nikolai’s hands went to their weapons, both warriors prepared to strike at the slightest provocation. Lucan lifted his hand to stay them, his eyes holding fast to Eva. He really didn’t give a damn that her venom was aimed squarely at him; if he’d been some kind of target for her rage, he had survived it. Rio might not. Any one of his brethren present on the raid tonight might not have survived Eva’s betrayal.
“The Rogues knew we were going to be there,” Lucan said, his voice held all the more cool by the depth of his fury. “We were ambushed at the warehouse. You arranged it.”
Low growls sounded from the other warriors. If the confession had come from a male, there would have been little Lucan could do to keep his brethren from attacking with lethal force. But this was a Breedmate, one of their own. Someone they had known and trusted as kin for more than one lifetime.
Now Lucan looked at Eva and saw a stranger. He saw madness. A deadly desperation.
“Rio was to be spared.” She bent over him, cradling his bandaged head in the crook of her arm. He made a noise, something raw and wordless, as Eva tugged him into her embrace. “I didn’t want him to be able to fight anymore. Not for you.”
“So you would see him maimed instead?” Lucan asked. “This is how you care for him?”
“I love him!” she cried. “What I did—all of it—was out of love for him! Rio will be happier somewhere else, away from all of this violence and death. He will be happier in the Darkhavens, with me. Away from your damned war!”
Rio made the sound in his throat again, more plaintive now. It was unmistakably a sound of agony, although whether it stemmed from physical discomfort or the distress of hearing what was happening around him, was unclear.
Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. “That’s a call you can’t make for him, Eva. You didn’t have the right. This is Rio’s war, as much as anyone else’s. It is what he believed in—what I know he still believes in, even after what you have done to him. This war belongs to all of the Breed.”
She scoffed acidly. “Ironic of you to think so, when you are only a few steps away from turning Rogue yourself.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dante hissed from where he stood nearby. “You’re wrong, Eva. You are fucking disturbed.”
“Am I?” Her gaze remained rooted on Lucan, sadistic in her glee. “I’ve been watching you, Lucan. I’ve seen you struggle with your hunger when you think no one is around. Your façade of control does not fool me.”
“Eva,” Gabrielle said, a voice of calm washing over the tension in the room. “You are upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
She laughed. “Ask him to deny it. Ask him why he deprives himself of blood until he is nearly starving for it!”
Lucan said nothing in response to the very public accusations, because he knew them to be true.
So did Gabrielle.
It moved him that she would rise to his defense, but this moment wasn’t so much about him as it was Rio and the deception that would shatter the warrior. Perhaps already had, judging from the increased sawing of the male’s bandaged limbs and his struggling to speak past his injuries.
“How did you strike this bargain, Eva? How did you make contact with the Rogues—one of your day trips topside?”
She exhaled with mocking humor. “It wasn’t so hard. There are Minions walking around all over the city. You only have to look. I found one and told him to put me in touch with his Master.”
“Who was it?” Lucan demanded. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. We met just once and he kept his face hidden. He wore dark glasses and kept the lights off in the hotel room. I didn’t care who he was or what he looked like. All that mattered was that he is powerful enough to make things happen. I only wanted his promise.”
“I can imagine what he made you pay for it.”
“It was just a couple of hours with him. I would have paid anything,” she said, no longer looking at Lucan, or everyone else who was gaping at her in disgust, but instead staring down at Rio. “I would do anything for you, my darling. I would bear…anything.”
“You may have made a bargain with your body,” Lucan said, “but it was Rio’s trust you sold.”
A rasp slipped from between Rio’s parched lips as Eva cooed and caressed him. His eyelids fluttered open. There was a shallow, gasping breath as he tried to form words.
“I…” He coughed, his wracked body spasming. “Eva…”
“Oh, my love—yes, I’m here!” she cried. “Tell me what you need, baby.”
“Eva…” His throat worked in silence for a moment, and then he tried again. “I…denounce…you.”
“What?”
“Dead…” He moaned, his mental pain no doubt deeper than the physical, but the fierce look in his bleary, bloodshot eyes said he would not be deterred. “No longer exist…to me…you are…dead.”
“Rio, don’t you understand? I did this for us!”
“Leave,” he gasped. “Never…see you…again…”
“You can’t mean that.” She lifted her head, her eyes darting frantically. “He doesn’t mean that! He can’t! Rio, tell me you don’t mean that!”
When she tried to reach for him, Rio growled, using what little strength he had to shun her touch. Eva let out a sob. Blood from his wounds covered the front of her clothes. She stared down at the stains she bore, then over to Rio, who had now shut her out completely.
What happened next took only a few seconds at most, but it played out as if time itself had slowed to a merciless crawl.
Eva’s stricken gaze lit on Rio’s weapon belt lying next to the bed.
A look of resolve crossed her face as she lunged for one of the blades.
She raised the gleaming dagger up near her face.
Whispered to Rio that she would always love him.
Then Eva flipped the weapon around in her hand and pressed it to her throat.
“Eva, no!” Gabrielle screamed, her body jerking in reflex as if she thought she could save the other female. “Oh, my God, no!”
Lucan held her at his side. He swiftly took her in his arms and turned her face into his chest, shielding her from seeing Eva slice through her own jugular and fall, bleeding and lifeless, to the floor.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
Fresh out of the shower in Lucan’s bedroom suite, Gabrielle toweled off her wet hair and slipped into a plush white terry-cloth robe. She was exhausted, having spent the better part of the day with Savannah and Danika, the three of them helping Gideon attend to Rio and Lucan. Everyone in the compound moved in a state of numb disbelief over Eva’s betrayal and the tragic outcome that left her dead at her own hand and Rio clinging precariously to life.
Lucan was in bad shape as well, but true to his word and his stubborn volition, he had left the infirmary on his own motor to rest in his personal suites. Gabrielle was astonished that he had accepted any care at all, but between the other women and herself, there hadn’t been any hope of his refusing.
Gabrielle felt a swelling sense of relief when she opened the bathroom door and found him seated on the massive bed, his back propped up against the headboard with several pillows. Although his cheek and brow were stitched and bandages covered much of his broad chest and limbs, he was recovering. He was whole, and in time, he would be healed.
Like her, he wore nothing but a white terry robe; it was all the women had permitted him to put on after they’d spent hours cleaning and patching up contusions and bloody shrapnel wounds, which peppered so much of his body.
“Feel better?” Lucan asked, staring as she ran her fingers through her damp hair to push it out of her face. “I thought you might be hungry once you came out of there.”
“I’m starved.”
He gestured to a squat cocktail table in the sitting area of the bedroom, but Gabrielle’s nose had already picked up on the impressive buffet. French bread, garlic and spices, tomato sauce, and cheese wafted from across the room. She saw a plate of field greens and a cup of fresh fruit, even something dark and chocolate-looking amid all the other temptations. She wandered over for a closer look, her stomach growling in anticipation.
“Manicotti,” she said, breathing in the pasta’s aromatic fumes. A bottle of red wine had been uncorked beside a crystal glass. “And chianti?”
“Savannah wanted to know if you had any favorite foods. It was all I could think of.”
It was the meal she’d made for herself the night he had come back to her apartment to return her cell phone. The meal that sat cold and forgotten on her counter while she and Lucan went at it like minks. “You remembered what I was cooking that night?”
He gave a mild shrug. “Sit down. Eat.”
“There’s only one place setting.”
“Were you expecting company?”
She looked at him. “You really can’t eat any of this? Not even a bite?”
“If I did, I could only stomach a small amount.” He motioned for her to take a seat. “Eating human food is merely for appearances.”
“All right.” Gabrielle sat on the floor cross-legged. She slid the creamy linen napkin out from under the silverware and draped it over her lap. “But it doesn’t seem fair for me to stuff my face in front of you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve had enough female fussing and concern for one day.”
“Suit yourself.”
She was too hungry to wait another second and the meal looked far too delicious to resist. Using the edge of her fork, Gabrielle cut off a bite of the manicotti and chewed it in a state of absolute bliss. She ate half of it in record time, pausing only to pour a glass of wine, which she also consumed with ravenous delight.
The whole time, Lucan watched her from the bed.
“Good?” he asked when she flicked a sheepish glance at him over the rim of her wineglass.
“Fantastic,” she murmured, shoveling in a mouthful of vinegarette-drenched field greens. Her stomach was much happier now. She swallowed the last bite of salad, then poured another half glass of chianti, and settled back with a sigh. “Thank you for this. I’ll have to thank Savannah, too. She didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“She likes you,” Lucan said, his studious expression unreadable. “You were a big help last night. Thank you for looking after Rio and the others. Myself, as well.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“Yes, I do.” The small, stitched gash in his forehead bunched up with his scowl. “You’ve been kind and giving all along, and I—” He broke off, muttering something under his breath. “I appreciate what you did, that’s all.”
Oh, she thought, that’s all. Even his gratitude came fully equipped with emotional barriers now.
Suddenly feeling too much like an outsider with him at the moment, she was more than willing to change the subject.
“I hear Tegan made it back in one piece.”
“Yes. But Dante and Niko nearly tore him apart on sight, after he pulled that disappearing act during the raid.”
“What happened to him last night?”
“One of the Rogues tried to slip out a back door at the warehouse as things heated up. Tegan tailed him into the street. He was going to take the suckhead out, but decided to follow him first, see where he might run. He tracked him to the old asylum outside the city. Place was crawling with Rogues. If there was any doubt, now we’re certain it’s a large colony. Probably an East Coast headquarters.”
A chill went through her when she thought that she had been to the asylum by herself—had been inside the place—unaware that it was a Rogue location.
“I have some pictures of the interior. They’re still in my camera. I didn’t have a chance to unload them yet.”
Lucan had gone stock-still, staring at her as if she just told him she’d been playing with live grenades. His face seemed to go a bit more ashen beneath its fatigued pallor. “You not only went there, but you broke in to the place?”
She shrugged, guiltily.
“Jesus Christ, Gabrielle.” He threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long moment, just looking at her. It took him a while to form words. “You might have been killed. Do you realize that?”
“I wasn’t,” she answered, lame observation, but still fact.
“Not the point.” He ran both hands deep into the hair at his temples. “Shit. Where’s your camera?”
“I left it in the lab.”
Lucan picked up the phone beside his bed and speed dialed on intercom. Gideon came on the other end.
“Hey, what’s up. Everything good?”
“Yeah,” Lucan said, but he was glaring at Gabrielle. “Tell Tegan to put the asylum recon detail on hold for now. I just found out we’ve got pictures of the interior.”
“No shit?” There was a pause. “Ah, fuck me. You mean, she actually went in the goddamn place?”
Lucan arched a wry I-told-you-so brow at her. “Load the images from the camera and tell the others we’ll meet in an hour to discuss the new strategy. I think we just may have saved some crucial time here.”
“Right. See you in sixty.”
The call ended with a click of the intercom.
“Tegan was going to go back to the asylum?”
“Yeah,” Lucan replied. “A likely suicide mission since he was lunatic enough to insist that he infiltrate solo tonight to gather intel on the place. Not that anyone was going to persuade him differently, least of all me.”
He got up off the bed and began inspecting some of his bandages. As he shifted, the top of his robe sagged open, revealing most of his chest and a wedge of his abdomen. The unique markings on his chest were a pale shade of henna, lighter than they had been last night. Now they looked as sallow as the rest of him. Parched and nearly colorless.
“Why are you and Tegan at such odds with each other?” she asked, keeping a close eye on him as she dared the question that had been on her mind ever since Lucan had mentioned the warrior’s name. “What happened between you?”
At first, she didn’t think he was going to say anything. He kept prodding his injuries, testing the flex of his arms and legs in silence. Then, just about the time she would have given up, he said, “Tegan blames me for taking something from him. Something he cherished.” He looked squarely at her now. “His Breedmate died. By my hand.”
“Good lord,” she whispered. “Lucan…how?”
He frowned, glanced away again. “Things were different in the Old Times when Tegan and I first knew each other. Warriors, for the most part, chose not to take Breedmates because the dangers were too great. There were few of us in the Order then, and protecting our families was difficult when combat took us leagues away from them, often for months at a time.”
“What about the Darkhavens? Wouldn’t they have provided some protection?”
“There were fewer of those then, too. And even less that would welcome the risk of housing a warrior’s Breedmate. We, and those we loved, were consistent targets of Rogue violence. Tegan knew all of this, but he bonded himself to a female anyway. Not long afterward, she was captured by the Rogues. They tortured her. Raped her. And before they sent her back to him, they nearly drained her. She was an empty husk—worse than that, she was made a Minion of the Rogue who ruined her.”
“Oh, my God,” Gabrielle gasped, horrified.
Lucan sighed, as if the weight of the memories pressed hard on him. “Tegan went insane with rage. He became like an animal, slaughtering everything in his path. He would appear so awash in gore that many thought he had bathed in blood. He gorged himself in his fury, and, for nearly a year, he refused to accept the fact that his Breedmate’s mind was lost forever. He kept feeding her from his vein, unwilling to see her corruption. He fed to feed her. He didn’t care that he was steadily sliding into Bloodlust. For that entire year, he defied Breed law, and would not put her out of her misery. As for Tegan himself, he was slowly, but surely, going Rogue. Something had to be done….”
When he let the statement hang, unfinished, Gabrielle spoke for him. “And as leader, it fell to you to take action.”
Lucan gave a grim nod. “I put Tegan in a thick stone cell, and then I put his Breedmate to the sword.”
Gabrielle closed her eyes, sensing his regret. “Oh, Lucan…”
“Tegan wasn’t freed until his body had withdrawn from its Bloodlust addiction. It took many months of near starvation and absolute agony for him to be able to walk out of that cell on his own legs. When he realized what I’d done, I thought he would try to kill me. But he didn’t. The Tegan I knew didn’t come out of that cell at all. Something colder did. He’s never said the words, but I know he’s hated me ever since.”
“Not as much as you hate yourself.”
His jaw was clenched hard, drawing the lean skin tighter across his cheekbones. “I’m used to making difficult choices. I’m not afraid to take on the hard tasks, or to be the target of anger, even hatred, because of the decisions I make for the betterment of the Breed. I don’t give a damn about any of that.”
“No, you don’t,” she said gently. “But you had to hurt a friend, and that has weighed heavily on you for a long, long time.”
The look he gave her begged to argue, but maybe he didn’t have the strength. After all that he had been through, he was tired, bone tired, although she doubted he would be willing to admit that, even to her.
“You’re a good man, Lucan. You’ve got a very noble heart underneath all that heavy armor.”
He grunted, dismissive and sardonic. “Only someone who’s known me less than a few weeks would make the mistake of presuming that.”
“Really? I can think of a few people here who would tell you the same thing. Including Conlan, if he were alive.”
His brows went low, like a thundercloud. “What can you possibly know about that?”
“Danika told me what you did for him. The funeral rite. Bringing him topside as the sun came up. To honor him, you let yourself burn.”
“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, shooting to his feet. He started to pace in an agitated, halting track near the bed. His voice was coarse, a barely contained roar. “Honor had nothing to do with it. You want to know why I did that? It was guilt. The night of the bombing in the train station, I was supposed to be running that mission with Niko, not Conlan. But I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I thought maybe if I had you—if I finally got inside you—it might satisfy my itch and I could move on, forget about you. So, that night I put Conlan on the job in my place. It would have been me in that tunnel, not Conlan. It should have been me.”
“My God, Lucan. You’re unbelievable, you know that?” She slammed her palms down on the table and let out a sharp, furious laugh. “Why can’t you cut yourself some fucking slack?”
The uncontrolled outburst got his attention when nothing else had. He stopped pacing and stared at her. “You know why,” he said, his tone level now. “You know, better than anyone else.” He shook his head, mouth twisted with self-contempt. “Turns out Eva knew something about it, too.”
Gabrielle thought back to the shocking exchange in the infirmary. Everyone had been appalled at Eva’s actions, and stunned by her crazed accusations against Lucan. All except him. “Lucan, the things that she said…”
“All true, as you have seen for yourself. But you still defended me. That’s twice you’ve kept my weakness from being exposed.” He scowled, turning his head away from her. “I won’t ever ask you to do that again. My problems are my own.”
“And you need to address them.”
“What I need is to get some clothes on and go take a look at those pictures Gideon is uploading. If they give us enough info on the asylum’s layout, we can hit the place tonight.”
“What do you mean, hit it tonight?”
“Take it out. Shut it down. Blow the fucking thing sky-high.”
“You can’t be serious. You said yourself it’s probably full of Rogues. Do you honestly think that you and three other guys will survive going up against unknown numbers?”
“We’ve done it before. And there will be five of us,” he said, as if that should make a difference. “Gideon has said he wants in on whatever we do. He’ll be taking Rio’s place.”
Gabrielle scoffed, disbelieving. “And what about you? You’re barely on your feet.”
“I’m walking. I’m well enough. They won’t be expecting a retaliation so soon, which makes it the best time for us to strike.”
“You must be out of your mind. You need rest, Lucan. You can’t do anything until you get your strength back. You need to heal.” She watched a muscle work in his jaw, a tendon ticking beneath the sallow, drawn slope of his cheek. His features were harder than normal, too lean. “You can’t go out there the way you are.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
The words rushed out of him, a coarse rasp in his throat. When he looked at her again, his silver irises were shot with bright amber flecks of color, like fire licking through ice.
“You’re not. Not by a long shot. You need nourishment. Your body’s been through too much recently. You need to feed.”
She felt a surge of coldness sweep the room and knew it came from him. She was provoking his anger. She’d seen him at his worst before and lived to tell of it, but maybe she was pushing too hard right now. She could sense he’d been itchy and uptight, his temper on a short leash ever since he’d brought her to the compound. Now he was dangerously on edge; did she really want to be the one to shove him past his threshold of control?
Screw it. Maybe that was just what was needed.
“Your body is beaten down, Lucan, not just from your injuries. You’re weak. And you’re afraid.”
“Afraid.” He swung an icy look at her, sneered with arctic sarcasm. “Of what?”
“Yourself, for starters. But I think you’re even more afraid of me.”
She waited for an instant rebuttal, something cold and nasty to match the wintry rage that was rolling off of him like frost. But he didn’t say anything. He glared at her for a long moment, then turned away and strode, a bit stiffly, toward a tall bureau on the other side of the room.
Gabrielle sat there on the floor, watching as he yanked open drawers, pulled out clothing and tossed it onto the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t have time to debate this with you. It’s pointless.”
A cabinet of weapons opened before he reached it, the doors swinging on their hinges with an invisible, violent jerk. He stalked over and pulled out a retractable shelf. At least a dozen daggers and other lethal-looking blades lay in orderly rows on the shelf’s velvet liner. With a careless grab, Lucan swiped two large knives in black leather sheaths. He slid open another shelf and selected a big, brushed stainless steel handgun that looked like something out of an action movie nightmare.
“You don’t like what I’m saying, so you’re going to run away from me instead?” He didn’t look at her, or even curse in reply. No, he completely ignored her, and that really pissed her off. “Go ahead, then. Pretend you’re invincible, that you’re not scared to death of letting someone care for you. Run away from me, Lucan. You’re only proving my point.”
Gabrielle felt a keen sense of hopelessness as Lucan retrieved an ammunition clip from the cabinet and shoved it into the pistol’s hollow grip. Nothing she said would stop him. She felt helpless, like she was trying to wrap her arms around a storm.
She glanced away from him, her eyes straying back to the table where she sat, at the plates and silverware in front of her. She saw the unused knife lying there, the polished blade gleaming.
She couldn’t hold him back with words, but there was something else….
She pushed back the long sleeve of her robe. Very calmly, with the same fearless resolve that had served her a hundred times before, Gabrielle picked up the knife and pressed the edge of it to the fleshy part of her forearm. A small pressure, the barest slice of the blade through her skin.
She didn’t know which of Lucan’s senses responded first, but the roar he let loose when his head came up and he saw what she had done rattled every piece of furniture in the room.
“Goddamn it—Gabrielle!”
The blade flew out of her grasp and across the length of the bedroom, embedding to the hilt in the far wall.
Lucan moved so fast she could hardly track him. One second he was standing several feet away at the foot of the bed, the next he had his large hand clamped down hard around her fingers, hauling her up to her feet. Blood rose from the thin line of her cut, juicy, deep crimson, trickling down her arm. Her hand was still caught in Lucan’s crushing grip.
He towered over her, a wall of dark, seething fury.
His chest was heaving, the nostrils flaring as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. His handsome face was contorted with anguish and outrage, and his eyes burned with the unmistakable heat of his hunger. Not a trace of gray remained, his pupils narrowed down to the barest slivers of black. His fangs were stretched long, their sharp white tips gleaming behind the vicious curl of his lip.
“Now, try to tell me that you don’t need what I’m offering,” she whispered fiercely.
Sweat glistened on his brow as he stared at her fresh, bleeding wound. He licked his lips and ground out a word from another language.
It didn’t sound friendly.
“Why?” he demanded, accusing. “Why would you do this to me?”
“You really don’t know?” She held his feral gaze, weathering his anger as droplets of blood splattered a crimson trail across the snowy white of her robe. “Because I love you, Lucan. And this is all I have to give you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
Lucan thought he knew hunger. He thought he knew fury and desperation—desire, too—but every paltry emotion he’d ever felt in all his ageless life fell away like dust as he stared into Gabrielle’s defiant brown eyes.
His senses were swamped, drowning in the sweet jasmine scent of her blood, its source so dangerously close to his mouth. Glossy red, thick as honey, the crimson rivulet pulsed from the small wound she had inflicted on herself.
“I love you, Lucan.” Her soft voice broke through the pounding of his own heart and the driving need that now engulfed him. “With or without blood to bind us, I love you.”
He couldn’t speak, didn’t even know what he might have said if his parched throat could form words. With a vicious growl, he thrust her away from him, too weak to be near her when all the darkness in him urged him to make her his in this final irrevocable way.
Gabrielle fell back onto the bed, the loosely tied robe barely covering her nakedness. Bright stains dotted the white sleeve and lapel. There was a red smear on her bare thigh, vivid scarlet on peaches-and-cream skin.
God, how he wanted to put his mouth on that silky wedge of flesh, all over her. Only her.
“No.”
The command came out of him, dry as ash. His gut was clenched in a vise of pain, knotted and twisting. It pulled him down. His knees collapsed beneath him when he tried to turn away from the tempting sight of her, sprawled and bleeding like a sacrifice laid out before him.
He dropped to the carpeted floor in a slump of bone and muscle, fighting back a need like he had never known before. She was killing him. This yearning for her—the shattering in his chest when he thought of her ever being with another male.
And then there was his hunger.
Never more intense than when Gabrielle was near, now that his lungs were filled with the perfume of her blood, he was ravenous.
“Lucan…”
He sensed her moving off the bed. Her feet crushed softly on the carpet and then came slowly into his view, pink-lacquered toenails like smooth little shells. She knelt down next to him. Gentle hands sank into his hair, then cupped his tense jaw as she slowly brought his head up to face her.
“Drink from me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was a weak attempt to deny what she was saying. He didn’t have the strength to fight the tender, yet unrelenting pull of her arms as she lifted him toward her.
He could smell the blood on her wrist; this close it sent a furious rush of adrenaline coursing through him. His mouth watered, fangs stretched longer, tearing his gums. She coaxed him higher, bringing his torso up off the floor. With one hand, she moved aside her long hair, baring her neck to him.
He flinched, but she held him firmly. Guided him closer.
“Drink, Lucan. Take what you need.”
She leaned forward until there was only a breath of space between his slack mouth and the delicate pulse that fluttered beneath the pale skin below her ear.
“Do it,” she whispered, and brought him to her.
Pressed his lips forcibly against her neck.
She held him there for an anguished eternity. Then again, maybe it took only a slim fraction of a second for the hook to set. Lucan couldn’t be sure. All he knew was the warm crush of her skin against his tongue, the beat of her heart, the rapid panting of her breath. All he knew was the longing he felt for her.
No more denial.
He wanted her—all of her—and the beast was too far gone to be merciful now.
He opened his mouth…and sank his fangs into the yielding flesh of her throat.
She gasped at the sudden penetration of his bite, but she didn’t release her hold on him, not even when he gulped in the first greedy pull from her open vein.
Blood rushed into his mouth, hot and earthy-sweet, exquisite. Beyond anything he could ever have imagined.
After nine hundred years of living, he was finally tasting heaven.
He drank urgently, deeply, need overwhelming him as Gabrielle’s quenching blood surged down his throat, into flesh and bone and cell. His pulse hammered with renewal, pumping blood into fatigued limbs and healing his recent wounds.
His sex had come alive with the first taste; now it throbbed heavy and hard between his legs. Demanding even more possession.
Gabrielle was stroking his hair, holding him close as he drank from her. She moaned with each hard tug of his mouth, her body melting, her scent going dark and humid with desire.
“Lucan,” she gasped, shuddering around him. “Oh, God…”
With a wordless snarl, he pressed her down beneath him on the floor. He drank deeper, losing himself to the erotic heat of the moment and to a frantic desperation that terrified him.
Mine, he thought, selfish and utterly savage with the idea.
It was too late to stop now.
This kiss had damned them both.
While the initial bite had been a shock, the sharp nick of pain had quickly dissipated into something lush and intoxicating. Pleasure bloomed all over her body from the inside out, as if each long pull of Lucan’s mouth at her neck sent a shaft of warm light back into her, reaching down through her core to stroke her soul.
He covered her with his naked weight, their robes askew as he took her to the floor with him. His hands were rough as they sank into her hair, holding her head to the side as he drank from her. Heedless of any pain his injuries might be causing him, he pressed his bare chest against her breasts. His lips never broke contact with her neck even for a second. She could feel the intensity of his need in every hard draw.
But she felt his strength, too. It was coming back, bit by bit, renewing because of her.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured, speech slowed for the mounting ecstasy that was building in her with each pulsating movement of his mouth. “You won’t hurt me, Lucan. I trust you.”
The wet, succulent sounds of his hunger was the most erotic thing she’d ever heard. She loved the heat of his lips on her skin. The ungentle graze of his fangs as he drew her blood into his mouth was a sensation that was both dangerous and exciting.
She was already soaring toward a splintering orgasm when she felt the thick head of Lucan’s erection nudging against her sex. She was wet, aching for him. He drove in deep with one thrust, filling her completely with rigid, volcanic heat. Detonating her in an instant. Gabrielle cried out as he plunged hard and fast, his arms like a cage around her, clutching her tightly. He was mindless in his rhythm, a force of raw, magnificent desire.
And still he remained fastened at her neck, pulling her into a blissful, creamy darkness.
She closed her eyes and let herself float away, toward a beautiful obsidian fog.
From someplace distant, she felt Lucan buck and pound above her, his strokes urgent, his large body vibrating with the power of his own release. He shouted something harsh and went completely still.
The delicious pressure at her neck abruptly eased, then vanished, leaving coldness in its wake.
Still drifting, still awash in the heady feel of Lucan sheathed inside her, Gabrielle lifted her heavy lids. Lucan was poised over her on his knees, staring down at her as though frozen. His lips were bright red, his hair wild around his head. His feral eyes were throwing off amber sparks, they were so bright. His skin color was healthier, the network of markings on his shoulders and torso glowing a deep crimson-black.
“What is it?” she asked him, worried. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment.
“Jesus Christ.” The rough growl of his voice was tremulous, a pitch she’d never heard in him before. His chest was heaving. “I thought you were…I thought I had—”
“No,” she said, giving a lazy, sated shake of her head. “No, Lucan. I’m fine.”
She couldn’t read his intense expression, but then he didn’t give her a chance. He recoiled, sliding out of her. There was a stricken look in his transformed eyes.
Her body felt cold and empty without his warmth. She sat up, rubbing off her sudden chill. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “Everything’s okay.”
“No.” He shook his head and vaulted to his feet. “No. This was a mistake.”
“Lucan…”
“I never should have let this happen!” he bellowed.
With a furious roar, he stalked to the foot of the bed to retrieve his clothes. He yanked the black camo pants and nylon shirt on, then grabbed his weapons and boots, and left the room in a tempest of seething rage.
Lucan could hardly catch his breath for the way his heart was banging in his chest.
When he’d felt Gabrielle go slack beneath him as he drank from her, a stark fear had torn through him, shredding him from the inside out.
She trusted him, she had said while he had been drinking feverishly at her neck. He’d felt the spurs of Bloodlust jabbing into him as Gabrielle’s blood flowed into him. Her voice had eased some of the pain. She was tender and caring, her touch, her naked emotion—her presence itself—grounding him when the animal part of him might have slipped its reins.
She trusted him not to harm her, and that trust gave him strength.
But then he’d felt her drifting away from him and he feared…God, in that instant, how he’d feared.
It still gripped him, the black, cold terror that he might have harmed her—could have killed her—if he’d let things go any further than they had.
Because, for all his pushing her away, all his denial, he belonged to her. Gabrielle owned him, down to his soul, and not simply for the fact that her blood was nourishing him now, healing his wounds and strengthening his body. He had bonded to her, long before now. But the irrefutable proof of it had come in that bleak instant a moment ago when he feared he might have lost her.
He loved her.
Down to the darkest, loneliest part of him, he loved Gabrielle.
And he wanted her in his life. Selfishly, dangerously, he wanted nothing more than to keep her with him for all the rest of his days.
The realization made him weave in the corridor outside the tech lab. In truth, it nearly sent him to his knees.
“Whoa, easy there.” Dante came up to Lucan almost without warning and grabbed him under the arm. “Damn. You look like holy hell.”
Lucan couldn’t speak. Words were beyond him.
But Dante didn’t need an explanation. He took one look at Lucan’s face and fangs and Dante’s nostrils flared as they picked up the obvious scents of blood and sex. He blew out a low whistle, a gleam of wry amusement flashing in the warrior’s eyes.
“You gotta be kidding me—a Breedmate, Lucan?” He chuckled, shaking his head as he clapped Lucan on the shoulder. “Shit. Better you than me, brother. Better you than me.”
CHAPTER
Thirty
Three hours later, with night full upon them, Lucan and the other warriors were geared up and sitting in a black SUV parked about a half mile down the road from the old asylum.
Gabrielle’s photographs had proven extremely useful in planning the hit on the Rogue lair. In addition to several exterior and ground-level, entry-point photos, she’d taken interior shots of the boiler room, various corridors, stairwells, and even a few containing inadvertent images of mounted security cameras that would need to be disabled once the warriors gained access to the place.
“Getting in’s going to be the easy part,” Gideon said, as the group of them began the final review of the operation. “I’ll interrupt the security signal on the ground-level cameras, but once we’re inside, planting those two dozen bars of C4 in critical areas without alerting the entire colony of suckheads will prove a little trickier.”
“Not to mention the added problem of unwanted publicity with the humans,” Dante said. “What the hell’s taking Niko so long to locate that gas main?”
“Here he comes,” Lucan said, spotting the vampire’s dark shape nearing the SUV from the ridge of trees outside.
Nikolai opened the back door and climbed in next to Tegan. He pulled off his black head covering, wintry blue eyes alive with excitement. “Piece of cake. The main line is in a lockbox on the west end of the complex. The suckheads may not need heat, but public service has plenty of gas running to the buildings.”
Lucan met the warrior’s eager look. “So, we get in, set up our party favors, clear the location—”
Niko nodded. “Signal me when the shit’s in place. I’ll flip the main line, then detonate the C4 once we all rendezvous back here. On the surface, it’ll look like a gas leak caused the explosion. And if Homeland Security wants to get involved, I’m sure some of Gabrielle’s photos of gangbanger graffiti will send the humans sniffing around in circles for a while.”
Meanwhile, the warriors would be sending a big message to their enemies, particularly the Gen One vampire who Lucan suspected was at the helm of this new Rogue insurgency. Blowing their headquarters into the next century ought to be a sufficient invitation for the bastard to come out into the open and dance.
Lucan was anxious to get started. Even more anxious to finish the night’s mission because he had his own unfinished business back at the compound. He hated leaving Gabrielle like he had, knowing she had to be confused and probably more than a little upset.
There were things to be said, certainly, things he hadn’t even been prepared to think about much less discuss with her in that moment when the stunning reality of his feelings for her had hit him.
Now, his head was full of plans.
Reckless, stupid, hopeful plans, all of them centered on her.
Around him in the vehicle, the other warriors were checking their gear, loading up the bars of C4 into zippered duffel bags and making final adjustments to the earpieces and mics that would keep them in contact with one another once they breached the asylum perimeter and split up to place the explosives.
“Tonight, we do this for Con and Rio,” Dante said, flipping one of his curved blades with nimble, black-gloved fingers and stabbing it into the sheath on his hip. “Vengeance time.”
“Hell, yeah,” Niko replied, a sentiment echoed swiftly by the others.
When they started to go for the doors, Lucan lifted his hand.
“Hold up.” His grim voice stilled them all. “There’s something you need to know. Since we’re about to go in there and possibly get our asses handed to us, I suppose now’s as good a time as any to be straight with you about a couple of things…and I need a promise from each of you.”
He met the faces of his brethren, warriors who’d been fighting beside him, as tight as kin, for what seemed like forever. They had always looked to him to lead, trusting him to make the hard calls, certain he would never be at a loss for strategy or decision.
Now he wavered, hesitant, unsure of where to begin. He raked a hand over his jaw, blew out a sharp sigh.
Gideon frowned at him, concerned. “Everything good, Lucan? You took a pretty massive hit in the ambush last night. If you want to sit this out—”
“No. No, that’s not it. I’m fine. My injuries are healed…thanks to Gabrielle,” he said. “Earlier today, she and I…”
“No shit,” Gideon replied when Lucan’s explanation trailed off. Damn the vampire, but he was actually grinning about it.
“You drank from her?” Niko asked.
Tegan grunted in the backseat. “That female’s a Breedmate.”
“Yes,” Lucan said, answering with serious calm. “And if she’ll have me, I mean to ask Gabrielle to take me as her mate.”
Dante smirked at him, rolling his eyes. “Congrats, man. Seriously.”
Gideon and Niko offered similar responses, clapping Lucan on the shoulder.
“That’s not all.”
Four pairs of eyes fixed on him, everyone but Tegan looking at him with grim expectation.
“Last night, Eva had some choice things to say about me—” There was an immediate defensive vocal barrage from Gideon, Niko, and Dante. Lucan spoke over the angry rumbles. “Her betrayal of Rio and the rest of us is inexcusable, yes. But what she said about me…it was the truth.”
Dante gave him a narrow look. “What are you talking about?”
“Bloodlust,” Lucan replied. The word fell hard into the silence of the SUV. “It’s ah…it’s a problem for me. Has been for a long while. I’m dealing with it, but there are times…” He dropped his chin, stared at the unlit floor of the vehicle. “I don’t know if I can beat it. Maybe, with Gabrielle at my side, I might stand a chance. I’m going to fight it like hell, but if it gets worse—”
Gideon spat a vivid obscenity. “Ain’t gonna happen, Lucan. Of all of us sitting here, you’re the strongest. Always have been. Nothing’s gonna pull you down.”
Lucan shook his head. “I can’t pretend to be the one always in control anymore. I’m tired. I’m not invincible. After nine hundred years of living the lie, it took Gabrielle less than two weeks to tear my mask off. She’s forced me to see myself as I truly am. I don’t like a lot of what I see, but I want to be better…for her.”
Niko scowled. “Damn, Lucan. You talking about love here?”
“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “I am. I love her. Which is why I need to ask something of you. All of you.”
Gideon nodded. “Name it.”
“If things get bad with me—sometime soon, or down the road—I need to know that I can count on you guys to have my back. You see me lose it to Bloodlust, if you think I’m going to turn…I’ve got to have your word that you’ll take me out.”
“What?” Dante recoiled. “You can’t ask that of us, man.”
“Listen to me.” He wasn’t accustomed to begging. The plea was like gravel in his throat, but he needed to spit it out. He was tired of carrying the burden alone. And the very last thing he ever wanted was to fear that in his weakness he might do anything to harm Gabrielle. “I need to hear you swear it. Each of you. Promise me.”
“Shit,” Dante said, gaping at him. Finally, he nodded gravely. “Yeah. Okay. You’re fucking crazy, but okay.”
Gideon shook his head, then held out his fist and knocked his knuckles against Lucan’s. “If that’s what you want, you got it. I swear to you, Lucan.”
Niko voiced his agreement, too. “That day will never come, but if it does, I know you’d do the same for any one of us. So, hell yeah, you have my word.”
Which left Tegan, sitting stoically in the backseat.
“What about you, T?” Lucan said, pivoting to meet the warrior’s flat green stare. “Can I count on you in this?”
Tegan held him in a long, contemplative silence. “Sure, man. What the fuck, whatever you say. You turn, and I’ll be first in line to take you out.”
Lucan nodded, satisfied as he looked around at the sober stares of his brethren.
“Jesus,” Dante interjected when the heavy quiet in the vehicle seemed endless. “All this touchy feely is making me itchy to kill something. How about we quit jerking each other off and go blow the roof off this mutha?”
Lucan returned the vampire’s cocky grin. “Let’s do it.”
The five Breed warriors in head-to-toe black poured out of the SUV as a unit, then began the stealthy approach toward the asylum on the other side of the moonlit trees.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Come on, come on. Open, damn it!”
Gabrielle sat behind the wheel of a black BMW coupe, waiting impatiently for the massive gate at the compound’s estate entrance to slide open and let her out. She hated that she’d been forced to take the car from the fleet without permission, but after what had happened with Lucan, she was desperate to get away. Since the entire grounds were circled with high-voltage fencing, that left just one alternative.
She’d figure out some way to return the Beemer once she was home.
Once she was back where she truly belonged.
She had given all she could to Lucan tonight, but it wasn’t enough. She had been prepared for him to push and resist her attempts to love him, but there was nothing she could do if he shut her out. As he had tonight.
She had given him her blood, her body, and her heart, and he had rejected her.
She was all out of energy now.
All out of fight.
If he was so determined to be alone, then who was she to force him into changing? If he wanted to crash and burn, she sure as hell didn’t intend to stand around waiting to see it happen.
She was going home.
The heavy iron gates finally parted wide enough to let her out. Gabrielle punched the gas and sped out onto the quiet, unlit street. She had no clear idea of where she was until she drove a couple of miles and found a familiar intersection. There she took a left onto Charles Street, and headed for Beacon Hill in an autopilot daze.
Her block seemed so much smaller to her as she parked the car at the curb outside her apartment. Her neighbors’ lights were on, but despite the ambient yellow glow, the brick building seemed dreary somehow.
Gabrielle climbed the front steps and fished her key out of her purse. Her hand knocked against a small dagger she’d taken out of Lucan’s weapon cabinet—a bit of insurance in case she ran into any trouble on the way home.
The apartment phone was ringing as she came inside and turned on the foyer light. She let the machine get it, turning to set all the locks and deadbolts on the door.
From the kitchen, she heard Kendra’s clipped voice come over the message intercom.
“It’s very rude of you to ignore me like this, Gabby.” Her friend sounded strangely shrill. Pissed off. “I need to see you. It’s important. You and I really need to talk.”
Gabrielle walked through the living room, noting the blank spaces on her walls where Lucan had removed some of her framed photographs. It seemed like a year had passed since the night he’d come to her apartment and told her the stunning truth about himself and the battle that was raging among those of his kind.
Vampires, she thought, surprised to find that the word no longer shocked her.
Probably very little could shock her now.
And she no longer feared that she was losing her mind like her mother had. Even that tragic history had taken on new meaning now. Her mother hadn’t been crazy at all. She’d been a terrified young woman, caught up in a violence that few human minds could grasp.
Gabrielle was not about to let that same violence destroy her. She was home, such as it was, and she would figure out some way to make her old life fit again.
She dropped her purse on the counter and walked over to the answering machine. The message indicator was blinking the number 18.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured, hitting the Play button.
As the machine did its thing, Gabrielle went into the bathroom to inspect her neck. Lucan’s bite glowed dark red below her ear, right near the teardrop and crescent moon that marked her as a Breedmate. She probed the twin punctures and vivid bruise that Lucan had left on her, but found it didn’t hurt at all. The dull, empty ache between her legs was the worse pain, but even that paled next to the cold rawness that settled in her chest when she thought of Lucan recoiling from her tonight as if she were poison. Stumbling out of the room like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
Gabrielle ran the water and washed up, vaguely aware of the messages playing in the kitchen. As the machine advanced to the fourth or fifth one, she realized something odd.
All of the messages were from Kendra, all within that past twenty-four hours. One after the other, some with less than five minutes between them.
And Kendra’s tone had soured significantly from her first message when she had been playfully casual, offering to take Gabrielle out to lunch or drinks or anything else that sounded good. Then the tone of the invitation had gotten a bit more insistent: Kendra saying that she had a problem and needed Gabrielle’s advice.
The last couple of messages were strident demands that Kendra expected to hear from her soon.
When Gabrielle ran to her purse and checked her cell phone’s voicemail, she found more of the same.
Kendra’s repeated calls.
Her weirdly acid tone of voice.
A chill crept along her limbs when she thought of Lucan’s warning about Kendra. That if she’d fallen victim to the Rogues, she was no friend of hers anymore. That she was as good as dead.
The phone started ringing again in the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, gripped in a mounting terror.
She had to get out of there.
Hotel, she thought. Somewhere remote. Somewhere she could hide for a while, decide what to do.
Gabrielle grabbed her purse and the keys to the BMW, practically running for her front door. She threw the locks free and twisted the knob. As the door swung open, she found herself staring at a familiar face that had once been friendly.
Now she was certain it belonged to a Minion.
“Going somewhere, Gabby?” Kendra brought her cell phone away from her ear and closed it. The ringing in the apartment ceased. Kendra smiled thinly, her head cocked at an odd angle. “You’re awfully hard to catch lately.”
Gabrielle winced at the lost, vacant look in those unblinking eyes. “Let me past you, Kendra. Please.”
The brunette laughed, a loud, open-mouthed chortle that faded into an airless hiss. “Sorry, sweetie. No can do.”
“You’re with them, aren’t you?” Gabrielle said, sick with the understanding. “You’re with the Rogues. My God, Kendra, what have they done to you?”
“Hush,” she said, her finger to her lip as she shook her head. “No more talking. We have to go now.”
When the Minion reached for her, Gabrielle pulled away. She thought of the dagger in her purse, and wondered if she could retrieve the blade without Kendra’s notice. If she could, would she be able to use it on her friend?
“Don’t touch me,” she said, inching her fingers under the leather flap of her bag. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Kendra bared her teeth, a terrible parody of a smile. “Oh, I think you should, Gabby. After all, Jamie’s life depends on it.”
Cold dread pierced her heart. “What?”
Kendra nodded her head toward the waiting sedan. A tinted window eased down, and there was Jamie, sitting in the backseat beside an enormous thug.
“Gabrielle?” Jamie called out, a panicked look in his eyes.
“Oh, no. Not Jamie. Kendra, please don’t let anyone hurt him.”
“That’ll be entirely up to you,” Kendra said politely. She grabbed Gabrielle’s purse out of her hands. “You won’t be needing anything in here.”
She motioned for Gabrielle to walk ahead of her toward the idling car. “Shall we?”
Lucan set two bars of C4 under the huge water heaters in the asylum’s boiler room. Crouched down behind the utility equipment, he flipped up the transmitter antennas, then spoke into his mic to report his progress.
“Boiler room is a check,” he told Niko on the other end. “I’ve got three more units to set and then I’m out—”
He froze, hearing the scuff of footsteps outside the closed door.
“Lucan?”
“Shit. Company coming,” he murmured quietly as he rose from his position and crept near the door to prepare to strike.
He wrapped his gloved hand around the hilt of a nasty serrated blade sheathed across his chest. He had a gun on him, too, but they’d all agreed no firearms on this mission. No need to alert the Rogues of their presence, and with Niko throwing the gas main outside, pumping fumes into the building, the spark of a bullet firing was liable to set the whole works off prematurely.
The latch on the boiler room door began to twist.
Lucan smelled the stench of a Rogue, and the unmistakable coppery scent of human blood. Muffled animal grunts mingled with wet smacking and the faint whine of a victim being bled dry. The door opened, letting in a huge gust of putrid air as the Rogue started to drag its dying plaything into the dark alcove.
Lucan waited to the side of the door until the Rogue’s big head came into full view. The suckhead was too involved in its prey to notice the threat. Lucan brought his hand up, burying the blade in the Rogue’s rib cage. It roared, huge jaws gaping, yellow eyes bulging as the titanium sped through its blood system.
The human fell to the floor in a slump, boneless, spasming in the throes of death while the Rogue who’d been feeding off of him began to sizzle and shake, blisters rising like it had been doused with acid.
No sooner did the Rogue collapse into swift decomposition than another came pounding up the corridor. Lucan leaped to meet the new attack, but before he could deliver the first blow, the suckhead came up short, yanked off its feet from behind by a black-clad arm.
A blade flashed, as crisp and quietly as lightning, across the Rogue’s throat, severing the big head in one clean strike.
The huge body was dropped to the floor like rubbish. Tegan stood there, blade dripping gore, green eyes steady. He was a killing machine, and the grim set of his mouth seemed to reiterate his earlier promise to Lucan that if Bloodlust ever got the better of him, Tegan was going to make sure Lucan got his own taste of titanium fury.
Looking at the warrior now, Lucan had no doubt that if Tegan ever came for him, it would be over before he even knew the vampire was in the room.
He met that cool, lethal look and gave a nod of acknowledgment.
“Talk to me,” Niko said over Lucan’s earpiece. “You good in there?”
“Yeah. All clear.” He cleaned his dagger on the human’s shirt, then sheathed it. When he glanced up, Tegan was already gone, vanished like the specter of death that he was.
“Heading to the north entry points now to place the rest of these party cakes,” he told Nikolai as he ducked out of the boiler room and crept down an empty stretch of corridor.
CHAPTER
Thirty-two
Gabrielle, what’s happening? What’s wrong with Kendra? She came to the gallery and told me you were in an accident and that I had to come with her right away. Why would she lie about that?”
She didn’t know how to answer Jamie’s anxious, whispered questions from beside her in the backseat of the sedan. They were speeding away from Beacon Hill, toward downtown. Financial District skyscrapers loomed ahead in the dark, office lights twinkling like Christmas bulbs. Kendra sat in the front seat next to the driver, a thick-necked bouncer type in a thug’s dark suit and sunglasses.
Gabrielle and Jamie had a similar companion in back with them crowding them onto one side of the slick leather bench seat. She didn’t think they were Rogues; they didn’t appear to be hiding huge fangs behind their tense lips, and from what little she knew of the Breed’s deadly enemies, she didn’t expect that she or Jamie would have gone so much as a minute without getting their throats ripped out if the two men were, in fact, blood-addicted Rogues.
Minions, then, she reasoned. Human mind slaves of a powerful vampire Master.
Like Kendra was.
“What are they going to do with us, Gabby?”
“I’m not sure.” She reached over and squeezed Jamie’s hand. She kept her voice low, too, but she knew their captors were listening to every word. “It’ll be okay, though. I promise.”
They had to get out of the car before they reached their destination, that much she did know. It was the most basic rule of self-defense: never let yourself be taken to a secondary location. Then you were on your attacker’s turf.
Odds of survival would go from poor to nil.
She glanced at the sliding lock on the door next to Jamie. He watched her eyes, brow pinching in question as she stared at him then back to the lock. Then he got it. He gave her a nearly imperceptible nod.
But when he started to shift his hands into place to unlock the door, Kendra chose that moment to turn around and taunt them from the front seat. “Almost there now, kiddies. Are you excited? I know I am. I can’t wait for my Master to finally meet you in the flesh, Gabby. Mm, mmm! He’s just gonna eat you right up.”
Jamie leaned forward, practically snarling with venom. “Back off, you lying bitch!”
“Jamie, don’t!” Gabrielle tried to hold him back, fear seizing her at his naive display of protectiveness. He had no idea what he was doing, agitating Kendra or the other two Minions in the car with them.
But he wouldn’t be swayed. He made a lunge from his seat. “You touch either one of us and so help me, I’ll claw your eyes out!”
“Jamie, stop, it’s okay,” Gabrielle said, pushing him back down. “Calm down, please! It’ll be okay.”
Kendra had hardly flinched. Staring at them both, she let out a sudden, shrill giggle. “Ah, Jamie. You always have been Gabby’s faithful little terrier. Arf! Arf! You’re pathetic.”
Very slowly, obviously very full of herself, Kendra resituated herself in the front seat, giving them her back. “Turn up at the light,” she told the driver.
Gabrielle blew out a tremulous sigh of relief as she settled back against the cold leather. Jamie was bunched up against the car door, fuming. When their eyes met, he slid a fraction to the side, letting her see that the door was now unlocked.
Her heart jumped at his ingenuity and courage. She could hardly contain her hopeful smile as the vehicle slowed for the traffic light a few yards ahead. It was red, but based on the line of cars stopped in front of them, it was due to change at any second.
This was their only chance.
She glanced at Jamie, and saw that he understood the plan perfectly.
Gabrielle waited, watching the light, the seconds seeming like hours. The red light blinked off, then went to green. The cars started moving ahead of them. As the sedan began to accelerate, Jamie grabbed the door handle. Pushed it open.
Fresh night air rushed in, and the both of them made a headlong move for freedom. Jamie hit the pavement and immediately moved to grab Gabrielle’s arm to help her escape.
“Stop her!” Kendra shrieked. “Don’t let her get away!”
A heavy hand clamped down on Gabrielle’s shoulder and hauled her back inside the car. She crashed against the Minion’s massive chest. His arms wrapped around her, trapping her in an iron hold.
“Gabby!” Jamie screamed.
A desperate sob choked out of her throat. “Get out of here! Jamie, go!”
“Punch it, you idiot!” Kendra yelled to the driver as Jamie reached for the door handle, trying to come back for Gabrielle. The engine roared, tires screeching as the car joined the other traffic.
“What about him?”
“Leave him,” Kendra ordered sharply. She smiled at Gabrielle, who was struggling in vain in the backseat. “He’s already served his purpose.”
The Minion held her in a bruising grip until Kendra ordered the car to a stop outside a sleek corporate building. They got out of the car and forced Gabrielle toward the glass entrance. Kendra was talking to someone on her cell phone, purring with self-satisfaction.
“Yes, we’ve got her. We’re coming up now.”
She pocketed the phone and led the way across a vacant, marble lobby to a bank of elevators. Once inside, she pressed the button for the penthouse suite.
Gabrielle immediately thought back to the private showing Jamie had done for her photographs. As the elevator stopped on the top floor and the mirrored doors slid open, she had a dreadful feeling that her anonymous buyer was about to make himself known.
The Minion thug who had her by the arms shoved her into the suite. She stumbled forward and, in mere seconds, Gabrielle’s dread became fact.
A tall, dark-haired figure in a long black coat and sunglasses stood in front of the wall of glass, Boston’s nighttime skyline glowing behind him. He was as big as any one of the warriors, and he projected the same air of confidence. The same cool menace.
“Come in,” he said, the boom of his deep voice rolling like a storm. “Gabrielle Maxwell, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Kendra went to his side and pet him adoringly.
“You brought me here for a reason, I assume,” Gabrielle said, trying not to mourn the loss of Kendra’s humanity or fear the dangerous being who made Kendra what she was.
“I’ve become quite a fan of your work.” He smiled without baring his teeth. Kendra was brushed aside with a rough hand. “You take some interesting photographs, Miss Maxwell. Unfortunately, I need you to stop. It’s not good for my business.”
She tried to hold the calm, predatory gaze that she knew was peering at her from behind the dark glasses. “What’s your business? You know, aside, from being a diseased, bloodsucking leech.”
He chuckled. “World domination, of course. Really, is there anything else worth fighting for?”
“I can think of a few things.”
A dark brow arched over the rim of his shades. “Oh, Miss Maxwell, if you say love or friendship, I may have to end this pleasant little introduction right now.” He steepled his fingers, the rings on them sparkling in the dim light. She didn’t like the way he was staring at her, sizing her up. His nostrils flared slightly, and then he leaned forward. “Come closer.”
When she didn’t move, the big Minion at her back shoved her into motion. She drew up just an arm’s length away from the vampire Master.
“You smell delicious,” he hissed slowly. “Like a flower, but there is something…else. Someone has fed from you recently. A warrior? Don’t bother to deny it, I can smell him on you.”
Before she realized it, he grabbed her wrist, yanking her to him. With rough hands, he pushed her head to the side, moving the hair that concealed Lucan’s bite and the other, more damning mark, beneath her left ear.
“A Breedmate,” he growled, smoothing his fingertips over her skin. “And newly claimed at that. You grow more fascinating by the second, Gabrielle.”
She didn’t like the intimate way he whispered her name.
“Who bit you, Breedmate? Which one of the warriors did you permit between those long, lovely legs?”
“Go to hell,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“Not going to tell me?” He clucked his tongue, slowly shook his head. “That’s all right. We can find out soon enough. We can make him come to us.”
He drew back from her at last, and motioned for one of the Minion guards. “Bring her to the roof.”
Gabrielle fought the grip of her captor, but she was no match for his brute strength. She was forced toward a red exit sign and a door with an information placard affixed to it, marked “Helipad Access.”
“Wait! What about me?” Kendra complained from within the suite.
“Oh, yes. Nurse K. Delaney,” her dark Master said, as if just now remembering her. “After we leave, I want you to come out to the roof. I know you’ll find the view from the ledge to be spectacular. Enjoy it for a moment…then step off.”
She blinked at him dully, then bobbed her head, completely under his spell.
“Kendra!” Gabrielle shouted, still desperate to reach her friend. “Kendra, don’t do it!”
The one in the black coat and dark shades strode past without a care in the world. “Let’s go. I’m finished here.”
With the last block of C4 in place at the northern end of the asylum, Lucan navigated his way through a ventilation duct that led to the outside. He removed the loosened grid and hoisted himself out onto the ground. The grass crushed beneath him as he rolled onto it, fresh air crisp in his mouth as he came up on his feet and started to jog toward the perimeter fence.
“Niko, how’re we doing?”
“We’re good. Tegan’s on his way back and Gideon should be right behind you.”
“Excellent.”
“Got my finger on the detonators,” Nikolai said, his voice nearly drowned out by the low chop of a helicopter encroaching on the area. “Say the word, Lucan. I’m dying to light this sucker up.”
“Me, too,” Lucan said. He scowled up into the night sky, searching for the bird. “We’ve got incoming, Niko. Sounds like a chopper heading right for the asylum.”
As soon as he said it, he saw the dark shape appear over the tree line. Small lights flashed as the helicopter angled for the roof of the asylum and began its descent.
A breeze kicked up as the propeller beat its steady rhythm. Lucan smelled pine and summer pollen…and another perfume that made his blood run cold in his veins.
“Oh, Jesus,” he gasped as the trace scent of jasmine registered. “Do not touch the detonators, Niko! For chrissake, whatever you do, you can’t let that fucking building blow!”
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
A volatile mix of adrenaline, rage, and absolute, marrow-chilling fear vaulted Lucan to the roof of the old asylum. The helicopter had barely touched down on its landing rails as he thundered toward it from the edge of the building. Lucan was vibrating with fury, more explosive and unstable than a tractor trailer packed with C4. He fully intended to rip the limbs off of whomever was holding Gabrielle.
He approached from behind the helicopter, careful not to be seen as he rolled under its tail, then came around to the passenger side of the cockpit, gun drawn.
He glimpsed her inside. She was in the backseat next to a big male dressed in black and wearing dark glasses. She looked so small, so terrified. Her scent swamped him. Her fear tore at his heart.
Lucan yanked open the cockpit door, shoved his weapon into the face of Gabrielle’s captor, and made a grab for her with his free hand. She was jerked back before he could latch onto her.
“Lucan?” Gabrielle gasped, her eyes wide with surprise. “Oh, my God, Lucan!”
He did a quick visual assessment of the situation, noting the Minion pilot and another mind-slave human next to him in the front. The Minion in the front passenger seat spun around to knock away Lucan’s arm, and got a bullet in his head instead.
When Lucan looked back to Gabrielle not even an instant later, the calm one with her had put a savage-looking blade to her throat. Peeking out from the sleeve of his long black trenchcoat were the dermaglyphs Lucan had seen in the surveillance photos from the West Coast.
“Let her go,” he told the Gen One leader of the Rogues.
“My, my, this is a faster response than I could have imagined, even for a blood-bonded warrior. What are you up to? Why are you here?”
The low, arrogant voice took him aback.
Did he know this bastard?
“Let her go,” Lucan said, “and I’ll show you why I’m here.”
“I think not.” The Gen One smiled broadly, baring his teeth.
No fangs. A vampire, but not a Rogue at all.
What the hell?
“She’s lovely, Lucan. I rather expected she was yours.”
Christ, he knew that voice. It came from somewhere buried deep in his memory.
Deep in his past.
A name cut through his mind, as sharp as a blade.
No. It couldn’t be him.
Impossible…
He shook off the momentary confusion, but the slip in focus cost him dearly. Creeping up on him from the side, a Rogue had come up on the roof from within the asylum. With a snarl, it seized the helicopter door and slammed the edge of it into Lucan’s skull.
“Lucan!” Gabrielle screamed. “No!”
He staggered, one knee sinking beneath him. His gun was kicked out of his grasp. It skittered across the rough surface of the roof, several yards out of reach.
The Rogue punched him, a massive fist connecting with his jaw. A second later, a brutal kick smashed into his ribs. Lucan went down, but he swung out with his booted foot and collapsed his attacker’s leg. He leaped on the Rogue, one hand going for the blade sheathed at his torso.
A few feet away, the helicopter’s rotors began a high-pitched whine. They were speeding up. The pilot was preparing to take off again.
He couldn’t let that happen.
If he let Gabrielle off this roof, he had no hope that he would see her alive again.
“Get us out of here,” Gabrielle’s captor ordered his pilot, as the chopper’s blades whirred faster and faster.
Outside, scrabbling on the roof, Lucan fought the Rogue who’d attacked him. Through the dark, Gabrielle spotted another one coming up from a hatch in the roof.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, hardly able to speak for the cutting edge of steel that was biting into the skin at her throat.
The big male leaned past her to see what was happening on the roof. Lucan had returned to his feet. He sliced the first Rogue who had jumped him, lacing open the big vampire’s gut. The Rogue’s scream was audible even over the loud drone of the helicopter’s rotors. Its body started convulsing, spasming…melting.
Lucan’s head pivoted around to the helicopter. Fury blazed out of his eyes, glowing like twin embers lit by hell-fire. He lunged forward, roaring, shoulders bunched. Coming at the vehicle like a freight train.
“Get us out of here now!” shouted the male beside Gabrielle, the first true trace of worry she’d heard in him. “Now, goddamn it!”
The helicopter started lifting.
Gabrielle tried to shrink away from the bite of the blade by pressing her spine into the back of the small rear seat. If she could just find a way to knock his arm away, she might be able to reach the cockpit door—
There was a sudden lurch of the helicopter, as if they had snagged on some part of the building. The engine whined, straining.
Her captor was fuming now. “Take off, you idiot!”
“I’m trying, sire!” said the Minion at the controls. He pulled a lever and the engine protested with a terrible groan.
There was another lurch, a sharp downward tug that rattled everything inside the helicopter. The cockpit rolled forward. Gabrielle’s captor lost his grounding on the seat, a momentary inattention.
The blade left her throat.
With a burst of sheer determination, she threw herself backward and kicked out with both legs, shoving him into the back of the pilot’s seat. The vehicle pitched sharply forward. She scrambled for the latch on the cockpit door.
It swung open wildly, flapping on its hinges as the whole compartment shook and wobbled. Her captor was righting himself, about to grab for her again. His sunglasses had fallen off in the chaos. He glared at her with icy gray eyes, full of malice.
“Tell Lucan this is far from over,” the leader of the Rogues ordered her, hissing the words through an evil smile.
“Go to hell,” Gabrielle shot back at him. In that same instant, she lunged for the open space of the door and dropped the several feet down onto the roof.
As soon as he saw her, Lucan let go of the helicopter’s landing rail. The vehicle jolted upward, spinning crazily as the pilot struggled to gain control of his ascent.
He raced to Gabrielle’s side and pulled her to her feet, hands roaming all over her to make sure she was in one piece. “Are you okay?”
She nodded jerkily. “Lucan behind you!”
On the roof, another Rogue was heading for them. Lucan met the challenge with pleasure, now that Gabrielle was with him, every muscle in his body primed for dealing death. He drew another blade and pounded toward the approaching threat.
The fight was savage and swift. With fists flying, blades slashing, Lucan and the Rogue engaged in a deadly hand-to-hand combat. Lucan took more than one hit, but he was unstoppable. Gabrielle’s blood was still strong within him, giving him a fury that would have been a match for ten opponents at once. He struck hard and with lethal efficiency, dispatching the Rogue with a vertical slice to its body.
Lucan didn’t wait to see the titanium do its thing. He spun around and ran back to Gabrielle. Once he was in reach of her, all he could do was pull her into his arms and hold her fast against him. He could have stayed there all night, just breathing her in, feeling her heart beat, stroking her soft skin.
He lifted her chin and placed a fiercely tender kiss on her lips. “We have to get out of here, baby. Right now.”
Above their heads, the helicopter was rising higher.
From out of the clear cockpit, the Gen One vampire who’d taken Gabrielle stared down through the glass enclosure. He gave Lucan a vague salute, grinning as his ride ascended into the night sky.
“Oh, God, Lucan! I was so scared. If anything had happened to you…”
Gabrielle’s whisper made him forget all about his escaping enemy. The only thing that mattered to him was that she was able to talk to him. She was breathing. Gabrielle was with him, and he hoped to God he could keep her that way.
“How the hell did they get to you?” he asked, his voice shaking with urgency and the sharp aftershocks of his fear.
“After you left the compound tonight, I needed to get away and think. I went home. Kendra showed up. She had Jamie held hostage in a car outside. I couldn’t let them hurt him. Kendra is—was—a Minion, Lucan. They killed her. My friend is dead.” Gabrielle gave a sudden sob. “But Jamie got away, at least. He’s somewhere downtown, probably scared out of his mind. I need to find him and make sure he’s all right.”
Lucan heard the low clip of the helicopter as it rose higher above them. He had to give Niko the signal to blow the place before the Rogues inside had a chance to escape, too.
“Let’s get out of here, then we’ll deal with the rest.” Lucan scooped Gabrielle off her feet and up into his arms. “Hold on to me, sweetheart. Tight as you can.”
“Okay.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.
He kissed her again, relief flooding him to have her in his arms.
“Don’t ever let go,” he said, looking into the shining, beautiful eyes of his Breedmate.
Then he stepped over the edge of the roof and dropped with her, as soft as he could manage, down to the ground below.
“Lucan, talk to me, man!” Nikolai called over the earpiece. “Where are you? What the fuck is going on out there?”
“Everything’s all right,” he answered, carrying Gabrielle swiftly across the darkened grass of the property, toward where the warriors’ SUV waited. “Everything’s going to be all right now. Hit the detonator and let’s finish this thing.”
Gabrielle was huddled under the strong curve of Lucan’s arm as the SUV pulled onto the road leading to the compound’s estate. He’d been holding her close to him since they’d escaped the asylum grounds, shielding her eyes as the entire complex of buildings had gone up in a hellish ball of fire.
Lucan and his brethren had actually done it—they’d taken out the Rogues’ headquarters in one awesome strike. The helicopter had managed to elude the explosion, vanishing skyward into the black smoke and cover of night.
Lucan was pensive, staring out the tinted window, up into the canopy of stars. Gabrielle had seen his look of surprise—of stunned disbelief—when he’d been up on the roof and thrown open the helicopter’s cockpit door.
It was as if he’d seen a ghost.
The mood carried with him even now as they entered the estate and Nikolai drove toward the garage. The warrior pulled the vehicle to a stop inside the huge hangar. When he cut the engine, Lucan finally spoke.
“Tonight we scored an important victory against our enemies.”
“Hell yeah,” Nikolai agreed. “And we avenged Conlan and Rio. They would’ve loved to have been there to see that place blow.”
Lucan nodded in the dark vehicle. “But make no mistake, we are entering a new phase of conflict with the Rogues. This is war now, more than ever. Tonight we’ve stirred the hornet’s nest. But the one we needed to get—their leader—is still alive.”
“Let him run. We’ll get him,” Dante said, grinning confidently.
But Lucan gave a grim shake of his head. “This one is different. He won’t make it easy. He’ll anticipate our moves. He’ll understand our tactics. The Order is going to need to strengthen its strategies and increase its numbers. We need to organize the few remaining cadres around the world, bring in more warriors, the sooner the better.”
Gideon pivoted around in the front seat. “You think it’s the Gen One out of the West Coast who’s leading the Rogues?”
“I’m sure of it,” Lucan answered. “He was in the helicopter on the roof tonight, where he was holding Gabrielle.” He stroked her arm with tender affection, pausing to look at her as if the mere sight of her reassured him in some way. “And the bastard’s not a Rogue—not now, if he ever was. Once, he was a warrior, like us. His name is Marek.”
Gabrielle felt a cold blast coming from the SUV’s third row of seats and knew that Tegan was looking at Lucan.
Lucan knew it, too. He swiveled his head to meet the other warrior’s stare. “Marek is my brother.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-four
The weight of Lucan’s revelation followed them as they exited the vehicle and took the hangar’s elevator down into the compound. Standing beside Lucan, Gabrielle laced her fingers through his as they descended. Shock and sympathy clawed at her heart, and when he glanced over at her, she knew he could read the worry in her eyes.
Gabrielle saw similar looks of concern reflected in the eyes of Lucan’s warrior brethren as well, an unspoken acknowledgment of what the night’s discovery meant.
The time was going to come that Lucan would have to face killing his own brother.
Or be killed by him.
Gabrielle hardly had a chance to absorb that cold fact before the elevator doors opened on Savannah and Danika, who were waiting anxiously for the warriors’ return. There were relieved welcomes, dozens of questions about the outcome of the night’s mission, as well as worried inquiries into what on earth had made Gabrielle leave the compound without a word to anyone. Gabrielle was too tired to answer, too exhausted from the entire ordeal to even try to express what she was feeling.
But she knew she would have to provide some answers soon, to Lucan at least.
She watched as he was ushered away by the other warriors amid talk of war tactics and new battle strategies to be used against the Rogues. Gabrielle was swiftly pulled in an opposite direction by Savannah and Danika. They fretted over her sundry scrapes and bruises, insisting that she take a warm meal and a long, hot bath.
Gabrielle reluctantly agreed, but not even Savannah’s amazing cooking or the fragrant heat of the soak that followed could relax her.
Her mind was spinning with thoughts about Lucan, Jamie, and everything that had happened that night. She owed Lucan her life. She loved him more than anything, would always be grateful to him for his rescuing her, but it didn’t change how she felt about the way things had been going between them. She couldn’t stay at the compound like this. And no matter what he said, she wasn’t about to enter one of the Darkhavens.
So, what did that leave? She couldn’t go back to her apartment, either. Her old life no longer fit. To return to it meant she would have to deny everything she’d experienced with Lucan these past weeks and work to forget him. She would have to deny all that she now understood about herself, and her connection to the Breed.
The truth was, she didn’t know where she belonged now. She didn’t know where to begin looking, but as she walked the compound’s maze of corridors, Gabrielle found herself standing outside Lucan’s private quarters.
The door to the main apartment was ajar; a soft light glowed from within. Gabrielle pushed it open, then stepped inside.
Candlelight flickered in the adjacent bedroom. She followed the ambient warmth to the threshold and paused there, marveling at what she saw. Lucan’s austere bedroom had been transformed into something out of a dream. Four tall black pillar candles set into intricate silver sconces burned in each corner. Red silk draped the bed. On the floor before the fireplace was a cushioned nest of fluffy pillows and even more crimson silk. It looked so romantic, so inviting.
A room intended for lovemaking.
She took a step farther inside. Behind her, the door closed softly on its own.
No, not quite on its own. Lucan was there, standing on the other side of the room, watching her. His hair was damp from a shower. He wore a loosely tied, satiny red robe that skated around his bare calves, and there was a heated look in his eyes that melted her where she stood.
“For you,” he said, indicating the romantic setting. “For us tonight. I want things to be special for you.”
Gabrielle was moved, instantly aroused by the sight of him, but she couldn’t bear to make love the way things had been left between them.
“When I left tonight, I wasn’t going to come back,” she told him from the safety of distance. If she went any closer, she didn’t think she’d have the strength to say what had to be said. “I can’t do this anymore, Lucan. I need things from you that you can’t give me.”
“Name them.” It was a soft command, but still a command. He moved toward her with careful steps, as though he sensed she might bolt on him at any second. “Tell me what you need.”
She shook her head. “What would be the use?”
A few more slow steps. He paused just beyond an arm’s length. “I’d like to know. I’m curious what it would take to convince you to stay with me.”
“For the night?” she asked quietly, hating herself for how badly she needed to feel his arms around her after what she’d been through these past several hours.
“I want you, and I’m prepared to offer you anything, Gabrielle. So, tell me what you need.”
“Your trust,” she said, tossing out something she felt was well out of reach. “I can’t…do this anymore, when you don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he said, so solemnly she actually believed him. “You are the only one who’s ever really known me, Gabrielle. There is nothing I can hide from you. You’ve seen it all—the worst, certainly. I’d like the chance to show you some of the good in me.” He moved closer. She could feel heat coming off his body. She could sense his desire. “I want you to feel as safe with me as you’ve allowed me to feel with you. So, the question is, can you trust me, knowing everything about me that you do?”
“I’ve always trusted you, Lucan. I always will. But that’s not—”
“What else, then?” he asked, cutting her denial short. “Tell me what else I can give you to make you stay.”
“This isn’t going to work,” she said, inching backward. “I can’t stay. Not like this. Not when my friend Jamie…”
“He is safe.” When Gabrielle looked at Lucan, confused, he said, “I sent Dante topside to find him soon after we arrived. He reported back a few minutes ago that he retrieved your friend from a police station downtown and took him home.”
Relief flared in her, but it was quickly followed by concern. “What did Dante tell him? Did he wipe Jamie’s memory?”
Lucan shook his head. “I didn’t think it would be fair to make that decision for you. Dante merely told him that you were safe as well and that you would be in contact with him soon to explain. Whatever you wish to tell your friend is up to you. You see? Trust, Gabrielle.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, warmed by the consideration. “Thank you for helping me tonight. You saved my life.”
“Then why are you afraid of me now?”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, but she was moving away from him, hardly aware of that fact until the bed came up behind her, blocking her escape. In an instant, he was right there in front of her.
“What more do you want from me, Gabrielle?”
“Nothing,” she said, hardly more than a whisper.
“Nothing at all?” he replied, his voice dark, demanding.
“Please. Don’t make me want to stay with you tonight when you will only wish me gone tomorrow. Let me go now, Lucan.”
“I can’t do that.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. His mouth was warm and soft on her fingertips, weaving a spell around her as only he could do. He brought her hand closer, pressing her palm to his chest, to the heavy throb that beat against his ribs like a drum. “I can’t ever let you go, Gabrielle. Because whether you want it from me or not, you have my heart. You have my love, too. If you’ll accept it.”
She swallowed hard. “What?”
“I love you.” The words were low and earnest, a caress she felt deep inside of her. “Gabrielle Maxwell, I love you more than life itself. I’ve been alone for so long, I didn’t know enough to recognize that until it was nearly too late.” He stopped talking then, searching her eyes intensely. “It’s not…too late, is it?”
He loved her.
Joy, pure and bright, poured through her to hear those words coming from Lucan.
“Say it again,” she whispered, needing to know that this moment was real, that it would last.
“I love you, Gabrielle. With every ounce of life in me, I love you.”
“Lucan.” She sighed his name, tears rising, swelling, spilling over to run down her cheeks.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply, a passionate joining of their mouths that sent her head spinning, her heart soaring, her blood pulsing like fire in her veins.
“You deserve so much better than me,” he told her, reverence in his voice and in his bright, amber-flecked gray gaze. “You know the demons in me. Can you love me—would you have me—even though you know my weakness?”
She cupped his strong jaw in her palm, letting him see the love she held for him reflecting in her eyes. “You’re never weak, Lucan. And I will love you no matter what. Together we can get past anything.”
“You make me believe that. You’ve given me hope.” Lovingly, he caressed her arm, her shoulder, her cheek. His gaze roamed over her face, following the reverent path of his hands. “My God, you are so exquisite. You could have any male, Breed or human—”
“You’re the only one I want.”
He smiled. “God help you, but I will have no other. I’ve never wanted anything so selfishly as I want this moment. Be mine, Gabrielle.”
“I am.”
He swallowed, glancing down as if suddenly uncertain. “I’m talking about forever. I can’t settle for anything less. Gabrielle, will you have me as your mate?”
“Forever and always,” she whispered, leaning back onto the bed and bringing him down with her. “I am yours, Lucan, forever and always.”
They kissed again, and when they drew apart this time, Lucan reached for a slim gold dagger lying on the table next to the bed. He brought it toward his face. Gabrielle started a bit, seeing him bring the edge of the blade up to his mouth. “Lucan—”
His eyes were soft, serious, yet tender as he held her anxious gaze. “You’ve given me your blood to heal me. You strengthen me and protect me. You are all that I ever want, all that I could ever need.”
She’d never heard him speak so solemnly. His irises just about glowed, the pale gray mingling with amber and the depth of his emotion.
“Gabrielle, will you honor me now and take my blood to complete our bond?”
Her voice was the barest gasp. “Yes.”
Lucan bowed his head and moved the dagger to his lower lip. When he set the blade aside and looked at her once more, his mouth was glossy with dark red blood.
“Come here. Let me love you now,” he said, and pressed his scarlet kiss to her lips.
Nothing could have prepared her for that first sweet taste of Lucan’s blood.
Richer than wine, instantly intoxicating, his blood flowed over her tongue like an elixir crafted for the gods. She felt all of Lucan’s love pouring into her, all of his power and strength. Light filled her from deep within, giving her a taste of the future that awaited her as Lucan’s Breedmate. Happiness flooded her, leaving her flushed with its heat, and a feeling of contentment like she had never known before.
She felt desire, too.
More intense than it had ever been.
With a low growl of need, Gabrielle braced her hand against Lucan’s bare chest and rolled him onto his back. She stripped out of her clothes in little more than an instant and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips between her thighs.
His sex thrust up in front of her, thick and solid as stone. The beautiful web of markings on his skin were deep purple shot with vivid red, pulsing in stronger hues as she gazed upon him in hunger. Gabrielle leaned down and let her tongue trace along the swirling, intricate lines that decorated him from thigh to navel, and higher, up his muscled chest and shoulders.
He was hers.
The thought was fiercely possessive, primal. She had never wanted him more than she did in that moment. She was panting and wet, burning up with the need to mount him and ride him hard.
God, was this what Savannah meant when she said the blood-bond would enhance lovemaking?
Gabrielle looked at Lucan with pure carnal need, hardly knowing where to begin with him. She wanted to devour him, worship him, use him up. Slake the coiling need that was churning inside of her.
“You should have warned me you were feeding me an aphrodisiac.”
Lucan grinned up at her. “And spoil the surprise?”
“Laugh it up, vampire.” Gabrielle arched a brow, then gripped his stiff erection and sheathed him to the hilt in one long move. “You just promised me eternity, you know. I can make you live to regret it.”
“Yeah?” The word was more of a strangled groan as she rocked on him, making his hips buck sharply beneath her. Eyes blazing now, he gave her a glimpse of fang as he smiled, clearly enjoying his torture. “Breedmate, I’m going to love seeing you try.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author Lara Adrian lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries’ old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Read on for a preview of
Lara Adrian’s next novel in her heart-stopping Midnight Breed series….
Kiss of Crimson
by
LARA ADRIAN
On sale June 2007
Kiss of Crimson
On sale June 2007
CHAPTER
Three
Tess came awake with a start.
Shit. How long had she been dozing? She was in her office, Shiva’s case file open beneath her cheek on the desk. Last she recalled, she’d fed the malnourished tiger and put it back in its containment so she could begin writing up her findings. That was—she glanced at her watch—two and a half hours ago? It was now a few minutes before 3 A.M. She was due back in the clinic at 7 o’clock.
Tess groaned around a big yawn and a stretch of her cramped arms.
Good thing she woke up before Nora reported back to work, or she’d never hear the end of—
A loud bump sounded from somewhere in the back of the clinic.
What the hell?
Had she been jolted out of her sleep by a similar noise a minute ago?
Oh, jeez. Of course. Ben must have driven past and saw the lights on in the clinic. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come around on a late-night drive-by to check in on her. She really didn’t feel like getting a lecture on her crazy hours, or her stubborn streak of independence.
The noise came again, another clumsy bump, followed by an abrupt clatter of metal as something got knocked off a shelf.
Which meant someone was in the back storage room.
Tess rose from her desk and took a few tentative steps toward her office door, ears tuned to any disturbance at all. In the kennels off the reception area, the handful of post-op cats and dogs were restless. Some of them were whining; others were issuing low warning growls.
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?”
Nobody answered. And now the noises she’d heard before had gone still as well.
Great. She’d just announced her presence to an intruder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic. Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shelter, who found his or her way into the clinic from the back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something else was in there as well.
Oh, that’s right. The tranq syringe, full of enough Telazol to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out cold.
“Is someone back there?” she asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception station and reached for the phone. The damn thing wasn’t cordless—she’d gotten it cheap on closeout—and the receiver barely reached to her ear from over the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started punching 9-1-1 on the keypad. “You’d better get out of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”
“No…please…don’t be afraid….”
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn’t have reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if the words had been whispered right up next to her head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
There was a dry croak and a violent, wracking cough, definitely coming from the storage room. And whomever the voice belonged to sounded like he was in a world of hurt. Life and death kind of hurt.
“Damn it.”
Tess held her breath and hung up the phone before her call connected. She walked slowly toward the back of the clinic, uncertain what she was going to find, and really wishing she didn’t have to look at all.
“Hello? What are you doing in here? Are you hurt?”
She spoke to the intruder as she pushed open the door and stepped inside. She heard labored breathing, smelled smoke and the briny stench of the river. She smelled blood, too. Lots of it.
Tess flicked the light on.
Harsh fluorescent tubes buzzed to life overhead, illuminating the incredible bulk of a drenched, heavily injured man slumped on the floor near one of the supply shelves. He was dressed all in black, like some kind of goth nightmare—black leather jacket, tee-shirt, fatigues, and lace-up combat boots. Even his hair was black, the wet strands plastered to his head, shielding his down-turned face from view. An ugly smudge of blood and river water traveled from the back door, partially opened onto the alley, to where the man lay in Tess’s storeroom. He had evidently dragged himself inside, maybe unable to walk.
If she hadn’t been so accustomed to seeing the grisly aftermath of car accidents, beatings, and other bodily trauma in her animal patients, the sight of this man’s injuries might have turned Tess’s stomach inside out.
Instead, her mind switched from alarm and the instinctual fight-or-flight mode she’d been feeling out in the reception area, to that of the physician she was trained to be. Clinical, calm, and concerned.
“What happened to you?”
The man grunted, gave a vague shake of his dark head like he wasn’t going to tell her anything about it. Perhaps he couldn’t.
“You’re covered in burns and wounds. My God, there must be hundreds of them. Were you in some kind of accident?” She glanced down to where one of his hands was resting on his abdomen. Blood was seeping through his fingers from a fresh, deep puncture. “Your gut is bleeding—and your leg, too. Jesus, have you been shot?”
“Need…blood.”
He was probably right about that. The floor beneath him was slick and dark from what he’d lost just since his arrival at the clinic. He’d likely lost a good deal more before he got there. Nearly every patch of his exposed skin bore multiple lacerations—his face and neck, his hands, everywhere Tess looked, she saw bleeding cuts and contusions. His cheeks and mouth were pale white, ghostly.
“You need an ambulance,” she told him, not wanting to upset him, but damn, the guy was in bad shape. “Just relax now. I’m going to go call 911 for you.”
“No!” He lurched from his slump on the floor, thrusting his hand out to her in alarm. “No hospitals! Can’t…can’t go there…they won’t…can’t help me.”
Despite his protest, Tess started to run for the phone in the other room. But then she remembered the stolen tiger hanging out in one of her exam rooms. Hard to explain that to the EMTs, or, God forbid, the police. The gun shop had probably already called in the theft of the animal, or would by the time the store opened that morning, just a few short hours away.
“Please,” gasped the huge man bleeding all over her clinic. “No doctors.”
Tess paused, regarding him in silence. He needed help in a big way, and he needed it now. Unfortunately, she looked like his best chance at the moment. She wasn’t sure what she could do for him here, but maybe she could patch him up temporarily, get him on his feet and get him the hell out of there.
“Okay,” she said. “No ambulances for now. Listen, I’m, ah—I’m actually a doctor. Well, more or less. This is my veterinary clinic. Would it be all right if I come a little closer and have a look at you?”
She took the quirk of his mouth and ragged exhaled sigh as a yes.
Tess inched down beside him on the floor. He seemed big from across the room, but crouched next to him, she realized that he was immense, easily six-and-a-half feet, and 250-plus pounds of heavy bone and solid muscle. Was he some kind of bodybuilder? One of those macho meatheads who spent his life in the gym? Something about him didn’t quite fit that mold. With the grim cut of his face, he looked like the kind of guy who could tear a gym rat to pieces with his teeth.
She moved her hands lightly over his face, feeling for trauma. His skull was intact, but her touch told her that he’d suffered a mild concussion in some fashion. Probably was still in a state of shock.
“I’m just going to check your eyes,” she informed him gently, then lifted one of his lids.
Holy shit.
The slit pupil cutting through the center of a large, bright amber iris took her aback. She recoiled, freaked out by the unexpected presentation.
“What the—”
Then the explanation hit her, and she instantly felt like an idiot for losing her cool.
Costume contacts.
Chill out, she told herself. She was getting jumpy for no good reason. The guy must have been at a Halloween party that got out of hand or something. Not much she could tell from his eyes so long as he was wearing those ridiculous lenses.
Maybe he’d been partying with a rough crowd; he certainly looked big and dangerous enough to be part of some kind of gang. If he was rolling with gangbangers tonight, she didn’t detect any evidence of drugs on him. She didn’t smell alcohol on him, either. Just some heavy-duty smoke, and not from cigarettes.
He smelled like he’d walked through fire. Just before he took a dive into the Mystic River.
“Can you move your arms or legs?” she asked him, moving on to inspect his limbs. “Do you think you have any broken bones?”
She skimmed her hands over his thick arms, feeling no obvious fractures. His legs were solid, too, no real damage beyond the bullet wound in his left calf. From the look of it, the round appeared to have passed clean through. Same with the one that hit him in the torso. Luckily for him.
“I’d like to move you to one of my exam rooms. Do you think you can walk if I help hold you up?”
“Blood,” he gasped, his voice thready. “Need it…now.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there. You’ll need a hospital for that. Right now we need to get you off this floor and out of those ruined clothes. God knows what kind of bacteria you picked up in that water out there.”
She put her hands under his armpits and started to lift, encouraging him to stand. He growled, something deep and animalistic. As the sound left his mouth, Tess caught a glimpse of his teeth behind his curled upper lip.
Whoa. That’s weird.
Were those monstrous canines actually…fangs?
His eyes came open as if he had sensed her awareness. Her unease. Tess was instantly blasted by piercing bright amber light, the glowing irises sending a bolt of panic straight into her chest. Those sure as hell weren’t contacts.
Good Lord. Something wasn’t right with this guy at all.
He grabbed her upper arms. Tess cried out in alarm. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he was too strong. Hands as unyielding as iron bands clamped tighter around her and brought her closer. Tess shrieked, wide-eyed, frozen in fear as he drew her right up against him.
“Oh God. No!”
He turned his bloodied, battered face toward her throat. Sucked in a sharp breath as he neared her, his lips brushing her skin.
“Shhh.” Warm air skated across her neck as he spoke in a low, pained rasp. “I won’t…not going to…hurt you. I promise….”
Tess heard the words.
She almost believed them.
Until that split second of terror, when he parted his lips and sank his teeth deep into her flesh.
CHAPTER
Four
Blood surged into Dante’s mouth from the twin punctures in the female’s neck. He drew from her with deep, urgent pulls, unable to curb the feral part of him that knew only need and desperation. It was life pulsing over his tongue and down his parched throat, silky, cinnamon-sweet, and so very warm.
Maybe it was the severity of his need that made her taste so incredible, so indescribably perfect to him. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He drank more of her, needing her heat when he was chilled to his marrow.
“Oh God. No!” The woman’s voice was heady with shock. “Please! Let me go!”
She clutched at his shoulders reflexively, fingers digging into his muscles. But the rest of her body was slowly going still in his arms, lulled to a boneless sort of trance by the hypnotic power of Dante’s bite. She sighed a long gasp of breath, sagging limply as he eased her down onto the floor beneath him and took the nourishment he so badly needed.
There was no pain for her now, not since the initial penetration of his fangs, which would have been sharp but swiftly fleeting. The only pain here was Dante’s own. His body shuddered from the depth of its trauma, his head splitting from concussion, his torso and limbs laced open in too many places to count.
It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.
You are safe. I promise.
He sent the reassurances into her mind, even as he held her tighter, brought her more firmly into the cage of his arms, his mouth still drawing hard from the wound at her throat.
Despite the ferocity of his thirst, a need amplified by the severity of his injuries, Dante’s word was good. Beyond the bite that startled her, he would not harm the female.
I’ll take only what I need. Then I’ll be gone, and you will forget all about me.
Already his strength was returning. Torn flesh was mending from the inside out. Bullet and shrapnel wounds were healing over.
Burns cooling.
Pain fading.
He eased up on the female, willing himself to slow, even though the taste of her was beyond enticing. He’d registered the exotic note of her blood scent on his first draw, but now that his body was rejuvenating, his senses coming back online fully, Dante couldn’t help but savor the sweetness of his unwilling Host.
And her body.
Beneath the shapeless white lab coat, she was strong, lean muscle and long, graceful limbs. Curvy in all the right places. Dante felt the mash of her breasts pressing against his chest, where he pinned her on the storeroom floor, her legs tangled with his. Her hands were still gripped hard on his shoulders, no longer pushing against him, but simply holding on to him as he took a final sip of her life-giving blood.
God, she was so exquisite he could drink from her all night.
He could do a hell of a lot more than that, he thought, suddenly aware of the erection that was wedged hard and demanding at her pelvis. She felt too good beneath him. His blessed angel of mercy, even if she’d come into the role by force.
Dante breathed in her spicy-sweet scent, gently dropping a kiss on the wound that had fed him a second chance at life.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her warm, velvet-soft skin. “I think you saved my life tonight.”
He smoothed his tongue over the small punctures, sealing them closed, and erasing all traces of his bite. The female moaned, stirring from her temporary thrall. She moved under him, the subtle shifting of her body only heightening Dante’s desire to be inside her.
But he’d already taken enough from her tonight. In spite of the fact that she would remember none of what occurred, it seemed less than sporting to seduce her in a puddle of stale river water and spilled blood. Particularly after going at her neck like an animal.
He moved slightly off of her, and brought his right hand up near her face. She flinched, understandably wary. Her eyes were open now—mesmerizing eyes, the color of flawless aquamarine.
“My God, you are beautiful,” he murmured, words he’d casually tossed out to numerous females in the past, but surprisingly never meant more than he did now.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“No,” Dante said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just close your eyes now, angel. It’s almost over.”
A brief press of his palm against her brow, and she would forget all about him.
“Everything’s all right,” he told her as she shrank back from him on the floor, her eyes locked onto his as if she waited for him to strike her. Dared him to. Dante smoothed her hair off her cheek with the tenderness of a lover. Her felt her tension ratchet a little tighter. “Relax now. You can trust—”
Something sharp stuck him in the thigh.
With a vicious snarl, Dante rolled away, flipping onto his back. “What the hell?”
Heat spread from that stabbing point of contact, burning through him like acid. A bitter taste gathered at the back of his throat, just before his vision began to swim crazily. Dante tried to heave himself upright on the floor, but fell back again, his body as uncooperative as a lead slab.
Panting rapidly, those bright blue-green eyes wide with panic, Dante’s angel of mercy peered over him. Her pretty face warped in and out of his vision. One slender hand was pressed to her neck, where he’d bitten her. The other was raised up at shoulder level, holding an empty syringe in a white-knuckled grip.
Holy Christ.
She drugged him.
But as bad as that news was, Dante registered something even worse as his blurring gaze struggled to hold on to the small hand that had managed to fell him with one blow. Between her thumb and forefinger, in that fleshy juncture of soft skin, the female bore a small birthmark.
Deep scarlet, smaller than a dime, the image of a teardrop falling into the bowl of a crescent moon seared into Dante’s brain.
It was a rare mark, a genetic stamp that proclaimed the female sacred to those of Dante’s kind.
She was a Breedmate.
And with her blood now pulsing within him, Dante had just completed one half of a solemn bond.
By vampire law, she was his.
Irrevocably.
Eternally.
The very last thing he wanted or needed.
In his mind, Dante roared, but all he heard was a low, wordless growl. He blinked dully, reaching out for the woman, missing her by an easy foot. His arm dropped like it was weighted down with irons. His eyelids were too heavy to lift more than a fraction. He moaned, watching his erstwhile savior’s features blur before his eyes.
She glared down at him, her voice edged with defiant fury.
“Sleep tight, you psychotic son of a bitch!”
KISS OF CRIMSON
A Dell Book / June 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Lara Adrian
Cover photo © Marcus Luconi/Getty Images
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33694-5
v3.0
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Excerpt from Midnight Awakening
For Cappy and Sue Pratt,
my traveling PR team and favorite cheerleaders.
Thank you for all the love, support,
and the countless good times.
I believe I hear the Caribbean calling again….
Acknowledgments
With many thanks to everyone at Bantam Dell for helping me bring the world of the Midnight Breed to the page and into my readers’ hands, most especially: Shauna Summers, Kristin Doyle, Nita Taublib, Kathleen Baldonado, Theresa Zoro, Anna Crowe, the fantastic art department, and the wonderful sales and subrights teams. I’m so pleased to be working with you all.
With continuing gratitude to my agent, Karen Solem, and to my publicist, Patricia Rouse, for always looking out for me and keeping me on track.
And with deepest appreciation and total adoration to my husband—my secret weapon—for all the killer ideas I happily take credit for, and for cheerfully (maybe that’s too strong a word) picking up the slack around home when I am deep into one of my books (which is pretty much always). I couldn’t do it without you, HB!
CHAPTER One
Dante smoothed his thumb over sweet female flesh, lingering at the carotid, where the human’s pulse throbbed the strongest. His own pulse quickened too, responding to the rush of blood flowing beneath the surface of delicate white skin. Dante leaned his dark head in and kissed that tender spot, letting his tongue play over the fluttering race of the female’s heartbeat.
“Tell me,” he murmured against the warm skin, his voice a low growl amid the heaving beat of the club’s music, “are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
The female squirmed in his lap, her fishnet-clad legs straddling him, black lace-up bustier pushing her breasts up under his chin like a buffet. She twirled her finger in her bright fuchsia wig, then let it trail down suggestively, past a Celtic cross tattoo and into her swelling cleavage. “Oh, I’m a very, very bad witch.”
Dante grunted. “My favorite.”
He smiled into her drunken gaze, not bothering to hide his fangs. He was one of many vampires in the Boston dance club that Halloween night, although most of them were pretenders. Humans sporting plastic teeth, fake blood, and various ridiculous costumery. A few others—himself and a handful of males from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries, hanging out near the dance floor—were the genuine article.
Dante and the others were Breed, a far cry from the pale, gothic vampires of human folklore. Neither undead nor devil-spawned, Dante’s kind were a hot-blooded hybrid mix of Homo sapiens and deadly other-worlder. The Breeds’ forebears, a band of alien conquerors who crash-landed on Earth millennia past and who were now long-since extinct, had bred with human females and given their offspring the thirst—the primal need—for blood.
Those alien genes had given the Breed great strengths and shattering weaknesses too. Only the human side of the Breed, those qualities passed down by their mortal mothers, kept the race civilized and adhering to any kind of Order. Even then, a few of the Breed would succumb to their savage side and turn Rogue, a one-way street paved in blood and madness.
Dante despised that element of his kind, and as one of the warrior class, it was his duty to eradicate his Rogue brethren wherever he found them. As a male who enjoyed his pleasures, Dante wasn’t sure what he preferred more: a warm, juicy female vein under his mouth, or the feel of titanium-edged steel in his hand as he sliced into his enemies and dispatched them to dust in the street.
“Can I touch them?” The pink-haired witch on his lap was staring at Dante’s mouth with rapt fascination. “Dang, but those fangs look wicked real! I just have to feel them.”
“Be careful,” he warned as she brought her fingers to his lips. “I bite.”
“Yeah?” She giggled, gaze widening. “I’ll bet you do, sugar.”
Dante sucked her finger into his mouth, contemplating the fastest way he could get the female horizontal. He needed to feed, but he was never opposed to a little sex in the process—prelude or chaser, didn’t matter. It was all good as far as he was concerned.
Chaser, he decided on impulse, letting his fangs puncture the fleshy tip of her finger as she started to withdraw it. She gasped as he suckled from the small wound, refusing to let her leave him just yet. The small taste of blood inflamed him, sharpening his pupils to vertical slits in the middle of his gold-hued eyes. Hot need rushed through him, settling into the swelling bulge of his cock, which strained beneath the black leather of his pants.
The female moaned, closing her eyes as she arched catlike on his lap. Dante let go of her finger as he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her neck closer to him. Taking a Host in a public place wasn’t exactly his style, but he was bored out of his skull and needed the diversion. Besides, he doubted anyone would notice tonight, when the club was rife with faux danger and open sensuality. As for the female on his lap, she would feel only pleasure as he took what he needed from her. Afterward, she’d remember none of it, her memory scrubbed of all recollection of him.
Dante came forward, tipping the female’s head aside, mouth watering in hunger. He glanced past her and saw two Darkhaven vampires, part of the general Breed population, observing him from a few yards away. They looked like kids—current generation, no doubt. They whispered among themselves, clearly recognizing him as one of the warrior class and trying to decide whether or not to approach him.
Bugger off, Dante thought in their direction as he parted his lips and prepared to open his Host’s vein.
But the vampire youths ignored his dark glare. The taller of the two, a blond male in desert camo pants, biker boots, and a black tee-shirt led the way. His companion, tricked out in baggy jeans, high-tops, and an oversize Lakers jersey, strutted along behind him.
“Shit.” Dante didn’t mind a small bit of indiscretion, but he sure as hell didn’t need an up-close audience gawking at him while he fed.
“What’s wrong?” his would-be Host whined when Dante pulled away from her.
“Nothing, sweetheart.” He placed his palm against her forehead, wiping the past half hour from her mind. “Go on now and join your friends.”
She obediently got up from his lap and walked away, fading into the press of bodies on the dance floor. The two Darkhaven vampires gave her only a passing look as they approached Dante’s table.
“What’s up, fellas.” Dante tossed the greeting out with zero interest in chitchat.
“Hey.” Blondie in fatigues nodded, striking a pose with his muscled arms crossed over his chest. Not a single visible dermaglyph on that young skin. Definitely current-generation Breed. Probably not even out of his twenties yet. “Sorry to interrupt, but we had to tell you, man—that was some kick-ass business you guys dealt the Rogues a few months ago. Everyone’s still talking about the way the Order took out an entire colony of suckheads in one night. Blew that mofo sky-high. Freakin’ awesome, man.”
“Yeah,” added his homeboy companion. “So, we was wonderin’…I mean, we heard the Order is looking for new recruits.”
“Did you, now?”
Dante leaned back in his seat and exhaled a bored sigh. This was hardly the first time he’d been approached by Darkhaven vampires hoping to join up with the warriors. Since the raid on the Rogue lair housed in the old asylum that past summer, the once secretive cadre of Breed warriors had gained a lot of unwanted notoriety. Celebrity, even.
Frankly, it was annoying as hell.
Dante kicked his chair back from the table and stood.
“I’m not the guy to talk to about that,” he told the hopefuls. “And anyway, recruitment into the Order is by invite only. Sorry.”
He strode away from them, relieved to feel the vibration of his cell phone going off in his jacket pocket. He dug out the device and clicked on to the incoming call from the Breed compound.
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going?” It was Gideon, resident genius of the warrior class. “Any topside activity to report?”
“Not much. Things are pretty dead out here right now.” Dante scanned the crowded club, noting that the two vampires had decided to move on. They were heading for the exit, taking a couple of costumed human females with them. “No Rogues in the vicinity at all so far. And doesn’t that just suck ass? I’m itching for some action here, Gid.”
“Well, try to cheer up,” Gideon said, a grin in his voice. “The night’s still young.”
Dante chuckled. “Tell Lucan I spared him from another couple of wannabes looking to sign on. You know, I liked things a hell of a lot better when we were feared more than revered. Is he making any progress on the recruiting, or is our boy too caught up with that gorgeous Breedmate of his?”
“Yes to both,” Gideon replied. “As to the recruiting, we’ve got a candidate coming in soon from New York, and Nikolai’s got feelers out to some of his contacts in Detroit. We’ll have to arrange some trial runs for the newbies—you know, take them through the paces before we commit.”
“You mean, hand them their asses on a platter and see which ones come back looking for more?”
“Is there any other way?”
“Count me in,” Dante drawled as he moved through the club toward the door.
He strolled out into the night, avoiding a group of human clubbers dressed like zombies in tattered clothes and death-warmed-over face paint. His acute hearing picked up hundreds of sounds—from general traffic noise to the shrieks and laughter of drunken Halloween partygoers clogging the streets and sidewalks.
He heard something else too.
Something that raised the hackles on his warrior senses to high alert.
“Gotta go,” he told Gideon on the other end of the line. “I’m homing in on a suckhead. Guess the night’s not a total waste, after all.”
“Check back in after you smoke him.”
“Right. Later.” Dante clicked off the call and pocketed the cell phone.
He stole down a side alley, following the low grunt and stale, wafting stench of a prowling Rogue vampire as it stalked its prey. Like the other warriors of the Order, Dante had a deep contempt for members of the Breed who’d gone Rogue. Every vampire thirsted, every vampire had to feed—sometimes kill—in order to survive. But each and every one of them also knew that the line between necessity and gluttony was thin, just a few meager ounces of blood. If a vampire consumed too much, or fed his need too frequently, he ran the risk of addiction, of entering a permanent state of hunger known as Bloodlust. Lost to the disease, he would turn Rogue, becoming a violent junkie who would do anything for his next fix.
The savagery and indiscretion of the Rogues jeopardized all of the Breed to exposure to the human race, a threat that Dante and the rest of the Order would not abide. And there was a larger threat blooming as well: As of a few months ago, it had become apparent that the Rogues were organizing, their numbers increasing, tactics becoming orchestrated toward a goal that seemed nothing short of war. If they weren’t stopped, and stopped soon, both humankind and Breed alike could find themselves at the center of a hellish, blood-soaked battle to rival even the worst Armageddon scenario.
For now, while the Order focused on locating the Rogues’ new command post, the warriors’ mission was simple. Hunt down and eliminate every Rogue possible. Exterminate them like the diseased vermin they were. It was a charge Dante relished, never more at home than when he was on the move, prowling the streets with weapons in hand, looking for a fight. It kept him alive, he was certain; even more, it kept the darkest of his demons at bay.
Dante rounded a corner, then crept into another narrow lane between a couple of old brick buildings. He heard a female scream somewhere ahead of him in the dark. Kicking it into high gear, he sped toward the sound.
And got there hardly a second too soon.
The Rogue had been stalking the two Darkhaven vampires and their female companions. It looked young, tricked out in basic goth garb beneath a long black trench coat. But young or not, it was big and it was strong, fierce with hunger. One of the women was held in a death grip, the Bloodlusting vampire already latched on to her throat while the would-be warriors stood by, shell-shocked and frozen.
Dante pulled a dagger from a sheath on his hip and let it fly. The blade struck hard, embedding between the Rogue’s shoulders. The weapon was specially crafted of steel and titanium, the latter metal being extremely poisonous to the corrupted blood systems and organs of the Rogues. One kiss of that deadly blade and a Rogue vampire would start cooking from the inside out at record speed.
Except this one didn’t.
It flung a savage look at Dante, its eyes glowing amber, fangs bloody as it hissed a vicious warning. But the Rogue weathered the dagger’s assault, holding fast to its prey and swinging its head around to drink with even greater urgency.
What the hell?
Dante ran up on the feeding vampire with another blade in hand. He didn’t waste a second, going for the neck this time, intending to cut it clean through. The blade sank in, slicing deep. But the suckhead spun out of the attack before Dante could finish it off. With a pained roar, it dropped the female and focused all of its fury on Dante.
“Get the humans out of here!” Dante shouted to the Darkhaven vampires as he yanked the woman out of the fray and shoved her toward the others. “Move it, now! Clean her up, scrub both their memories, and get them the fuck out of here!”
The two young males jolted into action. They grabbed the shrieking women and pulled them away from the scene while Dante considered the strangeness of what he’d just witnessed.
The vampire didn’t disintegrate as it should have from the double dose of titanium Dante had delivered. It wasn’t a Rogue, even though it had been hunting prey and feeding like the worst blood addict.
Dante stared into the transformed face, the extruded fangs and elliptical pupils swimming in irises awash in fiery color. A foul-smelling pink spittle crusted around the vampire’s mouth, turning Dante’s stomach with its stench.
Offended, he backed off, guessing the vampire to be about the same age as the two Darkhaven youths. A frigging kid. Ignoring the pulsing gash in its neck, the vampire reached back and removed Dante’s dagger from its shoulder. It growled, nostrils flaring as though it would spring at any moment.
But then it ran.
The suckhead bolted away at a fast clip, the hem of its trench coat flapping behind like a sail as it headed deeper into the city on a zigzagging path. Dante didn’t let up for a second. He followed it down one street after another, through alleyways and neighborhoods, then farther out, into the dockyards outside Boston proper, where empty factories and old industrial parks stood like bleak sentinels along the riverfront. The low throb of music pounded from one of the buildings, the heavy bass and intermittent flashes of strobe lights no doubt coming from a rave taking place somewhere nearby.
Ahead of him a few hundred feet, the vampire sped down a dock toward a rickety boathouse. Dead end. Spitting fury through its open jaws, the suckhead swung around and went on the offensive, roaring up on Dante like a lunatic. Fresh blood soaked the front of its clothing from the brutal assault on the human female. The vampire snapped and clawed at him, its large fangs dripping saliva, the gaping maw oozing more of the foul-smelling pinkish foam. Its amber eyes glowed with pure malice.
Dante felt the change come over him as well, battle rage coursing through him, transforming him into a creature not so different from the one he fought. With a snarl, he threw the suckhead down onto the wood planks of the dock. One knee planted in the barrel chest of his opponent, Dante drew his twin malebranche blades. The arced weapons gleamed in the moonlight, lethally beautiful. Even if the titanium proved useless, there was more than one way to kill a vampire, Rogue or not. Dante brought the blades down, first one, then the other, slashing deep into the fleshy throat of the crazed vampire and cleanly severing its head.
Dante kicked the remains off the dock and into the water. The dark river would conceal the corpse until morning, then the UV rays of daylight would take care of the rest.
A wind kicked up off the water, carrying the stench of industrial pollution and something…else. Dante heard movement nearby, but it wasn’t until he felt the burn of tearing flesh in his leg that he realized he was under a further attack. He took another piercing hit, this one in his torso.
Jesus Christ.
From somewhere behind him, up near the old factory, someone was firing on him. The gun’s report was silenced but unmistakably that of an automatic rifle.
His dull night was suddenly getting more interesting than he liked.
Dante dropped to the ground as another shot whizzed past him and into the river. He rolled, going for the cover of the boathouse as the sniper let another few rounds fly. One shot bit into the corner of the shingled structure, shattering the old wood like confetti. Dante had a handgun on him, a hefty 9mm backup for the blades he preferred to take into combat. He drew the piece now but knew it would be all but useless against the sniper at this range.
More rounds peppered the boathouse, one of them grazing Dante’s cheek as he peered around to get a sight on his attacker.
Oh, not good.
Four dark shapes were moving down the sloping embankment from the area of the factory, all of them carrying serious hardware. While Breed vampires could live for hundreds of years and withstand severe physical injuries, they were still essentially flesh and bone. Pump enough lead into them, sever major arteries—or worse, their head—and they died, same as any other living being.
But not without one hell of a fight.
Dante kept low and waited for the newcomers to come into range. When they did, he opened fire on them, taking out a knee of one and planting a slug into the head of another. He was oddly relieved to see that they were Rogues, the titanium in the custom-crafted rounds dropping them instantly and sending them into swift cellular meltdown.
The remaining Rogues fired back, and Dante narrowly avoided the spray, moving farther back along the side of the boathouse. Damn. Taking cover meant sacrificing the position of offense. Not to mention the fact that it impeded his ability to track his enemies’ approach. He heard them coming closer as he reloaded a new clip into the pistol.
Then, silence.
He waited for a second, gauging his surroundings.
Something bigger than a bullet flew through the air toward the boathouse. It clattered heavily onto the planks of the dock and rolled to a stop.
Holy Christ.
They’d lobbed a frigging grenade at him.
Dante sucked in a breath and flung himself into the river a mere instant before the thing blew, tossing the boathouse and half the dock into the air with a giant explosion of smoke, flame, and shrapnel. The percussion was like a sonic boom under the murky water. Dante felt his head snap back, his entire body racked with unbearable pressure. Above him, debris rained down onto the surface of the river, backlit by a blinding spray of orange fire.
His vision clouded as the concussion dragged him under. He started sinking, drifting with the strong pull of the current.
Unable to move as the river swept him, unconscious and bleeding, downstream.
CHAPTER Two
Special delivery for Doctor Tess Culver.”
Tess glanced up from a patient’s file and smiled, despite the late hour and her general fatigue. “One of these days, I’m going to learn to say no to you.”
“You think you need more practice? How about if I ask you to marry me again?”
She sighed, shaking her head at the bright blue eyes and dazzling all-American grin that were suddenly turned on her. “I’m not talking about us, Ben. And what happened to eight o’clock? It’s fifteen minutes to midnight, for Pete’s sake.”
“You got plans to turn into a pumpkin or something?” He pushed off the doorjamb and sauntered into her office. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek. “Sorry I’m so late. These things don’t tend to adhere to the clock.”
“Uh-huh. So, where is it?”
“Around back, in the van.”
Tess stood, pulling an elastic hair band from her wrist and fastening it around her unbound hair. The mass of blondish-brown curls was unruly, even freshly styled. Sixteen hours into her shift at the clinic left it in a state of total anarchy. She blew a wisp of hair from her eyes and strode past her ex-boyfriend to the hallway outside.
“Nora, will you prep a syringe of ketamine-xylazine, please? And ready the exam room for me too—the big one.”
“You bet,” chirped her assistant. “Hi, Ben. Happy Halloween.”
He shot her a wink and a crooked smile that would have melted the knees of any red-blooded woman. “Nice costume, Nora. The Swiss Miss braids and lederhosen are a great look for you.”
“Danke schön,” she replied, beaming at his attention as she skirted the reception station and headed for the clinic pharmacy.
“Where’s your costume, Tess?”
“I’m wearing it.” Walking ahead of him through the kennel area, past half a dozen sleepy dogs and nervous cats peering at them through their cage bars, Tess rolled her eyes. “It’s called the Super Vet Who’s Probably Going to Get Arrested for This One Day costume.”
“I won’t let you get into any trouble. I haven’t yet, have I?”
“What about you?” She pushed open the door to the back storage room of the small clinic and walked through with him. “This is a dangerous business you’re in, Ben. You take too many risks.”
“You worried about me, Doc?”
“Of course I worry. I love you. You know that.”
“Yeah,” he said, a bit sulkily. “Like a brother.”
The rear door of the place opened out onto a narrow alley that was seldom occupied, except by the occasional homeless person using the wall of her low-rent animal clinic near the riverfront as a backrest. Tonight Ben’s black VW van was parked there. Low growls and snuffles sounded from within the vehicle, and there was a gentle rocking of its shocks, as if something big was pacing back and forth inside.
Which, of course, was exactly what was happening.
“It’s contained inside there, right?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. Besides, it’s as docile as a kitten, I promise you.”
Tess slid him a look of doubt as she stepped off the concrete stoop and walked around to the back doors of the van. “Do I want to know where you got this one?”
“Probably not.”
For the past five years or so, Ben Sullivan had been acting as a personal crusader for the well-being and protection of abused exotic animals. He researched his rescue missions case by case, as cleverly as the most covert government spy. Then, like a one-man SWAT team, he moved in, liberating mistreated, malnourished, or endangered and illegal animals from their abusive caretakers and turning them over to legitimate sanctuaries that were equipped to properly care for the creatures. Sometimes, he made an emergency pit stop at Tess’s clinic to get treatment for various animal wounds and injuries that needed immediate care.
It was actually how they’d met two years ago. Ben had brought in an abused serval with an intestinal blockage. The small exotic cat was recovered from a drug dealer’s house, where it had chewed up and swallowed a rubber dog toy, and it needed to have the blockage surgically removed. It was a painstaking, lengthy procedure, but Ben had stayed the entire time. The next thing Tess knew, they were dating exclusively.
She wasn’t sure how they’d gone from fooling around to falling in love, but somewhere along the way it had happened. For Ben, at any rate. Tess loved him back—adored him, really—but she just didn’t see them going past the stage of good friends who happened to sleep together from time to time. Even that had cooled off lately, by her own initiative.
“Would you like to do the honors?” she asked him.
He reached out and grabbed the handle of the double doors, carefully swinging them wide.
“My God,” Tess breathed, utterly awed.
The Bengal tiger was emaciated and mangy, with an open sore oozing on its front leg from an apparent shackle burn, but even haggard as it was, it was the most majestic thing she’d ever seen. It stared back at them, its mouth slack, tongue out and panting, fear dilating its pupils until they were nearly full black. The tiger grunted, knocking its head against the bars of Ben’s containment cage.
Tess cautiously moved closer. “I know, poor baby. You’ve seen better days, haven’t you?”
She frowned, noting the odd shape of its front paws, the lack of definition near the toes. “Declawed?” she asked Ben, unable to mask the scorn in her voice.
“Yep. Defanged too.”
“Jesus. If they thought they needed to own a beautiful animal like this, why’d they mutilate it so badly?”
“Can’t have your advertising mascot shredding your customers or their little brats, now, can you?”
Tess glanced at him. “Advertising mascot? You don’t mean the gun shop out on—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Never mind. I really don’t want to know. Let’s get this big kitty inside so I can have a look.”
Ben pulled down a custom-fitted ramp from the back of the van. “Hop in and take the back of the cage. I’ll hold the front, since it will be heaviest on the way down.”
Tess did as instructed, helping him unload the wheeled container from the van down onto the pavement. When they reached the clinic door, Nora was there waiting. She gasped and cooed at the big cat, then gazed adoringly at Ben.
“Omigod. That’s Shiva, isn’t it? For years, I’ve been hoping he’d break out and run away from that place. You totally stole Shiva!”
Ben grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, liebchen. This cat is just a stray who showed up on my doorstep tonight. I thought Wonder Doc could patch him up a bit before I find him a good home.”
“Oh, you are bad, Ben Sullivan! And so totally my hero right now.”
Tess gestured to her enamored assistant. “Nora, could you take this end with me, please? We need to lift it up over the stoop.”
Nora came around to Tess’s side, and the three of them hefted the cage up and into the clinic’s back room. They wheeled the tiger into the prepped exam room, which had recently been outfitted with an oversize hydraulic lift table, courtesy of Ben. It was a luxury Tess couldn’t have afforded on her own. Although she had a small, devoted clientele, she wasn’t exactly operating in the wealthy end of town. She’d priced her services well below their value, even for the area, feeling it was more important to make a difference than make a profit.
Unfortunately, her landlord and suppliers didn’t agree. Her desk was weighted down with a pile of past-due notices that she wasn’t going to be able to put off for much longer. She’d have to hit her meager personal savings to cover them, and after that was gone…?
“Tranquilizer’s on the counter,” Nora said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Thanks.” Tess slipped the capped syringe into her lab-coat pocket, guessing that she probably wasn’t going to need it after all, based on the docility and general lethargy of her patient. Besides, she wasn’t going to do anything but a visual exam tonight, take a few notes on the animal’s overall condition, and get a feel for what needed to be done in order to facilitate safe transportation to its new home.
“Think we can get Shiva—or whatever this stray’s name is—to hop up on the table on his own, or should we use the lift?” Tess asked, watching as Ben worked the locks on the cage.
“Worth a shot. Come on, big guy.”
The tiger hesitated for a moment, head low as it glanced around the brightly lit exam room. Then, with Ben’s encouragement, it stepped out of the cage and leaped fluidly onto the metal table. While Tess spoke softly to it and stroked its large head, the animal sat down, sphinxlike, more patient than the most well-behaved house cat.
“So,” Nora said, “do you need anything else right now, or can I take off?”
Tess shook her head. “Sure, you can go. Thank you for staying so late tonight. I really appreciate it.”
“No prob. The party I’m going to won’t even get started until after midnight, anyway.” She flipped her long blond braids over her shoulders. “Okay, so, I’m off, then. I’ll lock up on my way out. ’Night, you guys.”
“Good night,” they answered in unison.
“She’s a great kid,” Ben said after Nora had left.
“Nora’s the best,” Tess agreed, petting Shiva and feeling for skin lesions, lumps, or other problems beneath its thick fur. “And she’s not a kid, Ben. She’s twenty-one, about to start her degree in veterinary medicine after she finishes up her last semester at the university. She’s going to make a great doctor.”
“No one’s as good as you. Got a magic touch, Doc.”
Tess shrugged off the compliment, but there was a bit of truth in it. Just how much, she doubted Ben really knew. Tess hardly understood it herself, and what she did understand, she wished she could blot out completely. Self-consciously, she crossed her arms, concealing her hands from view.
“You don’t have to stay either, Ben. I’d like to keep Shi—” She cleared her throat, arching a brow at him. “My patient, that is, for observation tonight. I won’t start any procedures until tomorrow, and I’ll call you with my findings before I do any work.”
“Dismissing me already? Here I thought I might be able to talk you into dinner.”
“I ate dinner hours ago.”
“Breakfast, then. My place or yours, you can call it.”
“Ben,” she said, hedging as he came over and stroked her cheek. His touch was warm and tender, comfortably familiar. “We’ve been through this already, more than once. I just don’t think it’s a good idea….”
He groaned, and it was an entirely too sexual sound, low and throaty. There was a time when that sound turned her self-control into butter, but not tonight. Not ever again, if she had any hope of maintaining her personal integrity. It just seemed wrong to go to bed with Ben, knowing he wanted something from her that she couldn’t give him.
“I could stay until you wrap up,” he suggested, backing off now. “I don’t like the idea of you being here all by yourself. This area of town isn’t exactly the safest.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just going to finish my examination here, then do a bit of paperwork and close up shop. No big deal.”
Ben scowled, on the verge of arguing until Tess blew out a sigh and gave him the look. She knew he read it clearly, since he’d seen it more than once during their two years of couplehood. “All right,” he agreed finally. “But don’t stay too much longer. And you call me first thing in the morning, promise?”
“I promise.”
“You sure you’re comfortable handling Shiva by yourself?”
Tess glanced down at the haggard beast, which immediately began licking her hand again as soon as she put it near him. “I think I’ll be safe with him.”
“What’d I tell ya, Doc? Magic touch. Looks like he’s already in love with you too.” Ben ran his fingers through his golden-blond hair, giving her a defeated look. “I guess if I want to win your heart, I’ll need to grow some fur and fangs, is that it?”
Tess smiled and rolled her eyes. “Go home, Ben. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER Three
Tess came awake with a start.
Shit. How long had she been dozing? She was in her office, Shiva’s case file open beneath her cheek on the desk. Last she recalled, she’d fed the malnourished tiger and put it back in its containment so she could begin writing up her findings. That was—she glanced at her watch—two and a half hours ago? It was now a few minutes before three A.M. She was due back in the clinic at seven o’clock.
Tess groaned around a big yawn and a stretch of her cramped arms.
Good thing she woke up before Nora reported back to work, or she’d never hear the end of—
A loud bump sounded from somewhere in the back of the clinic.
What the hell?
Had she been jolted out of her sleep by a similar noise a minute ago?
Oh, jeez. Of course. Ben must have driven past and seen the lights on in the clinic. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come around on a late-night drive-by to check in on her. She really didn’t feel like getting a lecture on her crazy hours or her stubborn streak of independence.
The noise came again, another clumsy bump, followed by an abrupt clatter of metal as something got knocked off a shelf.
Which meant someone was in the back storage room.
Tess rose from her desk and took a few tentative steps toward her office door, ears tuned to any disturbance at all. In the kennels off the reception area, the handful of post-op cats and dogs were restless. Some of them were whining; others were issuing low warning growls.
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?”
Nobody answered. And now the noises she’d heard before had gone still as well.
Great. She’d just announced her presence to an intruder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic. Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shelter who’d found his or her way into the clinic from the back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something else was in there as well.
Oh, that’s right. The tranq syringe, full of enough anesthetic to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out cold.
“Is someone back there?” she asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception station and reached for the phone. The damn thing wasn’t cordless—she’d gotten it cheap on closeout—and the receiver barely reached to her ear from over the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started punching 911 on the keypad. “You’d better get out of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”
“No…please…don’t be afraid….”
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn’t have reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if the words had been whispered right up next to her head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
There was a dry croak and a violent, racking cough, definitely coming from the storage room. And whomever the voice belonged to sounded like he was in a world of hurt. Life and death kind of hurt.
“Damn it.”
Tess held her breath and hung up the phone before her call connected. She walked slowly toward the back of the clinic, uncertain what she was going to find and really wishing she didn’t have to look at all.
“Hello? What are you doing in here? Are you hurt?”
She spoke to the intruder as she pushed open the door and stepped inside. She heard labored breathing, smelled smoke and the briny stench of the river. She smelled blood too. Lots of it.
Tess flicked the light on.
Harsh fluorescent tubes buzzed to life overhead, illuminating the incredible bulk of a drenched, badly injured man slumped on the floor near one of the supply shelves. He was dressed all in black, like some kind of goth nightmare—black leather jacket, tee-shirt, fatigues, and lace-up combat boots. Even his hair was black, the wet strands plastered to his head, shielding his downturned face from view. An ugly smudge of blood and river water traveled from the back door, partially opened onto the alley, to where the man lay in Tess’s storeroom. He had evidently dragged himself inside, maybe unable to walk.
If she hadn’t been so accustomed to seeing the grisly aftermath of car accidents, beatings, and other bodily trauma in her animal patients, the sight of this man’s injuries might have turned Tess’s stomach inside out.
Instead, her mind switched from alarm and the instinctual fight-or-flight mode she’d been feeling out in the reception area to that of the physician she was trained to be. Clinical, calm, and concerned.
“What happened to you?”
The man grunted, gave a vague shake of his dark head like he wasn’t going to tell her anything about it. Perhaps he couldn’t.
“You’re covered in burns and wounds. My God, there must be hundreds of them. Were you in some kind of accident?” She glanced down to where one of his hands was resting on his abdomen. Blood was seeping through his fingers from a fresh, deep puncture. “Your gut is bleeding—and your leg too. Jesus, have you been shot?”
“Need…blood.”
He was probably right about that. The floor beneath him was slick, and dark from what he’d lost just since his arrival at the clinic. He’d likely lost a good deal more before he got there. Nearly every patch of his exposed skin bore multiple lacerations—his face and neck, his hands, everywhere Tess looked, she saw bleeding cuts and contusions. His cheeks and mouth were pale white, ghostly.
“You need an ambulance,” she told him, not wanting to upset him, but, damn, the guy was in bad shape. “Just relax now. I’m going to go call 911 for you.”
“No!” He lurched from his slump on the floor, thrusting his hand out to her in alarm. “No hospitals! Can’t…can’t go there…. They won’t…can’t help me.”
Despite his protest, Tess started to run for the phone in the other room. But then she remembered the stolen tiger hanging out in one of her exam rooms. Hard to explain that to the EMTs or, God forbid, the police. The gun shop had probably already called in the theft of the animal, or would by the time the store opened that morning, just a few short hours away.
“Please,” gasped the huge man bleeding all over her clinic. “No doctors.”
Tess paused, regarding him in silence. He needed help in a big way, and he needed it now. Unfortunately, she looked like his best chance at the moment. She wasn’t sure what she could do for him here, but maybe she could patch him up temporarily, get him on his feet, and get him the hell out of there.
“Okay,” she said. “No ambulances for now. Listen, I’m, uh—I’m actually a doctor. Well, more or less. This is my veterinary clinic. Would it be all right if I come a little closer and have a look at you?”
She took the quirk of his mouth and ragged exhaled sigh as a yes.
Tess inched down beside him on the floor. He had seemed big from across the room, but crouched next to him, she realized that he was immense, easily six and a half feet and two hundred fifty-plus pounds of heavy bone and solid muscle. Was he some kind of bodybuilder? One of those macho meatheads who spent his life in the gym? Something about him didn’t quite fit that mold. With the grim cut of his face, he looked like the kind of guy who could tear a gym rat to pieces with his teeth.
She moved her hands lightly over his face, feeling for trauma. His skull was intact, but her touch told her that he’d suffered a mild concussion in some fashion. Probably was still in a state of shock.
“I’m just going to check your eyes,” she informed him gently, then lifted one of his lids.
Holy shit.
The slitted pupil cutting through the center of a large, bright amber iris took her aback. She recoiled, freaked out by the unexpected presentation.
“What the—”
Then the explanation hit her, and she instantly felt like an idiot for losing her cool.
Costume contacts.
Chill out, she told herself. She was getting jumpy for no good reason. The guy must have been at a Halloween party that got out of hand or something. Not much she could tell from his eyes so long as he was wearing those ridiculous lenses.
Maybe he’d been partying with a rough crowd; he certainly looked big and dangerous enough to be part of some kind of gang. If he’d been rolling with gangbangers tonight, she didn’t detect any evidence of drugs on him. She didn’t smell alcohol on him either. Just some heavy-duty smoke, and not from cigarettes.
He smelled like he’d walked through fire. Just before he took a dive into the Mystic River.
“Can you move your arms or legs?” she asked him, moving on to inspect his limbs. “Do you think you have any broken bones?”
She skimmed her hands over his thick arms, feeling no obvious fractures. His legs were solid too, no real damage beyond the bullet wound in his left calf. From the look of it, the round appeared to have passed clean through. Same with the one that hit him in the torso. Luckily for him.
“I’d like to move you to one of my exam rooms. Do you think you can walk if I help hold you up?”
“Blood,” he gasped, his voice thready. “Need it…now.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there. You’ll need a hospital for that. Right now, we have to get you off this floor and out of those ruined clothes. God knows what kind of bacteria you picked up in that water out there.”
She put her hands under his armpits and started to lift, encouraging him to stand. He growled, something deep and animalistic. As the sound left his mouth, Tess caught a glimpse of his teeth behind his curled upper lip.
Whoa. That’s weird.
Were those monstrous canines actually…fangs?
His eyes came open as if he had sensed her awareness. Her unease. Tess was instantly blasted by piercing bright amber light, the glowing irises sending a bolt of panic straight into her chest. Those sure as hell weren’t contacts.
Good Lord. Something wasn’t right with this guy at all.
He grabbed her upper arms. Tess cried out in alarm. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he was too strong. Hands as unyielding as iron bands clamped tighter around her and brought her closer. Tess shrieked, wide-eyed, frozen in fear as he drew her right up against him.
“Oh, God. No!”
He turned his bloodied, battered face toward her throat. Sucked in a sharp breath as he neared her, his lips brushing her skin.
“Shhh.” Warm air skated across her neck as he spoke in a low, pained rasp. “I won’t…not going to…hurt you. I promise….”
Tess heard the words.
She almost believed them.
Until that split second of terror, when he parted his lips and sank his teeth deep into her flesh.
CHAPTER Four
Blood surged into Dante’s mouth from the twin punctures in the female’s neck. He drew from her with deep, urgent pulls, unable to curb the feral part of him that knew only need and desperation. It was life pulsing over his tongue and down his parched throat, silky, cinnamon-sweet, and so very warm.
Maybe it was the severity of his need that made her taste so incredible, so indescribably perfect to him. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He drank more of her, needing her heat when he was chilled to his marrow.
“Oh, God. No!” The woman’s voice was thready with shock. “Please! Let me go!”
She clutched at his shoulders reflexively, fingers digging into his muscles. But the rest of her body was slowly going still in his arms, lulled to a boneless sort of trance by the hypnotic power of Dante’s bite. She sighed a long gasp of breath, sagging limply as he eased her down onto the floor beneath him and took the nourishment he so badly needed.
There was no pain for her now, not since the initial penetration of his fangs, which would have been sharp but fleeting. The only pain here was Dante’s own. His body shuddered from the depth of its trauma, his head splitting from a concussion, his torso and limbs laced open in too many places to count.
It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.
You are safe. I promise.
He sent the reassurances into her mind, even as he held her tighter, brought her more firmly into the cage of his arms, his mouth still drawing hard from the wound at her throat.
Despite the ferocity of his thirst, a need amplified by the severity of his injuries, Dante’s word was good. Beyond the bite that startled her, he would not harm the female.
I’ll take only what I need. Then I’ll be gone, and you will forget all about me.
Already his strength was returning. Torn flesh was mending from the inside out. Bullet and shrapnel wounds were healing over.
Burns cooling.
Pain fading.
He eased up on the female, willing himself to slow, even though the taste of her was beyond enticing. He’d registered the exotic note of her blood scent on his first draw, but now that his body was rejuvenating, his senses coming back online fully, Dante couldn’t help but savor the sweetness of his unwilling Host.
And her body.
Beneath the shapeless white lab coat, she was strong, lean muscle and long, graceful limbs. Curvy in all the right places. Dante felt the mash of her breasts pressing against his chest where he pinned her on the storeroom floor, her legs tangled with his. Her hands were still gripped hard on his shoulders, no longer pushing against him but simply holding on to him as he took a final sip of her life-giving blood.
God, she was so exquisite he could drink from her all night.
He could do a hell of a lot more than that, he thought, suddenly aware of the erection that was wedged hard and demanding at her pelvis. She felt too good beneath him. His blessed angel of mercy, even if she’d come into the role by force.
Dante breathed in her spicy-sweet scent, gently dropping a kiss on the wound that had fed him a second chance at life.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her warm, velvet-soft skin. “I think you saved my life tonight.”
He smoothed his tongue over the small punctures, sealing them closed and erasing all traces of his bite. The female moaned, stirring from her temporary thrall. She moved under him, the subtle shifting of her body only heightening Dante’s desire to be inside her.
But he’d already taken enough from her tonight. In spite of the fact that she would remember none of what had occurred, it seemed less than sporting to seduce her in a puddle of stale river water and spilled blood. Particularly after going at her neck like an animal.
He moved slightly off her and brought his right hand up near her face. She flinched, understandably wary. Her eyes were open now—mesmerizing eyes, the color of flawless aquamarine.
“My God, you are beautiful,” he murmured, words he’d casually tossed out to numerous females in the past but surprisingly never meant more than he did now.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“No,” Dante said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just close your eyes now, angel. It’s almost over.”
A brief press of his palm against her brow, and she would forget all about him.
“Everything’s all right,” he told her as she shrank back from him on the floor, her eyes locked on to his as if she waited for him to strike her. Dared him to. Dante smoothed her hair off her cheek with the tenderness of a lover. Her felt her tension ratchet a little tighter. “Relax now. You can trust—”
Something sharp stuck him in the thigh.
With a vicious snarl, Dante rolled away, flipping onto his back. “What the hell?”
Heat spread from that stabbing point of contact, burning through him like acid. A bitter taste gathered at the back of his throat, just before his vision began to swim crazily. Dante tried to heave himself upright from the floor but fell back again, his body as uncooperative as a lead slab.
Panting rapidly, those bright blue-green eyes wide with panic, Dante’s angel of mercy peered over him. Her pretty face warped in and out of his vision. One slender hand was pressed to her neck, where he’d bitten her. The other was raised up at shoulder level, holding an empty syringe in a white-knuckled grip.
Holy Christ.
She’d drugged him.
But as bad as that news was, Dante registered something even worse as his blurring gaze struggled to hold on to the small hand that had managed to fell him with one blow. Between her thumb and forefinger, in that fleshy juncture of soft skin, the female bore a small birthmark.
Deep scarlet, smaller than a dime, the image of a teardrop falling into the bowl of a crescent moon seared into Dante’s brain.
It was a rare mark, a genetic stamp that proclaimed the female sacred to those of Dante’s kind.
She was a Breedmate.
And with her blood now pulsing within him, Dante had just completed one half of a solemn bond.
By vampire law, she was his.
Irrevocably.
Eternally.
The very last thing he wanted or needed.
In his mind, Dante roared, but all he heard was a low, wordless growl. He blinked dully, reaching out for the woman, missing her by an easy foot. His arm dropped like it was weighted down with irons. His eyelids were too heavy to lift more than a fraction. He moaned, watching his erstwhile savioress’s features blur before his eyes.
She glared down at him, her voice edged with defiant fury.
“Sleep tight, you psychotic son of a bitch!”
Tess leaped back from her attacker, breath heaving out of her in a raw, rapid pant. She could hardly believe what had just happened to her. Or that she had managed to escape the crazed intruder at all.
Thank God for the tranquilizer, she thought, relieved that she’d had the presence of mind to remember the syringe in her pocket. Not to mention the opportunity to use it. She glanced at the spent needle, still clutched tightly in her hand, and winced.
Shit. She’d plugged him with the entire dose.
No wonder he dropped like a ton of bricks. He wasn’t going to be waking up anytime soon either. Eighteen hundred milligrams of animal tranq was one long kiss good night, even for a massive guy like him.
A sudden pang of worry stabbed her.
What if she’d killed him?
Unsure why she should be concerned about someone who seemed bent on tearing her throat out with his teeth just a few minutes ago, Tess inched her way back to where the man lay.
He wasn’t moving.
But he was breathing, she was relieved to note.
He was sprawled flat on his back, his muscular arms flung out on the floor where they’d fallen. His hands—those large mitts of brutal strength that had held her in a vise grip as he’d attacked her—were slack and still now. His face, which had been concealed by the fall of his dark hair, was almost handsome at rest.
No, not handsome, because even unconscious, his features held their stark angles and knife-edge planes. Straight black brows cut dark slashes over his closed eyes. His cheekbones were razor sharp, giving the slope of his face a lean, feral quality. His nose might have been perfect at one time, but the strong line of its bridge had a faint jag in it from an old break. Maybe more than one.
There was something strangely compelling about him, although she was certain she didn’t know him. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy she’d associate with, and trying to picture him coming into the clinic for pet care seemed absurd.
No, she had never seen him before tonight. She could only pray that once she called the cops to come and collect him, she’d never see him again either.
Tess glanced down, and her gaze caught on the glint of metal concealed beneath his sodden jacket. She moved the leather aside and drew in her breath to see a curved blade of steel sheathed under his arm. An empty holster on the other side seemed to be missing a gun. Other hand-to-hand implements studded a wide black belt that wrapped around his slim hips.
This man was a menace, no doubt about that. Some kind of thug, who made the hard-asses down here on the riverfront look like rank poseurs. This man was hard and deadly, everything about him throwing off an air of violence.
His mouth was the only bit of softness on him. Wide and sensual, lips parted slightly in his drugged state, his mouth was profanely beautiful. The kind of mouth that could wreak havoc on a woman from about a hundred different angles.
Not that Tess was counting.
And she hadn’t forgotten about those wicked canines either.
Moving cautiously around him despite the heavy dosage of tranquilizer that was swimming through his system, Tess reached out and lifted his upper lip to get a better look at him.
No fangs.
Just a row of perfect pearly whites. If he’d been sporting costume teeth when he attacked her, they’d been pretty damn convincing. Now those huge fangs seemed to have vanished into thin air.
A fact that made no sense at all.
A quick visual scan of the area around her came up empty. He hadn’t spat them out somewhere. And she sure as hell hadn’t been imagining them.
How else would he have been able to pop her throat open like a soda can? Tess brought her hand up to the bite wound in her neck. The skin felt smooth beneath her fingertips. No blood or stickiness, no trace of the holes he’d chewed into her jugular. She probed the whole side of her neck with her fingers. The area wasn’t even tender.
“That’s impossible.”
Tess got up and hurried into the nearest exam room, flipping on all the lights. Smoothing her hair away from her neck, she walked up to a mounted paper-towel dispenser and peered at her reflection in the polished stainless steel. The skin on her neck was clear, intact.
Like the terrifying attack had never happened.
“No way,” she told her stricken expression. “How can that be?”
Tess stepped back from the makeshift mirror, astonished.
Thoroughly confused.
Not more than a half hour ago, she was fearing for her life, feeling her blood being drained from her neck by the heavily armed, black-clad stranger she’d found lying unconscious near the clinic’s back door.
It had happened.
So how on earth could her skin show zero trace of the assault?
Tess’s feet felt detached from her body as she walked back out of the examination room and toward the storeroom. Whatever he’d done to her, no matter how he managed to disguise the wounds he’d inflicted on her, Tess intended to see him arrested and charged.
She came around the open doorway of the back room and drew up short.
The puddle of river water and spilled blood her attacker had brought in with him swamped a large area of the linoleum floor. Tess’s stomach gave a little turn at the sight of it, but there was something else that put a knot of ice-cold terror in her gut.
The storeroom was empty.
Her attacker was gone.
A gorilla-size dose of anesthetic, yet he was somehow up and gone.
“Looking for me, angel?”
Tess spun around and screamed.
CHAPTER Five
Adrenaline poured through her, putting her feet into motion. Tess dodged past him and tore up the hallway, her thoughts racing a thousand miles an hour.
She had to get out of there.
She had to get her purse and her money and her cell phone and get the hell out.
“We need to talk.”
There he was again—standing right in front of her, blocking her path into her office.
As though he’d simply vanished from where he’d been standing before and materialized in the doorway she needed to get through now.
With a yelp of alarm, Tess made a quick pivot and launched herself into the reception area. She grabbed the desk phone and punched one of the speed-dial numbers.
“This is not happening. This is not happening,” she whispered under her breath, repeating the mantra as if she could make it all go away if she hoped for it hard enough.
The call began to ring on the other end.
Come on, come on, answer.
“Put the phone down, female.”
Tess whirled around, shaking with fear. Her attacker moved slowly, with the deliberate grace of a skilled predator. He came closer. Bared his teeth in a harsh smile.
“Please. Put it down. Now.”
Tess shook her head. “Go to hell!”
The receiver flew out of her grasp of its own free will. As it clattered onto the desk beside her, Tess heard Ben’s voice come on the line. “Tess? Hello…that you, babe? Jesus, it’s after three o’clock in the morning. What are you still doing at the—”
There was a loud snap behind her, like the telephone wire had been yanked from the wall jack by invisible hands. Tess jumped at the noise, fear coiling in her stomach in the silence that followed.
“We have a serious problem. Tess.”
Oh, God.
Now he was pissed off, and he knew her name.
In the back of her mind, Tess registered the fact that aside from her attacker’s impossible state of consciousness, he had also experienced a miraculous recovery of his injuries. Beneath the grime and smudged ash that marred his skin, all of his sundry scrapes and lacerations were healed. His black fatigues were still torn and bloodstained from the wound in his leg, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore. Not from the likely gunshot wound in his abdomen either. Through the shredded fabric of his black shirt, Tess saw only smooth, bunching muscle and flawless olive skin.
Was this whole thing some kind of sick Halloween joke?
She didn’t think so, and she knew better than to let her guard down with this guy for so much as a second.
“My boyfriend knows I’m here. He’s probably already on his way. He might even have called the cops—”
“You have a mark on your hand.”
“W-what?”
His voice had sounded accusatory, and now he pointed to her, indicating her right hand, which was trembling up near her throat.
“You’re a Breedmate. As of tonight, you are mine.”
His lip curled at the corner as he said it, like he found the words not at all to his taste. Tess didn’t particularly like the sound of them either. She backed up several paces, feeling the blood rush out of her head as he tracked her every move.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know what happened to you tonight, or how you ended up in my clinic. I sure don’t know how it is that you could be standing in front of me right now, after I gave you enough tranq to knock ten men cold—”
“I am not a man, Tess. I am something…else.”
She might have scoffed at that if he hadn’t sounded so deadly serious. So deadly calm.
He was crazy.
Right. Of course he was.
Off the chain, raving lunatic, psycho crazy.
That was the only explanation she could come up with, staring in wide-eyed dread as he closed the space between them, the sheer power and size of him forcing her toward the wall at her back.
“You saved me, Tess. I didn’t give you a choice, but your blood healed me.”
Tess shook her head. “I didn’t heal you. I’m not even sure your wounds were real. Maybe you thought they were, but—”
“They were real,” he said, a faint, rolling accent in his deep voice. “Without your blood, they might have killed me. But in drinking from you, I’ve done something to you. Something that I can’t take back.”
“Oh, my God.” Tess felt sick, swamped with a sudden wave of nausea. “Are you talking about HIV? Please don’t tell me you have AIDS….”
“Those are human diseases,” he said dismissively. “I am immune to them. And so are you, Tess.”
Somehow, that wacko declaration didn’t give her a lot of hope. “Stop using my name. Stop acting like you know anything about me—”
“I don’t expect this is easy for you to understand. I’m trying to explain as gently as I can. I owe you that much now. You see, you are a Breedmate, Tess. That’s something very special to my kind.”
“Your kind?” she asked, growing weary of his game. “Okay, I give up. Just what is your kind?”
“I am a warrior. One of the Breed.”
“Right, a warrior. And breed, as in…what kind of breed?”
For a long moment, he just looked at her, like he was weighing his answer. “As in vampire, Tess.”
Holy Moses on a pogo stick. He was beyond crazy.
Sane people did not go around pretending to be bloodsucking fiends—or worse, actually acting out their perverted fantasies, like this guy had with her.
Except there remained the fact that Tess’s neck bore no trace of injury, even though she was certain—really, bone-chillingly sure—that he had chomped into her throat with razor-sharp fangs and swallowed quite a bit of her blood.
And then there was the incredible fact that he was standing here, walking and talking with no effect whatsoever of the tranquilizer that should have laid him low well into next week.
What could possibly explain any of that?
Distant police sirens wailed from someplace outside, the steady whine seeming on the approach to the clinic’s section of the city. Tess heard them, and so did the psycho-ward escapee holding her hostage. He cocked his head slightly, his whiskey-colored eyes never leaving her for a second. He smiled wryly, just the barest curve of his broad mouth, then cursed low under his breath.
“Sounds like your boyfriend phoned in some backup.”
Tess was too anxious to answer, uncertain what might provoke him now that he knew the authorities were on the way.
“Brilliant way to fuck up an evening,” he growled, seemingly to himself. “This isn’t the right way to leave things between us, but right now it doesn’t appear I have much choice.”
His hand came up near Tess’s face. She flinched to evade his touch, expecting the crush of a hard fist or some other brutality. But she felt only the warm press of his large open palm against her forehead. He leaned in to her, and she felt the feather-soft brush of his lips against her cheek.
“Close your eyes,” he murmured.
And Tess’s world went dark.
“No signs of any suspicious activity, folks. We checked all points of entry around the building, and everything looks tight and in order.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Tess said, feeling like an idiot for creating all the fuss at such a late—or, rather, early—hour.
Ben stood next to her in her office, his arm slung lightly around her shoulders in a protective, if a bit territorial, stance. He’d arrived a short while ago, not long after police sirens woke her out of an unusually deep sleep. She’d been working too late, evidently, and had dozed off at her desk. Somehow, she had knocked the phone and activated the speed dial for Ben’s cell. He’d seen the clinic number come up on caller ID and worried that she was in some kind of trouble.
His subsequent three A.M. call to 911 sent two officers out to the clinic on a drive-by.
While they had not found any cause for alarm as far as break-ins or late-night intruders, they did find Shiva. One of the cops had questioned them on where the tiger had come from, and when Ben insisted that he’d found the animal, not stolen it, the officer was quietly skeptical. He allowed that with it being Halloween night, advertising mascots were unusually high targets for adolescent mischief, a fact that Ben was quick to assure him must have been the case with Shiva.
Ben was lucky he hadn’t ended up in handcuffs. As it stood, he’d gotten off with a warning and a stern suggestion that he return Shiva to the gun shop first thing in the morning, just so nobody got the wrong idea and wanted to press charges.
Tess slid from under the weight of Ben’s arm and held her hand out to the officer. “Thanks again for coming by here. Can I get you some coffee or hot tea? I’ve got both, and it will only take a few minutes to make it.”
“No, thank you, ma’am.” The policeman’s comm device gave a short burst of static, followed by a coded string of new orders from Dispatch. He spoke into a mic clipped to his lapel, giving the all-clear on the veterinary clinic. “Looks like we’re all set here, then. You folks take care now. And, Mr. Sullivan, I trust that you’ll get that tiger back where it belongs.”
“Yes, sir,” Ben agreed, his smile tight as he accepted the officer’s hand and gave it a brief shake.
They walked the police to the door and watched as the squad car eased out onto the quiet city street.
When they were gone, Ben closed the clinic door and turned to face Tess. “You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded, gave a long sigh. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine. I’m sorry I worried you, Ben. I must have fallen asleep at my desk and bumped the phone.”
“Well, I still say no good can come from you working such late hours. This isn’t exactly the best part of town, you know.”
“I’ve never had any problems here.”
“There’s always a first time,” Ben said, his expression grim. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
“All the way to the North End? You don’t have to do that. I’ll just call a cab.”
“Not tonight, you won’t.” Ben picked up her purse and held it out to her. “I’m wide awake, and my van is right outside. Let’s go, Sleeping Beauty.”
CHAPTER Six
Dante came off the elevator at the Breed warriors’ compound, looking and smelling as foul as he felt. He’d been seething—mostly at himself—the entire ride down, some three hundred feet below one of Boston’s most affluent addresses and the high-security gated mansion on street level that belonged to the Order. He’d made it inside with only a few minutes to spare before dawn crested over the city to put a nice toast on his UV-allergic skin.
Which would have been the perfect topper to a night that had FUBAR written all over it.
Dante headed down the stark white corridor that twisted and turned through the heart of the labyrinthine compound. He needed a hot shower and some shut-eye and looked forward to sleeping off the daylight hours alone in his private quarters. Maybe he’d sleep off the next twenty years, long enough to avoid dealing with the glorious mess he’d made topside tonight.
“Yo, D.”
Dante muttered a curse under his breath when he heard the voice calling him from the other end of the corridor. It was Gideon, resident computer genius and right-hand man to Lucan, the Order’s venerable leader. Gideon had the compound wired tight inside and out; he’d probably been on to Dante’s arrival from the second he stepped onto the property.
“Where you been, man? You were supposed to call in your status hours ago.”
Dante turned around slowly in the long hallway. “I guess you could say my status got a bit fucked up.”
“No shit,” the other vampire replied, taking him in with a shrewd glance over the top of square-cut pale blue shades. He chuckled, shaking his spiky crown of blond hair. “Gad, you look like hell. And you smell like toxic waste. What the devil happened to you?”
“Long story.” Dante gestured to his shredded, bloodied, sodden clothing, which was rank with brine, sludge, and God knew what else from his trip down the Mystic River. “I’ll fill everyone in later. Right now I need a shower.”
“Industrial strength,” Gideon agreed. “But cleanup is gonna have to wait awhile. We’ve got company in the lab.”
Annoyance sparked in Dante. “What kind of company?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this.” Gideon gestured with his head. “Come on. Lucan wants you present for input.”
Exhaling a long breath, Dante fell in step alongside Gideon. They walked up another twisting length of the corridor, heading for the tech lab, the surveillance and intel hub where the warriors held most of their meetings. As the glass wall of the lab came into view, Dante saw the three other vampire warriors who were like kin to him: Lucan, the Order’s dark leader; Nikolai, the brash gearhead of the group; and Tegan, the eldest next to Lucan, and the deadliest individual Dante had ever known.
The Order was missing two other members of late. Rio, who had been severely injured by a Rogue ambush a few months ago and remained in the infirmary at the compound, and Conlan, who was killed by Rogues around the same time, in an explosion that took place on one of the city’s train lines.
As Dante scanned the assembly of warriors, his gaze lit on one unfamiliar face. Evidently, this was the company Gideon had mentioned. The vampire male had the clean-cut looks of an accountant—right down to the dark suit and white shirt, crisp gray tie, and glossy black oxford shoes. His golden-brown hair was short, impeccably styled, not a strand out of place. Although the male was sizable beneath all that spit and polish, he brought to mind one of those chiseled pretty boys that you see in human magazine ads, hawking designer clothing or expensive cologne.
Scowling, Dante shook his head. “Tell me that’s not one of the new warrior candidates.”
“That,” said Gideon, “is Agent Sterling Chase, of the Boston Darkhaven.”
A Darkhaven law-enforcement agent. Well, that made some sense. Certainly explained the vampire’s buttoned-up, useless-bureaucrat appearance. “What’s he want with us?”
“Information. Some kind of alliance, from what I gather. The Darkhaven has sent him here in the hopes of obtaining the Order’s help.”
“Our help.” Dante scoffed, skeptical. “You gotta be kidding me. It wasn’t so long ago that the general population of the Darkhavens were condemning us as lawless vigilantes.”
Walking beside him, Gideon glanced over with a smirk. “Dinosaurs who’d outlived their time and ought to be forced into extinction was, I believe, one of the more polite suggestions.”
Ironic, considering the populations of those sanctuaries existed directly because of the warriors’ continued efforts in fighting the Rogues. In the dark ages of man, long before Dante’s eighteenth-century birth in Italy, the Order had acted as sole protector of the vampire race. Then, they were revered as heroes. In the time since, as the warriors hunted down and executed Rogues all over the globe, putting down even the smallest uprisings before they had a chance to take root, the Darkhavens had relaxed into a state of arrogant confidence. Rogue numbers had been few in modern times but were growing again. Meanwhile, the Darkhavens had adopted laws and procedures for dealing with Rogues as mere criminals, foolishly believing that incarceration and rehabilitation were viable solutions to the problem.
Those of the warrior class knew better. They saw the carnage up close and personal, while the rest of the population hid in their sanctuaries, pretending they were safe. Dante and the rest of the Order were the Breed’s only true defense, and they chose to act independently—some might argue in defiance of—impotent Darkhaven law.
“Now they’re asking for our help?” Dante fisted his hands at his side, in no mood to deal with Darkhaven politics or the fools who peddled them. “I hope Lucan’s called this meeting so we can prove we’re savages and kill their friggin’ messenger.”
Gideon chuckled as the glass doors of the lab whisked open in front of them. “Try not to scare Agent Chase away before he’s had a sporting chance to explain why he’s here, will you, D?”
Gideon strode inside. Dante followed, giving a nod of respect to Lucan and his brethren as he entered the spacious control room. He turned his gaze on the Darkhaven agent, holding it steady as the civilian vampire rose from his chair at the conference table and looked upon Dante’s bloodied, battered condition in barely concealed disgust.
Now he was damn glad he hadn’t paused to tidy up before coming in. Hoping to offend further, Dante strolled up to the agent and held out his grimy hand in offered greeting.
“You must be the warrior called Dante,” said the low, cultured voice of the Darkhaven representative. He accepted Dante’s outstretched hand and clasped it briefly. The agent sniffed almost imperceptibly, fine nostrils flaring as they picked up on Dante’s certain stench. “A privilege to meet you. I am Special Investigative Agent Sterling Chase, of the Boston Darkhaven. Senior Special Investigative Agent,” he added, smiling. “But I’ve no wish to stand on ceremony, so please, all of you, feel free to address me as you will.”
Dante merely grunted, biting back the choice form of address that leaped to his tongue. Instead, he dropped into the seat next to the agent, holding him in a cool, unwavering stare.
Lucan cleared his throat, all it took for the eldest of the Breed to resume command of the gathering. “Now that we’re all here, let’s get down to business. Agent Chase has brought some disturbing news from the Boston Darkhaven. There’s been a rash of young vampires going missing lately. He’d like the Order’s help in recovering them. I’ve told him we will.”
“Search and rescue’s not exactly our thing,” Dante said, his eyes on the civilian as a rumble of agreement kicked up from around the table of warriors.
“That’s true,” Nikolai put in. The Russian-born vampire grinned from under a long hank of sandy-colored hair that didn’t quite conceal the wintry chill of his ice-blue gaze. “We’re more of a bag-and-tag operation.”
“There’s more to this than just a few stray vampires out past curfew and in need of collars,” Lucan said. His grim tone dialed down the attitude in the room at once. “I’ll let Agent Chase explain what’s going on.”
“Last month, a group of three Darkhaven youths left for a rave somewhere in the city and never returned. A week later, another two went missing. More disappearances have been happening from Boston area Darkhavens every night in the time since.” Agent Chase reached into a briefcase on the floor beside him and pulled out a thick file. He tossed it to the center of the conference table. From within the manila jacket, about a dozen snapshots spilled out—faces of smiling, youthful vampire males. “These are just the reported disappearances so far. We’ve probably lost another couple of individuals in the time I’ve been here meeting with you.”
Dante sifted through the pile of photographs and passed the folder around the table, figuring they couldn’t all be runaways. Life in the Darkhavens could be a bore to young males with something to prove to the world, but nothing was so bad it would drive groups of them away at a time. “Have there been any recoveries at all? Any sightings? This many missing individuals in such a short period of time—seems like someone ought to know something about it.”
“There have been only a handful of recoveries.”
Chase brought out another file from his case, this one considerably thinner than the first. He withdrew a few photographs and fanned them out before him on the table. They were morgue shots. Three civilian vampires, current generation, and probably not one of them older than thirty-five years. In each photo, a pair of sightless eyes stared up at the camera lens, pupils elongated to hungered slits, the natural color of the irises saturated in the amber-yellow glow of Bloodlust.
“Rogues,” Niko said, practically hissing the word.
“No,” Agent Chase replied. “They died in the throes of Bloodlust, but they hadn’t yet turned. They were not Rogues.”
Dante got out of his chair and leaned over the table to have a closer look at the pictures. His gaze was drawn immediately to the crust of dried pinkish foam that circled the subjects’ slack mouths. The same kind of saliva residue he’d spotted on his attacker outside the club earlier tonight. “Any idea what killed them?”
Chase nodded. “Narcotic overdose.”
“Any of you hear chatter around town about a new club drug called Crimson?” Lucan asked the group of warriors. None had. “From what Agent Chase has told me, it’s a particularly nasty bit of chemistry that’s been showing up lately among the Breed’s younger crowds. It’s a stimulant and mild hallucinogenic that also produces a burst of enormous strength and endurance. But that’s just the appetizer. The real fun starts about fifteen minutes into ingestion.”
“That’s right,” Agent Chase added. “Users who eat or inhale this red powder soon experience extreme thirst and feverlike chills. They convulse into a mindless, animal state, exhibiting all the traits of Bloodlust, from the fixed, elliptical pupils and permanently extruded fangs to the insatiable need for blood. If the individual is left to quench that need, he is almost certain to turn Rogue. If he continues to use Crimson, this,” Chase said, pointing to the morgue photos, “is the other outcome.”
Dante cursed, half in frustration for the epidemic hysteria just waiting to erupt among the Darkhaven populations, but also for the realization that the young Bloodlusting vampire he’d killed tonight was a Breed youth, like these, hopped up on the shit Chase had just described. He had a hard time feeling bad about taking the kid out when he’d been coming at Dante like a ton of bricks.
“This drug, Crimson,” Dante said. “Any thought on where it’s coming from, who might be manufacturing it or distributing it?”
“We have nothing more to go on than what I’ve presented here.”
Dante saw Lucan’s grave expression and understood where this was heading. “Ah, and so this is where we come in, is that it?”
“The Darkhavens have asked for our assistance in identifying and, if practical or even possible, bringing back any missing civilians we might run across in our nightly patrols. Obviously, as a part of that, it is in our shared interest to put a stop to Crimson and those who deal in it. I think we can all agree that the last thing the Breed needs is more vampires turning Rogue.”
Dante nodded along with the others.
“The Order’s willingness to assist with this problem is greatly appreciated. My thanks to all of you,” Chase said, letting his gaze settle on each of the Breed warriors in turn. “But there is one more thing, if I may?”
Lucan gave a slight incline of his head, gesturing for the agent to continue.
Chase cleared his throat. “I would like to have an active part in the operation.”
A long, heavy silence stretched out as Lucan scowled, leaning back in his chair at the head of the table. “Active in what way?”
“I want to ride along with one or more members of the Order, to personally monitor the operation and to assist in the retrieval of these missing individuals.”
Seated on the other side of Dante, Nikolai burst out laughing.
Gideon raked his fingers through his cropped hair, then threw his pale blue shades onto the table. “We don’t take civilians along on our operations. Never have, never will.”
Even Tegan, the stoic one, who hadn’t uttered a single word one way or the other throughout the entire meeting, was finally moved to voice his disagreement. “You won’t live to the end of your first night, Agent,” he said without inflection, only cold truth.
Dante held his disbelief inside, certain that Lucan would shut the agent down with the power of his level glare alone. But Lucan didn’t reject the idea outright. He stood up, his fists braced on the edge of the conference table.
“Leave us,” he told Chase. “My brethren and I will discuss your request privately. Our business here is finished for now, Agent Chase. You may return to the Darkhaven to await our decision. I will be in contact with you.”
Dante and the rest of the warriors stood too; then, after a long moment, so did the Darkhaven agent, retrieving his polished leather case from the floor beside him. Dante took a step out from the table. When Chase tried to move past him, he got the edge of Dante’s thick shoulder blocking his path. Given no choice, he paused.
“Folks like you call us savages,” Dante said harshly, “yet here you are, all posh and shiny in your suit and tie, asking for our help. Lucan speaks for the Order, and if he says we’re going to bail your ass out on this little problem, then that’s good enough for me. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Doesn’t mean I have to like you either.”
“I’m not hoping to win any popularity contests. And if you have misgivings about my proposed role in this investigation, by all means, state them.”
Dante chuckled, surprised by the challenge. He didn’t think the guy had it in him. “Well, now, I don’t mean to stand on ceremony, Special Investigative Agent Chase—’scuse me, Senior Special Investigative Agent—but what I do, what all of us in this room do, each and every night, is some dirty fucking work. We fight. We kill. We sure as shit don’t run some kind of tourist program for Darkhaven agents looking to build their political careers on our blood and sweat.”
“Nor is that my intention, I assure you. All that matters to me is my charge to locate and recover the individuals who’ve gone missing from my community. If the Order can stop the proliferation of Crimson in the process, so much the better. For all of the Breed.”
“And how is it you feel you’re even remotely qualified to go out on patrols with us?”
Agent Chase glanced around the room, possibly looking for support from any one of the warriors standing around the table. The room was quiet. Not even Lucan spoke on his behalf. Dante narrowed his gaze and smiled, half-hoping the silence would drive the agent away. Send him running back to his quiet little sanctuary with his tail between his legs.
Then Dante and the rest of the Order could get back to the business of dealing death to the Rogues—preferably without an audience and a goddamn scorecard.
“I hold a BA in Political Science from Columbia University,” Chase finally said. “And, like my brother and my father before me, I have a law degree from Harvard, where I graduated at the top of my class. In addition, I am trained in three schools of martial arts and have an expert-marksman rating in a shooting range of eleven hundred feet. That measure being without the aid of a scope.”
“Is that right?” The résumé was impressive, but Dante hardly flinched in reaction. “So, tell me, Harvard, how many times have you used your training—martial arts or weapons—outside of a classroom? How much of your blood have you spilled? How much have you taken from your enemies in the heat of battle?”
The agent held Dante’s flat stare, the clean-shaven, square chin climbing up a notch. “I’m not afraid to be tested on the street.”
“That’s good,” Dante drawled. “That’s real good, because if you’re thinking about going to the dance with any of us, you sure as hell will be put to the test.”
Chase bared his teeth in a tight smile. “Thanks for the warning.”
He brushed past Dante, murmured his good-byes to Lucan and the others, then strolled out of the lab with his briefcase clutched hard in his hand.
When the glass doors slid closed behind the agent, Niko ground out a curse in his native Siberian tongue. “That’s some messed-up shit, Darkhaven pencil-pusher thinking he’s got balls enough to ride with us.”
Dante shook his head, sharing the same opinion, but his thoughts were churning on something else equally troubling. Maybe more so.
“I got jumped downtown tonight,” he said, meeting the tense faces of his brethren. “I thought it was a Rogue stalking prey outside a club. I fought with the son of a bitch, but he wasn’t going down easy. Ended up pursuing him down to the riverfront, where I ran into a whole new mess of trouble. A group of heavily armed suckheads came at me hard.”
Gideon slanted a narrowed gaze on him. “Damn, D. Why didn’t you call in for support?”
“There wasn’t time to do anything but try to save my own ass,” Dante said, recalling the viciousness of the attack. “The thing is, that suckhead I chased down there fought like a demon. Virtually unstoppable, like a Gen One Rogue—maybe worse. And titanium didn’t affect him.”
“If he was Rogue,” Lucan said, “the titanium should have smoked him on the spot.”
“Right,” Dante agreed. “He showed all the signs of advanced Bloodlust, but he hadn’t actually turned Rogue. And there’s more. That dried pink foam you can see in Chase’s morgue shots? That suckhead had it too.”
“Shit,” Gideon said, picking up the photographs and showing them to the other warriors. “So, in addition to dealing with the continuing problem of the Rogues, now we’re coming up against Breed vampires hopped up on Crimson too. In the heat of the fight, how’re we going to know what we’ve got in our crosshairs?”
“We won’t,” Dante said.
Gideon shrugged. “Suddenly things don’t seem so black and white.”
Tegan, his expression placid and cool, exhaled a wry laugh. “As of a few months ago, our problem with the Rogues became a war. Not a lot of room for gray in that picture.”
Niko nodded his head in agreement. “If a suckhead wants to get in my shit—Crimson eater or Rogue—he’s got one thing to look forward to: death. Let the Darkhavens sort through the rubble once it’s all over.”
Lucan turned his attention to Dante. “What about you, D? Care to weigh in on this?”
Dante crossed his arms over his chest, more than ready for that shower now and an end to a night that had only proceeded to go downhill since he got out of bed. “From what little we know of Crimson, it doesn’t sound good. All these missing civilians, with more all the time, is bound to start a panic in the Darkhaven populations in general. Bad enough we’ve got this new complication of Crimson users to deal with, but can any of you imagine the clusterfuck situation of having the streets overrun with a bunch of Darkhaven agents trying to ID missing persons and apprehend them on their own?”
Lucan nodded. “Which brings us back to Agent Chase and his request to participate in this operation. He’s come to us with the same concerns, not wanting to cause widespread panic yet needing to recover the missing and find a swift solution to the problem Crimson seems to be causing among the Breed. I think he could be a benefit to us, not only in the operation itself but down the road as well. It might be good for the Order to have an ally in the Darkhavens.”
Dante could not contain his scoff of incredulity. “We’ve never needed them. We’ve been pulling their nancy assess out of fires for centuries, Lucan. Don’t tell me we’re going to start kissing up to them now. Fuck that, man! If we let them into our business, next thing you know, we’ll have to ask their permission to take a piss.”
He’d gone too far. Lucan said nothing, but a glance to the other warriors and then the door sent all but Dante out of the room. Dante stared at the white marble floor beneath his sodden boots, getting the sense that he’d just stepped into a pit of misery.
No one lost control in front of Lucan.
He was the leader of the Order, had been since the initial formation of the elite cadre of warriors nearly seven hundred years ago, long before Dante or most of the other current members had been born. Lucan was first-generation Breed, his blood flowing with the genes of the Ancients, those vicious otherworlders who came to this planet millennia past, bred with human females, and started the first line of the vampire race. Gen Ones like Lucan were few now and remained the most powerful—and most volatile—of all the Breed.
He was Dante’s mentor, a true friend, if Dante could be so bold as to claim the formidable warrior as such.
But that didn’t mean Lucan wouldn’t tear a hole in him if he felt Dante needed it.
“I could give a shit for Darkhaven PR, same as you,” Lucan said, the cadence of his deep voice measured and cool. “But the news of this drug disturbs me. We need to find out who’s sourcing it and sever that chain. It’s too important to leave it to Darkhaven involvement. If keeping a lid on this operation for the time being so that we can get the situation under control, on our terms, means letting Agent Chase play warrior for a few nights, then that’s the price we have to pay.”
When Dante opened his mouth to voice a further argument against the idea, Lucan arched a black brow and cut him off before he could get the first word out.
“I’ve decided that you will be the one to pair up with Agent Chase on patrol.”
Dante bit his tongue, knowing Lucan would abide no argument in this now.
“I choose you because you’re the best one for the job, Dante. Tegan would probably kill the agent outright, just because he annoyed him. And Niko, while a capable warrior, does not have your years of experience on the street. Keep the Darkhaven agent out of trouble, but don’t lose sight of the true goal: exterminating our enemies. I know you won’t let me down. You never have. I’ll contact Chase and let him know that his tour begins tomorrow night.”
Dante gave a low nod of acceptance, not trusting himself to speak when outrage was pouring through his veins. Lucan clapped him on the shoulder as if to say he understood Dante’s simmering anger, then headed out of the lab. Dante could only stand there for a moment, his jaw clamped so tight his molars burned with the pressure.
Had he really walked into the compound thinking that this night couldn’t get any worse?
Holy hell, had he been wrong about that.
After everything he’d been through the past twelve hours, culminating with this unwanted babysitting assignment, he was going to have to seriously recalibrate his idea of Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
CHAPTER Seven
Here you go, Mrs. Corelli.” Tess lifted a plastic cat carrier over the reception counter, passing the growling, hissing white Persian back to its owner. “Angel’s not too happy right now, but he should be feeling back up to snuff in a couple of days. I wouldn’t let him outside until the sutures have dissolved, though. Not that he’s going to be feeling like much of a Romeo anymore.”
The elderly woman clucked her tongue. “For months now, all up and down my street, what do I see? Little Angels running around. I tell you, I had no idea! And my poor smoochie-puss, coming home every night looking like a prizefighter, that pretty face of his torn up and bloody.”
“Well, he won’t have a lot of interest in fighting anymore. Or in his other apparent pastime. You’ve done the right thing by having him neutered, Mrs. Corelli.”
“My husband would like to know if you’d do the same for our granddaughter’s current boyfriend. Ay, but that boy is a wild one. Nothing but trouble and he’s only fifteen!”
Tess laughed. “My practice is limited to animals, I’m afraid.”
“More’s the pity. Now, what do I owe you, dear?”
Tess watched the elderly woman dig out her checkbook with chapped, arthritic hands. Even though she was well past retirement age, Mrs. Corelli cleaned houses five days a week, Tess knew. It was hard work, and the wages were meager, but since her husband’s disability pay had dried up a few years ago, Mrs. Corelli had become the sole provider for her household. Whenever Tess felt tempted to sulk because she was strapped and struggling, she thought about this woman and how she soldiered on with dignity and grace.
“We’re actually running a special on services right now, Mrs. Corelli. So your grand total for today is twenty dollars.”
“Are you sure, dear?” At Tess’s insistent nod, the woman paid the clinic fee, then tucked the pet carrier under her arm and headed for the exit. “Thank you, Doctor Tess.”
“You’re very welcome.”
As the door closed behind her client, Tess glanced to the clock on the waiting-room wall. Just after four. The day had seemed to drag on endlessly, no doubt due to the strange night she’d had. She had considered canceling her appointments and staying home, but she’d marshaled herself and worked the full day. One more appointment, and then she could get out of here.
Although why she was so eager to race home to her empty apartment, she had no idea. She felt edgy and exhausted at the same time, her entire system buzzing with an odd kind of disquiet.
“You have a message from Ben,” Nora announced as she came out of one of the dog-grooming rooms. “It’s on a sticky note by the phone. Something about a fancy art thing tomorrow night? He said you mentioned you’d go with him a few weeks ago, but he wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten.”
“Oh, shit. The MFA dinner exhibit is tomorrow night?”
Nora gave her a wry look. “Guess you forgot. Well, it sounds like fun anyway. Oh, and your four-twenty vaccination called to cancel. One of the girls called in sick at the diner, so now she’s working a double shift. She wanted to reschedule for next week.”
Tess gathered her long hair off her neck and rubbed the tight muscles at her nape. “That’s fine. Will you call her back and rebook the appointment for me?”
“Already did. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah. It was a long night, that’s all.”
“So I heard. Ben told me what happened. Fell asleep at your desk again, eh?” Nora laughed, shaking her head. “And Ben getting worried, calling the cops to look in on you? I’m glad he didn’t get into hot water with them about that stray cat he picked up.”
“Me too.”
Ben had promised when he dropped her off at home that he’d turn right around and pick up Shiva from the clinic so he could take the animal back to its owners, like the police had instructed him to do. He wouldn’t promise that another rescue attempt was out of the question, however. For what wasn’t the first time, Tess wondered if his tenacious zeal, as well-intentioned as it was, might one day be his downfall.
“You know,” she said to her assistant, “I still don’t understand how I could have accidentally speed-dialed his number in my sleep….”
“Huh. Maybe subconsciously you wanted to call him. Hey, maybe I should try that one night. Think he’d ride out to my rescue too?” At Tess’s eye roll, Nora held up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying! He seems like a really great guy. Good-looking, smart, charming—and let’s not forget totally into you. I don’t know why you won’t give him a fighting chance.”
Tess had given him a chance. More than one, in fact. And even though the problems she’d had with him seemed to be a thing of the past—he’d vowed time and again that they were—she was wary of becoming involved again beyond anything but friendship. Actually, she was beginning to think she might not be cut out for the whole relationship thing with anyone.
“Ben is a nice guy,” she said finally, picking up his message and stuffing it into the pocket of her khakis under her long white lab coat. “But not everyone is all that they seem.”
With Mrs. Corelli’s check topping off the day’s receipts, Tess stamped it for the bank and started preparing a deposit slip.
“You want me to run that out for you on my way home?” Nora asked.
“No. I’ll do it. Since we’re clear of appointments now, I think I’m going to call it a day.” Tess zipped the deposit slip into the leather receipts envelope. When she looked up, Nora was gaping at her. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my workaholic boss?”
Tess hesitated, sudden guilt about several days’ worth of filing yet to be done making her second-guess the idea of quitting early—or rather, as it actually happened to be, on time.
“I’m kidding!” Nora said, already racing around the desk to herd Tess out into the small lobby. “Go home. Relax. Do something fun, for crissake.”
Tess nodded, so grateful to have someone like Nora in her corner. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Just remember that at my next pay review.”
It took only a couple of minutes for Tess to ditch her lab coat, grab her purse, and shut down the computer in her office. She left the clinic and walked out into the afternoon sunshine, unable to recall the last time she’d been able to quit work and stroll to the T station before dark. Enjoying the sudden freedom—her every sense seeming more alive and attuned than ever before—Tess took her sweet time, making it to the bank just before they were closing and then catching the subway home to the North End.
Her apartment was a tidy but unimpressive one-bedroom, one-bath unit, close enough to the expressway that she’d learned to consider the steady hiss of flowing, high-speed traffic to be her own brand of white noise. Not even the frequent horn blasts of impatient drivers or the squeal of vehicle brakes on the streets below her place ever really bothered her.
Until now.
Tess jogged up the two flights of stairs to her apartment, her head ringing with the din of street noise. She shut herself inside and sagged against the door, dropping her purse and keys onto an antique sewing machine table that she’d bought cheap and reincarnated into a vestibule sideboard. Kicking off her brown leather loafers, Tess padded into the living room to check her voice mail and think about dinner.
She had another message here from Ben. He was going to be in the North End that evening and hoped she wouldn’t mind if he dropped by to check in on her, maybe head out to one of the neighborhood’s pubs for a beer together.
He sounded so hopeful, so harmlessly friendly, that Tess’s finger hovered over the call-back button for a long moment. She didn’t want to encourage him, and it was bad enough she’d promised to be his date for the Boston MFA’s modern-art exhibit.
Which was tomorrow night, she reminded herself again, wondering if there was any way for her to wiggle out of it. She wanted to, but she wouldn’t. Ben had bought the tickets specifically because he knew she loved sculpture, and the works of some of her favorite artists would be on display in limited engagement.
It was a very thoughtful gift, and backing out now would only hurt Ben. She would attend the exhibit with him, but this would be the last time they did the couple thing, even just as friends.
With that matter as good as resolved in her mind, Tess flipped on her television, found an old rerun of Friends, then wandered into her galley kitchen in search of food. She went straight for the freezer, her usual source of sustenance.
Which orange box of frozen boredom would it be tonight?
Tess absently grabbed the nearest one and tore it open. As the cellophane-covered tray clattered onto her counter, she frowned. God, she was pathetic. Was this really how she intended to spend her rare evening out of the office?
Do something fun, Nora had said.
Tess was pretty sure nothing she had on her personal schedule right now would constitute fun. Not to Nora, anyway, and not to Tess herself either.
At nearly twenty-six years old, was this what she’d let her life become?
While her bitter feelings didn’t stem merely from the prospect of bland rice and rubbery chicken, Tess eyed the frozen brick of food with contempt. When was the last time she’d actually cooked a nice meal from scratch, with her own two hands?
When was the last time she’d done something good just for herself?
Too damn long, she decided, and swept the stuff off the counter and into the trash.
Senior Special Investigative Agent Sterling Chase had reported to the warriors’ compound promptly at dusk. To his credit he’d lost the suit and tie, opting for a graphite-colored knit shirt, black denim jeans, and lug-soled black leather boots. He’d even covered his light hair with a dark skullcap. Dressed like he was now, Dante could almost forget the guy was civilian.
Too bad no amount of camo could hide the fact that Harvard was, as of this very hour, Dante’s official pain in the ass.
“If we ever need to knock over a bank, at least I know who to go to for wardrobe tips,” he said to the Darkhaven agent as he pulled on a leather trench coat loaded down with all manner of hand-to-hand weapons, and the two of them made their way to one of the Order’s fleet vehicles in the compound’s garage.
“I won’t hold my breath waiting for your call,” Chase shot back drolly, taking in the prime collection of machinery. “Looks like you folks do all right without resorting to grand larceny.”
The hangar-style garage held dozens of choice cars, SUVs, and cycles, some vintage, some current makes, every one of them a high-performance thing of beauty. Dante led him to a brand-new basalt-black Porsche Cayman S and clicked the remote locks open. The two of them climbed into the coupe, Chase looking around the sleek interior with clear appreciation as Dante fired up the engine, hit the code to open the hangar door, then let the sweet black beast begin its stealth prowl out into the night.
“The Order lives very well,” Chase remarked from next to Dante in the Porsche’s dimly lit cockpit. He exhaled an amused chuckle. “You know, a lot of the Darkhaven population believes that you are crude mercenaries, still living like lawless animals in underground caves.”
“That so,” Dante murmured, glaring out at the twilit stretch of road ahead of him. With his right hand, he flipped open the center console and pulled out a leather satchel containing a small cache of weapons. He dropped the lot of them—sheathed knives, a length of thick chain, and a holstered semiautomatic pistol—into the agent’s lap. “Suit up, Harvard. I assume you can figure out which end of that tricked-out Beretta 92FS is the one you’re gonna need to point at the bad guys. You know, seeing how you’re from the rarefied halls of the Darkhavens and all.”
Chase shook his head, muttered an expletive. “Look, that wasn’t what I meant—”
“I don’t give a shit what you meant,” Dante replied, taking a hard left around a city warehouse and peeling down an empty back street. “I don’t give a shit what you think about me or my brethren. Let’s get that straight right up front, capisce? You’re riding along only because Lucan says you’re riding along. The best thing you can do through all of this is sit tight, shut up, and stay the hell out of my way.”
Anger spiked in the agent’s eyes, the heat of it rolling off him in waves. Although Dante could tell Chase was not accustomed to taking orders—especially from someone he might consider a few steps beneath him in the social order of things—the Darkhaven male kept his irritation to himself. He rigged up in the hardware Dante had given him, checking the safety on the pistol and then shrugging into the leather chest holster.
Dante drove into Boston’s North End, following a tip Gideon had gotten about a possible rave to take place in one of the area’s old buildings. At seven-thirty in the evening, they still had about five hours to kill before any activity around the location would prove out the tip one way or the other. But Dante had never been one to abide that kind of patience. He didn’t do sit-and-wait, being more of the mind that death had a harder time catching up to a moving target.
He cut the lights and parked the Porsche down the street from the building they’d be staking out. A breeze kicked up, sending a smatter of leaves and city dust skating across the hood of the vehicle. When it had passed, Dante slid the window down and let the coolness come inside. He took a deep breath, dragging in a lungful of the crisp, late-autumn air.
Something spicy-sweet tickled his nostrils, sending every cell in his body into instant alert. The scent was distant and elusive, nothing manufactured by man, Breed, or any of their collective sciences. It was dusky warm, like cinnamon and vanilla, although to call it such only captured the smallest fraction of its mystique. The scent was something exquisite and singular.
Dante knew it at once. It belonged to the female he’d fed from—the Breedmate he’d so carelessly claimed as his less than twenty-four hours ago.
Tess.
Dante opened the car door and got out.
“What are we doing?”
“You’re staying here,” he instructed Chase, drawn inexorably toward her, his feet already moving on the pavement.
“What is it?” The agent drew his gun and started to get out of the Porsche like he meant to tail Dante on foot. “Tell me what’s happening, damn it. Do you see something out there?”
“Stay in the fucking car, Harvard. And keep your eyes and ears on that building. I’ve got to check something out.”
Dante didn’t think anything was going to go down at their posted location in the next few minutes, but if it did, at that moment he didn’t really care. All he knew was the scent of that perfume on the night wind and the realization that the female was near.
His female, came the dark reminder from somewhere inside him.
Dante tracked her like a predator. Like all of the Breed, he was gifted with heightened senses, super speed, and animal agility. When they wanted, vampires could move among humans undetected, nothing more than a cool breeze on the back of their necks as they passed them by. Dante used that preternatural skill now, navigating the clogged streets and back alleys, his senses trained on his quarry.
He rounded a corner onto the busy main street, and there she was, across the width of the pavement, on the other side.
Dante went still where he stood, watching as Tess shopped in a lighted open-air market, carefully selecting fresh greens and vegetables. She dropped a yellow squash into her canvas shopping bag, then perused a bin of fruit, stopping to lift a pale cantaloupe to her nose and test its ripeness.
Thinking back on the moment he first saw her in her clinic, even through the haze of his injuries, Dante had recognized that she was beautiful. But tonight, under the strand of small white lights illuminating the produce bins, she looked radiant. Her cheeks were flushed pink, her blue-green eyes sparkling as she smiled over at the old proprietess and complimented her on the quality of the stand’s offerings.
Dante moved up his side of the street, keeping to the shadows, unable to take his eyes off her. This close, the scent of her was inebriating and lush. He breathed in through his mouth, letting the spicy sweetness of her sift through his teeth, relishing the way it played across his tongue.
God, but he wanted to taste her again.
He wanted to drink of her.
He wanted to take her.
Before he knew what he was doing, Dante stepped down off the curb and into the street. He could have been at her side in half a second, but something strange caught his eye.
He wasn’t the only male watching Tess with evident interest.
A human stood in the shelter of a building entrance just a few doors down, peering around the casement at the market in an attempt to not be seen as he observed Tess finishing up her shopping. He didn’t fit the stalker mold, with his tall, lean frame and college-boy good looks. Then again, neither had Ted Bundy.
Tess paid for her groceries and wished the old woman a good night. The instant she started to step away from the lighted awnings of the produce stand, the human carefully came out of his hiding place.
Dante seethed at the idea that Tess might meet with harm. He crossed the street in a blink, coming up on the human from behind and stalking within a few yards, ready to tear the man’s arms off if he so much as breathed on her.
“Hey, Doc,” the man called out, familiarity in his voice. “What’s up?”
Tess spun around, gave him a surprised little smile. “Ben, hi! What are you doing here?”
She knew him. Dante pulled back at once, easing off into the flow of pedestrians milling about the shops and restaurants.
“Didn’t you get my message at your place? I had business up here, and I thought maybe we could have dinner or something.”
Dante watched as the human went up and hugged her, then leaned down to give her a fond kiss on the cheek. The man’s adoration was obvious. More than adoration; Dante detected the sharp tang of possessiveness radiating off the human male.
“Are we still on for the dinner exhibit at the museum tomorrow night?” the man asked her.
“Yeah, sure.” Tess nodded, surrendering her tote when he reached to take the burden from her. “So, what should I wear to this thing, anyway?”
“Whatever you want. I know you’ll be gorgeous, Doc.”
Of course. Dante understood it now. This was the boyfriend Tess had called at the clinic last night. The one she had turned to out of terror for what Dante had done to her.
Jealousy curdled in his gut—jealousy he had no true right to feel.
But his blood said different. His veins were alive and burning. The part of him that was not human at all urged him to plow through the crowd and tell the female that she was his, and his alone. Whether she knew it or not. Whether or not either of them willed it.
But a saner part of him lashed a collar around that beast and dragged it back.
Forced it to heel.
He didn’t want a Breedmate. Never had, never would.
Dante watched Tess and her boyfriend stroll off ahead of him, their casual chatter all but lost amid other conversations and the general buzz of street noise swirling all around him. He hung back for a minute, blood pounding in his temples as well as other, lower regions of his anatomy.
Turning around, he loped off into the shadows, back to the building where he’d left Harvard on watch. He hoped like hell Gideon’s tip about Rogue activity there was going to prove solid—the sooner, the better—because right about now he was itching for a good, bloody fight.
CHAPTER Eight
The North End stakeout was a bust. There had indeed been a rave at the old, empty building, but the partygoers were just a lot of humans. Not a Rogue in sight, and no sign of any Darkhaven vampires, let alone any misguided Breed youths jacked up on Crimson. Maybe it should have come as a relief that the city was quiet for a few hours, but after a patrol that had netted zero action all night, Dante was a good long way from relieved. He was frustrated, tense, and in severe need of some chill.
The cure for that was simple enough. He knew of about a dozen places topside where he could find a willing female with juicy veins and a warm, welcoming pair of thighs, and after dropping Chase off at his Darkhaven residence, Dante drove to an after-hours nightclub and parked the Porsche at the curb. He dialed the compound on his cell phone and gave a quick recap of the night’s nonevents to Gideon.
“Look at the bright side, D. You went seven full hours without killing the Darkhaven agent,” Gideon remarked slyly. “That’s an impressive benchmark in itself. We’ve got a pool going over here about how long the guy’s going to last. For what it’s worth, my money’s on nineteen hours, tops.”
“Yeah?” Dante chuckled. “Put me down for seven and a half.”
“That bad, eh?”
“I suppose it could have been worse. At least Harvard knows how to follow orders, even if he seems the type to prefer being in charge.”
Dante glanced in his side mirror, distracted by a wedge of pale female belly and half-exposed, leather miniskirt-clad hips that were currently snaking around the left taillight of the vehicle. Perched on steep platform heels, she rolled toward the closed window with a practiced strut that suggested she was a pro. When she leaned down and shot him a glimpse of fleshy tits, a street-hardened smile, and heroin-vacant eyes, she removed all doubt.
“Lookin’ for some company, handsome?” she mouthed at the darkened glass, unable to see who she was propositioning and evidently not caring, based on the quality of his ride.
Dante ignored her. Even a live-for-the-moment libertine like himself had certain standards. He hardly noticed as the prostitute shrugged, dejected, and moved on up the street. “I need you to run a search on something for me, Gid.”
“You got it,” he said, the clack of a keyboard being drafted into action sounding in the background. “What do you need?”
“Can you find anything on some kind of museum event taking place tomorrow night? A dinner or something like that?”
It took only a second for Gideon to come back with a reply. “I’ve got a social-pages listing for a chichi patrons’ dinner exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Tomorrow night, seven-thirty.”
That had to be the event Tess and her boyfriend were talking about at the produce stand. Their date.
Not that he should care what the female was doing, or with whom. It shouldn’t put his blood on a hard boil to think of another man touching her, kissing her. Burying himself inside her body.
It shouldn’t register on his fury meter at all, but damn if it didn’t.
“What’s going down at the MFA?” Gideon asked, breaking into his thoughts. “You got a lead on something over there?”
“No. Nothing like that. Just curious, that’s all.”
“What, you’re suddenly into the arts?” The warrior chuckled. “Jesus, maybe a few hours with Harvard is having an adverse effect on you. Never figured you for the highbrow shit.”
Dante wasn’t a total cultureless heathen, but he wasn’t in any frame of mind to explain himself right now.
“Forget it,” he all but snapped into the cell phone.
His irritation was only slightly improved when he noticed he was being sized up again. This time it was two pretty females who looked like they’d come in from the suburbs for a good time. College girls, he was guessing, based on the fresh faces, perky twenty-something bods, and torn, faux-vintage designer jeans. They were giggling and trying to act unimpressed as they approached the car on their way into the club.
“So, where are we, D? You on your way back to base now?”
“No,” he said, voice low as he cut the engine and let his gaze trail the women as they passed. “Night’s still young. I think I’ll stop off for a quick bite first. Maybe two.”
Sterling Chase prowled his Darkhaven residence like a caged animal, edgy and anxious. Although the night hadn’t exactly been a success by any measure, he had to admit a certain exhilaration his first time out on his mission. He didn’t care much for the arrogant, antagonistic warrior he’d been partnered with, but he reminded himself that his purpose in seeking the Order’s help far outweighed any of the bullshit he would likely be subjected to by Dante or his brethren these next few weeks.
He’d been home for a couple of hours now. A couple more and it would be daybreak, not that he would feel much like sleeping.
At the moment, he felt like talking to someone.
Of course, the first to come to mind was Elise.
But at this hour she would be retired to her quarters, preparing for bed. It didn’t take much for him to picture her seated at her delicate little vanity, probably nude beneath yards of gauzy white silk and brushing out her long blond hair. Her lavender eyes were likely closed as she hummed absently to herself—a habit she’d had since he’d first met her, and one that only endeared her to him all the more.
She was fragile and sweet, a widow going on five years now. Elise would never pair with another; in his heart of hearts, he knew that. And part of him was glad for her refusal to love again—the right of every Breedmate who lost her beloved—because while it meant he would live in the misery of wanting her, he would not have to accept the even more crushing blow of seeing her bonded to another male.
But without a male of the Breed to nourish her with the time-altering gift of his blood, Elise, born human like every other Breedmate, would one day grow old and die. This was the thing that saddened him the most. He might never truly have her, but it was a certainty that one day, probably no more than a scant sixty or seventy years from now—a blink of time, to those of his kind—he would lose her completely.
Perhaps it was that idea that made him want so badly to spare her every hurt that he could.
He loved her now, as always.
It shamed him, how much she affected him. Just thinking of her, his skin felt tight and too warm. She made him burn inside, and she could never know the truth of that. She would despise him for it, he was sure.
But that didn’t stop the clawing itch to be near her.
To be naked with her, even just once.
Chase stopped his pacing and dropped down onto the large sofa in his den. He sat back, thighs spread, head back on his shoulders, staring up at the tall white ceiling some ten feet above him.
She was there, in that bedroom over this very space.
If he breathed deeply enough, he could catch the faint rose and heather scent of her. Chase sucked in a long draft of air. Hunger coiled in him, stretching his fangs from his gums. He licked his lips, almost able to imagine the taste of her.
Sweet torture, that.
He imagined her padding barefoot across the carpeted floor of her room, unlacing the ties of her flimsy nightgown. Letting the silk fall near the bed as she climbed onto cool sheets and lay there, uncovered, uninhibited, her nipples like rosebuds against the paleness of her skin.
Chase’s throat was desert dry. His pulse kicked into a hard drum, blood flowing hot through his veins. His cock was stiff within the confinement of his black jeans. He reached for the ache of his sex, palming his erection over the thick fabric and straining buttoned fly. Stroking himself the way Elise never would.
He rubbed more urgently, but it only made the need worse.
He would never stop wanting…
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, disgusted with himself for his weakness.
He yanked his hand away and got up with a hiss of anger, denying himself even so much as the fantasy of bedding his perfect, unattainable Elise.
Heat licked along the length of Dante’s bare legs. It climbed higher, over his hips and torso, snaking up his spine and around his shoulders. Relentless, consuming, the heat pressed deeper, like an unstoppable wave crashing over him in slow-motion torment. It burned ever stronger, growing ever hotter, all but engulfing him.
He couldn’t move, no longer in control of his limbs or even his own thoughts.
All he knew was the fire.
And the fact that it was killing him.
Flames were twisting all around him now, smoke churning black, searing his eyes and scorching his throat with every futile, gasping breath he tried to take.
No use.
He was trapped.
He felt his skin blistering. Heard the sickening crackle of his clothing—his hair too—catching fire while he registered it all in stark, debilitating horror.
There was no way out.
Death was coming.
He felt the dark hand descend on him, pushing him down, toward a vortex of seething, endless nothing—
“No!”
Dante came awake with a jolt, every muscle tensed to fight. He tried to move, but something held him down. A slight weight draped across his thighs. Another lying limply across his chest. Both females stirred on the bed, one of them making a purring noise as she nestled against him and stroked his clammy skin.
“What’sa matter, baby?”
“Get off me,” he muttered, his voice raw and thready in his parched throat.
Dante extricated himself from the tangle of naked limbs and put his bare feet on the floor of the unfamiliar apartment. He could hardly catch his breath yet, his heart still hammering hard. He felt fingers running up the small of his back. Irritated by the unwanted touch, he got up off the sagging mattress and began searching for his clothes in the dark.
“Don’t go,” one of them complained. “Mia and I aren’t finished with you yet.”
He didn’t answer. All he wanted right now was to be moving. He’d been still for too long. Long enough for death to come looking for him.
“You okay?” asked the other girl. “You have a bad dream or something?”
Bad dream, he thought wryly.
Far from it.
He’d been seeing the same vision—living it in vivid detail—for as long as he could remember.
It was a glimpse of the future.
His own death.
He knew every agonizing second of his final few moments of life; all that remained unanswered was the why, the where, and the when of it. He even knew who to credit for the curse of his vision.
The human woman who bore him in Italy some 229 years ago had seen not only her own death but that of her beloved mate, the Darkhaven vampire who had been Dante’s scholarly, aristocratic father. Just as she’d envisioned it, that gentle female met a tragic demise, drowning in an ocean riptide after she’d swum out to pull a child from the same disaster. Dante’s father, she had predicted, would be slain by a jealous political rival. Some eighty years after her death, outside a crowded meeting hall in the Rome Darkhaven, Dante had lost his father just as his mother had described.
His mother’s unique Breedmate gift had passed down to her sole offspring, as was often the case among the Breed, and now Dante was the one damned with death visions.
“Come back to bed,” one of the young women pleaded from behind him. “Come on, don’t be such a drag.”
Yanking on his clothes and boots, Dante strolled back over to the bed. The females pawed at him as he came near, their movements drowsy and fumbling, their minds still sluggish from the thrall of his earlier bite. He had sealed their wounds right after he’d fed, but there remained one thing to do before he could make his escape. Dante reached out and put his palm against the brow of one girl, then the other, scrubbing all recollection of this night from their thoughts.
If only he could do the same for himself, he thought, his throat still dry with the taste of smoke and ash and death.
CHAPTER Nine
Relax, Tess.” Ben’s hand came to rest at the small of her back, his head bent low near her ear. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a cocktail reception, not a funeral.”
Which was a good thing, Tess thought, glancing down at her garnet-colored dress. Although the simple, resale-shop halter was a favorite, she was the only one wearing color amid the general sea of black. She felt out of place, conspicuous.
Not that she was used to fitting in among other people. She never had, not from the time she was a little girl. She was always…different. Always apart from the rest of the world in ways she didn’t fully understand and had learned it better not to explore. Instead, she tried to fit in—pretended she did—like now, standing in a crowded room of strangers. The urge to bolt from the crush of it all was strong.
Actually, more and more, Tess was feeling like she was standing at the front of a rising storm. As if unseen forces were gathering all around her, shoving her out onto a bare ledge. She thought if she looked down at her feet, she might find nothing but chasm beneath her. A steep fall with no end in sight.
She rubbed her neck, feeling a dull sort of ache in the tendons below her ear.
“You okay?” Ben asked. “You’ve been quiet all night.”
“Have I? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be.”
“Are you having a good time?”
She nodded, forcing a smile. “This is an amazing exhibit, Ben. The program says it’s a private patrons’ event, so how did you manage to get tickets?”
“Ah, I’ve got a few connections around town.” He shrugged, then downed the last of his champagne. “Someone owed me a favor. And it’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, his tone chiding as he took her empty soda glass from her hand. “I know the bartender, and he knows one of the girls who works in events here at the museum. Knowing how much you enjoy sculpture, a few months ago I put a bug in his ear about scoring me a couple of extra tickets for this reception.”
“And the favor?” Tess prompted, suspicious. She knew that Ben often mingled with some questionable people. “What did you have to do for this guy?”
“His car was in the shop and I loaned him my van one night for a wedding he had to work. That’s it, all on the up and up. Nothing shady.” Ben gave her one of his melting grins. “Hey, I made you a promise, didn’t I?”
Tess nodded vaguely.
“Speaking of the bar, how about I refresh our drinks—another mineral water with lime for the lady?”
“Yes, thank you.”
As Ben wended through the crowd, Tess resumed her perusal of the art collection on special display around the grand ballroom. There were hundreds of pieces of sculpture, representing thousands of years of history, all encased in tall Plexiglas kiosks.
Tess came up behind a group of blond, bronzed, bejeweled society women who were blocking a case of Italian terra-cotta figurines and chattering about so-and-so’s botched brow lift and Mrs. Somebody-or-other’s recent affair with a country-club tennis pro less than half her age. Tess hovered in back of them, sincerely trying not to listen as she attempted to get a closer look at the elegant sculpture of Cornacchini’s Sleeping Endymion.
She felt like an impostor, both as Ben’s date tonight and among these people at the museum patrons’ event. This was more his crowd than hers. Born and reared in Boston, Ben had grown up around art museums and theater, while her cultural background had been limited to county fairs and the local cinema. What she knew about art was modest at best, but her love of sculpture had always been something of an escape for her, particularly in those troubled days back home in rural Illinois.
Back then, she’d been a different person, and Teresa Dawn Culver knew a few things about impostors. Her stepfather had made sure of that. From all appearances, he’d seemed a model citizen: successful, kind, moral. He was none of those things. But he was dead almost a decade now, her estranged mother recently dead as well. As for Tess, she had left that painful past nine years and half a country behind her.
If only she could leave the memories there too.
The awful knowledge of what she’d done…
Tess refocused her attention on the handsome lines of Endymion. As she studied the eighteenth-century terra-cotta sculpture, the fine hairs at the back of her neck began to tickle. A flush of heat washed over her—just the briefest skate of warmth, but enough to make her look around for the source. She found nothing. The pack of gossiping women moved on, and then it was only Tess at the display.
She peered into the glass case once more, letting the beauty of the artist’s work transport her away from her private anxieties to a place of peace and comfort.
“Exquisite.”
A deep voice tinged with a faint, elegant accent drew her head up with a start. There, on the other side of the clear kiosk, stood a man. Tess found herself looking into whiskey-colored eyes fringed with thick, inky-black lashes. If she thought she stuck out like a sore thumb at this ritzy event, she had nothing on this guy.
Six and a half feet of darkness stared at her with hawkish eyes and a stern, almost menacing air of confidence. He was a study in black, from the glossy waves of his hair, to the broad lines of his leather coat and body-hugging knit shirt, to his long legs, which appeared to be outfitted in black fatigues.
Despite his inappropriately casual attire, he held himself with a confidence that made him seem like he owned the place, projecting an air of power even in his stillness. People stared at him from all corners of the room, not with scorn or disapproval but with a deference—a respectful wariness—that Tess couldn’t help feeling herself. She was gaping, she realized, and quickly glanced back into the case to avoid the heat of his unwavering gaze.
“It’s—it’s beautiful, yes,” she stammered, hoping like hell she didn’t look as flustered as she felt.
Her heart was racing inexplicably, and that strange tingly ache was back in the side of her neck. She touched the place below her ear where her pulse now throbbed, trying to rub it away. The sensation only got worse, like a buzzing in her blood. She felt twitchy and nervous, in need of air. When she started to move on to another case of sculpture, the man came around the display, subtly stepping into her path.
“Cornacchini is a master,” he said, that silky growl rolling over the name like the purr of a big cat. “I don’t know all of his works, but my parents were great patrons of the arts back home in Italy.”
Italian. So that explained his gorgeous accent. Since she couldn’t manage a smooth escape now, Tess nodded politely. “Have you been in the States long?”
“Yes.” A smile pulled at the corner of his sensual mouth. “I’ve been here for a very long time. I am called Dante,” he added, extending his large hand to her.
“Tess.” She accepted his greeting, nearly gasping as his fingers wrapped around hers in a moment of contact that was nothing short of electric.
Good Lord, the guy was gorgeous. Not model pretty but rugged and masculine, with a square-cut jaw and lean cheekbones. His full lips were enough to make any one of the collagen-plumped socialites at the reception weep with envy. In fact, his was the kind of profanely masculine face that artists had been trying to capture in clay and marble for centuries. His only visible flaw was a jag in the otherwise straight bridge of his nose.
A fighter? Tess wondered, some of her interest fading already. She had no use for violent men, even if they looked and sounded like fallen angels.
She offered him a pleasant smile and started to walk away. “Enjoy the exhibit.”
“Wait. Why are you running away?” His hand came to rest on her forearm, only the slightest brush of contact, but it stilled her. “Are you afraid of me, Tess?”
“No.” What a strange question for him to ask. “Should I be?”
Something flickered in his eyes, then disappeared. “No, I don’t want that. I want you to stay, Tess.”
He kept saying her name, and every time it rolled off his tongue, she felt some of her anxiety melt away. “Look, I’m, uh…I came here with someone,” she blurted out, reaching for the easiest excuse that came to her.
“Your boyfriend?” he asked, then turned his shrewd gaze unerringly toward the crowded bar where Ben had gone. “You don’t want him to come back and see us talking?”
It sounded ridiculous and she knew it. Ben had no claim over her, and even if they were still dating, she wouldn’t let herself be dominated so much that she couldn’t even talk with another man. That was all she was doing here with Dante, yet it felt intensely intimate. It felt illicit.
It felt dangerous, because despite everything she’d learned about protecting herself, about keeping her guard up, she was intrigued by this man, this stranger. She was attracted to him. More than attracted, she felt connected to him in some inexplicable way.
He smiled at her, then began a slow prowl around the Cornacchini display. “Sleeping Endymion,” he said, reading the placard for the sculpture of the mythical shepherd boy. “What do you think he dreams about, Tess?”
“You don’t know the story?” At the subtle shake of his head, Tess drifted toward him, almost unaware that she was moving. Unable to stop herself until she was standing right beside Dante, their arms brushing against each other as she looked into the Plexiglas with him. “Endymion dreams of Selene.”
“The Greek moon goddess,” Dante murmured next to her, his deep voice vibrating in her bones. “And are they lovers, Tess?”
Lovers.
Warmth stirred somewhere deep inside her just to hear him speak the word. He’d said it casually enough, yet Tess heard the question as if he’d meant it for her ears alone. The low, ticklish hum in the side of her neck intensified again, pulsing in time to the sudden rise of her heartbeat. She cleared her throat, feeling strange and unsettled, all her senses sharpening.
“Endymion was a handsome shepherd boy,” she said finally, drawing on recollections of what she’d learned in a college mythology course. “Selene, as you said, was the goddess of the moon.”
“A human and an immortal,” Dante remarked. She could feel his eyes on her now, that whiskey-colored gaze watching her. “Not the ideal combination, is it? Someone usually ends up dead.”
Tess glanced at him. “This is one of the few times things worked out.” She stared hard at the sculpture in order to avoid looking Dante’s way again and confirming that he was still watching her, so close she could feel the heat of his body. She started talking again, needing to fill the space with something other than the awareness that was crackling around her. “Selene could only be with Endymion at night. She wanted to be with him forever, so she begged Zeus to grant her lover eternal life. The god agreed and put the shepherd into an endless sleep, where he waits each night for his beloved Selene to visit him.”
“Happily ever after,” Dante drawled, a note of cynicism in his voice. “Only in myths and fairy tales.”
“You don’t believe in love?”
“Do you, Tess?”
She glanced up at him, into a penetrating, probing gaze that felt as intimate as a caress. “I’d like to believe in it,” she said, not sure why she was admitting this now, to him. The fact that she had said so to him confused her. Anxious suddenly, she strolled over to a neighboring case of Rodin pieces. “So, what’s your interest in sculpture, Dante? Are you an artist or an enthusiast?”
“Neither.”
“Oh.” Dante kept pace with her, pausing beside her at the kiosk. Tess had dismissed him as out of place when she first saw him, but hearing him speak, seeing him up close, she had to admit that despite the fact that he looked like something out of a Wachowski brothers’ action movie, there was an unmistakable level of sophistication about him. Beneath the leather and muscle, he had a worldly wiseness that intrigued her. Probably more than it should. “What then? Are you a patron of the museum?”
He gave a mild shake of his dark head.
“Working security for the exhibit?” she guessed.
It would certainly explain his lack of formal wear and the laser-sharp intensity that radiated around him. Maybe he was from one of those high-end insurance units that museums often hired to protect their collections while on public display.
“There was something here I wanted to see,” he replied, his mesmerizing eyes unflinching on her. “That’s the only reason I came.”
Something about the way he looked at her as he said it—the way he seemed to look right through her—gave her pulse a little jolt of electricity. She’d been hit on enough in the past to know when a guy was working some kind of angle, but this was different.
This man held her gaze with an intimacy that said she was already his. Not bravado or threat, but fact.
It didn’t take much to imagine his large hands on her body, stroking her bare shoulders and arms. His sensual lips pressing against her mouth, his teeth gently grazing her neck.
Exquisite.
Tess stared up at him, at the slight curve of his lips, which hadn’t moved despite the fact that she just heard him speak. He moved toward her regardless of the milling crowd—none of whom seemed to notice them at all—and tenderly traced the line of her cheek with his thumb. Tess could find no will to move as he leaned down and brushed his mouth along the curve of her jaw.
Heat ignited in her core, a slow burn that melted even more of her reason.
I came here tonight for you.
She couldn’t have heard correctly—if for nothing else, the very fact that he hadn’t said a word. Yet Dante’s voice was in her head, soothing her when she should be alarmed. Making her believe, when everything reasonable told her she was experiencing the impossible.
Close your eyes, Tess.
Her eyelids fell shut and then his mouth moved over hers in a soft, mesmerizing kiss. It wasn’t happening, Tess thought desperately. She wasn’t really letting this man kiss her, was she? In the middle of a crowded room?
But his lips were warm on hers, his teeth roughly grazing as he sucked her lower lip between them before drawing back. Just like that, the sudden, surprising kiss was over. And Tess wanted more.
God, how she wanted.
She couldn’t open her eyes for the way her blood was thrumming, every part of her hot with need and an impossible yearning. Tess weaved a little on her feet, panting and breathless, astonished at what she’d just experienced. She felt a cool breeze skim her body, raising goose bumps in its wake.
“Sorry I took so long.” Ben’s voice jolted her eyes open as he strode up with drinks in hand. “This place is a zoo. The line at the bar took forever.”
Startled, she glanced around for Dante. But he was gone. No sign of him at all—not anywhere near her or in the circulating crowd.
Ben handed her a glass of mineral water. Tess drank it quickly, half tempted to take his champagne and down that too.
“Oh, shit,” Ben said, frowning as he looked at her. “There must be a chip in that glass, Tess. You’ve cut your lip.”
She brought her hand up to her mouth as Ben scrambled to give her a small white napkin. Her fingertips came away wet, vivid scarlet.
“Jesus, I’m sorry about that. I should have looked—”
“I’m okay, really.” She didn’t quite know if that was true, but none of what she was feeling was Ben’s fault. And she didn’t have to check the glass to know there was no rough edge that might have caught on her lip. She must have bitten it herself when she and Dante…Well, she didn’t even want to think about the strange encounter she’d had with him. “You know, I’m feeling a little tired, Ben. Would you mind if we called it a night?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s fine. Whatever you want. Let’s go get our coats.”
“Thank you.”
As they headed out, Tess cast one last glance at the clear display case where Endymion slept on, waiting for darkness and his otherworldly lover to come for him.
CHAPTER Ten
What the hell was he thinking?
Dante paced the shadows outside the museum, strung out in a bad way. Mistake number one had been coming here in the first place, thinking he’d just take another look at the female who, by Breed law, belonged to him. Mistake number two? Seeing her on the arm of her human boyfriend, looking like a vivid jewel in her dark red dress and strappy little sandals, and thinking he wouldn’t have the need to look closer.
To touch.
To taste.
From there, things had pretty much sped out of the poor-judgment category and straight into disaster. His sex was raging for release, his vision sharpened by the narrowing of his pupils, still contracted to slits by his desire for the woman. His pulse was throbbing, his fangs stretched long in carnal hunger, all of which did nothing to curb his frustration over nearly losing control of the situation in there with Tess.
Dante could only imagine how far he would have been tempted to take things with Tess if her boyfriend hadn’t returned when he did, with the crowd watching or not. There had been a moment, as the human male approached them from the bar, that Dante had entertained some rather primitive thoughts. Murderous thoughts, brought on by his want for Tess.
Jesus Christ.
He should never have come here tonight.
What had he been trying to prove? That he was stronger than the blood bond that linked her to him now?
All he’d proven was his own arrogance. His raging body would be reminding him of that fact for the rest of the night. The way he was knotted up right now, he might be strung out for the rest of the week.
Although he was finding it damn hard to regret feeling Tess melt for him so sweetly. The taste of her blood on his tongue when he’d nicked her lip with his fangs stayed with him, making the rest of his torment seem like child’s play.
What he felt right now surpassed base need, carnal or otherwise. It had only been sixteen hours since he’d last fed, yet he thirsted for Tess like he’d gone sixteen days without nourishment. Sixteen hours since he’d last gotten off, and yet he could think of nothing he craved more than to bury himself inside her.
Seriously bad news, that’s what he was dealing with here.
He needed to get his head on straight, and quick. He hadn’t forgotten that he still had a mission to contend with tonight. He was more than ready to focus on something other than the furious pound of his libido.
Digging into the pocket of his dark coat, Dante pulled out his cell and dialed the compound. “Chase report in for patrol yet?” he barked into the device when Gideon picked up the call.
“Not yet. He’s not due ’til ten-thirty.”
“What time is it now?”
“Uh, it’s quarter to nine. Where are you, anyway?”
Dante exhaled a dry chuckle, every cell in his body still hardwired for want of Tess. “Somewhere I never thought I would be, brother.”
And far too much time to kill before his second night of show-and-tell with Harvard began. Dante didn’t have that much patience normally, let alone now. “Call the Darkhaven for me,” he told Gideon. “Tell Harvard that class begins early tonight. I’m on my way there to pick him up.”
Ben insisted on escorting her up to her apartment after the taxi dropped them off. His van was parked on the street below her place, and while Tess had hoped for quick a good-bye at the curb, Ben was intent on playing the gentleman and seeing her to her door on the second floor. His footsteps echoed hollowly behind her as the two of them climbed the old wooden stairs, then paused outside Apartment 2-F. Tess opened her evening bag and felt around inside for her key.
“I don’t know if I told you,” Ben said softly at her back, “but you look really beautiful tonight, Tess.”
She winced, feeling guilty for going with him to the exhibit, especially in light of what had so unexpectedly happened with the man she’d met there.
With Dante, she thought, his name sliding through her mind like dark, soft velvet.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and stuck her key into the lock. “And thank you for taking me tonight, Ben. It was very sweet of you.”
As the door creaked open, she felt his fingers toy with a strand of her loose hair. “Tess—”
She pivoted to tell him good night, to tell him that this would be the last time that she would go out with him as a couple, but as soon as she was facing him, Ben’s mouth came down on hers in an impulsive kiss.
Tess drew back just as abruptly, too startled to couch her reaction. She didn’t miss the wounded look in his eyes. The flash of bitter understanding reflected there as she lifted her hand to her lips and shook her head.
“Ben, I’m sorry, but I can’t…”
He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his golden hair. “Nah, forget it. My mistake.”
“I just…” Tess struggled for the right words. “We can’t keep doing this, you know. I want to be your friend, but—”
“I said forget it.” His voice was curt, stinging. “You’ve told me how you feel, Doc. I guess I’m just a little slow on the uptake.”
“This is my fault, Ben. I shouldn’t have gone with you tonight. I didn’t mean for you to think that—”
He gave her a tight smile. “I don’t think anything. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Things to do, places to be.”
He started moving back toward the stairs. Tess came out into the hallway, feeling terrible for the way things were going. “Ben, don’t leave like this. Why don’t you come in for a while? Let’s talk.”
He didn’t even answer, just looked at her for a long moment, then pivoted around and jogged down the steps. A few seconds later, the door of her apartment building banged shut. Tess went back inside, locked her door behind her, then drifted over to watch from her front window as Ben climbed into his van and sped away into the dark.
Behind the cover of dark sunglasses and the flickering light of strobes in the dance club, Dante scanned the crowd of flailing, gyrating humans. Since picking Chase up from his Darkhaven residence a couple of hours earlier, they’d run across only one Rogue, a rangy-looking male who’d been sniffing out prey among the homeless. Dante had given Harvard a quick lesson in the miracle of titanium when it meets a Rogue’s corrupted blood system, smoking the suckhead on the spot.
More’s the pity, because Dante was still itching for some up-close-and-personal combat. Before the night’s patrol was through, he wanted to get bruised and bloody. Call it attitude adjustment, after the clusterfuck way he’d kicked things off tonight.
Harvard, on the other hand, looked like he’d kill for a long shower. Maybe a cold one, Dante thought, following the vampire’s gaze across the club, to where a petite female with a long mane of cascading pale blond hair was standing with some other humans. Every time she tossed some of that flaxen silk over her shoulder, the Darkhaven agent seemed to crank tighter. He watched her hungrily, tracking her slightest movements and looking like he was ready to pounce.
Maybe she sensed the heat of the vampire’s stare; human nervous systems tended to respond instinctively to the feeling of being stalked by otherworldly eyes. The blonde twirled a length of hair around her finger and cast a sidelong look over her shoulder, zeroing in on the Darkhaven agent with dark, inviting eyes.
“You’re in luck, Harvard. Looks like she digs you too.”
Chase scowled, ignoring Blondie as she broke away from her pack for an obvious flyby. “She is nothing that I want.”
“Could have fooled me.” Dante chuckled. “What, you Darkhaven types don’t do hot and interested?”
“Unlike others of our kind, I find it personally degrading to give in to my every urge, like some kind of animal who can’t be brought to heel. I try to maintain some level of self-control.”
There was certainly something to be said for that, Dante thought irritably. “Where the hell were you with that advice a few hours ago, Dr. Phil?”
Chase shot him a questioning look. “Excuse me?”
“Never mind.”
Dante gestured to a knot of clubbers near the other end of the place. Among the humans was a small group of Darkhaven vampires, young civilian males who seemed less interested in the females throwing off fuck-me vibes than they were in whatever one of the human males appeared to be peddling in the center of the rowdy crowd.
“Some shit going down in the far corner,” he told Chase. “Looks like they’re busting out party favors. Come on, let’s go crash—”
He’d barely gotten the words out before Dante realized what he was seeing. By then, all hell had broken loose.
One of the vampires took a hit of something, snorting it hard. His head snapped back on his shoulders and he let out a deep howl.
“Crimson,” Chase snarled, but Dante had already gathered that.
When the Darkhaven youth’s chin came down again, he roared, baring long fangs and feral, glowing yellow eyes. The humans screamed. Chaos sent the small group scattering, but it was a clumsy break, and one of the females wasn’t quite fast enough to escape. The vampire lunged for her, leaping on top of her, knocking her to the floor beneath him. The kid was lost to sudden, swift Bloodlust, his sharp teeth stretching longer in anticipation of his kill.
Two hundred people were about to witness a very bloody, very violent—and very public—vampire feeding.
Moving too fast for human eyes to see, Dante and Chase sliced through the crowded dance floor. They were closing in on the catastrophe taking place in the corner when Dante caught a glimpse of the human who was standing there holding a spilled vial of Crimson powder, his jaw slack with horror in the split second before he bolted out the club’s back door.
Holy hell.
Dante knew the son of a bitch.
Not by name, but by face. He’d seen him just a few hours ago—with Tess, at the art museum.
The Crimson dealer was her boyfriend.
CHAPTER Eleven
Go after him!” Dante called to Chase.
Although his gut impulse was to leap on the fleeing human and shred the bastard before his feet got their first taste of pavement, Dante had a bigger problem to deal with right here in the club. He catapulted onto the back of the raving Darkhaven youth and peeled him off his shrieking human prey. Dante threw the vampire into the nearest wall and crouched low to spring on him again.
“Get out of here!” he ordered the stricken female when she lay there at his feet, immobile in her shock. Everything would be happening too fast for her human mind to sort out, Dante’s voice no doubt coming to her ears as a growled, disembodied command. “Move, damn it. Now!”
Dante didn’t wait to see if she obeyed.
The Crimson eater came up off the floor, snarling and hissing, his fingers curled into claws. His gaping mouth dripped pink foam, globs of it stretching from the ends of his huge fangs. His pupils were narrowed to thin vertical slits, nothing but a blast of yellow fire surrounding them. The vampire’s Bloodlusting focus was twitchy, head cocking from side to side as if he couldn’t decide what he wanted more: an open human carotid or a piece of the one who’d interrupted his meal.
The vampire grunted, then made a lunge for the nearest human.
Dante flew at him like a hurricane.
Hurtling bodily down the back corridor of the club, the both of them smashed through the exit and rolled out onto the alley behind the place. There was no one out there—no sign of Chase or Tess’s dealer boyfriend. There was only darkness and damp pavement and a Dumpster that reeked of week-old garbage.
With the Crimson eater snapping and clawing at him in a feral chaos of movement, Dante flicked a sharp mental command on the club’s back door, slamming the thing shut and jamming the lock to keep the curious from wandering out into the fray.
The young Darkhaven vampire fought like he was crazed, bucking and kicking, thrashing and fighting like he was amped up on a shot of pure adrenaline. Dante felt something hot clamp down on his forearm and realized with not a little fury that the kid had sunk his fangs into his arm.
Dante roared, what little patience he had for the situation evaporating as he gripped his attacker’s skull and launched the kid off him. The Darkhaven youth crashed against the side of the steel Dumpster, then slid to the pavement in a heap of gangly arms and legs.
Dante stalked over to him, his own eyes sharp with anger, throwing off the amber glow of fury. He could feel his fangs extruding, a physical reaction to the heat of battle. “Get up,” he told the younger male. “Get up, before I lift you up by your balls, asshole.”
The kid was growling low under his breath, muscles bunching as he collected himself. He stood up and pulled a knife out of the back pocket of his jeans. As weapons went it was pitiful, just a stubby blade with a fake horn handle. The utilitarian knife looked like something the kid had pilfered out of his father’s toolbox.
“Now, what the fuck do you think you’re gonna do with that?” Dante asked, coolly sliding his malebranche blade out of its sheath. The arc of polished steel with its sleek titanium edge gleamed like molten silver, even in the dark.
The Darkhaven youth eyed the custom-made dagger, then snarled and took a careless swipe at Dante.
“Don’t be stupid, kid. That hard-on you’re feeling is just the Crimson talking. Drop your blade, and let’s take this shit down a notch, get you the help you need to come off your high.”
If the youth even heard Dante talking, it might as well have been coming at him in a foreign language. Nothing seemed to register. The vampire’s glowing yellow eyes remained fixed and unresponsive, his breath sawing in and out of him from between his bared teeth. Thick pink spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. He looked rabid, completely out of his mind.
He snarled. Took another swipe at Dante with the knife. As the edge of the blade came toward him, Dante moved his own weapon into the path to deflect it. The titanium-edged steel made contact, slicing across the back of the other male’s hand.
The Darkhaven youth hissed in pain, but the sound stretched long, like a slow, wet sizzle.
“Ah, fuck,” Dante muttered, having come to know that sound well enough in his many years of hunting Rogues.
The Crimson eater was beyond saving. The drug had induced Bloodlust, strong enough in this young vampire that he had turned Rogue. The truth of that irreversible transformation was in the acid burn of his flesh where the titanium of Dante’s blade had cut him.
The metal alloy worked fast; already the skin of the vampire’s hand was corroding, dissolving, falling away. Red trails running up the Rogue’s arm showed the poison racing through his bloodstream. Another few minutes and there would be nothing left of him but a percolating mass of melting flesh and bone. Hell of a way to go.
“Sorry, kid,” Dante told the wild-eyed Rogue before him.
In an act of mercy, he flipped the arced blade around in his hand and sliced it cleanly across the other vampire’s neck.
“Jesus Christ—no!” Chase’s shout preceded the hard pound of his footsteps on the asphalt of the alleyway. “No! What the fuck are you doing?”
He drew up short next to Dante, just as the Rogue’s body dropped lifelessly to the ground, its severed head rolling to rest nearby. Decomposition was swift but grisly. Chase recoiled, watching the process in abject horror.
“That was a—” Dante heard a thick catch in the agent’s voice, like he was choking back bile. “Son of a bitch! That was a Darkheaven civilian you just killed! He was a goddamn kid—”
“No,” Dante answered calmly as he cleaned his blade and resheathed it on his hip. “What I killed was a Rogue, no longer a civilian or an innocent kid. The Crimson turned him, Chase. See for yourself.”
On the street in front of them, all that was left of the Rogue was a scattered pile of ash. The fine dust caught in the slight breeze, tracing across the pavement. Chase bent down to recover the crude knife from the scattering remains of its owner.
“Where’s the dealer?” Dante asked, hoping like hell to get his hands on him next.
Chase shook his head. “He got away from me. I lost track of him a few blocks from here. I thought I had him, but then he ran into a restaurant and I just…I lost him.”
“Forget it.” Dante wasn’t worried about finding the guy; he only had to look for Tess, and sooner or later her boyfriend was bound to make an appearance. And he had to admit that taking the human out personally was something he looked forward to.
The Darkhaven agent swore under his breath as he stared down at the knife in his hands. “That kid you killed—that Rogue,” he corrected, “was from my community. He was a good kid from a good family, goddamn it. How am I going to tell them what happened to their son?”
Dante didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t apologize for the killing. This was war, no matter what the Darkhavens’ official position might be on the situation. Once a Breed vampire turned Rogue—whether he turned from Crimson or the weakness present in all of the Breed—there was no coming back, no hope of rehabilitation. No second chances. If Harvard was going to run with the Order for any length of time, he’d better get a grip on that fact ASAP.
“Come on,” Dante said, clapping the grim-faced agent on the shoulder. “We’re finished here. You won’t be able to save them all.”
Ben Sullivan didn’t ease up on the gas until Boston’s city lights were a distant glow in the rearview mirror. He turned off Route 1 just inside Revere, flooring the vehicle onto one of the industrial drives down near the river. His hands were shaking on the wheel, palms slick with sweat. His heart was beating like a jackhammer behind his rib cage. He couldn’t catch his breath.
Holy shit.
What the fuck just happened back there at that club?
Some kind of overdose—it had to be. The guy who’d taken the hit of Crimson and lapsed into convulsions was a regular customer. Ben had sold to him at least half a dozen times in the past couple of weeks alone. He’d been manufacturing and dealing the mild stimulant on the club and rave circuit for months now—since the summer—and to his knowledge, nothing like this had ever happened before.
A goddamn overdose.
Ben pulled the van into a gravel yard outside an old warehouse, cut the lights, and sat there with the engine running.
He’d been tailed by someone on foot when he fled the club—one of the two big dudes who’d been somewhere inside the place and evidently had seen him dealing. They might have been undercover cops, maybe even DEA, but both the dark-haired one in sunglasses and his equally intimidating companion who came at Ben like a freight train looked to be the shoot-first, ask-questions-later types.
Ben wasn’t about to wait around and find out. He’d run out of the club and made a frantic, helter-skelter dash in and out of the surrounding streets and alleyways, finally ditching his pursuer long enough to circle back, reach his van, and get the hell out of Dodge.
The situation at the club was still playing through his head in a haze of confusion. Everything had happened so fast. The kid taking the jumbo hit of Crimson. The first sign of trouble, when his body began to spasm as the drug entered his system. The freakish roar that came out of his mouth an instant later. The answering screams of the people around him.
The sheer chaos that ensued.
Most of those intense several minutes were still spinning through Ben’s mind in strobe-light flashes of memory, some images clear, others lost to the dark fog of his panic. But there was one thing he was absolutely sure of….
The kid had sprouted fucking fangs.
Sharp-ass canines that would have been damn hard to hide, not that the kid had been trying to conceal anything when he’d let out that bloodcurdling howl and made a grab for one of the club girls standing next to him.
Like he meant to rip her throat out with his teeth.
And his eyes. For crissake, they had been glowing bright amber, like they were on fire in his skull. Like they belonged on some kind of alien creature.
Ben knew what he saw, but it made zero sense. Not in this world, not by any brand of science he knew, and not in this reality, which cast things like that firmly into the realm of fiction.
Frankly, by everything he knew to be logical and true, what he had witnessed just wasn’t possible.
But logic had little to do with the fear pounding through him right now or the chilling sense that his harmless little “pharming” endeavor had suddenly veered way off the track. An overdose was bad enough, even worse that it had happened in a very public place, with him still on the premises to be identified. But the incredible effect the Crimson seemed to have on that kid—the monstrous transformation—was something off-the-charts unreal.
Ben turned the key in the ignition, sitting numbly as the van’s engine rattled to a rest. He had to check his formula for the drug. Maybe the current batch was bad; he might have accidentally altered it somehow. Maybe the kid simply had an allergic reaction.
Yeah. An allergic reaction that just so happened to turn an otherwise normal-looking twentysomething into a bloodthirsting vampire.
“Jesus Christ,” Ben hissed as he climbed out of the van and hit the gravel below at an anxious jog.
He reached the old building and fumbled for the key to the big padlock on the door. With a metallic snick and a creak of the door’s hinges, he entered his private lab. The place looked like shit outside, but inside, once you got past all the dilapidation and ghostly manufacturing remnants of the paper mill’s previous occupation, the setup was actually pretty sweet—all of it provided by a wealthy, anonymous patron who’d commissioned Ben to focus his pharming efforts solely on the red powder known as Crimson.
Ben’s office was located behind a spacious cell of ten-foot-high steel-link fencing. Inside, there was a gleaming stainless table weighted down by a collection of beakers, burners, a mortar and pestle, and a state-of-the-art digital scale. A wall of combination-locked cabinets housed canisters of assorted pharmaceutical drugs—serotonin accelerators, muscle relaxants, and other ingredients—none of it too hard to come by for an ex-chemist with business contacts in debt to him for numerous and varied favors.
He hadn’t set out to be a drug dealer. In the beginning, after he was released from the cosmetics company where he’d been working as a chemical engineer and research–development manager, Ben would never have considered operating on the other side of the law. But his staunch opposition to animal abuse—the very thing that got him fired in the first place, after witnessing years of torture in the makeup company’s testing labs—put a fire in Ben’s belly to take a stand.
He started rescuing abandoned and neglected animals. Then he started stealing them when regular, legal channels proved too sluggish to be effective. From there, it was a short fall into other questionable activities, club drugs being an easy, relatively low-risk venture. After all, what was the crime in dealing fairly harmless recreational drugs to consenting adults? The way Ben saw it, his rescue operation needed funding and he had something of value to offer to the clubbers and candykids of the rave crowds—something they were going to get anyway from someone, somewhere, so why not him?
Unfortunately, Tess hadn’t seen things from his perspective at all. Once she learned what he was doing, she broke it off with him. Ben had sworn up and down he would quit dealing—just for her—and he truly had, until his current patron came knocking last summer with a fat wad of cash in hand.
At the time, Ben hadn’t understood the focused interest in Crimson. If he’d been paid to step up production and distribution of Ecstasy or GHB, maybe it would have made more sense, but Crimson—Ben’s own private recipe—had been one of the milder products he had produced. In Ben’s trials, conducted primarily on himself, he found that the drug generated a slightly more intense buzz than a caffeinated energy drink, with an increase in appetite and a lessening of inhibitions.
Crimson was a fast-hitting high, but fast-fading too. Its effects vanished after about an hour. In fact, the narcotic had seemed so innocuous, Ben could hardly justify the generous payment he’d been collecting for its manufacture and sale.
After what had happened tonight, he imagined those generous payments were about to come to an abrupt—and understandable—end.
He had to get in contact with his benefactor and report the terrible incident he’d witnessed at the nightclub. His patron needed to know about the apparent problems with the drug. Certainly he would have to agree that Crimson had to be taken out of circulation immediately.
CHAPTER Twelve
Dante followed the soft rumble of conversation coming from the formal dining room of the compound’s mansion at street level. He and Chase had arrived at the Order’s headquarters a few minutes before, after securing the scene at the nightclub and doing a further comb of the area for signs of trouble. Now Chase was in the tech lab below, logged on to the Darkhaven computers, making his report of the night’s events.
Dante had his own report to make as well, one that definitely wasn’t going to win him any attaboys with the formidable leader of the warriors.
He found Lucan seated at the head of the long, elegantly set table in the candlelit dining room. The warrior was dressed for combat, as though he had only recently returned from patrol himself. From beneath his black leather jacket, an array of weapons glinted, giving the impressive Gen One male an even greater aura of danger and command than what normally shrouded him.
His Breedmate didn’t seem to mind his hard edges. Gabrielle sat across Lucan’s lap, her head resting lovingly on his shoulder while she spoke across the table to Gideon and his mate, Savannah. Whatever she’d said made the others laugh, including Lucan, whose humor had been rare to nonexistent before the arrival of the beautiful human female at the compound. The warrior smiled, stroking her ginger-hued hair as gently as he might a kitten, a gesture that seemed to have become automatic in the short few months since the pair had been blood-bonded and mated.
Lucan had it bad for his woman, and he didn’t seem to give a damn for trying to pretend otherwise.
Even Gideon and Savannah, the other couple in the dining room, looked to be head over heels in love with each other. It was a fact that Dante hadn’t ever questioned in the thirty-plus years they’d been together but hadn’t really taken pointed notice of until this moment either. Seated together at the table, Gideon and his mate held hands, his thumb idly stroking the buttery brown skin of her long, tapered fingers. Savannah’s dark cocoa eyes were soft when she gazed at her man, filled with a quiet joy that said there was nowhere else she’d rather be than at his side.
Was this what it meant to be blood-bonded to someone? Dante wondered.
Was this what he’d been denying himself all these long years?
The feeling struck him hard, from out of nowhere. He had forgotten what true love looked like, it had been so long since he’d paused to notice it. His parents had known a deep bond with each other. They had set an example for him that seemed untouchable, more than he could ever hope for. More than he had ever dared to imagine. Why should he, when death could take it all away in an instant? Death hadn’t spared either one of them. He didn’t want to feel that kind of pain, or bring it onto another.
Dante watched the two couples in the dining room, struck by the sense of intimacy—the deep and easy sense of family. It was so overpowering that he had the sudden, strong urge to back away and forget he’d been there at all. Screw his report of what went down tonight. It could wait until the other warriors came in from patrol too.
“You plan on standing in the hallway all night, or are you coming in?”
Shit.
So much for getting the hell out of there unnoticed. Lucan, among the most powerful of the Breed, had probably sensed Dante’s presence in the mansion before he’d even come off the elevator from the compound below.
“What’s going on?” Lucan asked as Dante reluctantly strode inside. “We got trouble out there?”
“It’s not good news, unfortunately.” Dante shoved his hands into his coat pockets and leaned a shoulder against the wainscoted wall of the dining room. Harvard and I had front-row seats tonight for a Crimson deal gone bad. A kid out of the local Darkhaven had a little more than he could handle, evidently. He went into Bloodlust at a dance club downtown, attacked a human, and nearly tore her throat open in front of a couple hundred witnesses.”
“Jesus,” Lucan hissed, his jaw clamped tight. Gabrielle slid off his lap, giving her mate the freedom to stand up and begin a hard pace. “Tell me you were able to avert that disaster.”
Dante nodded. “I peeled him off the woman before he could hurt her, but the kid was in bad shape. He’d turned, Lucan, just like that. By the time I hauled him out of the place, he was full-on Rogue. I took him behind the club and smoked him.”
“How awful,” Gabrielle said, her fine brows pinched.
Gideon’s mate gestured to the bite wound on Dante’s arm, which had nearly stopped bleeding. “Are you all right?” Savannah asked. “Looks like you and your coat could both use a few stitches.”
Dante shrugged, feeling awkward for all the feminine concern. “It’s nothing; I’m fine. Harvard’s a little shook up, though. I’d sent him after the dealer, and he came back around just as I was finishing the job in the alley. I thought he was going to lose it seeing the Rogue go into cellular meltdown, but he managed to hold his shit together.”
“And the dealer?” Lucan prompted grimly.
“Got away from us. But I got a good look at him, and I think I know how to find him.”
“Good. That’s your new priority one.”
A digital trill punctuated Lucan’s order, the sound coming from the cell phone on the table near Gideon. The vampire reached for the device and flipped it open. “It’s Niko,” he said as he clicked on to the call. “Yeah, buddy.”
The conversation was short and concise. “He’s on his way down to the compound,” Gideon told the others. “He took out a Crimson eater who’d gone Rogue tonight too. He says Tegan’s tally was at three the last time they touched base a couple of hours ago.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dante growled.
“What’s going on out there, baby?” Savannah asked Gideon, her look of concern echoed in Gabrielle’s eyes as well. “Is it some kind of accident that this drug is turning vampires into Rogues, or is it something worse than that?”
“We don’t know yet,” Gideon answered, his tone grave but honest.
Lucan halted his pacing, crossing his arms over his chest. “But we need to find out quick, and I mean quick as in yesterday. We need to find that dealer. Find out where the shit is coming from and cut the supply off at the knees.”
Gideon scraped his fingers through his cropped blond hair. “You want to hear an ugly scenario? Let’s say you’re a megalomaniac vampire on a quest for world domination. You start growing your army of Rogues, only to be thwarted when your headquarters is blown into the next century by your enemies. You run away with your tail between your legs, but you’re still alive. You’re pissed off. And let’s not forget, you’re still a dangerous lunatic.”
On the other side of the dining room, Lucan exhaled a vicious curse. As they all knew, Gideon was talking about Lucan’s own kin, a Gen One vampire who was at one time a warrior himself and long presumed dead. It wasn’t until the past summer, when the Order routed a growing faction of Rogues, that they’d discovered Lucan’s brother was still alive.
Alive and well, and fashioning himself as the self-appointed leader of what had been shaping up to be a massive Rogue uprising. What could still be, considering that Marek had managed to elude the assault that took out his fledgling army and their base of operations.
“My brother is many things,” Lucan said thoughtfully, “but I assure you, he is utterly sane. Marek has a plan. Wherever he escaped to, we can be sure that he is working on that plan. Whatever he’s up to, he means to see it through.”
“Which means he needs to rebuild his numbers and build them fast,” Gideon said. “Since it takes time and a lot of bad luck for a Breed vampire to go Rogue on his own, perhaps Marek has started looking for a way to give his recruiting efforts a little boost—”
“Crimson would make a hell of a draft card,” Dante interjected.
Gideon shot him a sober look. “I shudder to think what Marek could do with the drug if it went global. We wouldn’t be able to contain an epidemic of Breed civilians suddenly turning Rogue on Crimson. It would be complete anarchy all over the world.”
While Dante hated to consider that Gideon’s speculations might be right, he had to admit he’d been having similar thoughts himself. And the idea that Tess’s boyfriend was involved—that Tess herself might have anything at all to do with the problem Crimson was posing for the Breed—made his blood run cold in his veins.
Could Tess know anything about this? Could she be involved in some way, maybe aiding her boyfriend with pharming supplies from her clinic? Did either one of them realize what Crimson was capable of? Worse still, would either of them care, once they learned the truth: that vampires were walking among humankind and had been for thousands of years? Maybe the idea of a few dead bloodsuckers—or the entire race—wouldn’t seem like such a bad thing from a human’s perspective.
Dante needed to know what Tess’s role in this situation was, if any, but he wasn’t about to put her in the crosshairs of a Breed war until he found out that truth for himself. And there was a mercenary part of him that wasn’t at all opposed to getting close to Tess in order to get close to her scumbag boyfriend. Close enough to kill the bastard, if need be.
Until then, he just hoped the Order could clamp a lid on the Crimson problem before things escalated any further out of control.
“Hi, Ben. It’s me.” Tess closed her eyes, sank her forehead into her hand, and let out a sigh. “Look, I know it’s late to be calling, but I wanted you to know that I really hate the way we left things earlier tonight. I wish you had stayed and let me explain. You’re my friend, Ben, and I’ve never wanted to hurt—”
A piercing beeeeep sliced into Tess’s ear as Ben’s answering machine cut her off. She hung up the phone and settled back on her sofa.
Maybe it was just as well that she didn’t get a chance to finish. She was rambling anyway, too wired to sleep, even though it was almost midnight and her shift at the clinic would be starting in roughly six hours. She was awake, unnerved by the entire evening, and worrying over Ben, whom, she reminded herself again now, was a grown adult and not her responsibility.
She shouldn’t worry, but she did.
Aside from Nora, who never met a stranger, Ben was Tess’s closest friend. Her only friends, in fact. Without them, she had no one, although she had to admit her solitary way of living was by her own design. She wasn’t like other people, not really, and that awareness had always kept her separate. It kept her alone.
Tess looked down at her hands, idly tracing the little birthmark between her right thumb and forefinger. Her hands were her trade, her source of creative outlet as well. When she was younger, back home in Illinois, she used to sculpt when sleep eluded her. She loved the feel of cool clay warming under her fingertips, the smooth stroke of her knife, the slowly emerging beauty that could be coaxed out of a shapeless mound of plaster or resin.
Tonight she had brought out some of her old supplies from the closet in the hallway; the box of tools and half-rendered pieces sat in a cardboard file box on the floor beside her. How often had she retreated into her sculpting to distance herself from her own life? How many times had the clay and knives and awls been her confidante, her best friend, always there for her when she could count on nothing else?
Tess’s hands had given her purpose in life, but they were also her curse and the reason she couldn’t trust anyone to truly know her.
No one could know what she’d done.
Memories battered the edges of her consciousness—the angry shouts, the tears, the stench of liquor and heated, panting breath blasting across her face. The frantic pumping of her arms and legs as she tried to escape hard, grasping hands. The weight that crushed down upon her in those last few moments before her life tumbled into a chasm of fear and regret.
Tess shoved all of that out of her mind, just as she’d been doing for the past nine years since she’d left her hometown to start her life over again. To try to be normal. To fit in somehow, even if that meant denying who she really was.
Is he breathing? Oh, my God, he’s turning blue! What have you done to him, you little bitch?
The words came back so easily, the furious accusations as cutting now as they had been then. This time of year always brought the memories back. Tomorrow—or rather, today, now that it was past midnight—marked the anniversary of when it all went to hell back home. Tess didn’t like to remember it, but it was hard not to mark the day, since it was also her birthday. Twenty-six years old, but she still felt like that terrified girl of seventeen.
You’re a killer, Teresa Dawn!
Getting up from the sofa, she padded over to the window in her pajamas and lifted the glass, letting the cold night air rush over her. Traffic hummed from the expressway and on the street below, horns honking intermittently, a lone siren wailing in the distance. The chill November wind sawed through the screen, riffling the sheers and drapes.
Look what you’ve done! You fix this right now, goddamn you!
Tess threw the window wider and stared out into the darkness, letting the night noises cocoon her as they muted the ghosts of her past.
CHAPTER Thirteen
Jonas Redmond has gone missing.”
At the sound of Elise’s voice, Chase turned off his computer monitor and looked up. Discreetly, without letting her see his movements, he slid the utility knife he’d recovered several hours ago while on patrol with Dante into one of his desk drawers.
“He went out last night with a couple of friends, but he didn’t return with them.”
Elise stood in the open doorway of his study, a vision of beauty, even in the shapeless white mourning clothes that had been a constant about her for the past five years. The bell-sleeved tunic and long skirt fluttered around her petite figure, the only color being the red silk widow’s sash that was tied loosely at her hips.
Never assuming, always rigidly proper, she wouldn’t enter Chase’s domain until he invited her in. He rose from his desk chair and held his hand out to her in welcome. “Please,” he said, unable to take his eyes off her as she glided over the threshold and stood against the far wall.
“They say he took some kind of drug while they were at a nightclub, and he became crazed,” she said softly. “He tried to attack someone. His friends got frightened and ran off. They lost him in the panic, and they don’t know what happened to him. The whole day has passed without any word from him at all.”
Chase didn’t reply. Elise wouldn’t want to know the truth of it, and he would be the last person to subject her to the ugly details of his own firsthand knowledge of the young vampire’s agonizing final moments of life.
“Jonas is one of Camden’s best friends, you know.”
“Yes,” Chase said quietly. “I know.”
Elise’s smooth brow pinched, then she glanced away from him, fidgeting with her wedding band. “Do you think it’s possible that they might have found each other out there? Maybe Cam and Jonas are hiding together somewhere. They must be so scared, needing to find shelter from the sun. At least it will be dark again soon, just a few more hours. Maybe tonight there will be good news.”
Chase didn’t realize he was moving until he saw that he was on the other side of his desk, only a few paces away from the spot where Elise stood. “I will find Camden. I promised you I would. You have my vow, Elise: I won’t rest until he is safe at home with you again.”
Her head bobbed weakly. “I know you’re doing all that you can. But you are sacrificing so much to search for Cam. I know how much you enjoyed your work with the Agency. Now you’re getting involved with those dangerous thugs of the Order….”
“You don’t worry about any of that,” he told her gently. “My decisions are my own to make. I know what I’m doing—and why.”
When she looked up at him now, she smiled, a rare gift that he devoured greedily and held close. “Sterling, I understand that you and my husband had your differences. Quentin could be…inflexible at times. I know that he pushed you a great deal at the Agency. But he respected you more than he did anyone else. He always said you were the best, the one with the most potential to be something great. He cared for you, even if he often had trouble expressing that to you.” She drew in a breath, then exhaled it on a rushing sigh. “He would be so grateful for what you are doing for us, Sterling. As I am.”
Looking into her warm lavender eyes, Chase pictured himself bringing Elise’s son home like a prize he’d won just for her pleasure. There would be joyful tears and emotional embraces. He could almost feel her arms thrown around him in cathartic relief, her moist eyes anointing him as her personal champion. Her savior.
He lived for that chance now.
He craved it with a ferocity that startled him.
“I just want you to be happy,” he said, daring to move closer to her.
In a shameful instant, he imagined an alternate reality, where Elise belonged to him, her widow’s garb flung away along with her memory of the strong, honorable mate she had loved so deeply and lost. In Chase’s private dream, Elise’s small body would be grown full and ripe with his child. He would give her a son to love and hold close. He would give her the world.
“You deserve to be happy, Elise.”
She made a small noise in the back of her throat, as though he had embarrassed her. “It’s very sweet of you to care. I don’t know what I would do without you, especially now.”
She stepped toward him and put her hands on his shoulders, just the lightest touch, but enough to send a flood of heat racing through him. He braced himself, hardly breathing as she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. The kiss was brief, heartbreakingly chaste.
“Thank you, Sterling. I couldn’t have asked for a more devoted brother-in-law.”
Tess perused the pastry case of a North End coffee shop, finally deciding on a decadent seven-layer brownie drizzled in caramel sauce. She normally didn’t indulge and probably had no right to now, given her tight finances, but after a long day at work—a day that came on the heels of a long, nearly sleepless night—she was going to enjoy her brownie and cappuccino without a moment of guilt. Well, maybe just a small moment of guilt, which would be forgotten the instant all that sticky sweet goodness touched her tongue.
“I’ll pay for that,” said a deep male voice from beside her.
Tess drew up sharply. She knew that low, beautifully accented voice, even though she’d heard it only once before.
“Dante,” she said, turning around to face him. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He smiled, and Tess’s heart did a crazy flutter in her chest. “I’d like to pay for your, er…God, don’t tell me that’s your dinner?”
She laughed and shook her head. “I had a late lunch at work. And you don’t have to pay—”
“I insist.” He handed the barista a twenty and didn’t accept the change. He didn’t seem to notice the pretty cashier’s coy look either, all of his focus rooted on Tess. The intensity of his gorgeous eyes, his entire presence, seemed to suck some of the air out of the too-warm room.
“Thank you,” she said, taking her bagged brownie and the paper cup away from the counter. “Aren’t you having anything?”
“I don’t do sugar or caffeine. They’re not my thing.”
“They’re not? It just so happens they’re two of my favorite vices.”
Dante made a soft sound in his throat, almost a purr. “What are your others?”
“Working, mostly,” she said quickly, feeling her face flush as she turned to grab a few napkins from the dispenser at the end of the counter. A peculiar heat also traveled along her neck, tingling like a mild electrical charge. She felt it down to her marrow, in every surging vein. She was eager to change the subject, far too aware of the heat he was putting off as he trailed her casually toward the coffee-shop door. “This is a surprise, seeing you here, Dante. Do you live nearby?”
“Not far. And you?”
“Just a couple of blocks away,” she said, walking with him outside into the cool night air. Now that she was standing next to him again, she couldn’t stop thinking about their strange, sexually charged encounter at the museum exhibit. She’d been thinking about those incredible few moments pretty much constantly ever since, wondering if he might have been just a figment of her imagination—some dark kind of fantasy. Yet here he was, flesh and bone. So real that she could touch him. It shocked her how much she wanted to do just that.
It unnerved her, made her twitchy and anxious. Made her want to get away before the urge became something even stronger.
“Well,” she said, as she tipped her steaming cappuccino cup in his direction. “Thanks again for the sugar and caffeine buzz. Good night.”
As she turned to walk up the sidewalk, Dante reached out and touched her arm. His mouth curved into an amused, if suspicious, smile. “You’re always running away from me, Tess.”
Was she? And really, why the hell shouldn’t she? She hardly knew him, and what she did know of him seemed to send all of her senses into overdrive. “I am not trying to run away from you—”
“Then let me give you a ride home.”
He pulled a small key ring out of his coat pocket, and a black Porsche parked at the curb gave a chirp, its lights flashing once in response. Nice car, she thought, not really surprised to find him driving something sleek, fast, and expensive.
“Thanks, but…that’s okay, really. It’s such a nice night, I was actually going to walk for a while.”
“May I join you?”
If he’d insisted in that confident, dominating way of his, Tess would have turned him down flat. But he was asking politely, as if he understood just how far she could be pushed. And although Tess had been craving alone time, tonight of all nights, when she thought about making excuses to leave him, the words simply wouldn’t come. “Um, sure. I guess so. If you want to.”
“I’d like nothing more.”
They began a slow stroll up the sidewalk, just another couple on a street full of tourists and residents enjoying the quaint neighborhood of the North End. For a long time, neither one of them spoke. Tess sipped her cappuccino and Dante surveyed the area with a hawkish intensity that made her feel both anxious and protected. She didn’t see danger in any of the faces they passed, but Dante had a fierce vigilance about him that said he was ready for any situation.
“You never did tell me the other night what you do for a living. Are you a cop or something?”
He glanced over at her as they walked, his expression serious. “I’m a warrior.”
“Warrior,” she said, skeptical of the antiquated term. “What exactly does that mean—military? Special Forces? Vigilante?”
“In a sense, I’m all of those things. But I’m one of the good guys, Tess, I promise you. My brethren and I do whatever is necessary to maintain order and make sure that the weak and innocent are not preyed upon by the strong or corrupt.”
She didn’t laugh, even though she wasn’t at all certain he was serious. The way he described himself called to mind ancient ideals of justice and nobility, as though he subscribed to some kind of knightly code of honor. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever seen that job description on a résumé before. As for me, I’m just your basic private-practice veterinarian.”
“What about your boyfriend? What does he do for a living?”
“Ex,” she admitted quietly. “Ben and I have been broken up for a while now.”
Dante paused to look at her, something dark flashing across his features. “You lied to me?”
“No, I said I was at the reception with Ben. You assumed he was my boyfriend.”
“And you let me believe it. Why?”
Tess shrugged, unsure. “Maybe I didn’t trust you with the truth.”
“But you do now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t trust very easily.”
“Neither do I,” he said, watching her more closly than ever now. They resumed walking. “Tell me. How did you become involved with this…Ben?”
“We met a couple of years ago, through my practice. He’s been a good friend to me.”
Dante grunted but said nothing more. Ahead of them less than a block was the Charles River, one of Tess’s favorite places to walk. She led the way across the street and onto one of the paved trails that meandered along the riverfront.
“You don’t really believe that,” Dante said when they neared the dark, rippling water of the Charles. “You say he’s a good friend, but you’re not being honest. Not with me, and not with yourself either.”
Tess frowned. “How could you possibly know what I think? You don’t know anything about me.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
She started to say as much, but his unwavering gaze stripped her bare. He did know. God, how was it possible that she could feel so connected to him? How could he read her so clearly? She’d felt this same awareness—this instant, peculiar bond with him—at the museum.
“Last night, at the exhibit,” she said, her voice quiet in the cool darkness, “you kissed me.”
“Yes.”
“Then you all but vanished without a word.”
“I had to leave. If I hadn’t, I might not have stopped at just kissing you.”
“In the middle of a crowded ballroom?” He didn’t say anything to deny it. And the slight, inviting curve of his lips sent arrows of fire licking through her veins. Tess shook her head. “I’m not even sure why I let you do that to me.”
“Do you wish I hadn’t?”
“It doesn’t matter if I wished it or not.”
She picked up her pace, moving ahead of him on the walking path.
“You’re running away again, Tess.”
“I am not!” She surprised herself by the frightened tone of her voice. And she was running, her feet trying to carry her as far away from him as possible, even though everything else within her was drawn to him like a magnetic field. She forced herself to stop. To remain still as Dante came up next to her and turned her to face him.
“We’re all running away from something, Tess.”
She couldn’t help scoffing a little. “Even you?”
“Yeah. Even me.” He stared out at the river, then gave a nod as his gaze came back to her. “You want to know the God’s honest truth? I’ve been running all my life—longer than you could know.”
She found it hard to believe. Granted, she knew very little about him, but if she’d been asked to describe him in one word, it likely would have been fearless. Tess couldn’t imagine what could make this immensely confident man doubt himself for a second. “From what, Dante?”
“Death.” He was quiet for a moment, reflective. “Sometimes I think if I just keep moving, if I don’t allow myself to become anchored by hope or anything else that might tempt me to miss a step…” He exhaled a curse into the darkness. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s possible to cheat fate, no matter how fast or how far we run.”
Tess thought about her own life, the damning past that had been haunting her for so long. She had tried to outrun it, but it was always there. Always shadowing every decision she made, reminding her of the curse that would never permit her to truly live. Even now—more and more lately—she wondered if it might be time to move on, start over.
“What do you think, Tess? What is it you run from?”
She didn’t answer, torn between the need to protect her secrets and her longing to share them with someone who might not judge her, who might understand what had brought her to this place in her life, if not forgive her for it.
“It’s okay,” Dante said gently. “You don’t have to tell me now. Come on, let’s find a bench so you can sit and enjoy your sugar and caffeine. Never let it be said that I’d deny a woman any of her favorite vices.”
Dante watched Tess eat the thick, caramel-laced brownie, feeling her pleasure radiate across the small space that separated them on the river-walk bench. She’d offered him a bite, and although his kind could not consume crude human food in anything more than a mouthful, he accepted a small taste of the sticky chocolate confection if only to share in Tess’s unabashed enjoyment. He swallowed the heavy, pretty much revolting bit of pasty sweetness with a tight smile.
“Good, huh?” Tess licked her chocolate-coated fingers, slipping one after the other into her mouth and sucking them clean.
“Delicious,” Dante said, watching her with his own brand of hunger.
“You can have some more if you want it.”
“No.” He drew back, shaking his head. “No, it’s all yours. Please. Enjoy it.”
She finished it off, then sipped the last of her coffee. As she got up to toss the empty bag and cup into a park trash bin, she was distracted by an elderly man who was walking a pair of small brown dogs along the riverfront. Tess said something to the old man, then dropped down into a crouch and let the dogs climb all over her.
Dante watched her laugh as the pair of them rolled and danced for her attention. That rigid guard he was so unsuccessful in breaching with her was gone now. For a few brief minutes, he saw what Tess was really like, without fear or mistrust.
She was glorious, and Dante felt an insane stab of envy for the two mutts who were benefiting from her uninhibited affection.
He strolled over and gave a nod of greeting to the old man as the gentleman and his dogs began to move on. Tess rose, still beaming, as she watched the beasts trot off with their master.
“You have quite a way with animals.”
“They’re my business,” she said, as if she needed to explain her delight.
“You’re good at it. That’s obvious.”
“I like helping animals. It makes me feel…useful, I guess.”
“Maybe you could show me what you do sometime.”
Tess cocked her head at him. “Do you have a pet?”
Dante should have said no, but he was still picturing her with those two ridiculous furballs and wishing that he could bring her some of that same joy. “I keep a dog. Like those.”
“You do? What’s its name?”
Dante cleared his throat, mentally casting about for what he might call a useless creature that depended on him for survival. “Harvard,” he drawled, his lips curving with private humor. “I call it Harvard.”
“Well, I’d love to meet him sometime, Dante.” A chilly breeze kicked up, and Tess shivered, rubbing her arms. “It’s getting kind of late. I should probably think about heading home.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dante nodded, kicking himself for making up a pet, for God’s sake, just because it might win him some favor with Tess. On the other hand, it might also be a convenient way to spend more time with her, figure out just what she knew about Crimson and her ex-boyfriend’s dealing operation.
“I enjoyed our walk, Dante.”
“So did I.”
Tess glanced down at her feet, a wistful look on her face.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I just…I wasn’t expecting anything good to happen tonight. It’s generally not one of my favorite days.”
“Why not?”
She glanced up then, gave a vague shrug of her shoulder. “It’s my birthday.”
He chuckled. “That’s a bad thing?”
“I don’t usually celebrate it. Let’s just say I had a rather dysfunctional upbringing. It’s not a big deal, really.”
Really, it was. Dante wouldn’t have needed any part of a blood bond with Tess to understand that she was still hurting from a very old wound. He wanted to know everything about her pain and its source, his protective instincts firing up at the thought of Tess suffering any kind of unhappiness. But she was already moving away from him, inching toward the path that would lead them up to the street, back to her neighborhood. He reached for her hand, delaying her retreat. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her there.
“You should have reason to celebrate every day, Tess. Especially this one. I’m glad you let me spend some of it with you.”
She smiled—truly smiled, her eyes glimmering in the soft glow of the park lamps, her luscious mouth spreading into a beautiful, soft arc. Dante couldn’t resist his need to feel her close to him. He tightened his fingers around hers and gently brought her toward him.
He looked down into her beautiful face, half lost to desire for her. “No birthday is complete without a kiss.”
Like a gate slamming down before him, Tess’s expression fell. She froze, then stiffened, pulling away from him. “I don’t like birthday kisses,” she blurted out on a rush of breath. “I just…I think we should call it a night now, Dante.”
“Tess, I’m sorry—”
“I have to go.” She was already moving onto the path. Then she pivoted around and ran off at a quick jog, leaving him standing alone in the park to wonder what the hell had just happened.
CHAPTER Fourteen
Chase drove away from the Order’s estate, itchy with frustration. There would be no patrol for him tonight. All of the warriors were out on solo missions, leaving Chase with several hours of darkness to kill on his own.
The death last night of Camden’s friend still ate at him, making him all the more aware that the clock was ticking fast if he stood any hope of bringing his nephew home in one piece. Chase drove by some of the places Dante had taken him on their patrols of the city, both the known and lesser-known locations where humans and vampires tended to mingle.
He searched the streets and dockyards for Camden, prowling for any sign of him or any of his friends. Several hours into it, he was still coming up empty.
He was parked somewhere in Chinatown, about to head back to the Darkhaven, when he saw two Breed youths and a couple of human females enter an unmarked door up ahead of him. Chase cut the Lexus’s engine and stepped out of the vehicle. As he approached the place where the group had gone, loud music bumped from somewhere down below street level. He opened the door and crept inside.
Down a long, barely lit flight of stairs was another door. This one had a human bouncer stationed outside it, but Chase had no trouble getting past the goth steak-head as he pressed a hundred-dollar bill in the guy’s hand.
Deep, thumping bass filled Chase’s head as he entered the crowded club. Bodies thrashed everywhere he looked, the dancing having overtaken the room in a giant, bobbing mass. He scanned the thick crowd as he waded in farther, blue and red strobe lights blasting his eyes.
He stumbled into a drunken female who’d been dancing with some friends. Chase murmured an apology that she probably couldn’t hear over the din. Belatedly, he realized that his hands were on her tight, round ass as he tried to keep her from falling.
She smiled up at him invitingly, licking her lips, which were stained bright red from the lollipop she was nursing. She danced up closer to him now, blatantly sexual as she rubbed her body against his. Chase stared at her mouth, then at the slender white column of her neck.
His veins started buzzing, a fever rising in his blood.
He should go. If Camden was in here somewhere, the odds of finding him were low. Too many people, too much noise.
The female snaked her hands up around his shoulders, grinding in front of him, her thighs brushing his. The skirt she wore was ridiculously short, so short that when she turned around and pressed her bottom into his groin, Chase saw that she wore nothing beneath it.
Jesus Christ.
He really had to get out of here—
Another pair of arms came around from behind him, one of the girl’s friends deciding to play too. A third moved in and took the first one in a long wet kiss, both of them looking at Chase as their tongues slithered together like serpents.
His cock went instantly stiff in his pants. The female at his back reached down, stroking the bulge ever harder with her skilled, relentless fingers. Chase closed his eyes, feeling lust twine with another hunger, one he hadn’t sated in nearly as long as his sexual urge. He was starving, his body craving both fulfillment and release.
The two females brought their kiss to him now, sharing his mouth while the crowd around them kept dancing, not caring about the carnal display taking place right there in the open. They weren’t alone; Chase spotted more than one couple getting busy, more than one Breed vampire finding a Host amid the open sensuality of the place.
With a growl, Chase slid his hands under the first female’s short skirt. He rucked the material up harshly, exposing her to his hungry gaze as her friend licked a hot trail along his neck.
Chase’s fangs stretched long in his mouth as he plumbed the wet slit straddling his thigh. Her friends worked his zipper, tugging it down and reaching in to fondle his erection. Need coiled in him, the urge to fuck and feed overwhelming him. With a rough hand, he grabbed one of the females by the shoulders and pushed her down before him. She knelt there, freeing his cock and taking it into her mouth.
As she vigorously sucked him, and the other female rode his hand toward her own climax, Chase brought the third closer to his mouth. His fangs were throbbing even more than his sex, his vision sharpening as hunger slitted his pupils and heightened all of his senses. He parted his lips as the female’s neck pressed against his mouth. With a sharp thrust, he clamped down on her, opening her vein and drawing the rich, warm blood through his teeth.
Chase fed quickly, if thoroughly, finding this uncharacteristic loss of control revolting. But he couldn’t stop. He drank hard, and with each pull at his Host’s vein, his release spiraled tighter in his groin. He pumped his hips, fisting one hand in the female’s hair as she worked him toward climax. It was coming fast now, roaring through him….
With a furious thrust he exploded. His mouth was still latched tight on his Host. He smoothed his tongue over the puncture wounds, sealing them closed. She was panting from her own release, all three women pawing him as they mewled and whimpered for more.
Chase pushed away from their grasping hands, hating what he’d just done. He brought his palm up to the forehead of his Host and wiped her memory. Then he did the same to the other two. He wanted to get out of there so badly, he was practically shaking with the idea. Stuffing himself back into his pants, Chase felt a niggle of awareness travel along his spine.
There were eyes on him somewhere across the room. He searched the crowd for the intrusion…and found himself staring at one of the Order’s warriors.
Tegan.
So much for holding himself to a higher standard than the Breed males who chose to live a life of violence and almost vigilante justice.
How much of Chase’s degrading lack of control had Tegan seen? Probably all of it, although the vampire’s expression betrayed nothing, just held him in a cold, flat, knowing gaze.
The warrior stared for another moment, then simply turned and strolled out of the place.
A pair of bright yellow eyes with slivered pupils stared back at Dante from his flat-screen computer monitor. The beast’s mouth was dropped open, lips curled back from a fairly impressive set of fangs. It was a look of hissing fury, but the caption beneath the photograph described the subject as a sweet and cuddly diva who would love to go home with you today.
“Jesus,” Dante murmured, repulsed. He saw enough of that spitting, feral look every night he spent topside, hunting Rogues.
Hell, sometimes he saw the same hideousness reflected in his own mirror, when blood hunger, lust, or rage brought out his primal nature. Pain from his nightmare visions often did the trick too: slitting his pupils, turning his light brown eyes to fiery amber, and stretching his fangs out from his gums.
He’d had another one of those hellish dreams just today. It woke him out of a dead sleep around noon and left him sweating and shaky for several hours afterward. The damn things were getting more frequent lately, more intense. And the splintering headaches they left in their wake were real ass-kickers.
Dante nudged the wireless mouse next to his keyboard, scrolling past the Felines category to the Canines. He clicked the button to bring up the inventory of available animals, then did a quick scan through the photos. A few looked promising for his purposes, in particular a sad-faced hound named Barney who was in need of special care and dreaming of a nice place to spend the last of his golden years.
That ought to work. He certainly wasn’t looking for anything long term.
Dante flipped open his cell phone and dialed the shelter’s number. A gum-smacking young woman with a thick Boston accent picked up on about the fifth ring.
“Eastside Small Animal Rescue, can I help you?”
“I need one of your animals,” Dante told her.
“Excuse me?”
“The dog from your website, the old one. I want it.”
There was a beat of silence, then a loud crack of the girl’s gum. “Oh! You mean Baah-ney?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but he’s been adopted. Is he still on our front page? They must have forgotten to update the website for him. What kind of dog are you looking for? We have several others who need good homes.”
“I need an animal tonight.”
She gave an uncertain little laugh. “Um, that’s not really how we work. We’d need you to come in and fill out an application, and then meet with one of our—”
“I can pay.”
“Well, that’s fine, because we do require a small donation to help cover treatment and—”
“Would a hundred dollars suffice?”
“Er…”
“Two?” he asked, not really caring what it cost. “It’s very important to me.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m, uh…I’m getting that idea.”
Dante lowered his voice and focused on the pliable human mind at the other end of the telephone connection. “Help me out here. I really need one of your animals. Now, let’s give it some thought, and you tell me what it’s going to take to make this happen.”
She hesitated for a long few seconds, then, “Look, I could totally get fired for this, but we do have a dog that just came in today. He hasn’t even been examined yet, but he doesn’t seem like he’s in the best shape. And I’ll be honest with you, he’s not much to look at either. We don’t have space for him right now, so he’s actually on the list for euthanasia in the morning.”
“I’ll take him.” Dante checked the time. It was just past five o’clock, already dark topside, thanks to New England sitting on the front end of the Eastern Time Zone. Harvard wouldn’t be showing up at the compound for another four hours. Plenty of time for him to complete this little transaction before he had to link up with the agent for the night’s patrol. He stood up, grabbing his coat and keys. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Okay. We close at five-thirty, but I’ll wait for ya. Just come around back and ask for Rose. That’s me.” She cracked her gum again, her jaw working audibly in a flurry of quick snaps. “Ah, about the money—the two hundred bucks? Can you pay cash?”
Dante smiled as he started for the door. “Done.”
CHAPTER Fifteen
Tess double-checked the last figure on her computer monitor, making sure the amount was correct before she clicked the button to complete the funds transfer. The overdue clinic bills were paid now, but her savings account was more than a thousand dollars lighter. And next month, the bills would start all over again.
“Hey, Tess?” Nora appeared in the open doorway and gave a hesitant rap on the jamb. “Sorry to interrupt, but it’s almost six o’clock and I have to take off to study for an exam tomorrow. You want me to lock up?”
“Okay,” Tess said, rubbing at her temples, where twin knots of stress had begun to settle. “Thanks, Nora. Have a good night.”
Nora looked at her for a long moment, then down at the stack of bills on the desk. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Tess attempted a reassuring smile. “Yes, everything is fine.”
“I saw the notice from the building landlord today. Rent’s going up after the first of the year, huh?”
Tess nodded. “Just eight percent.”
It wasn’t much, actually, but she could barely cover the clinic lease as it was. The increase would likely be the final nail in the coffin, unless she started charging more for services. That would probably cost her half of her clients, which would put her right back in the hole. The only reasonable alternative was to close the clinic, pull up stakes, and move on to something else.
Tess wasn’t afraid of that option; she was used to moving around. Sometimes she wondered if it wasn’t easier for her to start over than to really dig in somewhere. She was still searching for that soft place to fall. Maybe she would never find it.
“Look, Tess, I’ve, um, been meaning to talk to you about something. My classes are getting pretty intense this last semester, and I really need to buckle down.” She hesitated, lifting her shoulder. “You know I love working here, but I’m going to have to scale back my hours.”
Tess nodded, accepting. “Okay.”
“It’s just that between the clinic and studying, I hardly have time to breathe anymore, you know? My dad’s getting remarried in a few weeks, so I also have to think about moving out of his place. Anyway, my mom really wants me to come back to California after I graduate in the spring….”
“It’s okay. Really, I understand,” Tess said, relieved in a small way.
She’d shared with Nora some of the business’s financial struggles, and while Nora had insisted on riding it out with her, Tess still felt responsible. In fact, there were times she felt as though she was keeping the clinic afloat more for her clients and Nora than for herself. She was good at her work—she knew that—but she couldn’t help feeling that this new life she had made was just another form of hiding. From her past, certainly, but also from the here and now. From something that she was afraid to examine too closely.
You’re always running away, Tess.
Dante’s words from last night replayed in her mind. She’d been reflecting on what he said, knowing that his observation of her was right. Like him, she often felt that if she just kept moving, kept running, she might—just might—be able to survive. She didn’t fear eventual death, though. Her demon was always close by her side.
Deep down, she knew that what she was really running from was herself.
Tess straightened a stack of papers on her desk, pulling herself back to the conversation. “When were you thinking of cutting back your hours?”
“Well, as soon as you can let me, I guess. It kills me that you’ve been bankrolling my paycheck from your personal funds, anyway.”
“You let me worry about that,” Tess said, her words interrupted by the jangle of bells on the clinic’s front entrance.
Nora glanced over her shoulder. “That must be UPS with our supply order. I’ll run out and grab it before I go.”
She jogged away and Tess heard muffled conversation in the reception area. Then Nora was back again, a flush of pink in her cheeks.
“It’s definitely not UPS in the lobby,” she said, keeping her voice low as if she didn’t want to be overheard. “It’s an absolute god.”
Tess laughed. “What?”
“Are you up for a walk-in? Because this amazing-looking guy is waiting out there with a pitiful little dog.”
“Is it an emergency?”
Nora shrugged. “I don’t think so. No obvious blood or trauma, but the guy is pretty insistent. He asked for you. And did I mention he’s drop-dead gorgeous?”
“You did,” Tess said, standing up from her desk and coming around to put on her white lab coat. A tingle kicked up below her ear, an odd prickling sensation like the one she’d felt at the museum exhibit and again last night, when she was standing next to Dante at the coffee shop. “Tell him I’ll be right out, please.”
“No problem.” Nora hooked her hair behind her ear, smoothed her low-cut sweater, and trotted off.
It was him. Tess knew it was Dante, even before she heard his voice rumble in the lobby. She found herself smiling into her hand, weathering a wild current of excitement to think that he had sought her out after the embarrassing way she’d left things with him last night in the park.
Oh, God. This jolt of hormones was bad, bad news. She wasn’t the type to go all giddy over a man, but Dante did something to her that she’d never felt before.
“Get a grip,” she whispered to herself as she headed out of her office and into the hallway that opened onto the lobby area.
Dante stood at the tall reception station, holding a small bundle in his arms. Nora was leaning across the countertop to pet the little dog, cooing adoringly and flashing Dante a nice shot of her cleavage. Tess couldn’t blame Nora for flirting. Dante just had that effect on a woman; not even Tess was immune to his dark allure.
His eyes had locked on to her the instant she entered the room, and if Tess wanted to act cool and unaffected, she was probably failing miserably. Her smile wouldn’t dim, and her fingers trembled a bit as she brought her hand up to the side of her neck, where the queer tingling seemed to gather the strongest.
“This must be Harvard,” she said, glancing to the rather emaciated-looking terrier mix in Dante’s arms. “When I said I wanted to meet him, I guess I didn’t expect it would be so soon.”
Dante frowned. “Is this a bad time?”
“No. No, it’s fine. I’m just…surprised, that’s all. You keep surprising me.”
“You guys know each other?” Nora was gaping at Tess like she wanted to high-five her.
“We, uh…we met a couple of nights ago,” Tess stammered. “At the museum reception. Last night we ran into each other again in the North End.”
“I was out of line,” Dante said, looking at her as if they were the only people in the room. “I didn’t mean to upset you last night, Tess.”
She waved off his concern, wishing she could forget the whole thing. “It was nothing. I wasn’t upset, really. You didn’t do anything wrong. I should be the one apologizing to you for running off like I did.”
Nora’s gaze bounced between the two of them, as if the tension Tess felt from being near Dante was palpable to the other woman as well. “Maybe you two would like to be alone—”
“No,” Tess answered abruptly, at the same time that Dante calmly said, “Yes.”
Nora hesitated for a second, then turned and gathered her coat and handbag from a hook behind her desk. “I’ll just…um, see you in the morning, Tess.”
“Yeah, all right. Good luck with your studying.”
With her back to Dante, Nora looked at Tess and silently mouthed the words Oh, my God! as she started off for the back exit, where her car was parked. A few seconds later, the low rumble of an engine sounded, then faded away as Nora took off.
Until now, Tess had been so distracted by Dante’s presence, she’d hardly noticed the condition of the dog. Now she couldn’t help feeling a wash of pity for the animal. Its dull brown eyes were half closed, and a faint but audible respiratory wheeze sawed out of its lungs. On sight alone, Tess could tell that the dog was in need of care.
“Do you mind if I take a look at him?” she asked, glad to have something to focus on aside from Dante and the awareness that seemed to crackle between them. At his nod of agreement, Tess took a stethoscope out of her lab-coat pocket and hooked it around her neck. “When’s the last time Harvard had veterinary care?”
Dante gave a vague shrug. “I’m not sure.”
Tess gently took the dog from Dante’s arms. “Come on. Let’s have a closer look in one of the exam rooms.”
Dante followed in watchful silence, coming to stand right beside her as Tess placed the trembling animal onto the stainless steel table. She put the scope under the dog’s chest and listened to the rapid beat of his heart. There was a pretty significant murmur, and his respiration was definitely off, as she suspected. She felt carefully around his pronounced rib cage and made a note of the lack of elasticity in his flea-ridden fur. “Has Harvard been sleeping a lot lately? Lethargic?”
“I don’t know.”
Although Tess hardly noticed Dante moving, their arms brushed against each other, his solid, muscled body like a warm, protective wall beside her. And he smelled incredible—something spicy and dark that probably cost a fortune. She drew in a deep breath of him, then bent to inspect the dog’s mite-infested ears. “Have you noticed a loss of appetite or a problem keeping food and water down?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Tess lifted the terrier’s lips and checked the color of his diseased gums. “Can you tell me when was Harvard’s last vaccination?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know anything about this animal?” It sounded accusatory, but she couldn’t bite it back.
“I haven’t had it very long,” Dante said. “I know it needs care. Do you think you can help, Tess?”
She frowned, knowing it was going to take a lot to reverse everything the dog suffered from. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make any promises.”
Tess reached for a ballpoint that was lying on the countertop behind her and fumbled it. The pen dropped to the floor at her feet, and before she could bend down to pick it up, Dante was there. He caught the Bic in nimble fingers and held it out to her. As she took it from him, she felt his thumb skim over the back of her hand. She drew her arm against her body in an abrupt motion.
“Why do I make you so nervous?”
She shot him a look that probably broadcast that very thing. “You don’t.”
“Are you sure? You seem…agitated.”
She was, actually. She hated to see neglected animals such as this one, which looked like a poster child for the SPCA. And stress over everything that was going wrong in her life right now was also weighing her down.
But running undercurrent to all of that was the disquiet she felt just being in the same room with this man. God help her, but when her gaze lit on his, she was blasted with a very vivid, very real impression of the two of them naked together, limbs entwined, bodies moist and glistening, arching into each other on a bed of scarlet silk sheets.
She could feel his large hands caressing her, his mouth pressing hot and hungry against her neck. She could feel his sex sliding in and out of her, as his teeth grazed the sensitive spot below her ear, which throbbed now like the heavy beat of drums.
She was held suspended in his smoky amber eyes, seeing all of it as clearly as if it was memory. Or a future that danced just beyond her grasp…
With effort, Tess managed to blink, severing the strange connection.
“Excuse me,” she gasped, and hurried out of the room, awash in confusion.
She closed the door behind her and took a couple of quick paces down the hallway. Leaning back against the wall, she closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was racing, pounding against her sternum. Her very bones seemed to vibrate like a tuning fork.
Her skin was warm to the touch, heat blooming around her neck and in her breasts, and down, in her core. Everything in her seemed to have awakened in his presence, all that was female and elemental coming online at once, reaching out for something. Reaching out for him.
God, what was wrong with her?
She was losing it. If she was smart, she’d leave Dante and his sickly pet in the exam room and hightail it out of here right now.
Oh, sure. That would be really professional. Very adult.
So he’d kissed her once before. All he’d done now was brush fingertips with her; she was the one overreacting. Tess took a deep breath, then another, willing her hyperactive physiology to calm down. When she was finally in control again, she turned around and went back to the exam room, running through a dozen lame reasons for why she felt the need to run away.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said as she opened the door. “I thought I heard the phone—”
The flimsy excuse cut short when she saw him. He was sitting on the floor as if he’d dropped there not a second before, his head hung low and caught between his large palms. His fingertips were white where they dug into the thick hair of his scalp. He looked to be in excruciating agony, his breath hissing through his teeth, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, stepping farther inside the room. “Dante, what happened? What’s the matter with you?”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he was incapable.
Although it was clear that he was hurting in some major way, Dante radiated a dark, wild danger that seemed almost inhuman it was so powerful.
Seeing him there in pain on the floor, Tess felt a sharp stab of déjà vu, a niggle of foreboding that tickled her spine. She started to back away, ready to call 911 and let his problem—whatever it was—belong to someone else. But then his big shoulders hunched over in a tight, pained ball. He let out a moan, and that low, anguished sound was more than she could bear.
Dante didn’t know what hit him.
The death vision came on fast, nailing him like an explosion of blistering daylight. He was awake, at least, but suspended in a paralyzing state of awareness, all of his senses gripped in a debilitating, full-on assault. The vision had never come to him outside of sleep. It had never been so fierce, so ruthlessly strong.
One minute he’d been standing next to Tess, swamped with the erotic images of what he wanted to do with her; the next thing he knew, he was ass-planted on the linoleum of the examination room, feeling himself becoming engulfed in smoke and flame.
Fire climbed toward him from all sides, belching thick plumes of black, acrid smoke. He couldn’t move. He felt shackled, helpless, afraid.
The pain was immense, as was the despair. It shamed him how deeply he felt both of those things, how hard it was for him not to yell out in torment for what he was living through in his mind.
But he held on, the only thing he could do whenever the vision struck him, and he prayed it would be over soon.
He heard his name on Tess’s lips, asking him what he needed. He couldn’t answer. His throat was dry, his mouth filled with ash. He sensed the honesty of her concern and the truth of her apprehension, as she drew closer to him. He wanted to tell her to go, to let him suffer it out on his own, the only way he knew how.
But then he felt cool and gentle fingers come to rest on his shoulder. He felt the white calm of sleep float down over him like a sheltering blanket as she stroked his taut spine and the sweat-dampened hair at his nape.
“You’ll be all right,” she told him softly. “Let me help you, Dante. You’re safe.”
And for the first time he could ever recall, he believed that he was.
CHAPTER Sixteen
Dante lifted his eyelids, waiting for the splintering headache to blind him. Nothing happened. No staggering aftershocks, no cold sweat, no bone-numbing fear.
He blinked once, twice, staring up at a white acoustic-tile ceiling and an extinguished fluorescent-light panel above his head. Strange surroundings—the muted-taupe walls, the small upholstered sofa underneath him, the tidy wooden desk across from him, its orderly surface illuminated by a ginger-jar lamp next to the computer workstation.
He breathed in, smelling none of the familiar smoke or other burning stench that had filled his nostrils in the hellish reality of his death vision. All he smelled was a spicy-sweet warmth that seemed to cocoon him in peace. He brought his hands up from his sides, smoothing them over the fleece throw that only partially covered his big body. The plush cream-colored blanket smelled like her.
Tess.
He turned his head just as she was coming into the room from the hallway outside. The white lab coat was gone; she looked incredibly soft and feminine in an unbuttoned pale green cardigan over her beige knit top. Her jeans rode her hips, baring a thin wedge of smooth creamy flesh where the hem of her shirt didn’t quite meet the top of her pants. She’d let her hair down from the plastic claw that held it before. Now the honeyed brown waves fell down around her shoulders in loose glossy curls.
“Hi,” she said, watching him sit up and swivel around to put his feet on the carpeted floor. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah.”
His voice was a dry croak, but he felt surprisingly well. Rested. Cooled out, when he should have been jacked up tense and hurting—the usual hangover that came in the wake of his death vision. On impulse, he ran his tongue along the line of his teeth, feeling for fangs, but the fearsome canines were receded. His eyesight felt normal, not the sharp, otherworldly twin laser beams that marked him as one of the Breed.
The storm of his transformation, if it had come at all, was past.
He moved the fluffy throw off him and realized he was missing his coat and boots. “Where’s my stuff?”
“Right here,” she said, pointing to the black leather coat and the lug-soled Doc Martens that had been placed neatly on a guest chair near the door. “Your cell phone is on my desk. I turned it off a couple of hours ago. I hope you don’t mind. It was ringing pretty continuously and I didn’t want it to wake you.”
A couple of hours ago? “What time is it now?”
“Um, it’s quarter to one.”
Shit. Those calls were probably the compound, wondering where the hell he was. Lucy was gonna have some ’splaining to do.
“Harvard’s resting, by the way. He’s got a few problems that could be very serious. I fed him and gave him fluids and some IV antibiotics, which should help him sleep. He’s in the kennels down the hall.”
For a few seconds, Dante was confused, wondering how she could possibly know the Darkhaven agent and why the hell he’d be medicated and sleeping in the kennels of her clinic. Then his brain kicked into gear and he remembered the mangy little animal he’d used as a means of ingratiating himself further with Tess.
“I’d like to keep him overnight, if you don’t mind,” Tess said. “Maybe a couple of days, so I can run a few more tests and make sure he’s getting everything he needs.”
Dante nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
He looked around at the small, comfortable little office setup, with its minifridge in the corner and the electric hot plate that sat next to a coffeemaker. Obviously, Tess spent a lot of time in the place. “This isn’t the room I was in before. How did I get here?”
“You had some kind of seizure in the examination room. I got you on your feet and helped you walk back here to my office. I thought it would be more comfortable for you. You seemed pretty out of it.”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his hand over his face.
“Is that what it was, a seizure?”
“Something like that.”
“Does it happen frequently?”
He shrugged, seeing no cause to deny it. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Tess came toward him then, taking a seat on the arm of the sofa. “Do you have medication for it? I wanted to check, but I didn’t feel right going through your pockets. If there’s something you need—”
“I’m good,” he said, still marveling at the absence of pain or nausea following what had been the worst assault he’d experienced to date. The only one that had ever come on while he was awake. Now, aside from being a bit groggy from a hard sleep, he could barely tell he’d had the damn vision at all. “Did you…give me something, or maybe…do something to me? I felt your hands on my back at one point and moving around my head….”
A strange expression came over her face, almost a look of momentary panic. Then she blinked and glanced away from him. “If you think it will help, I have Tylenol in my desk. I’ll get you some and a glass of water.”
She started to get up.
“Tess.” Dante reached out and took her wrist in a loose grasp. “You stayed with me the whole time—all these hours?”
“Of course. I couldn’t very well leave you here by yourself.”
He got a sudden, clear mental picture of what she must have seen if she was anywhere near him while he fought the onslaught of his death vision. But she hadn’t run away shrieking, and she wasn’t looking at him in terror now either. In fact, he had to wonder if being with her hadn’t somehow eased the worst of his nightmare before it had even begun.
Her touch had been so soothing, so cool and tender.
“You stayed with me,” he said, awed by her compassion. “You helped me, Tess. Thank you.”
She could have drawn her hand out of his easy hold at any moment, but she hesitated there, a question in her blue-green gaze. “I think…Since you seem to be all right now, I think it’s time to call it a night. It’s late, and I should go home.”
Dante resisted the urge to point out that she was trying to run again. He didn’t want to scare her off, so he slowly got up from the sofa and stood near her. He looked at their fingers, still touching at the tips, neither one of them willing to break the unexpected contact.
“I have to…go,” she said quietly. “I don’t think this—whatever this is that’s happening between us—is a good idea. I’m not looking to get involved with you.”
“And yet you’ve been sitting here taking care of me for the past four-plus hours.”
She frowned. “I couldn’t have left you alone. You needed help.”
“What do you need, Tess?”
He curled his fingers, capturing hers in a firmer hold now. The air in the small office seemed to constrict and throb with awareness. Dante could feel Tess’s pulse kickstart into a faster beat, a vibration he picked up through her fingertips. He could read her interest, the desire that had been there when he’d kissed her at the art exhibit and been sorely tempted to seduce her in front of a few hundred witnesses. She had wanted him then, maybe even last night too. The delectable, trace scent coming off her skin as she held his meaningful stare told him plainly enough that she wanted him now.
Dante smiled, desire flaring in him for the woman whose blood was a part of him.
The woman who just might be in league with his enemies, if Tess had any hand at all in her onetime boyfriend’s pharmaceutical ventures.
She wasn’t thinking of the human now, that was for sure. Tess’s eyes darkened, and her breathing picked up speed, rushing shallowly from between her parted lips. Dante flexed his biceps, just the slightest pull of his arm to bring her closer. She came toward him without resistance.
“I want to kiss you again, Tess.”
“Why?”
He chuckled, low under his breath. “Why? Because you’re beautiful, and because I want you. And I think you want me too.”
Dante brought his free hand up to her face and gently stroked the line of her jaw. She felt like silk against his fingertips, as delicate as glass. He brushed his thumb across the dusky swell of her lips.
“God, Tess. I’m dying to taste you right now.”
She closed her eyes, exhaling a sigh. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “I don’t…this isn’t…something that I normally—”
Dante lifted her chin and bent to press his lips to hers. He’d meant only to sample the feel of her mouth on his, an urge he’d been harboring since those few heated moments they’d shared at the museum reception. Then he’d been something of a ghost to her, stealing a taste of her passion, then slipping away before she could know if he was real or imagined. Now, for a reason he could hardly comprehend, he wanted her to know he was flesh and bone.
He was, evidently, a goddamn idiot.
Because right now he wanted her to feel him—all of him—and understand that she was his.
He’d meant only to taste, but she was too sweet on his tongue. She was so responsive, her hands coming up around his neck to hold him closer as their mouths crushed together in a deep, prolonged joining. Seconds melted into a minute, then minutes more. A mad, timeless oblivion.
As he kissed her, Dante buried his hands in the luxurious mass of her hair, reveling in the softness of her, the heat of her. He wanted her undressed. He wanted her naked beneath him, screaming his name as he pushed inside her.
God, how he wanted.
His blood was pounding, hot and furious, through his body. His sex was stiff with need, the hard length of him fully aroused, and he was only just getting started with Tess.
The way he felt now, he hoped this was only the start.
Before Dante could stop himself, he was guiding her around to the sofa, easing her down onto the cushions.
She fell back, looking up at him from under those thick-fringed lashes, the aqua color of her eyes gone dark like stormy azure. Her mouth was glistening and swollen from his kiss, her lips blushing a deep, dark rose. The front of her neck was pink with the flush of her desire, color that fanned down into the V of her clingy shirt. Her nipples were hard little buds, straining against the fabric with each rise of her breath. She was ripe with want, and he had never seen anything more exquisite.
“You’re mine, Tess.” Dante moved over her, kissing a path from her lips to her chin, then along her throat, to the soft skin below her ear. She smelled so good. Felt so good against him.
Dante groaned, his nostrils picking up the sweet perfume of her arousal. Lust made his gums ache with the stretching of his fangs. He could feel the sharp points coming down, throbbing with the steady beat of his pulse. “You are mine. And you know that, don’t you?”
Although her voice was small, little more than a breath of air rushing out of her lungs, Dante heard her plainly, and the word went through him like fire.
She said yes.
God, what was she saying?
What was she doing, letting herself be kissed and touched—seduced—like this?
It was reckless and so unlike her at all. Probably dangerous too, for a dozen reasons she couldn’t quite bring herself to care about right now.
She’d never been easy—far from it, given her general distrust of the male gender—but something about this man made fear and inhibition fly right out the window. She felt linked to him somehow, a connection that went deeper than anything she knew, into uncharted territory that made her think of fairy-tale concepts like fate and destiny. Those things weren’t part of her normal lexicon, but she couldn’t deny that despite all she should be feeling about this moment, it just felt…right.
It felt too good to doubt, even if her body was inclined to listen to reason. Which it wasn’t, not when Dante was kissing her, touching her, making all that was female in her awaken as though it had been asleep for a hundred years.
She didn’t resist as he carefully pulled off her sweater, then lifted the hem of her shirt up over her breasts. He drew in a sharp breath as he bent down and kissed her bare stomach, teasing her with gentle nips as he moved up her belly to the front closure of her bra. He snapped it open and slowly peeled the satin away from her breasts.
“Christ, you are lovely.”
His voice was rough, his breath hot on her skin. Her nipples ached to be touched, to be drawn into his mouth and suckled hard. As though he knew the direction of her thoughts, Dante flicked his tongue over one of the tight buds. He pulled with teeth and tongue, while he took the other in his palm, caressing her, driving her crazy with need.
Tess felt him reaching down for the button of her jeans. He worked it free, then tugged the zipper open. Cool air hit her abdomen, then her hips, as Dante nudged her pants down around her thighs. With a long pull of her nipple, he lifted his head and looked at her partial nakedness.
“Exquisite,” he said, the same word he’d spoken the other night.
He reached up tenderly, smoothing his palm down the length of her throat, then along the center of her. Her body arched up for him as though attached to an invisible string that he was pulling. When he reached the core of her, he slid his fingers underneath her panties, not stopping until he found her moist cleft. Tess closed her eyes in tormented bliss as he cupped her, one long finger cleaving between her folds.
His breath leaked out of him in a hiss. “You feel like silk, Tess. Wet, hot silk.”
He penetrated her as he spoke, just the tip of his finger, the smallest invasion. She wanted more. She lifted her hips, a quiet moan in her throat as he drew back, teasing, sliding her moisture up around her clit with the tip of his slick finger.
“What?” he asked her in a gruff whisper. “What do you want, Tess?”
She writhed under his touch, reaching for him. Dante bent down and kissed her stomach as he put both hands on the loose waistband of her jeans and pushed them down. Her panties followed. Dante kissed her navel, then traced his tongue in a downward path, toward the small patch of curls at her groin. With one hand, he lifted her thigh, spreading her open.
“Do you want me to kiss you here?” he asked, pressing his mouth to her hipbone. His dark head moved lower, to the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “How about here?”
“Please,” she gasped, her spine arcing as heat roared through her.
“I think,” he said, moving off the sofa and positioning himself between her slack legs, “that you want me to kiss you…here.”
The first press of his mouth to her sex took her breath away. He kissed her deeper then, using his tongue on her, driving her wild. Tess’s pleasure spun higher, tighter. She didn’t know it was possible to feel this kind of need, but now that she was burning with it, there was only one thing that could sate it.
“Please,” she said, her voice sounding broken and thick. “Dante, please…”
“Do you want me inside you, Tess? Because that’s where I want to be right now. I want to be driving into you, feeling all of your wet heat milking my cock dry.”
Oh, God. He was going to make her come just thinking about it.
“Yes,” she managed to croak. “God, yes. That’s what I want.”
He drew back and stripped off his shirt. Tess opened her eyes, watching him through heavy lids as his muscles bunched and flexed in the dim light of her office. His chest was bare, sculpted like something out of Roman myth, and decorated with an amazing pattern of tattoos that tapered down the ridge of his firm stomach and beneath the waistband of his pants.
At least, she thought they were tattoos. Through her desire-soaked eyes, the geometric designs seemed to change colors as she stared at him, the lines muting from deep wine red to purplish blue and oceanic green.
“Your skin is beautiful,” she said, as curious as she was awed. “God, Dante…your tattoos…they’re incredible.”
She glanced up at his face and thought she saw something flash like amber in his eyes. And when his lips curved into a smile, his mouth seemed fuller somehow.
Dante unfastened his black pants and pulled them off. He wasn’t wearing anything under them. His sex sprang free, huge and erect, as breathtaking as the rest of him. To her surprise, the beautiful pattern of tattoos continued all the way down here, curling around the root of his erection like adoring, multihued fingers. Thick veins ridged the length of his long shaft, which was crowned with a broad head, as supple and dark as a plum.
She could have looked at him forever, but then he reached over to her desk and doused the light. Tess mourned the darkness that hid him, but an instant later his heat was covering her and she let her hands explore everything her eyes could no longer see.
He pressed her down beneath him, parting her thighs with his pelvis as he moved into position between her legs. His sex was hard, so hot, as he wedged it between her folds, just teasing her with the length of him, making her crave him even more.
“Dante.” Her breath heaved out of her, she was so ready for him, so needful of him. It took immense focus to break from the havoc he was wreaking on her senses and think rationally for a second. “Dante, wait. I’m…I’m on the pill, so I…but maybe we should—”
“It’s okay.” He kissed her as his erection nudged the mouth of her core. His tongue swept between her lips, the taste of her own juices a musky sweetness that lingered on his tongue. “You’re safe with me, Tess. I promise you.”
Ordinarily she would be the last person to rely on trust alone, but somehow she knew that she could believe him. Incredibly, she felt safe with him. Protected.
He kissed her again, pushing his tongue deeper. Tess let him in, kissing him back as she arched her hips and seated herself on the blunt head of his penis to show him what she wanted. He exhaled sharply, pelvis bucking as their bodies began to join.
“You are mine,” he gasped against her mouth.
Tess couldn’t deny it.
Not now.
She clutched at him hungrily, and then, with a low growl, he thrust forward, plunging deep.
CHAPTER Seventeen
In his private lab across town, Ben Sullivan had decided to make some adjustments to his Crimson formula. From the beginning he’d never stored the final recipe in the lab, figuring it to be a prudent measure of job security if he carried it with him instead of leaving it behind for his patron’s cronies—or anyone else—to find. He’d been paranoid about getting cut out of his lucrative little venture; after the phone call he’d made to his benefactor earlier tonight, he was feeling like his paranoia might have been more of a spot-on hunch.
He had relayed everything that happened the other night, right down to the near miss with the guys who had chased him out of the club and the incredible notion that Crimson had had some kind of dangerous—vampiric, he’d been inclined to call it—effect on one of Ben’s recent best customers.
The news had been accepted with his patron’s usual nonreactionary calm. Ben had been advised to divulge none of the details to anyone, and a meeting had been set up for him with his employer for the following evening at nightfall. After all the months of secrecy and anonymity, he was finally getting a face-to-face with the guy.
With a little less than fifteen hours before that rendezvous was to occur, Ben thought it wise to cover his bases as best he could, in the event he might need some leverage when he went to meet with the boss. He didn’t know precisely who he was dealing with, after all, and he wasn’t foolish enough to discount the fact that it might be someone with some pretty serious underworld connections. Wouldn’t be the first time a kid from Southie thought he could play ball with real thugs and ended up a floater in the Mystic.
Downloading both formulas—the original and the new, altered one that he considered his own job security—Ben popped the flash drive from his computer. He erased all traces of the files from his hard drive, then headed out of the lab. He took side roads back into the city, just in case he was being followed, and ended up in the North End, not too far from Tess’s apartment.
She would be surprised to know how often he cruised past her place, just to see if she was there. She’d be more than surprised, he admitted to himself. She’d be a little skeeved out if she had any idea how obsessed he truly was with her. He hated that he couldn’t let go of her, but the fact that she had always insisted on holding him at arm’s length, particularly since their breakup, only made him want her more. He kept waiting for her to come around and let him back in, but after the other night, when he’d felt her cringe as he kissed her, some of that hope had slipped away.
Ben wheeled his van around a corner and headed up Tess’s street. Maybe this would be the last time he drove by her place. The last time he’d humiliate himself like some pathetic Peeping Tom.
Yeah, he thought, putting his foot on the brake for a red light, maybe it was time to cut loose, move on. Get a fucking life.
As his van idled, Ben watched a sleek black Porsche roll up to the traffic light from a side road and hang a right in front of him, cruising down the nearly empty street toward Tess’s apartment building. His stomach squeezed as he got a look at the driver. It was the guy from the club—not the one who ran after him, but the other dude, the big one with the dark hair and the lethal vibe about him.
And damn if he didn’t recognize the female passenger sitting next to the guy.
Tess.
Jesus Christ. What was she doing with him? Had he been questioning her about Ben’s activities or something, maybe checking up with his friends and acquaintances?
Panic swam like acid up the back of his throat, but then Ben realized that at almost three in the morning, it was a little goddamn late for a police or DEA interview. No, whatever the guy was selling Tess, it wasn’t on any sort of official basis.
Ben tapped his steering wheel impatiently as the traffic light kept blaring red in front of him. Not that he was afraid of losing the Porsche. He knew where it was heading. But he wanted to see for himself. Needed to see for himself that it really was Tess.
Finally the light changed, and Ben gunned the gas. The van lurched up the street just as the car rolled to a stop outside Tess’s building. Ben pulled over to the curb a few yards back and cut his lights. He waited, watching in slow simmering fury as the guy leaned over from the driver’s side and pulled Tess into a long kiss.
Son of a bitch.
The embrace lasted for a long time. Too damn long, Ben thought, seething now. He threw the van into drive and turned the wheel into the street. He drove by the car at a leisurely pace, refusing to look as he passed, and then slowly continued on his way.
Dante navigated his way back to the compound in a state of distraction, so much so that he’d actually taken a wrong turn coming out of the North End and had to backtrack a few blocks just to resume course. His head was filled with the scent of Tess, the taste of her. She lingered on his skin and on his tongue, and all it took was the remembered feel of her gorgeous body clinging to him, sheathing him, to give him a massive hard-on.
Damn it.
What he’d done tonight with Tess was unplanned and straight-up stupid. Not that he could muster a lot of remorse for the way he’d spent the last few hours. He’d never been so on fire with a woman, and it wasn’t as if he was lacking for comparisons. He wanted to blame the fact that Tess was a Breedmate and that her blood was alive inside him, but the truth was slightly worse than that.
The woman simply did something to him that he couldn’t explain, let alone deny. And after she had eased him out of the tailspin of his death vision, all he wanted—all he needed—was to lose himself even deeper in whatever spell it was that she was casting. Except having Tess naked beneath him only cranked him up tighter. Now that he’d had her, he just wanted more.
At the least, the visit to her clinic had netted some good news.
As Dante wheeled onto the compound’s property, he pulled a crumpled sticky note out of his coat pocket and smacked it down onto the smooth surface of the dashboard. In the dim glow of the gauge lights, he read the handwritten message of a couple days ago, which he’d retrieved from Tess’s appointment book on her desk.
Ben called—museum dinner tomorrow night, 7 pm. Don’t forget!
Ben. The name rolled through Dante’s mind like battery acid. Ben, the guy Tess had been with at the fancy art reception. The human scum who was dealing Crimson, probably at the direction of the Rogues.
There was a call-back number on the message, a Southie exchange. With that bit of information in hand, Dante was betting that it would take all of two seconds to locate the human via Internet or utility records.
Dante gunned the Porsche up the gated drive toward the Order’s mansion, then rolled into the large, secured fleet garage. He cut the lights and engine, grabbed the piece of paper off the dash, then pulled one of his malebranche blades out of the center console beside him.
The bowed length of metal felt cold and unforgiving in his hand—just like it was going to feel against good old Ben’s naked throat. He could hardly wait for the sun to set again so he could go and make a formal introduction.
CHAPTER Eighteen
Tess slept well for the first time in what felt like a week and in spite of the fact that her head was spinning with thoughts of Dante. He’d been in and out of her dreams all night and was the first thing on her mind when she awoke early that next morning, before the alarm clock on her nightstand had a chance to go off with its usual six A.M. blare.
Dante.
His scent still clung to her skin, even after twenty minutes under the warm spray of her shower. There was a pleasant sort of ache between her thighs, an ache she relished because it called to mind everything they’d done together last night.
She could still feel all the places where he’d touched her and kissed her.
All the places on her body that he’d mastered and claimed as his.
Tess dressed quickly, then left her apartment, stopping only to grab a cup of Starbucks on her way to make the 5:20 train at North Station.
She was the first one in at the clinic; Nora probably wouldn’t arrive much before seven-thirty. Tess went in through the back door, leaving it locked behind her since the clinic didn’t open for another couple of hours. As soon as she entered the kennel area and heard the labored wheeze in one of the cages, she knew she had problems.
Dumping her purse, office keys, and the half-empty paper cup on the counter next to the washbasin, Tess hurried over to the little terrier Dante had brought in the night before. Harvard wasn’t doing well. He lay on his side in the cage, chest rising and falling in a slow pace, soft brown eyes rolled back in his head. His mouth was slightly open, his tongue a sickly gray color and lolled out to the side.
His breath was a dry rattle, the kind of sound that said all the bloodwork and tests she’d run the night before didn’t need to be sent out to the lab after all. Harvard would be gone before the samples made it into the mail.
“Poor baby,” Tess said as she unlatched the cage and carefully stroked the dog’s fur. She could feel his weakness through her fingertips. He was holding on by the thinnest strand of life, probably too far gone even before Dante had brought him in to see her.
Sympathy for the animal curled around Tess’s heart like a fist. She could help him. She knew the way….
Tess retracted her hands and clasped them together in a knot in front of her. She’d made a decision about this a long time ago. She’d promised herself, never again.
But this was just a helpless animal, not a human being. Not the vile man from her past who hadn’t deserved any pity or her help.
What would be the harm, really?
Could she actually stand there and watch the poor dog die, knowing she had the unique ability to do something?
No. She couldn’t.
“It’s all right,” she said softly as she reached back into the cage.
Very gently, Tess brought Harvard out, cradling his little body in her arms. She held him like she would an infant, supporting his slight weight with one hand as she placed her other hand on his gaunt belly. Tess focused on the feel of his breathing, the faint but steady beat of his heart. She could read his weakness, the combination of ailments that had been slowly sapping his life away for probably several long months.
And there was more—her fingertips tingled as she moved down to the dog’s abdomen. A bitter taste began to form at the back of her throat as the cancer made itself known to her touch. The tumor wasn’t very large, but it was lethal. Tess could picture it in her mind, seeing the web of fibrous strands that clung to the dog’s stomach, the ugly bluish clump of disease whose sole purpose was to drain away life.
Tess let the tumor come into her mind through her fingertips as the vibration of her blood began to simmer with power. She concentrated on the cancer, seeing it illuminate from within and then break apart. Feeling it dissolve as she held her hand over it and willed it away.
It came back to her so easily, her unexplainable ability.
My curse, she thought, although it was hard to think of it that way when the small bundle nestled in the crook of her arm whimpered softly and turned to lick her hand in gratitude.
She was so caught up in what she was doing, she almost didn’t hear the noise that came from one of the clinic’s empty exam rooms. Then it came again: a short, metallic scrape of sound.
Tess’s head came up sharply, the fine hairs at the back of her neck tingling with alarm. She heard another noise then: a heavy foot scuffing on the floor. She glanced up at the clock on the wall and knew that it was still much too early for Nora to be arriving.
She didn’t think she had anything to fear, yet as she started heading out to the other area of the clinic, she was hit with a sudden blast of memory—a light flicking on in the storeroom, a beaten and bloodied intruder slumped over on the floor. She paused, her feet stopping dead as the vivid image flashed through her mind, then vanished just as quickly.
“Hello?” she called out, trying not to jostle the dog in her arms as she walked out from the vacant kennels. “Is someone here?”
A hissed curse came out of the large examination room off the reception area.
“Ben? Is that you?”
He came out of the room holding an electric screwdriver. “Tess—Christ, you scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here so early?”
“Well, I happen to work here,” she said, frowning as she took in his flushed face with the dark rings under his eyes. “What about you?”
“I, uh…” He gestured back to the exam room with his screwdriver. “I noticed the hydraulic lift was sticking on this table the other day. I was up, and since I still have the spare key to the place, I thought I’d come in and fix it for you.”
It was true, the table had needed some adjustment, but something about Ben’s flummoxed appearance didn’t sit right. Tess walked toward him, gently petting Harvard when the dog started to stir in her arms. “It couldn’t wait until we opened?”
He ran a hand over his scalp, further mussing his disheveled hair. “Like I said, I was up. Just trying to help out where I can. Who’s your friend?”
“His name’s Harvard.”
“Cute mutt; kind of runty, though. A new patient?”
Tess nodded. “Just came in last night. He wasn’t doing too well, but I think he’ll be feeling better soon.”
Ben smiled, but it seemed too tight for his face. “Working late again last night, Doc?”
“No. Not really.”
He glanced away from her, and the smile turned a little sour.
“Ben, are we…okay? I tried to call you the other night, after the museum reception, to apologize. I left you a message, but you didn’t call back.”
“Yeah, I’ve been kind of busy.”
“You look tired.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about me.”
More than tired, Tess thought now. Ben looked strung out. There was an anxious energy about him, like he hadn’t slept for the past two days. “What have you been up to lately? Are you working on another animal rescue or something?”
“Or something,” he said, sliding a shuttered look at her. “Listen, I’d love to stay and chat, but I really have to go.”
He pocketed the screwdriver in his loose jeans and started heading for the clinic’s front door. Tess trailed after him, feeling a chill as an emotional distance that hadn’t been there before now began to crack open between them.
Ben was lying to her, and not just about his purpose in being at the clinic.
“Thanks for fixing the table,” she murmured to his fast-retreating back.
From within the opened door, Ben swiveled his head around to glance at her over his shoulder. His gaze raked her with its bleakness. “Yeah, sure. You take care, Doc.”
An icy drizzle ticked against the glass of Elise’s living-room window; overhead, the stone-gray afternoon sky was bleak. She parted the sheers of her second-floor private residence and stared out at the cold streets of the city below, at the clumps of people rushing to and fro in an effort to escape the weather.
Somewhere, her eighteen-year-old son was out there too.
He’d been gone for more than a week now. One of the growing number of Breed youths who’d disappeared from their Darkhaven sanctuaries around the area. She prayed Cam was underground, safe in some manner of shelter, with others like him to give him comfort and support, until he found his way home.
She hoped that would be soon.
Thank God for Sterling and all he was doing to help make that return happen. Elise could hardly fathom the selflessness that made her brother-in-law devote himself completely to the task. She wished Quentin could see all that his younger sibling was doing for their family. He would be astonished; humbled, she was sure.
As for how Quentin would feel about her right now, Elise was loath to imagine.
His disappointment would be enormous. He might even hate her a little. Or a lot, if he knew that it was she who drove their son out into the night. If not for the argument she’d had with Camden, the ridiculous attempt to control him, maybe he wouldn’t have gone. She was to blame for that, and how she wished she could call back those terrible few hours and erase them forever.
Regret was bitter in her throat as she gazed out to the world beyond her own. She felt so helpless, so useless in her warm, dry home.
Beneath her spacious living quarters in the Back Bay Darkhaven were Sterling’s private apartments and underground shelter. He was Breed, so while there was even a hint of sun overhead, he was forced to remain indoors and out of the light, like all of his kind. That included Camden as well, for even though he was half hers—half human—he had his late father’s vampire blood in him. His father’s otherworldly strengths, and his weaknesses.
There would be no searching for Cam until dark, and to Elise, the waiting seemed an eternity.
She took up pacing in front of the window, wishing there was something she could do to help Sterling look for him and the other Darkhaven youths who’d gone missing along with Cam.
Even as a Breedmate, one of the rare females of the human species who were able to produce offspring with vampires—who were solely male—Elise was still fully Homo sapiens. Her skin could bear sunlight. She could walk among other humans without detection, although it had been many long years—more than a century, in fact—since she had done so.
She’d been a ward of the Darkhavens since she was a little girl, brought there for her own safety and well-being when poverty destituted her parents in one of Boston’s nineteenth-century slums. When she was of age, she’d become the Breedmate of Quentin Chase, her beloved. How she missed him, gone just five short years.
Now she might have lost Camden too.
No. She refused to think it. The pain was too great to consider that for even a second.
And maybe there was something she could do. Elise drew to a halt at the rain-spattered window. Her breath steamed the glass as she peered out, desperate to know where her son might be.
With a burst of resolve, she pivoted around and went to the closet to retrieve her coat from where it had been since several winters past. The long navy wool covered her widow’s whites, falling down around her ankles. Elise put on a pair of pale leather boots and left her quarters before fear could call her back.
She dashed down the stairwell to the door at street level. It took her a couple of attempts to punch in the correct security code needed to unlock the door, for she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of the Darkhaven property. The outside world had long represented pain to her, but maybe now she could bear it.
For Camden, she could bear anything. Couldn’t she?
As she pushed the door open, chilly sleet stung her cheeks, carried toward her on a rush of cool fresh air. Elise braced herself, then walked out, down the brick steps with their wrought-iron railing. On the sidewalk below, thin clusters of people passed, some huddled together, others walking alone, dark umbrellas bobbing with their hurried gaits.
For a moment—the smallest suspension of time—there was silence. But then the ability that had forever been her bane, the extraordinary skill that came in unique form to every Breedmate, pressed down upon her like a hammer.
—I should have told him about the baby—
—not like they’re going to miss twenty measly bucks, after all—
—told that old woman I’d kill her fucking dog if it shit in my yard again—
—he’ll never even know I was gone if I just go home and act like nothing’s wrong—
Elise brought her hands up to her ears as all the ugly thoughts of the human passersby bombarded her. She couldn’t blot them out. They flew at her like so many winged bats, a frenzied assault of lies, betrayals, and all manner of sin.
She couldn’t take another step. She stood there getting soaked with drizzle, her body frozen on the walkway below her Darkhaven apartments, unable to will herself to move.
Camden was out there somewhere, needing her—anyone—to find him. Yet she was failing him here. She couldn’t do anything but hold her head in her hands and weep.
CHAPTER Nineteen
Dusk came early that night, ushered in on the steady spit of a cold November rain coming down from a fog of thick black clouds. The Flats section of Boston’s Southie neighborhood—probably nothing special to look at during the day, with its thickly settled collection of aluminum-sided duplexes and brick three-decker tenements—was reduced to a wet, colorless slum under the monotonous deluge.
Dante and Chase had arrived on Ben Sullivan’s dilapidated block about an hour ago, right after sunset, where they still waited in one of the Order’s dark-windowed SUVs. The vehicle was out of place here simply on the basis of its well-tended appearance, but it put off a distinct don’t-fuck-with-me vibe, which helped keep most of the gangbangers and other street thugs from coming too close. The few who had wandered near the window to have a peek decided to move on in a hurry after getting a flash of fang through the glass from Dante.
He was twitchy for all the waiting and half-hoped one of the idiot humans would be fool enough to make a move just so he could work out some of his idle energy.
“You’re sure this is the dealer’s address?” Chase asked from beside him in the dark front seat.
Dante nodded, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
He had considered paying this visit to Tess’s Crimson-dealing ex-boyfriend by himself but thought he’d better bring along some backup just in case. Backup for Ben Sullivan, not himself. Dante wasn’t at all sure the human would be breathing when he was finished with him if he’d come alone.
And not just because Sullivan was drug-dealing scum either. The fact that the guy knew Tess, and no doubt knew her intimately, flipped a trigger on Dante’s rage. An unbidden sense of possession stole over him, a need to protect her from losers like this Ben Sullivan person.
Right. Like Dante himself was some kind of prize.
“How did you find it?” Chase’s question cut into his thoughts, snapping him back to his mission. “Aside from seeing the human jackrabbit out of the club ahead of us the other night, we didn’t have much to go on as far as IDing him.”
Dante didn’t even glance over at Chase, just lifted his shoulder in a shrug as memories of his hours with Tess swamped his senses in vivid recall. “Doesn’t matter how I got it,” he said after a long minute. “You Darkhaven suits have your methods; we have ours.”
Just as another wave of itchy impatience flooded through him, Dante caught a glimpse of his quarry. He sat up in the driver’s seat of the vehicle, glaring out into the dark. The human came around a corner, head down, face partially shielded by a gray hooded sweatshirt. His hands were thrust into the pockets of a bulky parkalike vest, and the guy was walking fast, throwing continuous looks over his shoulder as if he expected trouble on his heels. But it was him, Dante was certain.
“Here’s our man now,” he said as the human jogged up the concrete steps outside his flat. “Let’s go, Harvard. Look alive.”
They left the vehicle on alarm and followed him right into the building before the door closed behind him, both Breed males moving with the speed and agility that came naturally to those of the vampire race. By the time the human stuck his key in the lock of his third-floor apartment door and pushed it open, Dante was shoving him into the dark, tossing the guy across the spartan living room.
“Motherfu—” Sullivan came up out of his crash on one knee, then froze, his face caught in a wedge of light from the bare bulb glowing in the hall outside.
Something flashed in the human’s eyes, something beneath his immediate fear. Recognition, Dante thought, figuring he probably remembered them from the club the other night. But there was anger there too. Pure male animosity. Dante could smell it seeping out of the human’s pores.
He slowly got to his feet. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“How about you tell us,” Dante said, willing a lamp to come on as he strode farther into the place. Behind him, Chase closed and locked the door. “I’m pretty sure you can guess this isn’t a social call.”
“What do you want?”
“We’ll start with information. It’ll be up to you how we go about getting it.”
“What kind of information?” His gaze swung anxiously between Dante and Chase. “I don’t know who you guys are, and I don’t have any idea what you’re talking abou—”
“Now, see,” Dante said, cutting him off with a chuckle, “that kind of bullshit answer puts us off to a real bad start.” As the human’s right hand slid into the deep pocket of his down-filled vest, Dante smirked. “You wanna convince me you’re an idiot, go ahead and pull that gun out. Just so we’re clear, I really hope you do.”
Ben Sullivan’s face blanched as white as his apartment’s unpainted walls. He pulled his hand back out, nice and slow. “How did you—”
“You expecting somebody besides us tonight?” Dante strode up to him and removed the beat-up .45-caliber pistol from his pocket without any resistance. He turned to Chase and handed him the safety-locked weapon. “Piece-of-shit-looking hardware for a piece-of-shit drug dealer, eh?”
“I just got that for protection, and I’m not a drug deal—”
“Have a seat,” Dante said, and dropped the guy onto a fake-suede recliner, the room’s sole piece of furniture aside from the computer workstation in the corner and the shelf of stereo equipment against the wall. To Chase, Dante said, “Give the place a good sweep, see what you can find.”
“I’m not a drug dealer,” Sullivan insisted as Chase moved off to begin searching. “I don’t know what you think—”
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Dante got down in his face, feeling his anger flare in the sharpening of his eyes and the slight prick of his fangs against his tongue. “I know you’re not going to sit there and deny that we saw you dealing Crimson in the back of that club three nights ago. How long have you been trafficking in that shit? Where are you getting it?”
The human glanced down, formulating his lie. Dante grabbed his chin in a bruising grip and yanked his gaze back up to him. “You don’t really want to die over this, do you, asshole?”
“What can I say? You’re mistaken. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe she can tell us something,” Chase put in, coming out of the bedroom just as Dante was about to coldcock the human into a little honesty. Chase carried a framed snapshot in his hand, holding it out in front of him. It was a photo of Ben and a shorter-haired, still-stunning Tess, looking very much the happy couple as they posed outside her clinic’s Grand Opening sign. “You two look cozy. I’ll bet she can shed a little light on your after-hours activities.”
The human shot a narrow-eyed stare at Chase. “Stay the hell away from her, or so help me, I’ll—”
“Is she involved?” Dante asked, his voice a rough scrape in his throat.
The human scoffed. “You gotta ask me that? You’re the one who had his tongue jammed down her throat last night in front of her apartment. Yeah, I was there. I saw you, son of a bitch.”
The news flash came as a surprise to Dante, but it certainly explained the man’s simmering anger. Dante could feel Chase’s eyes on him in question, but he kept his attention focused on Tess’s jealous ex.
“I’m about out of patience with you,” he snarled, then shook his head. “No, screw that. I’m totally out of patience.” Drawing one of the twin curved blades out of its sheath in a split-second blur of flashing steel, he pressed the edge to Ben Sullivan’s throat. He smiled thinly as the human’s eyes went round with terror. “Yeah, that feels much better to me too. Now, I’m going to give your larynx a little room to breathe, and you’re going to start talking. No more bullshit or stalling. Blink once if you’re with me, Benny boy.”
The human lowered his lids, then resumed his fearful study of Dante’s blade.
“They told me not to say anything to anyone,” he said, words rushing out of him.
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know—whoever’s been paying me to manufacture the shit.”
Dante scowled. “You make Crimson yourself?”
The human attempted a nod, his movement restricted by the cold steel still hovering near his throat. “I’m a scientist—at least, I was. I used to work as a chemist for a cosmetics firm until I got fired a few years ago.”
“Skip the unemployment record and tell me about Crimson.”
Sullivan swallowed carefully. “I created it for the nightclub scene, just to make some extra cash. Last summer, not too long after I started dealing it, this dude approached me about stepping up production. He said he had contacts who wanted to get in with me, and they were willing to pay big for it.”
“But you don’t know who your business partners are?”
“No. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Never mattered to me, really. Whoever it is, they pay in cash, lots of it. They leave my payments in a safe-deposit box at the bank.”
Dante and Chase exchanged a look, both of them knowing what the human was probably ignorant of—that he was dealing with Rogues, most likely tied in with the leader of the new faction of suckheads who, as of a few months ago, had been organizing, preparing for a war their leader intended to ignite among the vampire race. Dante and the rest of the Order had put a serious kink in those plans when they blew up the asylum headquarters, but they hadn’t eliminated the threat completely. So long as the Rogues could recruit and increase their numbers—particularly with the aid of a drug like Crimson—the possibility of war was more a question of when than if.
“What’s the big fucking deal anyway? Crimson’s not hardcore. I’ve even taken it myself in my own trials. It’s just a mild stimulant, not much different from X or GHB.”
Standing next to Dante, Chase scoffed. “Not much different. The hell it isn’t. You saw what happened the other night.”
Dante pressed the blade a bit closer. “You got a front-row seat to that little freak show, didn’t you?”
Sullivan’s jaw clamped tight, his eyes latched on to Dante in uncertainty. “I…I’m not sure what I saw. I swear.”
Dante pinned him with a narrow, measuring glare. He could tell the human was anxious, but was he lying? Damn, he wished Tegan had come along. No one, human or Breed, could hide the truth from that warrior. Of course, knowing Tegan, he’d be just as liable as Dante to want to take the human out for bringing this misery to the vampire population.
“Listen.” Sullivan tried to stand up but got Dante’s palm in the center of his chest, planting his ass right back down on the chair. “Hear me out, please. I never wanted to hurt anyone. Things have gotten…Christ, everything’s messed up now, dangerous. I’m in over my head, and I’m getting out. Tonight, in fact. I called my contact, and I’m going to meet with them to let them know I’m finished. They’re coming to get me in a couple of minutes.”
At the window, Chase put a finger between the aluminum miniblinds and peered out to the street below. “Dark sedan idling at the curb,” he advised, then glanced at the human. “Looks like your ride’s here.”
“Shit.” Ben Sullivan shrank back in the chair, his hands moving nervously on the ratty arms of the La-Z-Boy. He flicked a wary glance up at Dante. “I have to go. Damn it, I need my gun back.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Dante sheathed his malebranche blade and went over to the window. He peered out at the waiting vehicle. Although it was impossible to tell much about the driver from overhead, he was willing to bet it was either a Rogue or a Minion at the wheel, and another one sat on the passenger side. He turned back to the human. “If you get in that car, you’re as good as dead. How do you get in touch with your contact—you got a number to reach him?”
“No. They gave me a disposable cell phone. It’s got a single number programmed into speed dial, but they encrypted it, so I don’t know where I’m actually calling.”
“Let me see it.”
Sullivan reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the device, then handed it to Dante. “What are you going to do?”
“We’ll hang on to this for you. Right now you need to come with us so we can continue this little chat someplace else.”
“What? No.” He got to his feet, looking around anxiously. “Fuck that. I’m not sure I should trust you guys either, so thanks but no thanks. I’ll take care of myself—”
Dante crossed the room and had the human’s throat in his hand before the guy could blink. “It wasn’t a request.”
He released the Crimson dealer, shoving him toward Chase. “Get him out of here. Find a back way to the SUV and drive him to the compound. I’m going to go down and deliver his regrets to the assholes waiting at the curb.”
As Chase took hold of the human’s arms and started moving him out, Dante slipped through the doorway to the hall. He was on the rainy street in no time, coming to a halt in front of the idling sedan and glaring through the windshield at the two humans seated inside.
As Dante had suspected, they were Minions, mind slaves of a Gen One vampire who’d made them by draining them of their humanity while bleeding them to within an inch of their lives. Minions were living, breathing humans, but they were devoid of conscience, existing only to carry out their Master’s orders.
And they could be killed.
Dante grinned at them, more than ready to finish them off.
The bonehead in the passenger seat blinked a couple of times as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The one at the wheel had better reflexes; as his companion mouthed a bunch of useless curses, the driver threw the car into gear and stomped on the gas.
The engine roared to life, lurching the sedan forward, but Dante saw it coming. He planted his hands on the hood of the vehicle and held it back, sneering as the tires spun out on the wet pavement, squealing and smoking but going nowhere. When the Minion at the wheel dropped the car into reverse, Dante leaped onto the hood. He climbed up the length of it as the car made a swerving effort to leave the curb.
Balancing on the jostling ride like he was a surfer holding a wave, Dante brought the heel of his boot down and smashed in the windshield. The shattered sheet of glass caved in, breaking away from its frame. Pebbles spat in every direction as he swung himself into the car between the two Minions.
“Hello, boys. Where the fuck are we heading tonight?”
They went nuts, grabbing for him, punching him—even biting him, for crissake—but it was just a lot of annoyance. Dante threw the sedan into park, the hard change of gears sending them into a tailspin in the street.
He felt something sharp lance across his right thigh, then smelled the metallic flush of his own blood spilling. His fangs sprang out of his gums with his furious roar, his vision going sharp as laser beams as his pupils narrowed in his rage. Reaching over, he took the Minion on the passenger side by the hair at the back of his head. With one violent jerk of his arm, he plowed the human’s face into the dashboard, killing him instantly.
On the other side of him, the driver was scrambling to get out of the car. He fumbled for the door handle and wrenched it open, falling out onto the wet asphalt and then bolting for one of the narrow passages between the three-decker houses.
Dante lunged after him, tackling the Minion to the ground. He fought hand to hand, knowing that he couldn’t kill this one until he had a few answers about who he served and where that vampire could be found. Dante figured he didn’t need the name of the one who made this Minion; after everything that had gone down a few months ago, he and the rest of the Order were well aware that the vampire they needed to eliminate was Lucan’s own brother, Marek. What they didn’t know was where the bastard had fled to after he escaped the warriors’ attack last summer.
“Where is he?” Dante demanded, flipping the Minion over and giving him a punishing blow to the chin. “Where can I find the one who owns your sorry ass?”
“Fuck you,” the Minion spat.
Dante threw another punch, then drew his blade and leaned it against the human’s cheek.
“Go ahead and kill me, vampire. I’ll tell you nothing.”
The urge to oblige the mind slave was hugely tempting, but Dante hauled him off the ground instead. He slammed the Minion into the cinder-block wall of the nearest tenement house, taking dark pleasure in the audible crack of his skull as it bounced off the hard bricks.
“How about if I just cut you up piece by piece?” he hissed, his voice a low growl through his fangs. “I don’t care if you talk, but I’ll sure as hell enjoy hearing you scream.”
The Minion grunted as Dante’s blade pressed into his fleshy neck. Dante felt him squirm, heard the click of a safety coming off a handgun. Before he could wrestle it away from him, the Minion’s arm came up to the side of them.
He didn’t raise the weapon on Dante but on himself. In a split second, the human had the barrel up to his temple, then he fired.
“Goddamn it!”
The explosion flashed orange in the darkness, the percussion ricocheting off the tall buildings around them. The Minion dropped to the wet ground like an anvil, blood and gore spread around him in a grisly halo.
Dante looked down at his own injuries, the sundry scrapes on his hands, the deep wound cutting across his right thigh. It hadn’t been that long since he’d fed, so his body was strong and it wouldn’t take much time for him to heal. A couple of hours, maybe less. But he needed someplace safe to do so.
Above him, lights came on in a few of the surrounding apartments. A curtain parted in a window across the way. Somebody let out a horrified scream. It wouldn’t be long before a call went out to the police, probably already had.
Shit.
He had to get out of there, pronto. Chase was already long gone in the SUV, which was good, all things considered. As for Dante, he couldn’t very well drive off in the busted-out sedan and not be conspicuous. Sucking up the pain in his lacerated thigh, he pivoted around and took off on foot, leaving the dead Minions and the abandoned car behind him in the street.
CHAPTER Twenty
Tess dried the last of the dinner dishes and put them away in the cabinet next to the sink. As she snapped the plastic lid onto the leftover chicken marsala, she felt a pair of eyes boring into the back of her skull.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, pivoting her head over her shoulder to look down at the whining little beast at her feet. “Harvard, are you still hungry? You do realize you’ve been eating practically nonstop since you got here.”
The terrier’s tufted brows quirked over his chocolate-brown eyes, his ears lifting high as he cocked his head at an adorable angle. When that didn’t get her to move fast enough, he tilted his head in the other direction and raised one paw off the tile.
Tess laughed. “All right, you shameless charmer. I’ll give you some of the good stuff.”
She walked over and retrieved the small bowl that had been licked clean of its second helping of canned Iams. Harvard trotted along, following her every step of the way. He’d been glued to her side all day, her new shadow since she’d made the decision to bring him home so she could keep a closer eye on him.
It wasn’t something she’d ever done before with her patients, but then she’d never used her hands to heal one of them either. Harvard was special, and he seemed to be equally attached to her, as if he knew she’d brought him back from the brink today. After a round of IV fluids, some food, and a flea dip, he was a whole new dog. She didn’t have the heart to leave him alone in the empty clinic kennels after everything he’d been through. Now he had decided she was his new best friend.
“Here you go,” she said, cutting up a few small pieces of cooked chicken and dropping them in his bowl. “Try to pace yourself this time, okay?”
As Harvard went to town on the food, Tess put the rest of the leftovers in the refrigerator, then turned and poured herself another glass of chardonnay. She strode into the living room, where she’d left off with her sculpting. It had felt good to be working with her clay again, especially after the strange couple of days—and nights—she’d had.
Although she hadn’t sat down with any plan for what she would make, Tess wasn’t surprised when the lump of light brown Westklay began to take a familiar form. It was rough so far, only the general hint of a face beneath the tousled waves of thick hair she’d worked into the clay. Tess sipped her wine, knowing that if she went back to continue, she would only obsess and be at it all night, unable to tear herself away until the piece was finished.
Like she and Harvard had bigger plans or something?
Putting her wineglass down on the worktable, Tess pulled her wheeled stool over and took a seat. She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn’t know how long she’d been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke with a grunt.
“You expecting someone?” she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she’d seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth…
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
“Tess? Are you there?”
Dante.
Tess’s eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company.
“Dante?” she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren’t playing tricks on her. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Um, sure. Just a sec,” she called out, trying to sound casual as she threw a dry work cloth over her sculpture and quickly checked her face in the reflection off one of her putty spatulas.
Oh, lovely. She had a slightly crazed, starving-artist look going on. Very glamorous. That’ll teach him to do the pop-in visit, she thought, as she padded over to the door and twisted the dead bolt.
“What are you do—”
Her question cut off as she opened the door and caught a glimpse of him. He was drenched from the rain, his dark hair spiked where it clung to his forehead and cheeks, leather coat dripping onto his black combat boots and the tattered welcome mat in the hall outside her place.
But that wasn’t all he was dripping. Splotches of blood mingled with the rainwater, falling at a steady clip from an unseen injury.
“Oh, my God! Are you okay?” She moved aside to let him in, then closed the door behind him. “What happened to you?”
“I won’t stay long. I probably shouldn’t have come at all. You were the first person I thought of—”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Come in. I’ll go get you a towel.”
She ran down the hall to her linen closet and pulled out two towels, one to dry the rain off him and another for his wound. When she came back into the living room, Dante was in the process of taking off his coat. As he reached up to unzip it, Tess saw that his knuckles were bloodstained. There were splatters of the stuff on his face too, most of it diluted by the water that was still running off his chin and wet hair.
“You’re pretty banged up,” she said, concerned for him yet more than a little unsettled to see him looking like he’d been in some kind of nasty street fight. She didn’t see any cuts on his hands or face, so maybe most of the blood there didn’t belong to him. But that wasn’t the case elsewhere.
As the heavy leather came open in the front, Tess sucked in her breath. “Oh, Jesus…”
A long laceration ran across the width of his right thigh, clearly a knife wound. The injury was still fresh, soaking his pant leg with blood.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “Trust me, I’ll live.”
He peeled off the coat and Tess’s sympathy turned to ice.
Dante was armed like something out of an action-movie nightmare. A thick belt went around his hips, studded with several different kinds of blades, not the least of which were huge curved daggers sheathed on either side of him. Strapped across the chest of his black long-sleeved shirt was a gun holster sporting a deadly looking brushed-stainless monstrosity; she didn’t even want to imagine the size of hole that thing could blast into someone. He had another gun secured around his left thigh.
“What the hell…” Tess instinctively shrank away from him, holding the towels against her like a shield.
Dante met her stricken, uncertain gaze and frowned. “I won’t hurt you, Tess. These are just tools of my trade.”
“Your trade?” She was still inching backward, movement she wasn’t aware of until the backs of her calves came up against the coffee table in the center of the living room. “Dante, you’re dressed like an assassin.”
“Don’t be afraid, Tess.”
She wasn’t. She was confused, concerned for him, but not afraid. He began taking off his weapons, unfastening his leg holster and holding it like he didn’t know where to put it down. Tess gestured beside her, to the squat coffee table.
“May I have one of those towels, please?”
She handed him one, watching as he carefully placed his weapon on the table like he didn’t want to add another nick to the already well-worn wood. Even armed to the teeth and bleeding, he was still considerate. Polite, even. A real gentleman, if you could get past all the deadly hardware and the aura of danger that seemed to radiate in visible waves off his huge body.
He took in her apartment with a quick glance, including the little dog who was sitting near Tess in guarded silence.
Dante frowned. “That can’t be…?”
Tess nodded, her tension eroding as Harvard went up to Dante, shyly wagging his tail in greeting. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought him home with me. I wanted to keep a close watch on him, and I thought…”
Her excuse trailed off as Dante reached down to pet the animal, nothing but kindness in his touch and in his deep voice. “Hey, little guy,” he said, chuckling as Harvard licked his hand, then dropped down on the floor for a belly rub. “Someone sure took good care of you today. Yeah, looks like somebody gave you a whole new leash on life.”
He glanced up at Tess with a question in his eyes, but before he could ask her about the dog’s sudden turnaround, she took his wet towel and nodded in the direction of her bathroom down the hall. “Come on, let me have a look at you now.”
Idling at a red light on the other side of South Boston, Chase glanced over at his passenger in the SUV with barely concealed contempt. He personally had no use for the drug-dealing scum. Part of him enjoyed knowing that the human might have been heading for his own funeral if not for Dante and Chase showing up at his apartment tonight.
It didn’t seem fair, a lowlife like Ben Sullivan getting a lucky break while innocent youths like Camden and the others who were missing ended up dead or worse, lost to Crimson-induced Bloodlust and gone Rogue by the shit this human peddled to them.
Chase weathered a sudden, sickening recollection of Dante putting a blade to Jonas Redmond’s throat in the alley outside the club the other night. That good kid was dead, not because of the warrior but because of the human sitting just an arm’s length away from him now. The urge to reach over and blow him away with a bullet to the head came up on Chase like a tsunami, rage he was unused to feeling in himself.
He stared ahead out the tinted windshield, willing the temptation to pass. Killing Ben Sullivan wasn’t going to solve anything, and it sure wouldn’t bring Camden home any sooner.
And that, after all, was his primary objective.
“He’s sleeping with her, isn’t he—that other guy and Tess?” The human’s voice rattled Chase out of his contemplation, but he didn’t acknowledge the question. Ben Sullivan cursed, his head turned to stare out the passenger-side window. “When I saw them together outside her place last night, the son of a bitch had his hands all over her. What’s that all about—is he just using her to get to me?”
Chase remained silent. He’d been wondering about that revelation since it had first come up at Sullivan’s apartment. Dante had said he’d used his own methods to find the Crimson dealer, and hearing that he’d been with a woman whom Sullivan had apparently been close to, Chase had initially assumed she’d been a means to an end for Dante.
But the warrior’s face had taken on an odd cast at the mention of the female, something that seemed to go beyond simple duty to his mission. Did he care for her?
“Shit. I guess it doesn’t really matter,” Sullivan muttered. “Where are you taking me, anyway?”
Chase didn’t feel compelled to answer. The Order’s compound was just outside the city proper, a short drive northeast from where they were now. In a few hours, after he was interrogated by Dante and the others, Ben Sullivan would be sleeping in a dry, warm bed—a prisoner for all intents and purposes, but nevertheless protected behind the secured gates of the warriors’ headquarters. Meanwhile, dozens of Darkhaven youths were out in the elements topside, exposed to the dangers of the street and the terrible effects of Sullivan’s corrosive, deadly drug.
It wasn’t right, not just at all.
Chase flicked his eyes up at the light as it turned green, but his foot hovered over the gas. Behind him, someone laid on their horn. He tuned it out, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for a second as he thought about Camden and Elise, about his promise to bring the boy home.
He didn’t have a lot of options here. And time was running out, he could feel it.
When a second horn blast sounded from the rear, Chase brought his foot down on the accelerator and hung a left at the light. In grim silence, he put the SUV on a southbound path, heading back into the city, toward the old industrial area near the river.
CHAPTER Twenty-one
Good Lord,” Tess gasped, feeling a little queasy as she knelt down in front of Dante to inspect his wound. He was sitting on the edge of the white porcelain bathtub, wearing only his shredded black fatigues. The cut on his thigh seemed better than it had on initial glance in her living room, but in the bright lights of the bathroom, the sight of so much blood—Dante’s blood—made her stomach dip sharply and her head spin. She had to reach out for the lip of the tub to keep from swaying on her heels. “Sorry. I’m not usually affected like this. I mean, I see a lot of ugly injuries at the clinic, but—”
“You don’t have to help with this, Tess. I’m used to taking care of myself.”
She gave him a dubious look. “From the amount of blood on you, I’d say this wound is pretty deep. It’s going to require stitches, a lot of them. Somehow I don’t think you’re up to doing that yourself, are you? And you’re going to need to get out of these pants. I can’t do much so long as you’re wearing them.”
When he didn’t move, she frowned. “You’re not going to just sit here and bleed all over my tile, are you?”
His gaze on hers, he gave a slight shrug, then stood and unfastened the button at his waistband. When he started sliding the zipper down over his tattooed skin and the dark thatch of hair at his groin, Tess’s cheeks warmed. God, after last night, she should have remembered that he wasn’t a boxers or briefs kind of guy.
“Um, here’s another towel,” she said, pulling one off the bar for him to cover himself.
She turned her head as he finished undressing, although it was probably a little late for modesty considering what they’d done together the night before. Being with him again, especially when he was sitting there naked except for a piece of terry cloth, made the small bathroom seem as tight as a closet and as humid as a sauna.
“So, are you going to tell me what happened to you?” she asked without looking at him yet, busying herself with the small collection of medical supplies she’d assembled on the sink vanity. “What were you doing tonight to end up on the business end of an obviously very large knife?”
“Just par for the course. My partner and I were in the process of apprehending a drug dealer, and I ran across a couple of obstacles. I had to remove them.”
Remove them, Tess thought, instinctively understanding what that actually meant. She set a roll of gauze bandage down on the basin, feeling an inward shudder at Dante’s cold admission. She didn’t like what she was hearing, but he’d sworn he was a good guy, and maybe it was crazy, but she trusted him at his word on that.
“All right,” she said, “let me have a look at your leg.”
“Like I said, I’ll live.” She heard his pants hit the floor with a soft rasp. “I don’t think it’s as bad as you might have thought.”
Tess swiveled her head to regard him over her shoulder, prepared for the sight of a ghastly open wound. But he was right, it wasn’t that bad after all. Beneath the edge of the towel that draped his groin and upper thigh, the laceration was a clean slice but not that deep at all. Not even half an inch down into the flesh of his thigh. The bleeding was tapering off, even as she looked at him.
“Well, that’s…a relief,” she said, puzzled but glad that her concern had been overblown. She shrugged. “Okay. I guess we’ll just clean it up, then, and bandage it, and you should be good as new.”
Turning back to the sink, Tess wet a cloth under the faucet and squeezed a drop of antiseptic onto the thick terry weave. She was working up the lather when she heard Dante get up and come toward her. In half a stride he was at her back, taking out the clip that held her hair in its messy knot and letting the waves tumble down around her.
“That’s better,” he said softly, slowly, something darkly sensual in his voice. “Your beautiful bare neck was driving me to distraction. As it is, all I can think of is how much I want to put my mouth on you.”
Tess’s breath caught in her throat, and for a second she wasn’t sure if she should stay rigidly still and hope he’d simply move away or if she should turn to face whatever insanity was going to pass between them again tonight.
She inched herself around in the small space between the sink and Dante’s towel-clad body. This close, the tattoos on his bare chest were mesmerizing, a flourish of geometric symbols and swirling arcs rendered in a range of hues from deep russet to gold and green to peacock blue.
“Do you like them?” he murmured, watching her gaze follow the strange, interlocking patterns and beautiful colors.
“I’ve never seen anything like them. I think they’re stunning, Dante. Are they tribal-inspired?”
He gave a vague shrug. “More of a family tradition. My father was similarly marked; so was his father before him, and all the other males of our line.”
Wow. If the men of Dante’s family looked anything like him, they must have wreaked holy havoc on the hearts of women everywhere. Recalling just how far down the tattoos went below the hem of the towel at Dante’s hips made Tess’s face flush with heat.
He merely smiled, a knowing curve of his lips.
Tess closed her eyes and worked to steady her breath, then looked to him once more as she brought the warm, wet cloth between them and dabbed at the smudged stains on his cheeks and brow. He had some drying blood on his hands too, so she swabbed it away, holding his upturned palm in her own. His fingers were large and long, dwarfing hers when he curled them around her hand.
“I like feeling you touch me, Tess. I’ve been wanting your hands on me since the first time I saw you.”
She looked up to meet his eyes, her mind flooding with memories of the night before. The whiskey-gold color of his gaze drew her in, telling her that it was going to happen again—the two of them naked, bodies joined. She was getting the definite idea that it was always going to be hot and heavy like this with him. Her core tightened at the thought, a knot of intense hunger that bloomed out from the center of her, loosening her limbs.
“Let me just…see your leg now….”
She reached down to where the edges of the towel split at his right hip and followed the muscular length of his thigh. The wound had stopped bleeding, so she gently cleansed the area, far too aware of the masculine beauty of his lines, the power in his firm legs, the soft, tawny skin that stretched over the slight jut of his pelvic bone. As she brought her cloth back up, she felt his sex rouse beneath the towel, the rigid shaft brushing her wrist as she withdrew.
Tess swallowed on a dry throat. “I’ll get the bandages now.”
She dropped the washcloth in the sink and pivoted to reach for the roll of white gauze, but Dante caught her hand. He held it in his warm grasp, smoothing his thumb over her skin as if he were silently asking her permission. When she didn’t pull away, only turned back to face him, his eyes were glittering, the center of them seeming to glow within the bourbon-dark rim of color that surrounded his pupils.
“I should stay away from you,” he said, his voice low and thick. “I should, but I can’t.”
He captured the back of her neck in his large palm and brought her toward him, the few inches between them vanishing as their bodies pressed together. He lowered his mouth, and Tess’s breath left her on a long sigh as his lips brushed hers in a slow, sweet kiss. One of his hands went around to the small of her back, sliding up under her loose knit shirt. His touch was hot, fingertips leaving trails of electricity all along her spine as he caressed her bare skin.
Dante’s kiss deepened, his tongue thrusting into her mouth. Tess opened to him, moaning as the hard length of his erection prodded at her belly. Desire shot through her, wet and molten. His hand came around her rib cage, drawing slowly beneath the weight of her breast, then up over the tight nipple. A spray of goose bumps rose on her limbs, making her shiver with the need for more of his touch. For a long while there was only the sound of their combined breathing, the tender strokes of their hands on each other’s bodies.
She was panting when he broke their kiss, boneless as he lifted her off the tiled floor and sat her down on the vanity’s countertop. He pulled off her clingy white shirt and dropped it beside them. Her sweatpants went next. Dante eased her out of them, leaving her sitting on the cabinet in just her panties. Her legs were parted, the wide V filled with Dante’s perfect, masculine body, the terry cloth that covered his jutting arousal rasping softly against her inner thighs.
“Look what you have done to me,” he said, running his hand along her forearm as he guided her fingers beneath the towel to that enormous length of hard flesh that tented it.
Tess couldn’t feign shyness as she touched him. She stroked his thick shaft and the weighted sac beneath, drawing up and down his velvety skin, taking her sweet time, her fingers hardly able to circle his width. As she palmed the smooth head of his sex, she leaned forward to kiss his ridged belly, reveling in all the softness that sheathed so much strength.
Dante groaned as she played her tongue along the intricate lines of his tattoos, the rumble of his deep voice vibrating against her lips. His arms caged her on either side, the huge muscles bulging as he gripped the edges of the vanity and let her have her way with him. His head was dropped down on his broad chest, his eyes hooded but burning with intensity when Tess ventured a glance up at him. She smiled, then leaned back in to swirl her tongue around the rim of his navel, unable to resist the urge to nip at his smooth skin.
He hissed a curse through his teeth as she grazed him. “Ah, God—yes. Do it harder,” he growled. “I want to feel your little bite, Tess.”
She didn’t know what came over her, but she did what he asked, bringing her teeth together as she sucked some of his flesh into her mouth. She didn’t break his skin, but the sharp bite seemed to travel through Dante’s body like a current. He gave a sharp thrust of his hips, dislodging the towel, which had long since become an annoyance to her too. He shuddered as she smoothed her tongue over the spot she’d just abused.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. Don’t stop.” He curled himself over her and dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder. His muscles were clenched taut, his arousal surging even fuller in her hand. “God, Tess. You are such a surprise to me. Please, don’t stop.”
She didn’t want to stop. It made absolutely no sense to her why she should feel such a strong connection to this man—such a fierce need—but then, when it came to Dante, there was a lot she didn’t understand. She’d only just met him and yet he’d been with her for so long, as if fate had paired them up ages ago, then brought them together now.
Whatever it was, Tess had no desire to question.
She nipped her way down his belly, to his narrow hip, then bent forward and took the head of his sex into her mouth. She sucked him deep, letting her teeth gently graze his shaft as she withdrew. He moaned sharply, braced before her as rigid as a column of steel. She felt Dante’s pulse kick as she took him into her mouth again, felt the throb of his heartbeat traveling along the veined length.
She could feel the rush of his blood coursing through his body, scarlet-dark and ferocious, and for one startling, utterly insane moment, she wanted to know what all that power would taste like against her tongue.
The moonlit river was an undulating ribbon of black outside the tinted passenger window of the SUV. And it was quiet, no other cars on the empty, weed-choked stretch of concrete that used to be the parking lot for an old paper mill, condemned about twenty years ago. Ben Sullivan was guessing it was a decent place for a murder, and the stony silence of the intense, heavily armed man at the wheel of the vehicle wasn’t giving him a lot of reason to hope otherwise.
As the SUV rolled to a stop, Ben prepared himself for a fight, wishing to hell he’d found a way to get his hands back on that .45 he’d lost at his apartment. Not that he expected he’d have much of a chance with this guy, even if he was armed. Unlike his dark-haired partner, who broadcasted menace in his voice and his actions, this one held his cards close to his chest. He was icy calm, but Ben could read the seething rage that ran underneath the surface of that polished Mr. Cool demeanor, and it terrified him.
“What’s going on? Why’d we stop here? Are we waiting for someone?” The questions poured out of him, but he was too anxious to care if he sounded like a chicken-shit. “Your partner back there said he wanted you to take me to ‘the compound,’ didn’t he?”
No reply.
“Well, wherever that is,” Ben said, looking around at the desolate lot, “I don’t suppose this is the place.”
With the vehicle idling in park, the driver blew out a long breath of air and turned a cold look on him. The guy’s pale blue eyes were killer sharp, filled with barely restrained fury. “You and I are going to have a private talk.”
“Am I going to survive it?”
He didn’t answer, just stuck his hand into an inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. A photograph, Ben realized, catching the gloss in the dashboard light.
“Have you ever seen this individual?”
Ben glanced at the image of a clean-cut young man with tousled light brown hair and a broad, friendly smile. He wore a Harvard sweatshirt and was giving the photographer the thumbs-up sign with one hand, while the other held out a sheet of formal stationery emblazoned with the university’s symbol on the letterhead.
“Well? Is he familiar to you?”
The question was a low snarl of sound, and while Ben was sure he’d seen the kid around, even dealt Crimson to him a few times this week alone, he didn’t know whether or not that answer would be the one to save him or damn him right now. He slowly shook his head, lifting his shoulder in a noncommittal shrug.
Suddenly he was choking, his face caught in a bruising grip that crushed him so tightly he thought his jawbone would crack. God, the guy had struck like a viper—faster than that, because Ben hadn’t even seen his hand move in the small space of the front seat.
“Have a closer look,” Mr. Cool demanded, pushing the photo up into Ben’s face.
“O-okay,” Ben sputtered, tasting blood in his mouth as his teeth cut into the insides of his cheeks. “Yeah, okay! Shit!”
The pressure eased and he coughed, rubbing his screaming jaw.
“Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen him. His name’s Cameron or something.”
“Camden,” he corrected, voice tight and wooden. “When did you last see him?”
Ben shook his head, trying to remember. “Not too long ago. This week. He was hanging with some ravers at a tech–trance club in the North End. La Notte, I think it was.”
“Did you sell to him?” The words came out slowly, thick sounds that seemed obstructed by something in his mouth.
Ben flicked a wary glance across the seats. In the dim glow of the dash, the guy’s eyes were throwing off a funky sheen, like his pupils were disappearing, stretching thin in the center of all that glacial blue. A chill entered Ben’s bones, instinct kicking into high alert.
Something was off here, way off.
“Did you give him Crimson, you goddamn piece of shit?”
Ben swallowed hard. Gave a wobbly nod of his head. “Yeah. The dude might have bought from me a couple of times.”
He heard a vicious growl, saw a flash of sharp white teeth in the dark in the split second before the back of his head smashed against the passenger-side window and the guy launched on top of him in an explosion of hellish fury.
CHAPTER Twenty-two
She was killing him.
Each swirl of Tess’s tongue, every long draw of her tight mouth over his swollen flesh—holy Christ, the teasing rasp of her teeth on him—sent Dante further into a vortex of pleasured torment. Leaning over her as she sucked on him, he clutched the sides of the bathroom vanity in a vise grip, his face twisted, eyes squeezed shut in sweet agony.
His hips began pumping, his cock surging harder, reaching for the back of her throat. Tess took all of him in, moaning softly, the vibration buzzing against his sensitive head.
He didn’t want her to see what he looked like now, lost to a lust he could hardly control. His fangs had stretched long in his mouth, nearly impossible to hide behind his tightly clenched lips. Underneath his closed eyelids, his vision burned red with hunger and need.
He could feel Tess’s need too. The sweet scent of her arousal perfumed the humid air between them, filling his nostrils like the most potent aphrodisiac. And within that drenching perfume was another need, a curiosity that floored him.
Each tentative graze of her teeth on his skin tonight posed a question, each little nip and bite communicating a hunger she likely didn’t understand, let alone have words to express. Would she break his skin and take his blood into her body?
God, to think she actually might…
It stunned him, how badly he wanted her to sink her tiny, blunt human teeth into his flesh. When she withdrew from his sex and nipped his belly, Dante roared, the desire to urge her into drawing his blood and drinking it down nearly overpowering his far saner impulse to protect her from the Breedmate bond, which would tie her to him for as long as they both lived.
“No,” he growled, his voice rough, speech obstructed by the presence of his fangs.
With shaking hands, Dante took hold of Tess’s hips. He lifted her toward him, cradling her bottom on his arms as he tore away her silk panties and filled the juncture of her thighs with his body. His cock glistened from the wetness of her mouth and his own need, engorged to the point of pain. He couldn’t be gentle; with a hard thrust, he seated himself to the hilt.
Tess’s breath rushed against his ear, her spine arching in his hands. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he pistoned between her legs, his rhythm urgent, release coiling in the base of his shaft. He drove her hard, feeling her own climax building swiftly as her channel gripped him like a warm, wet fist.
“Oh, God…Dante.”
She broke apart an instant later, contracting around him in delicious ripples. Dante followed her over the edge, his orgasm shooting up his shaft and boiling out of him in a fierce torrent of heat. Wave after wave tore through him as he pumped into her like he never wanted to stop.
Dante peeled his eyes open as his body shook with the force of his release. In the mirror over the sink, he caught his feral reflection—the true picture of who, and what, he was.
His pupils were slivers of black in the center of glowing amber, his cheekbones stark, animalistic. His fangs were fully extended, long white points that flashed with every panting breath he hauled into his lungs.
“That was…incredible,” Tess murmured, hooking her arms under his shoulders to raise herself closer against him.
She kissed his damp skin, her lips trailing over his collarbone and up to the curve of his neck. Dante held her to him, his body still wedged inside hers. He waited, unmoving, willing the hungered part of him to heel. He flicked a glance back to his face in the mirror, knowing it would be a few minutes before his transformation subsided and he could look at Tess without terrifying her.
He didn’t want her afraid of him. God, if she saw him now—if she knew what he had done to her that first night he’d seen her, when she had offered him kindness and he’d repaid her by taking her throat in his teeth—she would hate him. And rightly so.
Part of him wanted to sit her down and tell her all that she had forgotten about him. To lay it all out in the open. Start fresh, if they could.
Yeah, he imagined that little talk would go down about as smoothly as a glass of tacks. And it certainly wasn’t a conversation he intended to strike up while she was still impaled on the resurgent length of him.
As he deliberated over the deepening complication he was making with Tess, a growl rumbled in from the open doorway. It was a small noise but unmistakably hostile.
Tess shifted, pivoting her head. “Harvard! What’s the matter with you?” She laughed a little, sounding shy now that the intensity of the moment was broken. “Um, I think we may have just traumatized your dog.”
She ducked out from the cage of Dante’s arms and grabbed a terry bathrobe off a hook near the door. She slipped it on, then bent down to retrieve the terrier. Scooping up the animal, she got an immediate and vigorous chin-washing. Dante watched them from under a hank of his dark hair, relieved to feel his features coming back to normal.
“That dog has certainly made a quick recovery under your care.” A dramatic turnaround, Dante was guessing, and one that seemed too quick for normal medicine.
“He’s a scrapper,” Tess said. “I think he’s going to be just fine.”
Although Dante had been concerned that she would detect his feral appearance, he realized he didn’t need to worry. She seemed intent on avoiding looking at him directly now, as if she herself had something to hide.
“Yes, it’s amazing how the animal has improved. I’d call it a miracle, if I believed in such things.” Dante watched her closely, curious and not a little bit suspicious. “What exactly did you do to him, Tess?”
It was a simple question, one she probably could have satisfied with any number of explanations, yet she all but froze in the bathroom doorway. Dante sensed a sudden, swelling panic begin to rise in her.
“Tess,” he said. “Is it such a difficult thing to answer?”
“No,” she replied hastily, but the word seemed to strangle in her throat. She shot him a fleeting, terrified look. “I need to…I should, um…”
With the dog held tight in one arm, Tess brought her free hand to her mouth, then pivoted and made a fast retreat out of the bathroom without another word.
By the time she got to the living room and put the dog down on the sofa, Tess was pacing, feeling trapped and lacking air. God help her, but she actually wanted to tell him just what she’d done to save the little dog’s life. She wanted to confide in Dante about her unique, damning ability—about everything—and it terrified her.
“Tess?” Dante came out right after her, a towel slung and knotted around his hips. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She gave a shake of her head, forced a smile that felt too tight for her mouth. “There’s nothing wrong, really. Do you want anything? If you’re hungry, I made chicken for dinner. I could—”
“I want you to talk to me.” He caught her shoulders in his hands and held her still. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what this is about.”
“No.” She shook her head, thinking about how desperately she’d kept her secret and her shame. “I’m just…You wouldn’t understand, okay? I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.”
Tess wanted to break away from his penetrating eyes but found she couldn’t. He was reaching out to her, and a part of her needed so desperately to grab hold of something solid and strong. Something that wouldn’t let her down.
“I swore I would never do it again, but I…”
Oh, God. She wasn’t really going to crack open that ugly chapter of her life for him, was she?
It had been her secret for so long. She had protected it fiercely, had learned to fear it. The only two people who knew the truth about her ability—her stepfather and her mother—were dead. It was a part of her past, and her past was miles behind her.
Buried there, where it belonged.
“Tess.” Dante eased her down onto the sofa next to Harvard, who clambered onto her lap, tail wagging with eager joy. Dante sat beside her, his hand caressing her cheek. His touch was so tender, so warm. She nestled into it, unable to resist him. “You can tell me anything. You are safe with me, Tess, I promise you.”
She wanted to believe that so badly, hot tears welled in her eyes. “Dante, I…”
A silence stretched out to some long seconds. When the words failed her, Tess reached over to where the hem of the towel split over Dante’s right thigh, exposing the gash on his leg. She lifted her gaze to him, then held her palm over the wound. She focused all her thoughts, all her energy, until she felt the healing begin.
Dante’s injured skin began to fuse together, sealing as cleanly as if the damage had never occurred.
After a few moments, she drew her hand away and cradled her tingling palm against her body.
“My God,” Dante said, his voice low, dark brows knit into a deep frown.
Tess stared at him, uncertain what to say or how to explain what she’d just done. She waited in terrible silence for his reaction, uncertain what to make of his calm acceptance of what he’d just experienced.
He traced his fingers over the smooth, uninjured skin, then looked back at her. “Is this how you do your work at the clinic, Tess?”
“No.” She denied it quickly, giving a vigorous shake of her head. The uncertainty she’d felt a second ago began sliding into fear of what Dante would think of her now. “No, I don’t—not ever. Well…I made an exception when I treated Harvard, but that was the only time.”
“What about humans?”
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t—”
“You’ve never used your touch on another person?”
Tess got to her feet, a cold panic washing over her when she thought about the last time—the final, damning time—she’d put her hands on another human being before this rash demonstration with Dante. “My touch is a curse. I wish I didn’t have this ability at all.”
“It’s not a curse, Tess. It’s a gift. A very extraordinary gift. Jesus, when I think of all that you could do—”
“No!” She shouted the refusal before she could bite it back, her feet carrying her a few steps away from where Dante was now getting up from the sofa. He looked at her with a mix of confusion and concern. “I never should have done this. I never should have showed you.”
“Well, you have, and now you have to trust me to understand. Why are you so afraid, Tess? Is it me you fear or is it your gift?”
“Stop calling it that!” She hugged herself in a tight grip, memories flooding her like a black, clutching undertow. “You wouldn’t call it a gift if you knew what it has made me into—what I have done.”
“Tell me.”
Dante came toward her then, moving slowly, his large body filling her vision and crowding her in the small living room. She thought she should want to run—to hide, as she’d been doing for the past nine years—but an even stronger impulse made her want to fly into his arms and let everything spill out of her in an ugly but cleansing rush.
She drew in a breath and was embarrassed to hear the hitch of a sob catching in the back of her throat.
“It’s all right,” Dante said, his gentle voice and the tender way he took her into his embrace nearly making her break apart. “Come here. It’s okay.”
Tess clung to him, balancing on the edge of an emotional chasm she could feel but didn’t dare look into yet. She knew the fall would be steep and painful, so many jagged rocks waiting to cut her open if she let go. Dante didn’t push her. He just held her in the warm circle of his arms, letting her draw from his steady, solid strength.
Finally, the words found their way to her tongue. The weight of them was too much, the taste too vile, so she forced them out into the open.
“When I was fourteen, my father died in a car accident in Chicago. My mother remarried that next year, to a man she met at our church. He had a successful business in town and a big house on a lake. He was generous and friendly—everyone liked him, even me, despite the fact that I missed my real father very much.
“My mother drank, a lot, as long as I can remember. I thought she was getting better after we moved into my stepfather’s house, but it wasn’t long before she fell into it again. My stepfather didn’t care that she was an alcoholic. He always kept the bar stocked, even after her worst binges. I started to realize that he preferred her drunk, so much the better if she spent entire evenings passed out on the sofa and wasn’t aware of what he was doing.”
Tess felt Dante’s body go rigid around her. His muscles vibrated with a dangerous tension that felt like a shield of strength, cocooning her within their shelter. “Did he…touch you, Tess?”
She swallowed hard, nodded against the warmth of his bare chest. “At first, for almost a full year, he was careful. He hugged me too close and too long, looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. He tried to win me over with presents and parties for my friends at the lake house, but I didn’t like being home, so once I turned sixteen I spent a lot of time out. I stayed over with friends, spent the summer at camp, anything to be away. But eventually I had to come home. Things escalated in the months leading up to my seventeenth birthday. He became violent toward both my mother and me, knocking us around, saying awful things to us. And then, one night…”
Tess’s courage faltered, her head swimming with the remembered din of profanity and hysterical rantings, the clumsy racket of drunken stumbling, the splintering crash of breaking glass. And she could still hear the soft creak of her bedroom door that night her stepfather woke her from a fitful sleep, his breath stinking of liquor and cigarette smoke.
His meaty hand had been salty with sweat when he clamped it over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
“It was my birthday,” she whispered numbly. “He came into my bedroom around midnight, telling me that he wanted to give me a birthday kiss.”
“That disgusting son of a bitch.” Dante’s voice was a vicious growl, but his fingers were gentle as he stroked her hair. “Tess…Christ. The other night by the river, when I tried to do the same thing—”
“No. It wasn’t the same thing. It reminded me, yes, but it wasn’t at all the same thing.”
“I’m so sorry. About everything. Especially what you’ve been through.”
“Don’t,” she said, not willing to accept his sympathy when she hadn’t gotten to the worst of it yet. “After my stepfather came into my room, he got on the bed with me. I fought him, kicking him, slapping him, but he was much stronger than me and he pinned me down with his weight. Sometime during the struggle, I heard him draw in a sharp breath. He choked a little, like he was in pain. He stopped trying to hold me down, and I finally managed to roll him off me. He let go because his heart had seized up. He was turning deep red, then blue—dying right there on the floor of my bedroom.”
Dante said nothing in the long silence that followed. Maybe he knew where her confession was heading. She couldn’t stop now. Tess pushed out a long breath, approaching the point of no return. “About this time, my mother came in. Drunk as usual. She saw him and she went hysterical. She was furious—with me, I mean. She screamed at me to help him, to not let him die.”
“She knew what you could do with your touch?” Dante asked gently, easing her through it.
“She knew. She’d seen it firsthand, when I would take away her bruises and heal the broken bones. She was so mad at me—she blamed me for my stepfather’s heart attack. I think she blamed me for everything.”
“Tess,” Dante murmured. “She wasn’t right to blame you for any of it. You do know that, right?”
“Now, yes. I know. But in that moment, I was so afraid. I didn’t want her to be unhappy. So I helped him, just like she ordered me to do. I started his heart and cleared the blockage in his artery. He didn’t know what happened to him, and we didn’t tell him. It wasn’t until three days later that I discovered just how bad of a mistake I’d made.”
Tess closed her eyes and she was back in time, walking out to her stepfather’s toolshed to look for a putty knife for one of her sculpture projects. She was taking out the stepladder, climbing up to search the top shelves of the old shed. She didn’t see the small wooden box until her elbow knocked it to the floor.
Pictures fell out, dozens of them. Polaroids of children of various ages, in various states of undress, some being touched by the photographer as he snapped the picture. She would have known those terrible hands anywhere.
Tess shuddered in Dante’s arms, chilled to her marrow.
“I wasn’t the only one my stepfather victimized. I found out that he’d been abusing kids in worse ways for what had to have been years, maybe decades. He was a monster, and I had given him a second chance to hurt someone else.”
“Jesus,” Dante hissed, drawing her away from him now but holding her tenderly as he looked on her with a sickened, furious look. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known, Tess.”
“But once I did,” she said, “I had to make it right.” At Dante’s frown, she let out a soft, wry laugh. “I had to take back what I had given him.”
“Take it back?”
She nodded. “That same night, I left my bedroom door open and I waited for him. I knew he’d come, because I asked him to. When he crept in after my mother was asleep, I invited him onto my bed—God, that was the hardest part of all, pretending that the sight of him didn’t make me want to vomit. He stretched out beside me, and I told him to close his eyes, that I wanted to repay him for the birthday kiss he’d given me a few nights before. I told him not to peek, and he obeyed me, he was so damn eager.
“I straddled his waist and put my hands on his chest. All my anger rushed to my fingertips in a second, like an electrical current that ripped through me and directly into him. His eyes flew open, and he knew—the look of terror and confusion in his eyes told me that he knew exactly what I intended for him. But it was too late for him to react. His body spasmed violently, and his heart went into immediate arrest. I held on with every ounce of my resolve, feeling his life leak away. I didn’t let go for twenty minutes, long after he was gone, but I had to be sure.”
Tess didn’t realize she was crying until Dante reached out and wiped away her tears. She shook her head, voice strangling in her throat. “I left home that same night. I came out here to New England and stayed with friends until I was able to finish school and get a fresh start.”
“What about your mother?”
Tess shrugged. “I never spoke to her again, not that she cared. She never tried to find me, and I was glad for that, to tell you the truth. Anyway, she died a few years ago of liver disease, from what I understand. After that night—after what I did—I just wanted to forget everything.”
Dante gathered her close again, and she didn’t fight the warmth. She burrowed into his heat, drained from reliving the nightmare of her past. Speaking the words had been hard, but now that they were out, she felt a sense of liberation, of sagging relief.
God, she was so exhausted. It seemed as though all her years of running and hiding had caught up with her at once, pulling her into a deep fatigue.
“I swore to myself that I would never use my ability again, not on any living thing. It’s a curse, like I told you. Maybe now you understand.”
Tears stung her eyes and she let them fall, trusting that she was in a safe harbor, at least for now. Dante’s strong arms were wrapped around her protectively. His softly murmured words were a comfort she needed more than she could ever have imagined.
“You did nothing wrong, Tess. That human scum had no right to live as he was doing. You dispensed justice on your own terms, but it was justice. Never doubt that.”
“You don’t think I’m…some kind of monster? That I’m not much better than him to have killed him like I did, in cold blood?”
“Never.” Dante lifted her chin on the edge of his hand. “I think you’re courageous, Tess. An avenging angel, that’s what I think.”
“I’m a freak.”
“No, Tess, no.” He kissed her tenderly. “You’re amazing.”
“I’m a coward. Just like you said, I always run away. It’s true. I’ve been afraid and running for so long, I’m not sure I can ever stop.”
“Then run to me.” Dante’s eyes were fierce as he held her gaze. “I know all about fear, Tess. It lives in me too. That ‘seizure’ I had in your clinic? It’s not a medical condition, not even close.”
“What is it?”
“Death,” he said woodenly. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve had these attacks—these visions—of my last moments alive. It’s hellish beyond imagining, but I see it as if it’s happening. I feel it, Tess. It’s my fate.”
“I don’t understand. How can you be sure of that?”
His smile was wry. “I’m sure. My mother had similar visions of her own death, and my father’s too. They happened precisely as she envisioned them. She couldn’t change what was to happen, or turn it back. So I’ve been trying to outrun my own end. I’ve been running from it forever. I’ve kept myself insulated from things that might make me want to slow down and live. I’ve never permitted myself to truly feel.”
“There’s danger in feeling,” Tess murmured. Although she could not begin to imagine what kind of pain Dante carried within him, she felt a kinship growing between them. Both alone, both adrift in their worlds. “I don’t want to feel anything for you, Dante.”
“God, Tess. I don’t want to feel anything for you either.”
He held her gaze as his lips slowly descended on hers. His kiss was sweet and tender, something reverent. It broke down all of her walls, the bricks of her past and her pain tumbling away, leaving her naked to him and unable to hide. Tess kissed him back, needing more. She was cold to her bones, and she needed all the warmth he could give her.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, Dante…”
CHAPTER Twenty-three
Chase entered his Darkhaven residence from around the back, thinking it best not to alarm the whole house by coming in through the front, seething like an animal and covered in blood. Elise was up; he could hear her soft voice in the first-floor living room, where she and some of the community’s other Breedmate females had gathered.
And he could smell her too. His senses were heightened from the rage still boiling through him—the violence he’d delivered—and the feminine scent of the woman he desired more than any other was like a drug shot directly into his vein.
With a feral snarl, Chase turned in the opposite direction of his sister-in-law and headed for his private quarters. He kicked the door shut as he entered, his hands working furiously at the zipper of his jacket, which was ruined with the human’s spilled blood. He tore the jacket off and threw it to the floor, then pulled off his shirt and discarded it too.
He was a mess, from the bleeding scrapes and contusions on his hands after beating Ben Sullivan nearly to a pulp to the fevered, savage thirst that made him want to destroy something, even now, some time after he’d left the scene of his uncontrollable fury. It had been a stupid thing to do, attacking the Crimson dealer like he had, but the need to enact some measure of vengeance had been overwhelming.
Chase had given in to savage impulse, something he rarely did. Hell, had he ever? He always prided himself on his rigid, righteous ideals. His refusal to let emotion overrule his logic.
Now, in one careless moment, he’d fucked everything up.
Although he hadn’t killed the Crimson dealer, he had leaped on him with full intent for murder. He’d bared his fangs and sunk them into the human’s throat, not caring that in doing so he was exposing himself as a vampire. He had attacked savagely, but in the end he had brought his fury to heel and let the human go. Maybe he should have scrubbed his memory to protect the Breed from exposure, but Chase wanted Ben Sullivan to remember exactly what was waiting for him if he reneged on their agreement.
The entire situation was an outright betrayal of the trust he’d been granted by Dante and the rest of the warriors, but Chase couldn’t see where he had much choice. He needed Ben Sullivan on the streets, not tucked away under the protective custody of the Order. Repugnant as the idea was, he needed the dealer’s cooperation in helping him find Camden. It was a bargain he’d made the human scum swear upon over his own spilling blood. Sullivan was no idiot, and after the taste of vampiric fury he’d gotten tonight, he’d begged to help Chase in whatever way he could.
Chase understood that he was solo on his mission now. There would be some hell to pay with Dante and the others, but so be it. He was too far into this personal crusade to care about his own consequences. He’d already forfeited his position at the Agency, the career he’d worked so hard to make. Tonight he’d given up some of his honor. He’d give up anything to see this mission through.
Flicking on the light in his bathroom, Chase caught a sudden, stark glimpse of his own reflection. He was blood-spattered and sweating, his eyes glowing like amber coals, the pupils winnowed down to slits by residual anger and his body’s thirst to feed. The dermaglyphs on his bare chest and shoulders pulsed in hues of pale scarlet and faded gold, indications of his general need for blood. The small taste he’d consumed when he bit Ben Sullivan’s throat hadn’t helped; the bitter copper tang lingering in his mouth only made him long to erase it with something sweeter.
Something delicate, like heather and roses—the blood scent he could trace coming closer to his apartments even as he stood there, glaring at the feral creature who stared back at him in the mirror.
The hesitant knock on the door outside went through his body like cannon fire.
“Sterling? Have you returned?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t, in fact. His tongue was cleaved to the roof of his mouth, his jaw ground tight behind the pained sneer of his pale, curled-back lips. He had to clamp down hard on his mind to keep himself from throwing the door open with the force of his will.
If he let her in now, unbalanced as he currently was, nothing would stop him from pulling her into his arms and slaking the twin hungers that were raging within him. He would be at her vein in a second; little more than that and he would be pushing inside her, damning himself completely.
Proving to himself just how far down he could sink in the course of one night.
Instead, he marshaled his mental strength and used it to cut the lights in the bathroom, plunging the space into a more comfortable darkness as he waited the long eternity that seemed to pass in those moments of answering silence. His eyes burned like embers. His fangs were ripping farther out of his gums, echoing the swelling ache of his arousal.
“Sterling…are you home?” she called again, and his ears were so attuned to her presence that he could detect her little sigh across the span of his apartments and through the solid panel of the door. He knew her well enough that he could picture the tiny frown that was certain to be creasing her forehead as she listened for him, then, finally, decided he wasn’t there after all.
Chase stood stock-still, silent, waiting to hear her footsteps retreat softly down the hallway. Only when she was gone, the scent of her fading with her departure, did he release his pent-up breath. It leaked out of his lungs on a deep, miserable howl, vibrating the darkened mirror in front of him.
Chase let it go, focusing his frustration—his damnable torment—on that rattling sheet of polished glass until it shattered off the wall into a thousand razor-edged shards.
Dante stroked his fingers over the soft skin of Tess’s bare shoulder as she slept. He lay in bed next to her, spooning the back of her naked body against the front of his and simply listening to her breathe. Around them, the room was quiet and dark, as peaceful as the wake of a passed storm.
The persistent calm was strange, the sense of comfort and contentment something entirely unfamiliar to him.
Unfamiliar, but…nice.
Dante’s body stirred with interest as he held Tess in his arms, but he had no intention of disturbing her sleep. They’d made love tenderly after he brought her to bed, at a pace he’d let her set and control, letting her take whatever she needed from him. But now, even though his body was awake with arousal, all he wanted to do was comfort her. To simply be with her for as long as the night could last.
A shocking revelation for a male unaccustomed to denying himself any pleasure or desire.
But then, as far as this evening was going, shocking revelations were practically a given.
It was not unusual for a Breedmate to have at least one extraordinary or extrasensory ability—a gift that also typically passed down to her Breed offspring. Whatever the genetic anomaly was that made the rare human’s womb capable of accepting a vampire’s seed and her aging process halt with the regular ingestion of his blood, it also made her something more than her basic Homo sapiens sisters.
For Dante’s mother, the talent was a terrible precognition. For Gideon’s mate, Savannah, it was psychometry, the talent to read the history of an object—more specifically, she could also read the history of the object’s owner. Gabrielle, the Breedmate who’d only recently come into the Order’s fold as Lucan’s woman, had an intuitive vision that drew her to vampire lairs and a strong mind that made her all but impervious to thought control, even by the most powerful of Dante’s kind.
For Tess, it was the amazing ability to heal a living creature with her touch. And the fact that she had been able to heal Dante’s leg wound meant that her restorative talents extended to those of the Breed as well. She would be such an asset to the race. God, when he thought of all the good she could bring—
Dante clipped the idea before it could take shape in his head. What happened here didn’t change the fact that he was living on borrowed time or that his duty was, first and foremost, to the Breed. He wanted Tess shielded from the pain of her past, but it seemed unfair to ask her to leave the life she was building for herself. Even more unfair was what he’d done by taking her blood that very first night, linking them inextricably to each other.
Yet, as he lay there beside her, caressing her skin, breathing in the cinnamon-sweet scent of her, Dante wanted nothing more than to scoop Tess up and carry her away with him, back to the compound, where he knew she would be safe from all the evil that might touch her topside.
Evil like the stepfather who’d given her so much anguish. Tess worried that killing the bastard had made her as bad as him, but Dante had only respect for what she’d done. She’d slain a monster, sparing herself and who knew how many other children from his abuse.
To Dante, Tess had proven herself a warrior at that tender age, and the ancient part of him that still subscribed to things like honor and justice wanted to shout to the entire sleeping city below that this was his woman.
Mine, he thought fiercely, selfishly.
As he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her delicate shoulder blade, the phone in her kitchen began to ring. He blasted the device with a sharp mental command, silencing the ring before it could wake her completely. She roused, moaning a little as she murmured his name.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “Sleep, angel. I’m still here.”
As she drifted off again, nestling tighter against him, Dante wondered how long he had before dawn would drive him away. Not long enough, he thought, astonished that he could feel that way and knowing that he couldn’t blame his feelings on the inconvenience of the blood bond he had unintentionally forced on them both.
No, what he was beginning to feel for Tess went a lot deeper than that. It went all the way to his heart.
“God damn it, Tess. Pick up!”
Ben Sullivan’s voice was shrill, quivering, his entire body shaking uncontrollably from trauma and a fear so intense he thought he might pass out from it.
“Fuck! Come on—answer.”
He stood in a nasty pay phone booth in one of the worst areas of town, the chewed-up, crusted-over receiver gripped in his bloody fingers. His free hand was clamped at the side of his neck, sticky from the horrific bite wound inflicted there. His face was swollen from the savage pounding he’d taken, the back of his head screaming with pain from a goose-egg-size lump he’d gotten from the window of the SUV.
He couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead. He had thought for sure he would be killed, based on the fury with which he’d been attacked. He’d been stunned when the guy—Jesus, was he even human?—ordered him to get out of the vehicle. He’d thrust the photograph of the kid he was looking for into Ben’s hand and let him know that if this Cameron, Camden, whatever, turned up dead, Ben would be held solely responsible.
Now Ben had been enlisted to help find him, to make sure the kid got home in one piece. Ben’s life depended on it, and as much as he wanted to hightail it out of town and forget he ever heard the word Crimson, he knew the lunatic who attacked him tonight would find him. The guy had promised he would, and Ben wasn’t about to test his rage in a second round.
“Damn it,” he grumbled, as the call to Tess’s apartment went into voice mail.
As bad off as he was now—as deep in the shit as he’d landed tonight—he felt a moral obligation to warn Tess about the guy she’d been messing around with lately. If his buddy was a psychotic freak of nature, Ben was betting that the other one was just as dangerous.
God, Tess.
When the voice-mail greeting left off with a beep, Ben rushed through the night’s events, from the surprise ambush at his place by the two thugs to the attack on him a short while ago. He blurted out that he’d seen her with one of the guys the other night and that he worried she was risking her life if she continued to see him.
He could hear the words spilling out of him in a breathless stream, his voice pitched higher than normal, fear edging on hysteria. By the time he’d gotten it all out and slammed the phone back down onto the chipped cradle, he could hardly breathe. He leaned back against a graffiti-tagged panel of the phone booth and bent over, closing his eyes as he tried to calm his rattled system.
A barrage of feelings came at him in a giant swell: panic, guilt, helplessness, bone-deep terror. He wanted to take it all back—the past several months, everything that had happened, everything he’d done. If only he could go back and erase things, make them right. Would Tess be with him, then? He didn’t know. And it didn’t fucking matter, because he couldn’t take any of it back.
The most he could hope to do now was survive.
Ben dragged in a deep breath and forced himself to stand. He pushed out of the phone booth and started walking down the darkened street, looking like holy hell. A homeless person recoiled from him as he cut across the road and hobbled toward the main drag. As he walked, he dug out the picture of the kid he was supposed to look for.
Glancing down at the snapshot, trying to focus on the bloodstained image, Ben didn’t hear the approaching car until it was nearly on top of him. Brakes screeched and the vehicle was thrown into an abrupt stop. The doors opened in tandem, a trio of unfamiliar bouncer types pouring out.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Sullivan?”
Ben jolted into flight mode, but he didn’t even get two steps on the pavement before he was seized by all of his limbs. He watched the photograph land on the wet asphalt, a large boot trampling it as the men started carrying him back to the waiting car.
“So glad we finally located you,” said a voice that sounded human but somehow wasn’t. “When you failed to show up at your meeting tonight, the Master became very concerned. He’ll be pleased to hear that you are on your way now.”
Ben struggled against his captors, but it was no use. They stuffed him into the trunk and slammed the lid, plunging him into darkness.
CHAPTER Twenty-four
The early-dawn colors seemed brighter to Tess, the November air crisply invigorating outside her apartment as she finished up her short walk with Harvard. As she and the terrier jogged up the stairs of her building, she felt stronger, lighter, no longer weighed down by the awful secret she’d been carrying all these years.
She had Dante to thank for that. She had him to thank for so much, she thought, her heart throbbing, her body still humming with the sweet ache of their lovemaking.
She’d been hugely disappointed to wake up and find him gone, but the note he’d left folded on her nightstand took away most of that sting. Tess dug the piece of paper out of the pocket of her fleece track pants as she pushed open her apartment door and let Harvard off his leash.
Strolling into her kitchen in need of coffee, she read Dante’s bold handwriting for about the tenth time, her broad smile seeming permanently stuck on her face: Didn’t want to wake you but had to leave. Have dinner with me tomorrow night? I want to show you where I live. I’ll call you. Sleep tight, angel. Yours, D.
Yours, he’d signed it.
Hers.
A wave of fierce possessiveness swamped her at the thought. Tess told herself that it meant nothing, that she was foolish to read anything into Dante’s words or to imagine that the powerful connection she felt toward him might be mutual, but she was practically giddy as she set the note down on the counter.
She glanced at the little dog who was dancing around her feet, waiting for his breakfast. “Well, Harvard, what do you think? Am I getting in too deep here? I’m not actually falling for him, am I?”
God, was she…falling in love?
A week ago she hadn’t known he existed, so how could she even consider that her feelings might go that far this fast? But somehow they did. She was falling in love with Dante, maybe already had, judging by the sharp tumble her heart was taking just thinking about him now.
Harvard’s eager bark snapped her out of the emotional free fall. “Right,” she said, looking down into his furry face. “Kibble and coffee, not necessarily in that order. I’m on it.”
She filled her Mr. Coffee machine with Starbucks grounds and cold water from the tap, hit the button to start it brewing, then went to retrieve a bowl and the dry dog food from the pantry. As she passed her kitchen phone, she saw that the message indicator was flashing.
“Here you go, baby,” she said, pouring a serving of Iams into Harvard’s dish and setting it down on the floor. “Bon appétit.”
With more than a little hope that the message might have been from Dante calling while she was out walking his dog, Tess pressed the play button and put the voice mail on speaker. She waited anxiously, punching in her pass code and listening as the automated greeting announced that she had one new message, time-stamped from late last night, and began playing it back to her.
“Tess! Jesus Christ, why aren’t you picking up your fucking phone?”
It was Ben, she realized, her disappointment over that fact swiftly draining into alarm at the odd tone of his voice. She’d never heard him sound so panicked, so unglued. He was breathing hard, panting, his words spilling out of him. He wasn’t merely afraid. He was terrified. Worry clutched at her with icy talons as she listened to the rest of his call.
“—needed to warn you. The guy you’re seeing, he’s not what you think. They busted into my place tonight—him and some other dude. I thought they were going to kill me, Tess! But it’s you I’m afraid for now. You’ve got to stay away from him. He’s into some fucked-up shit…. I know this sounds crazy, but the guy he was with tonight…I don’t think—ah, Jesus, I just have to say it—I don’t think he’s human. Maybe neither of them is. The other guy took me away in an SUV—I should’ve tried to get the number off the plates or something, but everything was happening so fucking fast. He drove me down to the river and he attacked me, Tess. The son of a bitch had these huge teeth—they were fangs, I swear to God, and his eyes were lit up like they were on fire! He wasn’t human. Tess, they’re not…human.”
She backed away from the counter as the message played on, Ben’s voice chilling her as much as the things he was telling her.
“Asshole bit me—smashed my head into a car window, beat me nearly unconscious, and then…he fucking bit me! Ah, Christ, my neck is still bleeding. I gotta get to a hospital or something….”
Tess retreated into her living room, as if the distance from Ben’s voice would somehow insulate her from what she was hearing. She didn’t know how to make sense of any of it.
How could Dante be involved—even peripherally—in an attack on Ben like the one he described? True, after he’d arrived at her place last night loaded down with weapons and bleeding from an obvious altercation, he had said he’d been pursuing a drug dealer. It certainly could have been Ben he was talking about. Tess had to admit, albeit sadly, that it wasn’t that big of a stretch to imagine Ben falling back into his old ways.
But he was talking absolute nonsense now. Men who could turn into fanged monsters? Savagery that belonged in a horror movie? Those things had no place in real life, not even in the harshest realm of reality. It just wasn’t possible.
Was it?
Tess found herself standing in front of the shrouded sculpture she’d been working on last night, the one of Dante’s likeness. The one she’d botched and would probably end up throwing away. She’d gotten his mouth all wrong, hadn’t she? Given him some strange sort of sneer that didn’t look like him at all?
Now her fingers tingled as she reached for the scrap of cloth that covered the piece. Confusion and an odd, niggling dread sat in her stomach like a stone as she grasped the edge of the fabric and drew it clear of the bust. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what she had done—the mistake she’d made had given Dante a wild, almost animal-like appearance…right down to the sharp canines that turned his smile into a feral-looking sneer.
Inexplicably, she had given him fangs.
“I’m really afraid, Tess. For both of us,” Ben’s voice said over the speaker of her answering machine. “Just…whatever you do, stay the hell away from these guys.”
Dante flipped his malebranche blades, one in each hand, the steel flashing in the fluorescent lights of the compound’s training facility. He spun at blinding speed and struck hard at the polymer target dummy, ripping twin razor-sharp lacerations several inches into the thick plastic hide. With a roar, he pivoted around and went at it again with a further assault.
He needed to feel at least the semblance of combat, because if he sat still for more than a second, he was going to kill someone. Top on his list at the moment was Darkhaven Agent Sterling Chase. Ben Sullivan was a damn close runner-up. Hell, if he could take both of them out at once, so much the better.
He’d been fuming ever since he returned to the compound and learned that the agent had been a no-show with their Crimson dealer. Lucan and the others were giving Chase the benefit of the doubt for now, but Dante had a feeling in his gut that Chase, for whatever his reasons, had willfully defied his order to take Ben Sullivan into custody at the compound.
Dante meant to find out what had happened, but phone calls, e-mails, and pages to the agent’s Darkhaven residence had gone unanswered. Unfortunately, an in-person interrogation was going to have to wait until sundown.
Which is roughly ten frigging hours away, Dante thought, delivering another savage attack on the target dummy.
The wait was made even worse by the fact that he’d been unable to reach Tess either. He called her apartment first thing in the morning, but she had apparently already left for work. He hoped she was somewhere safe. Assuming Chase hadn’t killed Ben Sullivan, the human could be loose on the streets, and that meant he could get to Tess. Dante didn’t think she was in danger from her ex-boyfriend, but he really wasn’t willing to take that risk.
He needed to bring her inside, explain to her everything that was happening, including who he truly was—what he truly was—and admit how he had brought her into the middle of this war between the Breed and its enemies.
He was going to do it tonight. He’d already set the stage with the note he’d left at her bedside, but now the sense of urgency was growing. He wanted it done and over with already, hated being so far removed from her while he waited for night to fall.
With a roar, he flew at his target again, hands moving so fast even he couldn’t track them. He heard the glass doors to the training facility slide open some distance behind him, but he was too lost in his own angry frustration to give a damn if he had an audience. He kept slicing, jabbing, brutalizing his target until he was panting with the exertion, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his bare chest and brow. Finally he paused, astonished at the depth of his fury. The polymer dummy was cut to pieces, most of it in shredded chunks around his feet.
“Nice work,” Lucan drawled from across the large facility. “You got something against plastic, or is this just a warm-up for tonight?”
With an exhaled curse, Dante flipped his blades between his fingers, letting the curved metal dance before he thrust both weapons into the sheaths belted at his hips. He pivoted to face the Order’s leader, who was leaning back against a weapons cabinet, a grave look on his dark features.
“We’ve got some news,” Lucan said, obviously expecting it wasn’t going to go over well. “Gideon just hacked into the Darkhavens’ Enforcement Agency personnel database. Turns out Agent Sterling Chase doesn’t work for them anymore. They released him from service last month, after a spotless twenty-five-year career.”
“He was fired?”
Lucan nodded. “For insubordination and flagrant refusal to follow Agency directives, according to the file.”
Dante pushed out a humorless chuckle as he toweled off. “Agent Sterling’s not so sterling after all, eh? Goddamn it, I knew there was something off about the guy. He’s been fucking playing us this whole time. Why? What’s he after?”
Lucan shrugged idly. “Maybe he needed us to get him close to the Crimson dealer. What’s to say he didn’t take the guy out last night? Some kind of personal vendetta.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, but I mean to find out.” Dante cleared his throat, feeling suddenly awkward in the presence of the elder vampire, who had long been a brother-in-arms—a friend, in fact. “Listen, Lucan. I haven’t exactly been playing straight lately either. Something’s happened—the night I almost got my ass handed to me down at the river by those Rogues. I, uh, I came to in the back room of an animal clinic. There was a woman there, working late. I needed blood in a bad way, and she was the only one around.”
Lucan’s dark brows came down in a scowl. “You kill her?”
“No. No, I was out of my head, but it didn’t go that far. Far enough, though. I didn’t realize what I had done to her until it was too late. When I saw the mark on her hand—”
“Ah, Jesus, Dante.” The large male stared at him, those gray eyes lancing into him. “You drank from a Breedmate?”
“Yeah. Her name is Tess.”
“Does she know? What have you told her?”
Dante shook his head. “She doesn’t know anything yet. I scrubbed her memory that night, but I’ve been, uh…spending time with her. A lot of time. I have to cop to her about what I’ve done, Lucan. She deserves to have the truth. Even if she ends up hating me for it, which wouldn’t surprise me.”
Lucan’s shrewd gaze narrowed. “You care for her.”
“God. Yeah, I do.” Dante’s answering chuckle sounded sharp in his ears. “Sure as hell didn’t see this coming, let me tell you. And to be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I’m not exactly premium mate material.”
“You think I am?” Lucan asked wryly.
It was only a few months ago that Lucan was fighting a similar personal battle, having lost his heart to a female bearing the Breedmate mark. Dante didn’t know the specifics of how Lucan won Gabrielle over, but part of him envied the long future the pair would share together. All Dante had to look forward to was a death he’d been dodging for a couple of centuries.
Thinking about Tess being anywhere near him on that day made his blood run cold with dread.
“I don’t know how things are going to shake down, but I need to tell her everything. I’d like to bring her here tonight, maybe help it all make sense.” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “Hell, maybe I’m just a pussy and I need to know I’ve got my”—he almost said family—“the Order behind me on this.”
Lucan smiled, nodding slowly. “You always will,” he said, reaching out to clap Dante on the shoulder. “Gotta tell you, I’m looking forward to meeting the woman who can scare the shit out of one of the fiercest warriors I’ve ever known.”
Dante laughed. “She’s fine, Lucan. Damn, she is just so incredibly fine.”
“At sundown, you take Tegan with you when you head out to question Chase. Bring him back in one piece, we clear? Then you go make things right with your Breedmate.”
“Chase I can handle,” Dante said. “It’s the other part I’m not so sure about. You got any advice for me on that, Lucan?”
“Sure.” The vampire grunted, his smile filled with dark amusement. “Dust off your knees, brother, because you may damn well end up walking on them before the night is through.”
CHAPTER Twenty-five
Tess had a full day of appointments and walk-ins at the clinic, work she was grateful for because it helped give her something to think about besides Ben’s disturbing telephone message. Yet it was impossible to put his call out of her mind completely. He was in some serious trouble—injured and bleeding besides.
Now, it seemed, he had simply vanished.
She’d tried calling his apartment several times, and his cell phone, the area hospitals…but there was no sign of him anywhere. If she had known how or where to contact his parents, she would have tried them too, even though the odds of Ben turning up there were slim to none. As it stood, the only other thing she could think of was to go past his place after work and see if she could find some sign of him there. She wasn’t holding out a lot of hope, but what were her alternatives?
“Nora, patient in Two needs a combo test and urine sample,” Tess said, coming out of the examination room. “Can you get those for me while I check the X-rays of our collie with the joint inflammations?”
“You got it.”
“Thanks.”
As she grabbed the films for her next patient, her cell phone went off in her lab-coat pocket, the vibration beating against her thigh like bird’s wings. She dug the device out and checked the ID to see if it might be Ben. The number was blocked.
Oh, God.
She knew who it was, who it had to be. She’d been suspended in an awful state between anticipation and dread all morning, knowing that Dante was going to call. He’d called her apartment as she was leaving early that day, but she’d let the blocked call go straight to voice mail. She hadn’t been ready to talk to him then; she wasn’t at all sure she was ready now.
Tess walked down the hall to her office and closed the door, her spine sagging against the cool metal. The phone trembled in her hand as it rang for the fifth and probably final time. She shut her eyes and touched the talk button.
“Hello?”
“Hey, angel.”
The sound of Dante’s deep, delicious voice sent a slow current through her. She didn’t want to feel the warmth that spread along her limbs and pooled in the center of her being, but it was there, melting the edges of her resolve.
“Everything okay?” he asked when she fell silent, an air of protective concern in his tone. “You still with me, or did I lose you?”
She sighed, unsure how to answer that.
“Tess? What’s wrong?”
For a long few seconds, all she could do was breathe in and out. She hardly knew where to begin, and she was terrified of where it was all going to end now. A thousand questions crowded her mind, a thousand doubts that had been raised in the hours since she’d listened to Ben’s bizarre message.
Part of her doubted Ben’s outrageous claims—the rational part of her that knew better than to believe there could be monsters loose on the streets of Boston. Yet there was another part of her that wasn’t as quick to dismiss the unexplainable, the stuff that existed with or without tidy logic or conventional science.
“Tess,” Dante said amid the quiet, “you know you can talk to me.”
“Do I?” she said, finally pushing words out of her mouth. “I’m not sure what I know right now, Dante. I’m not sure what to think—about anything.”
He swore, a snarled oath spoken in Italian. “What happened? Are you…hurt? Jesus, if he touched you in any way—”
Tess scoffed. “I suppose that answers one thing for me already. We’re talking about Ben, aren’t we? He was the drug dealer you were after last night?”
There was a slight hesitation. “Have you seen him today, Tess? Have you seen him at any time since you and I were together last night?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t seen him, Dante.”
“But you spoke with him. When?”
“He called last night and left a message, evidently while we were…” She shook her head, not wanting to remember how wonderful it had felt to lie in her bed in Dante’s arms, how protected and peaceful she’d felt. Now all she felt was a pervading chill. “Is that why you’ve been screwing around with me, because you needed me in order to get close to him?”
“Christ, no. It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“How complicated? Have you been playing me all this time? Or did the real game start the night you showed up here with your dog and we—Oh, my God, now even that makes more sense. Harvard isn’t your dog at all, is he? What did you do, take some stray animal off the street to use as bait for reeling me into your sick game?”
“Tess, please. I wanted to explain—”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Not like this,” he growled. “I’m not going to do this over the phone.” She felt a dark tension growing in him as he spoke, could almost see him pacing on the other end, alive with restless energy, his black brows low over his eyes in a scowl, his strong hand raking over his scalp. “Listen, you need to stay away from Ben Sullivan. He’s involved in something very dangerous. I don’t want you anywhere near him, do you understand?”
“That’s funny. He said the same thing about you. He said a lot of things, actually. Crazy things, like how your partner brutally assaulted him last night.”
“What?”
“He said he’d been bitten, Dante. Can you explain that to me? He said the man you were with when the two of you broke into Ben’s apartment took him away in a car and then savagely attacked him. According to Ben, he was bitten in the throat.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Can that be true?” she asked, horrified that he hadn’t even attempted to deny it was possible. “Do you know where Ben is? I haven’t heard from him since that call. Have you or your friends done something to him? I have to see him.”
“No! I don’t know where he is, Tess, but you have to promise me you’ll stay away from him.”
Tess felt miserable, scared, and confused. “What’s happening here, Dante? What are you really involved in?”
“Tess, look. I need you to go somewhere safe. Right now. Go to a hotel, a public building, anywhere—just go right now and stay there until I can come and get you tonight.”
Tess laughed, but it was a humorless sound that grated in her ears. “I’m working, Dante. And even if I wasn’t, I don’t think I’d go anywhere to wait for you. Not until I understand what’s going on here.”
“I will tell you, Tess. I promise you. I had planned to tell you all of it, even if this hadn’t happened.”
“Okay, fine. My schedule is booked solid today, but I can break for lunch in a couple of hours. If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to come here.”
“I…God damn it. I can’t do that right now, Tess. I just…can’t. It has to be tonight. You have to trust me.”
“Trust you,” she whispered, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the office door. “I guess that’s something I can’t do right now, Dante. I have to go. Good-bye.”
She flipped the cell phone closed and shut the ringer off altogether. She didn’t want to talk anymore, not to anyone.
As Tess walked over to put the cell on her desk, her gaze caught on something else that had been troubling her since she’d found it earlier that morning. It was a computer flash drive, a slim, portable data-storage device. She’d discovered it underneath the lip of the examination table in one of her clinic rooms—the very room where Ben had been yesterday, when she’d caught him unexpectedly and he’d made excuses that he came in to repair the table’s sticky hydraulics.
Tess had suspected he wasn’t being truthful with her—about a lot of things. Now she knew that was the case. But the question was, why?
In a furious mental outburst, Dante glared at his cell phone and sent the device hurtling against the opposite wall of his living quarters. It shattered with the impact, emitting a shower of sparks and smoke as it broke into a hundred tiny pieces. The destruction was satisfying, if brief. But it did nothing to assuage his anger, all of it self-directed.
Dante resumed the tight pacing he’d been doing while on the phone with Tess. He needed to be moving now. He just needed to keep his limbs in action, his mind alert.
He’d been making a brilliant mess of everything lately. While he’d never held an inkling of regret for being born of the Breed, now his vampire blood seethed with frustration over the fact that he was trapped inside. Denied the possibility of fixing things with Tess until the sun finally retreated below the horizon and freed him to move about in her world.
He thought the wait was going to drive him out of his mind.
It nearly had.
By the time he went to find Tegan in the training facility at a few minutes to sundown, his skin was hot and prickling, too tight everywhere. He was antsy and itching for combat. His ears were ringing, the incessant buzz like a swarm of bees in his blood.
“You ready to roll, T?”
The tawny-haired Gen One warrior looked up from the Beretta he was loading and gave a cold smile as the clip snapped into place. “Let’s do it.”
Together they headed up the winding corridor of the compound to the elevator that would take them to the Order’s fleet garage on street level.
As the doors closed, Dante’s nostrils began to tickle with the acrid tang of smoke. He glanced at Tegan, but the other male seemed unaffected, his gem-green eyes fixed before him, characteristic in their unblinking, emotionless calm.
The elevator car began its silent climb upward. Dante felt an intense heat lapping at him from the ghost of a flame, just waiting for him to slow down enough that it could catch him. He knew what this was, of course. The death vision had been dogging him all day, but he’d managed to beat it back, refusing to give in to the sensory torture when he needed his head fully in the game tonight.
But now, as the elevator reached its destination, the precognition slammed into his head like a hammer. Dante went down on one knee, leveled by the force of the hit.
“Jesus,” Tegan said from beside him as Dante felt the warrior take his arm to keep him from sprawling on the elevator floor. “What the hell? You all right?”
Dante couldn’t answer. His sight filled with billowing black smoke shot with bright plumes of flame. Over the crackle and hiss of encroaching fire, he could hear someone talking—taunting him, it seemed—the voice low, indistinct. This was new, a further detail in the elusive nightmare he’d come to know so well.
He blinked away some of the haze, struggling to stay present. To stay conscious. He caught a glimpse of Tegan’s face in front of him. Shit, he must look bad, because the warrior who was known for his ruthless lack of feeling now suddenly flinched back, pulling his hand away from Dante’s arm with a hiss. Behind his pained grimace, the tips of Tegan’s fangs shone white. His light brows dropped down low over his narrowed emerald eyes.
“Can’t…breathe…” Dante gasped, every panting breath he took dragging more phantom smoke into his lungs. Choking him. “Ah, God…dying…”
Tegan’s eyes bored into him, flinty sharp. His gaze was unsympathetic but level with a strength Dante knew would keep him steady.
“You hang on,” Tegan demanded. “It’s a vision, it’s not reality. Not yet, anyway. Now, stay in there, ride it out. Go back as far as you can, and absorb all of the detail.”
Dante let the images swamp him once more, knowing Tegan was right. He had to open his mind to the pain and fear so he could look past it to the truth.
Panting, his skin searing from the heat of the inferno surging all around him, Dante forced himself to focus on his surroundings. To place himself deeper into the moment. He stretched his mind backward from the worst of the vision, halting the action, then sending it into reverse.
The flames shrank away. The smoke reduced from massive, roiling clouds of black ash to thin gray tendrils that crept in along the ceiling. Dante could breathe now, but fear still clogged his throat with the realization that these would be his last few minutes of life.
Someone was in the room with him. A male, judging from the scent of him. Dante was lying prone on something icy cold and slick while his captor yanked his hands behind his back, then bound him at the wrists with a length of wire cord. He should have been able to snap it like twine, but it wouldn’t budge. His strength was useless. The captor bound Dante’s feet next, then hog-tied him on his stomach, a slab of bare metal beneath him.
Loud crashes sounded from somewhere outside the room. He heard bansheelike shrieks, smelled the coppery stench of death nearby.
And then, a low taunt sounded near his ear: “You know, I thought killing you was going to be difficult. You’ve made it very easy for me.”
The voice faded into a self-amused chuckle as Dante’s captor came around to where his head hung over the edge of the metal platform that held him. Denim-clad legs bent at the knee, and slowly the torso of his would-be killer came into Dante’s line of sight. Rough fingers grasped him by the hair, lifting his head up to face him in the instant before the vision started to fade away, as quickly as it had come…
Holy hell.
“Ben Sullivan.” Dante spat the name out like ash on his tongue. Released from the clutches of the premonition, he dragged himself to a sitting position on the floor. Dante wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow as Tegan stared at him in grave acceptance. “Son of a bitch. It’s the Crimson dealer, Ben Sullivan. I don’t fucking believe it. That human—he’s the one who’s going to kill me.”
Tegan gave a grim shake of his head. “Not if we make him dead first.”
Dante pushed himself up to his feet, planting one palm against the concrete wall next to the elevator while he tried to catch his breath. Beneath his fatigue, rage simmered, for Ben Sullivan and for former Agent Sterling Chase, who’d evidently taken it upon himself to let the bastard go.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he growled, already stalking across the cavernous garage, flipping one of his malebranche blades between his fingers.
CHAPTER Twenty-six
Ben’s captors had let him sit forever by himself in an unlit, windowless, securely locked room. He kept waiting for the one they’d called Master to appear—the nameless, faceless individual who’d been covertly financing the development and distribution of Crimson. Time dragged, maybe a full twenty-four hours since he’d been picked up and taken here. No one had come for him yet, but they would. And in a dark corner of his mind, Ben understood that when they did, he wouldn’t get out of the confrontation alive.
He got up off the floor and made his way across the bare concrete to the closed steel door on the other side of the room. His head was screaming from the beating he’d taken before he was dragged off the street to this place. His broken nose and neck wound were crusted over with dried blood, both injuries on fire with raw pain. Ben put his ear to the cold metal door and listened to movement getting louder on the other side. Heavy footsteps clopped nearer and nearer, the purposeful gaits of more than one man, punctuated by the metallic jangle of chains and weaponry.
Ben backed up, retreating as far as he could into the darkness of his holding cell. There was a snick of a key turning the lock, then the door swung open and the two huge guards who’d brought him here came inside.
“He’s ready for you now,” one of the thugs growled.
Both men took Ben by the arms and wrenched him hard before shoving him forward, out the door and into a dim hallway outside. Ben had suspected he was being held in some kind of warehouse, based on the crude quarters he’d been stowed in until now. But his captors led him up a flight of stairs and into what looked to be an opulent, nineteenth-century estate. Polished wood gleamed in elegant, low lighting. Beneath his muddied shoes, a soft Persian rug spread out in an ornate pattern of deep red, purple, and gold. Above his head in the foyer his captors pushed him through, a large crystal chandelier twinkled.
For an instant, some of Ben’s alarm eased. Maybe everything would be okay, after all. He was deep into the shit lately, but this wasn’t the nightmare he’d expected it to be. Not some torture chamber of horrors as he’d feared.
Ahead of him, a set of open double doors framed yet another impressive room. Ben was guided there by his handlers, who then held him securely in the middle of the large formal sitting room. The furniture, the rugs, the original oil paintings on the walls—all of it reeked of extensive wealth. Old wealth, the kind you didn’t get without a few hundred years of practice.
Surrounded by all that opulence, seated like a dark king behind a massive, carved mahogany desk, was a man in an expensive black suit and dark sunglasses.
Ben’s palms started to sweat the instant his eyes lit on the guy. He was immense, broad shoulders straining beneath the impeccable fall of his jacket. The pressed white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the neck, but Ben didn’t think it was a sign of casualness so much as an indication of impatience. Menace permeated the air like a thick cloud, and some of Ben’s hope strangled on the spot.
He cleared his throat. “I, uh…I’m glad to finally have the chance to meet with you,” he said, hating the tremor in his voice. “We need to talk…about Crimson—”
“Indeed, we do.” The deep, airless reply cut Ben off with its appearance of calm. But from behind those dark glasses trained on him, fury seethed. “It looks as though I’m not the only one you’ve annoyed recently, Mr. Sullivan. That’s quite a nasty gash on your neck.”
“I was attacked. Son of a bitch tried to tear my throat out.”
Ben’s shadowy employer grunted with obvious disinterest. “Who would do a thing like that?”
“A vampire,” Ben said, knowing how crazy it had to sound. But what had happened to him down by the riverfront was only the tip of a very disturbing iceberg. “That’s what I need to talk to you about. Like I said when I called the other night, something’s gone really wrong with Crimson. It’s…doing things to people. Bad things. It’s turning them into bloodthirsty lunatics.”
“Of course it is, Mr. Sullivan. That’s precisely what it was meant to do.”
“What?” Disbelief made Ben’s stomach drop in his gut. “What are you talking about? I created Crimson. I know what it’s supposed to do. It’s just a mild amphetamine—”
“For humans, yes.” The dark-haired man stood up slowly, then came around the side of the enormous desk. “For others, as you’ve discovered, it is something much more.”
As he spoke, he glanced toward the open doors of the room. Another pair of heavily armed guards stood at the threshold, their hair shaggy and unkempt, fierce eyes seeming to burn like embers under their heavy brows. In the dim light from the candles in the room, Ben thought he saw the gleam of fangs behind the guards’ lips. He flicked a nervous glance back at his employer.
“Unfortunately, I have discovered something troubling myself, Mr. Sullivan. After your call the other night, a few of my associates visited your laboratory in Boston. They searched your computer and records, but imagine my dismay to hear that they could not find the formula for Crimson. How do you explain that?”
Ben held the sunglass-shaded gaze that pinned him from only an arm’s length away. “I never keep the true formula in the lab. I thought it would be safer kept offsite, with me.”
“You need to give it to me.” There was little inflection in the words, no movement in the powerful body that stood before him like an impassable wall. “Now, Mr. Sullivan.”
“I don’t have it. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Where is it?”
Ben’s tongue froze. He needed a bargaining chip, and the formula was all he had. Besides, he wasn’t about to sic these thugs on Tess by telling them he’d hidden the Crimson recipe in her clinic. He hadn’t meant to leave it there for long, only until he’d sorted out his options in this mess. Too late to call back that misstep, unfortunately. Even though saving his own ass was his primary concern at the moment, putting Tess in the middle of this was out of the question.
“I can get it for you,” Ben said, “but you’ll have to let me go. Let’s agree on this like gentlemen. We sever all ties right here and now and go our separate ways. Forget we know anything about each other.”
A tight smile curved his employer’s mouth. “Don’t try to negotiate with me. You are beneath me…human.”
Ben swallowed hard. He wanted to believe that the guy was just some kind of demented vampire fantasist. A nut job who was heavy on cash but light on sanity. Except he’d seen what Crimson had done to the kid he’d dealt it to the other night. That horrific transformation had been real, hard as it was to accept. And the ragged, searing gash in his neck was real too.
Panic started hammering hard in his chest.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. Frankly, I don’t wanna know. I just want to get the hell out of here in one piece.”
“Excellent. Then you should have no trouble complying. Give me the formula.”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“Then you will have to re-create it, Mr. Sullivan.” A brief nod brought the two armed guards inside. “I’ve taken the liberty of bringing your lab equipment here. Everything you need is in order, including a test subject for the finished product. My associates will show you the way.”
“Wait.” Ben shot a look over his shoulder as the guards began to remove him from the room. “You don’t understand. The formula is…complex. I don’t have it memorized. To get it right could take me several days—”
“You have no more than two hours, Mr. Sullivan.”
Bruising hands grasped Ben in an unyielding hold and pushed him back toward the descending stairwell that gaped ahead of him, as black as endless night.
Chase strapped on the last of his weapons, then checked his ammo supply one final time. He had one pistol loaded with regular rounds; another held a clip of the hollow-nose titanium specials that he’d been given by the warriors for the express purpose of killing Rogues. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t need to use those, but if he had to blast through a dozen feral vampires to reach his nephew, he damn well would.
Grabbing his dark wool pea coat from the hook near the door, he stepped into the hallway outside his private quarters in the Darkhaven. Elise was there; he nearly ran into her in his haste to be on his way.
“Sterling…hello. Have you been avoiding me? I’d been hoping I could talk with you.” Her lavender eyes swept him in a quick glance. She frowned, seeing the array of guns and knives that circled his hips and crisscrossed his chest. He felt her apprehension, could smell the sudden, bitter note of dread mingling with the delicate scent that was simply her own. “So many terrible weapons. Is it very dangerous out there?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “Just keep praying for Camden to come home soon. I’ll take care of the rest.”
She picked up the tail of her scarlet widow’s sash and idly smoothed the silk through her fingers. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about, Sterling. Some of the other women and I have been discussing what more we can do for our missing sons. There is strength in numbers, so we thought that perhaps if we banded together…We would like to do some daytime searches of the waterfront or the old subway tunnels. We could look in the places where our sons might have gone for shelter from the sun—”
“Absolutely not.”
Chase hadn’t meant to cut her off so abruptly, but the idea of Elise leaving the sanctuary of the Darkhaven during daytime hours to venture into the worst parts of the city made his blood run cold. She would be beyond the protection of himself or any other members of the Breed so long as the sun was out, and while the Rogues would be no danger then for the very same reason, there was always the risk of running into their Minions.
“I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question.”
Her eyes widened momentarily in surprise. Then she quickly glanced down, giving him a polite nod, but he could see that she bristled beneath the veneer of her propriety. As her closest kin, even by marriage, Breed law gave Chase the right to impose a daytime curfew on her—an antiquated measure that had been in existence from the origination of the Darkhavens nearly a thousand years ago. Chase had never imposed it, and while he felt like an ass for doing so now, he could not allow her to risk her life while he stood by and watched.
“Do you think my brother would approve of what you want to do?” Chase asked, knowing that Quentin never would agree to such an idea, not even in an effort to save his own son. “You can help Camden the most by staying here, where I know you are safe.”
Elise lifted her head, those pale purple eyes flashing with the spark of a determination he’d never seen in them before. “Camden is not the only child missing. Can you save them all, Sterling? Can the warriors of the Order save them all?” She let out a small sigh. “Nobody saved Jonas Redmond. He’s dead, did you know that? His mother senses that he’s gone. More of our sons are disappearing, dying every night, yet we are supposed to do nothing but sit here and wait for bad news?”
Chase felt his jaw go rigid. “I have to go now, Elise. You have my answer on this subject. I’m sorry.”
He brushed past her, shrugging into his coat as he headed out. He knew she followed; her white skirts rustled softly behind him with each quick step she took. But Chase kept going. He grabbed his keys out of his pocket and threw open the main door of the Darkhaven building, clicking the remote lock of his silver Lexus SUV in the driveway outside. The vehicle chirped, lights flashing in response, but Chase wouldn’t be going anywhere fast.
Blocking the drive was a black Range Rover, its engine idling in the dark. The windows were tinted beyond legal opacity, but Chase didn’t need to see through them to know who was inside. He could feel Dante’s rage pouring through the steel and glass, rolling toward him like a frost heave.
The warrior wasn’t alone. He and his companion, the stone-cold one called Tegan, got out of the vehicle and strolled around to the lawn. Their faces were deadly calm, but the menace radiating off both huge males was unmistakable.
Chase heard Elise’s gasp behind him. “Sterling—”
“Get back inside,” he told her, keeping his eyes locked on the two warriors. “Now, Elise. Everything’s all right.”
“What’s going on, Sterling? Why are they here?”
“Just do as I say, damn it! Go back in the house. Everything is going to be okay.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Harvard.” Dante prowled toward him, those wicked, arced blades at his hip glinting in the moonlight with every long stride of the warrior’s legs. “I’d say things are about as fucked up as they could be right about now. Thanks to you, that is. You get lost last night or something? Maybe you just misunderstood what I told you to do with that drug-dealing scum—that it? I told you to haul his ass in to the compound, but you thought I said let the bastard walk?”
“No. There was no misunderstanding.”
“What am I missing here, Harvard?” Dante drew one of his blades from its sheath, the steel whisking out as softly as a whisper. When he spoke, Chase saw the tips of his fangs. A bright amber gaze locked on him like twin laser beams. “Start talking fast, because I’ve got no problem cutting the truth out of you right here in front of the woman.”
“Sterling!” Elise screamed. “Leave him alone!”
Chase whipped his head to the side just in time to see her dash down the brick steps of the Darkhaven entry and onto the pavement below. She didn’t get far. Tegan moved like a ghost, vampire speed no match for Elise’s human limbs. The warrior captured her around the waist and held her back as she struggled to get away from him.
Fury rose in Chase like a lit match on dry tinder. His fangs ripped out of his gums, his vision going sharp as his pupils narrowed with his transformation. He roared, ready to take on both warriors simply for the offense of touching Elise.
“Let her go,” he growled. “Damn it, she is not a part of this!”
He pushed at Dante, but the vampire didn’t budge.
“At least we have your full attention now, Harvard.” Dante shoved back at him, a freight train coming at full steam. Chase’s feet left the ground, his body propelled backward by the force of Dante’s rage. The brick facade of the residence stopped their trajectory, slamming hard against Chase’s spine.
Dante’s enormous fangs came right up in Chase’s face, his eyes burning into Chase’s skull. “Where is Ben Sullivan? What the fuck is really going on with you?”
Chase glanced over at Elise, hating that she had to witness this brutal side of their world. He just wanted it over for her. He saw the tears streaming down her cheeks, the fear in her eyes as Tegan held her so coldly against all of the deadly steel and leather that girded his immense body.
Chase swore roundly. “I had to let the human go. I had no choice.”
“Wrong answer,” Dante snarled, bringing that hellish blade up under his chin.
“The Crimson dealer would do me no good if he was locked up at the compound. I need him on the street, helping me look for someone—my nephew. I let him go so he would help me find Camden, my brother’s son.”
Dante scowled, but the blade eased up a little. “What about the others who’ve gone missing? All those kids Ben Sullivan has been feeding with his drug?”
“Getting Camden back is what I care about. He’s been my true mission from day one.”
“Son of a bitch, you lied to us,” the warrior hissed.
Chase met the accusing amber glare. “Would the Order have bothered to help me if I’d come around asking for you to find one missing Darkhaven youth?”
Dante cursed, low and furious. “You’ll never know, will you?”
He wondered now, having come to understand some of the warriors’ code—having seen firsthand that, despite their ruthless methods and the efficiency that made them such a mysterious and deadly force among the Breed and humankind alike, they were not without honor. They were merciless killers when needed, but Chase suspected that every one of them was, at heart, a far better man than him.
Dante abruptly released him, then pivoted around to stalk back toward the waiting Rover. Across the lawn, Tegan let Elise go as well, the warrior’s steady green gaze lingering on her as she anxiously stumbled away from him, rubbing at the places where he had touched her.
“Get in the truck, Harvard,” Dante said, indicating the open back door with a look that promised hell to pay if Chase didn’t cooperate. “You’re going back to the compound. Maybe you can persuade Lucan that we ought to let you keep breathing.”
CHAPTER Twenty-seven
Cold sweat trickled down the back of Ben Sullivan’s neck as he finished up the first sample of his new batch of Crimson. He hadn’t been lying about not having the recipe committed to memory; he did his best to re-create the drug in the absurdly short time he’d been allowed. With barely a half hour to spare, he collected a dose of the reddish substance and carried it over to his test subject. The young man, dressed in filthy blue jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt, slumped against the restraints that held him prisoner in a wheeled office chair, his head down, chin resting on his chest.
As Ben neared him, the door to the makeshift basement lab opened and his dark employer strode inside, walking between the two armed guards who’d been supervising Ben’s progress the whole time.
“I didn’t have a chance to vacuum-filter the moisture out of the stuff,” Ben said, making excuses for the cup of pasty goo he’d produced and hoping to hell he got the recipe right. “This kid looks like he’s in rough shape. What if he can’t chew it?”
There was no reply, only measuring, deadly silence.
Ben blew out a nervous breath and approached the kid. He knelt down in front of the chair. From under the fall of unkempt hair, listless eyes opened to heavy slits, then closed again. Ben peered up into the drawn, sallow face of what had probably been a good-looking kid at one time—
Ah, shit.
He knew this kid. Knew him from around the clubs—a fairly regular customer—and this was also the smiling, youthful face he’d seen in the photograph just last night. Cameron or Camden was his name? Camden, he thought, the kid Ben was supposed to help locate for the fanged psycho who’d promised to kill him if he didn’t oblige. Not that that threat was any more serious than the one Ben faced now.
“Let’s get on with it, Mr. Sullivan.”
Ben spooned a bit of the raw Crimson out of the cup and lifted it to the kid’s mouth. The instant the substance touched his lips, Camden’s tongue snaked out hungrily. He closed his mouth around the spoon and sucked it clean, seeming to revive for an instant. A junkie nuzzling up to what he hoped was his next fix, Ben realized, a pang of guilt sticking him.
Ben waited for the Crimson to take effect.
Nothing happened.
He gave Camden more, and then some more again. Still nothing. Damn it. The recipe wasn’t right.
“I need more time,” Ben murmured as the kid’s head lolled back down with a groan. “I’ve almost got it, but I just need to try it again.”
He stood up, turned around, and was shocked to find his menacing patron standing directly in front of him. Ben hadn’t heard the guy move at all, yet here he was, looming over him. Ben saw his own haggard reflection in the sheen of the man’s dark glasses. He looked desperate and terrified, a cornered animal trembling before a fierce predator.
“We’re getting nowhere, Mr. Sullivan. And I’m out of patience.”
“You said two hours,” Ben pointed out. “I still have a few minutes—”
“Not negotiable.” The cruel mouth stretched into a sneer, revealing the bright tips of sharp white fangs. “Time’s up.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Ben recoiled, knocking into the chair behind him and sending it and the kid held captive on it rolling backward in a clatter of spinning wheels. He stumbled away in a graceless crawl, only to feel strong fingers bite into his shoulders, hauling him up off the floor as if he were weightless. Ben was spun around harshly and sent crashing into the far wall. Agony splintered through the back of his skull as he crumpled in a heap. Dazed, Ben felt behind his head. His fingers came away bloody.
And when he focused his bleary gaze on the others in the room, his heart went tight with dread. The two guards were staring at him, their pupils narrowed to thin slits, glowing amber irises fixed on him like floodlights. One of them opened his mouth on a rasping hiss, baring huge fangs.
Even Camden’s attention had roused from where he sat several feet away. The kid’s eyes burned through the fall of his hair, his lips peeling away from long, gleaming canines.
But as terrifying as those monstrous faces were, they had nothing on the ice-cold approach of the one who was clearly calling the shots here. He strolled over to Ben at a calm pace, polished black shoes moving soundlessly on the concrete floor. He lifted his hand and Ben was rising, drifting back onto his feet as if attached to invisible strings.
“Please,” Ben gasped. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t…don’t do it, please. I can get the Crimson formula back for you. I swear, I’ll do whatever you want!”
“Yes, Mr. Sullivan. You will.”
He moved so fast Ben didn’t know what hit him until he felt the hard bite of fangs in his throat. Ben struggled, smelling his own blood pouring out of the wound, hearing the wet sounds of the creature at his neck drawing deeply at his vein. The fight leaked out of Ben with every draining pull. He hung there, suspended, feeling life flow out of him, feeling consciousness dim along with his will. He was dying, all that he was flowing away from him into a pit of darkness.
“Come on, Harvard, or whatever your name really is,” Tess said, guiding the little terrier across the street as the pedestrian light changed.
After closing up the clinic at six o’clock, she had decided to take a walk past Ben’s apartment on the South Side, one last attempt to find him on her own before she placed a missing-persons report with the police. If he was back to trafficking narcotics, he probably deserved to get arrested, but deep down she truly cared about him and wanted to see if she could talk him into getting help before things escalated that far.
Ben’s neighborhood wasn’t the most desirable, particularly in the dark, but Tess wasn’t afraid. Many of her clients were from this general area: hardworking, good people. Ironically, if there was anyone to be wary of in this stretch of tightly clustered duplexes and three-deckers, it was probably the drug dealer living in Apartment 3-B of the building where Tess now stood.
A television blared from the unit on the first floor, casting an eerie blue wash onto the sidewalk outside. Tess tipped her head up, looking to Ben’s set of windows for any indication that he might be there. The ratty white miniblinds were drawn closed over the balcony sliders and the bedroom window. The apartment was all dark, no light showing from anywhere inside, no movement.
Or…was there?
Although it was difficult to tell, she could have sworn she saw one of the sets of blinds sway against the window—as if someone inside had moved them or walked by them and bumped them, unaware.
Was it Ben? If he was home, he evidently didn’t want anyone to know, including her. He hadn’t returned any of her phone calls or e-mails, so why would she think he’d want her showing up at his place now?
And if he wasn’t home? What if someone had broken in? What if it were some of his drug contacts waiting for him to return? What if someone was up there right now, turning his place upside down looking for the flash drive she had in her coat pocket?
Tess backed away from the building, an anxious crawl working its way up her spine. She held Harvard’s leash in a death grip, silently shooing him from the dried-out shrubs that lined the sidewalk.
Then she saw it again—a definite shift of the blinds in Ben’s unit. One of the sliders began to open on the dark third-level balcony. Someone was coming out. And this someone was enormous, definitely not Ben.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered under her breath, stooping to pick up the dog so she could bolt the hell out of there in the next second.
She started jogging up the sidewalk, braving only the quickest glance over her shoulder. The guy was at the railing of the rickety balcony, peering out into the dark. She felt the savage heat of his stare like a lance slicing through the dark. His eyes were impossibly bright…glowing.
“Oh, my God.”
Tess dashed out to cross the street. When she looked back at Ben’s building again, the man on the balcony was climbing onto the railing, two more coming out behind him. The one in the lead swung his legs over the edge and dropped, as neatly as a cat, down onto the lawn. He started running up behind her, moving too fast. As if his speed had rendered her own to slow motion, her feet as sluggish as if they’d been mired in quicksand.
Tess hugged Harvard close to her chest and ran up onto the other sidewalk, darting between the cars parked at the curb. She glanced once more behind her, only to find that her pursuer was gone. She knew hope for a brief fraction of a second.
Because when she looked forward again, she saw that he was somehow, suddenly there, less than five paces in front of her, blocking her path. How could he have gotten there so fast? She hadn’t even seen him move, hadn’t heard his feet on the pavement.
He cocked his large head at her and sniffed at the air like an animal. He—or rather it, because whatever this was, it was far from human—began to chuckle low under its breath.
Tess backed up, moving woodenly, disbelieving. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. This was some kind of sick joke. It was impossible.
“No.” She stepped back and back, shaking her head in denial.
The big man started moving then, coming toward her. Tess’s heart stuttered into a panicked beat, her every instinct clanging on high alert. She pivoted on her heel and bolted—
Just as another beastly-looking man came between the cars and hemmed her in.
“Hello, pretty,” he said in a voice that was all gravel and malice.
In the pale wash of streetlight overhead, Tess’s gaze locked on the guy’s open mouth. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a thick hiss, revealing a huge pair of fangs.
Tess dropped the dog from her limp grasp and sent a terrified scream shooting high up into the night sky.
“Hang a left up here,” Dante said to Tegan from the passenger seat of the Range Rover. Chase sat in back like he was awaiting his execution, an anticipation that Dante was about to prolong a bit more. “Let’s swing through Southie before we head for the compound.”
Tegan gave a grim nod, then turned the vehicle at the light. “You got a feeling the dealer might be home?”
“I don’t know. Worth a look, though.”
Dante rubbed at a cold spot that had settled behind his sternum, a strange void that was squeezing his lungs, making it hard to breathe. The sensation was more visceral than physical, a hard tweaking of his instincts that put his senses on full alert. He hit the window control next to him, watching the dark glass slide open as he inhaled the cold night air.
“Everything cool?” Tegan asked, his deep voice drifting over from across the dim cockpit of the SUV. “You heading for a repeat of what happened earlier?”
“No.” Dante gave a vague shake of his head, still staring out the open window, watching the blur of lights and traffic as the downtown buildings fell behind them and the old neighborhoods of South Boston came into view. “No, this is…something different.”
The damn knot of cold in his chest was boring deeper, becoming glacial even as his palms began to sweat. His stomach clenched. Adrenaline dumped into his veins in a sudden, jolting flood.
What the hell?
It was fear running through him, he realized. Shell-shocked terror. Not his own, but someone else’s.
Oh, Jesus.
“Stop the car.”
It was Tess’s fear he was feeling. Her horror reaching out to him via the blood connection they shared. She was in danger out there. Mortal danger.
“Tegan, stop the fucking car!”
The warrior hit the brakes and dragged the steering wheel hard to the right, coolly skidding the Rover onto the berm. They weren’t too far from Ben Sullivan’s apartment; his building could be no more than half a dozen blocks’ distance—twice that if they had to navigate the maze of one-way streets and traffic lights between here and there.
Dante threw open the passenger door and jumped out onto the pavement. He dragged air into his lungs, praying he could get a tack on Tess’s scent.
There it was.
He locked on to the cinnamon-sweet note braided among the thousand other mingled odors carrying on the chill night breeze. Tess’s blood scent was trace, but growing stronger—too much so.
Dante’s veins ran cold.
Somewhere, not far from where he stood, Tess was bleeding.
Tegan leaned across the seat, one thick forearm draped over the wheel, his shrewd gaze narrowed. “Dante, man—what the fuck? What’s going on?”
“No time,” Dante said. He pivoted back around to the car and slammed the door shut. “I’m taking off on foot. I need you to haul ass to Ben Sullivan’s place. It’s off—”
“I remember the way,” Chase piped up from the backseat, meeting Dante’s gaze through the Rover’s open window. “Go. We’ll be right behind you.”
Dante nodded once at the grave faces staring at him, then he swung around and took off at a dead run.
He cut through yards, leaped over fences, sped down tight alleyways, firing off every cylinder of his Breed-born speed and agility. To the humans he passed, he was nothing but cold air, a brush of icy November wind on the backs of their necks as he barreled over and around them, all of his focus honed on one thing: Tess.
Halfway down a side street that would dump him onto Ben Sullivan’s block, Dante saw the little terrier Tess had brought back from the brink of death with her healing touch. The dog was wandering loose on the dark sidewalk, its leash dragging limply behind it.
Hell of a bad sign, but Dante knew he was close now.
God help him, he had to be.
“Tess!” he shouted, praying she could hear him.
That he wasn’t already too late.
He peeled around the corner of a three-decker, jumping over the toys and bicycles that littered the front yard. Her blood scent was stronger now, a shot of dread hammering his temples.
“Tess!”
He tracked her like the beam of a laser sight, racing in a mindless panic when he picked up the low snuffles and grunts of Rogues fighting over a prize.
Oh, Christ. No.
Across the street from the building where Ben Sullivan lived, Tess’s handbag lay near the curb, the contents spilling out of it. Dante veered right, racing down a foot-worn path that cut between two houses. There was a shed at the end of the path, the door swinging idly on its hinges.
Tess was inside. Dante knew it with a dread so deep it made his step falter.
Behind him, in the split second before he could reach the shed and tear the thing down with his bare hands, a Rogue came out of the shadows and pounced. Dante twisted as he fell, withdrawing one of his blades and slicing it across the suckhead’s face. The Rogue gave an unearthly shriek, flying off him in agony as his corrupted blood system got a good taste of lethal titanium. Dante rolled out of his crouch and shot to his feet as the Rogue spasmed into swift death and decomposition.
On the street now, the black Range Rover roared up and lurched to a sharp halt. Tegan and Chase jumped out, weapons in hand. Another Rogue came out of the dark, but he took one look at Tegan’s icy stare and decided to run the opposite way. The warrior sprang like a great cat, leaping into pursuit.
Chase must have seen more trouble at Ben Sullivan’s apartment, because he held his pistol in ready position and started off across the street at a stealth jog.
As for Dante, he was hardly aware of the peripheral action. His boots were already chewing up earth, moving toward the shed and the terrible noises that were emanating from it. The wet, slick sounds of vampires feeding was nothing new to him, but the idea that they were harming Tess threw his rage into the nuclear zone. He stalked to the flapping shed door and yanked it loose with one hand. It sailed across the empty back lot, instantly forgotten.
Two Rogues held Tess down on the floor of the out-building, one sucking at her wrist, the other latched on to her throat. She lay motionless beneath them, so still that Dante’s heart froze in terror as his eyes took in the scene. But he could sense that she lived. He could hear her thin pulse echoing weakly in his own veins. Another few seconds and they might have drained her.
Dante let out a bellow that shook the place, his fury boiling up and out of him like a black gale. The Rogue feeding from Tess’s wrist leaped back with a hiss, her blood circling the peeled-back lips and staining the long fangs scarlet. The suckhead twisted in midair, flying up to the corner of the shed’s ceiling and clinging there like a spider.
Dante tracked the flash of movement, releasing one of his malebranche blades and sending it airborne. The spinning wheel of titanium made lethal contact with the Rogue’s neck. It dropped to the floor with a shriek, and Dante turned his hatred on the bigger one, which had moved around to challenge him to its prey.
The Rogue crouched low in front of Tess’s limp body, facing off against Dante with fangs bared and eyes aglow with feral amber light. The suckhead appeared young behind the Bloodlust that had transformed it into a beast, probably one of the missing Darkhaven civilians. Didn’t matter; the only good Rogue was a dead one—especially this one, which had its hands and mouth all over Tess, sucking precious life out of her.
Might have killed her already, if Dante didn’t get her out of there quick.
Blood screaming into his muscles, Tess’s pain and one that was wholly his own galvanizing him for the fight, Dante bared his own fangs and flew at the Rogue with a roar. He wanted to deliver brutal, hellish vengeance, tear the bastard apart piece by piece before gutting it with one of his blades. But expedience was paramount. Saving Tess was all that mattered.
Latching on to the Rogue’s snapping jaw, Dante levered his arm and shoved down hard, cracking bones and severing tendons. As the suckhead screamed, Dante flipped a blade into his free hand and buried the titanium-edged steel into the vampire’s chest. He shoved the corpse off him and went to Tess’s side.
“Ah, God.” Kneeling down, he heard her soft, rasping breath. It was shallow, so thin. The wound on her wrist was nasty, but the one on her neck was savage. Her skin was pale as snow, cool to the touch when he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her slack fingers. “Tess…hang on, baby. I’ve got you now. I’m taking you out of here.”
Easing her into his arms, Dante gathered her close and carried her outside.
CHAPTER Twenty-eight
Chase stepped over the body of a dead human male that lay just outside the first-floor apartment door, the television blaring from inside the living room. The old man had been mauled by Rogues, at least one of which still remained in the building. Chase climbed the stairs to Ben Sullivan’s apartment in utter silence, his thighs pumping, senses tuned to his surroundings. He held the Beretta in both hands up near his right shoulder, the safety off, barrel tipped up toward the ceiling. He could have the weapon leveled and firing off titanium rounds in a fraction of a second. For the Rogue moving carelessly around in the apartment at the top of the stairs, death was imminent.
Reaching the last step, Chase paused in the hallway adjacent to the open unit door. Through the crack beside the jamb, he saw that the place had been sacked. The Rogues who’d come there were looking for something—definitely not Ben Sullivan himself, unless they expected to find him hiding in one of the dozens of drawers and file boxes that had been upended inside the apartment. He saw a flash of movement from within and drew back just as a Rogue came out of the kitchen with a butcher knife and began slicing into the cushions of the recliner, tearing the thing apart.
With the toe of his boot, Chase eased the door open wide enough for him to slip through, then he cautiously entered the unit, his 9mm trained on the Rogue from behind. The vampire’s frenzied search made him oblivious to the threat creeping up on him until Chase stood not two feet away, the barrel of the gun dropped level with the center of the Rogue’s head.
Chase could have fired in that instant, probably should have. All of his training and logic told him to pull the trigger and release one of those custom-made titanium rounds into the back of the Rogue’s skull, but instinct made him hesitate.
In a fraction of a second, his mind took a visual inventory of the vampire before him. He noted the tall, athletic build, the civilian clothes…the shadow of youthful innocence hidden beneath the filthy sweatshirt and jeans, the greasy, unkempt hair. He was looking at a junkie, there was no doubt about that. The Rogue smelled of sour blood and sweat—hallmarks of a vampire lost to Bloodlust.
But this addict was no stranger.
“Jesus,” Chase whispered, low under his breath. “Camden?”
The Rogue went utterly still at the sound of Chase’s voice. His shoulders came up, shaggy head began to pivot to the side, cocked at an exaggerated angle. Through bared teeth and fangs, he grunted, sniffing at the air. His gaze wasn’t totally visible, but Chase could see that his nephew’s eyes were bright amber, glowing from out of his sallow face.
“Cam, it’s me. It’s your uncle. Put down the knife, son.”
If he understood, Camden gave no indication. Nor did he let go of the huge butcher knife gripped in his hand. He started to turn around, slowly, like an animal suddenly made aware that it was cornered.
“It’s all over,” Chase told him. “You’re safe now. I’m here to help you.”
Even as he said the words, Chase wondered if he truly meant them. He lowered his pistol but kept the safety off, every muscle in his arm taut, his finger hovering over the trigger. Apprehension wormed up his spine, as cold as the night breeze floating through the apartment from the open door and sliders. Chase, too, felt cornered here, uncertain of his nephew and himself.
“Camden, your mother is very worried about you. She wants you to come home. Can you do that for her, son?”
A long moment ticked off in wary silence as Chase watched his brother’s only offspring pivot around to face him. Chase wasn’t prepared for what he saw. He tried to keep his expression schooled, but bile rose in his throat as he took in the bloodstained, ragged appearance of the kid who not a couple of weeks ago had been joking and laughing with his friends, a golden child whose future had been so full of promise.
Chase could find no sign of that hope in the feral male looming before him now, his clothing soiled from the slaughter he’d taken part in downstairs, the knife from the kitchen gripped at the ready in his hand. His pupils were fixed and narrow, mere slivers of black in the center of his vacant amber gaze.
“Cam, please…let me know that you’re in there somewhere.”
Chase’s palms began to sweat. His right arm started coming up of its own accord, slowly raising the weapon. The Rogue grunted, legs moving into a crouch. The feral gaze flicked from side to side, calculating, deciding. Chase didn’t know if the impulse running through Camden in that moment was fight or flight. He brought the 9mm higher, and higher still, his finger trembling on the trigger.
“Ah, fuck…this is no good. No goddamn good.”
With a bleak sigh, he arced the pistol’s barrel straight up in the air and shot a round into the ceiling. The crack of gunfire echoed sharply, and Camden jolted into action, leaping across the room to escape. He ran past Chase toward the open sliders. Without so much as a backward glance, he vaulted over the balcony and dropped out of sight.
Chase sagged on his feet, an oppressive mixture of relief and regret pouring over him. He’d found his nephew, but he’d just let a Rogue go back onto the streets.
When he finally lifted his head and glanced to the open doorway of the apartment, he found Tegan standing there, watching him with a keen, knowing gaze. The warrior may not have seen him release the Rogue, but he knew. That flat, emotionless green stare seemed to know everything.
“I couldn’t do it,” Chase murmured, shaking his head as he looked down at the discharged weapon. “He’s my kin, and I just…couldn’t.”
Tegan said nothing for a long moment, measuring him in the silence. “We have to go now,” he said evenly. “The woman is in bad shape. Dante’s waiting with her in the car.”
Chase nodded, then followed the warrior out of the building.
His pulse still throbbing with fear and rage, Dante arranged Tess in the backseat of the Rover, her head and shoulders cradled in his arms, his jacket covering her to keep her warm. He had torn off his shirt and cut it into strips, wrapping makeshift bandages around the wound at her wrist and the more severe laceration in her neck.
She lay so still against him, her weight so slight. He looked down at her face, grateful that the Rogues’ attack had not gone so far as to strike her or torture her, as their diseased kind was wont to do with their prey. They hadn’t raped her, and that was an enormous blessing too, given their savage, animal natures. But the Rogues had taken her blood—a great deal of it. If Dante hadn’t found her when he did, they might have drained her completely.
He shuddered, cold to his bones at the thought. Seeing her lying there, her eyelids closed in unconsciousness, her skin pale and cool, Dante knew the one sure way to help her. She needed blood to replace what she had lost. Not the medical transfusions her human sisters would require, but blood given from one of the Breed.
He had already forced one half of the blood bond on her, the night he took her blood to save himself. Could he be so callous as to shackle her with the completion of that bond while she had nothing to say about it? The only other choice was to stand by and watch her die in his arms.
Unacceptable, even if she might hate him for giving her a life that would link her to him by unbreakable chains. She deserved so much more than what he had to give her.
“Damn it, Tess. I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”
He brought his wrist up to his mouth and scored a vertical gash with the razor edge of his long fangs. Blood swelled to the surface, running in a rivulet down his bare arm. He was vaguely aware of urgent footsteps approaching the SUV as he lifted Tess’s head in preparation of feeding her.
The front doors opened and Tegan and Chase got in. Tegan glanced into the back, his gaze lighting on Tess’s arm—on her limp right hand, which had slipped out from under the cover of Dante’s jacket. The hand that bore the teardrop-and-crescent-moon mark. The warrior’s eyes narrowed, then came up to Dante’s in question as much as caution.
“She’s a Breedmate.”
“I know what she is,” Dante told his brother-in-arms. He didn’t even attempt to mask the grave concern in his voice. “Drive, Tegan. Get us to the compound as fast as you can.”
As the warrior threw the Rover into gear and gunned it, Dante placed his wrist against Tess’s slack lips and watched as his blood trickled into her mouth.
CHAPTER Twenty-nine
Tess thought she must be dying. She felt weightless and leaden at the same time, floating in a neverland between the pain of one world and the deep unknown of the next. The dark undertow of that further, unfamiliar place tugged at her, but she wasn’t afraid. A soothing warmth enveloped her, as if strong angel’s wings were folded around her, holding her aloft over the rising tide that lapped gently at her limbs.
She sank into that warm embrace. She needed that abiding, steady strength.
There were voices around her, pitched low and urgent in tone, yet the words were indistinct. Her body vibrated with the constant hum of motion beneath her, her senses gone sluggish with the occasional sway of her limbs. Was she being carried somewhere? She was too exhausted to wonder, too content to simply drift away in the protective warmth that cocooned her.
She wanted to sleep. Just melt away and sleep, forever….
A droplet of something hot splashed against her lips. Like silk, it ran along the seam of her mouth in a slow trail, its enticing fragrance drifting up into her nose. Another drop fell against her lips, warm and wet and heady as wine, and her tongue drifted out to taste it.
As soon as her mouth parted open, it was flooded with liquid heat. She moaned, uncertain what she was tasting but full with the knowledge that she needed more. The first swallow roared through her like an enormous wave. There was more for her to take, a steady flow that she latched on to with her lips and tongue, drawing from the font as though she were dying of thirst. Maybe she was. All she knew was that she wanted it, needed it, and couldn’t get enough.
Someone murmured her name, softly, deeply, as she drank the strange elixir. She knew the voice. She knew the scent that seemed to bloom all around her and spill into her mouth.
She knew that he was saving her, the dark angel whose arms protected her now.
Dante.
It was Dante with her in this peculiar void; she knew it with every particle of her being.
Tess was still floating, held aloft over the churning sea of the unknown. Slowly, the dark water rose up to engulf her, thick as cream, warm as a bath. Dante eased her into it, his arms holding her steady, so strong and gentle. She dissolved into the rolling tide, drinking it down, feeling it soak into her muscles, her bones, her smallest cells.
In the peace that washed over her, Tess’s consciousness slipped into another world, one that came to her in shades of deep scarlet, crimson, and wine.
The drive to the compound took an eternity, even though Tegan had to have set a few land speed records navigating through Boston’s busy, winding streets to the private drive leading to the Order’s headquarters. As soon as the Rover came to a stop in the fleet garage, Dante threw open the back door of the vehicle and carefully brought Tess out in his arms.
She was still in and out of consciousness, still weak from blood loss and shock, but he felt some hope that she would live. She had taken only a small amount of his blood; now that she was safe at the compound, he would make sure she got as much as she needed.
Hell, he’d bleed himself out completely if that’s what it would take to save her.
God, that wasn’t just some bullshit noble idea; he really meant it. He was desperate that Tess survive, so much that he would die for her. The physical ties of their completed blood bond ensured that he felt protective of her, but this was something stronger than that. It went deeper than he could ever have guessed.
He loved her.
The ferocity of his emotion struck Dante as he carried Tess into the garage elevator, Tegan and Chase on his heels. Someone hit the button to descend and they began the smooth, silent ride down the three hundred-some feet of earth and steel that sheltered the Breed’s compound from the rest of the world.
When the doors slid open, Lucan was standing in the corridor outside the elevator. Gideon was next to him, both warriors armed and wearing grave expressions. No doubt Lucan had been alerted to the others’ urgent arrival when the Rover showed up on the compound gate’s security camera.
He took one look at Dante and the savaged female in his arms and exhaled a dark curse. “What happened?”
“Let me through,” Dante said as he moved past his brethren, careful not to jostle Tess in the process. “She needs to rest someplace warm. She’s lost a lot of blood—”
“I can see that. Now, what the hell happened out there?”
“Rogues,” Chase put in, taking over the explanation to Lucan while Dante stepped out into the corridor, all his focus on Tess. “A group of them were sacking the Crimson dealer’s apartment. I don’t know what they were looking for, but the woman must have come up on them somehow. Maybe she got in their way. She’s got bite wounds on her arm and throat, from more than one attacker.”
Dante nodded at the facts, grateful for the Darkhaven vampire’s verbal assist since his own voice seemed to have dried up in his throat.
“Jesus,” Lucan said, turning a grim glance on Dante. “This is the Breedmate you spoke of? This is Tess?”
“Yeah.” He looked down at her, so still and colorless in his arms, and felt a piercing chill bore into his chest. “Another few seconds and I might have been too late….”
“Goddamn suckheads,” Gideon hissed as he raked a hand through his hair. “I’ll go prep a room for her in the infirmary.”
“No.” Dante’s reply was sharper than intended, and unyielding. He held out his scored wrist, the skin still red and wet at the place he’d fed her. “She is mine. She stays with me.”
Gideon’s eyes widened, but he said nothing more. Nor did anyone else, as Dante brushed past the group of warriors and headed with Tess down the maze of hallways to his private quarters. Once inside, he brought her into the bedroom and gently placed her on the king-size bed. He kept the lights dim, his voice soft and low, as he set about trying to make her comfortable.
With a mental command, he willed the bathroom sink on, running warm water into the basin as he carefully removed the makeshift bandages that covered Tess’s wrist and neck. She had stopped bleeding, thankfully. Her wounds were raw and hideous on her flawless skin, but the worst of the injuries was past.
Seeing the ugly marks left by the Rogues who attacked her, Dante wished he had Tess’s healing touch. He wanted to erase the injuries before she had a chance to see them, but he couldn’t work that kind of miracle. His blood would heal her from within, replenish her body and give her a preternatural vitality she’d never known. Over time, if she fed from him regularly as his mate, her health would be ageless. In time the scars would mend too. Not soon enough for him. He wanted to tear her attackers apart all over again, torture them slowly instead of delivering the efficient death the Rogues had received.
The need for violence, for vengeance against every Rogue who could ever harm her, seethed through him like acid. Dante tamped the urge down, throwing all of his energy into tending Tess with reverent, gentle hands. He eased her out of her bloodstained jacket, peeling off the sleeves and then lifting her slack body to free her of it. The pullover sweater she wore beneath was ruined as well, the celery-colored wool soaked a garish red around the neck and the edge of the long sleeve.
He would have to cut the sweater off; no way he was going to try to pull it over her head and disturb the nasty bite wound at her throat. Retrieving one of the daggers sheathed at his hip, he slid the blade under the hem and ripped a clean line up the center of the garment. The soft wool fell away, exposing Tess’s creamy torso and the peach-hued lace of her bra.
A sexual stirring roused within him, as automatic as breathing, as he looked down on the perfection of her skin, the sweetly feminine curves of her body. Seeing her always brought out his hunger, but seeing her marked by rough Rogue hands put a steadying calm in him that trumped even the strength of his base desire to possess her.
She was safe now, and that was all he needed.
Dante set the blade down on the nightstand, then removed Tess’s ruined sweater and dropped it next to the jacket beside the bed. The room was warm, but her skin was still cool to the touch. Pulling the edge of the black silk comforter from the other side of his large bed, he covered her, then went into the bathroom to get a soapy washcloth and a fresh towel to clean her up. As he came back out to the bedroom, he heard a quiet rap on the open door of his quarters, too soft to belong to any of the warriors.
“Dante?” Savannah’s velvety voice was even softer than her knock. She came in carrying a handful of ointments and medicines, her dark, gentle eyes filled with sympathy. Lucan’s mate, Gabrielle, was with her, the auburn-haired Breedmate holding a plush robe over her arm. “We heard what happened and thought we’d bring a few things to help make her more comfortable.”
“Thank you.”
He watched idly from the bedside as the other women approached to set down their items. His main focus was on Tess. He lifted her hand and carefully swept the edge of the warm washcloth over the crusted blood on her wrist, his strokes as light as he could manage with his large clumsy hands that were better suited to holding firearms or steel.
“Is she all right?” Gabrielle asked from behind him. “Lucan said you put her to your vein to save her.”
Dante nodded, but he felt no pride over what he’d done. “She’ll hate me for it when she understands what it means. She doesn’t know that she’s a Breedmate. She doesn’t know…what I am.”
He was stunned to feel a small hand light reassuringly on his shoulder. “Then you should tell her, Dante. Don’t put it off. Trust her enough that she will make sense of the truth, even if she is resistant to accept it at first.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know she deserves the truth.”
He was gratified by Gabrielle’s sympathetic gesture and by the soundness of her advice. She spoke from experience, after all. The female had been through her own astonishing truth with Lucan just a few months earlier. Although the pair were inseparable ever since and clearly in love, Lucan and Gabrielle’s journey had been anything but smooth. None of the warriors knew the specifics, but Dante could guess that Lucan and his stony, remote nature hadn’t made it easy for either of them.
Savannah stepped up next to him at the bed now. “After you clean her wounds, put some of this ointment on them. Along with your blood in her system, the medicine will help speed the healing and lessen her scars.”
“Okay.” Dante took the jar of homemade remedy and set it down on the nightstand. “Thank you. Both of you.”
The women gave him understanding smiles, then Savannah bent to pick up Tess’s soiled jacket and sweater.
“I don’t think these will be of any use to her now.” The instant her fingers closed around the clothing, her smooth features pinched. She closed her eyes, wincing. Her breath caught, then leaked out of her in a shaky sigh. “My Lord, the poor thing. The attack on her was so…savage. Did you know they nearly bled her dry?”
Dante inclined his head. “I know.”
“She was almost gone by the time that you—Well, you saved her, and that’s what matters,” Savannah said, adopting a serene tone that didn’t quite mask the discomfort she was feeling after reading the terrible details of Tess’s attack. “If you need anything at all, Dante, just ask. Gabrielle and I will do whatever we can to help.”
He nodded, already going back to work on Tess’s wounds with the damp cloth. He heard the women leave, and the space around him went still with the weight of his thoughts. He didn’t know how long he remained at Tess’s side—easily hours. He cleaned her up and toweled her off, then climbed in bed next to her and stretched out against her, just watching her sleep and praying that she would open her beautiful eyes for him again soon.
A hundred thoughts went through his mind as he lay there, a hundred promises he wanted to make to her. He wanted her to be safe always, to be happy. He wanted her to live forever. With him, if she’d have him; without, if that was the only other way. He would look after her as long as he was able, and if—more likely when—the death that stalked him finally caught up to him, he would have already seen to it that there would always be a place for Tess among the Breed.
God, was he actually thinking about the future?
Planning for it?
It seemed so strange that, after spending his entire life living like there was no tomorrow, convinced that at any second there would be no tomorrow, all it took was one woman to throw all of that fatalistic thinking right over a cliff. He still believed death was around the corner—he knew it with the same clarity that his mother knew her own death and that of her mate—but one extraordinary woman had made him hope like hell that he was wrong.
Tess made him wish that he had all the time in the world, so long as he could spend every second of it with her.
She had to wake up soon. She had to get better, because he had to make things right with her. She had to know how he felt, what she meant to him—and what he’d done to her, by binding them together in blood.
How long should it take for his blood to absorb into her body and begin its rejuvenation? How much would she need? She had taken only the smallest amount in the ride to the compound, just the few scant drops he could work into her mouth and down her slack throat. Maybe she needed more.
Using the dagger next to him on the nightstand, Dante scored a fresh line on his wrist. He pressed the bleeding cut to Tess’s lips, waiting to feel her respond, wanting to curse to the rafters when her mouth remained unmoving, his blood dripping down, useless, onto her chin.
“Come on, angel. Drink for me.” He stroked her cool cheek, brushed a tangle of her honey-blond hair from her forehead. “Please live, Tess…drink, and live.”
A throat cleared awkwardly from the area near the bedroom doorjamb. “I’m sorry, the uh…the door was open.”
Chase. Just fucking great. Dante couldn’t think of anyone he’d like to see less right now. He was too entrenched in what he was doing—in what he was feeling—to deal with another interruption, particularly one coming from the Darkhaven agent. He’d hoped the bastard was already long gone from the compound, back to where he came from—preferably with one of Lucan’s size-fourteens planted all the way up his ass. Then again, maybe Lucan was saving the privilege for Dante instead.
“Get out,” he growled.
“Is she drinking at all?”
Dante scoffed, low under his breath. “What part of ‘get out’ did you fail to understand, Harvard? I don’t need an audience right now, and I sure as hell don’t need any more of your bullshit.”
He pressed his wrist to Tess’s lips again, parting them with the fingers of his free hand in the hopes that she might take some of his blood by mild force. It wasn’t happening. Dante’s eyes stung as he stared down at her. He felt wetness streaking his cheeks. Tasted the salt of tears gathering at the corner of his mouth.
“Shit,” he muttered, wiping his face into his shoulder in a strange mix of confusion and despair.
He heard footsteps coming up near the bed. Felt the air around him stir as Chase reached out his hand. “It might work better if you tilt her head, like th—”
“Don’t…touch her.” The words came out in a voice Dante hardly recognized as his own, it was so full of venom and deadly warning. He swiveled his head around and met the agent’s eyes, his vision burning and sharp, his fangs having stretched long in an instant.
The protective urge boiling through him was fierce, utterly lethal, and Chase evidently understood at once. He backed off, hands raised in front of him. “I’m sorry. I meant no harm. I only wanted to help, Dante. And to apologize.”
“Don’t bother.” He turned back to Tess, miserable with worry and craving solitude. “I don’t need anything from you, Harvard. Except your absence.”
A long silence answered, and for a moment Dante wondered if the agent had actually slunk away as he hoped. No such luck.
“I understand how you feel, Dante.”
“Do you.”
“I think so, yes. Now I think I understand a lot of things that I didn’t before.”
“Well, good for you. Fucking brilliant of you, former Agent Chase. Write it up in one of your pointless reports and maybe your buddies in the Darkhavens will pin a goddamn medal of commendation on you. Harvard finally clues in on something.”
The vampire chuckled wryly, without rancor. “I’ve fucked up, I know. I’ve lied to you and to the others, and I’ve jeopardized this mission because of personal, selfish motives. It was wrong, what I did. And I want you to know—especially you, Dante—that I’m sorry.”
Dante’s pulse was hammering with fury, and with fear for Tess’s condition as well, but he did not lash out at Chase as impulse made him want to do. He heard the contrition in the male’s voice. And he heard humility, something generally on short order with Dante himself. Until now. Until Tess.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Honestly? Because I see how much you care about this woman. You care, and you’re scared shitless about it. You’re afraid you’re going to lose her, and right now you’ll do anything to hold on to her.”
“I’d kill for her,” Dante said quietly. “I would die for her.”
“Yes. I know you would. Maybe you can see how easy it would be to lie, cheat, or even give up your life’s purpose to help her—to do anything, risk anything, if it would mean protecting her from any more hurt.”
Frowning with new comprehension and suddenly unable to despise the agent any longer, Dante turned to look at Chase. “You said you had no female in your life, no family or obligations beyond your brother’s widow….”
Chase smiled vaguely. Etched in misery and longing, the vampire’s face said it all. “Her name is Elise. She was there tonight, when you and Tegan came to pick me up at my home.”
He should have known. He did know, on some level, Dante acknowledged now. Chase’s reaction when the woman came outside had been virulent, unhinged. It was only when he saw her potentially in harm’s way that he lost his usual cool. He’d looked like he’d wanted to tear Tegan’s head off for touching the female, a possessiveness that went beyond simple defense of one’s kin.
And by the look on Chase’s face, he was alone in his affection.
“Anyway,” the agent said abruptly. “I just…wanted you to know that I’m sorry for everything. I want to help you and the rest of the Order in any way I can, so if there is anything you need, you know where I am.”
“Chase,” Dante said as the male turned to leave the room. “Apology accepted, man. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I haven’t been fair to you either. Despite our differences, know that I respect you. The Agency lost a good one the day they cut you loose.”
Chase’s smile was crooked as he acknowledged the praise with a short nod.
Dante cleared his throat. “And about that offer of help…”
“Name it.”
“Tess was walking a dog when the Rogues attacked her tonight. Ugly little mutt, not good for much more than a foot-warmer, but it’s special to her. Actually, it was a gift from me, more or less. Anyway, the dog was running loose on its leash when I saw it a block or so away from Ben Sullivan’s place.”
“You want me to go retrieve a wayward canine, is that where this is heading?”
“Well, you did say anything, didn’t you?”
“So I did.” Chase chuckled. “All right. I will.”
Dante dug the keys to his Porsche out of his pocket and tossed them to the other vampire. As Chase turned to be on his way again, Dante added, “The little beast answers to the name Harvard, by the way.”
“Harvard,” Chase drawled, shaking his head and throwing a smirk in Dante’s direction. “I don’t suppose that’s a coincidence.”
Dante shrugged. “Good to see that Ivy League pedigree of yours comes in handy for something.”
“Jesus Christ, warrior. You really were busting my ass since the minute I came on board, weren’t you?”
“Hey, by all comparisons, I was kind. Do yourself a favor and don’t look too closely at Niko’s shooting targets, unless you’re very secure about your manhood.”
“Assholes,” Chase muttered, but there was only humor in his tone. “Sit tight, and I’ll be back in a few with your mutt. Anything else you’re gonna hit me up for now that I opened my big yap about wanting to get square with you?”
“Actually, there might be something else,” Dante replied, his thoughts going sober when he considered Tess and any kind of future that might be deserving of her. “But we can talk about that when you get back, yeah?”
Chase nodded, catching on to the turn in mood. “Yeah. Sure we can.”
CHAPTER Thirty
When Chase strode out of Dante’s living quarters into the hallway, Gideon was waiting there.
“How’s it going in there?” the warrior asked.
“She’s still unconscious, but I think she’s in good hands. Dante is determined that she’ll be all right, and once that warrior gets an idea in his head, there isn’t much that’s going to stand in his way.”
“True enough,” Gideon chuckled. He was holding a portable video device, which he now turned on. “Listen, I tapped into some Rogue activity on satellite surveillance earlier tonight. More than one of the subjects appear to be Darkhaven civilians. You got a minute to take a look, maybe provide some ID for us?”
“Of course.”
Chase glanced down at the small screen of the hand-held as Gideon called up the images and fast-forwarded to a specific frame. The night-vision footage, zoomed in on a decrepit building in one of the city’s industrial slums, showed four individuals exiting from a back door. By the gait and size of them, Chase could tell they were vampires. But the human they were stalking had no idea.
The recorded feed played on, and Chase watched, repulsed, as the four Darkhaven youths closed in on their prey. They attacked swiftly and savagely, like the Bloodlusting predators they were. Gang-style attacks on humans were unheard of among the Breed; only vampires turned Rogue hunted and killed like this.
“Can you tighten up this frame?” he asked Gideon, not really wanting to see more of the carnage but unable to look away.
“Think you recognize any of them?”
“Yes,” Chase said, his gut convulsing as the focus closed in on Camden’s disheveled, feral appearance. The second sighting of the youth in the past few hours, and irrefutable evidence that he was beyond retrieving. “They’re all from the Boston Darkhaven. I can give you their names, if you like. That one there is called Camden. He is my brother’s son.”
“Fuck,” Gideon whispered. “One of these Rogues is your nephew?”
“He started using Crimson and went missing nearly two weeks ago. He is the real reason I came to the Order for help. I wanted to locate him and bring him back before this happened.”
The other warrior’s face was grave. “You know that all of the individuals on this satellite feed are Rogues. They’re addicts now, Chase. Lost causes—”
“I know. I saw Camden earlier tonight, when Dante, Tegan, and I were at Ben Sullivan’s place. As soon as I looked into his eyes, I understood what he was. This only confirms it.”
Gideon was quiet for a long moment as he clicked off the device. “Our policy on Rogues is pretty plain. It has to be. I’m sorry, Chase, but if we run across any of these individuals in our patrols, there is only one course of action.”
Chase nodded. He knew that the Order’s stance when it came to dealing with Rogues was unwavering, and after riding shotgun with Dante for the past few nights, he knew it had to be that way. Camden was gone, and now it was only a matter of time before the Bloodlusting shell that was left of his nephew met a violent end, either in combat with the warriors or through his own reckless actions.
“I have to go topside and do something for Dante,” Chase said. “But I’ll be back within the hour, and I can give you whatever info you need to help get these Rogues off the streets.”
“Thanks.” Gideon clapped him on the shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry, man. I wish things could be different. We’ve all lost loved ones to this goddamn war. It never gets any easier.”
“Right. I’ll catch you later,” Chase said, then he strode away, heading for the elevator that would take him to the Order’s fleet garage on ground level.
As he rode up, he thought about Elise. He’d come clean to Dante and the others about Camden, but he was still keeping the truth from Elise. She needed to know. She needed to be prepared for what had happened to her son and to understand what it meant. Chase wouldn’t be bringing Cam home now. No one could. The truth was going to kill Elise, but she deserved to have it.
Chase stepped off the elevator and reached into his coat pocket to withdraw his cell phone. As he walked toward Dante’s coupe, he hit the speed dial for his home. Elise picked up on the second ring, her voice anxious, hopeful.
“Hello? Sterling, are you all right? Have you found him?”
Chase stopped walking, cursing inwardly. For a long second he could not speak. He didn’t know how to phrase what he had to say. “I, uh…Yes, Elise, Camden has been sighted tonight.”
“Oh, my God.” She let out a sob, then hesitated. “Sterling, is he…Please, tell me he’s alive.”
Shit. He hadn’t expected to do this over the phone. He thought he’d call her and let her know that he’d be there to explain everything later on, but Elise’s maternal worry knew no patience. She was desperate for answers, and Chase could not keep them from her any longer.
“Ah, hell, Elise. It’s not good news.” In the heavy, utter silence that held on the other end of the line, Chase launched into the facts. “Cam was spotted tonight, running with a group of Rogues. I saw him myself, at the apartment of the human who’s been dealing Crimson. He’s in bad shape, Elise. He’s…Christ, there’s just no easy way to tell you this. He’s turned, Elise. It’s too late. Camden has gone Rogue.”
“No,” she said finally. “No, I don’t believe you. You’re mistaken.”
“It’s no mistake. God, I wish it was, but I saw him with my own eyes, and I’ve seen surveillance footage of him collected by the warriors as well. He and a group of other Darkhaven youths—all Rogues now—were caught on satellite, attacking a human in full public view.”
“I need to see it.”
“No, trust me, you don’t—”
“Sterling, listen to me. Camden is my son. He’s all I have left. If he’s done these things, as you say—if he’s become such an animal and you have some proof of this—I have a right to see it for myself.”
Chase drummed his fingers on the roof of the black Porsche, knowing that none of the warriors was going to appreciate him bringing a civilian into the compound.
“Sterling, are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m still here.”
“If you care the least bit for me or for your brother’s memory, then please, let me see my son.”
“Okay,” he said, relenting at last and consoling himself with the idea that if he granted her this dubious request, he would at least be present to catch Elise when she fell. “I have some business topside, but I’ll swing by the Darkhaven in about an hour to pick you up.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
That incredible warmth was back, Tess mused from within the dark tide that held her. She stretched her senses toward the engulfing heat, toward the wondrous scent and taste of the liquid fire that fed her. Conscious thought seemed to dance just out of her reach, but her nerve endings clicked on like strings of tiny lights, as though her body was slowly thawing, coming alive inch by inch, cell by cell, after a long, cold sleep.
“Drink,” a deep voice beckoned her, and she did.
She drew more of the heat into her mouth, swallowing it down in greedy pulls. A strange awakening began somewhere deep inside her as she drank from the source of that powerful warmth. It started in her fingers and toes, then spread up into her limbs, an electricity that hummed through her in undulating waves.
“That’s it, Tess. Take more. Just keep drinking, angel.”
She couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. It seemed as though each sip made her thirsty for another, every swallow only adding fuel to the fire that was building within the very core of her. She felt like an infant at its mother’s breast, vulnerable and uninitiated, trusting completely, needing on the most basic level.
She was being given life; she knew this in that primitive part of her mind. She had been near death, maybe close enough to touch it, but this warmth—this dark elixir—had pulled her back.
“More,” she croaked. At least she thought she had spoken. The voice she heard sounded distant and weak. So desperate. “More…”
Tess shuddered as an abrupt absence of warmth answered her demand. No, she thought, a dark panic rising with the loss. He was leaving her now. Her protective angel was gone, along with the font of life he’d given her. She moaned weakly, forcing her listless hands to reach out and search for him.
“Dante…”
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
The chill vanished as a heavy weight settled in alongside her. Heat warmed her entire length, heat from him as he pulled her up against him. She felt strong fingers at her nape, guiding her head closer to his voice, pressing her mouth to the firm column of his neck. Warm, wet skin met her lips.
“Come here, Tess, and drink from me. Take all you need.”
Drink from him? Some fading part of her consciousness rejected the idea as nonsensical, unthinkable, but another part of her—the part that was still spinning wildly in the tide, grasping for solid ground—made her mouth seek out that which he so willingly offered.
Tess parted her lips and sucked long and hard, filling her mouth with the roaring force of Dante’s gift.
Holy. Hell.
As Tess locked her mouth down over the vein he’d opened for her in his neck, Dante’s entire body went as taut as a bowstring. The hungry suction of her lips, the silky caress of her tongue as she drew his blood into her mouth and swallowed it, made his cock stand up at attention, a fierce, stone-hard erection like he’d never experienced before.
He hadn’t known how intense it would be to let her drink from him so intimately. This was the first time in all his existence that he’d ever given his blood to another. He had always been the taker, feeding out of necessity and often for pleasure, but never with a Breedmate.
Never with a woman who moved him the way Tess did.
And the fact that she fed from him now out of pure survival instinct, because his blood was the very thing—the only thing—her body needed in this moment, just made the act all the more erotic to him. His sex throbbed, hungry and demanding, a heavy pressure that he wanted to ignore but couldn’t.
Christ, but it felt as if she were sucking on that very male part of him, each pull of her mouth ratcheting him up tighter, nearly sending him straight over the edge. With a groan, Dante fisted his hands in the silk sheets of his bed, holding on as Tess fed from him in primal need.
Her fingers started twitching where they clutched his shoulders, kneading his muscles in a mindless rhythm as she continued to draw his blood into her mouth. Dante felt her strength coming back to her with each passing minute. Her breathing grew deeper, no more the rapid, shallow compression of her lungs but a cadence of long, healthy draws.
Feeling her vitality return was the greatest aphrodisiac he had ever known. It took Herculean effort not to catch her in his arms and press her beneath him so he could slake his own thundering need.
“Keep drinking,” he told her, his mouth full with the presence of his extended fangs and a tongue gone thick with his own thirst. “Don’t stop, Tess. It’s all for you. Only for you.”
She moved up closer to him now, her breasts crushing against his chest, and her hips…God, her hips were rubbing along his pelvis, undulating in a subtle, instinctual motion as her mouth continued to work feverishly at his neck. He rolled onto his back and held as still as he could for her, his eyes closed in exquisite torment, his pulse raging.
Restraint was not something he was accustomed to practicing, but for Tess he would endure the agony all night if necessary. He relished it, actually, as much as his desire for her shredded him in pieces. He lay back on the mattress and absorbed every nuance of her body’s movement, every soft mewl and moan she made against his throat.
He might have lasted longer if Tess hadn’t crawled up over him, her mouth still fastened to his vein, her hair falling loosely onto his chest. Dante’s spine arced beneath her, rising up off the bed as she sucked deeper now, her slender body feeling hot to the touch, moving all over him in slow erotic waves.
She started riding him, her thighs spread across his hips, her sex grinding on his as if they were naked together and making love. Even through the nylon warmups he wore, he could feel Tess’s intense heat. Her panties were wet from desire, the sweet scent of her arousal slamming into his brain like a hammer.
“Christ,” he gasped, reaching up to grab the headboard as her feeding rose to a frenzied crescendo.
She rocked on him, faster and harder, her blunt human teeth latching on to his neck as she sucked deeper than ever at his vein. He felt her climax swelling, breaking loose. His own was roaring up on him fast as well, his shaft surging, leaping, ready to blow. The second Tess came, Dante surrendered to his own release. The orgasm crashed into him, laying him low, wringing him out. He was lost to it, unable to stop the fierce pulsations that seemed to go on endlessly as Tess settled on top of him in a sated, heavy sleep.
After a while, Dante unclamped his hands from the headboard and brought them down gently on Tess’s slack body. He wanted to be inside her, needed it like he needed air to breathe, but she was vulnerable right now and he would not use her. Now that she was out of danger, there would be other times for them to be together like this, better times.
God, there had to be.
CHAPTER Thirty-one
Tess came awake gently, her face breaking through the surface of a warm, dark wave that floated her body toward a welcoming shore. She took a breath and felt cool, cleansing air rush into her lungs. Her eyes blinked open, once, twice, the lids feeling heavy as though she’d been asleep for days.
“Hello, angel,” said a deep, familiar voice very near her face.
Tess lifted her gaze until she saw him—Dante, looking down on her, his eyes sober but smiling. He stroked her forehead, smoothing damp strands of hair out of her face.
“How do you feel?”
“Okay.” She felt better than okay, her body resting on a soft mattress, cocooned in black silk sheets and the strong shelter of Dante’s arms. “Where are we?”
“Someplace safe. This is where I live, Tess. Nothing can harm you here.”
She registered his assurances with a pang of confusion, something shadowy and cold hovering at the edges of her consciousness. Fear. She didn’t feel it now, not for him, but the feeling lingered like a mist clinging to her skin, chilling her.
She had been afraid a short while ago—deathly afraid.
Tess reached a hand up to her neck. Her fingers made contact there with a patch of inflamed, tender skin. Like a sudden flash of lightning, a memory ripped through her mind: a hideous face, with eyes as bright as lit coals, a mouth opened wide in a terrifying hiss, baring huge sharp teeth.
“I was attacked,” she murmured, the words forming even before the memory took full root. “They came up to me on the street and they…attacked me. Two of them dragged me off the street and they—”
“I know,” Dante said, carefully removing her hand from her neck. “But you’re all right, Tess. It’s over, and you don’t have to be afraid now.”
In a blur of recollection, the night’s events played in fast-forward through her mind. She relived it all, from her walk past Ben’s apartment and the realization that someone other than him was inside the place, to the shocking sight of seeing the large men—if they even were men at all—leaping down from the balcony to the street below and chasing after her. She saw their terrible faces, felt the bruising strength of the hands that seized her and pulled her into the dark where the real brutality was to begin.
She could still feel the terror of that moment, when one man held her arms and the other pinned her down with the weight of his huge muscular body. She’d thought she would be raped, probably beaten as well, but her attackers’ intent was only slightly less horrific.
They had bitten her.
The two savage monsters held her down like felled prey on the floor of a dark, dilapidated shed. Then they bit her at the neck and wrist and began to drink her blood.
She had been certain she was going to die there, but then something miraculous happened. Dante happened. He had killed them both, a fact Tess had not so much seen as felt. Lying on the rough plywood floor of the shed, the smell of her own blood choking her senses, she had felt Dante’s presence. She had felt his rage fill the small space like a tempest of black heat.
“You…you were there too, Dante.” Tess sat up, her body seeming miraculously strong, no lingering aches from her ordeal. Now that her mind was clearing, she felt energized and refreshed, like she had just awoken from a deep, rejuvenating sleep. “You found me there. You saved me, Dante.”
His smile seemed haunted, as if he wasn’t sure he agreed and didn’t feel comfortable with her gratitude. But he wrapped his arms around her and pressed a tender kiss to her lips. “You’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”
Tess held him close, feeling almost a part of him in some strange way. His heartbeat echoed in the cadence of her own, his body’s warmth seeming to seep through her skin and bones to warm her from within. She felt connected to him now in a very visceral way. The sensation was extraordinary, so powerful it took her aback.
“Now that you’re awake,” Dante murmured against her ear, “there’s someone waiting in the other room who’d like to see you.”
Before she could respond, Dante got off the big bed and walked toward the adjacent living room. From behind him, Tess couldn’t help admiring the masculine prowl of his body, the sexy network of multicolored tattoos over his back and shoulders shifting gracefully with every rolling stride. He disappeared into the other room, and Tess heard a soft animal whine that she recognized at once.
“Harvard!” she exclaimed as Dante came back into the bedroom, carrying the squirming, adorable little terrier in his arms. “You saved him too?”
Dante shook his head. “I saw him running loose before I found you and brought you here. Once I knew you were safe, I sent someone back out to get him.”
He set the dog down on the bed, and Tess was immediately tackled by the perky furball. Harvard licked her hands and face as she hoisted him up for a hug, overjoyed to see him after thinking she’d lost him on the street outside Ben’s apartment.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling through a sudden mist of tears as the happy reunion continued. “I have to confess, I think I’m totally in love with this little beast.”
“Lucky dog,” Dante drawled. He sat down on the edge of the bed, watching as Tess’s chin got a thorough, enthusiastic washing. His expression was too carefully schooled, too grave when her eyes met his. “There are…things we need to talk about, Tess. I had hoped you might never really be part of it, but I keep dragging you further in. After tonight, you need to understand what happened, and why.”
Nodding in silence, she let go of Harvard and looked at Dante’s bleak gaze. Part of her already knew where the conversation was going—uncharted territory, for sure, but after what she’d seen tonight, Tess knew that things she had long taken for granted as normal and real were somehow thrown off kilter.
“What were they, Dante? Those men who attacked me—they weren’t normal men. Were they?”
His head shook vaguely. “No, they weren’t men. They were dangerous creatures, blood addicts. We call them Rogues.”
“Blood addicts,” she said, her stomach lurching at the very idea. She looked down at her wrist, where a bite mark glowed red, but healing, on her skin. “My God. That’s what they were doing, drinking my blood? I don’t believe this. There’s only one name for that kind of psychotic behavior, and it’s vampire.”
Dante’s piercing, unwavering stare wasn’t even close to a refutation.
“Vampires don’t exist,” she told him firmly. “This is reality we’re talking about, after all. They can’t really exist.”
“They do, Tess. Not the way you might have been brought up to believe. Not as undead, soulless demons, but as a separate, hybrid species. The ones who attacked you tonight are the worst kind. They have no conscience, no capacity for logic or control. They kill indiscriminately and will continue to do so if they aren’t brought under control soon. That’s what I and the others in this compound are here for—to see to it that the Rogues are wiped out of existence before they become a pestilence unlike anything modern humankind has ever seen.”
“Oh, come on!” Tess scoffed, wanting to disbelieve but finding it hard to reject Dante’s outrageous claim when he had never looked or sounded more sincere. Or more deadly rational. “Are you telling me that you’re some kind of vampire slayer?”
“I’m a warrior. This is war, Tess. Things have only gotten worse now that the Rogues have Crimson on their side.”
“Crimson? What’s that?”
“The drug Ben Sullivan has been peddling around town the past few months. It increases the desire for blood, reduces inhibition. It creates these killers.”
“What about Ben? Does he know this? Is that why you went to his apartment the other night?”
Dante nodded. “He says he was hired to make the drug by an anonymous corporation this past summer. We suspect that corporation was likely a front for the Rogues.”
“Where is Ben now?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
A coldness edged Dante’s voice as he said it, and Tess couldn’t help feeling a note of worry for Ben. “The men who—the Rogues—who attacked me had been searching his apartment.”
“Yes. They might have been looking for him, but we’re not sure.”
“I think I may know something about what they wanted.”
Dante fixed her with a frown. “How so?”
“Where’s my jacket?” Tess glanced around the bedroom but didn’t see any of her clothes. She was wearing just a bra and panties under the sheets that draped her. “I found something at the clinic the other day. A computer flash drive. Ben hid it in one of my exam rooms.”
“What was on it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried to open it yet. It’s in my jacket pocket—”
“Shit.” Dante leaped to his feet. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Will you be all right here alone?”
Tess nodded, still trying to come to grips with everything that was happening, all the incredible, disturbing things she was learning about the world she thought she knew. “Dante?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you…for saving my life.”
Something dark flashed in his whiskey-colored eyes, softening his harshly handsome features. He came back to her on the bed and tunneled his fingers through the hair at her nape, tipping her face up to his. His kiss was sweet, almost reverent. “Sit tight, angel. I’ll be right back.”
Elise put her hand against the smooth wall of the corridor and tried to catch her breath. Her other hand was pressed to her stomach, her fingers splayed across the wide red sash of her widow’s garb. A heaving roll of nausea weakened her legs, and for a moment she thought she might throw up where she stood. Wherever that might be.
She had fled the compound’s tech lab in a state of complete revulsion, appalled by what she had been shown. Now, after running blindly down one length of hallway, then another, she really had no idea where she’d ended up. She only knew that she needed to get away.
She couldn’t run far enough away from what she had just seen.
Sterling had warned her that the Order’s satellite surveillance images of Camden were graphic, disturbing. Elise had been prepared, she’d thought, but seeing her son and several other Rogues engaged in the wholesale slaughter of a human being had been beyond even her worst imaginings. It was a nightmare that she knew would haunt her for the rest of her living days.
Her spine leaning against the corridor wall, Elise let herself sink slowly to the floor. She couldn’t hold back the tears or the ragged sobs that grated in her throat. Guilt was at the root of her anguish, the regret that she hadn’t been more careful with Camden. That she had taken for granted that he was too good at heart, too strong, for something so heinous to befall him.
Her son could not be the Bloodlusting monster she saw on that computer screen. He had to be in there somewhere, still retrievable. Still salvagable. Still Camden, her golden, cherished child.
“You all right?”
Startled by the deep male voice, Elise flinched, her teary gaze flicking upward. Gem-green eyes stared back at her from within a reckless fall of tawny hair. It was one of the two warriors who’d come to the Darkhaven for Sterling earlier that evening—the coldly imposing one who had caught Elise and held her back when she tried to rush to Sterling’s defense.
“Are you hurt?” he asked when she could only look up at him from her humiliating collapse on the corridor floor.
He strode toward her, his expression flat, unreadable. He was half undressed, wearing loose jeans that sagged down indecently on his lean hips and a white shirt that was completely unbuttoned, baring his muscular chest and torso. An astonishing display of dermaglyphs covered him from groin to shoulder, the density and intricacy of the markings leaving no doubt whatsoever that this warrior was first-generation Breed. Which meant he was among the most aggressive and powerful of the vampire race. Gen Ones were few in number; Elise, for her many decades of living in the Darkhavens, had never even seen one before.
“I’m Tegan,” he said, and held out his hand to help her up.
The contact seemed too forward to her, even though she could hardly pretend that this male’s huge hands hadn’t been clamped down on her shoulders and her waist just a few hours before. She’d felt the lingering heat of his touch for a long time after he’d let her go, the outline of his strong fingers seeming burned into her flesh.
She got to her feet on her own power and brushed awkwardly at her wet cheeks. “I am Elise,” she said, giving him a polite bow of her head. “I am Sterling’s sister by marriage.”
“Are you recently widowed?” he asked, his head cocking to the side as that penetrating gaze of his drank in every inch of her.
Elise fidgeted with the long scarlet sash at her waist. “I lost my mate five years ago.”
“You still mourn.”
“I still love him.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his tone level, his face placid. “And I’m sorry about your son too.”
Elise looked down, not ready to hear sympathy for Camden when she was still clinging to hope that he might return to her.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t drive him to this, and you couldn’t have stopped him.”
“What?” she murmured, astonished that Tegan could know anything about her guilt, her secret shame. A few Gen Ones were gifted in mind reading, but she hadn’t felt him probing her thoughts, and only the weakest humans were penetrable without some notice of psychic invasion. “How could you possibly—”
The answer came to her at once, the explanation for the strange buzzing of her senses when he’d touched her earlier that night, the lingering heat his fingers had left on her skin. He had divined her emotions in that instant. He had stripped her bare without her will.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not something I can control.”
Elise blinked away her discomfiture. She knew what it was like to be cursed with such an ability. Her own psychic skill had made her a prisoner to the Darkhavens, unable to bear the bombardment of negative human thoughts that assailed her whenever she was among their kind.
But sharing a similar affliction with this warrior didn’t make her any more comfortable in his presence. And worry over Camden—the raw misery she felt when she thought about what he was doing out there, swept up in the violence of the Rogues—made her anxious to be alone.
“I should go,” she said, more to herself than to Tegan. “I need to…I have to get out of here. I can’t be here right now.”
“Do you want to go home?”
She shrugged, then shook her head, uncertain what she needed. “Anywhere,” she whispered. “I just need to go.”
Closer now, moving without even the slightest stir of the air around him, Tegan said, “I’ll take you.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”
She shot a glance back down the corridor, in the direction she’d come from, thinking that she probably should try to find Sterling. A bigger part of her was thinking that she wasn’t at all sure she should be in this warrior’s company now, let alone considering going off with him somewhere unescorted.
“You afraid I’m going to bite you, Elise?” he asked, his lazy, sensual mouth quirking at one corner, the first indication she’d seen in him that he actually might feel any emotion at all.
“It’s late,” she pointed out, casting about for a polite excuse to deny him. “It must be getting close to dawn. I wouldn’t ask you to risk exposure—”
“So I’ll drive fast.” Now he smiled, a full-on grin that said he knew full well she was trying to dodge him and he wasn’t about to permit it. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here for a while.”
God help her, but when he held his hand out to her, Elise hesitated only for a second before she took it.
CHAPTER Thirty-two
Dante was gone longer than a few minutes, and the waiting made Tess anxious. She had so many questions, so much to sort out in her mind. And despite the internal, enlivened buzzing of her body, on the outside she felt strung out, antsy.
A hot shower in Dante’s spacious bathroom helped wash away some of that feeling, and so did the fresh change of clothes that he had left for her in the bedroom. With Harvard watching from his curled-up position on the bed, Tess put on the tan cords and brown knit shirt, then sat down to slip on her shoes.
Scuff marks and small splatters of blood were vivid reminders of the attack she’d suffered. An attack, Dante would have her believe, perpetrated by inhuman creatures with a thirst—an addiction—to blood.
Vampires.
There had to be a more logical explanation, something grounded in fact, not folklore. Tess knew it was impossible, yet she knew what she had experienced. She knew what she had seen, when her first assailant leaped off Ben’s apartment balcony on foot and dropped to the ground, as fluid as a cat. She knew what she had felt, when that man and another who joined him hauled her off the sidewalk and into the old shed. They had bitten her, like rabid animals. They had punctured her skin with huge fangs and drawn her blood into their mouths, feeding off her like something out of a horror movie.
Like the vampires Dante had proclaimed them to be.
At least she was safe now, wherever Dante had brought her. She looked around the large bedroom with its simple, understated furnishings. The furniture was masculine, with clean lines and dark finishes. The only indulgence was the bed. The king-size four-poster dominated the room, its glossy black silk sheets as soft and sleek as a raven’s wing.
Tess found similar tasteful appointments in the adjacent living room. Dante’s quarters felt comfortable and unfussy, like the man himself. The whole place seemed homey, but it didn’t feel like a house. There were no windows on any of the walls, just expensive-looking contemporary art and framed photography. He had mentioned this place was a compound, and now Tess wondered precisely where she was.
She walked out of the living room to a tiled foyer. Curious, she opened the door and peered out onto a corridor of glossy white marble. Tess looked up the long hallway, then down the other side. It was empty, just a curving tunnel of polished stone. On the floor, inlaid into the snowy marble, was a series of symbols—interlocking geometric arcs and swirls rendered in obsidian. They were unusual and intriguing, some of them forming similar patterns to the beautiful multihued tattoos Dante sported on his torso and arms.
Tess bent down to get a closer look. She was so involved in studying the symbols that she didn’t realize Harvard was near until the terrier slipped past her and started trotting off down the corridor.
“Harvard, get back here!” she called after him, but the dog kept running, disappearing around a bend in the curved hallway.
Damn it.
Tess stood up, shot a glance up and down the vacant corridor, then went after him. The pursuit led her down one long stretch of corridor, then another. Every time she got close to catching the errant terrier, he dodged capture, trotting through the endless maze of hallway as if they were playing a game.
“Harvard, you little shit, stop right now!” she whispered sharply and to no avail.
She was impatient now and uncertain if she should be traipsing around the place alone. Even though she couldn’t see them, she was sure security cameras were clocking her every move from within the opaque glass orbs that were installed every few feet in the corridor ceiling.
There were no signs anywhere to indicate her location or to note where any of the labyrinthine corridors led. Wherever it was that Dante called home, it was rigged up like some high-tech government agency. Which only gave more credibility to his outrageous claims of an underworld war and the existence of dangerous creatures of the night.
Tess followed the dog around a sharp right turn that opened onto another wing of the compound. Finally, Harvard’s run was thwarted. A pair of swinging doors blocked his path at the end of the hall, the small square windows at eye level cloudy with frosted glass.
Tess approached cautiously, not wanting to frighten the dog out of her reach but also unsure what might be on the other side of those doors. It was quiet here, nothing but endless white marble everywhere she looked. There was a vaguely antiseptic smell in the air. From somewhere not far, her ears picked up the faint electronic beep of medical equipment and some other rhythmic, metallic clank that she could not place.
Was this some kind of medical wing? It felt sterile enough, but there were no outward indications of patients inside, no staff rushing about. No one at all, from what she could tell.
“Come here, you little beast,” she muttered, bending down to retrieve Harvard from where he’d stalled out near the doors.
Holding him close to her chest in one arm, Tess slowly pushed open one of the doors a crack and peeked inside. Only dim light shone beyond the doors, a soothing semidarkness. There was a row of closed doors on both sides of the interior hallway. She slipped through the swinging doors and walked a few paces inside.
Right away she found the source of the beeping: A digital panel was mounted to a wall on her left, its array of monitoring lights dark except for a handful in a grid on the lower portion of the board. It appeared to be some kind of EKG monitor, although it was nothing like any she’d seen before. And coming from the farthest room in the hallway was the repetitive clank and thunk of something heavy.
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is someone in here?”
The instant the words left her lips, all other sound around her ceased, including the beeps of the monitor. She glanced to the grid just in time to see the lights blink off. Like someone had disconnected them from within the far room.
A feeling of unease crept up her spine. In her arms, Harvard started to squirm and whimper. He wriggled away from her, jumping down and scrambling back up the corridor. Tess couldn’t name the dread that was running through her, but she wasn’t about to stand around and wonder either.
She turned back for the doors. Started walking briskly toward them, her head turned to watch for movement behind her. She felt a sudden drop in the temperature—a chill breeze on her skin, crawling up the back of her neck.
“Shit,” she whispered, more than a little unnerved.
She put her hand out to push open the door and jumped back when her palm connected with something warm and unmoving. Tess stopped short and swung her head around in shock. Her gaze latched on to a hideously scarred face and torso of an immense, muscular man.
No, not a man.
A monster, with the huge fangs and fiercely glowing amber eyes of the ones who had assaulted her in the street.
A vampire.
In a flash of vivid, horrific remembrance, Tess was bombarded with images of the earlier attack: bruising fingers digging into her arms, holding her down; sharp teeth tearing into her, the endless, fevered pulls at her veins; awful, animalistic grunts and moans as the beasts fed on her. She saw the moonlit pavement, the darkened alleyway, the ramshackle shed where she’d thought she was going to die.
And then, just as suddenly but oddly out of place, she saw the small storage room in the back of her clinic. There was a big man with dark hair huddled on the floor, bleeding. He was dying, riddled with bullets and other terrible wounds. She reached out to him—
No, that didn’t belong in her memories. It hadn’t actually happened…had it?
She didn’t have a chance to try putting the pieces in place. The vampire blocking her escape stalked forward, his head cocked as he glared at her in wild fury, those enormous fangs deadly white and sharp enough to tear her to shreds.
Dante stood in Gideon and Savannah’s study, waiting for a verdict on the flash drive Tess had been carrying in her coat pocket. “You think you can get around the encryption on that thing, Gid?”
“Please.” The blond vampire slanted him an arch look. “You jest,” he said, leaning heavily on his faded English accent. He already had the drive plugged into his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’ve hacked into the FBI, the CIA, our own IID, and just about every other hack-proof database in existence. This will be cake.”
“Yeah? Let me know what you find. I gotta go now. I left Tess waiting—”
“Not so fast,” Gideon said. “I’m almost in. Trust me, this won’t take long, maybe five minutes. Let’s make it interesting. Give me two minutes, thirty seconds, tops.”
Beside him, leaning back against the antique carved mahogany desk in dark jeans and a black sweater, Savannah smiled and rolled her eyes. “He lives to impress, you know that.”
“Be a hell of a lot easier to take if the bastard wasn’t always right,” Dante drawled.
Savannah laughed. “Welcome to my world.”
“Too bad you can’t read computer files with your touch,” he told her. “Then we wouldn’t need to put up with this guy.”
“Alas,” she sighed dramatically. “Psychometry doesn’t work that way, at least not for me. I can tell you what Ben Sullivan was wearing when he handled the flash drive, describe the room he was in, his state of mind, but I can’t penetrate electronic circuitry. Gideon’s our best hope for that.”
Dante shrugged. “Just our luck, eh?”
Over at the computer, Gideon hit one last series of keystrokes, then sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “I’m in. Looks like one minute, forty-nine seconds, to be exact.”
Dante walked around to look at the screen. “What have we got?”
“Data files. Spreadsheets. Flow charts. Pharmaceutical tables.” Gideon rolled the mouse and clicked one of the files open. “Looks like a chemistry experiment. Anyone need a recipe for Crimson?”
“Jesus Christ. This is it?”
“I’m betting so.” Gideon scowled, clicking through more files on-screen. “There’s more than one formula stored on the drive, however. We can’t know which of them is valid until we obtain the ingredients and test each one.”
Dante raked a hand through his hair and began pacing. He was curious to know more about the formulas Ben Sullivan had stored on the drive, but at the same time he was damn itchy to be back in his quarters. He could sense Tess’s restlessness too, the connection they now shared through the blood bond like an unseen tether linking him to her as though they were one.
“How is she doing?” Savannah asked, obviously aware of his distraction.
“Better,” he said. “She’s awake and healing. Physically, she’s fine. As for the rest, I’ve been trying to fill her in on everything, but I know she’s confused.”
Savannah nodded. “Who wouldn’t be? I thought Gideon was a crazy fool when he first told me about all of this.”
“You still think I’m a crazy fool most of the time, love. That’s part of my charm.” He bent toward her and faked a bite of her denim-clad thigh, his fingers not skipping a beat on the keys.
Playfully batting him away, Savannah stood up and came over to where Dante was trying to wear a track in the rug. “Do you think Tess might be hungry? I’ve got breakfast started in the kitchen for Gabrielle and me. I can prepare a tray for Tess, if you’d like to bring it to her.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Savannah. Food would be great.”
God, he hadn’t even considered that Tess would need to eat. What a stellar mate he was proving to be already. He hardly took decent care of himself and now he had a Breedmate to think about, with human wants and needs that were well outside his areas of expertise. Oddly enough, where the thought might have given him doubts in the not-so-distant past, now he found the idea almost…pleasant. He wanted to provide for Tess, in every way. He wanted to protect her and make her happy, spoil her like a princess.
For the first time in his long life, he felt as if he’d found true purpose. Not the honor and duty that drove him as a warrior, but something equally compelling and righteous. Something that called to everything male in him.
He felt as if this bond he’d found—this love he had for Tess—might actually be strong enough to make him forget about the death and anguish that had been stalking him. Some hopeful part of him wanted to believe that with Tess beside him, maybe he could find a way to thwart it.
Dante hadn’t even begun to enjoy that slender hope before a scream ripped through him like a blade. He felt it physically, but the assault was on his senses, a fact he realized when neither Savannah nor Gideon reacted to the terrified shriek that froze Dante’s heart to ice in his chest.
It tore through him again, leaving him shuddering in its wake.
“Oh, Jesus. Tess!”
“What’s wrong?” Savannah paused on her way to the kitchen. “Dante?”
“It’s Tess,” he said, already training his mind on her, homing in on her location in the compound. “She’s somewhere in the compound—the infirmary, I think.”
“I’ll get a visual.” At the computer, Gideon quickly brought up the display for one of the corridor’s video monitors. “I’ve got her, D. Ah, hell. She’s run into Rio down there. He’s got her cornered—”
Dante took off at a dead run before the words were out of Gideon’s mouth. He didn’t need to see the screen to confirm where Tess was or what was giving her such a fright. He bolted out of Savannah and Gideon’s apartments, hauling ass into the heart of the compound. Knowing the layout of the place inside and out, he took the shortest route down to the medical wing, using all the preternatural speed at his command.
Dante heard Rio’s voice even before he reached the set of swinging doors that led into the medical wing.
“I asked you a question, female. What the fuck do you think you’re doing down here?”
“Get away from her!” Dante shouted as he entered the infirmary, hoping like hell he wasn’t going to have to do battle with one of his own. “Back off, Rio. Now.”
“Dante!” Tess cried, panting with fear. Her face was ashen, her body trembling uncontrollably from behind the massive wall of Rio’s body. The warrior had her trapped against the corridor wall, animosity radiating off him in blasting pulses of heat.
“Let her go,” Dante ordered his brethren.
“Dante, be careful! He’ll kill you!”
“No, he won’t. It’s okay, Tess.”
“This female doesn’t belong here,” Rio snarled.
“I say she does. Now back off and let her go.”
Rio relaxed only a fraction and swung his head around to look at Dante. Jesus, it was hard to remember the warrior before the ambush that had left him so wrecked, both physically and emotionally. The once-handsome face of the Spaniard with the ready smile and lazy wit was now a tangle of ruddy scars; his humor had long abandoned him for the fury that might never ease.
Dante parked himself right in Rio’s face, staring past the scars on the warrior’s cheeks and brow into the nearly insane eyes that looked so Roguelike even Dante was taken aback for a second. “I said, stand down,” he growled. “The woman is with me. She is mine. Do you understand?”
Sanity flared within the bright amber depths of Rio’s eyes, a lightning-quick glint of awareness, of contrition and regret. He wheeled away from Dante with a grunt, his breath still sawing in and out of his open mouth.
“Tess, it’s okay now. Step away from him and come to me.”
She let out a broken gasp but didn’t seem capable of moving. Dante held his hand out to her.
“Come on, angel. Everything’s all right. I promise you, you’re safe.”
Looking as if it took all her courage to do so, Tess sidled away from Rio and put her hand in Dante’s open palm. He brought her to him and kissed her, relieved to have her near.
As Rio slunk to the corridor wall and dropped into a huddled crouch on the floor, Dante’s pulse downshifted to something almost resembling normal. Tess was still upset and trembling, and while he didn’t think Rio posed any danger to her—especially now that Dante had made his position clear—he had some serious damage control to handle.
“Stay here. I’m just going to help Rio get back to his bed—”
“Are you crazy? Dante, we have to get out of here. He will tear both our throats open!”
“No, he won’t.” He held Tess’s anxious gaze even as he moved closer to Rio’s huddled form on the floor. “He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t have hurt you either. He didn’t know who you were, and something very bad happened to him that’s made him wary of females. Believe me, he’s not a monster.”
Tess gaped at Dante as if he’d lost his mind. “Dante, the fangs…those eyes! He’s one of the ones who attacked me—”
“No,” Dante said. “He only looks like them because he’s angry, and he’s in a lot of pain. His name is Rio. He’s a Breed warrior, like me.”
“Vampire,” she gasped brokenly. “He’s a vampire….”
Damn it, he hadn’t meant for her to learn the truth like this. God help him, but he’d thought he could ease her into his world—a world that belonged to them both—once she understood the vampire race was nothing to be feared, and once she saw how she was part of it, as a Breedmate.
As the only woman he would ever want at his side.
But everything was unraveling fast, a thread of half-truths and secrets that was spiraling down around his feet as she stared at him in panic, her eyes pleading with him to make sense of an unfathomable situation.
“Yes,” Dante admitted, unwilling to lie to her. “Rio is a vampire, Tess. Like me.”
CHAPTER Thirty-three
Tess’s heart took a sharp dive into her stomach. “W-what did you say?”
Dante looked at her, those whiskey-gold eyes far too serious, his expression much too calm. “I am one of the Breed. A vampire.”
“Oh, my God,” she moaned, her skin going tight with alarm, with revulsion.
She didn’t want to believe it—he didn’t look like the creatures who’d assaulted her or the one who now lay in an anguished ball on the floor of the infirmary. But Dante’s tone was so level and matter-of-fact, she knew he was telling her the truth. Maybe for the first time since she’d met him, he was finally being honest with her.
“You lied to me. All this time, you’ve been lying to me.”
“I wanted to tell you, Tess. I’ve been trying to find the words to tell you—”
“That you’re some kind of sick monster? That you’ve been using me—for what, just to get close to Ben so that you and your bloodsucking buddies could kill him?”
“We haven’t killed the human, I swear to you. But that doesn’t mean I won’t, if it comes down to that. And, yes, at first I needed to know if you were involved in his Crimson dealing, and I thought you might be useful in getting more information on those activities. I had a mission, Tess. But I also needed your trust so that I could protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No,” she said, numb with a heavy kind of dread. “What I need is to get as far away from you as I can.”
“Tess, the safest place for you now is here, with me.”
When he came toward her, holding out his hands in a gesture that begged trust, she recoiled. “Stay away from me. I mean it, Dante. Get away!”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
An image slammed into the front of her consciousness as he said the words. In her mind, Tess was suddenly transported to her clinic storeroom, crouching down over a badly injured man who’d somehow found his way inside after a vicious fight on the streets Halloween night. He was a stranger to her then, but not now.
It was Dante’s face she saw, bloodstained and grimy, his hair dripping wet as it spiked down over his brow. His lips moved, speaking the same words she heard him speak now: I’m not going to hurt you…I promise….
She had an abrupt but very distinct memory of strong hands gripping her by the arms, holding her in place. Of Dante’s lips peeling back from his teeth—revealing huge white fangs that came toward her throat.
“I didn’t know you,” Dante was saying now, as if he could track her thoughts with his mind. “I was weakened and seriously wounded. I would only have taken what I needed from you and left you alone. There would have been no pain for you, no distress. I had no idea what I had done until I saw your mark—”
“You bit me…you…Oh, God, you drank my blood that night? How…why am I only now remembering this?”
His stark features softened somewhat, as if in remorse. “I erased your memory. I tried to explain things to you, but the situation was too far out of hand. We struggled, and you injected me with a sedative. By the time I came to, it was almost dawn and there was no time for talking. I thought it best for you that you didn’t remember. Then I saw the mark on your hand, and I knew there could be no taking back any of what I’d done to you.”
Tess didn’t need to look down at her right hand to know the mark he spoke of. The small birthmark had always been curious to her, a teardrop poised over the bowl of a crescent moon. But it didn’t make any more sense to her now than it ever had.
“Not many women have the mark, Tess. Only a rare few. You’re a Breedmate. If one of my kind takes your blood into his body, or gives you his, a bond is forged. It is unbreakable.”
“And you…did this to me?”
Another memory swamped her now, a further remembrance of blood and darkness. Tess recalled waking from a shadowy dream, her mouth filled with a roaring force of energy, of life. She had been starved, and Dante fed her. From his wrist and then, later, from a vein he had opened for her in his neck.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “What have you done to me?”
“I saved your life by giving you my blood. Just as you saved mine with yours.”
“You gave me no choice, either time,” she gasped. “What am I now? Have you turned me into the same kind of monster that you are?”
“No. That’s not the way it works. You will never become a vampire. But if you continue to feed from me as my mate, you can live for a very long time. As long as I will. Longer, perhaps.”
“I don’t believe this. I refuse to believe this!”
Tess pivoted for the swinging doors of the infirmary and pushed against the panels. They didn’t budge. She pushed again, putting all of her strength into it. Nothing. It was as though they were fused on their hinges, completely immobile.
“Let me out of here,” she told Dante, suspecting that it was his will alone that kept the doors from opening for her. “Goddamn you, Dante. Let me go!”
As soon as the door gave the slightest bit, Tess pushed it open and bolted through at a dead run. She had no idea where she was going and didn’t care, so long as it put distance between herself and Dante, the man she only thought she knew. The man she actually believed she was in love with. The monster who had betrayed her more deeply than anyone in her tormented past.
Sick with fear and angered at her own stupidity, Tess choked back the tears that stung her eyes. She ran harder, knowing that Dante was certain to catch up to her. She just had to find a way out of the place. Running up to a bank of elevators, she pressed the call button and prayed the doors would open. Seconds ticked by…too many for her to risk waiting.
“Tess.” Dante’s deep voice startled her with its nearness. He was right behind her, close enough to touch her, even though she hadn’t heard him approach.
With a cry, she ducked out of his reach and made another mad dash down one of the corridor’s twisting lengths. There was an open, arched entryway up ahead of her. Maybe she could hide in the chamber, she thought, desperation making her grasp for any means of escaping the nightmare that was pursuing her now. She slipped inside the dim space—a cathedral of some sort, with carved stone walls lit only by a single red pillar candle that glowed near an unadorned altar.
There was nowhere to conceal herself in the small sanctuary, only twin rows of benches and the stone pedestal at the front of the room. On the other side was another arched doorway, opening into more darkness; it was impossible for her to discern where it might lead. It didn’t matter, anyway. Dante was standing in the open doorway off the corridor, his muscular body never looking more imposing than it did as he stepped into the small cathedral and began a slow prowl toward her.
“Tess, we don’t have to do this. Let’s talk.” His powerful stride faltered for a second, and he scowled, bringing his hand up to his temple as if he were in pain. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped a full octave in pitch, coming out of him in a dark snarl. “Christ, can we just…Let’s be reasonable, try to work this out.”
Tess backed up, inching closer to the far wall of the chamber and the arched hollow carved into the stone.
“Damn it, Tess. Hear me out. I love you.”
“Don’t say that. Haven’t you told me enough lies already?”
“It’s no lie. I wish it was, but—”
Dante took another step, and his knee suddenly gave out beneath him. He hissed as he caught himself on one of the low benches, his fingers digging into the wood so hard, Tess thought it a wonder he didn’t crush it.
Something strange was happening to his features. Even with his head dropped down, she could see that his face was growing sharper, his cheeks seeming leaner, more angular, his golden skin stretched tight over the bones. He spat a curse, something she didn’t recognize any more than she did the gravelly roughness of his voice.
“Tess…you have to trust me.”
She moved closer to the archway, leading with her hand as she sidled along the wall. And then she was standing in front of the opening, nothing but pitch blackness behind her and a thin, chill breeze at her back. She turned her head to glance into the dark—
“Tess.”
Dante must have sensed her movement, because when she looked back at him, he lifted his head and met her gaze. The warm color of his eyes had changed to a fierce glow, his pupils narrowing down to bare slits as she watched his transformation in stunned horror.
“Don’t go,” he rasped thickly, his words tangling on the lengthening sharpness of a spectacular set of fangs. “I won’t hurt you.”
“It’s too late, Dante. You already have,” she whispered, moving farther away from him, stepping back into the arched doorway. In the darkness, she saw that a flight of stone steps climbed steeply upward, toward the source of the cool air that drifted down around her. Wherever they led, she had to go. She put her foot on the first step—
“Tess!”
She didn’t look back at him. She knew she couldn’t or she might not find the courage to leave him. She climbed the first few steps tentatively, then began running, taking the flight as quickly as she could.
Down below, Dante’s anguished roar echoed off the stone walls of the cathedral and the darkened stairwell, straight into the marrow of her bones. Tess didn’t stop. She ran faster up what seemed like hundreds of steps, until she reached a solid steel door at the top. She slapped her palms against it and pushed it open.
Blinding daylight poured over her. A cool November breeze sent dried leaves spiraling up from the grass outside. Tess let the door close behind her with a bang. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and took off, running into the crisp, bright morning.
Dante thrashed on the floor, caught in the grip of his persistent, debilitating nightmare. The death vision had come on suddenly, intensifying as he and Tess argued.
It only worsened now that she was gone. Dante heard the topside door slam closed above and knew from the brief flash of daylight that shot down the long stairwell that even if he was able to break away from the invisible chains that held him, the sun’s brutal rays would prohibit him from going after her.
He sank deeper into the abyss of his premonition, where vines of thick black smoke curled around his limbs and throat, choking off precious air. The shattered remains of a smoke alarm hung from the ceiling by its mangled wire guts, silent as the smoke collected around it.
From elsewhere came the angry crash of objects falling, as if fixtures and furniture were being overturned and thrown to the floor by a marauding army. All around him in the small white cell that held him, Dante saw upended cabinet drawers and files, their contents spilled everywhere, rifled through in haste.
In the vision, he was moving now, stepping through the debris and making his way to the closed door on the other side of the room. Oh, Jesus. He knew this place, he realized now.
He was in Tess’s clinic.
But where was she?
Dante registered that he ached everywhere, his body feeling battered and tired, each step sluggish. Before he could reach the door and try to get out, it opened from the other side. A familiar face leered at him through the smoke.
“Look who’s up and about,” Ben Sullivan said, coming inside and holding a length of telephone cord in his hands. “Death by fire is such a nasty way to go. Of course, if you breathe in enough smoke, the flames will be just an afterthought.”
Dante knew he shouldn’t be afraid, but terror clawed at him as his would-be executioner entered the room and took hold of him in a surprisingly strong grasp. Dante tried to fight, but his limbs didn’t seem his own to command. His struggles only slowed Sullivan down. Then the human cocked his arm back and nailed Dante with a blow to the jaw.
His vision swam crazily. When he next opened his eyes, he was on his stomach, lying on a raised slab of cold polished steel while Ben Sullivan pulled his hands behind his back, then bound him at the wrists with the cable he was holding. Dante should have been able to snap his bonds loose, but they held tight. The human moved down to his feet, hog-tying him.
“You know, I thought killing you was going to be difficult,” the Crimson dealer whispered near his ear, the same words Dante had heard the last time he’d endured this glimpse of death. “You’ve made it very easy for me.”
As he’d done before, Ben Sullivan went around to the front of the platform and bent down in front of Dante. He grabbed Dante by the hair and lifted his face up off the cold metal. Past Sullivan’s head, Dante saw a clock on the wall above the door, the time reading 11:39. He struggled to collect more detail, knowing he would need all he could gather in order to confront this eventuality and maybe turn it around in his favor. He didn’t even know if it might be possible to cheat fate, but he was damn well going to give it a shot.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Sullivan was saying now. The human leaned in close—close enough that Dante saw the vacant gaze of a Minion staring back at him. “Just know that you brought this on yourself. Be grateful I didn’t turn you over to my Master instead.”
With that, Ben Sullivan released him, letting Dante’s head fall back down. As the Minion strode out of the room and locked the door, Dante opened his eyes and saw his reflection in the polished steel surface of the table on which he lay.
No, not his reflection.
Tess’s.
Not his body bound on the examination table while the clinic was being consumed in smoke and flames, but hers.
Oh, mother of Christ.
It wasn’t his horrific death he’d been experiencing in his nightmares all these years. It was the death of his Breedmate, the woman he loved.
CHAPTER Thirty-four
Tess made her way into the city from the compound’s property in a state of emotional numbness. Without her purse, coat, or cell phone, she had few options—not even a key to get into her apartment. Breathless, confused, utterly exhausted from everything that was happening to her, she headed for a corner pay phone, praying it wasn’t out of order. She got a dial tone, hit 0, and waited for the operator to come on.
“Collect call, please,” she panted into the receiver, then gave the operator the number of the animal clinic. The phone rang and rang. No answer.
As it went into voice mail, the operator disconnected, saying, “I’m sorry. There’s no one there to accept charges.”
“Wait,” Tess said, worry niggling at her. “Will you try it again?”
“One moment.”
Tess waited anxiously as the phone began ringing again at the clinic. No answer.
“I’m sorry,” the operator said again, disconnecting the call.
“I don’t understand,” Tess murmured, more to herself. “Can you tell me what time it is?”
“It’s ten-thirteen A.M.”
Nora wouldn’t break for lunch until noon, and she never called in sick, so why wasn’t she picking up the call? Something must be wrong.
“Would you like to try another number?”
“Yes, I would.”
Tess gave the operator Nora’s land line, then, when that call came up empty, she gave her Nora’s cell. As each call rang unanswered, Tess’s heart sank deeper in her chest. Everything felt wrong to her. Very wrong.
With dread pounding through her, Tess hung up the pay phone and began walking for the nearest subway station. She didn’t have the dollar-twenty-five fare it would cost to ride to the North End, but a grandmotherly woman on the street took pity on her and gave her a handful of loose change.
The trip home seemed to take forever, each stranger’s face on the train seeming to stare at her as if they knew she didn’t belong there among them. As if they could sense that she had been changed somehow, no longer a part of the normal world. No longer a part of their human world.
And maybe she wasn’t, Tess thought, reflecting on all that Dante had told her—everything she had seen and been a part of in the past several hours. The past several days, she corrected herself, thinking back on Halloween night, when she’d truly first seen Dante.
When he’d sunk his fangs into her neck and turned her normal world upside down.
But maybe she wasn’t being totally fair. Tess couldn’t remember a time when she’d really felt a part of anything normal. She had always been…different. Her unusual ability, even more than her troubled past, had always kept her separate from other people. She’d always felt like a misfit, an outsider, unable to trust anyone with her secrets.
Until Dante.
He had opened her eyes to so much. He’d made her feel, made her desire in ways she never had before. He’d made her hope for things she’d only dreamed of. He’d made her feel safe and understood. Worse than that, he had made her feel loved.
But that had all been based on lies. Now she had the truth—incredible as it was—and she would give just about anything to pretend it wasn’t real.
Vampires and blood bonds. A mounting war between creatures who shouldn’t exist outside the realm of the imagination, of nightmares.
It was all true, though.
It was real.
As real as her feelings for Dante, which only made his deception cut deeper. She loved him, and she’d never been more terrified of anything in her life. She had fallen in love with a dangerous vigilante. A vampire.
The admission weighed her down as she stepped off the subway car and made her way up to street level in her North End neighborhood. The local shops were bustling with morning patrons, the outdoor market enjoying a steady flow of regular customers. Tess passed a knot of tourists who’d stopped to browse autumn melons and squash, weathering a chill that had little to do with the crisp fall air.
The closer she got to home, the deeper her sense of dread grew. One of the tenants came out as she reached the front stoop. Although she didn’t know the old man by name, he smiled at her and held open the door for her to enter. Tess went inside and climbed the flight of stairs to her unit. Before she got within ten feet of the door, she realized that it had been broken into. The jamb was chewed up near the doorknob, as if it had been jimmied open and then closed to make it appear that nothing was out of place.
Tess froze, panic dousing her. She took a backward step, ready to turn around and bolt. Her spine connected with a solid mass, someone standing right behind her. A strong arm snaked around her waist, yanking her off balance, and a length of cold, sharp steel pressed meaningfully below her jaw.
“Morning, Doc. About fucking time you showed up.”
“You can’t be serious, Dante.”
Although all of the warriors, including Chase, were gathered in the training facility watching him gear up for battle, Gideon was the first to challenge him.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Dante took a pistol out of one of the gun cabinets and grabbed a handful of rounds. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“Jesus Christ, D. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s just after ten o’clock in the morning. That means full-on daylight.”
“I know what it means.”
Gideon exhaled a low curse. “You’re going to fry, my man.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Having been around since the eighteenth century, Dante was beyond old by human standards, but as a Breed vampire, he was fairly average, his lineage being several generations distant from the Ancients and their hypersensitive alien skin. He couldn’t stay topside for very long in the daytime, but he could take a small hit of UV rays and live to tell about it.
For Tess, he would be willing to walk into the core of the sun itself if he thought it might save her from the death he knew was waiting for her.
“Listen to me,” Gideon said, putting his hand on Dante’s arm to get his attention. “You may not be as vulnerable to the light as a Gen One, but you’re still Breed. You spend more than thirty minutes in direct sunlight and you’re toast.”
“It’s not like I’m gonna be sightseeing up there,” he said, refusing to be swayed. He shrugged off his brethren’s well-meaning caution and grabbed another weapon from the cabinet. “I know what I’m doing. I have to do this.”
He had told the others about what he’d seen, the vision that was still tearing his heart in pieces. It killed him to think that he’d let Tess leave the compound without his protection, that he hadn’t been able to stop her. That she might be in danger this very moment, while his vulnerable vampire genes forced him to hide belowground.
“What if the time you saw in your vision—eleven thirty-nine—is actually twenty-one minutes to midnight?” Gideon asked. “You can’t be sure the event you saw was taking place during the morning hours. You might be putting yourself at risk for nothing—”
“And if I wait and it turns out I’m wrong? I can’t take that chance.” Dante shook his head. He’d tried to reach her by phone but got no answer at her apartment or the clinic. And the searing ache in his chest told him that she wasn’t ignoring him purely by choice. Even without the benefit of his hellish precognition, he knew his Breedmate was in danger. “No goddamn way am I taking a chance on waiting around here ’til dark. Would you, Gideon? If Savannah needed you—I’m talking life-and-death needed you—would you even consider taking that kind of gamble? Would you, Lucan, if it were Gabrielle out there alone?”
Neither warrior denied it. There wasn’t a blood-bonded male alive who wouldn’t walk through a sea of fire for the woman he loved.
Lucan came toward him and held out his hand. “You honor her well.”
Dante clasped his leader’s strong Gen One hand—his friend’s hand—and shook it firmly. “Thank you. But to be honest, I’m doing this as much for myself as I am for Tess. I need her in my life. She has become…everything to me.”
Lucan nodded soberly. “Then go get her, my brother. We can celebrate your pairing when you and Tess return safely to the compound.”
Dante held Lucan’s regal gaze and slowly shook his head. “That is something I need to discuss with you. With all of you,” he said, looking to the other warriors as well. “Assuming I survive at all, if I am able to save Tess, and if she will have me as her mate—I intend to relocate to the Darkhavens with her.”
A long silence answered, his brethren staring at him in measured quiet.
Dante cleared his throat, knowing his decision must come as a shock to the warriors he’d fought alongside for more than a century. “She’s been through enough already—even before I met her and dragged her into our world against her will. She deserves happiness. She deserves a hell of a lot more than I can ever hope to give her. I just want her to be safe now, far away from any danger.”
“You would quit the Order for her?” Niko asked, the youngest only behind Dante, and a warrior who relished his duty perhaps even more than Dante had himself.
“I would quit breathing for her, if she asked it of me,” he replied, surprising even himself with the depth of his devotion. He looked to Chase, who still owed him that second favor from last night. “What do you think? You got any pull left in the Boston Darkhaven to help me get a spot with the Agency?”
Chase smirked, lifting his shoulder in a casual shrug. “I might.” He strode toward the weapons cabinet and took out a SIG Sauer. “But first things first, eh? We have to get your female back here in one piece so she can decide if she wants your sorry ass for a mate.”
“We?” Dante said, watching the former Darkhaven agent suit up with the SIG and another semiauto.
“Yeah, we. I’m going with you.”
“What the—”
“Me too,” Niko said, sauntering over and pulling out his own cache of weapons. The Russian grinned as he nodded toward Lucan, Gideon, and Tegan. “You’re not going to leave me down here with these Gen One geezers, are you?”
“No one’s coming with me. I wouldn’t ask it—”
“You never have to,” Niko said. “Like it or not, D, Chase and I are all you’ve got on this mission. You’re not doing this alone.”
Dante swore, humbled and grateful for the show of support. “All right, then. Let’s get moving.”
CHAPTER Thirty-five
With the knife biting into her neck to keep her silent, Ben forced Tess out of her building and into a waiting car on the street. He smelled bad, like soured blood and sweat and a hint of decay. His clothes were filthy and wrinkled, his normally golden hair unkempt, hanging lank and unwashed into his brow. As he shoved her into the backseat of the car, Tess caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were dull and flat, staring at her with a cold detachment that made her skin crawl.
And Ben wasn’t alone.
Two other men waited in the car, both seated in the front, both sharing the same vacant glint in their eyes.
“Where is it, Tess?” Ben asked as he closed the door and shut them inside the dark vehicle. “I left a little something at the clinic the other day, but now it’s not there. What did you do with it?”
The flash drive he’d lied about concealing. Which was currently in Dante’s possession. As much as she doubted Dante after all she had learned about him, what she felt for Ben now was even stronger. She met his disturbingly lifeless gaze and shook her head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Wrong answer, Doc.”
Tess wasn’t at all prepared for the fist that shot out at her and connected with the side of her head. She cried out, falling hard against the seat and cradling the pain that was exploding in her face.
“Maybe you’ll think more clearly at the clinic,” Ben said.
At his indication, the driver punched the gas and the car sped up the street. Tess’s vision swam as they made the drive from the North End to her clinic in East Boston. Ben’s van was parked around back, right next to Nora’s vintage Beetle.
“Oh, God,” Tess murmured, heartsick to see her assistant’s car. “What have you done to her, Ben? Tell me you haven’t hurt Nora—”
“Come along, Doc,” he said, ignoring her question as he opened the door beside him and motioned to her with the knife to get moving.
Tess climbed out as directed, followed by Ben and the two goons who accompanied him. They brought her in through the back of the clinic, through the storeroom and into the empty kennel area. Ben shoved her forward, into the clinic’s lobby. The place was trashed, file cabinets tossed over and emptied onto the floor, furniture smashed, chemicals and pharmaceuticals spilled all over the floor. The destruction was total, but it wasn’t until Tess saw Nora that her breath caught on a sob.
She was lying on the floor behind the reception station, her head coming up as Tess was brought near. They had tied her hands and feet with a telephone cord and gagged her mouth with a length of gauze from the medical supplies. Nora was crying, her face ashen, her eyes puffed and red from what looked to have been hours of torment. But she was alive, and that alone kept Tess from losing it completely.
“Oh, Nora,” she said brokenly. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get you out of this, I promise.”
Beside her, Ben chuckled. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Doc. Because little Nora’s fate depends solely on you now.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You’re going to help us find that flash drive, or you’re going to watch as I slit the bitch’s throat in front of you.”
Behind the gag in her mouth, Nora screamed. She started struggling wildly against her bonds, all in vain. One of Ben’s big companions went over and hauled her to her feet, holding Nora in a bruising grip. He dragged her closer, until no more than a couple of feet separated the women. Nora pleaded with her eyes, sheer panic making her tremble like a leaf in her captor’s hard grasp.
“Let her go, Ben. Please.”
“Hand over the flash drive, and I will let her go, Tess.”
Nora moaned, the sound imploring, desperate. Tess knew real terror then, a bone-deep dread that only bore further into her as she looked into her friend’s eyes and realized that Ben and these other men were deadly serious. They were going to kill Nora—probably Tess as well—if she didn’t give them what they wanted. And she couldn’t give it to them, because she didn’t have it.
“Ben, please. Let Nora go and use me instead. I’m the one who took the flash drive, not her. She’s not involved in this—”
“Tell me where you put the drive, and maybe I’ll let her go, how’s that, Doc? Fair enough for you?”
“I don’t have it,” she murmured. “I took it out of the examination table where you hid it, but I don’t have it anymore.”
He fixed that unfeeling stare on her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “What did you do with it?”
“Let her go,” Tess hedged. “Let her go, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Ben’s mouth lifted at the corner. He eyed the knife he held, toying with the razor edge of the blade. Then, in a flash of motion, he pivoted around and stuck Nora in the stomach with it.
“No!” Tess screamed. “Oh, God—no!”
Ben swung back to her, cool as could be. “That’s just a gut wound, Doc. She can survive that if she gets help soon enough, but you’d better start talking fast.”
Tess’s knees buckled beneath her. Nora was bleeding badly, her eyes rolling back in her head from shock. “Goddamn you, Ben. I hate you.”
“And I no longer care what you feel about me, Tess. All I care about is getting that flash drive back. So. Where the fuck is it?”
“I gave it to someone.”
“Who?”
“Dante.”
That caused a spark of animosity to flicker in Ben’s dull gaze. “You mean that guy—the one you’re screwing? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any idea what he is?”
When she didn’t reply, Ben shook his head, chuckling. “Well, you’ve really fucked up, Tess. It’s out of my hands now.”
With that, his arm shot out and his blade arced back toward Nora, making good on his earlier threat. Tess wailed as her friend was dropped, lifeless, to the floor. Ben and one of his companions grabbed Tess before she could reach out for Nora—before she had even a moment’s hope of saving her with her touch. They carried her away from the carnage, trapping her legs and arms as she fought them in a burst of animal desperation.
Struggling was futile. In moments, Tess found herself on the floor of one of her exam rooms, then heard the metallic click of the lock as Ben shut her inside to await her fate.
Nikolai drove like a bat out of hell, speeding the Breed’s black SUV through the city at a breakneck pace. The temptation to watch the sunlit streets and buildings fly past through the dark, UV-tinted windows was tempting—a sight Dante had never seen, and one he sincerely hoped he never would need to again—but he kept his head down in the passenger side of the vehicle, his thoughts trained on Tess.
He and the others were outfitted in head-to-toe black nylon protective clothing: fatigues, gloves, ski-mask head coverings, and close-fitting wraparound shades to shield their eyes. Even so, the jog from the vehicle to the back door of Tess’s clinic building was intense.
With weapons at the ready, Dante wasted no time. He led the charge, planting his booted foot in the center of the storeroom door and kicking the steel panel right off its hinges. Smoke swirled from the fires that Sullivan had begun setting inside. The roiling plumes grew thicker with the sudden influx of air from outside. They wouldn’t have much time to finish this.
“What the hell is going on?”
At the crack of splintering metal and raining debris from the door, a Minion came running in to see what was wrong. Niko let him know without the slightest hesitation, firing a round of metal into the guy’s skull.
Now that they were inside, Dante smelled blood and death through the smoke—not the fresh kill lying at their feet and, thankfully, not Tess either. She was still alive. He sensed her fear like his own, her current state of sorrow and pain tearing into him like heated steel.
“Sweep the place and put out the fires,” he ordered Niko and Chase. “Kill anyone who stands in your way.”
Tess tried the tightly wound cords that bound her hands and feet together behind her on the examination table. They wouldn’t budge. But she couldn’t stop trying them, even when her struggles only seemed to amuse her captor.
“Ben, why are you doing this? For God’s sake, why did you have to kill Nora?”
Ben clucked his tongue. “You killed her, Tess, not me. You forced my hand.”
Sorrow choked her as Ben came over to where he had trussed her up on the table.
“You know, I thought killing you was going to be difficult,” he whispered near her ear, his hot, stale breath assaulting her nostrils. “You’ve made it very easy for me.”
She watched nervously as he went around to the front of the platform and bent down to her level. His fingers were rough in her hair as he lifted her face up off the slab of cold metal. His eyes were those of a dead man, a mere shell of a human being, no longer the Ben Sullivan she once knew.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” he told her, his tone deceptively gentle. “Just know that you brought this on yourself. Be grateful I didn’t turn you over to my Master instead.”
He stroked her cheek, his touch revolting. When she flinched away, he held her hair tighter, forcing her to look at him. He leaned in as if to kiss her, and Tess spat in his face, fighting back by the only means he’d left her.
Tess braced herself for retaliation as he raised his free hand to strike her. “You fucking bit—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish speaking, let alone touch her. A blast of arctic air rushed in from the open doorway, the instant before the space filled with the massive form of a man clothed in solid black and wearing opaque wraparound sunglasses. Guns and blades hung from his hips and from the thick leather holsters that crisscrossed his muscular torso.
Dante.
Tess would know him anywhere, even beneath the cover of all that black. Hope flared in her, along with surprise. She could feel him reaching out to her with his mind, assuring her that he would get her out of there. That she was safe now.
And at the same time, she could feel his rage. The icy chill of it rolled off his huge body, centering on Ben. Dante lowered his head, the focus of his gaze readable even through the dark lenses that shielded his eyes. A glow emanated from behind those black shades—ember bright, and deadly.
With the flick of a glance, Ben’s body was jerked up off the floor and smashed into the cabinets on the exam-room wall. He kicked and flailed, but Dante held him aloft with just the power of his will. When another black-clad warrior appeared in the doorway, Dante growled a command.
“Get her out of here, Chase. I don’t want her to see this.”
Dante’s companion came over and cut Tess loose, then carefully lifted her into his arms and carried her out of the clinic to an SUV that idled out back.
Once Chase had removed Tess from the room, Dante let go of his mental hold on the human. The contact severed, Sullivan dropped like dead weight to the floor. He started to scramble up, trying to grab for a knife he’d left lying on the counter. Dante sent the blade flying with a sharp mental command, embedding the steel point in the opposite wall.
He stalked farther into the room, forgoing his own weapons in order to deliver Ben Sullivan’s death with his hands. He wanted vengeance now, and he meant to make the bastard suffer for what he’d intended to do to Tess. For what he had done to her in the time before Dante reached her.
“Get up,” he ordered the human. “It ends here.”
Sullivan chuckled, coming up slowly to his feet. When Dante met his gaze, he saw the dull glint of a mind slave in the Crimson dealer’s eyes. Ben Sullivan had been turned Minion. Certainly explained his recent MIA status. Killing him by any means was going to be doing him a favor.
“Where’s your Master hiding out these days, Minion?”
Sullivan only glared at him.
“Did he tell you we kicked his ass last summer, that he ran off with his tail between his legs rather than face the Order mano a mano? He’s a coward and a poseur, and we’re gonna take him down.”
“Fuck you, vampire.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Dante said, noting the twitch of muscle in the Minion’s legs, the telltale movement that told him Sullivan was about to snap. “Fuck you, you Minion piece of shit. And fuck the son of a bitch who owns you too.”
A shrill bellow came out of the Minion’s mouth as he launched himself across the room at Dante. Sullivan punched and hammered at him, fists flying fast, but not so fast that Dante couldn’t block them. In the scuffle, Dante’s chest covering tore away, exposing his skin. With a roar, he sent a blow into the Minion’s face, relishing the crack of bone and the dull smack of giving flesh that sounded on impact.
Ben Sullivan went down in a sprawl. “There is only one true Master of the race,” he hissed up at Dante. “Soon he will rule as king—as is his birthright!”
“Not bloody likely,” Dante replied, lifting the Minion’s bulk off the floor in one hand, then sending him airborne.
Sullivan slid across the polished surface of the table where he’d held Tess and crashed into the windowed wall on the other side of the room. He righted himself at once, leaping up to his feet but weaving in front of the blinds, which swung back and forth behind him. Dante instinctively shielded his eyes from the intermittent light, bringing his arm up to block the rays.
“What’s the matter? Too bright for you, vampire?” He grinned through bloodstained teeth. In his hand was a piece of broken drawer, which he held before him like a jagged club. “How about a little lesson from Die Hard?”
He swung his arm back and shattered the window, knocking the blinds askew and sending glass flying all around them. Sunlight poured in, searing Dante’s eyes behind his shades. He roared at the sudden agony shredding his corneas, and in that brief second of inattention, Ben Sullivan rolled out from under him, trying to escape.
Temporarily blinded, his skin heating up through his protective clothing and sizzling where the light met his exposed flesh, Dante tracked the Minion with his other senses, all of them heightened as his rage transformed him. Fangs stretched long in his mouth. Pupils narrowed on the other side of his dark lenses.
Launching up into the air, he leaped across the room in one fluid motion, pouncing on Sullivan from behind. The impact took both of them to the floor. Dante gave the Minion no chance to react. He grabbed him by his chin and brow and leaned down so that his sharp fangs brushed the bastard’s ear.
“Yippeekayay, muthafucker.”
With a sharp twist, Dante snapped the Minion’s neck in his hands.
He dropped the limp corpse to the floor, vaguely aware of the acrid smell in the air and the faint sizzle that buzzed in his ears like a swarm of flies. Pain washed over him as he stood up and turned away from the broken window. He heard the heavy pound of boots outside the room, but he could hardly force his eyes to focus on the dark shape that filled the space between the jambs.
“It’s all clear out—holy shit.” Niko’s voice trailed off, and then the warrior was at Dante’s side, ushering him out of the light-washed room at an urgent clip. “Oh, Jesus, D. How long were you exposed?”
Dante shook his head. “Not that long. Bastard knocked out the window.”
“Yeah,” Niko said, his voice oddly grim. “I can see that. We have to get you out of here, man. Come on.”
CHAPTER Thirty-six
Holy. Hell.”
The black-clad warrior in the front seat of the SUV with Tess—Chase, he’d been called—threw open the driver’s-side door and leaped out, just as Dante and another man came running out of the clinic.
But Dante wasn’t so much running as he was stumbling, his body being held up by the warrior helping him out. His head was dropped down against his chest, uncovered, and the front of his fatigues were torn open, exposing the tawny skin of his torso, which glowed a fiery red in the bright light of the morning.
Chase opened the SUV’s back door and helped the other man get Dante inside. Dante’s fangs were long, the sharp points glinting white with each breath he dragged in through his open mouth. His face was contorted in pain, his pupils thin black slits in the middle of bright amber irises. He was fully transformed, the vampire Tess should fear but couldn’t now.
His friends worked fast, their grim silence making Tess’s blood run cold. Chase shut the back door and ran around to the driver’s seat. He hopped in, threw the vehicle into gear, and they were off.
“What happened to him?” she asked anxiously, unable to see blood on Dante or any other indication of injury. “Is he wounded?”
“Exposure,” said the one she didn’t know, his urgent tone tinged with a Slavic accent. “Fucking Crimson dealer busted out a window. Dante had to take the bastard down in direct sunlight.”
“Why?” Tess asked, watching Dante shift on the backseat, feeling his agony and the concern that emanated from both of his grave companions. “Why would he do this? Why would any of you do this?”
With small but determined movements, Dante managed to strip off one of his gloves. He reached out to her from where he lay.
“Tess…”
She took his hand in hers, watching his strong fingers engulf her own. The emotion that traveled through their connection reached deep inside her, a warmth—a knowledge—that stole her breath.
It was love, so profound, so fierce, it rendered her speechless.
“Tess,” he murmured, his voice little more than air. “It was you. Not my death…yours.”
“What?” She squeezed his hand, tears welling in her eyes.
“The visions…It wasn’t me, but you. I couldn’t—” He broke off, inhaling sharply through obvious anguish. “Had to stop it. Couldn’t let you…no matter what.”
Tess’s tears spilled over, running down her cheeks as she held Dante’s gaze. “Oh, God, Dante. You shouldn’t have risked this. What if you had died in my place?”
His lip lifted slightly at the corner, baring the edge of one sharp, gleaming fang. “Worth it…seeing you here. It was worth…any risk.”
Tess grasped his hand in both of hers, furious and grateful, and not a little terrified of how he looked, lying in the back of the vehicle. She held on to him and didn’t let go until they had arrived at the compound. Chase parked the SUV in a cavernous hangar filled with dozens of other vehicles. They all got out, and Tess just tried to stay out of the way while Dante’s companions lifted him out of the car and moved him to a bank of elevators.
Dante’s condition seemed to be worsening as each minute passed. By the time they descended and the elevator doors opened, he could hardly stand up on his own. A group of three other men and two women met them in the corridor, everyone flying into swift action.
One of the women came up to Tess and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m Gabrielle, Lucan’s mate. Are you all right?”
Tess shrugged, then gave a vague nod. “Will Dante be okay?”
“I think he’ll fare better if he knows you’re near.”
Gabrielle gestured for Tess to follow her down the corridor to the infirmary, the very wing where she had fled Dante in fear earlier that day. They entered the room where Dante had been brought, and Tess watched as his friends removed his weapons, then carefully stripped him out of his fatigues and boots and placed him in a hospital bed.
Tess was moved by the concern of all in the room. Dante was loved here, accepted for what he was. He had a family here, a home, a life—and yet he’d risked it all to save her. As much as she wanted to fear him, to resent him for everything that had gone between them, she couldn’t. She looked at Dante, suffering in sacrifice for her, and all Tess felt was love.
“Let me,” she said softly, moving to Dante’s bedside. She met the worried faces of the other people who cared for him—the warriors gathered around him, the two women whose tender gazes said they understood what she was feeling. “Let me help him…please.”
Tess touched Dante’s cheek, stroking his strong jaw. She concentrated on his burns, letting her fingers trail down over his bare chest, over the beautiful markings that were blistered and raw, churning with angry color. As gently as she could, Tess placed her hands on the seared flesh, using her gift to draw away the radiation, take away the pain.
“Oh, my God,” whispered one of the warriors. “She’s healing him.”
Tess heard the awestruck gasps, the words of hope that traveled among Dante’s friends—his family. She felt some of their affection pouring over onto her, but as welcome as the warmth of their regard was, Tess’s entire focus was on Dante. On making him well.
She leaned over him and pressed a kiss to his slack mouth, unfazed by the rasp of his fangs against her lips. She loved him wholly, just as he was, and she prayed for the chance to tell him so.
Dante was going to live. His UV burns had been severe—easily life-threatening—but his Breedmate’s healing touch had ultimately proven more powerful than the death that stalked him. Like the others at the compound, Chase had been astonished at Tess’s ability and at her clear devotion to Dante. She had stayed by his side every moment, caring for him as he had done for her when he’d rescued her from the Rogues’ attack.
Everyone agreed they would make a good match: both of them strong as individuals; together they would be unbreakable.
With the worst of the storm past and the compound settling down into a peaceful sense of calm at the arrival of night, Chase’s thoughts turned homeward too. His own journey wasn’t at an end yet; the road ahead of him was murky and uncertain. Once it had all seemed so clear to him, what his future should hold, where he belonged…and with whom.
Now he wasn’t sure about anything.
He said his good-byes to the warriors and their mates, then left, heading out of the Order’s world, back to his own. The drive back into the city was quiet. The wheels of his borrowed vehicle were spinning, the road falling away behind him, but where was he going, after all?
Could he really call the Darkhaven home anymore? With his senses honed from the short time he’d spent in the company of the warriors, his body weighted down by all the metal he was carrying under his coat—the sundry blades, the Beretta 9mm that had somehow become a comforting presence against his hip—how could he ever expect to integrate back into the staid life he’d once known?
And what of Elise?
He could not go back to that tormented existence of wanting a woman he might never have. He’d have to tell her how he felt about her and let the chips fall where they may. She had to know everything. Chase didn’t delude himself with the hope that she might welcome his affection. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what to hope for. He only knew that the half-life he was living was over, starting now.
Chase turned onto the Darkhaven’s gated drive with a sense of freedom washing through him. Things were about to change for him. While he couldn’t guess at how everything might shake down from here, he felt liberated to know that he had reached a turning point in his life. He pulled up the gravel driveway and parked near the Darkhaven residence.
The house was lit up from within, Elise’s bedroom and living quarters glowing with soft light. She was awake, probably anxiously waiting for him to return with word from the compound.
Chase killed the engine and opened the door of the vehicle. The instant his boots hit the ground, he got a prickling sense that he was not alone. He pocketed the keys and got out, discreetly unbuttoning his pea coat as he stood. His eyes scanned the night shadows, peering into the darkness for some sign of the enemy he knew was there. His ears were attuned to every subtle noise in his surroundings—the rustle of naked branches as the breeze soughed through them; the muffled drone of the stereo in the house, Elise’s favorite soft jazz playing in the background….
And then, running counterpoint to all of that, the raspy wheeze of someone breathing not far from where Chase stood. There was a crunch of gravel behind him. Chase’s fingers were already curled around the grip of the 9mm as he slowly pivoted to face the threat.
Camden.
The déjà vu that hit Chase was like a cannon blast to the gut. But his nephew looked even worse than before, if that was possible. Caked in dried blood and gore, grisly evidence of recent kills that had not slaked his thirst, Camden came away from the hedge that had concealed him and loped closer. His huge fangs dripped saliva as he sized up Chase as his next fix for the Bloodlust that had taken over his body and mind. He had been unreachable when Chase encountered him in Ben Sullivan’s apartment. Now he was dangerous and unpredictable, a rabid dog left to go feral too long.
Chase looked at him sadly, full of remorse for the fact that he hadn’t been able to find him—hadn’t been able to save him—in time to prevent this irrevocable transformation to Rogue.
“I’m so sorry, Cam. This never should have happened to you.” Under the fall of his dark wool pea coat, Chase flipped off the Beretta’s safety, slid the weapon out of the holster. “If it could be me instead, I swear…”
Behind him now, up at the house, Chase heard the metallic click of the front door opening, then Elise’s sudden indrawn gasp. Time slowed at once. Everything spun out, reality descending into the thickness of a sluggish dream, a nightmare that began the instant Elise stepped outside.
“Camden!” Her voice seemed oddly distant, slowed like the rest of the moment. “Oh…God…Camden!”
Chase swiveled his head toward her. He shouted for her to stay back, but she was already running, holding her arms wide, her white widow’s garb fluttering around her like delicate moth’s wings as she flew toward her son. Toward her certain and violent death, if Chase allowed her to get close enough to touch the Rogue vampire that had been her beloved son.
“Elise, stay back!”
But she ignored him. She kept coming, even when her tear-filled eyes focused on Camden’s fearsome, hideous appearance. She choked on a sob, but her arms stayed open to him, her feet still moving across the lawn and down to the driveway.
In his peripheral vision, Chase saw the Rogue’s savage amber gaze shift attention to Elise. Fixed on her now, the Bloodlusting vampire let out a terrible snarl, lowering into a crouch. Chase pivoted around and put himself squarely between mother and son. He had the pistol drawn and level before he even realized it.
Another second ticked by.
Elise was still coming, faster now, weeping and calling Camden’s name.
Chase measured the distance with his gut, knowing that there were only seconds left before this confrontation would end in tragedy. He had no choice. He had to act. He couldn’t stand by and risk her life—
The blast of gunfire cracked like thunder in the night.
Elise screamed. “No! Oh, God—nooo!”
Chase stood there, numb, his finger still squeezing the trigger down. The titanium-filled bullet had hit its target squarely in the center of the chest, dropping the Rogue to the ground. Already the sizzle of death had begun, erasing all doubt that there might have been a chance to save Camden from the Bloodlust that possessed him. The Crimson had turned him into the walking dead; now it was ended. Camden’s suffering was over.
Elise’s—and Chase’s too—had only begun.
She raced up to him and beat her fists against him, making contact with his face, his shoulders, his chest, anywhere she could strike him. Her lavender eyes were swamped with tears, her beautiful face pale and stricken, her voice lost to the hitching sobs and wails that poured out of her throat.
Chase took the abuse in silence. What could he do? What was there to say?
He let her vent all of her hatred on him, and only when she finally stopped, pivoting around to collapse on the ground near the body of her son as the titanium quickly reduced his remains to ash, did Chase find the will to move. He stared at her hunched form trembling on the gravel driveway, his ears ringing with the mournful sounds of her grief. Then, in weary silence, he let the gun slip from his loose grasp.
He turned away from her, and from the Darkhaven sanctuary that had long been his home, and walked off into the darkness alone.
Dante jolted awake, his eyelids flying open, breath sawing out of him. He’d been trapped by a wall of fire, blinded by the flames and ash. Unable to reach Tess. He sat up, panting, the vision still raw in his mind, scraping at his heart.
Oh, God, if he’d failed…
If he’d lost her…
“Dante?”
A profound relief swamped him at the sound of her voice, at the glorious realization that Tess was right there with him, seated at his bedside. He’d woken her from a drowsy sleep; she lifted her head from her arms, her hair in disarray, her gentle eyes shadowed with fatigue.
“Dante, you’re awake.” She brightened at once, coming up nearer to him and caressing his face and hair. “I’ve been so worried. How do you feel?”
He thought he should feel a hell of a lot worse than he did. But he was well enough to pull Tess into his arms. Strong enough to bring her onto his lap on the bed, where he kissed her soundly.
He was alive enough to know that what he needed more than anything right now was to feel her nude body pressed against his.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her lips. “Tess, I am sorry for everything I’ve put you through—”
“Shh, we’ll have time for that later. We can sort everything out later. Right now you need to rest.”
“No,” he said, too glad to be awake—to be with her—to think about wasting any more time on sleep. “What I need to tell you can’t wait. I saw something terrible today. I saw what it would be like to lose you. That’s someplace I never want to go again. I need to know that you’re protected, that you are safe—”
“I’m right here. You saved me, Dante.”
He stroked the velvety skin of her cheek, so grateful that he could. “You’re the one who saved me, Tess.”
He wasn’t talking about his injuries from the UV exposure, which she had healed with her amazing gift of touch. He wasn’t talking about the first night he’d found her either, when her blood had fortified him when he was at his weakest. Tess had saved him in so many ways beyond any of that. This female owned him, heart and soul, and he wanted her to know that now.
“Everything makes sense when I’m with you, Tess. My life makes sense, after so many years of running scared in the dark. You are the light, the reason I live. I’m bonded to you deep, woman. For me, there will never be another.”
“We’re bonded by blood now,” she said, but her faint smile wobbled on her lips. She glanced down, frowning. “What if you hadn’t bitten me that night at my clinic? Without the blood bond, would you still…?”
“Love you?” he finished for her, lifting her chin so that she could see the truth of it in his eyes. “It’s always been you, Tess. I just didn’t know it until that night. I had been searching for you my whole life, connected to you by the vision of what happened today.”
He smoothed her mussed hair, letting one of her honey-brown waves curl around his fingers. “You know, my mother swore by destiny. She believed in it, even though she knew her own destiny held bitter pain and loss. I never wanted to accept that belief for myself, that anything was preordained. I thought I was smarter than that, above it. But it was destiny that brought us together, Tess. I can’t deny that now. God, Tess…have you any idea how long I’ve waited for you?”
“Oh, Dante,” she whispered, blinking away a stray tear. “I wasn’t prepared for any of this. I’m so afraid….”
He gathered her close, sick for everything she’d been forced to endure because of him. He knew the trauma of what happened today would stay with her for a long time. So much death and destruction. He never wanted her to feel that kind of pain again. “I need to know that you are somewhere you’ll always be safe, Tess. Where I can protect you best. There are places that we can go, safe houses within the Breed. I’ve already talked to Chase about securing a place for us in one of the area Darkhavens.”
“No.” His heart sank as she carefully extricated herself from his embrace and sat on her knees beside him on the bed. She shook her head slowly. “Dante, no…”
God help him, but he couldn’t speak. He waited in agonizing silence, knowing that he fully deserved her rejection. He deserved her contempt for so many reasons, yet he’d felt certain she cared for him. He prayed she might, even just a little bit.
“Tess, if you say you don’t love me—”
“I do love you,” she said at last. “I love you with all my heart.”
“Then what is it?”
She looked at him searchingly, her aqua eyes moist but resolved. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of hiding. You’ve opened my eyes to a world I never dreamed could exist. Your world, Dante.”
He smiled at the beauty sitting next to him. “My world is you.”
“And it’s all of this too. This place, these people. The incredible legacy that you’re a part of. Your world is dark and dangerous, Dante, but it’s also extraordinary—like you. Like life. Don’t ask me to run away from that. I want to be with you, but if I’m going to live in your world, then I want to do it here, where you belong. Where your family is.”
“My family?”
She nodded. “The other warriors here and their mates. They love you. I saw that today. Maybe in time they might love me too.”
“Tess.” Dante pulled her close, embracing her with a full heart and a gratitude that soared into his chest like it was borne on wings. “You would want to be with me here, like this, as the mate of a warrior?”
“As the mate of my warrior,” she corrected, smiling at him with love shining brightly in her eyes. “I can’t have it any other way.”
Dante swallowed on a throat gone dry. He didn’t deserve her. After all they’d been through, after all his ceaseless running, his heart had finally found its home. With Tess. With his beloved.
“What do you think?” she asked him. “Can you live with that?”
“Eternally,” Dante vowed, then pulled her back down onto the bed with him and sealed their pact with a passionate, endless kiss.
Read on for a preview of
Lara Adrian’s next novel
in her pulse-pounding
Midnight Breed series…
Midnight Awakening
by
Lara Adrian
On Sale
December 2007
Midnight Awakening
On sale December 2007
CHAPTER One
The scent of blood carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was faint, fresh, a coppery tickle in the nostrils of the vampire warrior who leaped soundlessly from the roof of one dusk-shadowed building to another. Snowflakes fell around him like floating white ash, blanketing the city that spread out beneath him some ten stories down.
Tegan crouched at the ledge and surveyed the tangle of bustling streets and alleyways. As one of the Order—a small cadre of Breed vampires engaged in war against their savage brethren, the Rogues—Tegan’s primary nightly objective was dealing death to his enemies. But down to his marrow, he was Breed, and there were none among his kind who could ignore the call of newly spilled human blood.
He curled back his lips and dragged the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingled, an ache blooming where his canines began to stretch into fangs. His vision sharpened beyond its preternatural acuity, pupils narrowing into thin vertical slits in the center of his green eyes. The urge to hunt—to feed—rose up in him swiftly, an automatic response that even he, with his disciplined, iron self-control, was powerless to suppress.
All the worse for him, being of the first generation of vampires spawned on Earth. Gen One appetites—physical, carnal, and otherwise—burned the strongest.
Tegan crept along the edge of the building, then leaped down onto the roof of another, his eyes rooted on the movement of people below, searching for a weak member in the herd. But he didn’t comb the crowds merely for his own needs: find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any Rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.
Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood, not fresh at all, but several minutes old.
Following the metallic odor of it, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long, hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.
“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath.
Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.
Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.
“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides. His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough. Take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying.
But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.
The human in the blood-stained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for the kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one Bloodlusting suckhead, let alone a pack of three. With a curse, Tegan advanced his position and jumped to a lower rooftop above the alleyway…just as the Rogue in front of the human lunged into action.
Tegan heard a sharp intake of breath—a female gasp of terror—as the Rogue grabbed for its prey. It seized the front of the woman’s hood and threw her down on the snow-covered pavement, letting loose a howl of savage amusement as she took the hard fall.
“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed, already drawing a large blade from the sheath at his hip.
With a running leap and dropped down from the ledge of the building, landing smoothly on the ground in a low crouch. The two Rogues nearest him split up, one taking cover while the other shouted that they were under attack. Tegan silenced the warning in mid-sentence, slicing his length of titanium-edged steel across the suckhead’s throat.
A few yards ahead of him in the alleyway, the female was on her stomach, scrabbling to get away from her assailant. She had a weapon too, Tegan was surprised to see, but the Rogue noticed it at the same time and kicked it out of her hand. The Rogue planted his boot on the center of her back, pinning her to the ground with his heel jammed hard into her spine.
Tegan was on him at once. He threw the Rogue off the woman, driving the snarling vampire into the side of the brick building and holding it there with his forearm wedged under the suckhead’s chin.
“Get out of here!” he shouted to the human as she started to drag herself up off the ground. “Run!”
She flung a frightened look over her shoulder—the first glimpse Tegan got of her face. His gaze locked on to a pair of huge, pale lavender eyes. The woman stared at him from over the top of a dark knit scarf that could hardly disguise the delicate beauty beneath it.
Holy shit. He knew her.
And she wasn’t just a random human female; she was a Breedmate. A young widow from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries in the city. Tegan didn’t know her well. He hadn’t seen her for several months, not since the night he’d taken her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned her only son had gone Rogue.
It was the last he had seen of her, but it hadn’t been the last time he’d thought about her.
Elise.
What the hell was she doing here?
Tegan’s flat stare held Elise transfixed for a moment that seemed to stretch out endlessly. Battle rage had fully transformed his face to that of his true nature—a Breed vampire, with gleaming fangs and fierce eyes that were no longer their usual gem-green, but swamped with bright, glowing amber that burned like twin flames in his skull.
“Run!” he shouted, a deep, otherworldly growl. “Get out of here—now!”
That brief inattention cost him. The Rogue he had pinned to the bricks in front of him twisted its big head, jaws wide, huge fangs dripping saliva. It bit down hard on Tegan’s forearm, ripping into the warrior’s muscled flesh. Without a sound of pain or anger, Tegan brought his other hand up and buried a blade in the Rogue’s neck. It dropped, lifeless, its corpse sizzling from the titanium that poisoned its corrupt bloodstream.
Tegan whirled around, his breath sawing out from between his lips, clouding in the chill air. “Goddamn it, woman—go!” he roared, just as the remaining Rogue vaulted into a further attack on him.
Elise jolted into action. She sped out of the alleyway and onto another street, running as fast as her legs would carry her. The small apartment she rented wasn’t far, just a few long blocks from the train station, but it seemed like miles. She was exhausted from her own ordeal that day, and shaking from the violence she’d just witnessed in the alley.
And she was worried for Tegan, even though she was certain he didn’t need her concern. He was a member of the Order, probably the most lethal of them all, based on what she’d seen of him when they’d met for the first—and last—time a few months ago. She’d never encountered such cold apathy as she had in Tegan. He was a killing machine, according to all who knew his name, and Elise didn’t doubt it for a second. And now that she’d been discovered in the city, she could only hope that the warrior would take no interest in what she was doing. She couldn’t allow herself to be pushed back into the Darkhavens, not even by a male as fearsome as Tegan.
Elise ran the last block to her apartment and raced up the concrete steps. The main door used to be keyed access, but someone broke the lock five weeks ago and the building super hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. Elise pushed the door open and dashed down the first floor hallway to her unit. She unlocked the deadbolt and slipped inside, immediately flipping on all the lights.
The stereo and television went on next—neither tuned to anything in particular, but both playing loudly. No longer needing the MP3 player she wore on her hunt that day, Elise pulled it off and set it down on the chipped yellow kitchen counter, along with the dead Minion’s cell phone. She ditched her ruined parka on the floor next to her treadmill, her stomach turning as the bare bulb hanging from the combination dining-living room ceiling washed over the dark red stains from the Minion’s blood. It was on her hands too; her fingers were sticky with gore.
And her head was still pounding, the usual vicious migraine that came in the wake of any prolonged period of using her skill. It wasn’t as bad as it would be soon. She still had time to clean up and try to get herself to bed before the worst of it hit her.
Elise dragged herself into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her fingers were trembling as she unfastened the empty leather knife sheath from her thigh and placed it on the sink. She’d lost the titanium blade in the snow when the Rogue kicked it out of her grasp, but she had others. A lot of the money she’d left the Darkhavens with had gone into weapons and training equipment—things she had never wanted to know anything about but now considered necessities. How drastically her life had changed in just four months. She could never go back to what she was.
The person she had been all the time she’d lived under the protection of the Breed was gone now, dead, like her beloved mate and her son. The pain of those losses had been a furnace that devoured her old life, reduced it to cinder. She was what was left—the phoenix that rose out of the ash. Elise glanced up into the fogging mirror and met her own haunted gaze in the glass. Blood smeared her cheek and chin, grime smudged her brow, all of it like war paint. There was a feral glint in the weary eyes staring back at her.
God, she was tired…so tired. But so long as she could stand, she could fight. So long as her heart still ached for vengeance, she would use the psychic gift that had for so long been her greatest weakness. She would endure any hardship, face any risk. Whatever it took to have justice.
Tegan wiped his bloodied blade on the dead Rogue’s jacket and idly observed the swift disintegration of the last body in the alley. He blew out a curse, his senses still quivering with the heat of combat. Battle-sharpened eyes lit on the knife Elise had lost in her struggle. Tegan walked over and retrieved the weapon, which was not some dainty dagger a lady might carry for protection but a serious-looking bit of hardware. It was seven inches long, serrated near the upward jut of the tip, and unless he missed his guess, the metal was not your basic carbide steel but Rogue-eating titanium.
Which only begged the question again: What the hell was the Darkhaven female doing out on the streets alone, covered in blood, and toting warrior-grade weapons on her person?
Tegan lifted his head and sniffed at the air, searching for her scent. It didn’t take long to find it. His senses were always sharp, predatorily acute; combat lit them up like Roman candles. He pulled the heather-and-roses scent of the Breedmate into his lungs, and let it guide him deeper into the city.
The scent trailed off at a shit-hole apartment building in one of the seedier sections of the low-rent area of town. Not at all the kind of place he’d expect to find a genteel Darkhaven-raised female like Elise. But she was inside the graffiti-tagged, brick-and-concrete eyesore, he was certain of that.
He stalked up the steps and scowled at the feeble door with its broken lock. Inside the vestibule a battered wooden staircase rose to the left, but Elise’s scent was coming from the door at the end of the first-floor hall. Tegan crept past another apartment door on his right, the thump of music vibrating the floor and walls. He could hear a television too, a barrage of background noise that seemed to swell as he neared Elise’s place. He rapped on the door and waited.
No response.
He knocked again, dropping his knuckles hard on the scarred metal. Nothing. Not that she could hear anything inside the place with all the racket going on in there.
Maybe he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t get involved in whatever it was that brought the female to this place in her life. Tegan knew she’d had a rough time since the death of her son. Already widowed some five years, Elise had been devastated when her only child went missing and was later found to have gone Rogue. The Order had gotten word that Camden was dead, killed by Elise’s brother-in-law, Sterling Chase, when the kid showed up at the Darkhaven in full-on Bloodlust. The report stated that Camden had been about to attack Elise when Chase gunned him down with titanium rounds—right in front of her.
God only knew what witnessing her son’s death might have done to Elise. Not his concern, though. Yeah, not his fucking problem at all. So why was he standing in this rank tenement house with his dick in his hand, waiting for her to come around and let him in?
Tegan eyed the array of locks on the apartment door. At least these were in working order and she’d had the good sense to set them once she got inside. But for a Breed vampire of Tegan’s power and lineage, tripping the locks with his mind took all of two seconds.
He slipped inside and closed the door behind him. The decibel level in the small studio apartment was enough to make his head shatter. He glanced around the place with narrowed eyes, taking in the odd decor. The only furniture was a futon and a bookcase, which housed a quality stereo system and a small flat-panel television—both on, and blaring.
Next to the futon, in a space that might have held a table and chairs, were a treadmill and a resistance training machine. Elise’s blood-stained parka lay on the floor there, and on the sorry-looking yellow kitchen counter were a cell phone and an MP3 player. Elise’s decorating style left a lot to be desired, but it was her choice of wall covering that Tegan found most peculiar.
Crudely nailed to all four walls of the one-room living space were acoustic foam panels—soundproofing material. Yards of the stuff, covering every square inch of the walls and the back of the door, too. “What the fu—”
In the adjacent bathroom, there was a metallic squeak as the shower abruptly cut off. Tegan turned to face the door as it opened a moment later. Elise was pulling a white terrycloth robe around herself as she glanced up, met his gaze, and gasped.
“Tegan.” Her voice was barely audible over the din of the music and TV. She made no move to turn them down, just came out of the bathroom and stood as far away from him as possible. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Tegan let his eyes drift around the meager living quarters, if only to quit looking at her in her state of near-undress. “Shitty place you have here. Who’s your decorator?”
She didn’t answer him. Her pale amethyst eyes stayed fixed on him as though she didn’t quite trust him, nervous to find herself alone with him. And who could blame her? Tegan knew he had the reputation of a stone cold killer. It was simply fact. But the last time he’d seen Elise, he’d shown her nothing but kindness, deference paid the Darkhaven female out of respect for what she was going through. It hadn’t hurt that she was a breathtaking beauty, as fragile as a frost flower.
Some of that fragility was gone now, Tegan noted, seeing the lines of muscle definition in her bare calves and arms. Her face was still lovely, but not as full as he remembered. Her eyes were still alive with intelligence but their sheen was somehow brittle, a characteristic made more pronounced by the trace shadows beneath her lashes.
And her hair…Jesus, she’d shorn off the long blond waves. The cascade of spun gold that used to fall to her hips was now a crown of thick silky spikes that rose around her head in pixie-like disarray, and framed the lean oval of her face.
She was still stunning, but in an entirely different way than Tegan ever would have imagined.
“You forgot something back in the alley.” He held out the wicked hunting blade. When she moved to take it from him, he drew it back out of her reach. “What were you doing out there tonight, Elise?”
She shook her head, said something too softly to be heard over the din filling the apartment. Impatient, Tegan mentally shut the stereo down. He glanced to the television, about to silence that device as well.
“No!” Elise shook her head, wincing, her fingers clutching her temple. “Wait—leave it on, please. I need…the noise soothes me.”
Tegan scowled his doubt, but left the TV alone. “What happened to you tonight, Elise? Did someone hurt you out there? Were you attacked before the Rogues discovered you in the alley?”
Her answer seemed long in coming. “No. I wasn’t attacked.”
“You want to explain all that blood on your coat over there? Or why you’re living in a part of town where you feel the need to carry around this kind of hardware?”
She held her head in her hands, her voice a rough whisper. “I don’t want to explain anything. Please, Tegan. I wish you hadn’t come here. Just, please…you have to leave now.”
He exhaled a sharp laugh. “I just saved your sweet little ass, darlin’. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you tell me why I had to.”
“I didn’t mean to be out past dark. I know the dangers. Things just took…a little longer than I anticipated.”
“Things,” he repeated, not liking where this seemed to be heading. “We’re not talking about shopping or coffee with friends, are we?”
Tegan’s gaze went back to the kitchen counter, to the familiar design of the cell phone that lay there. He scowled, suspicion coiling in his gut as he walked over and picked it up. He’d seen dozens of these things lately. The phone was one of those disposable jobs, the kind favored by humans in league with the Rogues. He flipped it over and disabled the built-in GPS chip.
Tegan knew if he took the cell phone in to the compound lab, Gideon would find it contained just one number, super-encrypted and impossible to break. This particular phone was spattered with human blood, the same shit that soaked the front of Elise’s coat. “Where’d you get this, Elise?”
“I think you know,” she replied, her voice quiet but defiant.
He turned to face her. “You took it off a Minion? By yourself? Jesus Christ…how?”
She shrugged, still rubbing the side of her head as if it pained her. “I tracked him from the train station. I followed him, and when the chance was there, I killed him.”
It wasn’t often that Tegan was taken by surprise, but hearing those words coming out of the petite female hit him like a brick to the back of his head. “You can’t be serious.”
But she was. The level look she gave him left no doubt whatsoever.
Behind her, the television screen flashed with a breaking news bulletin. A reporter came on, delivering word that a stabbing victim had been discovered a few minutes before:
“—the deceased was found just two blocks south of the train station, yet another killing in what authorities are beginning to suspect is a string of related murders…”
As the live report continued, and Elise calmly stared at him from across the room, Tegan’s blood ran cold with understanding.
“You?” he asked, already knowing the answer, incredible as it seemed.
When Elise didn’t respond, Tegan stalked over to a foot locker on the floor near the futon. He yanked it open and swore as his eyes lit on a large assortment of blades, guns, and ammunition. A lot of it was still brand-new, but others had been used and had the wear to show for it.
“How long, Elise? When did you start this insanity?”
She stared at him, her slender jaw held rigid. “My son is dead because of the Rogues,” she said finally. “I couldn’t sit around doing nothing.”
Tegan heard the resolve in her voice, but that didn’t make him any less pissed off about what was going on here. “How many? Tonight wasn’t the first, obviously. How many times have you done this, Elise?”
She said nothing for a very long time. Then she slowly walked over to the bookcase and knelt down to pull out a lidded crate from the bottom shelf. Her gaze on Tegan, she lifted the top and calmly set it aside.
In the bin were more Minion cell phones.
At least a dozen of the damned things.
Tegan dropped his ass onto the futon and raked his fingers through his hair. “Holy hell, woman. Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author Lara Adrian lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
A Dell Book / December 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Lara Adrian, LLC
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33758-4
v3.0
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
To my readers, with deep appreciation for all the enthusiasm and support you’ve shown for my books.
Thank you so much!
And to my husband, my true north, and proof positive that “happily ever after” really does exist outside the written page.
You’ll always be my hero!
Acknowledgments
With thanks to my agent and everyone at Bantam Dell for the continued belief in me, and for the wonderful attention given to each of my books. Thanks also to my copyeditors, proofreaders, and other folks working behind the scenes. (Hi, Destiny and Jeremy!)
Big hugs to my writer pals for tolerating prolonged bouts of radio silence on my end, yet still being available for last-minute sanity checks and encouragement. Thank you especially to Kayla Gray, Jaci Burton, Larissa Ione, and Stephanie Tyler for simply being awesome.
Additional gratitude goes out to three immensely talented bands whose music brought much of this story to life in my imagination. Inspiration (and a continuing daily addiction) is due to the artistry of Collide, H.I.M., and Black Lab.
CHAPTER
One
She walked among them undetected, just another afternoon rush-hour commuter trudging through the fresh February snowfall on her way to the train station. No one paid any mind at all to the petite female in the hooded oversized parka, her scarf concealing her face to just below her eyes, which watched the crowds of human pedestrians with keen interest. Too keen, she knew, but she couldn’t help it.
She was anxious being out among them, and impatient to find her prey.
Her head rang with the pound of rock music blaring in through the tiny earbuds of a portable MP3 player. It wasn’t hers. It had belonged to her teenage son—to Camden. Sweet Cam, who’d died just four months ago, a victim of the underworld war that Elise herself was now a part of as well. He was the reason she was here, prowling Boston’s crowded streets with a dagger in her coat pocket and a titanium-edged blade strapped to her thigh.
More than ever now, Camden was the reason she lived.
His death could not go unavenged.
Elise crossed at a traffic light and moved up the road toward the station. She could see people talking as she passed them, their lips moving silently, their words—more important, their thoughts—drowned out by the aggressive lyrics, screaming guitars, and pulsing throb of bass that filled her ears and vibrated in her bones. She didn’t know precisely what she was listening to, nor did it matter. All she needed was the noise, played loud enough and long enough to get her into place for the hunt.
She entered the building, just one more person in a river of moving humanity. Harsh light spilled down from fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. The odor of street filth and dampness and too many bodies assailed her nose through her scarf. Elise walked farther inside, coming to a slow pause in the center of the station. Forced to divide around her, the flowing crowd passed on either side, many bumping into her, jostling her in their haste to make the next train. More than one glared as they passed, mouthing obscenities over her abrupt halt in the middle of their path.
God, how she despised all of this contact, but it was necessary. She took a steadying breath, then reached into her pocket and turned off the music. The din of the station rushed upon her like a wave, engulfing her with the racket of voices, shuffling feet, the traffic outside, and the metallic grate and rumble of the incoming train. But these noises were nothing compared to the others that swamped her now.
Ugly thoughts, bad intentions, secret sins, open hatreds—all of it churned around her like a black tempest, human corruption seeking her out and hammering into her senses. It staggered her, as always, that first rush of ill wind nearly overwhelming her. Elise swayed on her feet. She fought the nausea that rose within her and tried her best to weather the psychic assault.
—Such a bitch, I hope they fire her ass—
—Goddamn hick tourists, why don’t you go back where you belong—
—Idiot! Outta my way, or I’ll friggin’ knock you flat—
—So what if she’s my wife’s sister? Not like she wasn’t after me all this time—
Elise’s breath was coming faster with each second, a headache blooming in her temples. The voices in her mind blended into ceaseless, almost indistinguishable chatter, but she held on, bracing herself as the train arrived and its doors opened to let a new sea of people pour out onto the platform. They spilled around her, more voices added to the cacophony that was shredding her from the inside.
—Panhandling losers ought to put the same effort into getting a damn job—
—I swear, he puts his hand on me one more time, I’ma kill the sumbitch—
—Run, cattle! Run back to your pens! Pathetic creatures, my Master is right, you do deserve to be enslaved—
Elise’s eyes snapped wide. Her blood turned to ice in her veins the instant the words registered in her mind. This was the one voice she waited to hear.
The one she came here to hunt.
She didn’t know the name of her prey, or even what he looked like, but she knew what he was: a Minion. Like the others of his kind, he had been human once, but now he was something less than that. His humanity had been bled away by the one he called Master, a powerful vampire and the leader of the Rogues. It was because of them—the Rogues and the evil one guiding them in a growing war within the vampire race—that Elise’s only son was dead.
After being widowed five years ago, Camden was all she’d had left, all that mattered in her life. With his loss, she’d found a new purpose. An unwavering resolve. It was that resolve she leaned upon now, commanding her feet to move through the thick crowd, searching for the one she’d make pay for Camden’s death this time.
Her head spun with the continued bombardment of painful, ugly thoughts, but finally she managed to single out the Minion. He stalked ahead of her by several yards, his head covered by a black knit cap, his body draped in a tattered, faded green camouflage jacket. Animosity poured out of him like acid. His corruption was so total, Elise could taste it like bile in the back of her throat. And she had no choice but to stick close to him, waiting for her chance to make her move.
The Minion exited the station and headed up the sidewalk at a fast clip. Elise followed, her fingers wrapped tightly around the dagger in her pocket. Outside with fewer people, the psychic blare had lessened, but the pain of overload in the station was still present, boring into her skull like a steel spike. Elise kept her eyes trained on her quarry, picking up her speed as he ducked into a business off the street. She came up to the glass door and peered past the painted FedEx logo to see the Minion waiting in line for the counter.
“Excuse me, miss,” someone said from behind her, startling her with the sound of a true voice, and not the buzz of words that were still filling her head. “You going inside or what, lady?”
The man behind her pushed open the door as he said it, holding it for her expectantly. She hadn’t intended to go in, but now everyone was looking at her—the Minion included—and it would draw more attention to herself if she refused. Elise strode into the brightly lit business and immediately feigned interest in a display of shipping boxes in the front window.
From her periphery, she watched as the Minion waited his turn in line. He was edgy and violent-minded, his thoughts berating the customers ahead of him. Finally he approached the counter, ignoring the clerk’s greeting.
“Pickup for Raines.”
The attendant typed something into a computer, then hesitated a second. “Hang on.” He headed to a back room, only to return a moment later shaking his head. “It hasn’t arrived yet. Sorry ’bout that.”
Fury rolled off the Minion, tightening like a vise around Elise’s temples. “What do you mean, ‘it hasn’t arrived’?”
“Most of New York got hit with a big snowstorm last night, so a lot of today’s shipments have been delayed—”
“This shit’s supposed to be guaranteed,” the Minion snarled.
“Yeah, it is. You can get your money back, but you have to fill out a claim—”
“Fuck the claim, you moron! I need that package. Now!”
My Master will have my ass if I don’t turn up with this delivery, and if my ass goes in a sling, I’m going to come back here and rip your goddamn lungs out.
Elise drew in her breath at the virulence of the unspoken threat. She knew the Minions lived only to serve the one who made them, but it was always a shock to hear the terrible depth of their allegiance. Nothing was sacred to their kind. Lives meant nothing, be they human or Breed. Minions were nearly as awful as the Rogues, the bloodthirsty, criminal faction of the vampire nation.
The Minion leaned over the counter, fists braced on either side of him. “I need that package, asshole. I’m not leaving without it.”
The clerk backed away, his expression suddenly gone wary. He grabbed the phone. “Look, man, as I’ve explained to you, there’s nothing more I can do for you on this. You’re gonna have to come back tomorrow. Right now, you need to leave before I call the police.”
Useless piece of shit, the Minion growled inwardly. I’ll come back tomorrow all right. Just you wait ’til I come back for you!
“Is there a problem here, Joey?” An older man came out from the back, all business.
“I tried to tell him that his stuff ain’t here yet on account of the storm, but he won’t give it up. Like maybe I’m supposed to pull it out of my a—”
“Sir?” the manager said, cutting off his employee and pinning the Minion with a serious look. “I’m going to ask you politely to leave now. You need to go, or the police will be called to escort you out of here.”
The Minion growled something indistinguishable but nasty. He slammed his fist down on the countertop, then whirled around and started stalking away. As he neared the door where Elise stood, he swept over a floor display, sending rolls of tape and bubble packs scattering to the floor. Although Elise stepped back, the Minion was coming too hard toward her. He glared down at her with vacant, inhuman eyes.
“Get out of my way, cow!”
She’d barely moved before he barreled past her and out the door, pushing so hard the glass panes rattled like they were going to shatter.
“Asshole,” one of the patrons still in line muttered once the Minion had gone.
Elise felt the wave of relief wash over the other customers at his departure. Part of her was relieved too, glad that no one met with harm. She wanted to wait for a while in the momentary calm in the store, but it was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. The Minion was storming across the street now, and dusk was coming fast.
She only had half an hour at best before darkness fell and the Rogues came out to feed. If what she did was dangerous in the daytime, at night it was nothing short of suicide. She could slay a Minion with stealth and steel—already had, in fact, more than once—but like any other human, female or not, she stood no chance against the blood-addicted strength of the Rogues.
Girding herself for what she had to do, Elise slipped out the door and followed the Minion up the street. He was angry and walking brusquely, slamming into other pedestrians and snarling curses at them as he passed. A barrage of mental pain filled her head as more voices joined the din already clanging in her mind, but Elise kept pace with her target. She hung a few yards behind, her eyes trained on the pale green bulk of his jacket through the light flurry of fresh snow. He swung left around the corner of a building and into a narrow alley. Elise hurried now, desperate not to lose him.
Midway down the side street, he yanked open a battered steel door and disappeared. She crept up to the windowless slab of metal, palms sweating despite the chill in the air. His violent thoughts filled her head—murderous thoughts, all the grisly things he would do out of deference to his Master.
Elise reached into her pocket to withdraw her dagger. She held it close to her side, poised to strike, but concealed behind the long drape of her coat. With her free hand, she grasped the latch and pulled open the unlocked door. Snowflakes swirled ahead of her into the gloomy vestibule that reeked of mildew and old cigarette smoke. The Minion stood near a bank of mail slots, one shoulder leaning against the wall as he flipped open a cell phone like the ones they all carried—the Minions’ direct line to their vampire Master.
“Shut the fucking door, bitch!” he snapped, soulless eyes glinting. His brows dropped into a scowl as Elise moved toward him with swift, deadly purpose. “What the hell is th—”
She drove the dagger hard into his chest, knowing that the element of surprise was one of her best advantages. His anger hit her like a physical blow, pushing her backward. His corruption seeped into her mind like acid, burning her senses. Elise struggled through the psychic pain, coming back to strike him again with the blade, ignoring the sudden wet heat of his blood spilling onto her hand.
The Minion sputtered, grasping out for her as he fell against her. His wound was mortal, so much blood she nearly lost her stomach at the sight and smell of it. Elise twisted out of the Minion’s heavy lean and leaped out of the way as he fell to the floor. Her breath was sawing out of her lungs, her heart racing, her head splitting in agony as the mental barrage of his rage continued in her mind.
The Minion thrashed and hissed as death overtook him. Then, finally, he stilled.
Finally, there was silence.
With trembling fingers, Elise retrieved the cell phone from where it lay at her feet and slipped it into her pocket. The slaying had drained her, the combined physical and psychic exertion almost too much to bear. Each time seemed to weigh more heavily on her, take longer for her to recover. She wondered if the day would come that she might slide so deep into the abyss that she’d not rebound at all. Probably, she guessed, but not today. And she would keep fighting so long as she had breath in her body and the pain of loss in her heart.
“For Camden,” she whispered, staring down at the dead Minion as she clicked on the MP3 player in preparation of her return home. Music blared from the tiny earbuds, muting the gift that gave her the power to hear the darkest secrets of a human’s soul.
She’d heard enough for now.
Her day’s sober mission complete, Elise pivoted around and fled the carnage she’d wrought.
CHAPTER
Two
The scent of blood carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was faint, fresh, a coppery tickle in the nostrils of the vampire warrior who leaped soundlessly from the roof of one dusk-shadowed building to another. Snowflakes fell around him like floating white ash, blanketing the city that spread out beneath him some six stories down.
Tegan crouched at the ledge and surveyed the tangle of bustling streets and alleyways. As one of the Order—a small cadre of Breed vampires engaged in war against their savage brethren, the Rogues—Tegan’s primary nightly objective was dealing death to his enemies. It was something he did with a cold efficiency, a skill perfected during his more than seven centuries of existence. But down to his marrow, he was Breed, and there were none among his kind who could ignore the call of newly spilled human blood.
He curled back his lips and dragged the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingled, an ache blooming where his canines began to stretch into fangs. His vision sharpened beyond its preternatural acuity, pupils narrowing into thin vertical slits in the center of his green eyes. The urge to hunt—to feed—rose up in him swiftly. It was an automatic response that even he, with his disciplined, iron self-control, could do little to suppress.
All the worse for him, being of the first generation of vampires spawned on Earth. Gen One appetites—physical, carnal, and otherwise—burned the strongest.
Tegan crept along the edge of the building, then leaped down onto the roof of another, his eyes rooted on the movement of people below, searching for the weak member in the herd. But he didn’t comb the crowds merely to satisfy his own needs: find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any Rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.
Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood. Not fresh at all, but several minutes old.
Following the metallic odor, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.
“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath as he tracked the individual.
Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.
Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.
“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides.
His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough: take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying. He didn’t really give a shit which came first.
But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.
The human in the bloodstained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for a kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one Bloodlusting suckhead, let alone a pack of three.
With a curse, Tegan advanced his position and jumped to a lower rooftop above the alleyway.
Just as the Rogue in front of the human lunged into action.
Tegan heard a sharp intake of breath—a female gasp of terror—as the Rogue grabbed for its prey. It seized the front of the woman’s hood and threw her down on the snow-covered pavement, letting loose a howl of savage amusement as she took the hard fall.
“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed, already drawing a large blade from the sheath at his hip.
With a running leap, he dropped down from the ledge of the building, landing smoothly on the ground in a low crouch. The two Rogues nearest him split up, one taking cover while the other shouted that they were under attack. Tegan silenced the warning in mid-sentence, slicing his length of titanium-edged steel across the suckhead’s throat.
A few yards ahead of him in the alleyway, the female was on her stomach, scrabbling to get away from her assailant. She had a weapon too, Tegan was surprised to see, but the Rogue noticed it at the same time and kicked it out of her hand. The Rogue planted the heavy sole of his boot on the center of her back, pinning her to the ground with his heel jammed hard into her spine.
Tegan was on him at once. He threw the Rogue off the woman, driving the snarling vampire into the side of the brick building and holding it there with his forearm wedged under the suckhead’s chin.
“Get out of here!” he shouted to the human as she started to drag herself up off the ground. “Run!”
She flung a frightened look over her shoulder—the first glimpse Tegan got of her face. His gaze locked on to a pair of huge, pale lavender eyes. The woman stared at him from over the top of a dark knit scarf that could hardly disguise the delicate beauty beneath it.
Holy shit.
He knew her.
And she wasn’t just a random human female; she was a Breedmate. A young widow from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries in the city. Tegan didn’t know her well. He hadn’t seen her for several months, not since the night he’d taken her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned her only son had gone Rogue.
It was the last he had seen of her, but it hadn’t been the last time he’d thought about her.
Elise.
What the hell was she doing here?
Tegan’s flat stare held Elise transfixed for a moment that seemed to stretch out endlessly. She saw a flash of recognition in the warrior’s unblinking gaze, felt the cold blast of his fury emanating toward her across the distance that separated them.
“Tegan,” she whispered, astonished to see that it was him coming to her rescue. She’d first met the terrifying warrior around the time that her son had gone missing. Tegan had been the one to take her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned Camden had fallen in with the Rogues. He’d shown her kindness in that late night ride back to her Darkhaven home, and although she hadn’t seen the warrior in the four months since, she hadn’t forgotten his unexpected compassion.
But none of that was present in him now. Battle rage had fully transformed his face to that of his true nature—a Breed vampire, with gleaming fangs and fierce eyes that were no longer their usual gem-green, but swamped with bright, glowing amber that burned like twin flames in his skull.
“Run!” he shouted, the deep, otherworldly growl of his voice cutting through the blare of music still pouring into her head from the earbuds she wore. “Get out of here—now!”
That brief inattention cost him. The Rogue he had pinned to the bricks in front of him twisted its big head, jaws wide, huge fangs dripping saliva. It bit down hard on Tegan’s forearm, ripping into the warrior’s muscled flesh. Without a sound of pain or anger, only chillingly swift efficiency, Tegan brought his other hand up and buried a blade in the Rogue’s neck. The diseased vampire dropped, lifeless, its corpse sizzling from the titanium that poisoned its corrupt bloodstream.
Tegan whirled around, his breath sawing out from between his lips, clouding in the chill air. “Goddamn it, woman—go!” he roared, just as the remaining Rogue vaulted into a further attack on him.
Elise jolted into movement.
She sped out of the alleyway and onto another street, running as fast as her legs would carry her. The small apartment she rented wasn’t far, just a few long blocks from the train station, but it seemed like miles. She was exhausted from her own ordeal that day, shaking from the violence she’d just witnessed in the alley.
She was worried for Tegan too, even though she was certain he didn’t need her concern. He was a member of the Order, probably the most lethal of them all, if his reputation was anything to go by. He was a killing machine according to all who knew his name. Seeing him here in action for herself, Elise didn’t doubt it for a second.
And now that she’d been discovered alone in the city, she could only hope that the warrior would take no interest in what she was doing. She couldn’t allow herself to be pushed back into the Darkhavens, not even by a male as fearsome as Tegan.
Elise ran the last block to her apartment and raced up the concrete steps. The main door used to be keyed access, but someone broke the lock five weeks ago and the building super hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. Elise pushed the door open and dashed down the first floor hallway to her unit. She unlocked the dead bolt and slipped inside, immediately flipping on all the lights.
The stereo and television went on next—tuned to nothing in particular, but both playing loudly. Elise pulled off the MP3 player and set it down on the chipped yellow kitchen counter, along with the dead Minion’s cell phone. She ditched her ruined parka on the floor next to her treadmill, her stomach turning as the bare bulb hanging from the combination dining-living room ceiling washed over the dark red stains from the Minion’s blood. It was on her hands too; her fingers were sticky with gore.
And her head was still pounding, the usual vicious migraine that came in the wake of any prolonged period of using her skill. It wasn’t as bad right now as it would be soon. She still had time to clean up and try to get herself to bed before the worst of it hit her.
Elise dragged herself into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her fingers were trembling as she unfastened the leather knife sheath from her thigh and placed it on the sink. The sheath was empty. She’d lost the titanium blade in the snow when the Rogue kicked it out of her grasp. She had others to replace it. A lot of the money she’d left the Darkhavens with had gone into weapons and training equipment—things she had never wanted to know anything about but now considered necessities.
Lord, how drastically her life had changed in just four months.
She could never go back to what she was. In her heart, she knew there could be no going back now. The person she had been all the time she’d lived under the protection of the Breed was gone now—dead, like her beloved mate and her son. The pain of those losses had been a furnace that devoured her old life, reduced it to cinder. She was what was left—the phoenix that rose out of the ash.
Elise glanced up into the fogging mirror and met her own haunted gaze in the glass. Blood smeared her cheek and chin, grime smudged her brow, all of it like warpaint. There was a feral glint in the weary eyes staring back at her.
God, she was tired…so tired. But so long as she could stand, she could fight. So long as her heart still ached for vengeance, she would use the psychic gift that had for so long been her greatest weakness. She would endure any hardship, face any risk. She would sell her everlasting soul if she must. Whatever it took to have justice.
CHAPTER
Three
Tegan wiped his bloodied blade on the dead Rogue’s jacket and idly observed the swift disintegration of the last body in the alley. The postmortem cleanup was courtesy of Tegan’s titanium weapons, a metal that acted as poisonous acid to the diseased cellular makeup of Breed vampires gone Rogue. The three bodies dissolved in the snow, reducing flesh, bone, and clothing to nothing but dark spots of ash against the pristine white.
Tegan blew out a curse, his senses still quivering with the heat of combat. Battle-sharpened eyes lit on the knife Elise had lost in her struggle with the Rogue who’d attacked her. Tegan walked over and retrieved the weapon.
“Christ,” he muttered, picking the blade up from the snow. It wasn’t some dainty dagger a lady might carry for protection but a serious-looking bit of hardware. Seven inches long, serrated near the upward jut of the tip, and, unless he missed his guess, the metal was not your basic carbide steel but Rogue-eating titanium.
Which only begged the question again: what the hell was the Darkhaven female doing out on the streets alone, covered in blood, and toting warrior-grade weapons on her person?
Tegan lifted his head and sniffed at the air, searching for her scent. It didn’t take long to find it. His senses were always sharp, predatorially acute; combat lit them up like laser beams. He pulled the heather-and-roses scent of the Breedmate into his lungs, and let it guide him deeper into the city.
The scent trailed off at a shit-hole apartment building in one of the seedier sections of the low-rent area of town. Not at all the kind of place he’d expect to find a genteel Darkhaven-raised female like Elise. But without a doubt, she was inside the graffiti-tagged, brick-and-concrete eyesore; he was certain of that.
He stalked up the steps and scowled at the feeble door with its broken lock. Inside the vestibule his boots scuffed on ratty, stained carpeting that reeked of urine, filth, and decades of neglect. A battered wooden staircase rose to the left of him, but Elise’s scent was coming from the door at the end of the first-floor hall.
Tegan moved past another apartment door on his right, the thump of music vibrating the floor and walls. He could hear a television too, a deafening barrage of background noise that seemed to swell as he neared Elise’s place. He rapped on the door and waited.
No response.
He knocked again, dropping his knuckles hard on the scarred metal. Nothing. Not that she could hear anything inside the place with all the racket going on in there.
Maybe he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t get involved in whatever it was that brought the female to this place in her life. Tegan knew she’d had a rough time since the disappearance and later death of her son. The Order had learned that Camden was killed by Elise’s brother-in-law, Sterling Chase, when the kid showed up at the Darkhaven in full-on Bloodlust. From the account Tegan heard, Camden had been about to attack Elise when Chase gunned him down with several titanium rounds—right in front of her.
God only knew what witnessing her son’s death might have done to the female.
Not his concern, though.
Yeah, not his fucking problem at all. So why was he standing in this rank tenement house with his dick in his hand, waiting for her to come around and let him in?
Tegan eyed the array of locks on the apartment door. At least these were in working order and she’d had the good sense to set them once she got inside. But for a Breed vampire of Tegan’s power and lineage, tripping the locks with his mind took all of two seconds.
He slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. The decibel level in the small studio was enough to make his head shatter. He glanced around the place with narrowed eyes, taking in the odd decor. The only furniture was a futon and a bookcase, which housed a quality stereo system and a small flat-panel television—both on and blaring.
Next to the futon, in a space that might have held a table and chairs, was a treadmill and a resistance-training machine. Elise’s bloodstained parka lay on the floor there, and on the sorry-looking yellow kitchen counter was a cell phone and an MP3 player. Elise’s decorating style left a lot to be desired, but it was her choice of wall covering that Tegan found most peculiar.
Crudely nailed to all four walls of the one-room living space were acoustic foam panels—soundproofing material. Yards of the stuff, covering every square inch of the walls, windows, and the back of the door too.
“What the fu—”
In the adjacent bathroom, there was a metallic squeak as the shower abruptly cut off. Tegan turned to face the door as it opened a moment later. Elise was pulling a thick white terry-cloth robe around herself as she glanced up and met his gaze. She gasped, startled, one slender hand coming up near her throat.
“Tegan.” Her voice was barely audible over the din of the music and TV. She made no move to turn them down, just came out of the bathroom and stood as far away from him as was possible in the cramped apartment. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Tegan let his eyes drift around the meager living quarters, if only to quit looking at her in her state of near undress. “Shitty place you have here. Who’s your decorator?”
She didn’t answer him. Her pale amethyst eyes stayed fixed on him as though she didn’t quite trust him, nervous to find herself alone with him. And who could blame her?
Tegan knew that by and large Darkhaven residents held little affection for members of the Order. He’d been called a stone-cold killer by more than one of the sheltered class of civilians that Elise was a part of—not that he cared. His personal reputation was simply stated fact. But while he could give a shit what others thought of him, it irked him that Elise looked at him now in fear. The last time he’d seen the female, he’d shown her nothing but kindness, deference paid the young Darkhaven widow out of respect for what she was going through. It hadn’t hurt that she was a breathtaking beauty, as fragile as a frost flower.
Some of that fragility was gone now, Tegan noted, seeing the lines of muscle definition in her bare calves and arms. Her face remained lovely, but not as full as he remembered. Her eyes were still alive with intelligence but their sheen was somehow brittle, a characteristic made more pronounced by the trace shadows beneath the generous fringe of her lashes.
And her hair…Jesus, she’d shorn off the long blond waves. The cascade of pale spun gold that used to fall to her hips was now a crown of thick, silky spikes that rose around her head in pixie-like disarray and framed the lean oval of her face.
She was still stunning, but in an entirely different way than Tegan ever would have imagined.
“You forgot something back in the alley.” He held out the wicked hunting blade. When she moved to take it from him, he drew it back out of her reach. “What were you doing out there tonight, Elise?”
She shook her head, said something too softly to be heard over the din filling the apartment. Impatient, Tegan mentally shut the stereo down. He glanced to the television, about to silence that device as well.
“No!” Elise shook her head, wincing, her fingers clutching her temple. “Wait—leave it on, please. I need…the noise soothes me.”
Tegan scowled his doubt, but left the TV alone. “What happened to you tonight, Elise?”
She blinked, shuttering her gaze and tipping her head down in silence.
“Did someone hurt you out there? Were you attacked before the Rogues discovered you in the alley?”
Her answer was long in coming. “No. I wasn’t attacked.”
“You want to explain all that blood on your coat over there? Or why you’re living in a part of town where you feel the need to carry around this kind of hardware?”
She held her head in her hands, her voice a rough whisper. “I don’t want to explain anything. Please, Tegan. I wish you hadn’t come here. Just, please…you have to leave now.”
He exhaled a sharp laugh. “I just saved your sweet little ass, female. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you tell me why I had to.”
“It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to be out past dark. I know the dangers.” She looked up, gave a vague lift of her slim shoulder. “Things just took…a little longer than I anticipated.”
“Things,” he repeated, not liking where this seemed to be heading. “We’re not talking about shopping or coffee with friends, are we?”
Tegan’s gaze went back to the kitchen counter, to the familiar design of the cell phone that lay there. He scowled, suspicion coiling in his gut as he walked over and picked it up. He’d seen dozens of these things lately. The phone was one of those disposable jobs, the kind favored by humans in league with the Rogues. He flipped it over and disabled the built-in GPS chip.
Tegan knew if he took the cell phone into the compound lab, Gideon would find it contained just one number, super-encrypted and impossible to break. This particular phone was spattered with human blood, the same shit that soaked the front of Elise’s coat.
“Where’d you get this, Elise?”
“I think you know,” she replied, her voice quiet but defiant.
He turned to face her. “You took it off a Minion? By yourself? Jesus Christ…how?”
She shrugged, rubbing the side of her head as if it pained her. “I tracked him from the train station. I followed him, and when the chance was there, I killed him.”
It wasn’t often that Tegan was taken by surprise, but hearing those words coming out of the petite female hit him like a brick to the back of his head. “You can’t be serious.”
But she was. The level look she gave him left no doubt whatsoever.
Behind her, the television screen flashed with a live breaking-news bulletin. A reporter came on, delivering word that a stabbing victim had been discovered a few minutes before:
“…the deceased was found just two blocks away from the train station, yet another killing in what authorities are beginning to suspect is a string of related murders…”
As the report continued, and Elise calmly stared at him from across the room, Tegan’s blood ran cold with understanding.
“You?” he asked, already knowing the answer, incredible as it seemed.
When Elise didn’t respond, Tegan stalked over to a footlocker on the floor near the futon. He yanked it open and swore as his eyes lit on a large assortment of blades, guns, and ammunition. A lot of it was still brand-new, but others had been used and had the wear to show for it.
“How long, Elise? When did you start this insanity?”
She stared at him, her slender jaw held rigid. “My son is dead because of the Rogues. Everything I loved is gone because of them,” she said finally. “I couldn’t sit around doing nothing. I won’t sit back and do nothing.”
Tegan heard the resolve in her voice, but that didn’t make him any less pissed off about what was going on here. “How many?”
Tonight wasn’t the first, obviously.
“How many times have you done this, Elise?”
She said nothing for a very long time. Then she slowly walked over to the bookcase and knelt down to pull out a lidded crate from the bottom shelf. Her gaze on Tegan, she lifted the top and calmly set it aside.
In the bin were more Minion cell phones.
At least a dozen of the damned things.
Tegan dropped his ass onto the futon and raked his fingers through his hair. “Holy hell, woman. Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
Elise rubbed her palm over her forehead, trying to ease some of the throbbing that was battering her from within. The migraine was coming on fast, bearing down hard. She closed her eyes, hoping to stave the worst of it off. Bad enough she’d been discovered tonight; she didn’t need the humiliation of a psychic meltdown that would leave her unable to function, let alone deal with the Breed warrior in her living room.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Tegan’s voice, though level and without a hint of anything beyond basic disbelief, boomed into Elise’s head like cannon fire. With the box of cell phones in hand, he started pacing off somewhere behind her in the small studio, the sound of his heavy boots on the worn, grubby, low-pile carpet grating in her ears. “What the hell are you trying to do, woman, get yourself killed?”
“You don’t understand,” she murmured through the drumming of pain behind her eyes. “You couldn’t…could not possibly understand.”
“Try me.” The words were curt, sharp. A command issued from a powerful male who expected to be obeyed.
Elise slowly got up from her kneel beside the shelving unit and moved to the other side of the room. Each step was a chore she worked hard to disguise, relief coming only when she was able to lean her spine into the wall for some much-needed support. She practically sagged into the acoustic-padded plasterboard, wishing Tegan was gone so she could collapse in private.
“This is my own business,” she said, knowing he probably heard her shortness of breath, which she was unable to fully conceal. “It’s personal.”
“For crissake, Elise. It’s fucking suicide.”
She flinched at the warrior’s profanity, unaccustomed to hearing rough language. Quentin had never uttered anything harsher than an occasional damn in her presence, and then only when he was in the worst of states over frustration with the Agency or restrictive Darkhaven policies. He’d been a perfect gentleman in all ways, gentle even though she knew that as one of the Breed, his strength was immeasurable.
Tegan was a crude, deadly contrast to her departed mate—one she’d been raised to fear growing up as a ward of the Darkhavens from the time she was a young girl. To Quentin and the Enforcement Agency he’d been a part of, Tegan and the rest of the Order were considered dangerous vigilantes. To many in the Darkhavens, the warriors were simply a cadre of savage, medieval-minded thugs who’d long outserved their purpose as defenders of the vampire nation. They were merciless—some would say lawless—and even though Tegan had saved her life tonight, Elise couldn’t help feeling wary of him, as if there was a wild animal loose in her home.
She watched him thrust his big hand into the box of Minion communication devices, heard the clatter and slide of plastic and polished metal as he inspected the collection.
“The GPS chips on these are already disabled.” He leveled a narrow, dubious look at her. “You knew to shut them off?”
She gave a faint nod. “I have a teenage son,” she replied, then winced as the words left her lips. Lord, it was still so automatic to think of him alive, especially at times like this, when her body was weakened from psychic fatigue. “I had a teenage son,” she corrected quietly. “Camden didn’t like me being able to keep tabs on him, so he used to turn off his cell phone’s GPS when he went out. I learned how to reactivate it, but he always found me out and shut it back off.”
Tegan made a noise in the back of his throat, something low and indistinct. “If you hadn’t crippled these tracking devices, there’s a real good chance you’d be dead by now. Better than good—it’s a fucking certainty. The one who made the Minions you’ve been hunting would have found you, and you don’t want to know what he is capable of.”
“I’m not afraid of dying—”
“Dying,” Tegan scoffed, cutting her off with a sharp, exhaled curse. “Dying would be the least of your worries, female, trust me. You may have gotten lucky with a few careless Minions, but this is war, and you’re way out of your league. What happened tonight should be evidence enough of that.”
“What happened tonight was a mistake I won’t make again. I went out too late in the day and took too long. Next time I’ll be sure I’m finished and home before nightfall.”
“Next time.” Tegan pinned her with a sharp scowl. “Jesus Christ, you really mean that.”
For a long while, the warrior only stared at her. His steady gem-green eyes were unreadable, unemotional. The schooled lines of his face gave no indication of his thoughts. Finally, he gave a shake of his tawny head and pivoted away from her to gather up the collection of Minion cell phones. He stuffed them into the pockets of his coat, his rough movements flashing a staggering array of weaponry that he wore beneath the folds of the black leather.
“What are you going to do?” Elise asked as the last of the devices disappeared into a deep inside pocket. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”
“I damn well should.” His flinty gaze raked her dismissively. “But what you do isn’t any of my concern so long as you keep your ass out of my way. And don’t expect the Order to ride to your rescue the next time you get in over your head.”
“I won’t. I don’t…expect anything, I mean.” She watched him head for the door, feeling awash in relief that she would soon be alone to contend with the tidal wave of pain that was roaring up on her swiftly. As the warrior opened the door and stepped out into the ratty hallway, Elise summoned what remained of her voice. “Tegan, thank you. This is just…something I have to do.”
She fell silent, thinking of Camden, and all the other Darkhaven youths who’d been lost to the poison of the Rogues. Even Quentin’s life had been cut short by a diseased member of the Breed who’d gone Rogue and attacked while in custody of the Agency.
Elise couldn’t bring any of the lost lives back; she knew that. But each day that she hunted, each Minion she eliminated meant one less weapon in the Rogues’ arsenal. The pain she suffered for the task was nothing compared to what her son and the others must have endured. True death for her would be in being forced to sit within the shelter of the Darkhaven and do nothing while the streets ran red with the blood of the innocent.
That, she couldn’t bear.
“This is important to me, Tegan. I made a promise. I mean to uphold it.”
He paused, slid a flat glance over his shoulder. “It’s your funeral,” he said, and pulled the door closed behind him.
CHAPTER
Four
Tegan threw the last of Elise’s hunting souvenirs into an isolated stretch of the Charles River and watched as the dark water rippled out and the cell phone vanished into the drink. Like all the rest that he and the other warriors had confiscated on their patrols, the encrypted cell phones would be of no use to the Order. And he sure as hell wasn’t about to leave them with Elise, GPS chips disabled or not.
Christ, he could not believe what the woman had been up to. Even more incredible was the fact that she’d been carrying out her lunatic vendetta for what had to be weeks, maybe even months. Obviously her brother-by-marriage had no idea, or the by-the-book ex–Darkhaven Enforcement Agent would have put a swift stop to it. Everyone in the Order knew that Sterling Chase had once had feelings for his brother’s widow—probably still did. Not that it was any of Tegan’s business. Nor was Elise’s apparent death wish.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his unbuttoned coat, Tegan stalked back to the street, his breath rolling between his lips in a cloud of misting steam. It was snowing again in Boston. A blustery curtain of fine white flakes fell onto a city already frozen from weeks of an unusually frigid winter. Tegan knew it had to be pushing single digits with the windchill, but he didn’t feel the cold. He could hardly remember the last time he’d felt discomfort of any kind. Longer still, the last time he’d felt pleasure.
Hell, when was the last time he’d felt anything at all?
He remembered pain.
He remembered loss, the anger that had once consumed him…long, long ago.
He remembered Sorcha and how much he’d loved her. How sweetly innocent she was and how completely she had trusted him to keep her safe and protected.
God, how he’d failed her. He would never forget what had been done to her, how savagely she’d been abused. To survive the blow of her death, he had learned to detach from his grief, from his raw fury. But he could never forget. Would never forgive.
More than five hundred years of slaying Rogues, and he wasn’t even close to calling things square.
He’d seen some of that same grief and fury in Elise’s eyes tonight. Something she cherished had been taken from her, and she wanted justice. What she would get was death. If her dealings with the Rogues and their human mind slaves didn’t kill her, the weakness of her body surely would. She had tried to hide her fatigue from him, but Tegan hadn’t missed it. The weariness he saw in her went deeper than mere physical need, although he could tell from a glance at her gaunt frame that she’d been neglecting herself since she’d left the Darkhaven—maybe longer than that. And what was the deal with all that acoustical foam nailed to the walls of her place?
Shit. Whatever.
It really was none of his concern, he reminded himself as he hoofed it toward the secret compound that housed the Order, just outside the city. The brick-and-limestone mansion and its multi-acred estate were surrounded by tall, high-voltage fencing and a massive iron gate rigged with cameras and laser-tripped, motion-sensor alarms. Not that anyone had ever come close to breaking in.
Very few of the entire Breed population knew the precise location, and those who did were well aware the property was held by the Order and were wise enough to stay away unless expressly invited. As for humankind, fourteen thousand volts of electricity was enough to discourage the curious from getting too close; those of the stupider variety woke up parboiled from a taste of the juice or nursing a killer hangover from a thorough mind scrub delivered by the warriors—neither one of those options being particularly pleasant. But they were effective.
Tegan keyed his access code into the concealed security panel near the gate, then slipped inside as the heavy iron parted to let him in.
Once admitted, he veered off the long, paved drive and let the wooded grounds envelop him. Up ahead some few hundred feet, he could see the faint glow of the mansion’s lights through the thick cover of snow-dusted pines. Even though the Order’s true headquarters were housed in a subterranean compound beneath the Gothic manse, it wasn’t unusual to find one or more of the warriors and their mates using the house in the evenings for dinners or entertaining.
But whoever was there tonight wasn’t enjoying any kind of pleasant recreation.
As Tegan neared the building, he heard a fierce animal roar, followed by the crash of shattering glass.
“What the—”
Another loud crash sounded, more violent than the first, coming from the mansion’s opulent foyer. Like something—or somebody—big was tearing the place apart. Tegan leaped up the marble steps to the front door and threw open the aged slab of black-lacquered wood, a blade gripped hard in his hand. As he stepped inside, his boots crunched in a chaos of broken porcelain and glass.
“Jesus,” he muttered, taking in the source of the destruction.
One of the warriors stood at an antique sideboard in the center of the tiled entryway, his scarred olive-dark hands braced on the carved edges of the piece as if that was all that kept him upright. He was soaking wet and naked from the waist up, wearing only loose-fitting gray cotton sweats that looked like they’d been yanked on just seconds before. His dark head hung low, long espresso-brown waves sleek with water and drooping over his face. The dermaglyphs that tracked up his bare chest and over his shoulders were livid with color, the intricate pattern of Breed skin markings pulsing with furious life.
Tegan brought his weapon down, the blade concealed by his hand until he’d sheathed it again. “How we doing, Rio?”
The warrior grunted low in the back of his throat, less acknowledgment than aftershock of his rage. Water sluiced off him to pool around his bare feet and the scattered shards of a priceless Limoges bowl he’d swept off the sideboard. Polished glass littered the surface of the mahogany cabinet; above, the wall mirror and its ornate gilt frame were smashed to bits by the bloodied knuckles of Rio’s right hand.
“Doing some late-night home improvements, my man?” Tegan walked closer to him, keeping his eyes trained on the tight coil of the warrior’s bulk. “For what it’s worth, I never had any use for that froufrou French shit either.”
Rio exhaled a rough, shuddering breath, then swiveled his head to look at Tegan. Topaz eyes still held a trace of glowing amber; the light from them sliced through the dark fall of his hair, throwing off the heat of a lingering madness. The bone-white glint of fangs shone behind the vampire’s parted lips as he dragged in air through his teeth.
Tegan knew it wasn’t Bloodlust that called up the warrior’s savage side. It was fury. And remorse. The gunmetal tang of it filled the air, pouring off Rio in heated waves.
“I might have killed her,” he rasped in a voice that was sharp gravel and anguish, not the Spaniard’s usual rolling baritone. “Had to get out of there, pronto. Something inside me just fucking…snapped.” He sucked in air around a feral-sounding snarl. “Shit, Tegan…I wanted to—needed to—hurt somebody.”
Someone else might have known a current of alarm at those words, but Tegan absorbed them with calm observation, narrowing his eyes on the burn-scarred, shrapnel-ruined left side of Rio’s face that wasn’t quite concealed by the wet spikes of his hair. There wasn’t much left of the handsome, sophisticated male who’d once been the most laid-back member of the Order, always quick with a joke or an easy smile. The explosion he’d survived last summer had taken most of his looks; the revelation that his own Breedmate, Eva, had betrayed him into the deadly ambush had taken away everything else.
“Madre de Dios,” Rio whispered roughly. “No one should be near me. I’m losing my goddamn mind! What if I…Cristo, what if I did something to her? Tegan, what if I hurt her?”
Alarm tripped Tegan’s senses. The warrior wasn’t talking about Eva. She’d died by her own hand the day her treachery had been discovered. The only other female who had any regular contact with Rio now was Tess, Dante’s Breedmate. Since her arrival at the compound a few months ago, Tess had been working with Rio, using her healing touch to mend what she could of his broken body and trying to help him rehabilitate from both the physical and the mental wreckage left in the wake of his ordeal.
Ah, fuck.
If the warrior had harmed her, accidentally or not, there would be some serious hell to pay. Dante loved his woman with an intensity that had surprised everyone at the compound. Once the reckless bad boy, Dante was wrapped around Tess’s slender finger and didn’t care who knew it. He’d kill Rio with his bare hands if anything happened to his mate.
Tegan hissed a curse. “What did you do, Rio? Where is Tess now?”
Rio gave a miserable shake of his head and gestured vaguely toward the back wing of the sprawling mansion. Tegan was about to take off in that direction when urgent footsteps sounded on the long corridor that led from the general area of the estate’s indoor pool. The soft smack of a light, barefoot gait drew nearer, followed by a female’s voice raised in concern.
“Rio? Rio, where are y—”
Tess rounded the corner in a squeaking skid, wearing black workout pants over a wet baby-blue tank swimsuit. The look was pure sports therapy business, but any male with eyes in his head and red blood in his veins would be crazy not to notice how beautifully she filled out all that nylon and Lycra. Her honey-brown hair was swept back in a long ponytail, the ends damp and curling from the pool. Peach-polished toenails stopped dead at the edge of the field of broken porcelain in the foyer.
“Oh, my God. Rio…are you all right?”
“He’s okay,” Tegan told her flatly. “What about you?”
Tess’s hand went up reflexively to her neck, but she nodded her head. “I’m fine. Rio, look at me, please. It’s okay. You can see that I’m perfectly fine.”
But something had gone down a few minutes ago; that much was obvious. “What happened?”
“We had some setbacks in today’s session, nothing major.”
“Tell him what I did to you,” Rio muttered. “Tell him how I blacked out in the pool and came to only to find my hands wrapped around your throat.”
“Jesus.” Tegan scowled, and now that Tess moved her fingers away from her neck he could see the fading outline of a bruising grip. “You sure you’re all right?”
She nodded. “He didn’t mean it, and he let go the instant he realized what he was doing. I’m fine, really. He will be too. You know that, right, Rio?”
Tess cautiously stepped forward, avoiding the shards at her feet yet keeping a healthy distance from Tegan like he was more of a threat to her general safety than the feral wreck that was Rio.
Tegan wasn’t offended. He preferred his solitary existence and worked hard to maintain it. He watched Tess move slowly toward Rio’s stiff stance at the sideboard.
She gently placed her hand on the warrior’s scarred shoulder. “Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure. Every day there are small improvements.”
“I’m not getting better,” Rio muttered, in what could have sounded like self-pity but seemed more a bleak understanding. He shook off Tess’s touch with a snarl. “I should be put down. It would be a blessing…to everyone, especially me. I am useless. This body—my mind—it’s all fucking useless!”
Rio slammed his fist down on the sideboard, rattling the broken mirror glass and putting a tremor in the two-hundred-year-old mahogany beneath it.
Tess flinched, but there was an unwavering resolve in her blue-green eyes. “You are not useless. Healing takes time, that’s all. You can’t give up.”
Rio growled something nasty under his breath, his hooded eyes throwing off amber light in warning. But not even a half-mad vampire’s ferocious bluster was going to dissuade Tess from helping him if she could. No doubt she’d seen this sort of snarling behavior before from Rio—and possibly even her own mate—and hadn’t run away in terror.
Tegan watched Tess stand firm, calm, steady, tenacious. It wasn’t hard to imagine why Dante adored her so much. But Tegan could see that Rio was in a particularly unstable, volatile state. He may not mean anyone harm—least of all, Tess, whose extraordinary healing skills had nursed him out of near psychosis—but rage and anguish made for one powerful emotional cocktail. Tegan knew that fact firsthand; he’d lived it once, long ago. Add to that the lingering aftereffects of a traumatic brain injury like Rio had suffered, and the warrior was a lit powder keg just waiting to go off.
“Let me,” Tegan said when Tess started to move toward Rio again. “I’ll take him down to the compound. I’m heading below anyway.”
She gave him a wary smile. “Okay, thanks.”
Tegan approached Rio with deliberate movements and carefully guided him away from the female and out of the field of debris around their feet. The big male’s steps were heavy, lacking the grace that used to come so naturally to him. Rio leaned heavily on Tegan’s shoulder and arm, his bare chest heaving with every deep breath he hauled into his lungs.
“That’s it, nice and easy,” Tegan coached him. “We good now, amigo?”
The dark head bobbed awkwardly.
Tegan glanced to Tess as she knelt down and began collecting the shattered glass and porcelain from the foyer tiles. “Have you seen Chase around tonight?”
“Not for a while,” she said. “He and Dante are still out on patrol.”
Tegan smirked. Four months ago, the two males had been ready to tear out each other’s throats. They’d been tossed together by Lucan as unwilling partners when Darkhaven agent Sterling Chase showed up at the compound with info about a dangerous club drug called Crimson and to solicit help from the Order in getting the shit off the streets. Now he and Dante were almost inseparable in the field, had been ever since Chase left the Darkhavens and came on board officially as a member of the Order. “The pair of them are a regular Mutt and Jeff, eh?”
Tess’s eyes held a trace of humor as she looked up from the mess in front of her. “More like Larry and Curly, if you ask me.”
Tegan exhaled a wry laugh as he steered Rio into the hallway. He brought him to the mansion’s elevator, walked him inside, then pushed the code to begin the journey down to the underground headquarters of the Order.
After dropping Rio off in the warrior’s compound apartments, Tegan headed back to the tech lab to check in. Gideon was at his post, as usual, the blond vampire rolling back and forth on a wheeled office chair, working his magic on no less than four computers at the same time. A wireless cell phone headset curled around his ear and he was giving a string of coordinates over the small mic that arced toward his cheek.
The consummate multitasker, Gideon looked up as Tegan entered the lab, gestured him over, and brought up a set of satellite stills on one of the monitors. “Niko’s got a possible lead on that Crimson lab,” he informed Tegan, then went back to his conversation as his fingers flew over the keyboard of another machine. “Right. I’m running a check right now.”
Tegan stared at the images Gideon had called up on the screen. Some were known Rogue lairs—most of them former lairs, due to the efforts of the Order—and others showed Rogues and Minions coming and going from various locations in and around the city. One face caught Tegan’s eye more than the rest. It was the human Crimson dealer, Ben Sullivan.
Although Dante had taken the bastard out last November, the whereabouts of his manufacturing lab were yet unknown. Problems with the drug had simmered down in the months since the Order got involved, but so long as the Rogues possessed the means to manufacture more of the shit, the threat of a resurgence in Crimson use among the Breed still existed.
“Hold up. I’m getting a match on a location out in Revere,” Gideon was saying now. “Yeah, whaddaya know, I think it’s a legit lead. You guys wanna do a drive-by down by the Chelsea River, see what you find?”
Tegan zeroed in on the photo of Ben Sullivan’s grinning, busted-up face. The human had killed a lot of young vampires with his drug, including Camden Chase, Elise’s teenage son. If not for Crimson, that kid would never have turned Rogue and had to be put down. And a gently bred female like Elise wouldn’t be holed up in that slum apartment downtown, out of her head with grief and anger, and hell-bent on some maternal brand of vengeance that was probably going to get her killed too.
A weight settled on Tegan as he considered all the bloodshed, the centuries he and the others like him had been fighting this battle against the savage side of the Breed. There were peaks and lulls, of course, times of relative peace, but the unrest was always there, burrowed deep within the race. Festering and corrupting.
“It’s fucking never going to end, is it?”
“Sorry?”
Tegan didn’t realize he’d spoken until he glanced over and saw Gideon looking at him over the rims of his pale blue shades. Tegan shook his head. “Nothing.”
He stalked away from the computers, his thoughts gone dark and churning as Gideon swung back to his monitors and sent his fingers clacking over a keyboard. Another satellite image filled the screen, this one showing an old industrial lot not far from the riverfront.
Tegan knew the location. He didn’t need anything more.
“Yeah, Niko,” Gideon said into the mouthpiece. “Right. Sounds good. If things look hot over there, yell for backup. Dante and Chase are less than an hour away and Tegan’s right…here…”
But Tegan wasn’t there anymore.
He was stalking purposefully up the corridor outside the tech lab now, where he heard Gideon’s voice trail off as the lab’s glass door hissed shut.
CHAPTER
Five
This is it. Hang a left up here at the stop sign,” Nikolai said from the backseat of the Order’s black SUV. He was busy reloading the weapons that he and the two new warrior recruits accompanying him tonight had put to good use on the city’s east side. The custom rounds he’d made were his favorite Rogue-blasting numbers—kick-ass hollowpoints filled with powdered titanium. One taste of that metal meant certain death to the blood-addicted members of the vampire race. Niko slapped the clip into the tricked-out Beretta 92FS he’d converted to full auto, then shoved the weapon into its holster under his coat.
“Park behind that piece of shit pickup truck,” he told the warrior doing the driving. This part of Revere was tight with houses and run-down businesses, thick clusters of humanity clinging to the outskirts of Boston and a briny stretch of the Chelsea River. “We’ll hoof it the rest of the way. Go in nice and quiet so we can get a good look around.”
“You got it.” Brock, a towering nightmare of a fighter recruited out of Detroit, was as smooth behind the wheel as he was with the ladies. He swept the vehicle over to the side of the snowy curb and killed the engine.
Next to Brock in the front seat, Niko’s other trainee pivoted around and held out his hand for the refreshed weapon. Kade’s wolflike silver eyes were still glowing from the night’s earlier action, his black hair spiky and wet with melted snow. “Think we’re gonna find something out here?”
Niko grinned. “I sure as hell hope so.” He handed pistols and fresh clips to both of them, then pulled a couple of silencers out of the leather duffel bag at his feet and slapped them into the warriors’ palms. When Brock arched a brow on his dark forehead, Niko said, “I’m all for cooking a bunch of Rogues with some 9mm high-test, but there’s no need to wake the neighbors.”
“Nah,” Kade added, flashing the tips of his pearly white fangs, “that would be just plain rude.”
Nikolai grabbed the rest of his gear and zipped the duffel shut. “Let’s go sniff around for some Crimson.”
They climbed out of the Range Rover and skirted the residential area on foot, all three of them keeping to the shadows as they navigated back to the old warehouse lot where Niko’s tip had led them.
The building looked like shit from the outside—a 1970s industrial eyesore of concrete, wood, and glass. Steel posts from what had once been part of a chain-link fence poked out of the perimeter lot at various angles, not a single one of them straight, not that it mattered. The place had a derelict, keep-out quality about it, even amid the snowglobe flurries that were filling the night sky.
Niko and the guys stepped onto the loose gravel of the empty lot, their boot heels cushioned by the fresh fall of snow. As they neared the building, Niko spotted a dark ash trail on the ground. The large, irregular shape was still visible, still smoldering and hissing as the delicate white flakes fell on it and melted on contact. He gestured to the pile of disintegrating remains as Brock and Kade came closer.
“Someone smoked a Rogue,” he told them, his voice low as a whisper. “Still fresh too.”
Gideon hadn’t mentioned sending in backup, so they’d be wise to be cautious of what else they might find. Rogues were basically savages, and it wasn’t unheard of that they took one another out over turf or petty disagreements. It was all good as far as the Order was concerned; saved the warriors time and effort when the Bloodlusting bastards lost their cool and offed their own.
Another suckhead had taken a lethal hit of titanium near the entrance of the building. A large padlock lay in the cellular goo, and Brock motioned toward the battered steel door. It was slightly ajar, just a thin wedge of darkness behind it.
Kade shot Niko a look of question, waiting for the signal to act.
Nikolai shook his head, uncertain.
Something wasn’t right here.
He heard a faint rumble from somewhere deep inside the place, a rumble he felt as a slight vibration in the soles of his feet. On the night’s soft chill, he caught a whiff of something sweetly cloying, chemical. It was…kerosene?
The rumble got deeper, stronger. Like gathering thunder.
“What the fuck is that?” Kade hissed.
Niko smelled the tang of hot metal—
“Oh, shit.” He glanced at the other two warriors. “Go! Move it! Go, go, go!”
They all sprang into a dead run, hauling ass across the lot as the rumble became a roar. There was a deep percussion—sharp, violent—as the explosion erupted from within the bowels of the old building. Glass blew out from the top floor windows, shooting flames and thick black smoke in its wake.
And as the three of them watched in awe, the front door of the place banged open, tearing clean off its hinges. Not by the force of the blast, but by the will of a single individual.
Rolling orange fire silhouetted him from behind, backlighting the warrior’s broad shoulders and casual, long-legged stride. As he strolled away from the inferno, the ends of his loose black coat winged out behind him like a cape befitting the prince of darkness himself.
“Holy hell,” Brock murmured. “Tegan.”
Niko shook his head, chuckling at the blatant awe in the newbies’ faces. Not that it wasn’t deserved. They didn’t come much more impressive than Tegan, and this display was going to go down as legend, he was sure. Behind him now, the warehouse was engulfed in flames, throwing off heat like hell’s own furnace. It was incredible, really, a thing of roaring, violent beauty. By the blasé flatness of Tegan’s expression as he approached, he might as well have just come back from taking a piss.
“Everything good in there, T?” Niko quipped. “You need backup or anything? Bag of marshmallows to roast over that little campfire you just started?”
“It’s handled.”
“No shit,” Niko replied, he and the other two warriors watching sparks erupt from the burning warehouse, a plume of fire reaching high into the night sky.
Tegan strode past them as cool as could be, giving neither excuse nor explanation. But then it was always that way with him. He was the ghost you never saw coming, death breathing down your neck before you even realized you were in the crosshairs.
He was never less than thorough in combat, but the annihilation he’d delivered to the Crimson lab was beyond anything Niko had ever seen the warrior do before. Based on the intel he had on this place, it was probably manned by half a dozen Rogues—all of them dead at Tegan’s hand and a building that would be nothing but smoldering rubble in a couple of hours. If Niko didn’t know better, he’d be tempted to call it personal.
“Glad we could be of assistance to you, man,” Niko called after him, exhaling a wry curse.
“Damn, that dude is cold,” Brock remarked as Tegan disappeared into the darkness and the scattering flurry of snow.
“He’s ice,” Niko said, glad as hell that the Gen One warrior was on their side. “Come on, let’s roll before the place starts swarming with humans.”
Tegan walked back into the city alone, the scream of sirens wailing in the distance behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to know that a fiery glow lit the night down near the Chelsea. He smirked into the darkness. No matter how much water the Revere FD threw on the old warehouse, there would be no saving it. Tegan had made sure there would be nothing left once the smoke finally cleared. He’d wanted the place torched, with a ferocity he hadn’t felt in years.
Shit, it had been more than years since he’d known the kind of savagery that ran through his veins tonight. Centuries was more like it.
And the kicker was, it had felt damned good.
Tegan flexed his hands in the wintry bite of the evening air. He was still able to feel the pain he’d delivered on the Rogues tonight—the delicious horror that swamped the hearts of each one he had killed in the Crimson lab. He’d indulged in their anguish as the titanium sped through their blood, cooking them from the inside out.
Where he’d long ago learned to disengage his own emotions, the psychic power he possessed was beyond his control. Like all of the Breed, he had, in addition to the vampiric traits of his father, certain unique extrasensory abilities passed down from the human female who bore him. For Tegan, he had only to brush against another individual—be it human or vampire—and he knew what they were feeling. Touch someone, and he absorbed the emotions into himself, feeding from the connection like a leech to an open wound.
The gift had been both weapon and curse to him throughout his life; now it was his private vice. He used it as infrequently as possible, but when he did, it was with deliberate, sadistic relish. Better that he siphon enjoyment out of others’ pain and fear than let his own feelings rise up to rule him as they had before.
But tonight he’d felt the kindling of some inner satisfaction as he dealt death to the Rogues and the couple of Minions who’d evidently been recruited to continue the manufacture of Crimson. And after none of them were left breathing, the concrete floor of the old warehouse running red with blood and stinking with the cellular meltdown of the Rogues he’d offed with blades and bullets, Tegan had needed something more.
For reasons he had no interest in examining even now, he had stood in the center of the carnage he’d wrought, wanting nothing less than complete obliteration.
Fire and cinder, smoldering rubble. He had wanted the Crimson lab erased from existence, nothing but a scar of black ash on the empty lot where it stood.
And whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not, he knew that his want for destruction had more than a passing connection to Elise. It had been her face he’d seen in his mind as he lit the place up. It had been the thought of her grief that made him savor each of the Rogue deaths he delivered tonight.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat, Tegan headed against the wind and cut down a South End side alley. He wasn’t sure where he was going, although he supposed he should have known. He recognized Elise’s shitty neighborhood even before he turned onto the street that would eventually dump him onto her block.
Tegan still couldn’t fathom her living in such squalid conditions. As the widow of a high-ranking Breed government official, Elise had to be more than financially set. She could have lived in any of the Darkhavens, wanting for nothing, whether or not she chose to take a new mate. That she had chosen to leave her old life to exist topside among basic humankind was surprising. She’d seemed so sheltered and fragile when he met her some four months ago. He couldn’t have been more shocked to find her earlier tonight, awash in Minion blood and armed like one of the Order.
But for all her defiance and resolve, Tegan had not missed Elise’s weariness. She’d appeared bone-tired and exhausted, in a way that seemed to go deeper than just plain fatigue. He supposed that was why he found himself outside her apartment again now.
He wasn’t about to go to the front door. It was late, she was probably asleep, and so long as it was dark outside, his priority one was the Order.
When he rightly should have kept on walking, Tegan instead slipped between Elise’s building and the one next to it, heading around to the back. The interior of her first-floor unit appeared dark as pitch from outside, but the acoustic foam covering the windows would have blocked out nearly any light. Even with the soundproofing in place, Tegan could hear the heavy bass of her stereo and the competing chatter of the TV. He ran a hand through his snow-dampened hair, then pivoted around and paced three long strides into the strip of backyard behind the place.
Forget about her and just walk away.
Yeah, that was damn well what he should do, all right. Put the heartbroken, beautiful female with the apparent death wish out of his head and walk the fuck away.
Except…
He crept closer to the building, scowling at the blocked glass of the windows. He didn’t hear anything other than music and television noise, but that was the thing that pricked his warrior’s senses onto alert.
That, and the faint tickle of a blood scent coming from within the apartment. Elise’s blood. His nose registered a subtle heather-and-roses sweetness that could only be the Breedmate inside. She was bleeding—perhaps not a lot by the trace scent of it, but it was impossible to tell much with brick and glass and three-inch-thick foam in the way.
Tegan opened the sash lock on the window with his mind—the second time he’d perpetrated a B&E on her place in one night—and lifted the heavy pane from outside. There was no screen, and it took all of a second to push away the acoustic panel and peer inside.
There were no lights on, but his vision was even sharper in the dark. Elise was there, on the futon, curled up in a tight, fetal ball, and still wearing the white terry robe from her shower several hours ago. Her arms were wrapped around her head in a protective cage, the short crown of silky blond hair mashed and spiked in complete disarray from her sleep.
She didn’t even stir as Tegan hoisted himself over the windowsill and swung himself inside, although he moved in silence and the audio racket in her place was deafening. Tegan willed the stereo and television to mute—and that’s when she suddenly shot straight up, not quite awake but jolted into a semiconscious panic.
“It’s okay, Elise. You’re all right.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her lavender eyes were wide, but out of focus, and not just from the lack of light in the apartment. She moaned as if in pain and flopped off the futon in a clumsy sprawl, her hands casting about frantically for the remote near her feet. She grappled for the device and began pushing the buttons in a frenzy. “Come on, turn on, damn it, turn on!”
“Elise.” Tegan walked over to her and knelt down beside her. He scented more blood on her and when he lifted her chin with the edge of his hand, he saw that her nose was bleeding. Scarlet droplets stained the bright white lapel of her bathrobe, some fresh, and some from an earlier bleed. “Jesus…”
“Turn it on!” she howled, then she glanced over and saw the open window, the loose acoustic foam hanging askew. “Oh, God. Who moved that panel? Who would do something like that!”
She pushed herself to her feet and hurried over to repair the breach, slamming the window closed and throwing the lock. Her hands moved restlessly over the soundproofing as she tried to wedge the material back into place over the glass.
“Elise.”
No response, just a deepening sense of anxiety radiating out from her petite form under the white terry robe. With a keening moan, Elise gripped her temples in both hands and slowly sank to the floor below the window, as if her legs just gave out beneath her. Huddled tight on her folded knees, she leaned forward, rocking herself back and forth.
“Make it stop,” she whispered brokenly. “Please…just…make it stop.”
Tegan approached her slowly, not wanting to upset her any further. With a curse, he crouched down, and carefully put his hand on the delicate arch of her spine. Fingers spanned wide, his senses open to the connection, Elise’s pain shot into him like an electrical current.
He felt the splintering agony of the migraine that gripped her, felt the hard thud of her heartbeat ringing in his ears as if it were his own. He tasted acid on his tongue, his teeth aching from the force with which she clenched her jaw to combat the torment that was riding her.
And he heard the voices.
Nasty, corrosive, terrible voices that were traveling on the air around them, silent to all but the psychically sensitive Breedmate crumpled before him on the floor.
In his mind—through the connection he held with Elise—Tegan registered the belittling argument of a couple down the hall. Across the way, a man was lusting for his own daughter. In the apartment above Elise’s, a junkie was shooting a month’s worth of child support into her vein while her hungry baby wailed, utterly ignored, in the other room.
Every negative, destructive human thought and experience within a radius Tegan could only guess at seemed to home in on Elise’s mind, pecking away at her like vultures on carrion.
It was hell on Earth, and Elise was living it every waking moment. Maybe even while she was asleep. Now he understood the foam panels and the audio racket. She’d been trying to drown out the input with other noise—the stereo, television, and even the MP3 player that lay in a tangle of wires on the kitchen counter.
She was deluding herself if she thought she could cope like this in the human world. To say nothing of the insanity of her intent to pursue vengeance on the Rogues and their Minions.
“Please,” she murmured, her soft voice vibrating against his open palm, “I need it to stop now.”
Tegan broke the contact and expelled a curse through gritted teeth.
This was no good. He couldn’t leave her like this. He should turn her over to the Darkhavens. Maybe he would. But right now she needed relief from the pain she was feeling. Even he wasn’t cold enough to sit back and watch her suffer.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Relax now, Elise. You’re okay.”
He gathered her up into his arms and carried her back to the futon. She was so light, too light, he thought. Elise was a petite woman, but she felt as weightless as a child against his chest. When was the last time she’d fed? Holding her this close, Tegan couldn’t help noticing the sharp angle of her cheekbones, the frailty of her jawline.
She needed blood. A good dose of Breed red cells would give her strength and quiet some of her psychic pain, though far be it from Tegan to volunteer. Elise was a Breedmate, one of those rare human females born genetically compatible with members of the vampire race. Feeding her from his vein would revitalize her in many ways, but putting his blood into her body would also create an unbreakable bond between them. That kind of link was reserved for mated pairs, the most sacred of Breed vows. Only death could break a blood bond, so there were few among the race who approached it lightly, or out of charity.
Elise was widowed, and the several years she’d obviously gone without a male’s blood—not to mention the damage she was inflicting on herself every day she lived among humankind—were starting to take a heavy toll on her. Tegan carefully laid her down on the bulky futon mattress.
He was slow and easy as he stretched out her lean legs and arranged her in what he hoped was a comfortable sleeping position. The terry-cloth robe she had on gaped from thigh to sternum, the belt at her waist having come undone and hanging loosely. He had to work to pull the ends of the sash out from under her, all the while trying his damnedest not to notice the wedge of creamy white skin that was exposed to him in the process. It was impossible to pretend he was blind to the feminine curves, or to the buoyant swell of her small, perfect breasts. But it was the sudden flash of a gorgeous thigh that sucked most of the air out of Tegan’s lungs.
There, on the inner side of her right leg, was the tiny teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark that all Breedmates bore somewhere on their bodies. Elise’s rested at the most tempting part of her thigh, just beneath the downy triangle of her sex.
“Ah, fuck.” Tegan reeled back, saliva surging into his mouth at the instant, swelling urge to taste that sweet spot.
Off limits, man, he told himself harshly. And way the hell out of your league.
His movements were quick now, his breath sawing past the tips of his emerging fangs as he tugged the ends of her robe around the nakedness of her body. Her nose had begun to bleed again from her migraine. The trickle of bright scarlet smudged the soft white skin of her cheek. He dabbed away the blood with the hem of his black tee-shirt, trying to ignore the sweet fragrance that called to everything in him that was Breed. Her fluttering pulse was like a drumbeat in his ears, the rapid little ticking of her carotid drawing his eyes to the graceful line of her neck.
Damn, he thought, mentally wrenching his gaze away. His own appetite sharpened just to be near her. He hungered now, fiercely, even though it hadn’t been that long since his last hunt. Not that the street-weary, foul humans he took his nourishment from could compare to the tender beauty spread out before him now.
Elise winced behind her closed eyelids, moaning softly, still in pain. She was so vulnerable right now, so defenseless against the psychic anguish.
And at the moment, he was all she had.
Tegan reached out to her and smoothed his fingers over her cool, damp forehead. He gently pressed his palm over her closed eyes.
“Sleep,” he told her, putting her in a light trance.
When her breathing slowed to something close to normal, and the tension eased out of her body, Tegan sat back and watched her slide into a calm, restful slumber.
CHAPTER
Six
Elise woke up slowly, feeling as though her consciousness had been transported somewhere far away and tranquil, only to be returned to her body like a feather carried gently on the breeze. Maybe it was a dream. A long, sweet dream…a peace she hadn’t known for months. She stretched a little on the futon, her bare legs rasping against the terry-cloth of her bathrobe and the soft crush of a blanket that covered her from chin to toe. She snuggled deeper into the pleasant warmth, sighing, and the sound of her own breath startled her.
No noise.
No blaring music or chattering television, even though she couldn’t sleep—could hardly function—without them.
Her eyes snapped open and she waited for the psychic assault to hit her. But there was only silence. Dear Lord. Seconds passed, then a full minute or more…and there was only blessed, wondrous silence.
“Sleep well?”
The deep male voice carried from across the studio apartment somewhere. She smelled toast browning, and the buttery scent of eggs sizzling in a fry pan. Tegan was standing in her meager kitchen, apparently cooking breakfast. Which only made the surrealism of the morning that much more complete.
“What happened?” Her voice was a soft croak in her throat. She cleared it and tried again. “What are you doing here?”
Oh, God. He didn’t have to answer because she remembered as soon as the words left her lips. She recalled the migraine that had laid her low, and the unexpected return of Tegan some hours after he’d found her following her run-in with the Rogues. He’d come back and broken into her apartment for some reason. Had muted the cushioning noise that she needed so badly.
Elise remembered waking in agony. In a flood of humiliation, she remembered collapsing in a blind hysteria near the window, trying to fix the soundproofing—which was all neatly back in place now, she noticed.
And she also remembered the sensation of being soothed into a calming state of numbness…
By Tegan?
Holding her robe in place, Elise moved aside the blanket and carefully eased herself into a sitting position on the futon. She still didn’t trust her surroundings, certain the blast of mental anguish was going to hit her at any moment.
“What did you do to me last night?”
“You needed help, so I helped you.”
He made it sound like an accusation as he leaned back against the counter near the stove, watching her with a look of cool detachment. He was dressed in night battle clothes: a black knit tee-shirt and black fatigues; his leather gun holster and belt of terrible-looking blades lay on the counter across from him.
Elise met the sharp, measuring gaze that was fixed on her from across the room. “You knocked me out somehow?”
“Just a mild trance so you could sleep.”
She clutched the lapels of her bathrobe in her fist, suddenly very aware of the fact that she didn’t have anything on beneath the loose drape of the terry-cloth. And last night, this warrior had put her in a forced doze, leaving her totally at his mercy? A tremor of alarm ran through her at the thought.
Tegan must have read the look in her eyes because he scoffed a bit, low under his breath. “So, you Darkhaven folks see the Order not only as cold-blooded killers but rapists as well? Or is that distinction reserved primarily for me alone?”
“You’ve never hurt me,” Elise said, feeling bad that she’d let her ingrained biases doubt him. “If you wanted to do anything harmful to me, I think you would have by now.”
He smirked. “Such a ringing declaration of faith. I suppose I should be flattered.”
“And I really should be thanking you, Tegan. You helped me twice last night. And I never thanked you for your kindness a few months ago either, when you gave me a ride home from the Order’s compound.”
“Forget it,” he said, shrugging one broad shoulder as if the topic were closed before she’d even had a chance to crack it open.
That November evening was never far from Elise’s mind. After viewing Camden on video surveillance captured by the Order, Elise had dissolved in one of the compound’s many corridors. Bereft, in shock and denial, it had been Tegan who’d found her. Incredibly, it had been Tegan who took her out of the compound and drove her to her Darkhaven home in the waning hours before dawn.
She had embarrassed herself with tears that wouldn’t end, but he’d let her spill them all. He’d let her weep, and even more astonishingly, he’d let her crumble against him, holding her through her grief in silence. With his strong arms wrapped around her, he held her together when she felt like she was being torn into pieces by her anguish.
He couldn’t have known he’d been her rock that night. Maybe it had meant nothing to him, but she would never forget his unexpected tenderness. When she’d finally found the strength to remove herself from the car, Tegan had merely watched her go, then drove away from the curb and out of her life…until last night in that alleyway when he’d saved her from the Rogues.
“The trance I put you in last night is still active,” Tegan said, evidently deciding to change the subject. “That’s why your talent is muted now. The block will hold so long as I’m here to keep it in place.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing her eye down to the elaborate pattern of dermaglyphs that tracked up his forearms and disappeared under the short sleeves of his shirt. Where glyphs served as emotional barometers on members of the Breed, Tegan’s were only a shade darker than his golden skin tone at the moment, giving away nothing of the warrior’s mood.
Elise had seen his impressive Breed skin markings once before, when she’d first spoken with him at the Order’s compound a few months ago. She didn’t want to stare, but it was hard not to marvel at the swirling arcs and elegant, interlocking geometric designs that distinguished Tegan as one of the oldest of the race. He was of the Breed’s first generation; if the depth of his powers didn’t out him as such, the prevalence and complexity of his glyphs certainly did.
But the fact that he was Gen One also made him most vulnerable to things like sunlight, which, at the current hour of morning, was a very real concern.
“It’s past nine A.M.,” she said, in case he hadn’t noticed. “You stayed here all night.”
Tegan merely turned away to spoon up a plateful of scrambled eggs. He turned off the electric burner, then popped the toaster and added the slice of bread to the plate. “Come over here and eat while it’s warm.”
Elise didn’t realize how hungry she was until she reached the counter and took her first bite of food. There was nothing she could do to hold back her little moan of pleasure as she chewed. “Oh, this is wonderful.”
“That’s because you’re starving.”
Tegan went to the mini refrigerator and came back with a protein shake in a plastic bottle. Aside from the eggs, yogurt, and a couple of apples, there wasn’t much more to be found in there. She’d been living on meager sustenance, not because of the cost, but because it was hard to think about eating when her migraines were so severe. Which was a daily occurrence since she’d left the Darkhaven—worse each day she ventured out among humankind to hunt Minions.
“You’re not going to last, you know. Not like this.” Tegan placed the shake down in front of her, then went back to his post against the opposite counter. “I know what it’s doing to you, living here among the humans. I know how hard the psychic input hits you, Elise. You have no control over it, and that’s a dangerous thing. It can destroy you. I felt what it does to you, when I pulled you up off the floor a few hours ago.”
She recalled her initial encounters with Tegan, how his touch had made her feel somehow exposed to him. The first time she experienced the warrior’s touch had been when he and Dante had shown up at the Darkhaven looking for her brother-in-law. The warriors had confronted Sterling in front of the residence, and when Elise ran out at the commotion, it was Tegan who grabbed her and held her away from the fray.
Now, after last night, he understood the flaw that had kept her prisoner in the Darkhavens all her life. Judging from the dispassionate look he trained on her, she wondered if he intended to see her put back in that cage again.
“Your body is weakening from the strain you’re putting it through, Elise. You’re not equipped to handle what you’re doing.”
She shook the plastic bottle he’d given her, then cracked the seal. “I’m coping well enough.”
“Yeah, I see that.” He shot a meaningful glance at all of the soundproofing she’d tacked onto the walls in an effort to damper her ability. “Looked to me like you were coping real well last night.”
“You didn’t have to help me.”
“I know,” he said, no expression in his tone or in his face.
“Why did you? How come you came back here?”
He lifted one thick shoulder in a shrug. “I thought you might like to know that the Order took out the Crimson lab. The lab, the manufacturing supplies, the individuals running the facility…all of it is ash now.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Relief washed over her like a balm. Elise closed her eyes, feeling hot tears well up behind her lids. At least the insidious drug that stole Camden couldn’t harm any other woman’s son now. It took her a moment to compose herself enough to look at Tegan again, and when she did, she found that gem-green gaze fixed hard on her.
She wiped at the tears that streaked her cheeks, embarrassed that the warrior should see her break down. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so emotional. There’s just this…hole…in my heart, ever since Quentin died. Then, when I lost my son…” She trailed off, unable to describe how empty she felt. “I just…ache.”
“It will pass.” His voice was crisp and flat, like a slap to the face.
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true. Grief is a useless emotion. The sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be.”
Elise gaped at him, appalled. “What about love?”
“What about it?”
“Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved? Or do males like you, who live for killing and destruction, even know what it is to love?”
He didn’t so much as blink at her angry outburst, just held her in a steady, unflappable stare that made her want to launch across the counter and strike him.
“Finish your breakfast,” he told her with aggravating civility. “You should rest while you can. As soon as the sun sets, I’m out of here, and you’ll be back to your own defenses. Such as they are.”
He walked over to the long black trench coat that was draped neatly over the treadmill and coolly fished out his cell phone. As he began to dial, Elise had the sudden absurd urge to pick up the plate in front of her and hurl it at him, just to get some kind of reaction out of the stony warrior.
But while she listened to him call in to the Order’s compound, that deep voice of his so matter-of-fact and unreadable, Elise realized that she didn’t so much dislike him as she envied him. How did he manage to keep himself so cold and disengaged? His psychic gift was not so different from her own. Last night, he had experienced her torment through his touch but it hadn’t laid him low like it did to her. How was it he could withstand the pain?
Perhaps it was his Gen One strength that made him so impenetrable, so totally aloof. But perhaps it was training. If it was something he’d learned, then it could be taught.
“Show me how you do it,” Elise said as he ended his call and flipped the phone shut.
“Show you what?”
“You say I need to learn some control over my mind’s powers, so show me what I need to do. Teach me. I want to be like you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She walked around the edge of the counter to where he stood. “Tegan, show me. I can be an asset to you and to the Order. I want to help. I need to help, do you understand?”
“Forget it.” He started to stalk away from her.
“Why, because I’m female?”
In a move so fast it stole her breath, Tegan wheeled around on her and pinned her with his fierce predator’s eyes. “Because you’re motivated by pain, and that’s a fatal weakness right out of the gate. You’re too raw. You’re too swamped in your own self-pity to be of use to anyone.”
Fire flashed in his gaze, then banked as quickly as it had risen. Elise swallowed hard as she registered his cutting words. The assessment stung, but it was true. She blinked slowly, then gave an admitting nod of her head.
“The best place for you is in the Darkhavens, Elise. Out here, like you are, you’re a liability—to yourself especially. I’m not saying it to be cruel.”
“No, of course you aren’t,” she agreed softly. “Because even cruelty would imply some kind of feeling, wouldn’t it?”
She didn’t say another word. Didn’t so much as look at him as she retrieved her plate from the counter and walked it to the sink.
“What do you mean, it’s gone?” The leader of the Rogues sat forward in his leather chair, planting his elbows on the surface of a large mahogany desk and steepling his fingers as the voice of a nervous Minion cracked over the speaker phone.
“The call came in to the firehouse late last night, sire. There was an explosion. Whole friggin’ warehouse went up like a Roman candle. No saving it, according to the guys who responded to the call. Initial reports say there appears to have been a gas leak—”
With a snarl, Marek jabbed the End button, cutting off his human servant’s useless report.
There was no way in hell the Crimson lab was destroyed by chance or faulty utilities. This bit of infuriating news had the Order written all over it. The only thing that surprised him was that it had taken this long for his brother Lucan and the warriors who fought alongside him to make their move on the place. But then, Marek had been keeping them busy fighting Rogues in the streets since last summer.
Which was exactly where he wanted the Order’s focus to remain.
Hold them off with one hand so the other could do the real work unnoticed and undisturbed.
It was the reason he’d come to Boston in the first place. The reason this particular city was experiencing an increased Rogue problem. All just part of his plan to create havoc while he pursued a bigger prize. If he could take out the warriors in the process, so much the better, but keeping them distracted would serve him just as well. Once his true goal was achieved, even the Order would be powerless against him.
And as much as the loss of the Crimson lab infuriated him, the even greater irritation was the fact that one of his other Minions had failed to report in as instructed. Marek was waiting on information—vital information—and his patience was thin even in the best of situations.
It didn’t bode well that his Minion was late. The human he’d recruited for this particular job was volatile and arrogant, but he was also reliable. All Minions were. Drained to within a bare inch of life, the human mind slaves were under the complete control of the vampire who made them. Only the most powerful among the vampire race could create Minions, and Breed law had long prohibited the practice as barbaric.
Marek scoffed with contempt at the self-imposed, bureaucratic castration of his kind.
Just one more example of why the vampire realm was overdue for change. They needed strong new leadership to usher in a new age.
The new age that would belong to him.
CHAPTER
Seven
He had pissed her off, probably hurt her, and even though an apology perched at the tip of his tongue most of the day, Tegan held it back. He had nothing to be sorry about, after all. He didn’t owe the female anything, least of all explanations or excuses for why he came off like the callous bastard everyone knew him to be.
And he wasn’t about to give so much as a second’s consideration to her request that he help her bring her psychic gift to heel. She’d surprised him with the suggestion. The idea that any female, particularly a sheltered Darkhaven widow like her, would think to put herself in his care for any reason was beyond his comprehension. As if he could be trusted for something like that.
Yeah. Not fucking likely.
Elise made it easy for him to avoid the issue. In the hours since he’d shut her down, she hadn’t uttered another word to him. She busied herself around the apartment, making up the futon, washing the breakfast dishes, dusting the bookshelves, going thirty minutes on the treadmill, and generally keeping as far away from him as seemed possible in the cramped quarters.
He’d heard her in the shower a while ago and had allowed himself a few minutes’ sleep where he sat on the floor, but the water was off now and he was awake, listening to Elise getting dressed behind the closed door. She came out in blue jeans and a hooded Harvard sweatshirt that fell halfway down her thighs. Her short blond hair was towel-dried and as shiny as gold, setting off the pale lavender of her eyes.
Eyes that slid to him in a chilly glare as she went to the closet in the hallway and pulled a white down vest off a hanger. She bent into the closet and took out a pair of tan suede boots.
“What are you doing?” Tegan asked her as she silently suited up for the outdoors.
“I have to go out.” She closed the closet door and zipped up the thick vest. “You probably noticed my refrigerator is practically empty. I’m hungry. I need to eat, and I need to pick up a few things.”
Tegan stood up, aware that he was scowling. “The trance won’t hold if you leave, you know.”
“Then I’ll just have to try to manage without it.”
Elise coolly walked over to the counter and picked up the MP3 player that lay there. She tucked the slim black case into the front pocket of her jeans, then threaded the earbuds under her sweatshirt and let them dangle down the front of her chest. She didn’t pick up the blade that had been left on the counter from her Minion hunting of the night before, and Tegan didn’t detect that she had any other weapons on her person either.
She wouldn’t look at him as she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. If you leave before I get back, I’d appreciate it if you locked up. I have my keys.”
Damn it. She might be hungry like she said, but he could tell by the rigid line of her spine that the female had a point to prove here.
“Elise,” he said, moving toward her as she reached for the apartment door. If he wanted to stop her, all it would take was a thought. He knew it, and by the look on her face as she turned to look at him now, so did she. “I know you’re angry about what I said earlier, but it’s the truth. You’re in no shape to go on like this.”
When he took another step, concluding he might as well tell her that he’d decided to turn her over to the Darkhaven for her own safety, she closed her hand around the doorknob and sharply twisted it open.
She couldn’t have chosen a more effective weapon against him.
Bright afternoon sunlight streamed in from the vestibule and hall, driving Tegan back with a hiss. He leaped out of the path of the searing daylight, and from under the shielding arm he held up over his eyes, he watched as Elise’s pointed stare held him and she calmly strode out, closing the door behind her.
Elise took her time walking to the corner market and shopping for a few basic groceries. With a small bag of items in hand, she strolled up the sidewalk, away from her neighborhood block. The chill air was bracing against her cheeks, but she needed the cold to help clear her head.
Tegan had been right about his trance wearing off once she was gone from her apartment. Beneath the audial grate of electric guitars and screaming rock lyrics pouring into her ears from Camden’s iPod, she could feel the hum of voices, the acid growl of human corruption and abuse that was her constant companion since she’d embarked on this dark journey beyond the sanctuary of the Darkhavens.
She had to admit, Tegan’s psychic intervention had been a welcome gift. Even though he’d infuriated her—insulted her—the hours she’d spent cocooned within the trance he’d put her under had been so very needed. The break had given her a chance to think, to focus, and in her mind’s calm, under the spray of a long, hot shower, she remembered a specific detail about the Minion she’d hunted yesterday.
He had been attempting to pick up an overnight package for the one he called Master. The Minion—Raines, she thought he’d said his name was—had been quite outraged to learn that the delivery had not arrived as expected. What could be so important to him? More to the point, what could be so important to the vampire who’d made the Minion?
Elise intended to find out.
She’d been itching to leave her apartment since the moment she recalled the intriguing detail, but a rather immense, rather arrogant Breed warrior stood in her way. As Tegan didn’t think she had anything to contribute in the fight against the Rogues, Elise saw no reason to bother him with her information until she was certain what it might mean.
It took several minutes to reach the FedEx store near the train station. Elise loitered outside for a while, formulating a loose plan and waiting for the handful of customers inside to complete their transactions and leave. As the last one came toward the exit, Elise tugged her earbuds free and walked up to the counter.
The clerk on duty was the same kid who had been working yesterday. He nodded a vague greeting at her as she approached, but thankfully he didn’t seem to recognize her.
“Can I help you?”
Elise took a deep, calming breath, fighting hard to work through the cacophony that was building in her mind now that her crutch of blaring music was gone. She wouldn’t have long before she was overwhelmed.
“I need to pick up a package, please. It was due here yesterday but got delayed because of the storm.”
“Name?”
“Um, Raines,” she replied, and attempted a smile.
The young man glanced up at her as he typed something on the computer. “Yeah, it’s in. Can I see some ID?”
“Excuse me?”
“Driver’s license, credit card…gotta have signature and ID for the pickup.”
“I don’t have any of those things. Not with me, I mean.”
The clerk shook his head. “Can’t release without some form of ID. Sorry. It’s policy and I can’t afford to lose this job. No matter how bad it sucks.”
“Please,” Elise said. “This is very important. My…husband was here yesterday to pick it up, and he was very upset that it was delayed.”
She weathered the clerk’s answering rush of animosity toward the Minion. He was thinking of baseball bats, dark alleys, and broken bones. “No offense, lady, but your husband is a dick.”
Elise knew she looked anxious, but it would only serve her all the better at this moment. “He’s not going to be happy with me if I come home without that shipment today. Really, I must have it.”
“Not without ID.” The kid looked at her for a long moment, then ran his palm over his chin and the little triangular growth of whiskers below his lower lip. “Course if I happen to leave it on the counter and go back for a smoke break, there’s a good chance that box might sprout legs and walk off while I’m gone. Shit does go missing from time to time…”
Elise held the kid’s cagey stare. “You would do that?”
“Not for nothing, I won’t.” He glanced at the earbuds dangling from the collar of her sweatshirt. “That the new model? The one with video?”
“Oh, this isn’t…”
Elise started to shake her head in refusal, ready to tell the clerk that the device belonged to her son and it wasn’t hers to give away. Besides, she needed it, she thought desperately, even while reason told her she had the means to buy a hundred new ones. But this one was Camden’s. Her only tangible link to him now, through the music he’d been listening to in the days—the hours, in fact—before he left home for the very last time.
“Hey, whatever,” the clerk said, shrugging now and pulling the box back off the counter. “I shouldn’t be messing around anyway—”
“Okay,” Elise blurted before she could change her mind. “Yes, okay. It’s yours. You can have it.”
She pulled the wires out from under her sweatshirt, then wound them around the iPod and set the sleek black case down in front of the clerk. It took her a while to remove her hand from the top of the device. When she did, it was with a wince of deep regret.
And rigid resolve.
“I’ll take the package now.”
CHAPTER
Eight
Tegan came out of a brief, light doze, fully recharged, as footsteps approached the apartment door from outside. He knew the sound of Elise’s soft but determined gait even before a key slid into the lock announcing her arrival.
She’d been gone almost two hours. Another two and the sun would finally be gone, and he’d be free to get the hell out of there, back to his business as usual.
Seated on the floor with his elbows resting on his knees, his back against the foam-padded wall, he watched as the door opened cautiously and Elise slipped inside. She didn’t seem as eager to singe him with the waning light from the hall; now she was focused on her own movements, as if it took most of her concentration just to remove the key and carefully close the door behind her. A lumpy plastic grocery bag swung from her tightly fisted left hand.
“Find what you needed?” he asked her as she rested a moment with her forehead pressed against the door. Her weak nod was her only reply. “Another headache coming on?”
“I’m fine,” she answered quietly. As if marshaling her strength, she pivoted around and with her right hand up at her temple, she headed for the kitchen. “It’s not one of the bad ones…I wasn’t out very long, so it will ease soon.”
Without dropping her grocery bag or shedding her down vest, she walked past the treadmill into the narrow galley. She was out of his line of vision now, but Tegan heard the tap running, water filling a glass. He got up and moved so that he could see her, debating whether to offer her the comfort of the trance again. God knew, she looked like she needed it.
Elise drank the water greedily, her delicate throat working with every swallow. There was something fiercely basic about her thirst, her need so primal it struck him as absurdly erotic. Tegan considered how long she’d gone without blood from one of the Breed. Five years at least. Her body had begun to show the lack, muscle groups going leaner, skin less pink than pale. She would be able to better cope with her talent if she was nourished by Breed blood, but she had to know that, having lived among the vampire race for any length of time.
She drank more water, and after her third full glass, Tegan saw some of the tension drain from her shoulders. “The stereo, please…will you turn it on?”
Tegan sent a mental command across the room and music soared to fill the quiet. It wasn’t blaring like she preferred, but it seemed to help her take the edge off a bit. After a moment, Elise began putting away the supplies she’d brought home. With each second that passed, her strength renewed before his eyes. She was right; this wasn’t nearly as bad as what he’d walked in on last night.
“It’s worse when you get close to the Minions,” he observed aloud. “Being exposed to that level of evil—having to get close enough to touch it—is what brings on your migraines, and the nosebleeds.”
She didn’t try to deny it. “I do what I must. I’m making a difference. And before you tell me that I’m of no use to the Order in this fight, you might be interested to know that the Minion I killed last night was in the middle of an errand for the vampire who made him.”
Tegan froze, eyes narrowing on the petite female as she turned to look at him at last. “What kind of errand? What do you know?”
“I tracked him from the train station to a FedEx store. He was there to pick something up.”
Tegan’s brain went into instant recon mode. He started firing questions at her one after the other. “Do you know what it was? Or where it came from? What exactly did the Minion say or do? Anything you can remember might be—”
“Helpful?” Elise suggested, her tone nothing but pleasant even though her eyes flashed with the spark of challenge.
Tegan chose to ignore the slight goad. She may want to grind that tired axe with him from the morning, but this shit was too critical. He didn’t have the time or interest for playing games with the female. “Tell me everything you recall, Elise. Assume that no detail is insignificant.”
She went through a basic recap of what she observed about the Minion she’d hunted the night before, and damn if the female didn’t make an excellent tracker. She’d even gotten the Minion’s name, which might prove useful if Tegan decided to locate the dead human’s residence and dig around for further information.
“What will you do?” Elise asked as he formulated his plan for the night.
“Wait for nightfall. Hit the FedEx store. Grab that goddamn package and hope it gives up some answers.”
“It won’t be dark for a couple more hours. What if the Rogues send someone to get it before you have the chance?”
Yeah, he’d thought of that too. Damn it.
Elise cocked her head at him, like she was measuring him somehow. “They might already have it. And because you are Breed, you’re stuck here waiting for the sun to set.”
Tegan didn’t appreciate the reminder, but she was right. Fuck it. He needed to act now, because the odds were good there wouldn’t be a later.
“What street is the delivery place on?” he asked her, flipping open his cell phone and dialing 411.
Elise gave him the location and Tegan recited it to the computerized prompts on the other end of the line. As the call connected to the FedEx store, he prepared to hit whoever answered with a little mental persuasion, level the playing field while he had the chance. The line picked up on the fifth ring and the voice of a young male who announced himself as Joey offered a disinterested greeting.
Tegan latched on to the vulnerable human mind like a viper, so focused on wringing information out of the man he hardly noticed Elise coming toward him from the kitchen. Without a word, she dropped a weighted plastic grocery bag down in front of him, a rectangular box at the bottom of it clopping on the counter.
Through the yellow smiley face “Thank You” logo stamped on the bag, Tegan saw an airbill addressed to one Sheldon Raines—the same Minion that Elise had killed the day before.
Holy hell.
She couldn’t have—
He released the FedEx clerk’s mind at once and cut off the call, genuinely astonished. “You went back for this today?”
Those pale violet eyes holding his surprised gaze were clear and keen. “I thought it might be useful, and in case it was, I didn’t want to risk letting the Rogues have it.”
God. Damn.
Although she didn’t say it, Tegan could tell that Elise’s Darkhaven-bred propriety was the only thing keeping her from reminding him how not a few hours before he’d assured her there was nothing she could do to help the Order in this war. And whether it was stubborn defiance or courageous savvy that sent her out today, he had to admit—at least to himself—that the female was nothing if not surprising.
He was glad for the interception, whatever it might prove to yield, but if the Rogues—particularly their leader, Marek—were expecting the package, then it must be of some value to them. The question remained, why?
Tegan pulled the box out and sliced open the tape seals with one of the daggers at his hip. The return address appeared to be one of those shared-office corporate types. Probably bogus at that. Gideon could verify that fact, but Tegan was betting that Marek wouldn’t be so careless as to leave a legitimate paper trail.
He tipped the box and the contents—a thin, leather-bound book sealed in bubble wrap—slid into his hand. Peeling the cushioned plastic away from the antique, he scowled, perplexed. It was just an unremarkable, half-empty book. A diary of some sort. Handwritten passages scrawled in what appeared to be a mixture of German and Latin covered a few of the pages; the rest were blank except for crude symbols doodled here and there into the margins.
“How did you manage to get this, Elise? Did you have to sign for it, or leave your name, anything?”
“No. The clerk on duty wanted identification, but I don’t have any. There was never a need for anything like that when I was living in the Darkhaven.”
Tegan fanned the yellowed pages of the book, seeing more than one reference to a family called Odolf. The name wasn’t familiar, but he was willing to bet it was Breed. And most of the entries were just repetitions of some kind of poem or verse. What would Marek want with an obscure chronicle like this one? There had to be a reason.
“Did you give the delivery station any information that might identify you at all?” he asked Elise.
“No. I, um…I traded for it. The clerk agreed to give the box to me in exchange for Camden’s iPod.”
Tegan glanced up at her, realizing just now that she’d made the trip back to her apartment without the aid of music to block her talent. No wonder she had seemed out of it when she came in. But not anymore. If she felt any lingering discomfort, she didn’t let it show. Elise leaned forward to inspect the book, focused wholly on the task at hand with the same interest as him, her mind totally engaged.
“Do you think the book might be important?” she asked him, her eyes scanning the page that lay open on the counter. “What could it mean to the Rogues?”
“I don’t know. But it sure as hell means something to the one leading them.”
“He’s not a stranger to you, is he.”
Tegan thought about denying it, but allowed a vague shake of his head. “No, he isn’t a stranger. I know him. His name is Marek. He’s Lucan’s elder brother.”
“A warrior?”
“At one time he was. Lucan and I both rode into many battles with Marek at our side. We trusted him with our lives and would have given our own for him.”
“And now?”
“Now Marek has proven himself to be a traitor and a murderer. He’s our enemy—not only the Order’s, but all of the Breed’s as well. They just don’t know it yet. With any luck, we’ll take him out before he has a chance to make whatever move it is he’s been planning.”
“What if the Order fails?”
Tegan turned a hard stare on her. “Pray we don’t.”
In the answering silence, he flipped through more of the journal pages. Marek wanted the book for some reason, so there had to be a clue of some sort secreted in the damn thing somewhere.
“Wait a second. Go back,” Elise said suddenly. “Is that a glyph?”
Tegan had noticed it at the same time. He turned to the small symbol scribbled onto one of the pages near the back of the slim volume. The pattern of interlocking geometric arches and flourishes might have appeared merely decorative to an untrained eye, but Elise was right. They were dermaglyphic symbols.
“Shit,” Tegan muttered, staring at what he knew to be the mark of a very old Breed line. It didn’t belong to anyone called Odolf, but to those of another Breed name. One that had lived—and died out completely—a long time ago.
So what reason could Marek have for digging up the ancient past?
Screams carried into the drawing room of an opulent Berkshires estate, the howls of anguish emanating down from a windowed attic room on the third floor of the manor house. The chamber boasted a wraparound wall of windows with unobstructed views of the wooded valley below.
No doubt the scenery was breathtaking, bathed in the day’s last searing rays of sunlight.
The vampire being held upstairs by Minion guards certainly sounded impressed. He’d been treated to a front row seat of the UV spectacle for the past twenty-seven minutes and counting. More screams poured down the central staircase, agony giving way to the weariness of sobs.
With a bored sigh, Marek rose from a fine Louis XVI wing chair and crossed the room to the double doors of his dimly lit private suite. Other than the attic interrogation room, the rest of the mansion’s windows were shaded for the day by sun-blocking electronic blinds.
Marek moved freely into the hall outside and summoned one of his Minion attendants who waited to serve him. At Marek’s nod, the human dashed up the staircase to instruct the others that their Master was on the way and to ensure the windows were covered for his arrival.
It took only a moment for the captive vampire’s bleating to dry up. Marek climbed the wide marble steps, up and around to the second floor, then up and around again, to the smaller flight of stairs that rose to the attic. As he progressed, fury kindled to life in him again.
This was only one of several frustratingly exhaustive interrogations of the vampire in his custody the past couple of weeks. Torture was amusing, but rarely effective.
There was little amusing about the day’s developments back in Boston. The Minion courier dispatched to obtain an important overnight delivery for him had instead turned up at the city morgue—a John Doe stabbing victim, according to Marek’s contact in the coroner’s office. As he was killed in broad daylight, that ruled out the Order or any other Breed intervention, but Marek still had his suspicions.
And he was very interested to learn that the package he’d been expecting had gone missing from the FedEx store that very day. The loss was serious, but he intended to reclaim it. When he did, he would take great pleasure in personally questioning the thief who had it.
Up ahead, at the top of the attic stairwell, one of the Minions on guard opened the door to permit Marek entry into the now-darkened room. The vampire was naked, strapped to a chair by chain links and steel shackles at each ankle and wrist. His skin was smoking from head-to-toe burns, emitting the sickly sweet odors of sweat and badly seared flesh.
“Enjoy the view?” Marek asked as he strolled in and looked on the male with revulsion. “A pity it’s still winter. I understand the colors up here are amazing in the fall.”
The vampire’s head was dropped low on his chest, and when he tried to speak, the sound was nothing more than a sputtered rasp in the back of his throat.
“Are you ready to tell me what I need to know?”
A pitiful moan slipped past the male’s blistered, swollen lips.
Marek crouched down before his captive, offended by both the stench and sight of him. “No one would know that you broke. I can give you that, if you cooperate with me now. I can send you away to heal, ensure your protection. That’s easily within my power. Do you understand?”
The vampire whimpered, and Marek sensed a possible teetering of conviction in the pained sound. He had no intention of making good on the lies he fed his captive. They were merely tools meant to bend him where torture and suffering had not.
“Speak it, and be free of this,” he coaxed, his tone quiet and unhurried despite the urgent greed swimming in him to have the answer. “Tell me where he is.”
There was an audible click of the prisoner’s throat as he attempted to swallow, a vague tremor in his head as he struggled to lift it from its slump on his ravaged chest. Marek waited, eager with hope and uncaring that the Minions standing around him could probably feel that hope vibrating off him.
“Tell me now. You don’t need to carry this burden any longer.”
A hiss began to leak from between the vampire’s lips, a drawn-out, rattling exhalation. A shudder overtook him, but he gathered himself and tried again, expelling the start of his confession at last.
Marek felt his eyes widen in anticipation, his own breath ceasing as he waited for the words that would begin his destiny.
“Ffff…” One eye peeled open just a crack behind the vampire’s seared lids. The iris was bright amber from the prolonged suffering, the pupil a thin slit of black that found Marek’s own gaze and burned into him with hatred. The captive drew in a breath, then spat it out on a low growl. “Fff…fuck…you.”
With an utter calm that belied the storm of rage that swept instantly to life inside him, Marek rose and began a deliberate stroll toward the attic stairs.
“Open the blinds,” he instructed the Minion guards. “Leave this worthless offal to the sun. If he doesn’t perish by the time it sets, let him bake up here with the dawn.”
Marek quit the room, not so much as flinching when the first terrorized screams cranked up again in his wake.
CHAPTER
Nine
As the last few minutes of day passed into dusk, Tegan gathered up the book and his weapons, then reached for his dark coat. Elise had spent the past hour or more—since the moment she’d handed the FedEx package over to him—watching him pore intensely over every page of the text while she worked up the nerve to ask him again about helping her become more involved in the war against the Rogues. Now, as he shrugged into the black leather trench coat, she sensed it was her final chance.
“Tegan…I hope the book proves useful.”
“It will.” Striking green eyes flicked to her, but she could see that his mind was churning on the new information in his hands. He blinked and it was as if he had dismissed her entirely now, was itching to get away from her. “You have the Order’s gratitude for this.”
“What about yours?”
“Mine?”
When he paused, scowling, Elise said, “It’s not so much to ask, is it? You’re the only one who can help me deal with this…flaw of mine. Teach me how to mute it, how not to feel. I can be an asset to you and to the Order. I want to help.”
His answering look scathed her with its sharp edge. “I work alone. And you don’t know what you’re asking for. Besides, we’ve already covered this ground.”
“I can learn. I want to learn. Please, Tegan. I need to learn.”
“And you think I’m the one to help you?”
“I think you’re my only hope.”
He scoffed at that, shaking his head. When he moved away from her, Elise marched toward him, undaunted, as if she could physically keep him from leaving. She caught herself a mere hairbreadth from contact, and let her hand fall to her side. “Don’t you think I’d go to someone else—anyone else—if I could?”
He was silent for a moment, considering, she hoped. But then he exhaled a curse and reached for the door. “I gave you my answer.”
“And I gave you that journal. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
He barked out a cutting laugh and whirled back on her. “You seem to think we’re negotiating here. We are not.”
“If that book contains insight into current dealings with the Rogues, I’m sure the Darkhavens would be just as interested in it as you are. All it would take is a single call to any of my husband’s Enforcement Agency connections and I could have the Order’s compound swamped with agents within the hour.”
It was true. Quentin’s rank within the Agency had been at the highest level, and as his widow, Elise’s own political status was considerable. She personally knew a great deal of influential Darkhaven individuals. Quentin’s name alone would open ten times as many doors if she felt the need to use it.
Tegan didn’t need her to explain that fact. Anger flared in his normally icy gaze, the first hint of emotion she’d seen in him.
“Now you’re threatening me.” His brittle chuckle put a knot of fear in her throat. “Female, I give you fair warning: you are playing with fire.”
Elise’s skin went tight with anxiety, but she couldn’t back down. For too long, she had been kept in a neat little box, coddled and protected. And if it meant stoking the temper of a warrior—even a lethal Gen One like Tegan—in order to help her break out of that box, then she would simply have to brave it and pray she would come out the other side in one piece.
“Whether you approve or not, I am part of this war. I didn’t go looking for it; the Rogues brought it to my door when Camden died. All I’m asking is that you show me how to be more effective. I should think the Order would welcome any allies they can get.”
“This isn’t about the Order and you know it. This is about revenge, an eye for an eye. Your emotions have been on a hard boil ever since you watched your Rogue son get smoked in front of your eyes.”
Tegan’s harsh words cut into her like glass, the reality of what he said like acid poured into the wounds.
“It’s about justice,” she told him sharply. “I need to make this right! Damn it, Tegan, do I have to beg you?”
She shouldn’t have touched him. She’d been so desperate to make her point that before she could stop herself, she had reached out and put her hand on his arm. Tegan’s hard muscles flexed beneath her fingertips, going as tense as the expression on his unreadable face.
He didn’t snatch his arm away from her touch, but his cold green eyes flicked past her to the stereo that was playing in the background. It went silent on his mental command. In the resulting quiet, the dark stirrings of Elise’s psychic talent began to wake.
Voices swelled in her mind, and from the piercing glint of Tegan’s gaze, which fixed on her now in stony, watchful purpose, she knew that he was reading every nuance of her distress. He was absorbing it, she realized, feeling him siphon in her reaction through the point where their skin touched.
Elise fought the awful storm that battered her mind, but the voices were growing louder. She nearly staggered from the obscenity and corruption that filled her head.
Tegan merely watched her as he might study an insect under glass.
Damn him, but he was enjoying this, driving home his point with each passing second of emotional assault that she tried to endure. As their eyes locked, Elise began to understand that he was somehow controlling the painful barrage that was beating at her skull. He was amplifying the input in much the same way that he was able to mute the music and television.
“My God,” she gasped. “You are so cruel.”
He didn’t even try to deny it. Expressionless, maddeningly stoic, he broke contact with her and stood in silent contemplation as she backed away from him, more wounded than she cared to let him see.
“Lesson number one,” he murmured coldly. “Don’t count on me for anything. I will only let you down.”
He was a prick and a bastard, but it would have been less than honest of him to let Elise think any differently. Leaving her looking at him from across the small apartment, her gaze stung and despising, Tegan headed out into the hallway to make his escape.
Maybe he should feel guilty for treating her so roughly but he frankly didn’t need the hassle. And she was far better off looking to someone else for whatever she needed. He hoped to hell she would.
With the book held against him under his coat, Tegan’s pace was brisk as he walked out into the dark night. Curiosity made him cut along a side street, then up onto the one that would take him past the FedEx store. Elise’s description of the Minion and all that had transpired there had been informative, but part of him wondered if he’d find out anything more if he went by and questioned the clerk himself.
Not a hundred feet from the place, he realized he wasn’t the only one interested in checking things out, and he’d gotten there too late.
Tegan smelled fresh spilled blood. A lot of it. The store was dark inside, but Tegan could see the motionless body of a clerk lying behind the counter. The Rogues had already been there. On a closed-circuit monitor in the corner, a single frame from a video feed was frozen onscreen. It was a blurry but recognizable shot of Elise, caught in mid-motion, the package in her hands.
Damn it.
And right about now, the Rogues who’d been there were no doubt scouring the area looking for her.
Tegan turned around and hauled ass back to her apartment building, using all the preternatural speed at his disposal. He banged on her door, cursing the blare of music likely drowning him out.
“Elise! Open the door.”
He was just about to throw the locks and barge inside when he heard her on the other side. She opened the door only a crack, glaring at him. Before she could tell him to fuck off like he deserved, he pushed her back inside with the bulk of his body and slammed the door shut.
“Get your coat and boots. Now.”
“What?”
“Do it!”
She flinched at his barked command, but she held her ground. “If you think I’m going to let you send me back—”
“Rogues, Elise.” He saw no reason to pretty the situation up for her. “They just killed the clerk at the FedEx store. Now they’re looking for you. We don’t have much time. Get your things.”
She blanched white at the news, but blinked at him like she didn’t quite trust him—which made good sense, since he’d given her no reason to think she could. Especially after what he did to her not a few minutes ago.
“I have to get you out of here,” he told her when she hesitated another second. “Now.”
She nodded, grave acceptance in the pale amethyst of her eyes. “Okay.”
It took her no time to grab a wool coat and shove her feet into a pair of boots. On her way to the door with him, she suddenly doubled back. “Wait. I’m going to need a weapon.”
Tegan took two strides in and caught her by the wrist. “I’ll protect you. Come on.”
They hurried out of the apartment—only to find a Rogue peering through the glass of the building entrance, its feral eyes glowing amber as it locked on to them in the narrow hallway. It curled back bloodstained lips and snarled something over its thick shoulder, no doubt calling in reinforcements from the street.
“Oh, my God,” Elise gasped. “Tegan—”
“Get back inside.” He pushed the book he was carrying into her hands and shoved her back toward her apartment. “Stay in there until I come for you. Bolt the door.”
She obeyed him at once, her footsteps retreating fast, the door shutting tight as the Rogue outside shouldered his way into the building. Another followed, both suckheads leering psychotically through their elongated fangs, both big vampires armed for bear.
They started coming for him, and Tegan went on the offensive, springing from his stance near Elise’s door. He plowed into the one in front, driving that Rogue into the one behind him. The Rogue who would have been at the bottom of the pile feinted left at the last second, dodging the fall as Tegan took his companion down in a killing grip.
The commotion brought one of the building’s residents into the hallway, but the human took one look at the confrontation and wisely decided to butt out. “Oh, shit!” he squeaked, then immediately spun back into his unit, slammed the door, and threw all the locks.
Totally unfazed, Tegan pounced fast and hard on the Rogue he held on the floor, ripping one of his blades across the suckhead’s throat. It roared and sputtered under the swift poison of the dagger’s titanium edge, oozing gore as its body began a rapid meltdown.
“Your turn,” Tegan told the other one as it attempted to scramble out of the way.
The vampire threw its arm out, swiping at Tegan with its blade, but it was a careless move, even for a Rogue. When it had the chance to come at him, it hesitated, started inching to the side, drawing things out. Distracting him, Tegan realized in that next instant, when he heard the sudden crash of breaking glass coming from Elise’s apartment.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled as the female’s scream shot through the walls.
The Rogue chose that second to fly at him, but Tegan was ready for the attack. He leaped out of the suckhead’s path, landing in a low crouch behind it and coming up fast with his blade. He skewered the bastard in a split-second’s move and was gunning for Elise’s door before the dead bulk of the Rogue hit the floor.
Using mental will and brute force, Tegan smashed the apartment door off its hinges and stormed inside. Elise was on the floor, facedown, her spine trapped beneath the heavy boot of the Rogue who’d come in through the window. She held the journal tight to her chest, protecting it with her body.
Jesus Christ.
She’d been cut somehow in the struggle; a gash on her upper arm was bright red, slick with fresh blood. And the scent and sight of it had sent her Rogue attacker into a slavering fit of Bloodlust. Instead of going for the book, which the trio had no doubt been dispatched to do, the Rogue on Elise seemed rooted on just one thing—slaking its unquenchable thirst.
“Tegan!” she cried as her stricken gaze lit on him. She started scrambling to push the journal out from under her now, like she meant to pass it to him even though her life was hanging in the balance. “Don’t let them have it. Take the book, Tegan!”
Fuck that, he thought, his temples pounding with the need to spill more Rogue blood. He went after the suckhead on Elise, knocking the Rogue off with a fierce strike of his mind. Without touching the bastard, using only his will and a flaring, savage anger, Tegan threw the Rogue against the far wall and held him there, two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of thrashing, feral vampire suspended three feet off the ground.
He saw the hunger in the Rogue’s eyes, those slitted pupils fixed on Elise, even though Tegan was tightening his mental hold around the suckhead’s throat, killing him by degrees. The long fangs were dripping saliva, the mind inside the huge skull no longer capable of any thought besides feeding the thirst. Tegan despised this element of his kind—knew it better than most, enough to know that extermination was the only solution for vampires lost to the disease.
But it wasn’t duty or cool logic that made him draw his blade and drive it into the Rogue’s heart. It was the heather-and-roses scent of Elise’s spilled blood, the bitter tang of her fear, which clung to the air like a mist. This bastard had injured her, an innocent female, and that was something Tegan could not abide.
He let the dead Rogue crumble to the floor, instantly forgotten.
“Are you all right?” he asked Elise, turning to see her coming to her feet behind him.
She nodded. “I’m okay.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
As they hit the street, Tegan flipped his cell phone open and speed-dialed the compound. “I need pickup,” he told Gideon when the warrior came on the line. “Send it fast.”
There was a fractional hesitation, no doubt because Tegan, ever the loner, never called for backup. “You hit?”
“Nah, I’m good. But I’m not alone.” He glanced at Elise’s wound and ground out a curse. “I’m with a female from the Darkhaven. She’s bleeding, and I just smoked three Rogues downtown. Got a feeling there’s going to be more real quick.”
And if so, he and Elise might be able to shake their pursuers temporarily, but so long as they were leaving a blood scent trail, the Rogues would track them like hounds.
“Ah, shit,” Gideon breathed, understanding that fact the same as Tegan did. “Where are you at right now?”
Still running, Elise hurrying alongside him, Tegan gave his location and the direction he was heading.
“Yep, I got ya right here,” Gideon said over a clacking rush in the background as he typed something on a keyboard at the compound. “Tracking GPS on the others now to see who’s closest…Okay, looks like Dante and Chase are on patrol just north of you about fifteen minutes out.”
“Tell them they’d better get here in five. And, Gideon?”
“Yeah.”
“Let them know that the injured female who’s with me…let them know it’s Elise.”
“Fuck, T. You serious?” Gideon’s voice dropped low, incredulous. “What the hell are you doing with that female?”
Tegan heard the edge of wary suspicion in the vampire’s tone, but he ignored it. “Just tell Dante to haul ass.”
CHAPTER
Ten
Elise fought to keep pace with Tegan as they cut down one dark street, then another. She knew he was slowed by her; no human was any match for the incredible speed that those of the Breed possessed. The Rogue who was fresh on their trail was deadly fast too. No sooner did Tegan end his call to the compound than he spotted the new threat on their heels.
“This way,” he said, grabbing for her hand and pulling her onto a narrow lane between two Colonial-era buildings.
Behind them, Elise heard heavy boot falls, then sudden, empty silence, followed a second later by a hard metallic clank. She threw a glance over her shoulder and saw that another Rogue was onto them now. The large vampire had gone airborne, leaping up and landing on a metal fire escape that clung to the side of the old brick structure. It leaped again, then swung up onto the roof to track them from above.
“Tegan—up there!”
“I know.”
His voice was grim, his hand clamped firmly around hers as they neared the end of the lane. That grip was solid as iron, an unspoken promise that he was not about to let go of her. Elise drew from his strength, forcing her legs to work harder, ignoring her screaming lungs and the burn in her arm where the Rogue who attacked her had laced her open.
As they cleared the lane and spilled out onto the adjacent street, a dark SUV came roaring up from the traffic light and pulled a hard, skidding stop in front of them at the slushy curb. The back door flew open.
“Get in.”
Tegan let go only to push her into the vehicle, and Elise scrambled onto the leather bench seat, her heart pounding in her chest. In a move so fast it hardly registered to her, he pivoted around, drew a dagger, and let it fly down the alleyway. From somewhere in the darkness came a shout of pain, then the low, anguished howl of a Rogue meeting its demise at the end of Tegan’s titanium blade.
Tegan dived into the SUV next to Elise and slammed the back door shut. “Make us gone, Dante. There’s more on the way. Coming at us from above—”
At that instant something heavy hit the roof of the vehicle. In a peal of screeching tires, Dante threw the SUV into reverse, dislodging the Rogue onto the hood. A fast zigzagging maneuver threw it off the car completely, and as the feral vampire came up from its roll on the street, the leather-clad warrior in the passenger seat leaned out his open window and filled the Rogue with a merciless hail of bullets. The warrior squeezing the trigger shouted a coarse battle cry as a seemingly endless blast of gunfire ripped like thunder into the night.
When it finally ceased, Dante exhaled a wry oath. “Just a tad excessive there, buddy. But I think the suckhead got your point.”
There was no answering humor from the grim one seated next to Dante, only the cold metallic clack and grate of a weapon being reloaded.
“You okay?” Tegan asked from beside Elise, drawing her attention away from the violence.
She nodded, breathing too hard to speak, fear still making her heart race within her breast. She was too aware of Tegan’s body next to her, the heat of him an odd comfort. His muscled thigh pressed alongside hers, his arm slung casually over the back of the bench seat behind her. Elise knew that propriety demanded she put space between them, but she was too shaken to make herself move.
And as the SUV sped into the night, her mind absorbed the din of the city’s corruption, her talent cracking her wide open.
“Come here,” Tegan murmured. He pressed his palm lightly to her brow, trancing her with a touch and silencing her pain before it could really begin. His hands were gentle on her, even though his face was dispassionately cool. “Is that better?”
She couldn’t hold back her relieved sigh. “Yes, much better.”
It took him a moment to draw his hand away. When he did, Elise felt a pair of eyes fixed on her from the front passenger side of the vehicle. She glanced up and met the measuring stare of the warrior seated there. The blue gaze was intense beneath the light brows and black knit cap, but not quite friendly.
Dear Lord.
“Sterling,” she whispered, astonished.
He said nothing, the silence stretching interminably.
She hadn’t seen him for four months—not since Camden’s death that terrible night outside their home. Sterling had walked off alone that night, the last anyone at the Darkhavens had heard from him. Elise knew he blamed himself for taking Camden’s life—she had too. That blame was misplaced, however, and seeing him so unexpectedly now made her heart ache to tell him how sorry she was…for everything.
But the eyes that once looked at her with noble compassion, even affection, now dismissed her with a slow blink and a turn of his head. Sterling Chase was no longer her brother-by-marriage. He was a warrior, and if she hoped to reclaim him as her ally—as her last remaining kin—that hope bled away as the SUV roared out of the city, toward the Order’s headquarters.
“Is Lucan still topside?” Tegan asked as Gideon met him and the others upon their arrival at the compound.
“He came in from patrol about twenty minutes ago. Decided to stick around after you called in.”
“Good. I need to see him. The tech lab?”
Gideon shook his head. “He’s in his quarters with Gabrielle. What the hell is going on, T?”
“See that she gets medical help for that wound,” he said instead of answering, gesturing to Elise’s bloodied arm and already heading off with the book she’d intercepted, down the corridor toward Lucan’s private apartments in the compound.
He found the Gen One leader of the Order in the room his Breedmate favored most: the library study that was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a handcrafted tapestry depicting Lucan himself in chain mail armor and astride a rearing medieval warhorse beneath a cloud-streaked crescent moon. There was a hilltop castle burning in the background, its parapet smoking and under siege—a declaration of war instigated by Lucan.
Tegan remembered the night represented in the intricately rendered needlework. He remembered the carnage that had come before. And afterward. He’d been there with Lucan when the Order was conceived in blood and fury—the two of them and six others banding together in a pledge to fight for the future of their race, the Breed.
Jesus, that had been a lifetime ago. Several lifetimes ago.
A lot of death had followed the Order to this moment, both within their ranks and without. Most of the original warriors were lost to time and combat. Only Tegan, Lucan, and Lucan’s elder brother Marek—now their most dangerous adversary, having recently resurfaced to anoint himself leader of the Rogues—had survived of the original cadre of eight.
As Tegan paused in the open doorway of the library, Lucan looked up from an array of color photographs that Gabrielle spread out before him on the squat table in the center of the room. She had a gift that extended beyond her artist’s eye for beauty: Gabrielle’s camera lens was often drawn to vampire locations, both Breed and Rogue. It was in part how she and Lucan met the past summer; now it wasn’t unusual for the Breedmate to return from occasional daytime outings to the city and suburbs with pictures that proved useful to the Order’s recon efforts topside.
But this particular collection was something different.
Even from a distance, Tegan’s eye was drawn to vibrant, sunlit images of the mansion’s winter grounds and gardens. Ice glistened on branches like diamonds, and in one of the shots a red cardinal was captured close-up, a blast of shocking color amid a field of fresh white snow. A few of the pictures were taken in the city, some showing children in one of the area parks, bundled up in bright snowsuits, rolling large snowballs for a family of snowmen that stood half-completed nearby.
All things that those of the Breed didn’t often get a chance to see, the warriors especially.
Lucan’s woman had taken the photos simply for his pleasure, bringing him images of a vivid daylight world that existed just out of his reach.
Tegan glanced away from the pictures with a mental shrug; it didn’t feel right for him to share in this joy. It didn’t belong to him, and he sure as hell hadn’t come here looking for warm fuzzies.
“Not like you to call in the cavalry, Tegan,” Lucan drawled. There had been a smile lingering in the formidable warrior’s gray eyes as he met Tegan’s gaze from across the room, but he sobered instantly. “We have new trouble coming our way?”
“It could be.”
The Gen One leader of the Order nodded gravely, understanding from a single exchanged look that the night was about to head south.
Way south, Tegan thought. He held the curious journal under his arm, but ancient protocol made him hesitant to discuss potentially disturbing Order business in front of a female. It did not escape his notice that instead of getting up from the room or requesting privacy from Gabrielle, Lucan reached out to take her hand in his. The slight nod he gave her as she sat back down beside him was one of respect and solidarity.
The statement was clear: they were a unit, and while Lucan would walk through fire to protect her, the venerable warrior kept no secrets from her. No doubt the female would have it no other way.
It had been like that between the couple from the day she arrived at the compound as Lucan’s mate. The same could be said of Gideon and Savannah, who were paired more than thirty years and an equally solid match. Dante and Tess were two halves of one whole as well, though they had only been together a few short months.
Breedmates had their freedoms, even those bonded to members of the Order, but there wasn’t a male among the entire vampire nation who would stand by and condone what Elise had been doing the past few months she’d been living topside. What she intended to keep on doing, even if it killed her.
“Tell me what this is about,” Lucan said, indicating for Tegan to come into the library chamber. “Gideon said you phoned in that you were with an injured Darkhaven female.”
Tegan arched a brow in acknowledgment. “Elise Chase. No longer of the Darkhavens, as it turns out.”
“She left?”
“After the death of her son. She’s been living in the city by herself.”
“Jesus. What happened to her tonight?”
Tegan smirked, still disbelieving the woman’s tenacity. “She attracted some unwanted attention from the Rogues. They came gunning for her at her apartment.”
He left out the fact that one of the bastards got to her before he could stop it. The thought still burned in him, self-directed anger seething beneath his cool veneer.
Gabrielle frowned. “What would they want with Elise?”
“This.” Tegan held the book out and Lucan took it, scowling as he touched the faded tooling on the aged cover, then flipped through some of the yellowed pages. “It was waiting for overnight pickup by a Minion. Somebody was in a big rush to have it.”
Lucan’s look was grave. No question as to who the somebody was.
“And the Darkhaven woman?”
“She intercepted it.”
“Christ. What about Marek’s human mule?”
“The Minion is dead,” Tegan stated simply. “Marek must have gotten wind of that fact and unleashed his hounds to retrieve the book. It would have been easy enough to track down Elise from the store’s closed-circuit feed.”
“What is it, some kind of diary?” Gabrielle asked, peering past Lucan at the fanning pages.
“Appears to be,” Tegan said. “Apparently it belonged to a family named Odolf. You ever hear of them, Lucan?”
The vampire shook his dark head as he ran through the journal again. Before Tegan could direct him to the disturbing symbol at the back of the text, Lucan flipped to the page himself. As soon as his eye lit upon the hand-drawn dermaglyphic marking, he muttered a curse. “Holy hell. Is this what I think it is?”
Tegan gave a grim nod. “No doubt you recognize the pattern.”
“Dragos,” Lucan said, a dark weight hanging on that one word.
“Who is Dragos?” Gabrielle asked, peering past Lucan at the glyph scrawled onto the page.
“Dragos is a very old Breed name,” Lucan explained. “He was one of the original members of the Order—a first generation vampire. Like Tegan and me, Dragos was sired by one of the ancient creatures who began the vampire race as we know it. Dragos fought alongside us when the Order declared war on our alien fathers.”
Gabrielle nodded, showing no surprise or confusion. Evidently Lucan had already filled her in on the otherworldly origins of the Breed, as well as the bloody war that arose within the Breed during the fourteenth century of the human era.
It was a tumultuous time, rife with treachery and violence—most of it carried out by the long-lived, savage creatures from a distant planet who prowled the night and fed without discretion, sometimes wiping out entire villages of humankind. The Ancients were ravenous and brutal, supremely powerful. Without the Order to intervene, they’d been a bloodthirsty pestilence that made even the worst Rogue look like a misbehaving frat boy.
Gabrielle’s gaze went from Lucan to Tegan. “What happened to Dragos?”
“Killed in battle a few years into the war with the Ancients,” Tegan supplied.
“Can you be sure of that?” she asked. “Until last summer, everyone believed that Marek was dead too…”
Lucan gave a firm nod. “Dragos is dead, love. I saw his body with my own eyes. None of the Breed can resurrect when their head is taken.”
Tegan recalled that night as well. It was a moment that marked many losses, starting with Dragos’s Breedmate, who took her own life upon hearing the news of his death. Kassia had been a good, caring woman, as close as a sister to Sorcha. It wasn’t long after Kassia’s death that Tegan lost Sorcha as well. Dark times that he preferred not to think on, even now. He’d learned to suppress the pain, but he still had so many memories…
Tegan sharply cleared his throat. “Which brings us back to the name Odolf. Who is it? And what can it mean to Marek?”
“Maybe Gideon can turn something up in the IID,” Lucan suggested, handing the book back to Tegan as he got to his feet. “The database isn’t a complete record, but it’s all we’ve got.”
“You two run your search,” Gabrielle interjected when they reached the corridor outside. “I’m going to check in on Elise. It sounds like she’s been through a lot tonight. Maybe she could use some company and something to eat.”
Lucan’s eyes darkened as he held his woman’s gaze. He whispered something low in her ear, then pressed a kiss to her lips. There was a faint pink tint to her cheeks as she broke the embrace.
Tegan glanced away from the exchange and started the trek toward Gideon’s lab. Lucan was behind him in no time, Gabrielle heading in the opposite direction to look for Elise.
It was impossible not to notice the calm that enveloped the warrior whenever he was around his Breedmate. Not that long ago, Lucan had been a powder keg just looking for an open flame. He’d pretended an iron control, but Tegan knew him longer than any of the others at the compound, and he knew that Lucan had been only a few steps away from total disaster.
Bloodlust was the fatal flaw of all the Breed—a tipping point that could push even the most stable vampire over the edge into a permanent addiction. All of the Breed needed to consume blood to survive, but some took it too far. Some turned Rogue, and it had stunned Tegan to discover that Lucan was teetering on the very knife-edge of that abyss. He’d been nearly lost.
Until Gabrielle.
She grounded him somehow, gave Lucan what he needed through their blood bond, yet trusted him not to fall. She’d saved the warrior, and it was clear that she continued to do so every moment they shared together.
“You’re well mated,” Tegan said as Lucan caught up to him and strode along at his side in the corridor.
He’d meant it in praise, but it came out sounding harsh, almost an accusation. Lucan didn’t seem surprised by the rough tone, but he didn’t rise to the bait like he might have at one time either. “I think about you and Sorcha sometimes, when I look at Gabrielle and imagine what my life would be like without her. It’s sure as hell not a place I like to visit often. How you ever got through it—”
“It passes,” Tegan murmured, a bit too tightly even to his own ears. “And the only ghost I’m interested in talking about right now is Dragos.”
Lucan dropped the subject as the two of them entered the tech lab. Gideon was at his usual post behind the long console, keying something into one of the many computers. “What’ve you got?” he asked the moment they strode in, his eyes and fingers never leaving his task.
Tegan put the airbill and journal down on the table. “Need you to check the origin of this package, but first run a search of the IID records for the name Odolf.”
“You got it.” The vampire grabbed a wireless keyboard, dropped it into his lap, and started typing. “Am I looking for criminal records, birth records, death records…?”
“Any of the above,” Tegan said, watching the monitor screen fill with a scrolling list of data. It kept running and running, turning up zilch. Then one record stuck at the top of the screen while the program scrolled for more results. “You got one?”
“Deceased,” Gideon replied. “A one Reinhardt Odolf, of the Munich Darkhaven. Went Rogue in May 1946. Deceased the following year by solar suicide. Another entry, this one for Alfred Odolf, lost to Bloodlust in 1981. Hans Odolf, Bloodlust, 1993. A couple of missing persons on record…here’s one more for you: Petrov Odolf, Berlin Darkhaven.”
Lucan moved in to get a better look at the computer. “Also deceased?”
“Actually no. Not yet, anyway. Petrov Odolf, institutionalized for rehabilitation. According to the record, this boy’s been Rogue for the past few years and a ward of the Enforcement Agency in Germany.”
“Is he coherent?” Tegan demanded. “Can he be questioned? More importantly, can his answers be trusted to be valid?”
Gideon shook his head. “The record’s not complete about his current condition, other than he’s breathing and under the supervision of the institution in Berlin.”
“Berlin, eh?” Lucan turned a questioning look on Tegan. “Think you can call in any favors over there?”
Tegan turned away from the monitor and pulled out his cell phone. “Guess it’s as good a time as any to find out.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
Elise looked down at the healed wound on her left arm, then over at Tess, whose gifted hands had erased all traces of the bleeding cut and mended the torn flesh with just a touch. “This is incredible. How long have you had this talent?”
“Pretty much all my life, I suppose.” Tess pushed a curling lock of honey-blond hair behind her ear and gave a small shrug. “For a long time, I didn’t use it. I just wished it would go away, you know? So I could be…normal.”
Elise nodded, understanding completely. “You’re lucky, though, Tess. Your ability is one of strength. It works for the good.”
Shadows seemed to crowd the Breedmate’s aqua eyes. “Now it does, yes. Thanks mostly to Dante, that is. Before I met him, I had no idea why I was so different from other women. I treated my talent like a curse. Now I wish it went deeper. There is so much more I wish I could do—like with Rio, for instance.”
Elise knew the warrior Tess referred to. She’d seen him in one of the other infirmary rooms when she was led down here by Gideon. As they passed his open door, Rio had looked up from where he lay on a hospital bed, one side of his face distorted by old burns, the muscles of his bare chest and torso riddled with shrapnel scars and healed gouges that indicated some very severe injuries. His topaz-colored eyes had been dull beneath the fall of his overlong, dark brown hair. Elise hadn’t wanted to stare, but the anguish she saw in his face was arresting—even more so than the ravaged condition of his person.
“I can’t take away old wounds and scars,” Tess said. “And some of the worst ones a person bears are on the inside. Rio is a good man, but he’s damaged in ways he may never recover from, and there is no Breedmate talent that can erase those kinds of hurts.”
“Maybe love?” Elise suggested hopefully.
Tess shook her head as she ran her hands under the counter tap and scrubbed up. “Love betrayed him once. That’s what left him the way he is now. I don’t think he’ll let anyone get that close again. All he’s living for is to get back out in the field with the other warriors. Dante and I are trying to convince him to take things slowly, but when you try to slow Rio down, he only pushes harder.”
In some small way, Elise could relate to the warrior’s determined need to take action, even if only in the name of revenge. She was driven by a similar need and, like Rio, hearing others advise her to step back didn’t make the need burn any less.
From outside the infirmary room came the soft gait of female footsteps, accompanied by the quick, rhythmic click of a four-footed companion. Savannah and a perky brown terrier appeared in the doorway. Gideon’s pretty Breedmate offered Elise a warm smile. “All set here?”
“We’ve just wrapped up,” Tess said, drying her hands with a paper towel and bending down to scratch the chin of the little dog who quite obviously adored her. The mutt jumped all over her, showering Tess with wet kisses.
Savannah came in and carefully ran her fingers over Elise’s healed arm. “Good as new. Amazing, isn’t she?”
“You’re all amazing,” Elise answered, meaning it totally.
She’d met Savannah and Gabrielle a short while before, when both women had come down to check on her soon after her arrival at the compound. Savannah with her gorgeous mocha complexion and velvet brown eyes, had instantly made Elise feel at home with her gentle, caring demeanor. Gabrielle was sweet as well, a ginger-haired beauty who seemed wise beyond her years. And then there was pretty, quiet Tess, who’d taken care of Elise as compassionately as she might her own kin.
Elise felt humbled before them all. Having been raised in the Darkhavens, where the warriors of the Order were considered at best to be an antiquated, dangerous faction within the vampire race—at worst, a deadly gang exercising vigilante justice—it was surprising to meet the intelligent, kind women who’d taken members of the Order as their mates. She couldn’t see any one of these women binding herself to anything less than a male of honor and integrity. They were too smart for that, too confident in themselves.
Surprisingly, they seemed so pleasant and warm, not unlike the Darkhaven females Elise considered her friends.
“Since you’re finished here, why don’t both of you come with me?” Savannah said, breaking into Elise’s thoughts. “Gabrielle and I just made some sandwiches and a fruit salad. You must be hungry, Elise.”
“I am…or at least, I should be,” she admitted quietly. It had been several hours since she’d eaten and her body felt depleted, in need of nourishment, but the idea of food held little appeal. Everything tasted bland, even the things she used to enjoy when Quentin was alive.
“How long has it been for you, Elise?” Savannah’s tone was cautious, concerned. “I’ve heard that you lost your mate about five years ago…”
She knew what the woman was asking, of course. Had she gone so long without blood? In the Darkhavens it would be considered rude to ask questions about another female’s blood bond with her mate—even worse to question a widow about whether or not she drew sustenance from another in her mate’s absence—but here, among these women, there seemed no reason to hide the truth.
“Quentin was killed by a Rogue in the line of duty five years and two months ago. I haven’t turned to anyone else for my needs—not any of them. Nor will I.”
“Five years without Breed blood in you is a long time,” Savannah acknowledged. Thankfully she didn’t bring up the other implication in Elise’s confession: that she hadn’t taken another lover in all that time either.
“Your body is aging,” Tess said, a look of curiosity in her eyes, maybe sadness. “If you don’t take another male as your mate—”
“Eventually I will die,” Elise answered. “Yes, I know. Without Breed blood to sustain me in a state of perfect health, I need to work my muscles and keep fit, just like any other human. And, like any other human, my body will start to progress in years—it already has. In time, like any other human, I will succumb to old age.”
Savannah’s dark eyes were sympathetic. “That doesn’t bother you, the thought of dying?”
“Only when I think that I might go to my grave without having made a difference in this world. That’s why I…” She glanced down, still finding it difficult to speak about the thing that motivated her to leave the Darkhaven and begin another life. “I lost my son four months ago. He got involved with Crimson, and the drug turned him Rogue.”
“Yes,” Savannah said, reaching out to softly touch her shoulder. “We heard what happened. And how he died. I’m so sorry.”
“So am I,” Tess added. “At least the Crimson lab has been destroyed. Tegan saw to it personally.”
Elise’s head shot up in surprise. “What do you mean, personally?”
“He razed the place,” Tess said. “It’s all that Nikolai, Kade, and Brock have been talking about since they got back. Evidently Tegan went in by himself and single-handedly shut the operation down before the others had even arrived on scene. Then he burned the building to the ground.”
“Tegan did that?” Elise was astonished. And she was fairly certain he’d implied the Order was responsible for shutting the lab down, not him personally. Why would he let her believe that if he had been the one responsible?
“Niko said Tegan came out of that burning warehouse like something out of a nightmare,” Tess went on. “Then he walked off into the night without any explanation.”
And from there he went to her apartment to look in on her, Elise realized now.
“Come on, let’s talk some more while you eat. Gabrielle’s waiting for us in the dining room upstairs.”
The three women left the infirmary, Tess’s little dog trotting after them, and walked a confusing maze of corridors into the heart of the Order’s subterranean compound. They were nearly to an elevator when a glass door whisked open somewhere nearby and deep male voices filled the area. Elise recognized Sterling’s voice among them, but he sounded rougher than normal, talking about night patrols and racking up his tally of Rogue kills like it was some kind of sport for him.
The other male’s voice rolled with an exotic accent, making Elise picture turquoise ocean waves and golden sunsets. It was Dante, she realized, as the two armed warriors rounded the corner and the one walking with Sterling moved in to sweep Tess into a tight embrace.
“Hello, angel,” he drawled and nuzzled his mouth against her neck while she laughed at the sudden amorous assault. His eyes flashed amber with the spark of his desire for his woman, emotion he didn’t even attempt to hide.
“I missed you,” she whispered, stroking his dark hair. “I always miss you.”
“Well, I’m home now.” The words were a deep rasp as he reached down and twined his fingers through hers. Elise could see the tips of his fangs when he gave his Breedmate a slow, crooked smile. “And I’m thirsty for you, Tess.”
The female’s smile was full of longing. “I was just on my way to have a bite with my friends.”
Savannah laughed. “I think you found something better. We’ll save you a sandwich. Lord knows, you’re probably going to need it.”
Tess beamed over her shoulder as Dante led her away. The couple strode off together, leaving no one in the room in doubt of what would soon transpire privately between them.
When Tess’s little terrier started barking as Dante led her away, Savannah bent down to pick up the dog. “Come on, you darling beast. I’ll find something for you too.” She glanced over at Elise. “I’m just going to go see what Gideon’s up to in the lab. I’ll be right back, okay?”
Elise nodded. And when she turned her head away from Dante and Tess’s retreat, it was to find Sterling staring at her from across the corridor. His eyes scathed her, taking in her appearance—from the top of her shorn hair to her bloodstained shirt, pants, and damp winter boots. There was disapproval in his eyes, even worse than Tegan’s initial reaction to her. She saw Sterling’s gaze drift down to her hands, to her fingers, which were twisting anxiously at the hem of her shirt. He stared at her wedding band, a muscle ticking in his beard-shadowed jaw.
“Aren’t you going to even say hello to me?” she asked him in the unbearable silence. “We have to talk to each other sometime, don’t we?”
But Sterling didn’t say a word.
With a vague shake of his head, he simply turned and strode away, leaving her alone in the long corridor.
Tegan tensed up as the lights flicked on over the estate’s indoor pool. He’d gone there after making his call to the Berlin Darkhaven, looking for solitude and means of working off some excess steam. He was pissed but not surprised that Gideon hadn’t been able to get a legitimate origin for Marek’s FedEx shipment. The vampire’s network of Minions had to be extensive. That journal had probably been handed off like a relay baton at half a dozen stops before arriving in Boston, just to muddy its trail.
As for the book itself, not even Savannah’s impressive psychic ability to read the emotional history of an object had proved helpful there. All Gideon’s Breedmate could cull from the journal was the deep madness—the mind-eating Bloodlust—of the one who had written on its pages.
Frustrated by it all, Tegan had swum a few laps, and now sat in the corner of the vaulted space, bare legs straddling a teakwood chaise, his hair and the brief black trunks clinging to his groin still damp from the water. He’d been enjoying the alone time and the darkness—or had been, until the rows of domed lights above the pool blinked on like interrogation room high beams.
He stood up, expecting to see Rio limp in with Tess for a round of therapy. But it wasn’t either of them who came out of the shower room into the pool area.
It was Elise.
She didn’t see him as she padded in barefoot, wearing a snow-white swimsuit that was sliced up the sides and held together by delicate bronze rings. The front of it plunged low, another ring centered between the perfect swell of her breasts. The daring suit was almost as big of a surprise as seeing her here; Tegan would never have guessed the reserved Darkhaven widow to look so right in such immodest clothing.
And goddamn, did she ever look right.
A deep, primal awareness stirred in him as he watched her draw away the spa towel she had slung around her neck. She let it fall to the tiles at the water’s edge, then stepped down onto the first submerged step at the shallow end of the pool.
Soundlessly, Tegan inched his way back into the corner, hardly breathing in the thin shadows that concealed him. Even though it was clear that her body was leaner than it should be from want of fortifying Breed blood, Elise was lovely. She was beautifully formed, from the grace of her long legs and the gentle flare of her hips, to the slender curves of her waist, breasts, and delicate shoulders.
He had seen hints of her figure when she’d come out of the shower in her apartment last night, and when she’d lain unconscious on the futon, but the thick robe had hidden more than it revealed. The scrap of elastic white material she wore now only accentuated her assets. In a big way.
She strode down into the water, then began a slow swim toward the center of the pool. Abruptly, she dove under, disappearing from his view until she reemerged at the far end to come up for air. As her face broke the surface of the water, she opened her eyes and spotted him. Her little gasp echoed in the cavernous room.
“Tegan.” She brought her arm up to hold on to the edge of the pool, but kept her body submerged as if the water could shield her from his intrusive gaze. “I thought I was alone in here.”
“So did I.” He walked out under the lights, and didn’t miss the flush of color in her cheeks as she quickly averted her eyes from his near nakedness.
He drew closer to the edge and smirked a bit as she moved away, going toward the center of the pool. “Your arm looks better.”
“Tess took care of my wound,” she said. “Gabrielle and Savannah fed me and gave me some fresh clothes. Savannah said it would be all right if I came up here for a swim…”
Tegan shrugged, watching her tread water, lithe arms and legs moving sinuously beneath the surface. “Do what you want. You don’t need to explain anything to me.”
She held his gaze across the pool. “Then why do you make me feel like I do?”
“Do I?”
Instead of answering, she pivoted and started swimming at an easy pace, putting more distance between them. “Were you able to find out anything about the journal?”
“Looking to change the subject, are you?” He watched her retreat toward the deep end, and for some absurd reason, it took every ounce of impulse control for him to not dive in and follow her. “We might have a lead on something in Berlin. I’m heading there tomorrow night.”
“Berlin?” She reached for the lip of the pool and turned a frown on him. “What’s in Berlin?”
“Someone we might be able to persuade into giving us information. Unfortunately, our best lead right now is a Rogue. He’s been cooling his jets in a holding tank for the past few years.”
“A rehabilitation facility?” Elise asked. At Tegan’s nod, she said, “Those places are controlled by the Enforcement Agency.”
“So?”
“So, what makes you think they’ll permit you inside? I’m sure you are aware that the Order doesn’t have a lot of admirers in the Darkhavens. They have never approved of your methods when it comes to dealing with the problem of Breed vampires going Rogue.”
He had to give the female credit: she was up on her politics, and she was right about the Enforcement Agency intending to block the Order’s access to the captive Rogue. Tegan’s call to his old ally in Berlin, Andreas Reichen, had only confirmed what he and Lucan expected. The only way they were getting near Petrov Odolf was through a lot of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit.
Assuming Reichen could get Tegan an audience at all.
Elise knew that too. “I have connections in the Agency. Maybe if I went with you…”
Tegan scoffed. “No way.”
“Why not? Are you so stubborn that you would refuse my help even in something like this?”
“I work alone, that’s why.”
“Even if it means banging your head against a wall?” Now she laughed, stunning him with her open mockery. “I would have thought you were smarter than that, Tegan.”
Anger pricked at him, but he held it back, refusing to let her bait him. With a shake of her head, Elise pivoted around and headed back for the shallow end, swimming with determined strokes. “I should leave,” she murmured.
Tegan kept time with her, strolling along the edge of the pool. “Don’t let me interrupt your swim. I was just on my way out anyway.”
“I mean, I should leave the compound. It’s obvious I don’t belong here.”
“You can’t go back to your apartment now,” he informed her curtly. “The Rogues will have turned the place inside out. Marek will have his spies embedded all over the neighborhood, looking for you.”
“I know that.” Her slim body glided through the water, nearly to the end of the pool. “I’m not foolish enough to think I can return there.”
Tegan chuckled, satisfied that maybe she had come to her senses at last. “Then I guess Harvard has convinced you to go back to the Darkhaven?”
“Harvard? Is that what Sterling goes by now that he’s one of you?”
“One of us,” Tegan said, hearing the accusation in her clipped tone.
Not that she tried to conceal it.
She swam to the steps and came out of the water, evidently too piqued to care that Tegan was staring openly at her wet body. His eyes homed in on the birthmark riding the inner edge of her thigh, drawn there unerringly like a heat-seeking missile locked on target.
Saliva surged into his mouth as he watched rivulets of water slide down her smooth, bare thighs. His skin felt tight all over, heat moving in his veins, and in the dermaglyph markings that covered his body and declared him one of the Breed. His gums ached with the sudden press of his fangs. He clamped his jaws together, curbing the startling jolt of hunger.
He didn’t want to look at the female, but damned if he could tear his eyes away from her now.
“Sterling hasn’t convinced me of anything,” she said as she grabbed her towel and covered herself with it. “He won’t even speak to me, if you want to know the truth. I think he must hate me after what happened last fall.”
Tegan studied her smart lavender eyes. “Is that really what you think—that he hates you?”
“Sterling was my mate’s brother—by marriage, he is my brother. It would be completely improper—”
Tegan scoffed. “Men have gone to war with their own brothers for want of the same woman. Desire could give a damn about propriety.”
Elise held the towel closed between her breasts and paced from him. “I don’t like where this conversation is heading.”
“Do you have feelings for him?”
“Of course not.” She looked at Tegan, clearly, rightfully, appalled. “And what right have you to ask me that?”
None at all, but suddenly it was important to him that he know. He stood there, deliberately blocking her path if she even thought to duck away from him. “He desires you. He would take you into his bed if you’d let him. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t even need your permission.”
“Now you’re just being rude.”
“I’m only stating the truth. Don’t tell me you weren’t aware that Chase burns for you. Anyone with eyes in his head can see that.”
“But only you would be coarse enough to speak it.”
That pale purple gaze flashed with outrage and for a second he wondered if he was about to get slapped. He rather hoped he would. He wanted her angry. Wanted her hating him, especially now, when the scent of her warm, wet skin was drilling into his senses. Every curve of her petite body branding itself into his mind’s eye.
He was close enough to take her in his hands. Too close, because at this intimate range, he could see the flutter of her pulse drumming frantically at her throat, and he was all too aware that there would be no one to stop him if he pulled her into his arms and took a forbidden taste of her.
“You hang your callousness on the excuse of truth,” she said, a fierceness creeping into her voice. “So maybe you can tell me why you found it necessary to lie to me about what happened with the Crimson lab.”
Tegan narrowed a hard look on her, the question raising some kind of alarm within him. “I didn’t lie to you about anything.”
She didn’t flinch under his glare, only held his gaze steadier, challenging him. “It was you who destroyed the lab, not the Order. You personally, Tegan. No one else. I heard all about it.”
A low hiss leaked out of him. He drew back, knowing he was the one retreating now, but unable to stop his hedging backward momentum. Elise moved with him, her wet, nearly naked body too close. Too goddamn tempting.
“Why would you do something like that, Tegan? I can’t believe that you had any kind of personal stake in seeing the lab razed. So tell me. Why? Did you do it for me?”
He said nothing, incapable of speech and edging dangerously close to an emotion he did not want to feel.
She stared up at him fiercely. The silence was heavy, immovable. “Where’s your truth now, warrior?”
Tegan forced a scoff, hearing the humorless laugh scrape in his throat. “I’ve warned you once, female. You’re toying with fire. I won’t be gentleman enough to warn you again.”
Elise closed her eyes as Tegan snarled a curse and stalked away from her. She didn’t dare move, hardly drew a breath in the moments Tegan’s swift footsteps carried him to the pool’s exit. She heard him leave. Only then did she allow herself to sag in relief.
What on earth was she thinking? Had she completely lost her mind, provoking a warrior like him toward anger?
And it was anger she saw in his expression. An unmistakable, smoldering fury had lit his bright green eyes as he’d stared at her, probably no less than an instant away from lashing out at her. Was she suicidal, like he’d accused her last night? Because if his ruthless reputation was anything to go by, pushing him like she had was liable to get her killed.
Except it wasn’t anger she’d been looking for just now. She had wanted to see some kind of feeling in him…
Feelings he might have toward her.
Which was utterly foolish.
Still, she wondered. Had been wondering, ever since that early November night when Tegan had taken her home from the compound. Elise didn’t want to think there was anything between them. Lord knew, she didn’t need a complication like that in her life right now.
But in the tense moments before Tegan left the room, something had indeed been there.
Despite his cool demeanor, color had risen in his Gen One dermaglyphs. The beautiful markings had swirled like elaborate, changeable tattoos across Tegan’s muscular chest, arms, and torso…and down, beneath the tight black swimsuit that blatantly accentuated his profane sexuality.
And as she’d stood before him, close enough to feel his breath skate hotly across her skin, those incredible glyphs had begun to pulse in shades of burgundy, indigo, and gold—the colors of awakening desire.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Hey, T. Looks like you’re Berlin bound tomorrow night,” Gideon said as Tegan entered the tech lab. He scrubbed a hand through his spiky blond hair, disheveling it even worse than it had been before and amping up his usual geeky-genius look. “We just got FAA clearance for our private jet. The pilot will be waiting for you at Logan’s corporate terminal at dusk. You’ll have to stop to refuel in Paris, but you’ll arrive in Berlin with about an hour to spare before dawn the following day.”
Tegan acknowledged the news with a vague nod. It had been a couple of hours since his encounter with Elise at the pool, and his blood was still drumming in his temples, his body still alive with a tingling sense of awareness that was frankly starting to annoy him.
At least he had an escape plan. Tomorrow night he would be on his way out of the country, putting several thousand miles between him and the woman who was driving him to a very uncharacteristic distraction. It didn’t look like his mission in Berlin was going to be easy; he would probably be gone for at least a week, maybe longer. Plenty of time for him to put Elise out of his mind.
Yeah, just like he’d done so effectively in the four months since he’d first met the female.
Taking her home that night from the compound had been a mistake. Stupid impulse—something he rarely indulged in, and, on the occasions he did, generally lived to regret. The way he reacted to her earlier tonight only drove that point home like the sharp edge of a blade.
He hungered for her, and he couldn’t delude himself with the hope that she hadn’t seen ample evidence of that fact. He hadn’t been able to curb the transformation of his glyphs in her presence, let alone suppress his unwilling arousal just from being near her.
Jesus Christ, he needed to be gone, and gone soon.
Across the lab, Dante and Chase were going over tactics with Niko and the new recruits. A couple of heads lifted as Tegan strolled inside and dropped into a chair next to Gideon at the bank of computers and compound surveillance monitors.
“You all right?” Gideon asked, glancing at him from under an arched brow. “You’re throwing off heat like a radiator.”
“Never better.” Tegan punched the speaker key on the telephone near his elbow. “Let’s give Reichen the flight details and see if he’s been able to get anywhere with the suits in charge of the containment facility.”
Tegan dialed the private line of the Berlin Darkhaven and was immediately put through to Andreas Reichen.
“Everything is in order,” he told the German vampire, not bothering with the pleasant hi-how-are-yas in his impatience to get the mission underway. “Expected arrival at Tegel Airport is two days from now just before sunrise. Think you can get me to your place before I go crispy?”
Reichen chuckled. “Of course. I will have a car waiting to retrieve you.” His deep, accented voice rolled through the speaker. “It has been too long, Tegan. I have not forgotten my debt to you for your assistance with our little…problem over here a while ago.”
Tegan remembered that time. The Berlin Darkhaven’s little problem had entailed a string of Rogue attacks on its residents, several ending in grisly killings. Tegan had gone in as a one-man commando unit, tracking the Rogue cell into the thick forests of Grunewald then wiping out the Bloodlusting predators who’d been terrorizing the region. That had been, shit…almost two hundred years ago.
“We’ll be square if you can get me inside that Enforcement Agency facility,” he told Reichen.
“Ah, that is resolved, my friend. The head of security phoned only moments before you called. The Director of the Agency here in Berlin gave specific license for access to the facility. There is no issue with permitting your emissary into the facility to question Petrov Odolf.”
“My emissary…”
As the words left his mouth and suspicion started to simmer in his blood, Tegan heard the soft whisk of the tech lab’s glass doors as they slid open to let someone inside. He knew who that someone was, even before he saw Chase’s jaw go tight across the room. Tegan pivoted around in his wheeled chair and found Elise standing there, looking guilty as sin.
“What the hell have you done?”
“It wasn’t my doing,” Reichen said over the speaker. “I assumed it was something you initiated…”
The German leader of the Berlin Darkhaven was still talking but Tegan wasn’t hearing a word. Elise walked forward, her steps a bit halting. One of the other Breedmates had given her a change of clothes. The purple knit tunic and dark blue jeans were an improvement over the havoc of the revealing swimsuit, but it still didn’t totally conceal her petite, feminine lines.
Which only pissed Tegan off more.
“Whatever you think you’re doing, forget it. I told you, I work alone.”
“Not this time. The arrangements are already in place with the Agency and the containment facility. They are expecting me.”
“This must be a fucking joke.”
“I’m completely serious. I’m going with you.”
Tegan dismissed her with a brief look and went back to his call with Reichen. “There will be no Darkhaven emissary accompanying me. Just me alone, Andreas, and we’re still getting in to see that Rogue, even if we have to break into—”
“Tegan, I think you misunderstand.” Elise’s voice was unwavering behind him and dangerously bold. “I wasn’t asking for your permission.”
He froze, stunned at the woman’s nerve. “I’ll be in touch,” he told Reichen, then severed the connection with an overzealous punch of the keypad.
“I’m the one who delivered the journal to the Order,” Elise said as he turned a glare on her. “Without me, you wouldn’t have known anything about the individual you mean to question. Without me, you won’t be permitted to get within viewing range of him, let alone speak to him. I am going with you.”
Tegan vaulted out of his chair. Elise leaped back, startled—the first show of good sense he’d seen in her since she walked into the lab. He pinned her with a narrow stare that swept with scathing, deliberate slowness from her flushing cheeks to the tips of her borrowed shoes. “You’re in no condition for travel. Look at you—you’re weak, little more than skin and bones. We won’t even talk about the fact that you can hardly be near humans without inviting vicious migraines and nosebleeds.”
“I will manage.”
He scoffed. “How?”
She frowned, dropping her gaze as Tegan’s voice boomed around them.
“What are you going to do between now and then—solicit the vein of a vampire to bolster your strength? Because that’s what it would take.”
Her cheeks went suddenly awash in color.
“Maybe one of them will offer to service you,” Tegan said, ruthless now, indicating the other warriors who were watching the exchange in tense silence.
“Shit, Tegan,” Gideon cautioned beside him. “Lighten up, for crissake.”
Tegan tuned out everything but the Darkhaven female’s shocked expression. “That’s what it would take, Elise—Breed blood coursing through your body. Nothing less. Without it, your talent will continue to rule you, as it does now. You’ll only be a liability.”
He saw the outrage spark in her eyes, but it was her humiliation that struck him like a blow to the gut. It was considered crass in the extreme to speak publicly of the blood bonds between a female and her mate—even worse, to speak of it in mixed company.
To suggest that an unbonded Breedmate take a male for sustenance alone was beyond profane.
“I am a widow,” she said quietly. “I am in mourning—”
“Five years,” Tegan reminded her, his voice sounding tight even to his own ears. “Where will you be in another five? Or ten? You’re letting yourself die on your feet and you know it. Don’t ask me to help you get there faster.”
She stared up at him mutely, her delicate throat working as she swallowed what was likely a sob. Maybe a curse that he go straight to hell, which was probably where he was heading even before this ugly display.
“You’re right, Tegan,” she whispered, not a trace of weakness or any hitch in her voice. “You are right…and I concede that you’ve made your point.”
With squared shoulders, she pivoted around and walked calmly out of the lab, a vision of stoic dignity. Tegan felt like an ass, watching her leave in rigid silence. After she disappeared from view, he exhaled a sharp curse.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he barked to Chase, who had risen from the table he’d been seated at. The ex-Darkhaven agent had his hand curled around the butt of a handgun that was holstered across his chest. His expression was nothing short of murderous.
“Screw this,” Tegan growled. “I’m outta here.”
Not surprisingly, Chase was right on his heels. He gave Tegan’s shoulder a hard shove as the two of them exited to the corridor outside the lab.
“You son of a bitch. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment—least of all from someone like you.”
No, she didn’t. But it was necessary. There was no way in hell he was going to put himself in close quarters again with Elise, let alone make her his accomplice on this mission to Berlin. He’d needed to shut her down, and shut her down hard. So what if he’d made himself into a bigger asshole for doing it publicly. He’d only fortified what everyone already thought of him.
Tegan met Chase’s furious look and affected a callous smile. “You care so much about the female, Harvard? Why don’t you go console her like you’re burning to do. Just do us all a favor and keep her the fuck away from me.”
Chase got up in his face, blue eyes flashing raw anger. “You’re a real dick, you know that?”
“Yeah?” Tegan shrugged. “Last time I checked, I wasn’t campaigning for any Mr. Congeniality awards.”
“Arrogant motherf—”
Parting his lips, Tegan hissed through his lengthening fangs as he bore down on Chase, cutting off the further round of insult. He half hoped the irate vampire would push him into a fight. Part of him craved to know Chase’s feelings of torment and rage, and as torqued as he was right now, he wouldn’t turn down a chance to bruise his knuckles in a little hand-to-hand.
But Dante smoothly intervened, coming out of the lab at that very second to grab Chase’s arm and physically pull the warrior out of Tegan’s path. “Shit, Harvard. Don’t go getting yourself killed now that I’ve almost got you trained. What a friggin’ waste that would be, eh?”
After a few seconds of interference, Chase simmered down, but his eyes were still hot on Tegan even as Dante tugged him up the corridor. In the lab, Gideon was back at his keyboard. Nikolai, Brock, and Kade got back to business too, all of them acting as though Tegan hadn’t just come off like a heartless bastard in front of a defenseless female.
Tegan cursed low under his breath. He had to get the hell out of there, and the way things were going, tomorrow night’s flight to Berlin wasn’t going to be soon enough.
He had somewhere he could go—the place he always went when shit started bearing down on him. Sometimes he’d disappear there for nights on end; none of his brethren in the Order had ever been there. It was his own private hell, a forsaken, hollow place, filled with death. Right about now, it sounded like a fucking holiday.
Elise stood in the center of a large, mostly vacant chamber in the compound, feeling as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She was still shaking from her confrontation with Tegan, but whether it was from humiliation or anger, she wasn’t sure. What he’d done to her in front of his brethren was inexcusable, incredibly cold. He had to know that what he suggested was blasphemous and profanely insulting—not just to her, but to the warriors who’d been in the room to hear it. Only the lowest females living among the Breed would engage in a blood bond without a solemn commitment and a deeply shared love.
The blood bond was the most sacred communion between a Breedmate and the male she chose as her own. The ultimate intimacy, it was very often a sexual act, and one never entered into lightly. To use a vampire’s blood only to further one’s longevity and strength was simply not done. Not by anyone Elise knew.
But she couldn’t deny that Tegan’s observations of her had been the truth.
What he’d said was cruel and crude…and utterly accurate. She was willingly wasting away, which was her prerogative as a widowed Breedmate. But she wanted to have an active part in thwarting the Rogues, and it was foolish of her to think she could do so if she continued on as she was.
Elise glanced at the barren room around her. The white, windowless walls contained no color at all—no pleasing art or photographs, like she’d seen in the rest of the compound. No sofa, no electronic equipment or computers, no books. Nothing of personal expression at all.
Near the far wall stood a tall black cabinet, and a black wooden bench beside it, underneath which was two pairs of large black leather boots, arranged with military precision. There was a large bed in the adjacent room, but even that wasn’t particularly inviting. Just gunmetal gray sheets and a coal-colored blanket folded neatly at the foot of the king-sized mattress. Elise had never seen a soldiers’ barracks, but she imagined they’d look like this…maybe not this cold and impersonal.
She knew where she was, of course. She’d known where she was heading when she navigated the labyrinth of corridors after removing herself from the embarrassment she’d endured in the Order’s control room.
She knew what she was about to do now, but that didn’t make her heart skip any less frantically when she heard Tegan’s hard gait approaching from outside the open door of his private quarters.
That long-legged stride slowed, then ceased altogether as the air stirred coldly, announcing his arrival. His immense body filled the door frame, muscular arms crossed over his chest, his powerful, denim-clad thighs spread in a battle stance. He didn’t speak at first, but there was no need for words when his emerald-green eyes narrowed on her, as sharp as gemstones and as cold as a glacier.
“Tegan—”
“If you’re looking for an apology, you can forget it.”
Elise held that menacing gaze as she forced herself to approach him. “I’m not here for that,” she told him, surprised there was no tremor in her voice for the way her pulse was skittering in her veins. “I came here to tell you that you were right back there. I do need the strength of a blood bond, but I’m not looking for a mate. I need an uncomplicated arrangement, with someone who isn’t going to care what I do, or when I walk away…so I choose you.”
CHAPTER
Thirteen
Every smartass, apathetic reply that might have sprung to his lips fled, along with all the blood in his brain. Tegan stood there in the doorway of his private apartments, struck stupid with shock at what he just heard.
He sure as hell never saw this coming.
And although all good sense told him to deny Elise’s proposal—shut the goddamn idea down before another second passed—his mouth didn’t seem capable of speech. An erotic mental image burned instantly into his mind: Elise’s lips pressed against his skin, her sweet pink tongue lapping at him, her mouth drawing deeply from his vein.
He wanted that, he realized in a flash of disbelief.
Wanted it so bad he shuddered with the force of it.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, finding his voice at last. “You’re insane. And I’m leaving. I only came to grab a few of my things and I’m out of here.”
When he stalked forward, meaning to dismiss her and her ludicrous suggestion without another word, Elise moved into his way. He glared down at her, but she didn’t so much as flinch under the deadly look that would have withered warriors and Rogues alike.
“What are you running from, Tegan?” Soft lavender eyes fixed on him in defiant challenge. “I’m sure it can’t be me scaring you off.”
He scoffed at the idea, refusing to let her see how close to the mark she might be. “Do you know what you’re asking for? If you take my blood, a part of you will be linked to me for as long as I’m alive. It’s an unbreakable connection.”
“I know very well what the blood bond entails. All of it.”
Her sudden flush seemed to indicate that she was also aware of the sexual nature of the act. Vampire blood had a highly aphrodisiac quality. In females without the Breedmate mark, the effect was often a rush of fierce desire; in females like Elise, who were capable of bearing Breed offspring, the drinking of Breed blood nearly always sent them into a heated sexual hunger that demanded to be slaked.
“I’m not what you’re used to,” he told her sternly, the only warning he could think of now. “Don’t think that I’ll be gentle with you. I wouldn’t show you any mercy.”
Her little smile was mocking. “I’d hardly expect that you would.”
With that, she turned and strode away from him, her spine impeccably erect as she went into his bedroom to await him. Tegan raked his fingers through his hair, knowing he had about two seconds to get a grip on himself and walk away from this certain disaster. Any longer for him to think about it, and he didn’t know if he’d have the will to refuse her.
In the adjacent room, he heard the soft clop of Elise’s shoes hitting the rug as she took them off. If he thought he could scare her out of going through with this, apparently all he’d done was fortify her resolve. She’d thrown a gauntlet here, and he had never been the kind of male to back down from a challenge.
Even now, when every survival instinct he possessed was clamoring for him to turn tail and run from a situation that had catastrophe written all over it.
Long moments ticked by.
And still she waited.
Tegan growled a dark oath.
Then, with hardly a conscious thought to command it, he brought the door to his apartments closed with the will of his mind and headed for the bedroom after her.
Some of Elise’s resolve wavered as Tegan came in behind her to his bedroom. There was a savage intensity in his slow steady stride and in the unblinking gaze trained on her. Suddenly she felt as if she were standing before a predator while it measured its options, preparing to close in for the kill.
“How do you want…” She let the words trail off, uncertain how to proceed now that she actually had him here. “Where shall I…?”
“The bed,” came his flat reply.
He began pulling off his black knit shirt, baring his glyph-marked torso. Their normal henna hue was deepening now, no longer the neutral shade indicating a placid mood, but blushing darker, the patterns beginning to saturate. Elise sat down on the very edge of the mattress and turned her head to avert her eyes from him. She heard the crush of fabric as Tegan set the shirt aside and came nearer to the bed.
“You’re overdressed,” he said, his warm breath tickling the side of her bare neck.
His presence so close to her was almost as startling as his words. Elise turned an anxious glance on him. “You mean for me to disrobe? I don’t see why I sh—”
“You will,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “If I were a cultured Darkhaven male and not the crude warrior that I am, I doubt you’d expect me to receive you fully clothed.”
It was true. Respect for the act of blood-bonding between vampire and Breedmate demanded that both parties come to each other without concealment, coercion, or reservation. Naked in body, commitment, and intent.
Tegan reached down to unfasten the zipper on his low-slung blue jeans.
As they sagged on his trim pelvis, Elise’s eyes fell unwillingly to the ridges of taut muscle that defined him, and to the trailing pattern of dermaglyphs that quite obviously continued all the way down to his naked, swelling groin. He wore nothing beneath, she realized in a state of instant panic.
“Please,” she gasped. “Tegan, please. Will you…leave them on?”
He didn’t reply, but he slowly pulled the denim back together and dragged the zipper up. She couldn’t help noticing that the button at the top stayed undone, baring a small vee of his smooth tawny skin.
“That’s the only request you get tonight,” he said in a deep rasp. “You still have time to reconsider. But not much. Now disrobe, or ask me nicely to let you leave.”
He was testing her. She knew he was deliberately pushing her now, probably so sure that he could make her change her mind with a few menacing words.
Really, she should be afraid. Not just of being alone with a warrior like Tegan, but also of the intimate, sacred act she was about to defile by drinking from a male she had no intention of taking as her mate. Truly, she degraded them both by asking Tegan to service her like this, and if he was disgusted by the thought—or by her—she could hardly blame him.
“What’s it going to be, Elise?”
She stood up, too aware of him watching her, waiting for her to bolt. With only the slightest tremble in her fingers, she began to lift the hem of her tunic and drew it up over her head.
Tegan’s warm breath ceased. He went utterly still beside her, but she could feel heat rolling off him as she set her top down on the bed.
She crossed her arms over the modest white cotton bra she wore, and turned a questioning look on him.
When Tegan finally spoke, his voice was thick, obstructed by the points of his gleaming white fangs. “Your pants too. You can keep the rest on for now.”
She stripped out of her jeans as quickly as she could, then sat back down on the edge of the bed.
“Move to the middle, and face me sitting on your knees.”
As she scooted to the center of the king-sized mattress, Tegan came up onto the bed as well. He prowled forward on his knees, until only a foot of space separated them. The pupils in the heart of his green irises began to thin, narrowing down by degrees into vertical slits. When he parted his lips to speak, his fangs seemed enormous.
“Last chance, Elise.”
She gave a shake of her head, incapable of talk now. Tegan snarled something nasty under his breath, then brought his wrist up to his mouth. With his eyes on hers, he bared his fangs and sank them into the flesh below his palm.
Dark red blood dripped from the wound, falling softly, steadily, onto the gray sheets.
“Come here,” he said, holding his arm out to her, his lips stained crimson from his bite.
With her eyes closed, heart stuttering in her breast, Elise leaned forward. She put her hands under his thick forearm and carefully lifted his bleeding punctures to her mouth. There, she hesitated, knowing there would be no turning back. With one taste, she would be bound to this deadly male. Aware of him always, like a living warmth buzzing in her veins, until the time should come that one or the other of them would die.
But she would be stronger too.
Her psychic torment would be lessened, far easier to manage. Her body would rejuvenate, require less work to keep it fit and healthy.
Her promise to Camden wouldn’t feel so hollow once she had some of Tegan’s power coursing through her veins.
But to use him like this?
She glanced up and found him staring down at her, his lips peeled back and glistening, his breath raking coarsely through his teeth. His dermaglyphs were livid with color now, strikingly beautiful on so much sculpted muscle and golden skin.
“Do it,” he snarled, that fierce gaze daring her to take him to her mouth…damning her for it.
Elise bent down over his wrist and carefully opened her mouth to receive him. The instant her lips touched his skin, Tegan hissed, arcing sharply. Elise drew gently, using her tongue to lap at the twin openings in his skin. His blood was hot and tingly as it slid down her throat, filling her with a heat that soon became a roar of swelling, compounding power.
It hit her so fast, she moaned from the intensity, feeling instantly overwhelmed. Warmth boiled through her limbs and into her core, pulsing hard, rolling like a tide.
She hadn’t been prepared for such a swift, stunning reaction. Inside she was molten, going liquid and boneless…wanton.
When she tried to pull away, Tegan placed his palm on the back of her head. His large fingers spanned her skull, burrowing through her hair. There was no denying his strength, yet the pressure he held her with was light. But it was also unyielding.
Elise glanced up at him, anxious now. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea at all. Maybe she’d been wrong.
Tegan’s eyes glittered, pupils swamped by fiery amber.
“You shouldn’t have started if you weren’t prepared to finish.” His face was starkly serious, unforgiving. “Take more. You know you need it.”
Her breath sawed out of her at his invitation. God help her, but she did need more. Already she could feel Tegan’s blood mixing with her own, pounding in her temples. She licked her lips, savoring the wild, powerful taste of him on her tongue.
Tegan’s jaw went visibly rigid.
“Christ,” he ground out tightly. His fingers were a searing presence across her nape and up along the back of her head. He could have pushed her down so easily, but he only held her there, tender beneath all that coiled Breed power. “Take more of me, Elise.”
Panting now, every nerve ending firing off inside her like a hail of sensory explosions, she lowered her head and latched on to him once more.
Tegan sucked in a sharp breath as Elise fastened her mouth to his wrist and took another long pull from his opened veins. She moaned as she swallowed more and more of him. Her hunger was rising. Greed for more made her pull harder, deeper, even as she quenched herself on him. Her tongue was a moist, hot demand against his skin, but it was the light scrape of her teeth that made Tegan’s sex surge even harder than it already was.
He knew he wasn’t alone in his arousal. He could feel her body’s response; he absorbed her thoughts and emotions through his fingertips, which were buried in the silky layers of her short blond hair, resting against the warmth of her nape. He indulged in a brief few strokes of her soft skin, then drew his hand away when the sensations became too intense.
Jesus, she was on fire with need—both the physical thirst and the carnal one that Breed blood inspired in females bearing the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark.
Absurdly, Tegan fought to distance himself from the gravity of what was happening. He tried to occupy his mind with a clinical mental inventory of her features—anything to dull the erotic movements of her mouth on him—but it was no use. Elise was too real, too damn hot, the way her spine arched and snaked with each long draw of her mouth. Her breath heaved, rapid and deep, and her lips were making deliciously wet noises in the quiet of the room.
Her eyelids flicked open as if to beg permission and Tegan was struck by the lovely amethyst color of her irises now that hunger and desire had darkened them. Her cheeks were pinkening already from his blood in her system, her lips stained a glossy, beautiful red where they held fast to his wrist.
“Finish it,” he told her, his tongue thick, his own mouth dry as bone. “Take your fill.”
With a throaty groan, Elise pushed him down onto his back and followed him there, never breaking contact as she crawled alongside him on the bed, his arm raised to accommodate her continued feeding.
Even though he was hard as granite in his jeans, Tegan wanted to remain detached from the entire catastrophe playing out before him. He needed to tune out the incredibly desirable woman who was now writhing against him in nothing but a modest cotton bra and panties, throwing off erotic heat like a furnace.
And her emotion was swamping him. Her need was so raw, so honest.
Christ, he had forgotten what that felt like. He didn’t want to think about how long it had been since he’d lain with a woman. Didn’t want to acknowledge how empty—how willfully chaste, physically and emotionally—his life had been for the past five centuries.
He didn’t want to think about Sorcha….
He couldn’t think about her, not when Elise was driving him to the edge with every moan and sigh and catlike slide of her body next to him. To his surprise, he wanted very much to touch her—not to flex his psychic talent a little more, but to just touch her.
Reaching over with his free hand, Tegan traced his fingers along the smooth line of her shoulder and upper arm. A spray of gooseflesh rose along the trail he’d made on her skin. Beneath the thin white cotton of her bra, her nipples tightened into hard pearls. He brushed his thumb over one pebbled bud, his breath catching in the back of his throat as she arched into him uninhibited, the blood fever from her feeding making her know no shame.
He could take her, Tegan knew. She probably expected it, since it was rare that the act of blood-drinking with a Breedmate would end without sex to relieve a female of her need.
But he’d told her no mercy, and a cruel part of him wanted to make good on that promise.
Especially since he was the one being used in this scenario.
Elise’s legs flexed and scissored as he continued his tactile exploration of her body. He traced his fingers along the dip of her flat stomach, then up the graceful flare of her hip. She was liquid in her movements, undulating and arching as her suckling at his wrist became more urgent. With a low, breathy moan, she opened her legs for him and moved his hand down where she wanted him. She clamped her thighs together, holding him to her and grinding when he hesitated to touch her on his own.
It was too much to resist, even for him.
He brushed his fingers along the moist cleft shielded by her panties and she jerked as if he touched her with an open flame. He stroked her again, with more purpose, feeling her need ratchet tighter with every slide of his fingers.
“Tegan,” she gasped, turning her head aside to look at him with dazed, brilliant eyes, “Tegan…please…do something.”
She put her hand down on his, but he was already in motion. He slid his fingers beneath the scrap of damp cotton between her legs. Flossy curls were drenched and slick, the petals of her sex giving way easily as he glided his thumb along the delicate valley between them.
God, she was so soft. Like velvet and satin.
And the scent of her…
The fragrance of her arousal was a shattering combination of heather and roses and fresh spring rain.
“Please,” she whispered, forcing him into an urgent rhythm when he might have taken his time to savor her.
But her need was too far gone. He’d threatened no mercy, and while he knew he was a coldhearted bastard, he couldn’t deny her relief.
“Drink some more,” he said, his voice reduced to coarse gravel in his throat. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
Elise obeyed him, fastening onto his wrist as Tegan stroked her toward a shattering release. She came apart in wave after wave of shuddering pleasure, her blunt human teeth biting down hard on him as her climax rippled through her body.
By the time it was over, Tegan’s fangs were throbbing, his cock straining to be freed and buried deep inside the wet, hot core of Elise’s body. He drew his hand away from her, his senses swamped with the intoxicating perfume of sex and blood and warm, languid woman.
He wanted to spread her legs wide and mount her like an animal. Wanted it so badly his head was pounding with the urge to rip away the denim she’d made him keep on and fall on her in a savage, lustful fury.
Oh, yeah.
That’s just what he needed to do to really take this bad situation and send it straight into a goddamn nuclear-grade disaster.
What he really needed was to get the fuck out of there.
Too bad he hadn’t done that before she’d managed to goad him into giving her his vein.
With a growl of frustration, Tegan eased his arm out from under Elise’s slack mouth and brought the wounds to his lips. He sealed the punctures with his tongue, licking away the last of the blood and trying not to taste Elise on his skin. He even failed at that.
“I have to go,” he said, unwilling to look at her and be tempted into more idiocy in one night. He moved to the far edge of the bed and swung his feet down onto the floor. He grabbed his shirt and yanked it over his head. “If you insist on going with me to Berlin, be ready tomorrow night. We leave promptly at dusk.”
CHAPTER
Fourteen
The wait until the following evening seemed unending to Elise. She’d gotten dressed and crept out of Tegan’s quarters in absolute shame immediately after he left her there, somehow managing to find her way to the room Gabrielle had prepared for her elsewhere in the compound without being seen. Once inside the comfortable suite, she had holed up like a hermit, feigning a headache so that she could take her meals in privacy and not have to face scrutiny from the other women—or, God forbid, any of the warriors—for anything they may know about what had transpired between Tegan and her.
Not that Tegan would have spoken of what they’d done.
She had most certainly disgusted him, if not by her use of him as her blood Host, then most definitely by her humiliatingly base reaction during the event. She could hardly stand to think on it now, and she didn’t suppose an apology to Tegan would be enough to excuse her behavior.
Supposing he would even give her a chance to attempt one.
In the nearly twenty hours that he’d been gone, it didn’t appear that anyone had heard from him at all. He hadn’t said where he was going—just put on his clothes and a pair of black combat boots, then left Elise alone in his quarters like he couldn’t bear to be near her for another second. Understandable, of course. She had embarrassed them both.
Part of her considered abandoning the idea of going with him to Berlin—to save what was left of her pride, if nothing else. But she had already taken things this far, and it was a little late to turn back now.
She could feel Tegan’s blood inside her, the low hum of power that beat in her temples and in each of her pulse points. Five years without Breed blood in her body had sapped her of more than she realized, but drinking from Tegan was a revelation. She felt him flowing through her muscles, bones, and cells, giving her a vitality she had almost forgotten was possible. Even her senses were tuning up, becoming more acute, just after that one taste from the warrior’s Gen One veins.
And because of that blood connection to him, she felt the precise moment when Tegan entered the compound. He was there, somewhere, his arrival like a light blinking on in a shadowed corner of her mind.
This was the connection she could never break with him now—this bone-deep awareness of him. She would always be drawn to Tegan, conscious of him on an elemental level, until the day that one or the other of them died.
God, what had she done?
Elise paced the living room of her guest quarters, anxious now that the time was coming that she would be leaving with Tegan for Berlin. Maybe she should venture out into the compound to find him and make sure that he didn’t intend to depart without her. Maybe she should wait for him to come to her?
She heaved a sigh and started for the door—
At the very second a knock sounded on the other side.
It wasn’t Tegan; her senses told her that much. Elise opened the door and was stunned to find a familiar face outside.
“Oh.” She glanced down, surprised and shamed. “Hello, Sterling.”
She couldn’t look at him now, especially when he was standing there with genuine concern in his eyes.
“I heard you weren’t feeling well. Savannah said you’ve been in here alone all day, so I…I wanted to check and make sure you’re all right.”
Elise nodded. “I’m fine. Just a headache. To be honest, I needed some time alone.”
“Of course.” Sterling’s voice was schooled, almost awkwardly so. He let a long moment pass before he spoke again. “I cannot believe what he did to you in the lab, why he felt the need to say what he did—”
“No, don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. There is no need, Sterling.”
He exhaled sharply, anger radiating from his stiff stance in the doorway. “Tegan was way out of line. He had no right to speak to you like that. I don’t expect him to have honor enough to apologize for what he subjected you to, so I’ve come to do it for him.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, looking up into those familiar, flinty blue eyes.
“Yes, I do,” he insisted. “And not just for Tegan’s behavior, but for my own as well. Ah, Christ, Elise. What happened to Camden that night outside the Darkhaven…I’m so sorry. I’m so damned sorry for everything that happened. If I could have traded places with him—if it could have been me who’d gone Rogue…me in front of that gun when the trigger was pulled…”
“I know.” She reached out to her brother-in-law, and gently squeezed his muscled forearm. “I’m sorry too.”
He gave her a grim look, tried to dismiss her regret with a stiff shake of his head.
But she couldn’t let the rest go unsaid now.
“Yes, hear me out, please. I blamed you for Camden’s death, Sterling, and that was wrong of me. You did everything you could to save him. I know what it cost you. I am the one owing an apology. You felt responsible for him…for me…and I let you shoulder that burden when I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair to you.”
Something tender moved across his features. “You were never a burden.”
“Not yours, certainly,” she said, as gentle as she could be. “It was wrong of me that I never pointed that fact out to you. I should have made sure you understood how I felt.”
He went rigid at the words, his jaw going tight.
“Sterling, I never meant to hurt you, or to make you think we might in any way, at any time—”
“You were never anything but proper, Elise.”
His clipped, careful tone was brittle to her ears. “But I still hurt you.”
He slowly shook his head. “All of my decisions have been my own. You’ve done nothing to regret.”
“Don’t be so certain of that,” she murmured, thinking on all her past mistakes, not the least of which would probably prove to be the blasphemy of a blood bond she’d instigated with Tegan.
She felt the warrior’s presence getting stronger within her, and knew that wherever he was in the compound now, he was coming closer. She could feel him in the warmth skating along her limbs, and in the prickle of the fine hairs at the back of her neck.
“I appreciate your concern, Sterling, truly. But everything is fine. I’m fine.”
His light brown brows were knit together in a scowl. “You don’t look fine. You look flushed. You have goose bumps on your arms.”
“It’s nothing.”
He stared at her face, which was probably pink with color from both the recent nourishment of Tegan’s blood and the sudden flood of embarrassment that Sterling would soon guess the cause of her discomfort for himself.
That dawning came over him instantly. It was evident in the fall of his expression, then the glowering rage that filled his eyes with indigo fire.
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, awash in humiliation but through no fault of Tegan’s.
“You drank from him.”
It was an accusation that Elise could not deny. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about me—”
“Did he belittle you into thinking you had to do this? Did he…seduce you into drinking from him?” Sterling hissed an oath, his fangs emerging in his rage. “I’ll fucking kill him. If he forced you, I swear to you, that bastard will pay—”
“Tegan didn’t force me to do anything. I went to him. It was my choice. I asked him to let me use him. It was my doing, Sterling. Not any of his.”
“You went to him?” He looked at her as if she’d slapped him. “You drank from him by choice. Jesus, Elise…why?”
“Because I made a promise to Camden that I’d do whatever I could to make sure no one else was hurt by the Rogues or those who serve them. I made a vow, but I can’t live up to it if my body isn’t strong. Tegan was right. I needed Breed blood, and he gave it to me.”
Sterling raked his hand through his hair, then over his face. When he reached out to take hold of her shoulders, his eyes were wild with pain, his fingers gripping her hard.
“You didn’t have to demean yourself with a stranger, Elise. Goddamn it, you could have come to me. You should have come to me!”
She jumped at the harsh spike in his voice, and at the ferocity of his handsome face. When she tried to slip out of his strong grasp, he only held tighter.
“I would have taken care of you. I would have treated you right. Don’t you know that?”
“Sterling, please let go of me. You’re hurting me.”
“I’d do as the lady asks, Harvard.”
The cool command issued from just a few feet away in the corridor. Tegan stood there, garbed in a graphite-colored sweater and black pants. His arms were crossed, one thick shoulder leaning against the white marble wall.
Everything about his stance said he couldn’t be bothered with the little conflict playing out between Elise and her deceased mate’s brother, but Tegan’s eyes told a different story. His stare was locked on Sterling, unblinking. Threatening in its steady hold on the other male.
Elise brought her hands up to touch the ones still gripping her like a vise. “Sterling, please…”
He looked at her, stricken, and let go at once. “I’m sorry. Now I’m the one who’s overstepped my bounds. This won’t happen again, I promise you.”
“Damn right it won’t,” Tegan said, his tone oddly protective even though he hadn’t moved from his position across the corridor. As Sterling backed off, clearly distressed by his uncharacteristic display, Tegan finally glanced away from him to look at Elise. “The plane is ready. Are you coming or not?”
Elise swallowed, and gave a wobbly nod of her head. “I am.”
Awkwardly, she inched away from Sterling. She felt his eyes on her as she slipped out into the hallway. The weight of her brother-in-law’s sullen stare remained with her as she fell in beside Tegan and walked the length of the corridor at his side.
Chase stood in the hallway long after Elise and Tegan disappeared from view. He couldn’t pretend he was surprised that Elise rejected him. That hurt had been a long time coming, and one he knew he’d brought upon himself.
She had never been his, no matter how he had wished things to be different. She had belonged to his brother. In her heart she probably still did, even though she’d finally traded her mourning widow’s whites for street clothes.
And now a part of her belonged irrevocably to Tegan.
That was the truth that stunned him most. Tegan, the deadliest of the Order, the coldest. The one with the least regard for life—his own, or anyone else’s.
Yet in her need, Elise had turned to him.
Had Tegan bedded her in the process? Chase refused to consider that likelihood, although it would be virtually unheard of for a Breed vampire to put a female to his vein and not be overcome with the sexual impulse to take her body in return. Tegan wasn’t one to brag about his conquests—in all the months Chase had been among the Order, he’d never once heard a single boast of any kind from the warrior—but the many nights Tegan spent unaccounted for outside the compound left little doubt that the warrior had his own private itches to scratch. A sheltered female like Elise was probably no more than a moment’s amusement to an icy individual like Tegan.
“Goddamn it,” Chase muttered, pounding the corridor wall with his fist. It was a futile exercise that only brought him more pain. But right now, he welcomed the hurt. He wanted to bleed. So much the better if he could take out a few Rogues in the process.
He stalked up the hallway and found Dante hanging outside the tech lab with Niko, Brock, and Kade. All of them were armed like Chase, suited up for the night’s patrol topside.
Dante gave him a cautious nod of greeting as he approached, his whiskey-colored eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “They’re gone,” he said, as if Chase ought to be relieved to hear it. “You okay, Harvard?”
“Do I look like I need a fucking group hug?” he snapped. “I’ll be a hell of a lot better once my feet are on pavement and my hand’s stained with Rogue blood. Anyone game to smoke some suckheads tonight, or would you all rather stand around here thinking about it?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just headed off for the compound’s elevator with dark, deadly purpose, the other warriors falling in behind him.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Elise dozed most of the nine hours in flight to Berlin. Tegan, however, remained awake. He’d never particularly enjoyed the modern modes of transportation, and while he could appreciate the efficiency of jet travel, propelling himself more than thirty thousand feet above ground at five hundred miles an hour while trapped inside several tons of metal ranked about dead last on his list of favorite things to do.
He was relieved to feel the private jet begin its gradual descent once they reached Berlin’s Tegel Airport. A few minutes later, the sleek aircraft’s wheels touched down on terra firma.
“We’re here,” he told Elise when the soft bump of the landing roused her awake.
She stretched demurely, hiding a yawn behind her hand. “Was I asleep all this time?”
Tegan shrugged. “You needed the rest. Your body is still adjusting to the blood you consumed. It can take a day or two to level out.”
She blushed a shade much deeper than the pink color that had come back into her cheeks from her feeding the night before. Turning her face as if to hide her reaction from him, she lifted the shade on the small oval window beside her and looked out over the predawn cityscape below.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice pleasingly rough from sleep. “I’ve never been to Berlin. Have you?”
“Once. It was a long time ago.”
She shot him a half-smile of acknowledgment from across the minimalist elegance of the fuselage, then glanced away again. They hadn’t spoken of what happened between them, and Tegan had zero interest in cracking open the topic himself. Bad enough he’d been unable to get the sight of her—the incredibly silken feel of her—out of his head in the time he’d been gone from the compound. He’d been hoping like hell she’d back out of the Berlin trip, and he’d even considered a change of plans that would leave her behind.
He didn’t want to think about why he’d been compelled to go looking for her, and then intervene when he found Chase and her together in the corridor. The jolt of protectiveness he’d felt seeing the other male’s hands on her had come up on him fast. He’d like to blame it on the power of the blood bond, but the problem there was that the connection was only half-complete. He hadn’t taken any of Elise’s blood, so he shouldn’t be feeling possessive of her at all.
For several long centuries, he’d been perfecting his general state of apathy like armor that had long since meshed into his own skin, so unless he willed it, he shouldn’t feel a goddamn thing.
But he did.
Just looking at Elise triggered off a storm of unwanted feelings, not the least of which being a lust that tightened every inch of his skin and made his cock stir to aching life. He could hardly reconcile his want of the woman. Seeing her come undone while she suckled at his wrist had only amplified the desire that was already there. Now he craved her with a need that was bound to prove disastrous.
Because if he ever had her naked beneath him, there would be no stopping him from taking her tender Breedmate vein at the same time.
She caught him staring as she suddenly turned away from the window. “A long black Rolls-Royce just pulled up next to us on the tarmac.”
“That’ll be Reichen.”
“Who?”
“Andreas Reichen.” Tegan stood up as the aircraft eased to a stop. “He oversees the largest of the area Darkhavens here. We’ll be staying with him at his estate outside the city.”
The door to the plane’s cockpit opened and the two uniformed pilots came out to give Tegan a nod of greeting as they prepared to disembark. They were both human, both topclass, and available 24/7 by private retainment of the Order. So far as the pilots knew, they worked for a very private, very wealthy corporation that demanded anonymity and absolute loyalty in exchange for a healthy paycheck.
For most humans, that was enough. For the few who proved less than trustworthy, they were rewarded with a thorough mind scrub and a swift kick to the curb.
“Enjoy your stay in Berlin, Mr. Smith,” said the captain as he opened the door of the jet onto the waiting flight of stairs that had been placed beside the aircraft. He gave Elise a courteous smile as she stepped past him to exit the plane. “Miss Smith,” he said politely. “A pleasure to serve you. Have a pleasant day.”
On the tarmac below, a suited driver got out of the black Rolls limousine and opened the door for his passenger in the back of the vehicle. Andreas Reichen climbed out as Tegan and Elise came off the last stair and walked toward the car.
He looked more the wealthy executive than the libertine Tegan knew him to be, his gray shirt and black trousers sporting barely a wrinkle beneath the fall of his tailored overcoat. Only his dark hair gave his hedonist side away: he wore it long and loose, the thick chestnut waves lifting in the wintry breeze that came in off the pavement.
“Welcome, friends,” he said, his accented baritone voice just as rich and cultured as Tegan remembered it. The vampire hadn’t changed much at all in the many decades since Tegan had last seen him—not only in his movie star looks, which were an unapologetic source of pride for him, but also in his blatant appreciation for feminine beauty.
“Andreas Reichen,” he purred, offering Elise his hand.
“I am Elise Chase,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you.”
When she reached out to accept his greeting, Reichen smoothly captured her fingers and brought them to his lips for a chaste kiss, bowing his dark head over her hand. “Enchanted. And I am honored to welcome you to my domain.”
Elise gave him a shy smile. “Thank you, Herr Reichen.”
The German frowned as if wounded by her formality. “You must call me Andreas, please.”
“Very well. If you will call me Elise.”
“With honor, Elise.” It took him a moment before he finally broke away to acknowledge Tegan. “Very good to see you again, my friend, and so much the better that it is under more pleasant circumstances than before.”
“That remains to be seen,” Tegan said, not particularly caring that his grim attitude might put a damper on the pleasantries. “Is everything still a go for the containment facility visit?”
“Yes, all is in order.” Reichen indicated the idling vehicle. “Shall we be on our way? Klaus will see to your bags.”
“This is it,” Tegan said, holding up a black leather duffel that contained his combat gear and a few extra weapons. “We won’t be here more than a couple of days. It can’t take that long to get what we need out of the Odolf Rogue.”
Reichen’s chiseled cheeks showed twin dimples with his answering smile. “I’m not surprised that you are all business, Tegan, but what about the lady?”
Elise shook her head. “This trip came up so abruptly, I didn’t have much chance to prepare—”
“No matter,” Reichen said. “I will take care of it. I have accounts at several designer houses on the Ku’damm. I’ll call from the car and have them bring some selections to the estate today for both of you.”
He flipped out his cell phone and began talking even before they were all seated in the limousine. Tegan understood a bit of German from the Old Times, when all of the Breed existed primarily in Europe—enough to know that Reichen was ordering up pricey gowns and shoes in a range of what he guessed to be Elise’s petite sizes.
When he dialed another store and requested a men’s tailor to come out for a custom fitting within the hour, Tegan shot him a threatening look. “What the hell’s going on, Reichen?”
“A reception, of course. I’ll be hosting it at the estate this evening. It’s not often the Berlin Darkhavens get to receive such esteemed company. There are people within the Enforcement Agency in particular who insisted they be allowed to greet you properly.”
“I’ll bet.” Tegan scoffed. “I have no interest in being paraded around like a tuxedoed monkey in front of a bunch of Darkhaven bureaucrats. So, no offense to you, Reichen, but the rest of your stuffed-shirt pals can kiss my—”
The German pointedly cleared his throat as if to remind Tegan that a lady was present and to mind his tongue. Frigging Darkhaven sophisticate and his flawless manners. A rusty old part of Tegan acknowledged that Elise probably didn’t need to hear him go off on the society that had raised her. It wasn’t that long ago that she was very much a part of that world—still would be, if not for the deaths of her mate and her only son.
Reichen smiled, arching a dark brow as Tegan bit back the rest of his ripe thoughts.
But there was some spark of satisfaction gleaming in Reichen’s dark eyes that had little to do with his silver spoon upbringing. It was humor, wry amusement.
“Actually, Tegan, the reception has been arranged in honor of your lovely companion. Perhaps you were not aware that Quentin Chase was one of the most respected figures in the Enforcement Agency, in the States and abroad.” Reichen gallantly inclined his head in Elise’s direction. “It is a great honor for us to receive the late Director Chase’s widow for however long she chooses to stay with us.”
Tegan scowled in the dimly lit vehicle, stealing a glance at Elise. She seemed less surprised than resigned at the announcement, like she was used to the sort of attention Reichen described. Like she lived that kind of rarefied society fuss all the time.
Shit.
She hadn’t been kidding when she said she could bring the entire Enforcement Agency down on the Order with a single phone call. He knew her mate had been well connected, but he’d had no idea how high up the Darkhaven food chain Elise was herself.
“Your hospitality overwhelms me, Herr Reichen…Andreas,” she corrected demurely. “Thank you for welcoming us so graciously.”
Tegan stared hard at her now, seeing how easily she fell into the role of diplomat with Reichen. She hadn’t been so gratingly proper with him last night at the compound. No, with him she’d been wanton and demanding, perfectly willing to use him to get what she needed.
And why the hell not?
He knew how the Darkhavens viewed the Order. With the exception of a few current generation males who’d been impressed by the warriors’ destruction of the Boston-area Rogue lair the summer before, most of vampire society regarded the Order on a par with feral pit bulls. Those within the Enforcement Agency, the group whose policies of capture and rehabilitation operated in direct opposition to the Order’s bag-and-tag methods of dealing with deadly Rogues, were the most vocal in their contempt.
Little wonder that Elise, as the Breedmate of one of their highest ranking officials, would think of Tegan as nothing more than a means to an end.
That he’d let her drink from him burned Tegan like a lick of midday sunlight on his skin. The fact that he craved the woman—even a little bit—made him want to leap out of the moving car and run until he hit the dawn.
Yeah, it was a damn good thing he was seeing her clearly now. Before he allowed himself to do anything even more stupid with the female.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
Elise skimmed her hands over the yards of glistening indigo silk that covered her. The sleeveless designer gown was breathtaking, one of more than a dozen couture pieces that Andreas Reichen had arranged to be brought in earlier that day from the city for her selection. She chose the simplest dress in the least dramatic color, wishing she didn’t have to attend the evening’s reception at all.
She’d been treated like a queen all day, and even after a restful bit of sleep, she wasn’t much in the frame of mind for the hours of socializing that awaited her in the lakeside estate’s grand ballroom downstairs. But years of practice on Quentin’s arm had taught her what was expected of a member of the Chase family: duty first. That had been his personal credo, and one Elise had learned to embrace as well. So, after a quick shower in her guest suite, she had put on the form-fitting dark purple gown and a pair of gem-encrusted sandals, then arranged her short hair into some semblance of a style and headed out of her room ready to act her part.
Or at least, she thought she had been ready.
As soon as she descended the curving stairwell from the expansive wing of living quarters above, the din of voices and elegant music made her pause.
This would be the first public reception she’d attended since Quentin’s death. Until she’d left the Darkhaven four months ago, she had kept herself in mourning, wearing the long white tunic and scarlet sash that declared a Breedmate a widow. As such, she’d been able to sequester herself in her home, seeing only those people she wished to, and neatly avoiding the sympathetic stares and whispers that would only remind her of Quentin’s absence all the more.
There would be no more avoiding it, she realized, seeing Andreas Reichen striding toward her across the marble foyer from the direction of the crowded ballroom. He was stunning in a black tuxedo and crisp white shirt. His dark hair was pulled back off his face into a loose queue at his nape, showcasing those razor-sharp cheekbones and his strong square jaw. The handsome German’s warm smile put her somewhat at ease immediately as he approached.
“A perfect choice. You look exquisite,” he said, his dark eyes taking her in from head to toe as he took her hand and lifted her fingers to his mouth. His brief kiss of greeting was whisper soft and warm as velvet. He released her with a slight bow of his head, and when his gaze reached her face, he frowned. “Something is wrong? Is anything not to your liking?”
“Everything is fine,” she assured him. “It’s just…I haven’t done this in a very long time. Been out in public, that is. For the past five years, I’ve been in mourning—”
Reichen’s frown deepened in understanding. “In mourning, all this time?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, God. You must pardon me, but I didn’t know. I am sorry. You need only say the word and I will send everyone away. They don’t need to know why.”
“No.” Elise shook her head. “No, I would never ask you to do that, Andreas. You’ve gone to so much trouble, and it’s just a pleasant gathering, after all. I can get through this. I will get through it.”
She couldn’t help looking around Reichen’s broad shoulders, searching for the one face she knew. Even though Tegan could hardly be considered friendly, he was familiar, and gruff or not, his strength would be a comfort to her. By the low current in her veins, she could feel him somewhere in the mansion, nearby, yet out of her line of sight.
“Have you seen Tegan?” she asked, trying to sound only passingly interested in the answer.
“Not since we arrived this morning.” Reichen chuckled as he led her away from the sweeping staircase, toward the ballroom. “We won’t see him anywhere near the reception, I’m sure. He never was one for social gatherings.”
No, she didn’t suppose he was. “Do you know him well?”
“Oh, not particularly. But then I doubt few can claim to know that warrior well. Personally, I know all I need to know to consider him a friend.”
Elise was curious. “How so?”
“Tegan came to my aid some time ago, when the area was having a sudden, but persistent problem with a group of Rogues. This was ages ago, in the early 1800s…1809, the height of summer.”
Two hundred years would seem a very long time to human ears, but Elise herself had been living among the Breed for more than a century, after being rescued from Boston’s slums by the Chase family when she was a young child. The Breed’s Darkhaven communities had been in existence in various parts of Europe and the United States for much longer than that. “Things must have been very different for you then.”
Reichen grunted as if remembering those times. “Things were different, yes. The Darkhavens weren’t nearly as secure as they are now. No electronic fences, no motion sensors, no cameras to warn of breaches. Normally, our problems with Rogues were isolated incidents—one or two weak-willed vampires succumbing to Bloodlust and wreaking a bit of havoc on the human population before they were captured and contained. But this was different. These Rogues had begun attacking humans and Breed alike. They had banded together in their hunting, doing it for sport, it seemed. They managed to infiltrate one of our Darkhavens. Before the first night had ended, they’d violated and killed a number of women and slaughtered several Breed males as well.”
Elise winced, imagining the terror that must have cut through the hearts of the area’s residents at such an episode of violence. “How did Tegan help you?”
“He’d evidently been roaming the countryside when he entered the Grunewald and came across an injured Darkhaven male from my community. When Tegan heard what was going on, he showed up on my doorstep with an offer to assist us. We would have paid him anything, of course, but he would accept no fee in exchange. I don’t know how he did it, but he hunted down every one of those Rogues and killed them all.”
“How many were there?”
Reichen’s expression was nothing short of awe. “Sixteen of the diseased savages.”
“My God,” Elise gasped, beyond astonished. “So many…”
“The Berlin Darkhaven you see today might have been wiped out of existence if not for Tegan all those years ago. He tracked and killed all sixteen Rogues single-handedly, then simply went on his way. I didn’t hear from him again until many years later, after he’d settled in Boston with the few remaining members of the Order.”
Elise had no words for what she’d just been told. Part of her was stunned by Reichen’s account of Tegan’s heroics, but another part of her was suddenly awash in a deep chill of dread that made her shudder. She knew Tegan was a skilled warrior—an extremely lethal individual—but she truly had no idea what violence he was capable of doing.
And to think she had forced herself on him the other night. Goaded him into the profanity of a blood bond she’d initiated with him. How she must have insulted him, and yet by some miracle, he hadn’t lashed out at her even though he had every right to despise her for using him.
Good Lord.
If all the hideous things she’d been raised to believe about the Order’s members were even remotely true, she probably wouldn’t be standing here. As it was, her legs felt a bit weak beneath her. The buzzing in her temples was increasing, distracting her like a swarm of gnats circling her ears.
“Andreas, I think I…I could really use a drink now.”
“Of course.” Reichen offered her his arm and she gladly took it. “Come, I’ll present you to the gathering and make sure you have whatever you like.”
Tegan waited until they were gone before he descended from the upper floor landing of the mansion. He took the stairs, even though he could have just as easily vaulted over the side of the carved mahogany railing to the marble foyer three floors below.
After a day of being cooped up in the mansion awaiting nightfall, he’d been on his way out to hunt for blood and Rogues when the sound of Elise’s voice stopped him in his tracks upstairs. He peered over just in time to see Reichen sweep in on her, full of his usual dark charm as he kissed Elise’s hand for the second time since meeting her. He’d called her exquisite and by God, she was.
The indigo dress she wore hugged her petite figure in all the right places, an architectural wonder of crisscrossing silk layers and flowing, filmy skirts. Her bare shoulders and short blond hair accentuated the graceful line of her throat, which drew Tegan’s eye like a beacon. Her pulse ticked frantically below her ear, a beat that echoed in his own veins, even now that she was gone from view.
Damn, he needed to feed.
The sooner the better.
Garbed in combat gear, Tegan headed straight for the mansion’s front vestibule, eager to get the fuck out of the place. He strode past the wide-open double doors of the grand ballroom, ignoring the soaring whine of the string quartet and the chaotic buzz of the many conversations underway inside the reception.
He tried to ignore the sight of Elise on Reichen’s arm as the suave German brought her before the crowd of their peers. She looked so elegant and refined amid the glitter of the gathering, fitting in perfectly with the Darkhavens’ elite.
This was her world; there could be no mistaking that fact now that he saw her enveloped within it. She belonged here, and his place was out on the streets, staining his hands with the blood of his enemies.
Yeah, he thought, feeling a surge of anger run through him. He belonged anywhere but here.
As she strolled farther into the ballroom on Reichen’s arm, Elise scanned the crowd of fifty or more, recognizing several faces from events she’d attended with Quentin in the past. Everyone was staring at her—had been since the instant she entered the room. Conversations paused, heads turned. The string quartet played on near the other side of the room, falling into a soft whisper of music as Andreas Reichen presented her to the gathering.
He introduced her to one person after another, a dizzying line of names and faces that eventually began to blur together in her mind. She accepted the offers of condolence for Quentin’s passing and listened with not a little pride as many of the area’s Enforcement Agency representatives recounted their dealings with her respected mate. More than one person asked about the nature of her business in Berlin, but she dodged the questions as artfully as she could. It didn’t seem prudent to discuss the Order’s business in such a public arena, and it would be next to impossible to mention her association with the warriors without explaining how she’d come to know them in the first place.
How shocked and appalled would these politic Darkhaven males be to learn that she had been out on Boston’s streets hunting Minions just a few days before?
Some rebellious part of her almost wished she could blurt that truth out, if only to watch the stuffy civilians balk. Instead, Elise merely sipped the wine Reichen had fetched for her soon after they arrived, her attention only partially focused on the Enforcement Agent who had been bending her ear for about fifteen minutes straight.
Looking slightly down his aquiline nose at her, the imposing blond vampire was quick to impress upon her how he had served the Agency most of his life—racking up more than a hundred years of self-aggrandizing war stories that he seemed compelled to describe to her in great detail. She nodded along and smiled at the appropriate moments, wondering how long it would take her to hit the bottom of her wineglass.
About three seconds, she decided, casually draining the last of the fine French wine.
“Your years of service are commendable, Agent Waldemar,” she said, already extricating herself from the conversation. “Will you excuse me, please? I’m afraid this wine has gone straight to my head.”
The arrogant agent sputtered something about the fact that she hadn’t yet heard about the time he required a full twenty stitches after a run-in with a Rogue outside Tiergarten, but Elise just gave him a polite smile as she slipped into the thickest knot of the crowd.
In the middle of the perfumed, silk-clad bodies, a female hand reached out to clasp her own. “Elise? Oh, my goodness, it’s so nice to see you!”
She was swept into a tight, warm hug. When she drew back, a flood of delight filled her to see the face of an old, dear friend. “Anna, hello. You look well.”
“I am. And you—how many years has it been since we’ve seen each other? The boys were so young then. Were they even six years old the last time we were all together?”
“They were seven,” Elise said, hit with an instant blast of memory. Camden and Anna’s son Tomás had been fast friends, spending an entire summer together before the Agency reassigned Anna’s mate overseas.
“I can’t believe how time flies,” the other Breedmate exclaimed, then took Elise’s hand in both of hers. “We heard what happened to Quentin, of course. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Elise attempted a smile. “Thank you. It was…a difficult time. But I’m adjusting to life without him as best I can.”
Anna clucked her tongue. “And poor Camden. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for him too, losing his father when he could have barely been into his teens. How is he holding up? Did he come with you to Berlin? I know Tomás would be thrilled to see him.”
All the blood seemed to drain out of her head at the well-meaning questions. The pain in her heart was still raw from this more recent loss. So raw, she could hardly find her voice to speak. “Camden is…well, he’s not here, actually. There was an incident a few months ago in Boston. He, um…he ran into some trouble, and he…” She had to take a breath and push the words out of her mouth. “Camden was killed.”
Anna went white with shock. “Oh, Elise! Forgive me, I had no idea—”
“I know you didn’t. It’s all right. Cam’s death was sudden, and not many people know.”
“Oh, my dear friend. You’ve been through so much tragedy, haven’t you? You must be the strongest woman I know. To lose so much in so short a time…it would have destroyed me, I’m sure. I think I would have curled up and simply faded away.”
Elise might have too. Lord knew, she wanted to do that very thing at first. But anger pulled her through the initial suffering.
Vengeance would take her the rest of the way.
“You do what you must in order to survive it,” she heard herself say to the stricken female who looked at her with so much pity it stung. “You just do…whatever it takes.”
“Of course,” Anna replied. She smiled, but it was a wobbly effort that didn’t quite mask her discomfort with the conversation’s awkward turn. “How long will you be in town? Perhaps if you have time, I could show you around the city. We have some lovely parks and museums…”
“Perhaps.” Elise glanced at her wineglass as if she just recalled it was empty. “Will you excuse me? I think I’ll take a little walk and refresh my drink.”
“Yes,” Anna said, sympathy still softening her eyes. “It was good to see you, Elise. Truly.”
Elise gave her friend’s hand a gentle squeeze. “You too.”
As she started to walk away, a low rumble of conversation carried through the crowd. Elise hardly had to turn to see what caused it; she felt the disturbance deep within her bones, and in the warm prickle of awareness that settled in her breast.
“For God’s sake,” Agent Waldemar muttered from a few feet away from her. He and several of his cronies were gaping in open contempt toward the entrance of the ballroom. “You’d think he’d at least have the decency to dress accordingly for a function like this. Despicable savages, every last one of them.”
Elise swiveled her head and saw Tegan making his way into the gathering. He was a startlingly grim vision, dressed in full combat gear and dripping with weapons. His overlong tawny hair was wild around his head and broad, leather-clad shoulders, and there was a lethal sharpness to his green-eyed gaze as he casually scanned the crowd.
He had to know how nightmarish he must look to these pampered civilians, but he only sneered at those few individuals who dared to stare at him as he strode into their midst.
“Just look at that uncouth Gen One barbarian,” Waldemar chortled, much to his Agency companions’ smirking amusement. “The younger generations may be impressed by the Order’s violent methods—particularly after that bit of spectacle last summer in Boston—but they need only take a hard look at this one to see the warriors for what they truly are: uncivilized hoodlums who have long outlived their purpose.”
The group of them chuckled, so pompous in their silk tuxedos, their arrogance rolling off them like a sour wind.
Elise hated how the Darkhaven males were looking at Tegan. And in a small, shamed corner of her conscience, she knew that she had been guilty of the same thing at one time. She’d been raised in an Agency family nearly from infancy, taught to believe that the Order was exactly what this man claimed them to be.
And when it came to Tegan himself, Elise had to acknowledge that she’d been judging him most unfairly of all.
“Tell me, Agent Waldemar,” Elise said, putting herself squarely in front of the Breed male and staring up into his surprised expression. “Have you lived in the Berlin Darkhaven for long?”
He puffed out his chest with pride. “One hundred and thirty-two years, my dear lady. As I mentioned, most of them spent in service with the Agency. Why do you ask?”
“Because it occurs to me that while you and your friends stand around at fancy parties, patting yourselves on the back and condemning the Order as obsolete, the warriors are on the streets risking their lives each and every night to protect a nation that hasn’t bothered to so much as thank them for their trouble in the past few hundred years.”
Waldemar blanched, but then his feathery blond brows lowered dangerously. “You are Quentin Chase’s widow, so I’ll be kind and not burden you with the facts about just how brutal those thugs can be. But I assure you, madam, they are soulless killers, each and every one of them. Especially that one,” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. “He would slit your throat in your sleep if he felt like it, you mark my words.”
“That one,” Elise said, knowing that Tegan was coming closer all the time. Her veins were lit up like live wires, her temples buzzing. But she was furious and getting more incensed by the second. “That warrior you would insult so freely is the main reason any of you are standing here tonight.”
“Indeed,” Waldemar scoffed, clearly incredulous.
“Is the historical memory so short in this area that you have forgotten about the band of Rogues who descended on your Darkhaven two hundred years ago, killing many of your citizens? It was that warrior who took it upon himself to hunt the Rogues down. He saved your community single-handedly, and he asked for nothing in return. I don’t think a little respect for him now would be misplaced.”
None of the Darkhaven males said a word as she finished her diatribe and waited for their reaction. They were looking past her now, Agent Waldemar the palest of them all. As the group of them slowly shrank back into the crush of milling bodies, Elise turned around and found herself standing less than an inch away from Tegan. He glared down at her, looking about as mad as she’d ever seen him before.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
CHAPTER
Seventeen
Tegan had known it was a mistake to walk into the reception. He’d been half a mile away from the mansion on foot when the urge suddenly struck him to go back and make his presence known to all of the Darkhaven idiots who thought they were better than him.
Or maybe he just wanted to make his presence known to the woman who had been turning his head inside out since the moment he first met her. Some masochistic part of him wanted to stake a claim here, even though he fully expected her to be appalled by his presence—much like everyone else who saw him strolling into their pleasant little party dressed for war.
What he never expected was to hear Elise rising to his defense as if he needed to be protected from a bunch of blowhards in tuxedos and bow ties. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt the sting of humiliation, but he felt it now, left standing alone with Elise as the rest of the crowd shrank back.
“Excuse me,” she said, ignoring his demand that she explain herself. Without waiting for him to speak, she simply walked away. Tegan stood there, following her with his eyes as she deposited her empty wineglass on a server’s tray and headed for the wall of glass doors that looked out over the estate’s lakefront back lawn and gardens. When she slipped outside alone, Tegan snarled a curse and went after her.
She was halfway to the water by the time he reached her, the frozen grass crunching under the slender heels of her shoes.
Tegan grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “You want to explain to me what that was about back there?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t like what I was hearing. Those self-righteous ‘stuffed shirts’ as you call them were wrong, and they needed to hear it.”
Tegan exhaled sharply, his breath misting in the chill air. “Look, I don’t need anyone coming to my defense—especially not with a bunch of assholes like that. I fight my own battles. Next time, spare me the concern.”
Her eyes narrowed in the dark as she stared up at him. “No, you can’t accept even the smallest kindness from anyone, can you, Tegan?”
“Last time I checked, I was doing just fine on my own.”
She laughed at him. Threw her pretty head back and really laughed, right in his face. “You’re unbelievable! You can take on an army of Rogues all by yourself, but you’re scared to death that someone might actually care for you. Or even worse, that you might be tempted to care for someone else.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Does anyone?” She yanked her arm out of his light hold. Her face seemed stark in the moonlight, her soft features drawn tight. “Go away, Tegan. I’m tired and I just…I really want to be left alone right now.”
He watched her lift her long indigo skirt above her pale ankles as she began another trek farther out toward the dark lake glistening at the end of the lavish grounds. She paused in the shadows of an old stone boathouse at the shoreline, her arms wrapped around herself.
Tegan considered doing as she asked, just turning around and letting her have her space. But now he was pissed off and he wasn’t about to let Elise deliver him a verbal slap in the face and simply walk away.
He was fully prepared to lace into her for presuming to know anything of what he’d been through or for thinking she could possibly know how he felt, but as he came up behind her he saw that she was trembling. Not just shuddering from the cold, but really shaking.
Jesus Christ, was she crying?
“Elise…”
She shook her head and pivoted to move farther up the lawn, out of his reach. “I said go away!”
Tegan went right after her, moving faster than her human eyes would be able to track him. He stopped in front of her, blocking her path. Pale, tear-filled eyes lifted and widened before she pivoted to get around him. She didn’t make it even a single step. He reached out, holding her still, his fingers wrapped over her trembling bare shoulders.
Her grief sliced through him the instant his hands made contact. He hadn’t helped the situation any, but most of what she was feeling was something bleaker than the anger he stoked in her. Tegan felt her emotions seep in through his fingertips, registering the cold ache of loss. It was fresh again, like a wound ripped open before it had fully healed.
“What happened in there?”
“Nothing,” she lied, her voice thick with sorrow. “It will pass, right?”
The very words he’d said to her at her apartment when he’d callously dismissed her bereavement. She threw them back at him now, her flashing lavender eyes daring him to say something kind, or to so much as think he might offer her comfort.
He wanted to offer that to her. The realization hit him hard, squarely in the center of his chest. He didn’t want to see her in pain.
He wanted…God, he didn’t even know what to want when it came to this woman.
“I know what you’re going through,” he admitted quietly. “I understand loss, Elise. I’ve been there too.”
Ah, hell.
What was he doing? Some ancient part of him roused in a defensive panic as soon as the words left his tongue. He hadn’t aired out his bleak history in ages. He knew he was exposing the soft belly of a long-sleeping beast, but it was too late to call the admission back.
Elise’s expression muted from distress to tender surprise. A sympathy he wasn’t sure he was ready to accept. “Who did you lose, Tegan?”
He cast his gaze out over the moonlit water and the twinkle of lights shining across the way, thinking back on a night he’d relived a thousand times in his mind. More than five hundred years of imagined alternate scenarios—endless things that he could have, would have, should have done differently—but the outcome never changed. “Her name was Sorcha. She was my Breedmate a very long time ago, when the Order was new. She was abducted by Rogues one night when I was out on patrol.”
“Oh, Tegan,” Elise whispered. “Did they…hurt her?”
“She’s dead,” he replied, simple stated fact.
He didn’t think she’d want to know the horrific details of how her captors had sent her back to him, abused and violated, a broken shell of who she had been. God knew, he didn’t want to talk about the guilt and rage that had torn at him when Sorcha had come back alive—but only barely, drained of her blood and her humanity. To his horror, she’d come back to him a Minion.
Tegan had lost his mind, certainly lost his self-control, in those dark days following his Breedmate’s abduction and return. He’d fallen into the grip of Bloodlust, and had come deadly close to going Rogue.
All for nothing.
Death, when it finally came for Sorcha, had been a mercy.
“I can’t bring her back, and I can’t take away what happened.”
“No,” Elise said softly. “Would that we could. But how long does it take before we stop blaming ourselves for everything we wish we’d done differently?”
He looked back at her now, unused to this feeling of affinity. But it was the regret in her eyes that made something inside him thaw just a little. “You didn’t give your son the drug that corrupted him, Elise. You didn’t push him over that edge.”
“Didn’t I? I thought I was protecting him, but I held him too close all the time. He rebelled. He wanted to be a man—he was a man—but I couldn’t bear to lose my child because he was all I had left. The more I tried to keep him close, the harder he pulled away.”
“Every kid goes through that. It doesn’t mean you caused his death—”
“We argued the last night I saw him,” she blurted out. “Camden wanted to go to some kind of party—a rave, I think he called it. There had already been a few Darkhaven youths who’d gone missing, so I was worried something might happen to him. I forbade him to go. I told him that if he did, he shouldn’t come back home. It was just an empty threat. I didn’t mean it…”
“Jesus,” Tegan muttered. “We all say things we regret, Elise. You were only trying to keep him safe.”
“Instead I killed him.”
“No. Bloodlust killed him. Marek and the human he paid to create Crimson killed your son. Not you.”
She crossed her arms over herself and gave a mute shake of her head. He didn’t miss the sudden flood of tears that filled her eyes.
“You’re shivering.” Tegan shrugged out of his heavy leather coat and draped it around her before she could refuse him. “It’s too cold. You shouldn’t be out here.”
Not with him, he thought, so very tempted to touch her now.
Before he could stop himself, he was raising his hand to her cheek and smoothing away the wetness that streaked down her fair skin. He caressed her face, letting his thumb brush across her lips. It was all too easy to recall how sweet her mouth had been, pressed against his wrist. How heated her tongue had been when she lapped at him, drawing strength from his blood.
How the feel of her body, hungry and writhing next to his, had inflamed him.
He wanted that again, with a ferocity that stunned him.
“Tegan, please…don’t.” Elise sighed, closing her eyes as if she knew the direction of his thoughts. “Don’t do this if you don’t mean it. Don’t touch me like that if you don’t…if you don’t feel it.”
He lifted her chin, tenderly sweeping his fingertips over her petal-soft eyelids, compelling her to see him. They opened slowly, dark lashes framing pools of beautiful light amethyst.
“Look at me, Elise. Tell me what you think I’m feeling,” he murmured, then bent his head to hers and pressed his mouth to her parted lips.
The warmth of her kiss was like a flame, kindling the cold space in his chest. He let his fingers thread into the short, silky hair at her nape, holding her against him as he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips. She parted for him on a gasp, trembling in his arms as he tasted the wet velvet of her mouth.
When her hands came up to touch him, Tegan was the one to tremble, shocked by the sensation of being held, astonished by how much he needed it—how much he needed her. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself this kind of intimacy. The centuries of solitude had been their own comfort to him, but this…
The craving for this woman seared him with its intensity. His gums throbbed with the emergence of his fangs. Even behind his closed eyelids he could tell his irises were throwing off amber light, evidence of his desire for Elise. His skin was tight, his dermaglyphs prickling with the sudden rush of blood that would deepen their color to vivid shades of indigo, burgundy, and gold. He knew she had to feel the hard ridge of his cock, which was wedged between their bodies, pushing against her abdomen.
Elise had to be aware of all his body’s responses to her—she had to know what it meant—yet she didn’t shove him away. Her fingers curled deeper into his shoulders, holding him with an intensity he could hardly fathom.
He was the one to pull back, breaking contact on a low, muttered curse. When he glanced up at the mansion, he saw several faces near the glass, Elise’s Darkhaven peers staring out at them in open disdain.
Elise saw them too. She followed his gaze up the frozen lawn and gardens, but when she turned back to Tegan, there wasn’t so much as a trace of shame in her expression. Only soft regard, and the lingering heat of desire in her eyes.
“Let them stare,” she said, stroking his jaw before their disapproving audience. “I don’t care what they think.”
“You should. That’s your world up there on the other side of that glass.” She sure as hell couldn’t stay out here with him any longer, not when their kiss was still setting fire to his blood. “You should go back inside.”
She glanced back up toward the golden light spilling out of the ballroom and slowly shook her head. “I can’t go back in there. I look at them and all I see is a beautiful cage. It makes me want to run before the trap closes on me again.”
Tegan was surprised at the frank admission. “You weren’t happy in the Darkhaven?”
“It’s all I’ve known. Quentin was all I’d known. His family took me in as a baby and raised me as one of their own soon after I arrived at the Darkhaven. I owe them everything for the life they afforded me.”
Tegan grunted. “That sounds like gratitude to me. Nothing wrong with it, but what I asked was if you were happy there.”
She turned a thoughtful look on him. “I was mostly, yes. Especially after Camden came along.”
“You said you felt caged.”
She nodded lightly. “I was never very strong, physically. My gift made it difficult for me to leave the Darkhavens for any length of time, and Quentin thought it unwise for me to go anywhere by myself. He only meant to protect me, I’m sure, but at times it was…stifling. Then there were all the Agency obligations and the impossible expectations that came with being a member of the Chase family. It was a fine line that had to be walked at all times—allegiance to the Agency no matter what, know your place and keep it, never dare to speak out of turn. I can’t tell you how often I wanted to scream, just to prove to myself that I could. Most days, I still want to.”
“So, what’s stopping you?”
She threw him a frown over her shoulder. “What?”
“Go ahead. Scream right now if you want to. I won’t stop you.”
Elise laughed. She glanced up at the mansion behind them. “That would really make their tongues wag, wouldn’t it? Can you imagine the tales they’d tell tomorrow about how you terrorized a defenseless civilian female? Your reputation would never recover.”
He shrugged. “All the more reason to do it, if you ask me.”
Elise exhaled a long sigh, her breath steaming the chill air. When she turned back to look at him once more, there was a pleading light glimmering in her wide lavender eyes. “I can’t go back in there tonight. Will you stay with me out here, Tegan…just for a little while?”
Marek’s vision burned red with fury as he scanned the flight plan one of his Minions had procured from the Boston airport a few hours before. A private jet had scheduled a last minute evening trip to Berlin last night, carrying two passengers—one of which was certain to be a member of the Order.
Tegan, no doubt, based on the visual description provided by Marek’s mole. But the female accompanying him was a mystery. Tegan was the consummate loner, and try as he might, Marek couldn’t imagine what would compel the stoic, deadly warrior to tolerate a woman’s presence for more than a few necessary minutes.
He hadn’t always been like that, however. Marek recalled well the warrior’s utter devotion to the female he’d taken as his mate—Jesus, could it be some five hundred years ago? She was pretty, Marek remembered, with dark gypsy looks and a sweet, trusting smile.
Tegan had been devoted to her. It had nearly destroyed him to lose her so savagely.
Pity it didn’t take him all the way.
The fact that Tegan was in Berlin now was troubling news. Couple that with the journal Marek lost—a journal that had taken him a long time to find—and he was looking at a fucking disaster in the making. The Order had the journal now, Marek had no doubt.
How long would it take them to put all the pieces in place? He would have to work fast if he meant to stay ahead of them.
Unfortunately for him, it was daytime and unless he wanted to risk a lethal suntan at thirty thousand feet too close to the sun, he’d have to wait until dark before he could get overseas and take control of the situation personally.
Until then, he would have to call out a few Minion eyes and ears in his place.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Tegan opened the door of the stone-and-timber boathouse that hugged the shoreline of the lake and led Elise inside. She couldn’t see well in the dark, but Tegan’s hand was firm around hers, his steps sure where she walked gingerly over the wide plank floor in her high heels.
The space for a large boat was empty for the winter, the water partially frozen where it came into the base of the building.
“There should be a loft up here,” Tegan said, guiding her toward a wooden staircase.
“How do you know?”
“This was the warden’s cottage when I was here last. Guess there’s not much need for gamekeepers anymore, so Reichen’s had it converted to house one of his many toys.”
Elise lifted the ends of her skirt and Tegan’s oversized leather coat and climbed up the stairs with him. At the top of the steps he opened a door that revealed a wide post-and-beam space above. It was rustic, but welcoming. Moonlight poured in through an A-shaped window that overlooked the lake. Big leather club chairs flanked a sofa positioned for the best views of the water, and set into the eastern wall was a fireplace built out of thick stone.
“Knowing Reichen, there’s got to be electricity out here,” Tegan said from somewhere behind her. A second later, a table lamp went on across the room, activated by his will.
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I think I prefer the dark. It’s peaceful.”
The light blinked off, replaced once more by the cool pale wash of moonglow. Elise felt Tegan’s eyes on her as she walked toward the window and gazed out into the night. Her heels sank into a plush white rug—sheepskin, she realized, glancing down at the fluffy, irregular shape of the floor covering. On impulse, she kicked off the elegant sandals and let her toes burrow in the luxuriously thick pelt.
Some of her anxiety faded at once. She gave herself over to the tranquil movement of the water outside, and the quiet darkness of the loft. The stress of the reception was ebbing away, but her pulse still thrummed from Tegan’s kiss. She hadn’t expected him to be so tender with her, or to open up like he had and share any part of his past.
She hadn’t expected his desire.
He wanted her, and she wanted him too.
The space around them practically throbbed with that awareness, the air thick with all that was unspoken between them.
“This is a bad idea,” Tegan murmured as he came up beside her, his low, growling voice setting off a vibration deep in her bones. “You shouldn’t be alone with me right now.”
Elise turned to look at him and was struck to see the dim glow of amber in his eyes. It hadn’t faded since their kiss outside. Nor had the heat of his body. She could feel it radiating toward her, permeating the leather of the coat that draped her.
Tegan bared his teeth and fangs in a pained-looking smile. “In case you’re not sure, that’s your cue to make a quick retreat.”
She didn’t move. She had absolutely no wish to leave right now, even though she knew Tegan wouldn’t be the type to allow second chances. Holding his intense gaze, she watched as he came toward her and drew the coat from her shoulders. He set it down on the chair behind her. As he straightened, he skimmed his fingers over the bare curve of her arm. His touch was searing hot and yet she trembled from it.
Desire coiled within her. She wanted him to touch her, needed it so badly it wrung a soft moan from her throat.
Tegan scowled, his tawny brows lowering over the glowing embers of his eyes. He retracted his hand with a glare. “No,” he said thickly. “No, this is a very bad idea. I’ll take more from you than you’re willing to give.”
When he turned as if he meant to walk away, Elise moved toward him and lifted her hand to the side of his rigid jaw. “Tegan, wait. I don’t want you to go.”
She went closer to him, until their bodies brushed together in the dark. She heard his sharp intake of breath hiss through his teeth and fangs as she rose up on her toes in front of him. She felt the rush of heat roll off every coiled muscle of his body in that instant before she pressed her lips to his. She tasted the ferocity of his hunger in the way he wrapped his arms around her and dragged her deeper into his embrace, his mouth demanding as he took her tentative kiss and turned it into something fevered and dark.
He groaned, and Elise felt the long tips of his fangs rasp against her lips as he traced his tongue along the seam of her mouth. She let him in, reveling in the erotic invasion, unable to bite back her mewled complaint when he abruptly drew back.
His chest was heaving with every rough breath he dragged into his lungs. He stared at her from under low brows, the green of his eyes swamped completely by amber light, his pupils thinned to slivers in the center of all that fiery gold. Even in the dark, shrouded by his black combat gear, she could see that he was fully aroused. She’d felt the thick ridge of his sex pressing insistently against her in that moment before he pulled away. She knew that if she peeled off his weapons and fitted black knit shirt, she’d see his Gen One dermaglyphs churning with livid color.
He’d never looked more predatory than he did in that moment—a massive, powerful Breed male who could have her beneath him in an instant.
Faster than that, if he willed it.
Perhaps she should fear him, now more than ever. But it wasn’t fear that was making her knees feel boneless under her. It wasn’t fear sending her heart into a frantic drum in her breast.
Nor was it fear that made her fingers tremble as she slowly reached behind her to find the zipper of her confining bodice and begin to tug it down.
Before the tiny teeth had parted more than an inch, Tegan’s large hand closed around hers, stilling her. He held her there, her arm gently trapped behind her as he brought his free hand up between their bodies. His fingers moved over the detail of her gown’s low neckline, skimming the edge of dark silk that framed the tops of her breasts. There was a delicious possessiveness in his touch, in the way he restrained her while his other hand roamed freely over her body.
When he kissed her now, it was blatantly carnal, a deep claiming of her mouth that mimicked the hard thrust of his hips where they pressed against her. The hand at her back pulled her forward as his eyes snapped open on her stunned gaze, those twin amber coals commanding her to understand how close she was to the ledge of a very steep fall.
If she tumbled down with him now, there would be no coming back. He would take her body, and he would take her blood. There was no mistaking that feral promise in his eyes.
As if to drive home his point, Tegan smoothed the flat of his hand higher, up the slope of her throat. He bared her neck and bent down over her, dragging his tongue along the path of her carotid. His fangs were a subtle, but unmistakable, abrasion as his mouth moved to a tender spot just below her ear.
A tremor of uncertainty rippled through her at the thought of where this was heading, more swiftly than she’d been prepared for.
She really shouldn’t be here.
Shouldn’t be doing this…
Tegan’s chuckle sounded cruel, darkly satisfied. He released her at once, practically pushing her out of his reach.
“Go on,” he said, his voice so deep she hardly recognized it. “Get out of here before we do something we’ll both regret.”
She brought her hand up to the side of her neck, where she could still feel the lingering heat of his mouth. Her pulse was hammering now, so loud it was audible to her own ears. When she drew her fingers away from her neck, she saw that the tips bore trace stains of blood.
Dear God, had he been so close to biting her?
Tegan’s hungry gaze tracked her every movement, and he looked savage enough to pounce if she hesitated so much as a second longer.
“What are you waiting for? I said get the fuck out of here!” he bellowed, the animal snarl jolting her into action.
Elise grabbed her sandals from the floor beside her and ran out of the boathouse as fast as her feet would carry her.
Tegan dropped into the nearest chair as soon as he heard the boathouse door bang shut on Elise’s heels.
He was physically shaking from need of her, all of his Breed senses torqued off the charts with the depth of his hunger for the female.
Jesus Christ, he’d been just a fraction of a second away from sinking his fangs into her.
That unintentional graze of her skin, which brought only the faintest taste of her blood to his tongue, had practically laid him out. He shuddered from the heather-and-roses sweetness that still lingered in his mouth. His fangs throbbed, along with another part of his anatomy, both equally ravenous. Both damning him for letting Elise get away.
The only thing that had snapped him back to his wits was her sudden flood of anxiety. Through the connection of touch, he felt the jolt of fear override her desire—and not a moment too soon. She’d been too pliant, too accepting, even when he was deliberately pushing, wanting her to understand just where he wanted to take things.
Where he still wanted to take things with her.
Yeah, straight to hell, with him leading the way.
He gripped the leather arms of the club chair, digging his fingers into the supple hide to keep from vaulting to his feet and going out after her. Which was the very thing he ached to do.
The part of him that was more savage than human railed at being forced to heel. He was a predator at heart, and he never felt it more than he did in that moment, with his vampire eyes reflecting back at him from the glass of the boathouse window, his fangs stretched long and sharp as razors.
Every dark instinct in him was tuned on one thing: Elise.
Barely a taste of her and he was on fire with the need for more. How lost would he be if he ever got the chance to fill his mouth with that lush nectar running through her tender veins?
Ah, fuck. He was in seriously bad shape.
And he needed to feed.
Not for sustenance so much as distraction. Because if he didn’t slake at least one of the hungers sticking its talons into him, he was going to have the luscious Elise flat on her back beneath him before the night was through.
Elise didn’t stop running until she had circled the mansion and found the front entrance. She knew she should go inside. It was late and she was cold. Her bare feet were wet and freezing, her body trembling from the wintry night air. She knew how close she’d come to disaster with Tegan; she should be grateful that he gave her the opportunity to escape what could only prove to be a heartbreaking mistake in the end.
And yet…
She stood on the wide marble steps that led up to safety, and her hand refused to reach for the door. The fear she’d felt moments ago in the boathouse had muted into something else—something that still unsettled her in many ways, but the sharp edge of it was gone.
She’d felt anxious, apprehensive in those passionate few minutes with Tegan. All too aware of his hunger for her, and stunned to realize how his hunger enflamed her. Now, having fled him like a coward, she felt…empty.
Elise backed away from the elegant manor house.
This wasn’t what she wanted.
As soon as her soles hit the cold grass, she lifted her damp skirt and dashed back around the corner of the mansion. She cut across the long yard and gardens, breathless as she reached the dark brick-and-timber building near the water. She threw open the door and ran up the stairs to the loft, ready to let Tegan take whatever he wanted from her.
But the boathouse was empty.
He was already gone.
Tegan hoofed it back into the city, moving with the preternatural speed that made the Breed all but invisible to human eyes. He was glad for the long run from Reichen’s lakeshore Darkhaven. He was glad for the chill snap in the air that helped clear his head after the near catastrophe with Elise.
But he was glad most of all for the thick clot of humanity that was prowling the darkened streets of Lichtenberg in Berlin’s depressed Eastern District. Row upon row of twenty-story concrete high-rise eyesores towered over this former East Berlin sector, which only added to the general malaise of the place. There were few tourists here at this hour of night. Only grim-faced locals hurrying from late-shift jobs or the grimy brewhauses that catered to the working-class poor—folks who weren’t leaving the GDR in this lifetime, wall or no wall.
Tegan scanned his surroundings with a hunter’s eye. He was hardwired to look for Rogues, but he could tell at a glance there were no suckheads in the vicinity. While Boston had been practically overrun with the Bloodlusting bastards courtesy of Marek’s recent reappearance, Berlin and most other major cities had been reporting only minimal Rogue activity for years.
And damn if that didn’t suck ass.
Because right now, Tegan would have welcomed a good hard fight with his enemies—several, if he had his choice about it.
He had to force his aggression to heel as he stalked down one of the desolate streets that would lead him deeper into the district. He watched for his night’s prey, ignoring a pair of human women who gave him the once-over as they stumbled out of a bar and into his path. He walked around them with an annoyed snarl.
He wouldn’t feed from a female.
He hadn’t in all this time…not since Sorcha’s death.
It was his choice, something he’d adopted as self-imposed punishment for failing the innocent girl who had been so wrong in trusting him to keep her safe from his enemies. But somewhere along the way, Tegan’s aversion to drinking from females, let alone binding himself to another Breedmate, had become an act of desperation.
It had become an act of plain survival.
His hungers ran too deep. And he knew from experience how easy it was to lose control. He’d tasted Bloodlust once before, and he could never allow himself to get close to it again.
That he’d been so tempted by Elise tonight had rattled him hard. He’d never wanted to take a female—to his mouth or to his bed—in a long span of time that had somehow become centuries. He’d been alone by his own will, bonded to nothing but his mission to wipe out the Rogues.
But now…?
“Fuck,” he ground out savagely from between clamped teeth and fangs.
Now he was about two seconds away from hauling ass back to the Darkhaven where Elise was probably cowering in terror from what he might have done to her—to them both—if he’d given in to the impulse to drink from her.
Instead, he plowed forward, his sights locking on to a trio of skinheads in black leather and chains. The white laces on their jackboots practically glowed in the scant light shed by the intermittent streetlamps overhead. They hooted at an elderly woman in a headscarf who was coming toward them up the sidewalk. Her dark eyes dropped to avoid facing the threat, and when she started to cross the street to get out of their way, the gang of neo-Nazis loped after her, taunting her with ugly racial slurs. They shoved her into the alcove of a nearby building, and one of them made a grab for her purse. The woman screamed and held on, and suddenly she was being dragged into the adjacent alley where the situation was sure to escalate.
Tegan moved in quickly, feeling battle rage transform him.
The first skinhead didn’t know what hit him until he was thrown several yards into the street. Wisely, he got up, took one look at Tegan, and started running in the opposite direction. His companions took a bit more convincing. While one pulled the old woman farther into the alley by her purse strap, the other one drew a switchblade and made a jab at Tegan.
He missed.
But then it’s damn hard to hit a target that’s standing in front of you one second, then suddenly behind you the next, wrenching your arm out of its socket. The skinhead howled in agony, dropping the blade as he crumbled to his knees on the pavement.
Tegan’s breath rolled out of his mouth in cloudy plumes, and his hands itched to finish the asshole, but the one who really needed killing was the one pounding his fists into a defenseless old woman a few yards away.
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” he snarled down at the whimpering human, peeling his lips back from his fangs to make sure the kid got a good eyeful of the hell he’d be dealing with if he decided to stick around.
“Ah, shit!” the human gasped, reading Tegan loud and clear. He scrambled to his feet and took off running, his dislocated arm dangling uselessly at his side.
Tegan wheeled around and stalked into the alleyway where the last of the skinheads had finally wrestled the purse away from the old lady. He dug through the leather bag, dumping out the scant contents. He tore out the lining and let it fall to the ground.
“Where’s your cash, bitch? You’ve got to be hiding something in here to hold on as tight as you did!”
The woman crawled forward to retrieve a small framed photo from the slushy pavement. “My photograph,” she wailed, her German tinged with an Arabic accent. “It’s all I have left of my husband. You’ve ruined it!”
The skinhead laughed. “Oh, my heart is breaking for you. Nasty foreign scum.”
Tegan came up on the guy like a ghost. He clamped his hand around the back of the skinhead’s neck and steered him away from the woman. In his periphery, he saw her collect her meager belongings and hurry out of the alley.
“Hey, ubermensch,” Tegan hissed about an inch away from the human’s ear. “You ever get tired of terrorizing old women? Maybe you wanna hit a hospital next, eh? Bet you could really do some damage on the children’s ward. Or would the cancer wing be more your speed?”
“Fuck you,” the thug seethed back at him in English. “Maybe I show you the morgue, asshole.”
Tegan smiled, flashing his fangs. “Funny. That’s exactly where you’re headed.”
The human hardly had a chance to scream before Tegan tore into his throat and began to feed.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Tegan managed to avoid her the entire next day. Elise didn’t know where he’d gone the night before, or where he spent the hours before dusk, when the time of their appointment at the Enforcement Agency’s containment facility drew near. He didn’t speak to her—hardly did so much as look at her—the whole forty-five minutes in the car as Reichen’s driver took the three of them south of the city to the location where the Odolf Rogue was housed.
The entrance was gated and manned by an automated security system. There was no sign to indicate what lay on the other side of the tall, solid iron gates, but it was clear from the high-voltage, fortresslike perimeter wall that whatever was held inside was meant to stay there. As the car approached, Elise saw a thin red stream of light sweep through the vehicle from one of the mounted electronic devices that flanked the entrance. A moment later, the wall of iron parted in front of them.
Reichen’s driver eased the car inside, only to pause before another set of tall gates. A quartet of armed Breed guards approached from either side of the vehicle and opened the doors. Elise didn’t miss Tegan’s deep-throated growl as they all climbed out, practically held at gunpoint.
Another Breed male came forward now, having come out of a windowless door built into the interior gate of the complex. He looked serious and distinguished in his dark gray suit and black turtleneck, his reddish brown beard trimmed into a precise goatee.
“Madam Chase,” he said, greeting her with a curt nod. “Welcome. I am Heinrich Kuhn, director of this facility. If you are ready, we will escort you inside now.” He looked to the two males with her, barely affording Tegan a glance. “Your, er…companions may await you here, if you please.”
“Absolutely not.” Tegan’s deep voice, the first he’d spoken since leaving Reichen’s estate, sliced through the air like a sword. Ignoring the sudden clack of shifting metal as the guards raised their weapons on him, he stepped toward Elise, placing himself between the facility head and her in an unmistakably protective stance. “She’s not going in there alone.”
“It will be perfectly safe,” the director said, pointedly addressing Elise rather than Tegan, as if the warrior did not warrant a direct explanation. “The patient will be restrained, of course, and he has also been sedated for his feeding, which should be finished any moment now. There will be no danger from him, I can assure—”
“I don’t care if you have that suckhead bricked up behind ten feet of solid stone,” Tegan snarled, his green eyes flashing. “She doesn’t go inside that Rogue holding tank without me.”
Two of the guards flicked nervous glances at the director, as if they waited for his order to move in yet dreaded the idea of tangling with the Gen One warrior with a widely accepted lethal reputation.
And well they should hesitate. Elise had no doubt that if things escalated here, it was going to take a lot more than a Darkhaven-trained security detail to handle Tegan. Andreas Reichen seemed to understand that too, and the German evidently found the idea mildly amusing, smiling as he stood back and watched the suited civilian squirm.
“Madam, if you please,” said the director in a patently false diplomatic tone. “Facility visitations are rarely granted to anyone due to the stress it tends to cause the residents in treatment. At the pleasure of the Enforcement Agency’s Chief Director, we have made an exception for you with this interview, but I am loath to think what the mere sight of a warrior inside the clinic could do to my patient’s progress. You must be aware that his kind revels in agitating the afflicted among our race. We practice mercy here, not malice.”
Tegan scoffed. “I’m going in with her. It wasn’t a question.”
Even though he kept his narrowed gaze trained on the containment facility director, Elise knew that Tegan had already sized up the four guards and dismissed them as any kind of true threat. Underneath the long coat he wore, the warrior was also armed with a nasty-looking handgun and several deadly blades sheathed across his torso and at his hip. He made no move to reach for any of his weapons, but Elise knew from seeing him in action that it would take less than a second for him to turn the contained stretch of pavement into a blood-soaked graveyard.
“I would like Tegan to accompany me inside,” she said, taking control of the situation. She saw Tegan’s eyes slide her way for an instant, before he turned his icy stare back on the director.
“Madam, I really don’t think—”
“Tegan comes with me.” Elise removed her jacket and draped it over her arm. She smiled politely, but her gaze was as unwavering as her tone. “I’m afraid I must insist, Director Kuhn.”
Elise’s handling of the self-important facility director was impressive. She knew Darkhaven and Enforcement Agency protocol and understood just how far she could bend both. Her station as Quentin Chase’s widow brought her a lot of pull, which she didn’t hesitate to put to use.
The fact that she’d sided with Tegan when she could have just as well left him to fight his way inside to interrogate the Odolf Rogue—and would have been within her rights to do just that, after how things ended between them last night—impressed him even more. Elise was cool under pressure, a consummate lady and a levelheaded tactician.
She was, he had to admit if only to himself, a damn valuable asset.
The fact that he could hardly take his eyes off her in the sexy, all-business navy trousers and crisp white blouse she wore only amplified his appreciation of her. The evidence of that rousing appreciation was a hard, heavy presence behind the zipper of his black fatigues as he left Reichen to wait behind with the driver and followed the graceful sway of Elise’s hips through the second set of gates, toward the containment facility ahead.
Tegan ignored the gaping of the clinic employees he passed. He vaguely registered the hasty scrambling of civilian feet all around him—both the ones getting the hell out of his way and those few daring souls who came out from behind their monitoring stations or meeting-room doors to have a look at the dark, dangerous stranger stalking through their midst.
The facility director led Tegan and Elise deeper into the place, through one after another set of secured doors. Finally, they turned down a long concrete hallway and stopped in front of a heavy steel door marked Treatment Center. The director punched a code into a wall-mounted keypad, then put his face in front of a scanner and waited as a light took a quick read of his retinas.
“This way,” he said, sniffing almost imperceptibly down the length of his nose as he held the door open for Elise and Tegan to enter yet another hallway.
The space inside was dimly lit and quiet except for intermittent moans and feral-sounding growls not quite masked by the soft classical music piped in through overhead speakers. Closed doors lined either side of the hallway, some with small windows that looked in over the room’s occupant. A few of the rooms were empty, but others held Rogues in various stages of consciousness, all of them strapped into full body restraints. Heavy steel bars equipped with electronic locks held the doors closed, sealing the patients inside their rooms.
Tegan glanced into one of the windows as he passed, taking in the pathetic sight of a drooling, blood-addicted Breed vampire, its limp body stuffed into a soiled white jumpsuit, head shaved bald and still sporting tiny contact pads from a recent bout of electroshock therapy. The Rogue’s fiery amber eyes were at half-mast, rolled back into its skull from whatever sedative it had been given.
“So, this is the Darkhavens’ version of Betty Ford, eh?” Tegan gave a humorless chuckle. “And you people have the balls to say the Order has no mercy.”
Elise shot him a quelling look, but Kuhn ignored the jab completely. He walked them toward the last of the holding cells, pausing to enter an access code. As the admittance light blinked green above the door, the director said, “Since the feeding is still under way, we will have to wait in the observation room until they finish. It should only be another few minutes.”
Tegan followed Elise inside the vestibule, and was there to hold her steady as she physically recoiled the instant she got her first glimpse of the procedure taking place on the other side of the shaded one-way glass.
“Good Lord,” she gasped, one hand coming up to her mouth.
In the adjacent room, the Rogue named Petrov Odolf was strapped down on a custom-rigged examination table like a specimen under a scope. He was naked except for the multiple sets of thick metal clamps that held him at each limb, around the torso and neck, and across the width of his brow. His shaved head was wrapped in a leather-and-wire-mesh mask that held his jaw and massive fangs stationary for the tube that was running fresh blood into his mouth from the Host who had the unpleasant task of feeding him. The Rogue had pissed himself at some point during the procedure, leaving a puddle of urine beneath the table that only added to the degradation of the whole thing.
And then there was the woman.
Tegan exhaled a ripe curse as his gaze followed the blood-filled tube running from the Rogue’s mouth to the inner forearm of a young woman lying on another exam table a few feet away from him. Garbed in a white clinic jumpsuit without sleeves, she lay very still on her back, calmly in fact, but her freckled cheeks were stained with tears.
“You sent a female in there with that beast?”
“She’s his Breedmate,” Kuhn replied. “They’d been together for many years before he succumbed to Bloodlust and turned Rogue. She’s been coming in every week to feed him, and to take her own nourishment from him as well. She must keep her own health and longevity in order to continue to care for him. Truly, he’s lucky to have her devotion. Most of our other patients have no Breedmate to look after them, so they must be fed from human donors.”
Elise inched closer to the glass now, obviously as transfixed by what she was seeing as she was repulsed. “How do you find those other donors, Director Kuhn?”
He shrugged when she glanced back at him over her shoulder. “We never have to look far. University students willing to join medical studies for a little money, prostitutes, the homeless…drug addicts, if we’re desperate.”
“Well, shit,” Tegan drawled, full of sarcasm. “This is a real class operation you got here.”
“No harm done to anyone, generally speaking,” Kuhn said with an annoyed smile. “The procedures are very closely monitored and none of our recruited Hosts maintain a single memory afterward. We simply return them to their lives with a little cash in their pocket that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. A little time spent here is the best thing to happen to some of the unfortunates we collect as donors.”
Tegan was ready to spit a cutting remark at the pompous Darkhaven male, but it had been less than twenty-four hours since he himself had been hunting for blood on Berlin’s darkened streets. He’d killed, even though he could justify it with the knowledge that there was one less human criminal around to violate a defenseless woman. But that didn’t make him a saint by any stretch. At heart, all of the Breed were self-serving, ruthless predators. Some just attempted to hide the fact behind sterile white walls and a fleet of clinical equipment.
“There now,” the facility director announced when a small beep sounded on the console near the viewing window. “The feeding procedure is complete. As soon as the patient is alone and resting, we can go in.”
They waited as Odolf was disconnected from his feeding tube. The vampire fought the removal, his insatiable blood addiction making him snap and growl behind the wire-mesh face mask as the attendants cut off his supply. He struggled against his body restraints, but the effort was sluggish and ineffective, no doubt from the sedatives Kuhn had mentioned earlier.
The Rogue’s dermaglyphs were still seething from deep purples to red to black, the colors of ferocious hunger traveling along the pattern of markings that ran up his bare chest and over his shoulders.
His huge fangs flashed bone white with his sudden roar of protest. His pupils were fixed into vertical slits, the irises throwing off a blast of amber light every time he tried to raise his big head up off the table. Even though he was drugged, the taste of blood had inflamed him to the point of madness—as it did all Rogues.
Tegan ought to know. He’d lived a similar thirsting, angry as hell himself. He hadn’t progressed as far Rogue as this male, thankfully, but he’d come damn close. Seeing this blood-addicted male up close was a strong reminder of what those dark months Tegan had fought to shake off his own weakness had been like.
As Petrov Odolf rattled his bonds in futility, his Breedmate got up off the table beside him and cautiously approached where he lay. She kept her hands at her sides, even though it was clear from the anguish in her eyes that she longed to touch her mate. She said something too quiet to be heard over the cell’s audio monitors, then she turned away and walked toward the door of the observation room, wiping tears from her freckled cheeks.
Kuhn opened the door for her, and she seemed startled to see that she’d had an audience. Her face flamed red, and her downcast gaze said it was in shame. “Pardon me,” she murmured, trying to make a beeline for the outside hallway.
“Are you all right?” Elise asked gently.
The Breedmate gave a wobbly nod. A sob hitched in her throat, broken and raw. “Will you excuse me, please?”
“This way,” Director Kuhn said as the Rogue’s female slipped out of their company and headed down the corridor. “I can permit you no more than ten minutes with him, Madam Chase. And I must reiterate that I think it best if the warrior—”
“Actually,” Elise said, her voice full of confident authority, “I would like Tegan to conduct the interview without me.”
“Wha—Without you?” Kuhn’s brows crashed together furiously. “That was not the term of our arrangement at all.”
“It is now. I’m not about to let that poor woman leave here in such a state of distress,” she said, then glanced at Tegan. “Tegan will speak with Petrov Odolf. I trust him in this, Director Kuhn, and you can too.”
She didn’t wait to hear the facility head sputter his disagreement, just strode out of the observation room and went after Odolf ’s distraught Breedmate like a guided missile in a designer suit and stilettos.
Tegan was tempted to smile, but instead he turned a flat gaze on Kuhn.
“After you,” he said, daring the director to try to keep him out of that containment cell.
CHAPTER
Twenty
Elise found the Breedmate just a short way down the corridor. The woman was seated on a cushioned bench, her face pressed into her hands. She was weeping quietly, but her contained sobs shook her entire body.
“I’m very sorry,” Elise murmured, unsure if she should intrude on such a private moment, yet too moved by what she had seen to simply let the Breedmate suffer alone. She fished a small package of tissues out of her bag and held them out as she walked closer to the female. “Would you like these?”
Red-rimmed light brown eyes lifted to meet Elise’s gaze. “Yes, thank you. I always think I’ll be strong for him, but it’s so hard. It never gets easier, seeing him like he is.”
“Of course,” Elise said, taking a seat beside her. “I’m Elise, by the way.”
“Irina,” she answered softly. “Petrov is my mate.”
“Yes, I know. The facility director told us.”
She glanced down as she took out one of the folded tissues. “You’re from America?”
“Boston.”
“So far away. Director Kuhn informed me that some people were coming to see my mate, but he couldn’t tell me why. What is it that you want with Petrov?”
“We just need to ask him some questions, Irina. That’s all.”
There was a worried glint in the female’s sidelong look. “That male you’re with—he’s not Darkhaven Breed.”
“No. Tegan is one of the Order. He’s a warrior.”
“A warrior?” Irina went visibly rigid, her brow creasing. “But Petrov has hurt no one. He is a good man. He has done nothing wrong—”
“It’s all right,” Elise assured her, placing her hand over the anxious woman’s trembling fingers. “Tegan is not here to harm him, I promise you. Only to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“We need some information about your mate’s family line. We need to talk to him, and see if he recognizes a particular dermaglyphic symbol.”
Irina sighed and gave a small shake of her head. “He hardly recognizes me anymore. I don’t think he will be much help to you.”
Elise smiled, sympathetic. “We have to try. It’s very important.”
“You give me your word that no harm will come to him?”
“Yes. I give you my word, Irina.”
The Breedmate stared at Elise for a long moment, those warm brown eyes searching, divining the truth. “Yes,” she said at last. “I believe you. I trust what you are telling me.”
Elise squeezed the woman’s hand. “How long have you and Petrov been blood-bonded?”
“It will be fifty-seven years this summer.” There was pride in the statement, and love. But sadness crept into her voice as she went on. “He has been in this…this place…for the last three of those years.”
“I’m very sorry,” Elise said.
“I thought he would be stronger than the weakness that plagued his father and his brothers—I thought my love might be enough, you know? But he was haunted by demons I never understood. Three years ago, in the weeks before I lost him to his disease, he was a different man.”
“How so?” Elise asked the question carefully, not wanting to pry into what had been such a painful time for the woman.
“He changed in so many ways after his older brother went Rogue and died. I think maybe Petrov knew the day was coming that he would fall too. It was as if a terrible burden had been heaped upon him. He withdrew from everything—from me as well. He became secretive, writing for hours in his study, only to burn his papers to a cinder. I managed to retrieve a page, but it was filled with nonsense, just a lot of crazed ramblings that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain to me.” She shrugged, her head hung low. “Petrov started going on feeding binges late at night, while I slept. He went quite mad in time. He attacked me one night in a fit of Bloodlust, and I realized it was time for us to part.”
“It must have been so difficult for you, Irina.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Bloodlust is a terribly seductive thing. I know Petrov will never come home. They rarely do come home from this place. But still, I hope.”
The Breedmate waved her hand as a fresh round of tears welled in her eyes. “Listen to me going on like this. I need to change out of this awful feeding garment and get myself home. Thank you for talking to me. And thank you for these,” she said, pulling out another tissue and dabbing her moist eyes.
“You’re very welcome.”
Elise stood with Irina, and gave her a brief hug as the other woman gathered herself to leave. Once she was gone, Elise walked back up the corridor to Petrov Odolf ’s containment cell. Tegan was just coming out, and he didn’t look pleased. Director Kuhn was right behind him, sputtering something about ensuring the patient’s comfort and perfectly acceptable doses.
“What’s going on?”
Tegan raked a hand over his scalp. “Odolf is so medicated he’s practically catatonic. We won’t get anything out of him in this condition.”
“Additional sedatives are always required for a feeding procedure, for the safety of the patient and his blood Host,” Kuhn declared, indignant.
“And the other half a dozen drugs you’ve pumped into him?” Tegan challenged.
“Just our normal protocol for making certain our patients are comfortable at all times.”
“You weren’t able to talk to him at all?” Elise asked, ignoring Kuhn’s bluster to focus on Tegan.
“A minute after I got in there, he was barely conscious. We’ve got shit so far.”
“Then we’ll come back tomorrow.” Elise turned to the facility head. “I’m sure Director Kuhn can see to it that he’s more lucid when we return. Won’t you, Director?”
“To reduce a patient’s medication is an enormous risk. We won’t be responsible for any harm that comes to either of you if that is your request.”
Elise glanced to Tegan, who gave her a nod of agreement. “That’s fine. Expect us tomorrow evening at this time, and have Petrov Odolf awake and clearheaded when we arrive.”
Kuhn’s mouth went tight, but he inclined his head in compliance. “As you wish, madam.”
Although Tegan was quiet, she felt his eyes on her the entire time as they left the treatment center and were escorted back out to where Reichen’s car and driver waited. Whatever had passed between them last night in the boathouse, and the heavy awareness that had remained in the hours since, was still present now. Just being near him, her body thrummed with a disquieting heat.
She knew part of it was the link she shared with him through his blood, but there was another part of her that responded to him as well. It was that latter part—the elemental, feminine stirring—that troubled her the most, because after the way he’d left her last night, it seemed that she was alone in her desire.
Tegan was stoic and silent with her, stepping aside as Reichen’s driver opened the back door of the Rolls-Royce to her as they approached the car. She glanced into the vehicle as she began to climb inside and was surprised to find it empty.
“Where is Andreas?”
The driver gave a polite little bow of his bald head. “With regrets, madam, he was called away briefly to attend a personal matter in the city. He asked that I contact him once you and the gentleman had completed your meeting here. We’ll go retrieve him now.”
“Oh. All right, Klaus. Thank you.”
Elise slid into the private passenger area of the luxurious sedan limousine. Tegan followed, seating himself across from her, one muscled arm slung over the back of the sumptuous leather bench seat. His thighs were spread indecently wide as he slouched back and stared at her under a hank of his thick tawny hair. He was considering her in that maddening silence of his, those bright green eyes fixed on her for so long she could hardly bear the weight of his unreadable scrutiny.
The few minutes it took to reach the center of Berlin felt like an hour. And even worse, the farther they drove into the heart of all that humanity, Elise’s temples began to pound with the incoming chatter of hundreds of dark thoughts and ugly voices hissing their corrupt impulses into her ears. She turned her face toward the tinted glass of the car window, feeling the crush of her psychic gift squeezing all the air out of the vehicle.
Lord, just let the drive be over soon. All she wanted was to crawl into bed and put the past few nights behind her.
“…handled it well.”
Tegan’s deep voice roused her out of her mounting panic. She’d been so distracted, she hadn’t realized he’d finally started speaking to her. “I’m sorry?”
“Back there at the containment facility. You were good, the way you handled Kuhn…and all the rest of it. I’m impressed.”
The praise warmed her, mostly because she knew how rare it was, coming from Tegan. He wasn’t the type to coddle, or to dole out kind words unless he meant them. “I wish we’d had better luck with Odolf.”
“We’ll get what we need from him tomorrow.”
“I hope so.”
Idly, she rubbed at her throbbing temple, a move Tegan followed with his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said, wincing a bit as the car stopped at a traffic light in the center of a crowded intersection downtown. Pedestrians crossed in front of them, a thick knot of people whose thoughts rattled Elise’s head like a long roll of thunder. “I’ll be fine once we’re out of the city.”
Tegan stared at her.
“You need more blood,” he said, not sounding very happy about the idea. “After so long without, feeding just one time isn’t going to hold you.”
“I’m okay,” she insisted, wishing it were true. “I’m not going to take anything more from you, Tegan.”
“I wasn’t offering.”
Humiliation flooded her at his grim statement of fact. “You weren’t offering that first time either, were you? I forced your hand that night at the compound, Tegan. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. I’ll live.”
Well, he certainly closed the door on that subject. Actually, he seemed preoccupied and edgy, even more than usual. Elise had seen how appalled Tegan had been by the containment facility’s practices.
She’d also seen the way he’d looked at Petrov Odolf, restrained and feverish from the Bloodlust that had robbed him of his sanity and, probably, his soul. Tegan, who was normally so detached and unmovable, had felt a degree of sympathy for the Rogue being held in that cell. Incredibly, it had seemed as though Tegan might even relate to the vampire’s pitiful condition.
Elise could hardly imagine that, seeing how rigidly the warrior clung to his self-control. Or maybe he held on so tightly because he knew what it was like to lose his grasp…
She might have pondered that in more depth, but a fresh wave of nausea assailed her as another large group of people filed past the car while it waited for the light.
In a fluid move, Tegan came over onto the seat next to her. “Come here. I’ll trance you.”
“No.” She drew away from him, not wanting any of his pity. “No, I need to deal with this myself. It’s my problem, like you’ve said. I want to manage it on my own.”
Thankfully the vehicle was moving again, turning a corner onto a side street off the exclusive main thoroughfare with its bright boutique lights and milling crowds. It was better here, but still a struggle to hold it together under the constant battering of her mind. Her mind was like a broken radio receiver, intercepting only the worst feeds, bombarding her with countless inputs until the cacophony seemed to consume her.
“Find one that you can focus on,” Tegan said from beside her. His breath was warm, his fingers tender but commanding as he took hold of her hand. His thumb swept over her skin, gentling her. Grounding her. “All you need is one, Elise. One voice that you can deal with on its own. Separate it from the others. Let the rest go. Let them fall away.”
His deep voice was almost hypnotic, coaching her further into the pain of her gift so that she could learn to harness it. With eyes closed, she followed his direction, sifting through the terrible din to find something she could grasp ahold of. Slowly, bit by bit, she peeled away the worst of the voices in her mind until she heard one that hurt the least.
“Focus on the one,” Tegan murmured, still holding her hand, still guiding her with his words and the protective warmth of his touch. “Pull one voice closer, even as the others begin to drift around you. They can’t touch you. You’re stronger than your gift, Elise. Your power is in you, in your own will.”
She felt everything he was saying. She knew it was true. With his fingers wrapped around hers, his voice a low purr near her ear, she believed that she was strong. She believed that she could do this…
“Feel your strength, Elise,” Tegan coached her. “There is no panic here, only calm. Your gift does not own you…you are in control.”
And so she was, she realized only now—knowing that what Tegan was showing her was just a glimmer of the control she was capable of. He was opening a door in her subconscious, and wherever it was that her Breedmate gift originated within her, Tegan was guiding her inside that place, letting her see the power of her own potential.
It was a revelation. Her temples still pounded from the onslaught of psychic pain, but it was a dull, manageable throb now that she was focusing, honing her skill. She wanted to keep working it, to keep pushing herself, but the exercise was also exhausting. The one voice she clung to began to slip out of her grasp, blending back into the din.
Outside her body and her mind, she felt the car slow to a stop. Footsteps approached, two pairs of them, joined by the efficient shuffle of the driver’s quick gait as he ran around the vehicle to get the door.
As soon as it opened, Tegan’s touch was gone.
Elise blinked, lifting her gaze to find Reichen outside the car, giving a beautiful raven-haired woman a brief kiss on the mouth. She was wrapped in a silvery fur coat—and from what Elise could tell, little else beneath it. On the side of her graceful throat was a pink bloom of color, only a fading rosebud mark to indicate the place where Reichen had no doubt fed from her just a short while ago.
“A pleasure as always, my darling Helene,” he said as the two of them parted. “You spoil me so well.”
Evidently the Darkhaven male’s personal business was of a very personal nature.
The woman’s glossy mouth curved into a catlike smile at his charm. She didn’t wait at the car for him to leave, but pivoted on staggeringly tall silver stiletto heels and sauntered back into a red, unmarked door of the building where Reichen’s car sat idling.
“My thanks for the curb service,” the German said as he crawled into the limousine and took a seat opposite Tegan and Elise. “Not to imply I don’t enjoy your company, but I rather hoped you might be longer at your appointment. You finished quickly.”
Tegan smirked. “So did you, from the looks of it.”
Reichen chuckled, unabashed as he lounged back in the seat and the car took off. He smelled like expensive perfume, blood, and sex. Not that he cared, Elise thought as she considered him. His broad, sated grin said he couldn’t be in a happier, more familiar state.
Andreas Reichen was a very attractive male, mysterious and sophisticated, but even his smoldering sensuality paled next to Tegan’s raw appeal. Elise practically burned from the heat of Tegan’s thigh where it pressed unassumingly against hers. His head was tilted down, eyes hooded beneath the thick fringe of his eyelashes.
He kept his arms crossed over his chest now, and she missed the warm feel of his touch. She craved it, especially as the limousine navigated through the busy city streets and her Breedmate gift continued to buffet her senses. Instead she tried to use the brief lesson he’d given her, taking what he’d shown her and wielding it against the crush of her psychic pain.
More than anything, she wanted to grab Tegan’s hand again and feel his calming strength.
But he only put a measure of distance between them. He moved away from her on the seat, a subtle shift of his thigh that left a gap of space in its place. When they arrived a short while later at the lakeshore Darkhaven, Tegan leaped out of the car almost as soon as Klaus slowed to a stop on the front driveway.
“I have to report in to the compound,” he said, keeping his gaze averted. He stalked off before either Elise or Reichen could get out of the car.
“All business, that one,” Reichen remarked with a shake of his head. “May I get you something to eat in the house, Elise? You must be hungry.”
She was famished, actually, having last eaten around noon. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Elise let Reichen help her out of the vehicle, and took his proffered arm as they walked up to the main entrance of the estate. But all the while, her thoughts were fixed on Tegan, and on quelling the strong—evidently onesided—desire he stirred in her.
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
Tegan closed his cell phone after reporting in to the compound and leaned back on the ridiculously froufrou velvet settee in his private room of the Darkhaven. He was pissed off that the night had resulted in a stalemate with Petrov Odolf, and more rattled than he cared to admit by the Bloodlust reality check he’d gotten at the facility. Seeing Odolf and the other Rogues was a damn good reminder of the fire he’d walked through after Sorcha’s death.
He’d managed to beat his Bloodlust all those years ago, but the fight had been brutal. And the hunger was always with him, even when he was trying his hardest to deny it.
Being near Elise only magnified his craving. Damn, but that female put his blood on a slow, rising boil.
That moment alone with her in Reichen’s car—touching her, walking her through her psychic distress—had been a colossal mistake. It only made him realize how deeply he wanted to help her. That he didn’t want to see her in pain.
That despite centuries of religiously honed apathy, he was starting to care. He was genuinely beginning to have feelings for her, a bold and complicated Darkhaven beauty who could have her choice of any male, Breed or otherwise. He truly cared about Elise. He wanted her…and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he went after her like the predator he was.
Touching her soft skin had made him recall how good it had been to feel her body pressed against him, how delicious her mouth fit his own…how sweet even the smallest taste of her blood had been on the tip of his tongue.
Christ.
He hadn’t been able to bolt out of the car fast enough.
And the hour he’d spent alone up here in his guest room hadn’t done much to cool the need that urged him to go downstairs and find Elise. Sate himself with her the way Reichen had so freely been able to do with the woman in the city.
The fire Elise had stoked in him from nearly the moment he set eyes on her was banked, but still burning.
Maybe he could douse it, Tegan thought, stalking into the bathroom to turn on the shower. God knew he wanted to get the feel of the containment facility off his skin as well. Seeing those incarcerated, mostly catatonic Rogues had pulled him back to an ugly time in his own life—one he had no desire to relive, even in passing memory. That part of him was buried deep, where it belonged.
He stripped off his shirt and weapons and dropped the lot of it on a chair beside the settee. His fingers were working the zipper of his black fatigues when a knock sounded on the closed door to the hall. He ignored it, wondering if it might be Reichen looking to drag him into a few hours of sin back in the city. Part of him was tempted by the thought—anything to slake the coiling hunger he had for Elise.
The knock came again, and this time Tegan threw open the door without a thought.
As the panel swung wide, he was surprised—and not a little furious—to see the subject of his frustration standing there. Just what he didn’t need right now. Gorgeous as ever, still wearing the proper navy pantsuit she had on at the clinic, the sight of Elise was a major dose of gasoline tossed on his fire.
“What the hell are you doing up here?” His voice was harsh, more rough than he intended.
Elise didn’t so much as flinch. “I thought we might talk.”
“What happened to Reichen finding you some dinner downstairs?”
“He did. That was almost an hour ago. I…waited for a while to see if you might come out of your room, but when you didn’t, I decided to come to you.”
He stared at her for a minute, then mentally cut the shower off and turned to grab his shirt and weapons holster. “I was just on my way out.”
“Oh.” She didn’t look like she was buying it. “What could be so urgent all of a sudden?”
“Just a little thing called duty, sweetheart. I’m not used to spending my nights sitting on my ass when I could be outside killing something.” He said it deliberately to shock her, and he probably took a bit too much satisfaction at the disturbed frown that creased her forehead. “I need to get out of this place for a while. I should be in the city, on the streets, where I’m useful. Not wasting my fucking time sitting around here.”
He expected her to give him space and be glad he was leaving. His cold attitude had scared away countless Breed males, even among the Order, so he didn’t expect this female to linger for long.
For a second, he really thought she was going to retreat like he’d intended her to do.
But then she strode right over the threshold and into his room.
“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” she said, soft but resolute. There was apprehension in her expression, but damn if she didn’t close the door behind her and keep coming toward him. “Tonight we need to talk. I need to know where things stand. Where we stand, Tegan.”
He glared. “You think it’s wise to shut yourself in here with me? It won’t take long for Reichen and the rest of this house to figure out where you are and think the worst. He may be discreet when needed, but the others who live here—”
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I just need to know what you think.”
He scoffed, a grating sound that held more mockery than he’d intended. “I think you’re out of your fucking head.”
She glanced down, gave a little nod. “I’m confused, I’ll give you that. I don’t know if you…I don’t know what to make of you, Tegan. Not from day one. I don’t know how to play this game that we seem to be playing together.”
“I don’t play games,” he said, deadly serious. “I don’t have the interest or the time—”
“Bullshit!”
He arched a brow at her unexpected blurt of profanity. He was ready to push again—seething with the compulsion to shove her away hard, before she got any closer to the truth of what he was feeling. But the glint of anger in her eyes gave him pause.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and took a couple of paces nearer to him, making it clear that if he pushed now, she was sure as hell going to push back.
“What do you call it when you’re tender with me one moment, then cold as ice the next? You kiss me, only to push me away a minute later.” She drew a breath, letting it out on a frustrated-sounding sigh. “Sometimes you look at me as if you might really feel something for me, but then…then you blink and it’s like the feeling was never there in the first place. What is that, if not your twisted idea of fun?”
Since she wasn’t about to stand down, he pivoted away from her on a snarl and went for the duffel bag that held more of his gear and weapons, ignoring her attempt to goad him. He reached in and blindly grabbed for a cache of combat supplies. He pulled out a sheathed blade, then a clip of titanium rounds for his 9mm—anything to keep his hands moving and his focus trained on something other than the maddening awareness of the woman who was slowly walking up behind him.
Incredibly, his fingers were shaking as he put his gear down on the settee’s velvet cushions. His vision was going sharp, his field of sight taking on a hard edge as his pupils narrowed and a flood of amber fire bathed everything in a hunter’s light. His gums ached with the emergence of his fangs, his mouth watering with the hunger he’d barely been able to stave off before Elise arrived in his room.
Now that she was here, provoking him with her mere presence, he didn’t know how long he could hold the beast at bay. It had been snapping at its leash since the moment he first laid eyes on her.
Behind him, he heard the thick Persian rug crush with the subtle movement of her feet. He closed his eyes, his senses flooded with awareness of her.
With the keen, aching want of her.
“You say you don’t play games, but you’re a master at it, Tegan. In fact, I think you’ve been playing at them for so long you can’t remember how to be real anymore.”
He was hardly aware of his own movements as he whirled back on her with a furious roar. Distance closed in fractional seconds—a blink of time between the moment he’d been turned away from Elise and the next, when he was bearing down on her like a train in motion, pushing her with both the force of his will and his body until they both slammed up against the closed door.
He pinned her there, between the hard, unyielding length of him and the thick plank of oak at her back.
“Is this real enough for you, sweetheart?”
He hissed the words at her, his lips curled back from his fangs. Desire had him livid, fully transformed into the savage side of his nature. With a growl, he bent his head and took her mouth in a hot, demanding kiss.
She cried out, startled, her hands coming up to brace defensively against his shoulders. He only kissed her harder, thrusting his tongue past her teeth as she gasped to take a breath.
Christ, she was sweet. So warm and lush against his mouth.
So soft against the scorching rigidity of his body.
He didn’t want to feel this arousal. Wanted like hell to reject this consuming need. But he was burning up with it, and there would be no denying it now.
No stopping the pound of his blood as everything Breed in him—everything elementally male—awakened to the delicious taste of Elise.
When he broke their kiss, she was panting. He was too. His whole body heaved with the force of his hunger, his every pulse point pounding with a beat he felt echoing in Elise as well.
“Last night in the boathouse, I felt your fear,” he whispered fiercely, holding her wide gaze, pressing the front of his body deeper into hers. His cock was rigid, growing harder just at the feel of her. “I let you go instead of taking what I wanted. I’m not going to be forgiving this time. So, fear me if you will, Elise, but don’t expect me to fucking care—”
“I went back last night.” A breathless little sound curled up from her throat, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “I wasn’t afraid of you, Tegan. I went back for you.”
The words sank into his brain slowly, stilling him as he registered what he was hearing.
“Last night, after you told me to leave you…I had gotten as far as the main house and I realized that I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be with you.”
She stared up at him without the slightest tremor of uncertainty now. Where his hands held her arms, he felt only pliant acceptance, knowing surrender. Through the connection of his touch, he read her desire. Felt it radiating out to him, seeping into him.
“I wanted to be naked with you, Tegan. I wanted you inside me, so I went back. But you were already gone.”
Holy hell.
He knew he should probably say something, but he had no voice. Only a dumbshit muteness like he’d never known before. His weight settled back on his heels, and the urge to shove her away from him in defense—remove her from his reach—was nearly overwhelming.
But he found he couldn’t let go of her.
He couldn’t stop looking into the clear lavender pools of her eyes. The unwavering honesty—the guileless need—that he saw in their depths floored him.
“I want to be with you now, Tegan…so if you want me, even a little bit—”
He pulled her close and silenced her doubt with another kiss. She put her arms around him and held him to her, parting her lips and taking his tongue as he swept inside her mouth the way he intended to be inside her body. He guided her around, away from the door and toward the waiting bed, their lips never parting. Hands roaming, clutching, trembling.
Clothing was stripped away quickly under the force of their need. Tegan drew off Elise’s jacket and made fast work of the white silk blouse beneath it, slipping free what seemed like a hundred tiny buttons until he had unveiled her satin-and-lace-covered breasts. He ran his hands over the gossamer white fabric, watching with a hungry gaze as her nipples rose to his touch.
Easing her back onto the bed, he unfastened her tailored navy trousers and slid them down her pale, slender legs. Her sex was hidden behind a small scrap of white satin. Tegan followed the line of thin triangle with his fingers, softly stroking the warm velvet of her hip and inner thigh. His thumb traced beneath the satin to something even more silky. The slick, wet heat of her made him groan, compelled him to delve deeper into that searing, moist cleft.
Elise sucked in her breath as he stroked the dewy petals and the tight little nub nestled at the top of her sex.
He pushed her legs apart and his hungry gaze settled on the tiny birthmark that rode the inside of her right thigh. Tegan smiled, amused that she bore it on such a delectable part of her body. He’d been wanting to taste that tender spot on her from the first time he saw it. Now he kissed the little teardrop-and-crescent-moon, nipping her gently as he came back up to look at her.
God, she was beautiful. Pure and decadent at the same time.
He wanted to feast on her slowly, but need was stronger—his own, and hers as well. He could feel Elise’s hunger in every questing brush of his fingers, and knew her want was as strong as his, a sexual need coiling to the point of pain.
Tegan shucked his fatigues with hasty impatience, kicking them aside as he pushed Elise farther up on the bed. He drew off her panties and climbed over her, bracing his arms on either side of her head. His cock hung down between them, engorged and ruddy, a thick spear of hard flesh that weeped a drop of moisture into the cradle of her belly. The Gen One glyphs that covered him from shoulder to mid-thigh were pulsing with color, the pattern alive with lust’s variegating shades of indigo, gold, and wine.
“Is this too real for you, Elise?” His voice was reduced to a bestial growl, speech made difficult for the presence of his fangs, which were fully extended in response to his desire for her. “Jesus Christ…I think it’s too goddamn real for me.”
If she had given the slightest indication that she was unsure about what they were about to do, he might have found the strength to back off.
He would have forced himself to heel, even though he was nearly out of his head with the need to possess her. Despite all his hard-ass threats, he knew, looking down into her gentle gaze, that he would have shown her mercy. Some panicked part of him hoped to hell she would want out.
But Elise didn’t tremble at the feral beast poised over her. She reached up and put her hand around the back of his neck. Firmly, she guided him down to her, her eyes wide open and fixed on his, and pressed his mouth to hers.
Tegan crushed her beneath him as he claimed her lips in a heated kiss. God help him, but she met his every thrust and parry, driving him wild when he felt the ungentle prod of her tongue slipping inside his mouth, tracing the length of his fangs.
Without breaking contact with her lips, he reared back on his knees and took himself in hand, guiding his thick erection between her parted thighs. She arched up to meet him, a tremor rocking her as he played the head of his penis along the wet core of her body.
The tease was too much to bear, and he was too far gone to be patient. He tilted his hips back, then thrust into her moist sheath with one long, filling stroke.
Elise gasped near his ear as he came down over her and seated himself to the hilt. Her body was small beneath his, her sex tight and hot, a molten vise around his cock.
Everything he thought he knew about being inside a woman—everything he thought he remembered—was obliterated by the incredible feel of Elise wrapped around him. This was unlike anything he’d known before, more powerful than he ever could have imagined. He was connected to her, mind and body, feeling her pleasure pour into him everywhere their bodies touched. Elise was vibrant and strong, consuming. After centuries of exile from touch, from feeling, Tegan looked into Elise’s beautiful face and gave himself up to the warm, wet bliss of her.
He couldn’t stop his hips from pumping, couldn’t stanch the escalating urge to lose himself inside her. His shaft swelled with the rise of his orgasm, and he knew he was just a few desperate seconds from exploding.
He grunted, going deep as the coil wound tighter. His voice was a raw scrape in his throat. “Ah, Christ—Elise!”
He couldn’t hold it back. With a hard surge, he drove his hips into hers and came like a breaking storm. He shouted with the force of his release, thrusting as wave after searing wave shuddered out of him.
And still it wasn’t enough. He was still erect, still hungry for her.
Still pumping into the velvety glove of Elise’s exquisite body.
He stared down into her dusky eyes as he filled her, needing to see her as he gave her some of the same pleasure she was giving him.
“I was greedy,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her in apology. He didn’t dare get close to her luscious throat, not when his fangs were throbbing with another need that was raging to be sated. “If you want, we can take it slower now.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, wrapping her legs around his thighs to make her point.
Tegan chuckled, and some distant part of him wondered when the last time was that he’d actually felt humor. When was the last time he’d felt anything close to what Elise roused in him?
He didn’t want to explore the place she seemed to have breached inside him. All he wanted right now was this.
“It’s been a long time for me,” Elise whispered. “And you feel so good…”
Her words trailed off on a moan as Tegan pushed as deep as she could take him. He withdrew and thrust again, feeling the walls of her channel grip and contract around him.
“My God,” he rasped, hissing with the pleasure of it.
Already another orgasm was ratcheting up within him.
Elise’s climax was swiftly building too. She took him deeper with every furious pound of their meeting flesh, clutching at his shoulders and panting as her body’s need overtook her.
Tegan could feel her pleasure in each stroke of his fingers on her flesh, each silken caress of her core. Her emotion seeped into him from every point of contact, swamping him with a surfeit of sensation. He absorbed everything she gave him, all his focus on bringing her toward a shattering release.
He kissed her passionately, with tongue and teeth and fang. Elise met him every inch of the way, and when he felt the sharp nip of her blunt human teeth sink into the flesh of his lower lip, he bucked wildly, groaning as her tongue lapped at the small wound she’d made. She sucked a little harder and he was totally lost, fevered with the desire to have her at his vein.
Before he could think better of it, Tegan reared back and punctured his wrist with his fangs. Blood dripped in steady rivulets onto her bare breasts and throat as he offered the gift to her and gently pressed his arm to her mouth.
“Take it,” he said. “I want to feed you.”
With her eyes locked on his, she sealed her lips around his flesh. She drank him down, pulse after pulse, her tongue creating a mesmerizing, erotic suction. And all the while, Tegan thrust into her, taking carnal delight in every gasp and shudder of her body as she spiraled closer to release. Her fingernails scored his skin where she gripped his arm, holding him fast against her mouth, pulling hard at his vein as her orgasm seized her.
She broke apart on a violent tremor, crying out as Tegan drove in a relentless rhythm, chasing his own fierce climax now too. He plunged deep, felt the rush of hot seed jetting up his shaft, erupting from him in a gushing wave as Elise’s sex milked him like a hot, wet fist.
“Ah, fuck,” he gasped, rolling away from her, spent but not sated.
Not even close.
The scent of blood and sex was ripe in the room, a potent fragrance that only reminded him of the savage side of his nature. The part that had once ruled him…had almost destroyed him.
Beside him on the bed, Elise crept closer. Her naked breasts pressed against his shoulder as she leaned over him. Her fingers were tender as she stroked the side of his face and smoothed his sweat-dampened hair off his brow.
“You didn’t finish.”
He scoffed weakly, still weathering the aftershocks of his release. “You obviously weren’t paying attention.”
“No, Tegan. I mean…you didn’t finish.”
Her arm came around him, hovering in front of his mouth. Alarm arrowed into his brain, overriding the hard-core impulse that made him want to fall on her like the beast he was and fill his mouth with the sweet heather-and-roses taste of her blood.
He got up like he’d been spurred in the ass, vaulting to his feet next to the bed. He licked the wound at his wrist, sealing up the punctures with an efficient sweep of his tongue.
“You won’t drink from me?”
“No,” he said, forcing the word past his tongue. “I can’t do that.”
“I thought maybe you wanted to—”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped.
His denied hunger made his voice take on an even sharper edge. He cast a glance at his discarded clothes and weapons, wondering how fast he could pull them on and get the hell out of the room. He had to go, before he gave in to the temptation Elise presented, sitting naked and beautiful in his bed, cradling in her lap the delicate wrist he had so callously refused.
Tegan’s breath sawed out of him as it passed over his fangs. “Shit,” he said, his voice rough gravel, harsh and otherworldly. “This is going too damn far. I need to…ah, fuck.” He raked a shaky hand over his face. “I need to get out of here.”
“Don’t bother.” Elise crawled off the bed. “It’s your room. I’ll go.” She hastily gathered up her clothes, yanking on her blouse and pulling the navy jacket over the top of it, buttoning it with sure, steady fingers. She grabbed her pants and stepped into them, fastening them as she headed for the door. “This was a mistake. Another one, where you’re concerned. You win, Tegan. I’m finally giving up.”
She ran out, and he forced himself to let her go.
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
Elise closed the door of her guest room behind her and sagged against the carved oak panel.
She felt like an utter fool.
Bad enough she’d thrown herself at Tegan like some kind of wanton idiot, but she had to top it off by offering her blood to him. Blood that he rejected.
Of course, it didn’t surprise her that he had refused. To drink from her would irrevocably complete their blasphemy of a blood bond, a fact that Elise had been willing to accept in those heated moments of passion in his bed. At least Tegan had the good sense—the levelheaded self-control—to avoid that kind of disaster.
His obvious horror at the idea of bonding himself to her, even without any of the vows that true mated couples shared, had come to Elise as no surprise at all.
But God, it hurt.
Especially when her veins were alive with the powerful roar of his blood within her, and her body was still thrumming and boneless from the intensity of his lovemaking.
She was a naïve fool, because some hopeful part of her had actually thought they shared something more than just an unwanted, yet undeniable, physical attraction. When Tegan touched her tonight—when he kissed her so hungrily, then scored his own wrist to let her drink from him—she really believed that she meant something more to him than mere conquest. She had thought he might truly care for her.
Worse than that, she’d hoped he did.
After five years of being alone, thinking she could never feel anything for another male, she had finally allowed her heart to open.
To a warrior, she thought grimly. There was no small amount of irony in the idea that she would let herself fall for one of the dark, dangerous members of the Order—especially after being taught all her life that they were heartless savages, never to be trusted.
And for her to care anything for Tegan, likely the coldest of them all…
Well, that went beyond foolish.
She’d been asking for this kind of hurt from that very first night all those months ago, when she let him drive her home from the compound. Tonight he’d done her a favor—spared her from making an enormous mistake she could never call back.
She should be grateful for that small mercy, particularly in a man who claimed to possess none at all.
Tegan was a heartbreak she didn’t need.
Yet as she crossed the room to the adjoining bath and turned on the water in the shower, she couldn’t help reliving the moments she had spent with him in his bed. She stripped off her clothes and stepped under the warm spray, feeling his hands on her, their bodies melded together, burning with pleasure.
She ached for him, even now.
Would be drawn to him always, the pull of his blood within her binding her to him with unseen chains.
But as much as she wanted to blame her feelings for Tegan on the unfortunate fact that she’d drunk from him—twice now—she knew that the problem went even deeper than that.
Yes, God help her. It was far, far worse than that.
She was falling in love with him.
Perhaps she already had.
Tegan spent a good long time under a punishing ice-cold shower, and still his body was inflamed with thoughts of Elise. His skin was tight all over, dermaglyphs pulsing under the chilly pummel of the water. He braced his fists on the marbled tile wall in front of him, struggling against the urge that compelled him to stalk Elise into her guest room and finish what they’d started.
Christ, did he ever want to finish it.
His vision was still sharp from the dual hungers that both centered on one woman alone, his fangs throbbing, the long points not yet receded. He dropped his head with a deep, ragged sigh. This need for Elise was only getting worse, becoming a fever in his veins.
How long before his control snapped its flimsy tether and he sealed their sham of a blood bond? And if he allowed himself to have a taste of something as sweet as Elise, how could he be sure his thirst wouldn’t rise up to rule him again?
It was that much harder to resist, knowing that Elise would so willingly offer herself to him, even without the promises of love and devotion that any male would be privileged to give her. She had been ready to let him take so much for so little in return. It humbled him.
It shamed him, because he had been so damn close to taking her pretty wrist in his teeth…
With a roar, Tegan hauled his arm back and let his fist fly at the unyielding marble tile of the shower. The smooth polished square shattered on impact, breaking apart and crumbling down around his bare feet. Pain splintered into his hand and wrist, but he soaked it all in with relish, watching as droplets of his blood swirled down the shower drain.
No. Damn it, no.
He was stronger than this animal need he felt for Elise. He could resist it. He had to.
He’d only really known Elise for a handful of days and she was somehow under his skin, had somehow managed to break down some of the protective walls it had taken him several lifetimes to construct. He could not permit things to escalate between them.
And he wouldn’t.
Even if he had to spend every spare moment out of her sight for the rest of their short stay in Berlin.
Tegan lifted his head and cut the water off with a curt flick of his mind. He stepped out of the shower and wrapped one of the thick black towels around his hips. As he entered his suite, he saw the message light blinking on his cell phone. He dialed in, hoping like hell he was going to hear orders from the compound that he was needed in Boston and had to return there without delay.
No such luck. Not that he should expect good fortune to provide him with any kind of assist. Fate had turned its back on him a long time ago.
Gideon’s message played on speaker, grim and concise: he’d gotten word that there was an inquiry made on the Order’s flight logs out of Logan airport. There was no mistaking that Marek was involved, probably soon to be in Berlin himself or, at the very least, tapping local contacts or sending out feelers to determine how much the Order knew, and what they intended to do with the knowledge.
Shit.
Now more than ever, Tegan was certain they were onto something big with Petrov Odolf and the journal Elise had intercepted from Marek’s courier. He didn’t need any more excuse than that to quickly towel off and get dressed for a few hours’ patrol of the city. With weapons strapped to his hips, thigh, and ankle, he grabbed his coat and headed down the estate’s main staircase.
Reichen was just strolling out of a mahogany-paneled study with a young Darkhaven couple as Tegan neared the foyer. The youthful male was blushing fiercely under a floppy lock of strawberry-blond hair, murmuring his thanks to Reichen for some favor recently granted, while his pretty redheaded Breedmate was beaming, her hands placed lovingly atop a very prominent pregnant belly.
“Congratulations to you both,” Reichen said in German. “I look forward to welcoming your fine, strong son once he arrives.”
“Thank you for agreeing to be godfather,” said the young woman. “You honor us well.”
She went up on her toes to place a kiss on Reichen’s cheek, then took her mate’s hand and the two of them hurried off, gazing at each other as if the world outside them didn’t exist.
“Ah, love,” Reichen said, glancing over at Tegan with a broad grin once the happy pair had departed. “May it never sling its barbed coils around either of us, eh?”
Tegan gave him a wry look, but at the moment he was fully in agreement with the cynical sentiment. He came off the last step and saw Reichen’s gaze travel to the hand that rested on the butt of a loaded, holstered Beretta. Raw scrapes and traces of blood marred Tegan’s knuckles from where his fist had chewed up the marble of the shower.
The German arched a dark brow.
“Had a little incident upstairs,” Tegan said. “I’ll pay you back for the damage.”
Reichen dismissed the offer with a cut of his hand. “I would be insulted if you tried. By my account, I am the one still in debt to you.”
“Forget it,” Tegan said, only slightly less uncomfortable with the gratitude than he was itchy to be out of the house where Elise was likely hating him now. “I need to go check things out in the city. We’ve had word of some activity coming out of Boston, which probably means trouble on the way over here.”
Reichen’s expression sobered. “I’ve heard there have been increased Rogue problems in your city. Is it true that there were dozens of them housed at the location the Order destroyed last summer?”
“We didn’t stop to count, but yeah. It was a large lair.”
The Darkhaven male swore softly. “Breed vampires gone Rogue aren’t exactly social creatures. To have so many in one place is troubling to say the least. You don’t suppose they were attempting to organize?”
“It’s possible,” Tegan said, knowing full well that was exactly what Marek was orchestrating. That is, before the Order had rolled out a C-4 welcome mat at the abandoned asylum where the bulk of Marek’s suckhead army had been headquartered.
“Tegan.” Reichen cleared his throat. “If you—or the Order—need anything at all from me, you have only to ask. I hope you know that. I would require no explanations whatsoever, and I assure you the Order would have my complete cooperation. And my trust.”
Tegan saw frank honesty in the Darkhaven male’s eyes, and a keen intelligence that seemed to say that for all his reckless charm and bravado, Andreas Reichen was not one to make frivolous gestures of alliance. If he offered his friendship, he offered his honor too.
“Consider my resources your own,” Reichen added, lowering his voice to a confidential, deadly serious level. “Men, money, arms, subterfuge, or intelligence…you name it. Whatever tools I have in my reach are available to you and the rest of the warriors.”
Tegan nodded his thanks. “You have to know, aligning yourself with the Order isn’t going to make you very popular among your Darkhaven peers, Reichen.”
“Perhaps not. But then who can stand the self-righteous bastards, anyway?” The German clapped Tegan on the shoulder. “Let me take you into town to meet someone. If you need information about any shady dealings, or movement taking place in Berlin’s underbelly, then you really must talk to Helene.”
“The female you were with earlier tonight?”
“Yes. She is a dear friend…with certain other benefits.” Reichen grinned. “She’s human, not Breedmate, in case you wondered.”
Tegan had been wondering, in fact. He hadn’t missed the healing bite mark on the woman’s throat as Reichen had kissed her good-bye at the curb, but he hadn’t detected any kind of blood scent on her. Nothing beyond the bland, coppery tang of basic Homo sapiens red cells.
And it hadn’t appeared that Reichen had scrubbed the woman’s mind after feeding from her either.
“She knows about you—about the Breed?”
Reichen nodded. “She can be trusted, I assure you. I’ve known her for many years, and we are business partners in her club as well. She has never betrayed my trust. She won’t betray yours either.”
Reichen smoothed his hair back at his temples, then gestured for the mansion’s front door. “Come. Let me make some introductions for you.”
A short while later, Tegan found himself seated in a plush red velvet booth inside a high-end brothel called Aphrodite. The place was swank and expensive, an adult playground filled with beautiful women, sumptuous furnishings, and a host of assorted pleasures to be had at a price firmly negotiated up front. Tegan watched with mild disinterest as more than one small orgy was under way in full public view.
The clientele at the club was almost exclusively human, with the exception of Reichen, who was evidently no stranger to the establishment. He sat across from Tegan in the large booth, his fingers toying idly along the shapely arm of Aphrodite’s proprieter, the stunning Helene. More than one of her girls had come around to have a look at Tegan. He’d been offered drinks, food, company, and quite a few temptations not found on the club’s general menu.
As the last beautiful prostitute sashayed away from them on her teetering high heels, Helene shot him a slight frown. “If you have specific personal tastes, I’m sure I can make arrangements to accommodate you.”
Tegan shifted on the soft velvet seat. His personal tastes had narrowed down to one female alone, and she was back at Reichen’s estate, probably wishing she’d never met him. “I appreciate the offer,” he told Helene, “but I didn’t come here to get laid.”
“We were hoping you might be willing to help keep us informed of any…unusual activity taking place in the city,” Reichen added. “It would require your total confidence, of course.”
“Naturally,” she said, nodding in shrewd agreement. “Are we talking about keeping an eye on unusual human activity or something else?”
“Both,” Tegan said. Since Reichen had obviously made her aware of the vampire nation and trusted her to keep the secret, Tegan didn’t see any point in mincing words. “We’ve been seeing an increase in our Rogue population back in the States. We think we know where it’s coming from, but there’s a good chance some of those problems may come to roost here in Berlin. If you hear anything out of the ordinary at all, you need to make us aware.”
The human female inclined her chin. “You have my word.”
She held out her hand to Tegan and he took the opportunity to read the woman’s emotions. His touch told him instantly that there was nothing dishonest in her intent. She meant what she’d said, and her word was good.
Tegan released her and leaned back as one of her employees came up to the table. “One of my clients has had too much to drink,” the young woman complained. “He’s getting loud and unruly.”
Helene’s smile was serene, but her eyes were as sharp as laser beams locking on to a target. “Will you excuse me? Duty calls.”
She got up from the booth and smoothly motioned for one of the many bouncers to accompany her. When she had gone, Reichen lifted a brow at Tegan. “She’s charming, don’t you think?”
Tegan grunted. “She has her appeal, I suppose.”
Reichen narrowed his gaze on him now. “I’m curious. Is celibacy something all of the Order adheres to?”
The question drew Tegan’s head up sharply. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve just watched you turn away about a dozen flawless women who would have prostrated themselves at your feet for the chance to please you. No man has that kind of control. Unless—” The Darkhaven male chuckled. “Unless the rumors circulating at the reception the other night are actually true. Is there something going on between you and the lovely Elise Chase? Something beyond the business that brought both of you to my city?”
“There’s nothing going on between us.” Or at least there shouldn’t be. And wouldn’t be, after the way things had gone tonight. “I have no claim on the female whatsoever.”
“Ah. I was out of line. Forgive me for suggesting,” Reichen said, obviously taking the hint from Tegan’s clipped tone that the matter was not open for discussion.
Tegan rose to his feet. “I’m out of here.”
He was suddenly itching to be outdoors on patrol, away from the open carnality of the club. And he didn’t trust himself to return to the estate with Reichen when all that would do was put him back in close proximity with Elise.
“Don’t wait up,” he growled, then stalked out of the place and into the night outside.
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
Elise awoke just after dawn that next morning, following a fitful night of little sleep. Somewhere during the night, her survival instincts had kicked in and she realized that she could not stay any longer here with Tegan and hope to emerge with her heart intact. She had to leave Berlin and return home to Boston. The few belongings she had with her were packed into a small bag that sat near the door. She was showered and dressed, and had already called a taxi to come and take her to the airport.
She’d insisted on coming here with Tegan in the first place because of her vow to Camden primarily, and because she wanted to do her part to uncover whatever secrets might have been hidden in the old book that Marek had been so eager to have. But she was failing Camden—failing herself—every second she wasted on thoughts of Tegan and the hopelessness in imagining any sort of future with him.
She had accomplished what she’d come to Berlin to do: Petrov Odolf would be questioned, and the containment facility would be expecting Tegan again today, with or without Elise’s personal escort. Now her time would be better spent back home, where the Rogues and their leader still posed an immediate, deadly threat.
A knock sounded on her door, followed by the soft female voice of one of Reichen’s kin who lived in the Darkhaven. “Hello? I don’t mean to disturb you…“
“It’s all right. I’m awake. Come in.”
Elise crossed the room from the window, where she’d been pacing a track for the past several minutes. She opened the door, expecting to hear that her car had arrived. The young Breedmate waiting there smiled shyly and held out a cordless telephone.
“A call for you,” she said. “Will you take it?”
“Of course.” Elise put the phone to her ear as the other female retreated down the hall. “Hello? This is Elise Chase.”
There was a moment of silence before Petrov Odolf ’s mate spoke. “It’s Irina—we met yesterday at the containment facility?”
“Yes, of course. Is anything wrong?”
“No. No, nothing is wrong. I hope you don’t mind that I called. Director Kuhn told me where to find you…”
“Not at all.” Elise moved back inside her guest room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What can I do for you, Irina?”
“I found something today, and I am wondering if it might be of use to you.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I was putting some of Petrov’s things in storage and I found a shoebox containing some of his deceased brother’s personal effects. They’re mostly mundane…photographs, jewelry, some monogrammed desk items, that sort of thing. But at the bottom, I found some old handwritten letters wrapped in a folded piece of embroidery. Elise, these letters that Petrov’s brother was keeping…he must have spent weeks writing them, but they’re filled with nonsensical ramblings. I can’t be sure, but I think it might be the same odd things Petrov had begun writing in the time before he went Rogue.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Do you suppose the writings might be of some help to you?”
“I’d really like to see them to find out.” Excitement shot through Elise as she fished a pen and some paper out of her purse. “Would you be willing to let me have them?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I called.”
Elise glanced at her packed bag, biting her lower lip. She could leave for the States anytime. This potential new information was more important. “I can be in a taxi in just a few minutes, Irina. Give me your address and I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
A cream-colored Mercedes taxi idled at the end of the gated drive, which had been under Minion surveillance since dawn. From his vantage point several hundred yards away, concealed by the thick green of the surrounding forest and peering through high-powered binoculars, the Minion watched as a slender blond woman hurried out to meet the waiting car.
The bitch appeared to be a perfect match for the video image he’d gotten via e-mail from his Master. To be certain, he pulled the picture out of his jacket pocket and took another look. Yes, that was her all right.
The Minion smiled as the woman got into the taxi.
“Showtime,” he murmured, letting the binocs swing from the cord around his neck as he clambered down out of the tree where he’d been hiding.
He jogged over to his car, ditched on a narrow private lane nearby. He hopped in, turned the key, and rolled out after his quarry.
Irina Odolf lived in a small, tidy town house on a tree-lined residential street on the outskirts of Berlin’s west end. Elise was surprised, though not shocked, that the woman had decided to make her home outside the Darkhavens after losing her mate to Bloodlust. She likely would have done the same in her situation.
“There were just so many reminders of what I was missing after he was sent away,” Irina explained as she and Elise sat down for coffee in the sun-filled dining area. Glass doors shaded by vertical blinds overlooked the community’s snow-patched common courtyard that ran along the backs of the houses. “Petrov and I have many friends in our Darkhaven, but living there without him was too difficult. I suppose if he comes home—when he comes home,” she amended, idly smoothing the lacy edge of the tablecloth. “When he comes home, then we’ll return there and start our life over again.”
“I hope that day comes soon for you both, Irina.”
The Breedmate looked up with a teary-eyed smile. “So do I.”
Elise took a sip of her coffee, dimly aware of a slow pound building in her temples. It had been present since she got into the taxi that brought her here, a trip that had taken her through the center of the city, where the din of human thoughts had battered her through the metal and glass of the car. But she used the focus that Tegan had shown her, and the worst of her psychic pain had faded to a manageable level.
Being this close to a lot of humanity was certainly a test. Irina’s neighborhood was a tightly packed cluster of homes, with a steady stream of cars traveling up and down the street outside, bringing even more noise to the chatter filling her head.
And underneath the general rumble of discontent she was receiving, Elise detected something darker…just out of her reach.
“Would you like to see the letters?”
Irina’s voice snapped Elise back to attention. “Yes, of course.”
She followed the woman out of the dining room and into a cozy little den at the end of the hall. A man’s desk sat across from an inviting reading nook, the masculine furnishings impeccably polished and organized, as though awaiting the imminent arrival of their owner.
Irina motioned Elise over to the desk, where an open shoebox sat next to an old weaving that had been laid flat. A stack of folded papers rested on top. “Here they are.”
“May I?” Elise asked, reaching to pick up the collection of letters.
At Irina’s nod, she unfolded the first one and glanced at the page. It was filled with a hasty, violently uneven scrawl. The words were barely legible, written in what appeared to be Latin, by a hand that seemed guided by madness. Elise fanned through the other papers, finding more of the same on them.
“Do you think it means anything?”
Elise shook her head. “I can’t be sure. I’d like to show it to someone, though. You’re sure you don’t mind if I take these?”
“Do what you’d like. I have no use for them myself.”
“Thank you.”
Elise glanced at the weaving that lay on the desk. It was incredibly beautiful and obviously very old. She couldn’t resist tracing her finger over the intricate stitches of the medieval garden design. “This is lovely. The detail is incredible, like a painting done with a needle.”
“Yes, it is.” Irina smiled. “And whoever made it had an interesting sense of whimsy too.”
“How so?”
“I noticed it when the piece was wrapped around the stack of letters. Let me show you.”
She folded the square cloth diagonally, turning up one edge so that the designs on the lower left and upper right corners touched. At the place where they met, the delicate embroidery revealed the hidden shape of a teardrop falling into the basin of a crescent moon.
Elise laughed, delighted by the clever artistry of the work.
“The woman who made this was a Breedmate?”
“Apparently so.” Irina carefully smoothed it out again. “It must be from the Middle Ages, don’t you think?”
Elise couldn’t answer, even if she had a guess. At that instant, a lancing blast of pain sliced into her mind. It was pure menace, something deathly evil…and it was suddenly very close.
Inside the house.
“Irina,” she whispered. “Someone’s here.”
“What? What do you mean someone—”
She held up her hand to silence the woman, fighting through the mental assault as her mind filled with the violent thoughts of the intruder.
It was a Minion, sent on a mission to kill.
“We have to get out of here right now.”
“Get out of here? But I don’t—”
“You have to trust me. He’ll kill us both if he finds us.”
Irina’s eyes went wild with fright. She shook her head. “There’s no way out from back here. Only the window—”
“Yes. Hurry! Open it and get yourself out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
Elise silently closed the room’s door, then dragged the bulky leather chair in front of it while Irina worked on opening the ground floor window. The Minion was quiet in his stealth as he prowled farther into the town house looking for his prey, but the savagery of his thoughts betrayed him as loudly as a screaming alarm.
He’d been sent by his Master to kill her, but he meant to drag things out. Make her bleed. Make her scream. That’s what he enjoyed the most about his job.
And he was almost giddy with the idea that he’d get to exercise his perversions on two women instead of just the one.
Oh, God, Elise thought, revulsion surging up the back of her throat.
She called upon the power of Tegan’s blood inside her and her own determination, working furiously to focus through the chilling knowledge of what was stalking toward her up the hallway.
“The window lock is stuck,” Irina gasped, struggling in her panic. “It won’t open!”
That worried shriek drew the Minion like a beacon. Heavy footsteps pounded toward the end of the hallway now. Elise grabbed a thick book from a shelf and ran to Irina’s side, smashing the heavy binding against the window casement to loosen the sticky lock.
“There it goes,” Elise said as the mechanism finally gave way. She dropped the book and pushed the glass aside, then knocked out the screen and let it fall to the ground below. “Climb out, Irina. Go now!”
She felt the Minion bearing down on the room where they hid. His thoughts were malicious, black with menace. She heard his guttural roar the instant before he threw himself at the door. He came at it again, then again. The hinges screamed with the impact, the frame splitting as he came at the thing again with the force of a battering ram.
“Elise!” Irina shrieked. “Oh, my God! What’s going on?”
She didn’t answer. There was no time. Elise lunged for the letters, but as she pivoted with them toward the window and her only hope of escape, the Minion shoved the door open wide enough for him to heave into the room. He threw the obstructing chair out of his way and came at her, brandishing a dreadful-looking hunting blade in his hand. He snarled, and the stretch of his features gave prominence to a vicious scar that cut down his forehead and onto his right cheek. The cloudy eye in the path of that scar was gleaming with malice.
“Don’t run away so soon, ladies. We’re going to have a little fun.”
Hard fingers clamped around Elise’s neck before she could dodge the Minion’s reach. He shoved her onto the surface of the desk and leaned over her. Slapped her so hard with the back of his big hand that her vision swam and the whole side of her face rang with pain. With a powerful drive of his arm, he planted the tip of the blade into the wood next to her head, missing her by a deliberate, scant inch.
His grin was full of sadistic humor as his fingers closed tighter on her neck. “Play nice and maybe I’ll let you live,” he lied.
Elise kicked and twisted, but his grip was unrelenting. With her free hand, she cast about for anything to use as a weapon. The shoebox tipped on the desk, spilling its odd collection of cuff links, pictures…and a pearl-handled letter opener. Elise tried not to call attention to her find, but she was determined to get hold of it.
“Let her go!” Irina shouted.
“You’d better not move,” the Minion growled, glancing up at her in warning. “That’s right, bitch. You stay put, or your friend here is going to eat steel.”
Elise closed her eyes as Irina sobbed at the window, paralyzed by terror. But in the moment the Minion was distracted, Elise’s fingers closed around the hilt of the letter opener. She knew it would be a sorry match against the knife her attacker had, but it was better than nothing at all.
The second she got a firm grip, Elise brought the makeshift weapon up in a sweeping arc. It struck the Minion in the side of his neck.
The deep puncture sent him rearing up off her with a howl, his fingers clutching at the bleeding wound. Elise didn’t realize he had gone for his own knife until he drove it toward her. She rolled away, narrowly escaping his clumsy, irate strike.
The Minion stumbled a bit, pressing his hand to his neck and looking dazed as the front of his shirt went red with spilled blood.
“You fucking bitch!”
He barreled toward her again, throwing his weight at her and knocking her to the floor. Elise thrashed in an effort to get out from under him, but he was a big man and he was furious now. She managed to roll over onto her back, the letter opener still clutched hard in her hand, trapped between the Minion’s arm and ribs.
She saw his knife come up near her face.
“No,” she gasped, sick with the weight of him and the acrid stench of his spilling blood. “Damn it, no!”
With a blind stab, she stuck the Minion with the letter opener. It went into his ribs, another deep wound that sent him yowling in pain. He reared back, choking and wheezing, giving Elise the chance to get away from him.
“Oh, God,” Irina gasped, staring in abject horror. “What’s going on? Who is that man? What does he want with us?”
“Irina, get out now!” Elise cried, grabbing the letters and shoving the other woman toward the open window.
They both hurried out, landing on the frozen grass below. Elise saw the Minion sitting on the floor inside, pale with shock and going nowhere fast. But she didn’t dare relax for a second.
“We have to get out of here, Irina. Do you have a car?”
The woman said nothing, her face going as pale as the snow outside. Elise took her shoulders and met her stricken gaze.
“Do you have a car, Irina? Can you drive?”
A glimmer of focus came back into her eyes. “What? Oh…yes…my car is parked over there. Next to the alley.”
“Then come on now. We have to go.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
Commotion in the foyer of the Darkhaven woke Tegan from a light doze in his guest room. Something was wrong. Really wrong. He heard Elise’s voice—heard the elevated pitch in her usually calm tone—and vaulted to his bare feet in an instant, all of his senses tripped to full alert.
Naked except for the pair of blue jeans he pulled on as he headed for the hall outside, he registered the muffled sounds of a female crying. Not Elise, thank God, but she was down there too, talking fast and clearly upset.
Tegan got to the staircase and glanced down to the open entryway of the estate. What he saw just about leveled him where he stood.
Elise, having just returned from somewhere outside, covered in blood.
Holy hell.
He rocked back on his heels, his stomach dropping like a stone to a vicinity somewhere around his knees. Elise was drenched in scarlet. The front of her clothes were stained deep red, as if someone had opened up her jugular.
Except it wasn’t her blood, he realized as the metallic odor of it drifted up to fill his nostrils. It was someone else’s blood—a human.
The relief he felt in that moment was profound.
Until a desperate brand of anger set in.
He put his fists on the railing and swung his legs over, dropping to the floor of the foyer on a tight-bitten curse. Elise hardly glanced at him as he stalked toward her, his body shaking with the depth of his fury. But all her focus was on stricken, incoherent Irina Odolf, who had collapsed onto an upholstered bench near the front door.
Reichen came in from the kitchen carrying a glass of water. He handed it to Elise.
“Thank you, Andreas.” She turned and offered the drink to the sobbing Breedmate. “Here you go, Irina. Drink a little of this if you can. It will make you feel better.”
Tegan couldn’t see anything wrong with the other woman aside from shock. Elise, however, looked like she’d just come in from the front lines. A livid bruise ran along her jaw and up the side of her cheek. “What the hell happened? And what the fuck were you doing outside of this Darkhaven?”
“Drink,” Elise coaxed her charge, all but ignoring Tegan. “Andreas, do you have a quiet room where Irina can lie down for a while?”
“Yes, of course,” Reichen replied. “There’s a sitting room here on the first floor.”
“Thank you. That should be fine.”
Tegan watched Elise taking control with a gentle command that came so easily to her. He had to admire her strength in the midst of obvious crisis, but damn it, he was fuming. “You want to explain why you’re standing here bruised and bathed in blood?”
“I went to see Irina this morning,” Elise replied, still not troubling herself to meet his angry gaze. “A Minion must have followed me—”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He broke into Irina’s town house and attacked us. I took care of it.”
“You took care of it,” Tegan said darkly. “What happened? Did you fight with the son of a bitch? Did you kill him?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t wait around to find out.”
She took the glass of water away from Irina, who wasn’t drinking much anyway, and set it down on the floor. “Are you able to stand up now?” she asked the woman, her voice caring and concerned. When the Breedmate nodded, Elise took her under the arm and helped her to her feet. “We’re going to walk you to another room where you can rest, all right?”
“Allow me,” Reichen said, smoothly moving in and taking Irina’s slack weight onto himself. He gingerly guided her out of the foyer, toward a pair of open double doors off the grand entrance.
When Elise started to follow them, Tegan reached out and caught her by the hand. “Elise. Wait.”
Given little choice, she paused. Then she blew out a slow sigh and turned to face him. “I really don’t need your disapproval right now, Tegan. I’m exhausted, and I want to get out of these awful clothes. So, if you plan on lecturing me, it’s going to have to wait—”
He pulled her to him and she fell silent as his arms went around her in a fierce embrace.
He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t speak. His chest was constricted with an emotion he didn’t want to acknowledge, but could hardly deny. It wrenched him, pressing like a vise around his heart.
Ah, fuck.
Elise might have been killed today. She’d managed to get away, sure, but she’d been in serious danger with that Minion and there was always the very good chance that things would end badly.
He might have lost her while he slept. When she’d been out of his reach, and he’d been unable to protect her.
The thought hit him hard.
So unexpectedly deep.
All he could do right now was hold on to her. Like he never wanted to let her go.
Elise had expected anger from Tegan. Perhaps arrogant male censure. She couldn’t have been more shocked to feel his arms holding her tight.
Good Lord, was he actually trembling?
She stood in the warm, strong cage of his embrace, and felt some of her edgy tension begin to break. The bone-deep fear she’d refused to let herself feel until now started to pour into her limbs. She leaned into Tegan’s welcome strength, bringing her hands up to rest against the hard muscles of his bare back, her unhurt cheek lying on the smooth plane of his chest.
“There are some papers,” she finally managed to say. “Petrov Odolf ’s brother wrote a bunch of letters. I thought they might be important. That’s why I went out to see Irina.”
“I don’t care about that.” Tegan’s voice was thick, vibrating against her ear. His fingertips pressed into her shoulders as he brought her away from him and stared down into her eyes. That gem-green gaze was penetrating, so intensely serious. “Jesus Christ, I don’t care about any of that right now.”
“It could mean something, Tegan. There are some strange verses…”
He shook his head, scowling now. “It can wait.”
He reached out and wiped at an apparent smudge on her chin. Then he tilted her face up to his. He stared at her for a long moment before he kissed her.
It was brief and tender, filled with a sweetness that robbed Elise of her breath.
“Everything else can wait for now,” he said quietly, a dark ferocity in his voice. “Come with me, Elise. I want to take care of you now.”
He led her by the hand, out of the foyer and up the main staircase to her guest room on the second floor. She walked inside with him, paused as he turned to close the door behind them. He glanced down to where her packed bag sat on the floor. When he looked back at her, there was a question in his eyes.
“I had been planning to leave Berlin today. I was going to go back to Boston.”
“Because of me?”
She shook her head. “Because of me. Because I’m confused about a lot of things, and I’m losing focus on what matters. The only thing that should matter—”
“Your vengeance.”
“My promise, yes.”
Tegan came to stand in front of her, his broad chest filling her vision, radiating a warmth she wanted so badly to feel against her again. She closed her eyes as he began carefully unbuttoning her bloodstained blouse. He peeled the sticky silk off her body and let it drop to the floor.
Maybe she should have felt awkward or at least resistant, allowing him to undress her after the awful way things had gone between them last night. But she was sickened by the gore on her clothes, and there was a shaking, distressed part of her that welcomed Tegan’s care. His touch was protective, not sexual, all steady strength now. Capable and compassionate.
Her ruined pants went next, along with her socks and shoes. And then she was standing before him in just her bra and panties.
“The Minion’s blood soaked through to your skin,” he said, frowning as he ran his hand over her marred shoulder and down along the line of her arm. In the adjoining bathroom, the shower turned on. “I’ll wash it off you.”
She walked with him into the spacious bath suite, saying nothing as he gingerly removed the last of her clothing.
“Come on,” he said, guiding her around the wall of mottled glass bricks that separated the large shower area from the rest of the room.
Warm steam rolled around them as they neared the spray.
“You’re getting all wet,” Elise said when Tegan strolled in ahead of her without taking off his jeans.
He merely shrugged. Water sluiced all over him, into his tawny hair and down the thick, banded muscles of his shoulders and arms. Cascading rivulets ran over the beautiful lines of his dermaglyphs, and onto the darkening denim that covered his long, powerful legs.
She looked at him and felt as if she were seeing him with fresh eyes…seeing him for the first time. There was no mistaking what he was—a solitary, deadly male, trained to kill and nearly perfect in his apathy. But there was a stunning vulnerability about him as he stood in front of her now, soaking wet, his hand extended out to her in kindness.
And if the warrior in him gave her pause before, this new vision of him was even more unnerving.
It made her want to run into his arms and stay there, forever if she could.
“Step under the water with me, Elise. I’ll do the rest.”
She felt her feet moving beneath her, her fingers coming to rest in the warm center of Tegan’s palm. He brought her into the soft rain of the shower. Smoothed her hair back from her face as they both became drenched together.
Elise melted into the warm water and the even greater heat of Tegan’s body brushing against hers. She let him soap her skin and shampoo her hair, glad for his comforting touch after the ugliness of her day.
“Feel good?” he asked as he rinsed her off, the low vibration of his voice traveling through his fingertips and into her skin and bones.
“It feels wonderful.”
Too much so, she thought. When she was with Tegan, especially like this, he made her forget about her pain. He made it all too easy to accept the void that had existed for so long in her heart. His tenderness could make her feel so full, pushing away all the darkness. Right now, as he caressed her and held her so safely in his arms, he made her feel loved.
He made it far too tempting to imagine a future where she could be happy again. Whole again, with him.
“I’m failing in my promise to my son,” she said, forcing herself to draw away from the comfort of Tegan’s touch. “All I should be concerned about is making sure Camden’s death wasn’t in vain.”
Something flashed in his eyes, only to be shuttered an instant later by the fall of his spiked, wet lashes. He reached behind her and shut off the water. “You can’t spend your life living for the dead, Elise.”
Reaching above her, he grabbed a folded towel from the supply stacked on a high shelf built into the marble of the shower. When he passed the towel to her, Elise met his gaze. The hauntedness reflecting there took her aback.
There was a bleakness staring back at her. The pain of an old wound, not yet healed.
She’d never noticed it before…because he’d never allowed her to see it.
“You blame yourself for what happened to your mate, don’t you?”
He stared at her for a long, quiet minute, and she was certain he would give her an aloof denial. But then he exhaled a hushed curse, ran his fingers through the wet hair at his scalp. “I couldn’t save her. She depended on me to keep her safe, but I failed her.”
Elise’s heart stumbled a beat in her chest. “You must have loved her very much.”
“Sorcha was a sweet girl, the most innocent person I’ve ever known. She didn’t deserve the death she was given.”
Elise wrapped the towel around herself as Tegan sat down on the marble bench that ran the length of the shower stall. His thighs were spread, his elbows resting on his knees.
“What happened, Tegan?”
“After her abduction, some two weeks later, her captors sent her back to me. She’d been raped, tortured. As if that hadn’t been cruel enough, whoever held her also fed on her. She came back to me a Minion of the one who brutalized her.”
“Oh, God. Tegan.”
“Sending her back like that was worse than killing her, but I guess they left that task to me. I couldn’t do it. In my heart, I knew she was gone, but I couldn’t end her life.”
“Of course not,” she assured him gently, her heart breaking for him.
Elise closed her eyes on a softly whispered prayer as she eased down onto the bench next to him. She didn’t care if he rejected her compassion; she needed to be close to him. He had to know that he wasn’t alone.
When she put her hand on his bare shoulder, he didn’t flinch away. He pivoted his head to the side, meeting her sympathetic gaze. “I tried to make her better. I thought if I drew enough of her blood away and gave her my own in return—if I could feed her from my veins and siphon off the poison in hers—maybe by some miracle she’d revive. So, I fed to feed her. I went on a blood rampage that lasted for weeks. I had no control. I was so consumed by guilt and the need to make Sorcha better that I didn’t even notice how quickly I was slipping toward Bloodlust.”
“But you didn’t slip, did you? I mean, you must not have, to be sitting here now.”
He laughed sharply, a coarse, bitter sound. “Oh, I slipped all right. I fell, like all addicts do. Bloodlust would have turned me Rogue if it hadn’t been for Lucan. He stepped in, and put me in a stone cell to wait the disease out. For several months, I nearly starved, feeding in only the smallest quantities needed to keep me breathing. Most of those days, I prayed for death.”
“But you survived.”
“Yeah.”
“And Sorcha?”
He shook his head. “Lucan did for her what I wasn’t man enough to do. He freed her from her suffering.”
Elise’s heart lurched with understanding. “He killed her?”
“It was an act of mercy,” Tegan answered tightly. “Even though I hated him for it all these past five hundred years since. In the end, Lucan showed her far more compassion than I was able to. I would have kept her alive only to save myself from suffering the guilt of her death.”
Elise smoothed her palm over Tegan’s strong back, moved by his confession and by the love that had been taken from him so long ago. She had thought him cold and unfeeling, but it was only because he hid his emotions well. His wounds went deeper than she could ever have guessed. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, Tegan. I understand now. I understand…so much now.”
“Do you?”
The bleak, narrowed gaze that met her eyes was penetrating in its intensity.
“When I saw you downstairs, covered in blood—” He broke off abruptly, as if unable to form the words. “Ah, fuck…I never wanted to feel that kind of fear and pain again, do you understand? I didn’t want to let myself get that close to anyone again.”
Elise looked at him in silence, hearing his words, yet uncertain he could actually mean them. Did he really mean to say that he cared for her?
His fingers were a feather-light brush against the dull throb of her bruised cheek. “I do care,” he said, a quiet reply in answer to the question he’d read with his touch. He brought her under the shelter of his arm, just holding her, his thumb idly stroking her arm. “With you, I think it would be very easy to care too much, Elise. I’m not sure that’s a risk I can afford to take.”
“You can’t…or you won’t?”
“There’s no difference. Just semantics.”
Elise leaned her head against his shoulder. She didn’t want to hear this now. Didn’t want to let him go. “So, where does that leave us now? Where do we go from here, Tegan?”
He didn’t say anything one way or the other, just held her close and pressed a tender kiss to her brow.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
The rest of that day passed in a blur of tactics and information gathering. At sundown, Reichen had sent a couple of his associates out to Irina Odolf ’s residence. The report had come back that the Minion was gone, evidently on his own motor, even though Elise had certainly slowed the bastard down based on the amount of blood he’d left at the scene.
Armed with her description of him, Reichen was already in town looking for possible leads. Tegan hoped like hell they located the Minion son of a bitch because he was looking forward to finishing what Elise had started.
As for her, as much as Tegan might have liked to have kept Elise in his arms—or, better still, naked in his bed—he knew it was a path that would only lead him deeper into complicated territory. Instead, he had turned his attention to the journal they’d intercepted from Marek, and the stash of letters Elise had recovered from Petrov Odolf ’s belongings.
Both contained instances of the same peculiar phrases:
castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon
to the borderlands east turn your eye
at the cross lies truth
It was a riddle of some sort, but what it meant—if it meant anything at all—remained to be seen.
Petrov Odolf didn’t seem to understand it either, despite the fact that his Breedmate said he’d been scribbling those very words compulsively in the time leading up to his turning Rogue. Like his brother before him had as well.
And like who it was that once owned the old journal with Dragos’s dermaglyphic symbol scribbled onto its pages.
Now Tegan stood across the containment cell from Petrov Odolf, eyeing the restrained Rogue with precious little patience. He and Elise had been at the facility for the past hour, getting exactly nowhere in their continued round of questioning with Odolf.
His medication had been reduced, so at least the Rogue was conscious, but he was far from lucid. Strapped into a free-standing, vertical steel-mesh body cage, his muscular arms bound down at his sides, feet shackled together, Petrov Odolf looked every bit the dangerous beast he was. His big head sagged down on his chest, glowing amber eyes shifting back and forth across the cell without focus. He snorted and grunted through his elongated fangs, then began another round of futile struggle against his restraints.
“Tell us what it means,” Tegan said, talking over the racket of clanging metal and mindless animal snuffling. “Why were you and your brother both writing these phrases?”
Odolf didn’t answer, just kept fighting his bonds.
“‘Castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon,’” Tegan recited. “‘To the borderlands east turn your eye.’ Is this a location? What does it mean to you, Odolf? What did it mean to your brother? Does the name Dragos mean anything to you?”
The Rogue shook and strained until his face looked like it was going to explode. He tossed his head back and forth, snarling furiously.
Tegan blew out a frustrated sigh and turned to face Elise. “This is a fucking waste of time. He’s not going to be any use to us.”
“Let me try,” she said.
When she moved forward, Tegan didn’t miss the fact that Odolf ’s feral gaze tracked her across the room. The Rogue’s nostrils flared as his blood-addicted body worked to get her scent.
“Don’t go near him,” Tegan warned her, regretting the fact that he’d promised Elise he wouldn’t use his weapons on the Rogue except as a last resort. His first line of attack was an emergency syringe of sedative given to him by Director Kuhn. “That’s far enough, Elise.”
She paused several feet away from the Rogue. When she spoke, her voice was soft with patience and compassion.
“Hello, Petrov. My name is Elise.”
Elliptical pupils narrowed even farther in the center of Odolf ’s amber eyes. He was still panting from exertion, but some of his struggling eased as his focus locked on to Elise.
“I met Irina. She’s very nice. And she loves you very much. She told me how much you mean to her, Petrov.”
Odolf went still in his tight cage. Elise took a step closer. Tegan growled a warning, and although she stopped, she didn’t acknowledge his concern.
“Irina’s worried about you.”
“Not safe,” Odolf murmured, almost imperceptibly.
“What’s not safe?” Elise asked gently. “Is Irina not safe?”
“Nobody’s safe.” The big head shook back and forth as if caught in a seizure. When it passed, Odolf peeled his lips back off his huge fangs and dragged in a deep breath of air. “At the cross lies truth,” he muttered on the exhale. “‘Turn your eye…turn your eye.”
“What does it mean, Petrov?” Elise read the entire passage back to him. “Can you explain it to us? Where did you hear this? Did you read it somewhere?”
“‘Castle and croft shall come together,’” he repeated. “‘To the borderlands east, turn your eye…’”
Elise moved forward another half-pace. “We’re trying to understand, Petrov. Tell us what you know. It could be very important.”
He grunted, his head going back on his shoulders, tendons stretching tight in his neck. “‘Castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon…To the borderlands east turn your eye…At the cross lies truth.’”
“Petrov, please,” Elise said. “We need you to help us. Why isn’t it safe? Why do you think nobody is safe?”
But the Rogue wasn’t hearing her now. With his eyes squeezed shut, head tipped back, he whispered the nonsensical phrases over and over again, a rapid, breathless stream of insanity.
Elise glanced back at Tegan. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is a waste of time.”
He was about to agree when Odolf suddenly began to snicker. His mouth spread wide, he dropped his head down and started whispering in a voice so small Tegan could barely hear it. He caught bits and pieces of the riddle, then Odolf blinked and it was as if a crystal clarity settled in his mind.
In a completely rational, coherent voice, he said: “That’s where he’s hiding.”
Tegan’s blood ran cold. “What did you say? That’s where who’s hiding—Marek?”
“Hiding away.” Odolf chuckled, already slipping back into his madness. “Hiding, hiding…‘at the cross lies truth.’”
Once again, Tegan considered the glyph they’d found in the journal. The Breed line it belonged to was long extinct. But then again, maybe Marek wasn’t the only one to come back from what had been merely a presumed death. “Is this about Dragos? Is he alive?”
Odolf shook his head, eyes falling serenely closed. He launched into another chorus of the riddle, murmuring it in a maddening, singsong voice.
“Goddamn it!” Tegan growled, stalking right up next to the cage. “Is Dragos in hiding somewhere? Are he and Marek allied in some way? Have they been plotting something together?”
Odolf kept chanting, unresponsive now. Not even when Tegan grabbed hold of the metal box he was in and gave it a hard shake did Odolf show any indication of awareness. The Rogue had mentally checked out.
“Shit.” Tegan raked a hand through his hair. In his coat pocket, his cell phone vibrated with an incoming call. He flipped it open and barked into the receiver: “Yeah.”
“Any progress?” It was Reichen.
“Not much.”
Behind him in the cage, Petrov Odolf was snapping at the air, growling and cursing. No point in lingering any longer. Tegan gestured for Elise to follow him out of the Rogue’s holding cell and into the adjacent observation room.
“We’re just wrapping up,” he told Reichen. “Did you get anything on the Minion?”
“Yes, we have something. I’m at Aphrodite with Helene. She’s seen the man in here before once or twice. Had some trouble with him, in fact.” Reichen cleared his throat, hesitating. “He, ah, apparently works for a blood club here in the city, Tegan. Probably supplies women for it.”
“Jesus.” He looked at Elise, his veins going tight at the thought of her being anywhere near trafficking scum like that. Blood clubs among the Breed, while illegal, had once been the preferred entertainment of a certain class of vampire. They catered to the bored and affluent, and those with appetites that tended to run toward the cruel. “Any idea where I might find this place?”
“Naturally, to avoid unwanted attention, the clubs seldom meet in the same location. Helene has already put out feelers for you. She’ll probably have something back within the hour.”
“I’m on the way now.”
“What’s going on?” Elise asked as he snapped the cell phone closed and slid it back into his coat.
“I have to meet one of Reichen’s contacts in the city. She has some intel on the Minion who attacked you today.”
Elise’s fine brow arched. “She?”
“Helene,” Tegan said. “She’s a human friend of Reichen’s. You saw her last night when we picked him up outside her club, Aphrodite.”
Elise’s look said she remembered very well the half-naked woman who walked Reichen to the curb. “All right, then,” she said with a quick nod. “Let’s go talk to her.”
Tegan reached out to catch her arm as she started to walk out to the corridor. “I’m not taking you to Helene’s club, Elise. I could drop you back at the Darkhaven—”
“Why?” Elise shrugged, unconcerned. “I’m not afraid to go to a nightclub.”
Raw images of what Tegan had seen at Aphrodite the night before came back to him in vivid detail. “It’s, uh, not that kind of club. You wouldn’t be comfortable there. Trust me.”
Her eyes widened in understanding. “Are you telling me it’s a brothel?”
He didn’t answer right away, not that she needed him to spell anything out for her. He watched her absorb the idea, her brow creasing in a slight frown. “Have you been there?”
Tegan lifted his shoulder slightly, wondering why the hell he felt bad about admitting it. “Reichen took me there to meet Helene last night.”
“Last night,” she said, her pale purple eyes narrowing on him. “Last night, you went out to a brothel…after we…oh. Okay. I see.”
“It’s not what you think, Elise.”
He had the sudden absurd impulse to assure her that nothing had happened while he was at Aphrodite, but Elise didn’t seem interested in hearing any excuses. With brisk movements, she put on her coat and started buttoning it up.
“I think I’m ready to go now, Tegan.”
He fell in step beside her as she headed up the corridor. “I shouldn’t be long with Reichen. Once I finish up, I’ll come back to the Darkhaven and we can try to make sense out of what little we got from Odolf tonight.”
Elise turned a level look on him. “We can talk about that on the way to Aphrodite,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
He met her unwavering stare and exhaled a defeated chuckle. “Suit yourself then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Despite living a sheltered existence in the Darkhavens, Elise had never considered herself a prude. But walking with Tegan into the private back entrance of Aphrodite gave her an instant education in eroticism.
They were let in by a huge, muscle-bound man in a dark, tailored suit. He wore a wireless communication device on his ear, with a small microphone that extended near his goatee-rimmed mouth. He spoke into the mic, presumably advising his employer that her guests had arrived, as he escorted Tegan and Elise through the main floor of the club.
Festooned in bright carnival colors, with polished brass fixtures and sumptuously appointed furnishings, the lounge and bar area was a visual feast. Beautiful nude women reclined on animal-print sofas, some of them entertaining a male client or two in full view of all. Still others performed together, kissing and caressing one another as men wearing silk robes or sauna towels watched with rapt, heated stares.
On another cushioned nest near the bar, a man was being serviced by four women at once. Elise could hardly keep from gaping at the erotic tangle of tanned arms and legs. Even over the soft, pumping beat of the music pouring in through the overhead speakers, she could hear the slap of skin meeting skin, and the pleasured moans and hoarse shouts of release coming from practically every corner of the lounge.
Surrounded by so much humankind, Elise weathered the low drone of her talent, which stirred to life as soon as they entered the club. Fortunately, most of the input hitting her was of a lustful nature, some of it graphically so, but nothing disturbing enough to cause true pain.
She remembered Tegan’s coaching and reached with her mind for one of the least offensive voices that was filling her head. She brought it forward, using it to damper the others as she made her way through the place.
When she braved a glance at Tegan, she found him staring at her. If he noticed any of the public couplings taking place all around them, he didn’t seem fazed in the least. No, he seemed to be more interested in measuring her reaction. His gaze was hard, penetrating. His jaw seemed clamped tight enough to shatter his teeth.
The intensity of his look made her too warm inside. Elise blinked, glancing away. But glancing away from him meant seeing more of the club. More raw, pulsing sexuality, which only made her all the more aware of Tegan and the very vivid knowledge of how good their bodies felt together.
She couldn’t have been more relieved when their escort paused in front of an elevator bank and led them inside a waiting car.
They rode up to the fourth floor. The elevator opened into a glass-walled suite outfitted as both office and bedroom. Reichen stood up to greet them, rising from an elegant sprawl on the luxurious round bed. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned and hanging loose, his finely cut gray trousers showcasing his trim waist and smooth, muscular chest. The vampire’s dermaglyphs swirled over his pecs in winglike flourishes, drawing the eye to the masculine beauty of his form.
He seemed accustomed to being admired and merely smiled as Elise and Tegan strode into the room.
“I didn’t realize you would be accompanying Tegan here,” he said, gallantly taking Elise’s hand. “I hope you aren’t too shocked.”
“Not at all,” she said, hoping her discomfiture didn’t show.
Reichen brought her in front of the tall brunette Elise had seen him with the other night. The woman wore a simple yet sophisticated ivory sweater and pants outfit that looked like it belonged in a boardroom more than a brothel. Tonight her long raven-dark hair was swept up in a loose chignon, secured with a pair of gleaming, tortoiseshell chopsticks.
She was the picture of professionalism, a curious contrast to the live video feeds playing on flat-screen monitors mounted behind her on the wall of the office. While images of people on the main floor of the club writhed and bucked on-screen, the woman merely smiled pleasantly as Reichen and Elise paused in front of her.
“This is Helene,” Reichen said. “She owns the club, and she is also a trusted friend of mine.”
“Hello,” Elise said, offering her hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” came the accented purr in reply. Elise’s fingers were gripped in a firm yet feminine hold that echoed the confidence gleaming in Helene’s dark eyes. That self-assured gaze slid in Tegan’s direction and politely feigned unfamiliarity, a gesture that seemed for Elise’s benefit. “Hello and welcome to Aphrodite. Both of you.”
“Good to see you again, Helene,” Tegan said, his tone cutting through all pretense. “Reichen tells me you have some intel.”
“Yes, I do.”
The woman picked up on Tegan’s all-business tone and reached for a laptop computer that sat on her desk. She opened it and typed something on the keyboard. Behind her, one of the wall-mounted video screens went black, then came back on with a freeze-framed surveillance image of a man seated at the club’s bar downstairs. The scar down the Minion’s face identified him instantly.
“That’s him,” Elise said. She could still feel his punishing hands on her, could still hear his ugly thoughts ringing in her ears.
“He came here only a few times. He was a prick, very nasty to the girls. I banned him a couple of months ago. It wasn’t until later that I heard rumors of his involvement in the blood clubs.” Helene glanced over at Elise. “You were lucky today. I’m glad you gave him some pain.”
Elise didn’t feel any pride in what she’d done. But more than that, she inwardly shuddered at the mention of blood clubs. They were all but unheard of in Boston for many decades, due mostly to the Enforcement Agency’s crackdown on the illegal operations. Quentin had especially despised them as little better than organized sport where humans were the captive playthings of twisted members of the Breed. To think that she and Irina had been in arm’s reach of one of the suppliers for that kind of activity put a chill in her marrow.
Tegan’s hard gaze on her now told her that he didn’t like the idea any more than she did. “Do you have any leads on the area’s clubs? Anything on this guy’s associates, or someone who might know his name or where to find him?”
Helene nodded and typed something else into the laptop. “I have cultivated a few close friends among the police. Not surprisingly, this Minion is no stranger to the law.” She walked over to a laser printer behind her desk and retrieved a sheet of paper as it came out of the machine. “I was able to get his most recent arrest record, which contains his name and last known address.”
“Beautiful and resourceful,” Reichen said approvingly as Helene passed the report to Tegan.
Elise watched Tegan drink in every detail of the report, his eyes narrowed, calculating. He glanced over at Reichen. “Will you see Elise back to the Darkhaven?”
“Of course. It will be my pleasure.”
“What are you going to do, Tegan?” Even as she asked the question, she knew his intentions. He was going out to kill the Minion who’d attacked her. She could see the warrior side of him locking in to place, its sights fixed on the target with deadly focus. “Tegan, just…be careful.”
He met her gaze for a long moment, then looked again to Reichen. “Get her out of here. I’ll meet you back at the Darkhaven when it’s finished.”
Elise wanted to throw her arms around him, but Tegan was already stalking toward the elevator, a solitary warrior with a single purpose. This was who he was, who he would always be.
She closed her eyes as he stepped inside the waiting car and the polished brass doors closed behind him. Her senses tracked him as he descended, her blood link to him warm and alive in her veins. It was the only part of him she could truly hold on to; she wasn’t sure he would ever let her close enough to have anything more.
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
Tegan crouched low on a rooftop, his eyes trained on a light-filled, curtainless window in the building next to him. The Minion had been on his cell phone for the past fifteen minutes. Judging from the speed his lips were moving and the look of worry on his distorted face, it appeared he was in the process of trying to talk his way out of some pretty serious shit. No doubt his Master was on the other end of the line, getting the unhappy news that his orders hadn’t been executed quite as planned.
Tegan’s mouth quirked as he watched the Minion squirm and pace his filthy, rathole apartment. The human’s neck was bound with thick gauze, a spot of blood coming through the white bandage where Elise had stuck the bastard. His bare chest was similarly doctored up and from the way he was clutching at his ribs as he spoke, Tegan guessed he was probably sporting a perforated lung as well.
Next to him, on a coffee table cluttered with porn magazines and empty beer bottles, was a blood-soaked shirt and open boxes of medical supplies. More cotton gauze, white surgical tape, even a used roll of suture filament and a bent sewing needle. Evidently he’d been busy with a little do-it-yourself first aid after he fled Irina Odolf ’s place that day.
Wasted effort, Tegan thought with grim satisfaction as the Minion abruptly ended his call and threw the cell phone down onto the table.
He disappeared into another room, then came out a second later, gingerly shrugging into a flannel shirt. He buttoned up, shoved the phone into the pocket of his jeans, then grabbed his coat and headed for the door.
Tegan was already on the pavement below by the time the Minion exited his building. He stepped into the human’s path and shoved the guy back with a sharp mental command.
“What the hell!” The Minion’s look of annoyance quickly bled into one of alarm when Tegan flashed him his fangs. “Oh, shit!”
He pivoted to run back into the building, but Tegan blocked him faster than the human’s eyes could follow. He reached out and grabbed the Minion by the throat, closing his fingers around the thick neck.
“Aagh!” the Minion cried, struggling and wheezing against the sudden choke hold.
“Yeah, that probably hurts,” Tegan said coolly. He squeezed harder, increasing pressure to allow only the smallest bit of air to pass into the Minion’s lungs. “Had a little trouble in town today, did you?”
“Let…go…”
Tegan’s touch told him of the Minion’s recollection of what happened at Irina Odolf ’s place. He read the Minion’s anger, his surprise at Elise’s retaliation, his disgusting intent to make her suffer for it deeply, had she not been able to get away from him.
“Who sent you after her?” Tegan demanded, all but certain on his own, but needing to hear it. “Who’s your Master, you sick fuck?”
“Piss off, vampire,” the Minion gasped, but inside he was panicking and in a great deal of pain. His mind surrendered the name to Tegan’s touch, even though his tongue refused to speak it.
Marek.
It came as little surprise to Tegan that Lucan’s brother owned this one. He wouldn’t doubt that the powerful vampire had a far-reaching network of human mind slaves at his disposal. God knew he’d had many long years to covertly lay the groundwork for whatever dark plan the deceptive son of a bitch was working on.
But it wasn’t anger at Marek that tightened Tegan’s grip on the Minion’s injured throat, as much as he wanted to tell himself he was just crippling one more leg of his enemy’s army. What filled Tegan’s mind as he choked the life out of the sorry excuse for a man was the cold knowledge that the human had put his hands on Elise.
For the fact that the Minion had enjoyed hurting her, Tegan intended to take his sweet time ending the bastard.
“Was the lamb not to your liking?”
Elise snapped back to attention and met Reichen’s gaze across the intimate restaurant table. “No, it’s delicious. Everything was just incredible, Andreas. You really didn’t have to do this.”
He made a casually dismissive gesture with his hand, but his smile was full of pride. “What kind of host would I be to let you go all day without a proper meal? It seemed only fitting that I treat you to one of the city’s finest dinners.”
They were seated together in a top-floor restaurant in one of Berlin’s most exclusive hotels. After learning Elise hadn’t eaten for several hours, Reichen had insisted they detour there after they’d left Helene’s club.
He wasn’t having anything, of course. Those of the Breed could only consume prepared food in the smallest quantities—a practice reserved for rare moments when a vampire found it necessary in order to pretend to be human.
Elise had hardly eaten either, despite the fact that the food and wine in front of her was nothing short of amazing. As hungry as she was, she had little appetite. She could hardly think of eating when Tegan was out there somewhere, fighting her battles.
Outside the window at her left, the nighttime city twinkled with life below. She looked out, letting her gaze wander over the tangle of milling pedestrians, rushing traffic, and the illuminated beauty of Brandenburg Gate.
None of the humans out there had the first clue about the war that was rising within the Breed. Few in the Darkhavens knew either. Those who were in a position to know of Rogue conflicts chose to turn a blind eye, trusting politics and protocol to keep things in their proper place. Everyone went about their lives, oblivious, comfortably ignorant, while Tegan and the other members of the Order dirtied their hands and risked their lives to maintain the fragile peace within the Breed and its dependent link to humankind.
She had been one of those sheltered many. When she looked across the table at handsome, sophisticated Reichen, she was reminded how easy her life had been before. She had lived in the cushioned lap of wealth and privilege as Quentin Chase’s mate. A part of her realized how easy it would be to return to that kind of existence, to pretend she’d never seen the terrible things she’d witnessed outside the Darkhavens these past several months, or done the terrible things she’d convinced herself she had to do in vengeance for Camden’s death.
A cowardly part of her wondered if it might not be too late to go back to her old life and forget she’d ever met the warrior called Tegan.
The answer came in the quickening of her pulse, a stirring that flared at just the thought of him.
Her blood would never forget him, no matter how far she ran. And neither would her heart.
“Would you prefer to try another dish?” Reichen asked, leaning over the table to touch her hand. “I can call the waiter over if you—”
“No. No, there’s no need for that,” she assured him, feeling rude and unappreciative of his kindness. Tegan probably didn’t need her concern. He certainly wouldn’t want it. She couldn’t turn off her feelings for him, but that didn’t mean she had to let them consume her. “Thank you for bringing me here, Andreas. I can’t remember the last time I had such wonderful food and wine. Quentin and I enjoyed nice dinners together, but since his death, I guess I never really saw any reason to go to the effort.”
Reichen gave her a mock scowl, as if he’d never heard a more preposterous thing. “There is always a reason to enjoy all of life’s pleasures, Elise. I personally do not believe in deprivation. Not in any shape or form.”
Elise smiled, knowing he was deliberately putting on the charm now. “With that kind of life philosophy, I’m betting that you have broken a lot of hearts in your time.”
“Only a few,” he admitted, grinning.
He lounged back in his seat, one arm slung over the back of the chair, his aristocratic profile etched in light by the warm glow of the candle flickering on the table. With his dark hair slipping loose of its queue, his tailored white shirt unbuttoned one more notch than was decent, Andreas Reichen had the look of an indulgent king surveying his subjects from atop his tower keep.
But there was a restless undercurrent to his practiced air of nonchalance, perhaps a trace of boredom. There was a cynical wisdom in his eyes that indicated for all his easy charm, the male had seen more darkness than he would ever let on.
Elise wondered if, despite his privilege and his obviously libertine ways, Andreas Reichen might have a bit of the warrior in him as well.
“What about Helene?” Elise couldn’t resist asking about the stunning female who wasn’t a Breedmate, yet seemed to know a great deal about the vampire nation due to her apparent relationship with Reichen. “Have you and she…known each other for a long time?”
“A few years. Helene is a friend. She is my blood Host on occasion, and we enjoy each other’s company, but it’s primarily a physical arrangement.”
“You’re not in love with her?”
He chuckled. “Helene would probably say that I love no one more than myself. Not altogether untrue, I suppose. I’ve just never met a woman who tempted me to want anything permanent. Then again, who would be mad enough to put up with me?” he asked, turning a dazzling smile on her that would have made any other woman leap up to volunteer for the task.
Elise took a sip of her wine. “I think you are a very dangerous man, Andreas Reichen. A woman would be well advised to guard her heart around you.”
He arched a brow at her, looking rakish and serious at the same time. “I would never want to break your heart, Elise.”
“Ah,” she said, tilting her glass at him in mock salute. “And now you have just further proved my point.”
Tegan arrived back at Reichen’s estate in a foul mood. The Minion who would have killed Elise was dead, and that was good enough news. But as he’d squeezed the last breath out of the human, Tegan had come away with two critical pieces of information.
The first, that Marek had given kill orders on Elise to several of his Minion contacts in and around Berlin. Which meant Tegan needed to get her the hell out of the city as soon as possible.
He was already putting that plan into motion. He’d just hung up with Gideon, who was going to see that the Order’s private jet was fueled and cleared for departure out of Tegel Airport in one hour.
The second thing he came away with tonight was that no matter how much he wanted to deny it, Elise mattered to him. She mattered in a way he could hardly fathom. He cared for her like his own kin—more than that, in fact—a truth that had been driven home pretty clearly when she’d come back after the Minion attack covered in blood. He respected her, not only for her courage, but for her strength. She was an extraordinary woman, far better than he could ever hope to deserve.
He wouldn’t even try to pretend that he could resist her. Walking with her into Helene’s club had nearly wrung him out. All he’d been able to think of was what he wanted to do with Elise. He’d caught her uncomfortable glance as they strolled through the place, and he hadn’t missed the fact that her breathing had kicked into a rapid beat, her pulse drumming loud enough for him to feel it as a vibration in his own body.
She couldn’t have known how badly he’d wanted to pull her into one of Aphrodite’s plush alcoves, strip her naked, and drive himself deep inside her soft, moist heat. Just thinking about it now gave him a massive hard-on.
And then there was the matter of their blood bond. That was easily the worst of it. As offended as he should be by the whole idea, he found himself looking forward to the next time Elise would take his vein to her mouth. He actually liked knowing that it was his blood making her strong, helping her cope with the psychic gift that had been slowly destroying her before.
His blood that would keep her alive close to forever if they completed their bond. All he’d have to do is drink from her, and they would be linked to each other inextricably.
Yeah, that was exactly what he wanted.
And what the fuck, he might as well admit it—to himself, at least.
He loved her.
Which brought him back to his current state of aggravation. He entered the Darkhaven, which was quiet except for the handful of residents who hadn’t gone out for the night. Tegan stood outside Elise’s guest room and knocked on the closed door. No response. He tried again, feeling like an idiot as one of the younger females approached from up the hallway.
“Good evening,” the woman said, smiling pleasantly.
Tegan nodded curtly and waited until she sauntered down the stairs to the main level of the mansion. He knocked one last time, then opened the door and went inside the empty room.
Where the hell was she? And where was Reichen? Why wouldn’t they have returned by now?
A tremor of dread snaked up Tegan’s spine.
Ah, Christ. If anything had happened to her…
He stalked to the pair of French doors that opened onto a small balcony overlooking the estate’s front grounds, intending what, he didn’t know. The blast of cold air braced him as he stepped outside and listened to the surrounding night.
If one of Marek’s human assassins had managed to find Elise while he was away—
Just then, Reichen’s sleek black Rolls-Royce limo came gently up the drive, making an elegant sweep as it came to rest outside the mansion’s main entrance.
Relief washed over Tegan as the driver came around and opened the rear passenger door. He helped Elise out, Reichen exiting directly behind her.
“Thank you again for dinner,” Elise said as Reichen strolled in front of her and offered his hand to help her up the mansion’s steps.
“It was my great pleasure. Truly.”
Something primitive and possessively male rose to attention at the intimate tone Reichen was using on Elise.
“Perhaps I could entice you to extend your stay in Berlin,” said the Darkhaven lord as he inched closer to her, his large frame towering over Elise and obscuring her from Tegan’s view. “I would very much like to get to know you better, Elise.”
Tegan could hardly contain his growl as Reichen reached out to touch her, then leaned down to deliver what was unmistakably a more than friendly kiss.
She didn’t draw back. She didn’t slap him or run away in outrage.
And why should she?
Tegan hadn’t given her any reason not to consider other males. No, he’d practically shoved her into Reichen’s arms. He should be relieved that she might look elsewhere for a mate. He sure as hell was no prize.
Elise deserved far better than him—or Reichen, for that matter. And Tegan was going to tell her as much, damn it.
His foul mood heading farther south every second she remained out there with the Darkhaven male, Tegan stalked back into her room to wait for her.
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
Elise drew out of the very unexpected kiss, her fingers pressed to her lips. It had been a pleasant, if brief, contact but she felt absolutely nothing for the handsome man who was now looking at her in awkward, yet understanding, silence.
“I’m sorry, Andreas. I shouldn’t have let you do that.”
When she glanced down, embarrassed, he gently lifted her chin so that she was looking at him again. “The fault is mine. I should have asked you first. No,” he said, correcting himself. “I should have recognized that your heart is already spoken for. I did, actually, but I suppose I wanted to be certain that I stood no chance. I don’t…stand any chance, do I, Elise?”
She smiled up at him apologetically and slowly shook her head.
“Ah. I feared not. The lucky bastard.” Reichen exhaled, stripping the thin leather thong from his queued hair and raking his hand into the loose, dark waves. “I think I’ve finally run out of charity when it comes to that warrior. After this forfeit to him, Tegan will have no choice but to accept that my debt to him is paid in full.”
Elise warmed to his praise, even though she wasn’t sure it was valid. Tegan had made no claims on her, despite her feelings for him. In fact he seemed intent on keeping her at arm’s length. He would probably be relieved if she were to suddenly develop an affection for another male.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Reichen was right; her heart was no longer hers to give. Tegan had it, whether he wanted it or not.
She looked up into Reichen’s striking dark eyes. “You’re a good man, Andreas. A very kind man.”
He gasped dramatically. “Stop, I beg you! You have thrashed my pride enough for one night. I’m a devil and a cad, and don’t you forget it.”
Elise laughed, and went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you for dinner. Thank you for everything, Andreas.”
He nodded, then strode ahead to open the mansion door for her.
“Good night, beauty,” he said, then waited in the foyer as she made the climb upstairs to her guest room.
Tegan heard her light footsteps pause outside her room door. He waited silently, stealthily, as the crystal knob turned and the panel swung inward. Elise took only a step inside, then she paused, listening. Her blood link to him instantly gave him away; she could feel his presence. He knew it by the softly indrawn breath she took, her eyes searching the dark room.
“Tegan?”
She flipped the light switch. Walked farther into the room. He stayed still, watching her rub a chill from her arms as she crossed the thick rug and went to the open French doors. She looked out onto the balcony, her movements cautious, uncertain.
“Tegan…are you out here?”
The sweet scent of her drifted up to him as a chill night breeze swept in from outside. Reichen’s scent was on her too—a dark, musky undertone that set Tegan’s teeth on edge. Jealousy spiked in him, raw and feral.
Instinctively male.
As she drew back to close the doors, Tegan came down from the corner of the room where he’d been suspended spiderlike. He dropped soundlessly behind her, his body blocking her as she pivoted around and gasped.
Startled, her eyes went wide. “Tegan! Where were y—”
He pulled her to him in a hard, unyielding embrace and slanted his mouth over hers. His kiss was forceful, deliberate. An animal male putting his stamp on what he meant to be his, and his alone.
Elise didn’t fight him. He felt her hands come up around his neck, her fingers linking together at his nape and holding him close. She kissed him back, sighing into his mouth as he pushed her lips apart and plunged his tongue between them, needing to taste her.
Needing to claim her.
Christ, she inflamed him. Every cell in his body was lit with heat, with hunger for her. He couldn’t be gentle, not when everything primal in him was fully awake, fully aroused. All that was Breed in him responded as well, lust thinning his pupils and stretching his fangs. He ground his pelvis against the tender curves of Elise’s body, letting her feel the hard ridge of his cock. She moaned as they pressed together, her heartbeat banging like a little drum in his ears.
“Oh, God, Tegan,” she said, her voice a breathless rush of warm air when he finally withdrew from the lush sweetness of her mouth. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was worried about you tonight.”
He grunted, low in his throat. “Yeah, I noticed. I saw how concerned you were, down there in Reichen’s arms.”
“You saw us…”
He smirked, baring his fangs. “I can still taste him on your lips.”
“Then you must also taste the fact that he isn’t the one I want,” she said, not flinching at all as he let his mouth travel along her soft cheek, down to the tender skin below her ear. “It’s you, Tegan. I want to be with you. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve fallen in love with you.”
He snarled, pulling back to hold her in a narrowed glare. They were the words he wanted to hear—the words he’d been prepared to force out of her after seeing her caught up in another man’s arms. Still, it leveled him. His mouth went suddenly dry.
She was so beautiful, so courageously open.
All his aggression leaked out of him as he gazed into the deep amethyst pools of her eyes. He ran his fingers along the delicate line of her jaw, hardly able to draw breath as she tilted her head to the side for him, exposing the vulnerable column of her throat. He couldn’t resist touching the place where her pulse beat the strongest. The ticking flutter beneath his fingertips was like a brand searing into his skin. He let his thumb trace over the soft skin, then gently bent to place his mouth atop the tender, beating artery that carried Elise’s lifeblood.
Saliva surged into his mouth, swamping him with the need to taste her now and seal their bond completely.
But Tegan only kissed her.
With reverent hands, he lifted the hem of her sweater and carefully peeled it off her. Tenderly, he caressed her soft skin. She sighed as he stroked her breasts, the nipples peaking like dusky rosebuds beneath the thin satin of her bra. He unfastened the front clasp and bared her to his appreciative gaze.
“So beautiful,” he said thickly, letting his fingers skate along the soft underside of the creamy swells.
He knelt down before her and took one dark pink nipple into his mouth. His fangs were huge now, and it took great care not to graze the sharp edge of them against her tender skin as he suckled the pebbled flesh with his tongue. But he was careful. He held her as though she were made of glass, every inch of her precious and breakable. A treasure he was unworthy of, yet determined to cherish.
Elise’s arms came down around his shoulders. She held fast, arching into him as he lavished the same attention on the other breast. He let his mouth travel down her belly while his hands worked to free her of her slacks and panties. The skin of her hips was like velvet against his palm. He kissed the lean curve of her pelvis, then trailed lower, into the trim thatch of blond curls between her thighs.
He spread her legs and put his mouth to her sex, cleaving his tongue into the wet heat of her core. She quivered as he feasted on her, her body feeling limp and boneless in his arms as he picked her up and carried her to the bed. She lay back and watched him under heavy lids as he undressed for her, the hunger in her gaze like a physical heat on his skin.
Naked and painfully aroused, Tegan stood at the edge of the mattress and let her take her fill of him with her eyes. He held his breath as she sat up then came toward him on her hands and knees. Her hands were curious and questing, soft but firm, as she took his engorged shaft and stroked it from tip to balls and back again. She licked her lips, eyes flicking up to his in question.
His low exhalation must have been permission enough. Tegan watched her descend on him, those moist lips parting as she took the head of his cock into her mouth. He moaned, reaching down to bury his fingers in her short blond hair as she sucked him deep, torturing him with the slow, steady slide of her tongue against his sensitive flesh.
She increased her rhythm and he spun quickly toward the edge of his control. With a pleasured snarl, he pulled away from her devastatingly sweet mouth and pushed her down onto the mattress. He climbed over her and kissed her deeply, feeling the ferocity of her desire in every place their bodies touched.
“Do you want me inside you, Elise?”
“Yes,” she gasped, arching up to meet his body. “I need you inside me, Tegan. Now.”
He was only too willing to oblige. Thrusting in one long stroke, he filled her tight channel, swallowing her soft cry. Her body milked him, the walls of her sex gripping him like a moist, hot fist. Tegan pumped his hips, watching emotion play over Elise’s beautiful face.
“You feel so good,” he told her, wanting only to please her.
His woman.
His mate.
His love.
He could feel her orgasm building along with his own. She was panting now, writhing to meet every hard flex of his hips and moaning in protest with every slight withdrawal. She turned her head to the side, where his arm was bracing him up. With a deliciously animal sound, she nipped at his wrist, closing her pretty white teeth down onto his skin. The pinch of her blunt little bite was an erotic pain that went through him like an arrow.
“Yeah?” he said, looking down into her hungry gaze. “You want to drink from me as I make you come?”
She nodded weakly and gave him another small bite in reply.
“You got it, sweetheart. But not the wrist this time.” Holding her against him, he rolled onto his back and brought her up astride him. “I want to feel you at my neck, Elise. I want to hold you while you drink from me. I want to feel you bite into me.”
Touching her, he felt her uncertainty. “I’ve never done it that way before.”
“Good,” he said, entirely too pleased to hear it. “I’ve never asked anyone to do it that way before. So, will you, Elise?”
She frowned, but her eyes were rooted on his throat. “I don’t want to hurt you…”
He chuckled, adoring her all the more for her concern. “Come here,” he said, wrapping his hand around her nape and guiding her down to the exposed column of his neck. “Sink your teeth into me, Elise. Take your fill.”
She bent over him, their bodies still intimately joined, eyes locked together. Her breath skated hotly across his cheek as she descended. Warm lips pressed below his ear and parted. He felt her wet tongue, then the hard line of her teeth as she positioned her mouth over his vein.
The instant she bit down, Tegan nearly exploded inside her. She broke his skin in a sharp, delicious flare of pain that sent his hips bucking up off the mattress. He gripped her ass and drove into her as she suckled from the wound she’d made. She began to ride him, plunging hard, then rising up slowly on the length of his shaft. The wet sounds of her drinking so close to his ear was erotic in the extreme, her pleasured moans and wet lapping the sexiest thing he’d ever heard.
When she threw her head back and screamed with her breaking orgasm, Tegan lost all hope of control. He sat up with her, hooking her legs around him as he continued to rock into her. She clung to him as her body shuddered around his sex, wave after wave of release rippling against him. Tegan ran his palm over her glistening skin, bending down to taste the enticing curve of flesh where her neck and shoulder met.
He should have known better.
Ah, hell. Maybe he did know better and had to do it anyway.
The drum of her heartbeat pulsated against his mouth. Tegan followed it, moving up Elise’s throat until his mouth hovered at the tender patch of skin beneath her ear. She whimpered as he hesitated there, his tongue licking along the line of her artery.
His fangs throbbed in time with her pulse, every Breed instinct in him rising to the temptation that lay just a breath away from completion.
Elise’s hands came up around his head. “Tegan…Oh, God…do it.”
He nipped at her, just a small test of her mettle. In answer, she impaled herself deeper on his cock, grinding against him as another orgasm shuddered through her.
It was too much for him to bear.
Tegan held her head to the side in one hand and lowered his mouth to her neck. His fangs sank in easily, sharp points penetrating her tender skin like a warm knife through butter. She cried out as he took the first long pull from her vein. Her body arched catlike in his arms, then eased into a languid calm as he began to drink.
And oh, God, she was sweet. His mouth filled with a sudden rush of her blood, the heather-and-roses scent of it saturating his senses. He was greedy for it, could not recall ever knowing anything as exquisite as the taste of Elise on his tongue, the vibrant essence of her blood coursing into his body, lighting him from within.
With each quenching, binding swallow from her vein, Tegan’s hunger for her rose. The lust he’d known for Elise before was just a pale hint of the desire he knew now.
Possession rolled over him like a storm. He roared with need for this woman—his woman now, irreversibly.
Irrevocably.
He pushed her down beneath him and let the awakened beast in him have its head.
Elise could only hold on to Tegan as he covered her with his body and drove her toward another shattering orgasm. She reveled in the feel of his long fangs penetrating deeply into her neck, in the hard suction of his mouth as he drew her blood down his throat and completed their bond.
There was nothing gentle about him now. His unbreakable self-control had snapped, and she had never known anything quite so arousing as Tegan gripped in the wildness that had overcome him the moment he took his first taste of her blood.
He spun her out on an endless wave of pleasure, making love to her until they were both sated and panting, lying boneless in each other’s arms. When it was over, he ran his tongue over the punctures he’d given her, sealing the wound with a tender lover’s kiss.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, smoothing his fingers through her hair.
“Mm-hmm.” Elise nodded, groggy but enlivened at the same time. “I’m very all right.”
She’d never been better, in fact. Although it hadn’t escaped her notice that when she told Tegan she loved him, he hadn’t returned the sentiment. A little late to be worrying about that, perhaps, but now that the worst of her hungers had been dealt with, reality was edging in again to spoil things.
“I haven’t said those words in a very long time, Elise. I didn’t think I ever would again.”
“Don’t do that.” She sat up and drew out of his reach, embarrassed that he’d invaded her emotions with his touch. “And don’t feel that you have to say anything kind because of what just happened here.”
“I don’t feel that I have to say anything.”
“Good. Please don’t. I don’t think I could stand your charity right now.”
He reached out and took her hand in his. “If I tell you that it pissed me off to see you kissing Reichen, and that I never want to see you kissing any other male ever again, it’s not because I feel I have to tell you that.”
Elise stared at him, hardly daring to breathe. His amber-tinged eyes were intense as he held her gaze, his pupils still thinned from desire. When he spoke, his voice was rough, the tips of his fangs gleaming.
“I don’t feel I have to be kind because of what we just did here, so that’s not why I’m telling you that you are unlike any woman I’ve ever met before. I wasn’t prepared for you, Elise. Holy hell…not even close.”
She glanced down to where their hands were linked together, his strong fingers firm and protective, always so gentle with her even though they were trained for war and combat.
“It wouldn’t be charitable of me at all to tell you that I hope you never want another male as much as you want me.” He exhaled a wry laugh. “Do I love you? Yeah, God help you, but I do.”
“Tegan,” she whispered, bringing her hand up to rest against his cheek. The bite she’d given him was already healing over, his skin knitting together. She touched the red mark tenderly, then looked up into his eyes. “Kiss me again.”
His mouth quirked at the corner as he pulled her into his arms. They had barely gotten started before a low buzzing sound drew Tegan’s head up with a groan.
“What is it?” she asked as he vaulted out of the bed and grabbed his cell phone from his discarded pants.
“It’s our ride back to Boston. I’ve arranged a flight out tonight.”
He answered the call, his tone clipped and serious—back to warrior mode in an instant. “Yeah. Right. Tegel Airport. Corporate terminal. Departure in one hour.”
Elise slid off the mattress and padded over to where Tegan stood, naked and gorgeous. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing the front of her body against the hard muscles of his backside. She nipped his shoulder blade, smiling as goose bumps rose along the beautiful dermaglyphs on his arms. She heard his low growl of interest and couldn’t help but smile as he cast a heated look at her.
“You’d better make it two hours from now,” he instructed the person on the other end of the line. “Something’s just come up.”
Elise glanced down as he turned to face her. Something had indeed come up—quite impressively, in fact. She backed away, her lip caught in her teeth as Tegan disconnected the call, his hooded eyes rooted on her.
He tossed the phone aside.
Then he pounced.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
They slept most of the trip back to Boston, Elise contentedly curled up in Tegan’s arms. He’d told her that the Minion who attacked her at Irina’s was dead. He’d also informed her that the human mind slave was just one of several in Berlin who’d been given orders by Marek to hunt her down. Elise had accepted the news with her usual calm understanding, but Tegan couldn’t help holding her a bit tighter as she dozed across his lap.
Marek was a treacherous enemy. He’d been a formidable warrior, ruthless in battle, often unnecessarily cruel. Tegan had known Lucan’s elder brother well, had trusted him with his life more than once on the field. They’d fought side by side in the Old Times, when the Breed was young and trouble with Rogues was commonplace. Marek had been one of the original members of the Order, but he’d always been the renegade. He balked at his younger brother’s command—Lucan was founder of the warrior class and a natural-born leader, two things Marek seemed unable to accept. Impatience and arrogance were Marek’s strongest traits, and the two things that prevented him from getting the respect he felt he deserved.
The fact that he’d been presumed dead for so long—some six centuries—only to resurface in Boston with obvious plans to target the Order, seemed to indicate that Marek had somehow learned to bide his time. He’d shown great patience in staying hidden as long as he had, and Tegan had no doubt that the vampire had been using those years to his benefit. He had a plan, and he was slowly but surely putting it into motion. That the name Dragos was suddenly in the mix, along with the Odolfs’ cryptic ramblings, hinted at trouble of a very old nature.
Tegan flipped open the journal and read the strange passages again. It had to be a location, but where? And what did it signify?
That’s where he’s hiding, Odolf had blurted.
Tegan didn’t think it referred to Marek. But could it possibly be Dragos? Or might it be someone else who wasn’t even on the Order’s radar yet?
Whatever Marek was after, and whatever secret it was that haunted Petrov Odolf and his kin, it did not bode well for anyone.
As the jet touched down in Boston, Tegan phoned the compound and told Gideon to assemble the others for a meeting. They were going to have to rout out Marek, wherever he’d run to, and make sure that the Order stayed one step ahead of him.
One of his Minions was dead, according to the latest report out of Berlin. Marek was enraged to lose another of his pawns, but since the human had failed to carry out his task, Marek could only hope that the Minion was made to suffer in his final moments of life. The savagery of the killing left little doubt that he had suffered greatly, his body broken and bloodied almost beyond recognition. And that fact was surprising in itself, considering the Minion’s executioner had most certainly been Tegan.
He had killed the Minion that Marek had dispatched to get rid of the Darkhaven female—not with the immaculate, cold efficiency the warrior was known for, but with a clearly evidenced rage.
Tegan had killed with a vengeance.
That he’d acted in retaliation over the female could mean only one thing: Tegan cared for her.
Marek could hardly wait for the chance to exploit that weakness in the warrior. He’d nearly destroyed Tegan once through his love of a woman; how gratifying it would be to use this new affection to finally finish him off for good.
How satisfying it would be to finish off all the Order, and to assume his rightful place as the ruler of all the Breed. It was what he’d been working toward all along, a plan that had required more patience than Marek had thought himself capable of.
He’d been dreaming of his crowning moment for centuries—ever since the warrior Dragos had confided in him a powerful, damning secret.
Marek got up from his desk and paced to the tall window that overlooked a moonlit Berkshires valley in the distance. The woods were thick out here, as dense as any medieval forest. The landscape reminded him of the Old Times, his thoughts returning to the Order’s long-ago past.
Back then, a war had been raging within the vampire nation. It pitted father against son, except the fathers in this scenario were the band of vicious otherworlders—the Ancients, alien creatures who arrived on Earth thousands of years ago and preyed on human blood for their survival. Their eventual sons, the hybrid progeny born of alien seed carried by human mothers, formed the first generation of the Breed.
Marek, Lucan, and Tegan were among those rare Gen One sons. They saw firsthand the savagery perpetrated by the Ancients on humankind, the wholesale slaughter of entire villages at times, lives lost to ravenous vampire appetites. The carnage had never disturbed Marek the way it did his younger brother.
While Lucan despised the terror the Ancients delivered, Marek often indulged in it himself. The power to stir panic and kill without recourse was heady stuff, and more than once he wondered why the Breed shouldn’t simply enslave their human Hosts and claim the planet for their own. Marek had been feeding those seeds of discontent to the Ancients for some time when all of his plans were thrown into a tailspin.
In a fit of Bloodlust, his alien sire took the life of Marek and Lucan’s mother. The creature slaughtered her, and Lucan, claiming justice, took the vampire’s head in exchange. With that killing of an Ancient, Lucan declared war on the remaining few like him and any who served them. Lucan formed the Order, pulling Marek into the fold as well, along with Tegan and five other Gen One vampires all pledged to end the mass carnage and start a new way of life for the Breed.
Such noble, lofty intentions.
Marek could hardly contain his derisive chuckle, even now. He hadn’t been the only one of the Order to bristle at Lucan’s vision of a peaceful coexistence with humankind. Another warrior, Dragos, eventually confided in Marek that he had different ideas for the future of the Breed.
And even more intriguing, he’d actually taken steps to ensure that future.
While the Order waged war on the surviving Ancients, hunting them down one by one in a battle that took years to complete, one of those deadly creatures remained.
Dragos and his alien sire had made a pact. Instead of killing the vampire, Dragos had helped to hide him away.
It wasn’t until sometime later, after Dragos was mortally injured in combat, that he chose to spill his secret to Marek. But the bastard wouldn’t surrender all of it. Dragos refused to give Marek the location of the crypt where the Ancient slept in a state of prolonged hibernation.
Marek’s rage over that omission had been uncontrollable. He put a blade to Dragos’s neck, and with one furious blow, he sent the vampire—and that crucial bit of information—to the grave.
Marek had gone after the only other person who might have been of use to him: Dragos’s Breedmate Kassia. But the female was shrewd, and in the moment her mate perished at Marek’s hand, she must have known the same danger would soon be coming to her doorstep.
By the time Marek arrived at Dragos’s castle to drain the secret out of her—literally, as it were—Kassia had thwarted him by taking her own life.
In the time since, Marek had been on a single-minded quest to find Dragos’s secret. He’d willingly tortured and killed for it. He’d long ago tossed away his honor, pretended his own death, and betrayed his kin, all for the chance to be the one to unleash the ancient terror and use it to serve his own whims.
Finally, after an endless time of searching, he’d recently come upon the first truly useful clue: it was the name of Odolf, a Breed family from the Old Times who’d had ties with Dragos’s mate, Kassia. She had given them something of great worth all those centuries ago, but not even torture had given Marek the answers he needed.
And now the Order was getting closer to the truth every moment. Marek’s jaw clamped tight at the thought. He hadn’t worked this hard, waited this long, just to let everything slip through his fingers. He refused to consider it might even be a possibility.
He was going to win.
The real battle was only beginning.
A few minutes after they arrived at the compound, Tegan showed Elise to his quarters so she could shower and relax while he headed for the tech lab, where the Order had assembled at his request. As he walked in, Lucan gave him a knowing nod from where he stood next to Gideon at the bank of computers. Niko, Kade, and Brock sat around the table at the center of the room, the two newbies fitting right in as they traded gibes with Dante and Chase about the week’s Rogue tallies and which of them had the sharper eye.
But it was the sight of Rio that made Tegan’s mouth lift in surprise and satisfaction. The Spaniard leaned against the back wall of the lab, apart from the others, broody but alert. Determination rolled off him like an electrical charge. He lifted his chin to acknowledge Tegan’s arrival, the scarred side of his face stretching taut with his grim smile.
The once-lively topaz eyes were flinty now, sober as the grave.
Tegan looked at his brethren, some of whom had fought at his side for centuries, others who had yet to be truly tested, and he couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride to be included among their ranks. For a long time, he’d thought of himself as being alone in this war. Sure, Lucan and the others always had his back, as he had theirs, but Tegan fought every battle as if it belonged to him alone.
He’d lived every day wallowing in his own dark isolation…until a courageous beauty taught him not to fear the light. Now that he’d found her, he wanted to make sure the darkness he’d known would never touch her.
And that meant keeping her safe from Marek.
“What’s the word out of Petrov Odolf?” Lucan asked as Tegan set his duffel bag of gear down on the table.
“Most of the time, the word is crazy. The rest of the time, he’s catatonic.” Tegan pulled out the handwritten pages they’d gotten from Irina. He handed them to Lucan. “Before he went Rogue, Odolf had been writing compulsively and in secret. Evidently his brother, who also went Rogue sometime before him, had been obsessed with a similar habit. Look familiar?”
“Shit. The same thing we found in the journal Marek was after.”
Tegan nodded. “Odolf said something odd in one of his rare moments of clarity. When Elise and I asked him what the riddle meant, he said, ‘That’s where he’s hiding.’”
“That’s where who’s hiding?” Gideon asked, taking the pages from Lucan and giving them a quick visual scan. He read one of the verses aloud. “Does this reference some kind of location?”
“Maybe. Odolf wouldn’t say. Maybe he doesn’t know.” Tegan shrugged. “That’s all he gave us, just started rambling after that. We didn’t get any further with him.”
Dante came out of his loose recline at the table, putting his feet down on the floor with a thump. “Whatever it means, it’s big enough to get Marek’s interest. No good ever came out of that.”
“And he’s willing to kill anyone who gets in his way,” Tegan added. “After he found out we were in Berlin, Marek put out orders to some of his Minions in the city to kill Elise. One of them got damn close.”
“Son of a bitch,” Lucan hissed, his features hardening in anger.
“She injured the bastard and thankfully managed to get away. That night I went out and finished him off.” Tegan felt Chase’s stare from across the room, and he turned a sincere look on the male. “Elise has become…very precious to me. I’m not about to let anything happen to her. I’d give my life to keep her safe.”
Chase looked at him for a long while, then he nodded tightly. “What about the glyph you found in the journal? That symbol belonged to one of the first warriors, didn’t it—a Gen One male called Dragos?”
“Yeah,” Tegan said. “There’s got to be a connection, but I’m not sure what it is. I know Dragos is dead. Lucan can vouch for that since he saw the body.”
The Order’s leader inclined his head in agreement. “His Breedmate saw it too. Evidently seeing her mate dead must have been too much for Kassia. That same night, she took her own life.”
Nikolai grunted. “So, what have we got to work with here? Our own Romeo and Juliet scenario, a batshit Rogue talking riddles, a dead-end glyph scribbled into the margin of a musty old book, and Marek somehow in the middle of it all.”
“Get to Marek, and you’ll start getting answers,” Dante put in, his voice low and deadly.
Tegan nodded. “Right. But first we need to find him.”
“No hard leads there,” Gideon said. “He’s gone deep underground since we ran up against him last summer.”
“So we hunt him down like the vermin he is,” Rio snarled. “We root him out and smoke the son of a bitch.”
Tegan glanced over at Lucan, who was absorbing the conversation in stoic silence. Amid the talk of enemies and battles to come, it was sometimes easy to forget that Lucan and Marek were blood kin. “You cool with all this?”
The silver stare that held Tegan’s eyes was unwavering. “Whatever Marek is up to, he has to be stopped. The question isn’t if, but when. And by any means.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
Elise heard women’s voices as she strolled the corridor on her way out of Tegan’s quarters. The muffled laughter and easy conversation drew her, reminding her of the friendships she had enjoyed in the Darkhaven, when her life had seemed so full. Although she didn’t feel as empty as she had in recent months, there was still a space in her heart that was open—a small void that made her miss being part of a community.
She didn’t know what the other females would think of her. Although it seemed years ago to her, it was only a handful of days since the confrontation she’d had with Tegan in front of the Order—when he’d publicly suggested she find a willing male to be her blood Host without the sanctity of a vow. He’d only done it to push her away, but if the Breedmates here at the compound had heard about it, she was probably a subject of pity with them, if not scorn. There were few females in the Darkhavens who would be able to look her in the eye after something like that.
As she neared the open door of the room where the warriors’ mates had gathered, Elise prepared herself for cautious greetings and the quiet whispers that were sure to begin once she had passed.
“Elise, welcome back!” Gabrielle exclaimed the instant her kind brown eyes lit on her. “We heard you and Tegan had just come back. I was actually about to go and find you. Do you want to join us?”
The women had a nice little repast of fruits and cheeses spread out on the coffee table in the center of the cozy library. Tess was putting down small plates and there was already an extra one waiting for Elise. Savannah stood in front of a dark cherry sideboard, pulling a cork from a bottle of chilled white wine. She looked over at Elise and smiled as she began pouring into several long-stemmed glasses.
“Want some?” she asked.
“Okay.” Elise walked into the inviting chamber and accepted the glass from Savannah’s outstretched hand. “Thank you.”
The awkwardness she expected didn’t happen. As soon as she settled in with the women, Elise was bombarded with questions about the trip, about what she and Tegan were able to uncover, and about where things stood with regard to Petrov Odolf and the journal Marek had been so determined to get his hands on.
They weren’t interested in gossip or scandal, and Elise found herself falling into an easy conversation with all three of the intelligent, savvy women. She told them all she knew, relating the details of Tegan’s and her visits to the containment facility.
She had just begun to tell them about the writings Irina had given her when Tess put down her wineglass, her brows knit in a frown.
“What happened to your face? You’re bruised.”
Elise nodded, idly touching the tenderness that still lingered in her cheek and jaw. “Oh. A Minion did that.”
“My God,” Savannah gasped, her concern echoed by Gabrielle and Tess as well.
“Does it hurt?” Tess asked, moving around the table and kneeling next to Elise.
“It did at first. It’s not so bad now.”
“Let me see.” She carefully tilted Elise’s head. When her hand came to rest on the bruise, Elise felt a warm tingle spreading from the female’s palm to the tips of her fingers. Dante’s mate had worked her healing touch on Elise before, but that didn’t make her marvel at Tess’s talent any less. The trauma of the injury faded away, muting until not even the slightest twinge of discomfort remained.
Elise let herself sink into the peaceful sensation that swept over her as Tess drew her hand away. “Your skill is amazing.”
The pretty female shrugged her shoulder as if uncomfortable with the praise. “There are some things that are beyond my ability. I can’t take away scars or correct wounds that have already healed on their own. Some damage is irreversible. I’m learning that with Rio.”
Savannah reached over to squeeze Tess’s hand. “He’s doing a lot better since you’ve been working with him. The fact that he’s even out of bed at all is due mostly to you.”
“No, it’s pure rage that drives him,” Tess said. “My being able to heal some of his physical wounds is only incidental.”
“Rio was injured in a Rogue ambush last summer,” Gabrielle explained to Elise. “He got pretty messed up from exploding shrapnel, but the worst of it was when he found out that his Breedmate had set the Order up for the attack.”
Elise’s heart twisted at the very idea. “How awful.”
“Yeah, it was. Eva betrayed Rio and the others to Marek. In exchange, Lucan was to be the primary target of the explosion. Lucan was supposed to die that night, but the bomb only injured him. He and Rio were hit, but Rio took the worst of the impact.” Gabrielle took a sip of her wine, her gaze sober, reflective. “I was there when Eva confessed what she’d done…and when she proceeded to take her own life.”
“Those were some dark days,” Savannah said. “It was really hard losing Eva like that. I thought she was a friend. What she did to Rio and to the others is unforgivable.”
“Rio certainly won’t let it go,” Tess added. “Dante and I are really concerned about him. I wonder sometimes if he’s too far gone—you know, on the inside. When I work with him, there are times I feel like I’m looking at an armed grenade that’s just waiting for an excuse to go off.”
Savannah exhaled a wry laugh. “Pretty bad when Rio makes Tegan look like a poster boy for normal and well-adjusted.”
Elise glanced down, feeling her cheeks heat up at the mention of Tegan. When she looked up again, it was to find Gabrielle watching her. “He wasn’t too terrifying in Berlin, was he? Tegan doesn’t make it easy for anyone to be around him.”
“No. No, he was fine, actually,” Elise said, rising to his defense. “He was kind and protective…well, and frustratingly complicated. He’s the most intense man I’ve ever known. And he is…so much more than people might think.”
She felt the room go quiet. Three pairs of female eyes were rooted on her now, each of the warriors’ mates staring at her as fire shot into her face.
“Elise,” Gabrielle said slowly, her eyes brightening with understanding. “You and Tegan…really?”
Before she could stammer out an admission, she was pulled into the female’s happy embrace. The two other Breedmates took turns congratulating her as well, making her tear up at the instant circle of sisterhood that they were so willing to accept her into.
It was through a moist, bleary gaze that Elise got her first glimpse of the tapestry that hung on the far corner wall of the library. The colors of the medieval setting were dazzling, depicting a knight on horseback as richly as if it were paint on canvas.
The intricacy of the needlework was extraordinary…familiar.
And unmistakable.
She’d seen a similarly intricate piece when she’d met with Irina Odolf. The embroidery that had been wrapped around the stack of letters Irina had found.
“That weaving,” she said, hardly able to breathe. “Where did it come from?”
“It’s Lucan’s,” Gabrielle said. “It was made for him in the 1300s. A long time ago, when the Order was still new.”
Elise’s pulse kicked into an excited tempo. “Who made it, do you know?”
“Um, a woman named Kassia,” Gabrielle said. “She was a Breedmate to one of the Order’s original members. Lucan says her talent with needle and thread was unmatched, which you can see from the detail in this piece alone. According to him, this was the last weaving Kassia made, and her most stunning work. That’s Lucan on the warhorse—”
“May I look at it?” Elise asked, standing up and walking over to see it up close.
On a distant hill behind the knight on the rearing stallion, a castle smoldered under a thin sliver of a moon. A crescent moon.
And beneath the horse’s hooves lay a trampled field, rutted with deep tracts of earth.
castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon
The strange riddle played through her mind, carried there in Petrov Odolf ’s tormented voice.
It couldn’t be…could it?
Elise ran her hand over the delicate stitches of the tapestry’s detailed border. All of it had been woven with such deliberate care. And in the lower right corner was the weaver’s mark—a Breedmate symbol, just like the one she’d seen on the embroidery Irina showed her—sewn into the design.
Was there a message hidden somewhere in here?
Hidden here all this time?
“What is it, Elise?” Gabrielle came up behind her. “Is something wrong?”
Elise’s heart was racing. “Would it be all right if we took this down from the wall?”
“I guess so…yeah, sure.” She got up on the cushioned chair situated next to the tapestry and reached up to lift the piece from its hanging mount on the wall. Gabrielle held the tapestry gingerly in her hands. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Lay it flat, please.”
“I’ll clear the table,” Savannah said, and she and Tess went to work quickly removing the food and dishes to make space. “Okay, here you go.”
Elise trailed Gabrielle as she spread the tapestry out. She studied the piece in silence for a moment, remembering the rest of the cryptic verse:
to the borderlands east turn your eye
at the cross lies truth
“I’d like to try something. I will need to fold the cloth, but I promise I’ll be very careful.”
At Gabrielle’s agreeing nod, Elise brought the top of the tapestry toward the center of the design, then lifted the bottom of the piece and folded them so that the castle and the field below Lucan’s mount met.
“‘Castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon,’” she murmured, watching as the two meeting portions of the design formed a new picture.
“It looks like some kind of mountain range,” Tess said, as a distinctly shaped rock formation became visible within the stitches. “How did you know to do that?”
“The Odolf journal contained odd scribblings—the same weird phrases that Petrov Odolf became obsessed with in the weeks before he went mad with Bloodlust and turned Rogue. The same phrases that his brother had written before he went Rogue. My God…it seemed like a puzzle we were never going to solve.”
Gabrielle’s eyes were wide. “You mean this tapestry is somehow linked to all of that?”
“I think it must be,” Elise whispered. She looked back down at the folded design. “‘To the borderlands east turn your eye…’ Maybe if we turn the tapestry to the left?”
She pivoted the weaving ninety degrees, so that the top border was facing east. The folded center was running vertical now. And within the design emerged another—one that hadn’t been obviously visible until held at this new angle. The faint outline of a cross was stitched into the tapestry, and in the center of it was a single word spelled out in the threads.
“‘Praha,’” Elise read aloud, astonished that a voice from so long ago was suddenly speaking through the silk and canvas of her work. “The secret, whatever it is, is in Prague.”
“That’s incredible,” Savannah gasped.
She reached out and ran her fingertips over the hidden text. No sooner had they skimmed the stitches when the female drew her hand back as if she’d been burned.
“Oh, my God.” Her dark brown eyes were stricken and wide. She pressed her hand down onto the fabric again, holding it there in grave silence.
“Savannah, what do you feel?”
When she finally spoke, her voice was airless with dread. “This tapestry has a few more secrets to tell.”
CHAPTER
Thirty
The warriors were gearing up for patrol when the glass doors to the tech lab whisked open and four beautiful women rushed inside. Elise and Gabrielle were carrying the tapestry from Lucan’s library; Tess and Savannah walked behind them with serious looks on their faces. Savannah seemed especially grim, her mouth drawn into a flat line, her hands flexing and fisting at her sides as she walked.
Tegan met Elise’s anxious gaze. “What’s going on?”
“The tapestry,” she said as she and Gabrielle spread it out on the meeting table. “I think we’ve figured out what the Odolf riddle refers to.”
“You serious?”
“Yeah.” Her sober expression told him that it wasn’t going to be good news.
Tegan and the other warriors gathered around the women. “Okay. Let’s see what you have.”
He watched, astonished and proud, as she recited each puzzling verse and folded the design accordingly. It was incredible, and so obvious now that Elise was putting it together for them. The tapestry correlated exactly to each seemingly nonsensical phrase. When Elise was finished, she stepped back and revealed an entirely new design—one that Kassia had hidden in the threads as she sewed the piece all those years ago.
Elise met Tegan’s curious look. “When I was at Irina’s place, she showed me some needlework that was incredibly detailed. It also had a secret design woven into it. When I saw this tapestry on the wall just now, I knew it had to have been made by the same hand. The more I looked at it, I wondered if there might be something more to it.”
Tegan smiled. He didn’t care one bit that everyone saw him bring her under his arm and lovingly kiss her brow. “Good work.”
“I know that mountain range,” Lucan said as he inspected the weaving.
Tegan nodded, also recognizing the distinctive formation that lay northeast of Prague. “It’s not far from the region where most of the Breed was living at the time.”
“So, this is meant to be some kind of map?” Rio asked. “If so, what are we looking for?”
“It’s not what, but who.” Savannah’s soft voice drew everyone’s attention. “The tapestry points to a location where Dragos helped hide someone. The vampire who fathered him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Tegan didn’t know which of the warriors muttered the curse, but each one of them had to understand the weight of what Savannah had just said.
“Dragos’s Breedmate wove this piece specifically for me,” Lucan put in with a dark scowl. “Are you saying Kassia deliberately hid this message in here? Why? And why the hell wouldn’t she come to me and tell me about this?”
“Because she was afraid,” Savannah said. “She’d been entrusted with a terrible secret, and she feared what might happen if she let it out.”
Gideon glanced over at his mate. “You felt all that in the cloth, babe?”
Savannah nodded. “There’s more too. And it’s not good.”
“Tell us,” Lucan said grimly. “Whatever you can read in this thing, we need to know.”
The room went still as Savannah reached out and put her hands on the tapestry. The Breedmate’s unique gift of psychometry had been useful to the Order in the past, but everyone watching as she began to absorb the emotional history of the piece fell into total silence, well aware that they’d never needed Savannah’s special talent more than now.
“Kassia was tormented by what she knew, but Dragos kept a close eye on her and she knew that if she told the secret, her mate would find out. He might move what he was hiding, and then there would be no hope of fixing what he had done.” Savannah closed her eyes in concentration. “Kassia had no one to share her burden with—not even her dearest friend, Sorcha.”
Tegan felt his jaw go rigid at the mention of the sweet girl who met such a terrible end because of his failings. As if to say she understood what he was feeling, Elise’s hand came to rest gently on his arm. Her touch was caring and compassionate, her soft gaze tender.
Savannah went on. “When Lucan asked Kassia to make this tapestry, she realized that maybe there was a way to warn him of what Dragos had done. So, as she stitched the remembrance for Lucan, she added clues and prayed one day he’d discover them before it was too late.”
“What did Dragos do?” Lucan asked, his deep voice booming in the quiet of the lab. “How the hell did he begin this deception?”
For a long time, Savannah didn’t speak. She slowly withdrew her hands, and when she turned to face the Order’s leader, her pretty features were bleak.
“When you declared war on the last of the Ancients—only a few months before this tapestry was made—Dragos and the alien creature who fathered him forged a pact. Dragos helped his father escape into the mountains rather than stand and fight you and the rest of the Order.”
Lucan’s scowl was dark, anger building in his tense stance. “Dragos and several others battled the one who sired him. Dragos was the only one to come out of the skirmish alive. He was severely wounded—”
“All part of his ruse,” Savannah said. “After they killed the others, Dragos helped hide his father in a protective crypt he’d built specifically for him in the mountains outside Prague. Dragos’s wounds were from his father, but only to help conceal the truth of what actually happened. The plan had been to leave the Ancient in a state of hibernation until things settled down with the Order. Then the Ancient would be awakened to feed again, and to start a new generation of his Breed offspring.”
“Holy hell,” Gideon muttered, ripping off his pale-blue glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Did Kassia know if Dragos ever got the chance to go back and free the bastard?”
Savannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not picking up anything to indicate that she knew the outcome. Dragos told her where the crypt was located, and that’s what she stitched into the tapestry. She wanted Lucan to have the clues in case anything were to happen to her.”
“Oh, Lucan,” Gabrielle said, wrapping her arms around him.
“There is…something more,” Savannah said. “There was a child. Kassia was pregnant when she made this tapestry. Dragos was away on a mission for nearly a year—so long that she had her son in secret and sent him away to live with another Breed family before Dragos returned. She refused to let her only child be a victim of her mate’s dangerous alliance, so she took steps to protect the baby and give him a safer future.”
“Let me take a wild-ass guess about the name of the family Kassia turned to,” Gideon drawled.
Savannah nodded. “Odolf.”
“You know,” Kade interjected, “I’ve heard that under the right conditions, the Ancients were capable of hibernating for generations.”
“Try centuries,” Tegan said, reflecting on the savage otherworlders who spawned him and the rest of the Breed’s first generation progeny. “For all we know, that last remaining Ancient is still out there, holed up near Prague and waiting to be unleashed.”
“Christ,” Dante hissed. “The world would be a very different place if an evil like that was turned loose again.”
Niko clucked his tongue. “And if someone thought to ally himself with that kind of deadly power? Somebody like Marek…”
“We can’t afford that risk,” Lucan said. “So, it looks like we need to haul ass to Prague and see what we can find.”
“Reichen’s only a few hours away from there in Berlin,” Tegan said. “He’s offered us his help in whatever way we can use him.”
Lucan narrowed his eyes, considering the idea. “Can he be trusted?”
“Yeah,” Tegan said, nodding in certainty. “I can vouch for him.”
“Give him a call then. But keep the details to a minimum. Let him know we’re on the way and we’re going to need transportation. We can rendezvous with him on arrival at Tegel Airport.”
“Shouldn’t we head straight for Prague instead and meet up with him there?” Brock asked.
Tegan shook his head, picking up on Lucan’s tactic. “Reichen may be trustworthy, but we don’t know about anyone else around him. Marek’s already aware that we’ve got an interest in Berlin. No sense tipping our hand about Prague.”
Lucan nodded. “We’ll fill Reichen in once we arrive.”
“Right,” Gideon said. “I’ll get clearance for a flight out tonight.”
There was none of the usual bravado as the lab emptied out and the warriors each went to prepare for the mission ahead of them. Tegan normally would have gone off to suit up by himself and think in peace. He thought he probably should now, but then Elise linked her fingers through his as the two of them paused in the vacant corridor.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her gaze as sober as his must have been. “If you want to be alone, or if you have something you need to do…”
“No. I don’t.”
He thought about calling the denial back and feeding her some line of bullshit that he was needed somewhere else right then, but the words wouldn’t come. And he found he couldn’t let go of her hand.
He’d be leaving in a few hours, and the odds were pretty damn good that he wasn’t coming back.
He was going in this time with one goal: to personally take out Marek. Even if he had to take himself out in the process. Tegan was more than ready to bring the war to Marek, and, one way or another, that son of a bitch was going down.
“Come on,” he said to Elise, tipping her chin up to meet his kiss. “There’s only one place I want to be right now.”
Elise and Tegan spent the rest of the day in his quarters, making love, and, it seemed, avoiding talk of what the future might bring them. She knew the secrets the tapestry had revealed weighed heavily on him—on all of the Order—but Tegan seemed especially remote as dusk drew near and the group of them prepared to head out. He had withdrawn in some way, as if he were already gone, fighting the ghost of an enemy that had haunted him for too long and had to finally be exorcised.
His call to Reichen earlier that day had brought troubling news: Petrov Odolf had slipped further into Bloodlust and was not doing well. The word out of the containment facility was that the Rogue had become increasingly unstable in the hours after Tegan and Elise left him that last time. At some point overnight, he lapsed into violent seizures and attacked one of his handlers, nearly killing the attendant in a fit of rage.
As for Tegan, he seemed skeptical of Director Kuhn’s report to Reichen. He didn’t trust the facility director, and, as he hung up with Reichen, he left the Darkhaven male with a mission to get more answers about the Rogue’s condition.
“Be careful,” Elise told him as they walked out of his quarters to meet the others who were gathering in the main area of the compound.
Tegan paused and kissed her passionately, but there was a distance in his eyes.
“I love you,” she said, stroking his strong jaw and trying to tamp down the worry that was beating like a caged bird in her chest. “You’d better come back to me soon, you understand? Promise me.”
The sounds of the other warriors talking in the hallway up ahead drew his attention. Weapons and gear jangled, deep male voices rumbling against the marble walls. That was his world calling him, the duty he’d been sworn into for longer than she’d been alive.
“Tegan, promise me,” she said, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t do anything heroic.”
The corner of his mouth quirked into a wry grin. “Me, heroic? Not a chance.”
She smiled with him, but her feet felt leaden as they walked the rest of the way up the corridor to where the Order, and Tegan’s role among them, waited.
Everyone else was already gathered. Elise met the serious faces of the other Breedmates, Tess and Gabrielle holding on to their mates as the departure time drew near. It had been agreed that Gideon would stay behind at the compound where he could monitor the operation from base and be a touch point for the others while they were in the field.
The biggest surprise was Rio. The recuperating warrior was dressed in combat gear and waiting with the rest of them, the look in his topaz eyes nothing short of fury. His muscled body radiated pure malice—white-hot and volatile—and Elise suddenly understood Tess’s concerns about him. He was terrifying, even simply standing still.
Elise resisted the urge to hold on a little tighter to Tegan’s hand when she felt his arm flex as he prepared to join his brethren.
God, but she didn’t want to let him go.
Not when they’d just found each other.
“All right,” Lucan said, his gaze steady as it lit on each of the warriors in turn. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Andreas Reichen was waiting with two Mercedes SUVs on the tarmac at Tegel Airport as the Order arrived in Berlin. Tegan made quick introductions while the warriors threw their gear into the vehicles and got situated for the ride out to Reichen’s Darkhaven estate, which was to serve as the operation’s temporary base.
“I’m honored to assist,” Reichen told Lucan and Tegan as the three men loaded the last of the bags and weaponry. “I’ve often wondered what it might be like to stand among the Order as one of your own.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Lucan drawled. “Depending how things go, there’s a good chance we could end up knighting you on the field.”
“Try not to look so enthused,” Tegan said, catching the glint of eagerness in the civilian’s eyes. “What’s the word out of the containment facility?”
Reichen shook his head. “Dead end, literally, I’m afraid. Odolf went from bad to worse as it turns out. He slid further into Bloodlust—went into violent convulsions. He even started foaming at the mouth. The attendant I spoke with said it was very strange, as if Odolf had gone rabid. A few hours later, they were wheeling him down to the morgue.”
“Shit.” Tegan exchanged a glance with Lucan, his hackles rising. The report had Marek written all over it. “What about this foam Odolf was spitting? Was it pinkish, foul smelling?”
Reichen frowned. “I don’t know. I could make some more inquiries, do some more investigating—”
“No, forget it. I’ll take it from here,” Tegan said.
Lucan knew exactly where this was heading. “You don’t suppose that Rogue was fed Crimson…”
“Only one way to find out. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“It will be dawn in about that long,” Lucan warned.
Tegan glanced up at the still-dark sky, the moon well into its westward slide. “Then we better stop yakking about it so I can get out of here. I’ll catch you all back at the Darkhaven.”
“Tegan. Goddamn it—”
He heard Lucan’s terse oath behind him, but he was already across the blacktop and moving through the airport complex to the streets outside.
Director Heinrich Kuhn was in his office at the containment facility, writing up disposal documents for the body of his recently deceased patient, when the frantic call came in from security. There had been a perimeter breach. A Breed male—Gen One warrior, by the size and power of him—had infiltrated both the exterior and interior gates and was now somewhere loose in the facility.
“Shoot to kill, sir?” asked the head of security, anxiety edging his voice.
“No,” Kuhn replied. “No, he is not to be killed. But apprehend him by any means, then bring him to me.”
Kuhn hung up the phone. He had no doubt as to who the intruder might be. He’d been warned that the Order would not be far behind once word of Petrov Odolf ’s death began to circulate. He regretted that he’d permitted the warrior called Tegan into the facility in the first place—him and the Enforcement Agency female both. It was his job to protect his patients, from distress outside and from within themselves. In that, he’d failed Petrov Odolf, though no more than when he’d permitted the final visitor in to see him.
It was fear of that last individual that set the director to pacing his office now. Somehow, against everything he knew to be right, he’d let himself be recruited into a collusion that had ended with Petrov Odolf ’s hideous suffering and eventual death. Kuhn had been promised a similar personal experience if he didn’t prove useful to his new, lethal acquaintance.
Maybe he would be wise to slip out before the situation escalated any further. It was perilously close to dawn, after all, and he really had no wish to sit around waiting for more trouble to land on his doorstep.
Too late, he thought, not a second later.
Kuhn wasn’t sure precisely when he felt the first stir of the air around him, but as he turned to face the closed doors of his office, he found himself staring into cold, deadly green eyes.
“Guten morgen, Herr Kuhn.” The warrior’s smile was chilling. “I hear we’ve had a few problems here in your little Bedlam.”
Kuhn inched back behind his desk. “I-I’m not sure what you mean.”
In a fluid, instant motion, the warrior leaped across the room and landed in a crouch on top of the desk. “Petrov Odolf is dead. That slip your mind?”
“No,” Kuhn replied, realizing he had just as much to fear from this male as he did the one who killed Odolf. “It was unfortunate, but he was very ill. Worse than I suspected.”
The director carefully slid his hand along under the edge of his desk, searching for the button that would sound a silent alarm. He’d hardly had the thought before a sharp blade lifted his chin.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to see the body.”
“What for?”
“So I will know whether or not you need to die.”
“Oh, God!” Kuhn wailed. “Please don’t hurt me! I had no choice—I swear to you!”
“You swear.”
The answering scoff was crisp with contempt. The dagger at Kuhn’s throat eased up, only to be replaced by the clamp of hard fingers. There was a heat that traveled through him from that punishing connection—a draining sense of invasion that buzzed like gnats in his brain.
The cold green eyes boring into his wide gaze went narrow. “You lying son of a bitch. You and Marek—”
The crack of Kuhn’s office door being smashed off its hinges split the air. There was a sudden report of gunfire, staccato blasts that came from no less than four armed security guards as they poured inside and opened fire on Kuhn’s assailant.
The warrior roared as the guards hit their mark all at once. As soon as the grip on Kuhn’s throat began to ease, he backed away—as far as he could get out of the massive vampire’s reach. He watched in stricken relief as the warrior slumped, then rolled off the desk onto the floor.
A wordless snarl curled out of the slack mouth, the ruthless eyes rolling back into the warrior’s skull. Kuhn gathered his courage now and approached the fallen beast. He stared down at the collection of tranquilizer darts that protruded from his body.
“Are you all right, sir?” one of the guards asked.
“Yes,” Kuhn replied, even though he was still trembling from the altercation. “That will be all for now. I don’t want this incident recorded in any way, do you understand? As far as anyone here is concerned, it didn’t happen. I will see that the intruder is removed from the premises.”
When the guards had gone, Heinrich Kuhn took out the cell phone he’d been given and dialed the sole number that was programmed into the device. When the low voice answered on the other end, Kuhn told him, “Something interesting just arrived. Where would you like me to deliver it?”
Lucan knew something was wrong even before the night gave way to dawn. Now, a couple of hours toward noon, he could only assume the worst. It wasn’t unusual for Tegan to go solo on his own personal missions, but this time he was off grid completely. He hadn’t returned from the containment facility. He hadn’t reported in, and there wasn’t even so much as a cell phone signal to indicate where he was or what kind of shit he might be into.
Calls to the facility had been useless. According to everyone Lucan spoke with, Tegan had never arrived. As for getting some intel on Odolf ’s death, all inquiries were being personally handled by the director of the place, one Heinrich Kuhn, who would not be reachable until he reported back to work at nightfall.
Lucan didn’t appreciate the bureaucratic stalemate, particularly when he was getting a very bad feeling that Tegan was in trouble.
“Still nothing?” Dante came out of the room where the rest of the Order and Reichen were covering the night’s upcoming trip to Prague. The warrior exhaled a low sigh when Lucan gave a shake of his head. “I know this mission is critical, Lucan, but damn. I don’t feel good about leaving Tegan behind.”
“We’re not.” Lucan met the serious stare of his brethren. “I need you and Chase to head up the mission. I’m going to stay behind and locate Tegan.”
“How are you gonna go about doing that? We’ve got no idea where he is, or if he’s even still in the city. It’ll take you forever if you’re planning to go door-to-door.”
Lucan shook his head. “I think I know of a better way to find him.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-two
Tegan’s mind came awake before the rest of his body. His throat burned, still raw and coated with the residue of whatever drug had been shot into him by Kuhn’s guards. He was no longer in the containment facility; his nose told him that much. Instead of the clinical stench of that place, he smelled old wood and brick, a hint of fresh paint as well, coming from somewhere overhead…
And nearby, the odor of a recent death. The cloying scent of spilled, coagulating Breed blood—a lot of it—hung like a thick shroud.
He didn’t have to attempt to move his limbs to know that he was restrained. The weight of heavy manacles and chains hung from his wrists and ankles, his body drawn spread-eagle between two large wooden beams.
Overhead, coming from outside whatever structure it was that imprisoned him, he heard the chatter of crows as they flew by. Even though it was dark where he was being held, it was daylight outside, his brain reasoned as the cawing grew distant. He must have been here—wherever here was—for hours.
He cracked one eyelid open, hardly able to lift it. His vision swam, instant vertigo making him sag deeper into his restraints.
“Awake at last,” mused a voice Tegan recognized, even in his half-drugged state. “Those idiots employed by Kuhn almost killed you with their tranquilizer darts. And that is a privilege I intend to save for myself.”
Tegan didn’t respond. He wouldn’t have, even if he’d been able to make his sluggish tongue form words. Marek deserved no respect whatsoever.
“Wake up,” came the terse command. “Wake the fuck up, Tegan, and tell me where he is!”
Hard fingers gripped a handful of his hair, lifted his head roughly when he didn’t have the strength to do it on his own. A heavy, closed-fisted blow landed on the side of his face, but he barely registered it through the fog of his sedation.
“Need a little convincing, do you?”
Footsteps sounded across a creaking, plank wood floor as Marek left him to slump and walked a few paces away. He came back a moment later. Tegan’s head was yanked back. Something was pressed beneath his nose. When the fist connected with his gut, he sucked in his breath.
The involuntary reaction brought the sting of fine powder traveling up his nostrils and in through his open mouth. He coughed, choking on the foul substance, and knew at once what Marek had just fed him.
“There we are. A little Crimson ought to speed things up.”
Marek backed away as Tegan tried to spit the drug out. It was no use. He could feel the Crimson seeping into his sinus passages, clinging to the back of his throat. Like an electrical current shot straight into his brain, the drug made him spasm and shudder. He felt it absorbing into his bloodstream, heat traveling along his strung-up limbs. When the initial quake subsided, Tegan opened his eyes and fixed a murderous stare on his captor.
Marek crossed his arms over his chest, grinning. “Back online already, eh?”
“Fuck you.” He tried to bring his arms down, but the chains held fast. His head was clearing, but his physical strength was still subpar at best. It was going to take time—or a stronger, riskier hit of Crimson—to shake off the effects of the tranqs.
“Where is he, Tegan? Have you found the hiding place yet?” Marek’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, but Tegan felt the furious heat of his stare. “I know the Order has the journal. I know you’ve seen the riddle. And I know you spoke with Petrov Odolf. What did he tell you about it?”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes,” Marek agreed civilly. “Overdosed on Crimson, as you no doubt suspected when you went to see Herr Kuhn over here.”
Tegan’s gaze followed Marek’s casual gesture to the source of the death stench in the room. Director Kuhn’s headless torso lay on the floor next to a broad-bladed, blood-soaked sword.
Marek shrugged. “He outserved his purpose. All of the quivering, hapless sheep inhabiting the Darkhavens have outserved their purpose, wouldn’t you agree? They’ve forgotten their roots, if they really ever understood them. How many generations have been spawned since the illustrious first that you and I are both a part of? Too many, and each generation has grown weaker, their blood diluted with feeble homo sapiens genes. It’s time to start fresh, Tegan. The Breed needs to sever its atrophied branches and begin a new reign of Gen One power. I want to see the Breed thrive. I want us to be kings—the way it should be.”
“You’re insane,” Tegan growled. “And you only want power for yourself. You always did.”
Marek scoffed. “I deserved to rule. I was eldest, not Lucan. I had the clearer vision for how our race should evolve. The humans should be hiding from us, living to please us, not the other way around. Lucan didn’t see it that way. He still doesn’t. His humanity is his greatest weakness.”
“And yours has always been your arrogance.”
Marek grunted. “What was yours, Tegan?” His tone was a bit too light, too taunting in its casualness. “I remember her, you know…Sorcha.”
Tegan hated like hell to hear that innocent girl’s name on his enemy’s lips, but he swallowed the rage that was building inside him. Sorcha was gone. He’d finally let her go, and Marek would not be able to goad him with her memory.
“Yes, she was your weakness. I knew that when I went to her that night. You remember, don’t you? The night she was abducted from your home while you were out on patrol with my brother on one of his endless missions?”
Tegan lifted his gaze to Marek. “You…”
The vampire’s smile was cruel, full of amusement. “Yes, me. She and Dragos’s Breedmate bitch were thick as thieves, so I’d really hoped Sorcha might be able to tell me the secret Dragos took to his grave and what Kassia sought to cheat me out of when she took her own life before I could wrench the truth out of her. But Sorcha didn’t know anything. Well, not quite. She knew about a son Kassia had delivered in secret and sent away—an heir that Dragos himself had known nothing about.”
Ah, Christ. Tegan closed his eyes, understanding only just now what Sorcha must have endured—and at Marek’s hand.
“She broke easily, but then I knew she would. She was never strong. Just a sweet girl who trusted you to keep her safe.” Marek paused, as though reflecting. “It almost seemed a waste to turn her Minion since she’d given up all her secrets at the first bit of pain.”
“You son of a bitch,” Tegan snarled. “You sick, goddamn son of a bitch! Why, then? Why did you do it to her?”
“Because I could,” Marek replied.
Tegan’s roar echoed up into the rafters of the place, rattling the black-washed windows that were set high into the roof. He fought his bonds but the momentary burst of spent adrenaline only left him coughing and exhausted. The shackles cut into his wrists as his weight sagged once more, his thighs too weak to hold him.
“And because I can, Tegan,” Marek added, “I’m going to kill you and everyone you care about if you don’t tell me what that goddamn riddle means. Tell me where to find the Ancient!”
Tegan panted, suspended helplessly from his chains. The sedatives were pulling him under again, making his head spin. Marek watched with detached calm, yet standing well out of reach. Very casually, he walked to the door and motioned two of his Minion guards inside. He pointed to Kuhn’s desecrated body.
“Take that rotting corpse out of here and let it burn.”
With his servants rushing to carry out his orders, Marek turned his attention back to Tegan. “You look like you need some time to think about what I’ve asked you. So, you think, Tegan. You think hard. And we’ll chat some more when I get back.”
Elise took one look at Gideon’s face when he came to find her in Tegan’s quarters, and she knew something was terribly wrong.
“It’s Lucan,” he said. “He needs to talk to you.”
She took the cell phone and swallowed hard before answering. “What’s happened to him?” she said into the receiver, not bothering with a greeting when every cell in her body went suddenly still. “Lucan, tell me he’s okay.”
“I’m, ah…not sure about that, Elise. Something’s gone down over here.”
She listened woodenly as Lucan explained Tegan’s disappearance. They hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard from him, for several hours. Lucan was going to send the rest of the Order out to Prague with Reichen at dusk, but he was staying behind to begin searching for Tegan. He wasn’t sure where to begin, or even how long it might take to scour the city for any sign of where he might be. Suspecting that she and Tegan shared a blood bond, their best means of tracking him would be Elise.
“We can’t be certain,” Lucan said, “but it’s a fair guess that Marek might have him. If that’s the case, there won’t be a lot of time before—”
“I’m on the way.” She glanced at Gideon, who was waiting just outside. “Can you get me a flight out right away?”
“The Order’s jet is still in Berlin, but I can see about chartering another one.”
“There’s no time,” she said. “What about commercial air?”
He frowned, concerned. “You really want to sit on a plane for half a day with a couple hundred humans? You think you’re up for that?”
She wasn’t sure, actually, but she damn well wasn’t going to let that stop her. If she had to hitch a ride with a plane full of convicted killers, she’d do it, if that’s what it would take to make sure Tegan was all right.
“Just do it, Gideon. Please. The first flight you can get me on.”
He nodded and took off at a jog up the corridor to handle the details.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Lucan.”
She heard his low exhalation, and the caution in his voice. Lucan wasn’t convinced that they would be able to do anything for Tegan, even if they managed to find him.
“Okay,” he said. “A car will be there to pick you up and bring you to Reichen’s estate. We’ll start searching as soon as you get here.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
The flight to Berlin was long and taxing. Elise took each hard minute, every hour, as it came, determined that she would be stronger than the ability that had owned her for so long. She had Tegan to thank for helping her overcome the worst of it—not only his showing her how to manage the psychic talent, but also the love she had for him, which drove her forward even as the familiar, vicious migraine began to pound in her temples barely an hour into the flight.
Elise got through it because she had to. Because Tegan’s life might very well depend on her now.
God, she could not fail in this.
She could handle anything except losing him.
As soon as the jet’s wheels touched ground that evening, Elise’s determination to find Tegan—and bring him home safely—redoubled. She ran out of the terminal and met Lucan outside at the curb, where he waited with one of Reichen’s vehicles.
“You realize that if we do find him, Tegan’s going to kill me for bringing you in on this,” Lucan said as she approached the car. He said it kind of jokingly, but she didn’t miss the fact that there was no humor at all in his gray eyes.
“When we find him, Lucan. There can’t be any ifs.” She tossed her carry-on bag into the back and climbed into the passenger seat. “Let’s get started. I don’t want to rest tonight until we cover every street in this city.”
Dante, Reichen, and the rest of the Order pulled the two SUVs to a stop just off a moonlit, wooded stretch of road an hour outside Prague. The forest was thick here, only the smallest light from a few remote homes glowing in the darkness. They got out, all seven of them garbed in black fatigues and armed to the teeth with guns, thousands of titanium rounds, and a healthy cache of C-4 explosives.
Each Breed male also carried a sheathed broadsword strapped on his back—unconventional weaponry for modern warfare, but totally necessary hardware when you were dealing with something as nasty and powerful as the creature they were intending to rouse out of its slumber.
“That’s got be the place,” Dante said, pointing to the jagged silhouette of the mountains ahead of them. “The outline is a perfect match for the design in Kassia’s tapestry.”
“Probably take us a couple of hours to make the hike up there,” Niko put in. His cheeks dimpled with his eager grin, the white glint of his teeth bright against the cover of night. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go bag the motherfucker.”
Dante held him back with a firm hand, scowling at the young warrior’s zeal. “Hold up, all of you. This is not a fucking game. It’s not like any other mission we’ve done. That thing that was sealed away in this mountain is not your garden-variety vampire. You take Lucan and Tegan and put them together—shit, throw Marek in there too—and you still aren’t coming close to what this creature can do. He’s Gen One times a hundred.”
“But his head can be separated from his body, same as any one of us,” Rio pointed out in a low, deadly voice. “The fastest way to kill a vampire.”
Dante nodded. “And we’re gonna have one shot at him, no more. Once we find the crypt and get inside, first priority is putting three feet of razor-sharp steel through the bastard’s neck.”
“And we’ll need to do it before it has a chance to get up,” Chase added. “If we let this thing rouse before we’re in place and ready to kill it, there’s very good odds we won’t all make it out of there.”
“Someone remind me why I didn’t want to be an accountant when I grew up,” Brock drawled.
Niko chuckled. “Because accountants don’t get to make things go boom.”
“They don’t get to smoke many suckheads either,” Kade added, sharing in the joke.
Brock’s answering grin was big and bright white. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember.”
Dante let everyone settle in to the plan, the younger males blowing off nervous energy with humor and smacktalk. But as the team of them started up the wooded side of the rocky incline, they fell silent and serious. None of them were certain what lay at the end of this journey, but they were all prepared to meet it together.
Elise wasn’t sure how long they’d been driving. Easily hours. They navigated through each section of the city, the affluent and the derelict, stopping at regular intervals to let her listen to the darkened streets and alleyways. Waiting for her veins to prickle with the awareness—the fervent hope—that Tegan was near.
She didn’t want to give up.
Not even as the night began to wane toward dawn.
“We can make another circuit through town,” Lucan said, the Gen One warrior no more inclined to abandon Tegan than she was. Even though the coming daylight was as much a threat as any deadly enemy.
Elise reached over and touched the large hand that turned the steering wheel onto yet another street. “Thank you, Lucan.”
He nodded. “You love him a great deal, do you?”
“Yes, I do. He is…everything to me.”
“Then we’d better not lose him, eh?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, we’d better not…oh, my God…Lucan. Slow down. Stop the car!”
He braked at once, and pulled over near a tree-lined, elegant residential street. As the vehicle came to a halt, Elise put down her window. A cold February breeze rushed inside.
“Down here,” she said, her veins tingling.
She focused on the sensation, pulling it into her, trying to divine its source. It was Tegan; she had no doubt. And the heat that traveled her bloodstream was not a pleasant warmth, but an acid burn.
The searing heat of pain.
“Oh, God. Lucan, he’s being held somewhere on this street—I’m sure of it. And he’s hurting. He’s hurting…very badly.” She closed her eyes, feeling it even more now that the car was turning onto the pleasant drive. “Hurry, Lucan. He’s being tortured.”
She felt queasy, both with the idea of Tegan being abused, and with the twisting anguish coursing through every cell in her body. But she held on, searching for any sign that they were getting close. The white-hot spike of pain that hit her as they drew up on an old stone-and-timber manor house told her they had found him.
The house was set back from the street, quiet, but well tended. Obviously lived in. A white Audi sedan was parked at the carriage house garage. There was birdseed in the feeder hanging from a pine bough in the center of the yard. A kid’s sled lay on the snowy front walk.
“Right here,” she told Lucan. “He’s in that house.”
Lucan frowned as he took in the same details she had, but he cut the headlights and killed the engine. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. Tegan is being held inside.”
She watched as Lucan armed himself. He was already wearing an arsenal of weapons—two large handguns and a pair of sheathed daggers—but he grabbed a leather satchel from behind the passenger seat and unzipped the bag to reveal even more.
He glanced up at her and muttered a ripe curse. “I’m not sure it would be safe for you to wait—”
“That’s good,” she said, “because I don’t plan to. I can help you find him once we get in.”
“No way, Elise. It’s too fucking dangerous. I can’t take you in there. I won’t.” He slapped a clip into one of his guns and holstered it. Then he pulled another knife and a coil of wire from the duffel and stuffed both into a pocket of his combat jacket. “As soon as I head for the house, I want you to slide over and take the wheel. Drive out to the—”
“Lucan.” Elise met his stern gray gaze and held it firmly. “Four months ago I thought my life had ended. My heart was ripped out by Marek and the Rogues who serve him. Now, by some miracle of fate, I’m happy again. I never dreamed I could be. I’ve never known this kind of love—the love I have for Tegan. So, if you think I’m going to sit out here and wait, or run out of harm’s way when I know he’s in trouble—when I know he’s in pain—well, I’m sorry, but you can forget it.”
“If my brother is the one holding him—and let’s be goddamn clear about this, we both know it’s got to be Marek—then there’s no telling what we’re going to find in there. Or what might come out of there when the dust finally settles. Tegan could already be lost.”
“I need to know, Lucan. I’d rather die trying to help him than stand by or walk away.”
A slow grin spread over the face of the Order’s fearsome leader. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re one stubborn female?”
“Tegan might have said so once or twice,” she admitted wryly.
“Then I guess he’ll have to understand what I was up against when he sees you with me.” He handed her a sheathed dagger attached to a leather belt.
Elise strapped the weapon around her waist and cinched the buckle. “I’m ready when you are, Lucan.”
“Okay,” he said, shaking his head in defeat. “Let’s go get our boy.”
They exited the car and swiftly, cautiously approached the human residence. As they neared the place, Elise was assaulted with both the pain of Tegan’s suffering and the growing awareness of Minions on the property. Her mind filled with a concert of corrupt thoughts, ugly voices pounding into her consciousness.
“Lucan,” she whispered, mouthing a warning to him. “Minions inside—more than one.”
He nodded, and motioned for her to come up near him. He gripped a wooden trellis that climbed up the side of the house, testing its strength. “Can you climb it?”
She took hold of the makeshift ladder and started pulling herself up. Lucan met her at the top; all it took for him to reach the level roof of the second-floor terrace was a powerful flex of his legs. He landed soundlessly from his fluid leap and thrust his hand down to help pull her up the rest of the way.
A pair of French doors were open onto the tiled patio, the wispy white curtains riffling out like ghosts. Elise could see a woman in a nightgown lying motionless on the floor inside the room. Her arm was outstretched, unmoving, the wrist savaged and resting in a pool of spilled blood.
“Marek,” Lucan said softly, in explanation of the carnage. “Will you be all right walking through there?”
Elise nodded. She followed him in through the scene of recent violence, past the dead human woman and the husband who had evidently tried without success to fend off the vicious vampire attack. Bile rose in Elise’s throat as they stepped out into the hallway and found the body of a young boy.
Oh, God.
Marek had broken in and killed them all.
Lucan ushered her past the child, taking her wrist and holding her behind him as he made a quick visual check of the hallway. She felt the sudden blast of mental pain, but had not seen the Minion coming until he was on them, having come out of another room just as they approached. Lucan silenced Marek’s mind slave before the human had a chance to scream a warning. With a dagger slicing deeply across the Minion’s throat, it sputtered in shock, then dropped in a lifeless heap to the floor. Lucan gave it no pause at all. He stepped over the corpse, waiting for Elise to do the same.
As they neared a stairwell that led to an upper floor of the house, Elise’s veins lit up with an electric kind of intuition. She could almost feel Tegan’s heart beating inside her own body, his labored breath a constriction in her own lungs.
“Lucan,” she whispered, pointing to the open door. “It’s Tegan. Up there.”
He moved into the unlit well and peered up the stairs. “Stay close, and stay behind me.”
Together they climbed the steep, narrow steps. At the top was a barred door. Lucan lifted the metal lock. He glanced back at her, and even in the darkness she could see the expression that seemed to caution her to brace herself for whatever they might find on the other side.
Tegan was alive behind that closed door—that much she was sure of—and that’s all she needed to know. “Do it, Lucan,” she whispered.
He pushed the door open and barreled through like a freight train, drawing a large blade and burying it into the Minion guard who pounded toward them in attack. Elise held back her scream as another one moved in and got like reward, going down in a bleeding, heavy crumble to the wood-planked floor.
But it was the sight of Tegan that nearly ripped a keening howl from her throat. Shackled to a pair of thick beams with irons on both wrists and ankles, his body bowed out, hanging limply from its restraints. His beautiful face was nearly concealed by the lank droop of his sweat-soaked, blood-coated hair, but Elise could still see the damage there. He was bloodied and beaten all over from a recent bout of torture, his body not yet having the time to speed healing to the abused tissue and bones.
She thought him unconscious until a visible tension suddenly crept over his muscles. He knew she was there. He felt her presence just as she would know his anywhere.
“Tegan…” She started to run to him, but drew back sharply when he lifted his head and she saw the razor-edged glint of fury in his eyes. “Oh, God…Tegan.”
“Get out of here!” His voice was raw gravel. The amber eyes glaring at her from under the bruised brow were filled with animal rage and pain. His fangs were enormous, more deadly than she’d ever seen them. He railed against the chains that held him. “Goddamn it! Get the fuck out of here now!”
“Tegan.” Lucan stepped up now, approaching warily but without hesitation. He reached out to take hold of one of the manacles fastened to Tegan’s wrist. “We’re taking you out of this place.”
“Get back,” he growled.
Lucan sniffed at the air. “What the fuck?” He wiped his thumb under Tegan’s nose, where a faint pink crust had collected. “Ah, Christ, Tegan. Crimson?”
“Marek…he gave me a lot of the shit, Lucan…” Tegan grunted, the slits of his pupils going thinner in the middle of all that glowing amber. “You get it now? It’s Bloodlust. I’m too far gone.”
“No, you’re not,” Elise told him.
“Jesus,” he hissed through the huge fangs. “Leave me—both of you! If you want to help me, Lucan, get her the hell out of here. Get her far away from here.”
Elise walked up to him and gently touched his matted hair. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”
As she tried to soothe Tegan, Lucan tore the shackle and chain free from the post with a mighty yank of his arm. Tegan’s right arm dropped down loosely, metal clanking. When he reached for the other, it was Tegan who growled a warning.
“Lucan—”
Too late.
The gun blast cracked sharply in the dim room, an orange explosion coming from near the stairwell. Lucan took the hit in his back and went down on one knee. Another shot rang out, but the reporting ping said it missed the target and hit stone instead.
More gunfire erupted as two Minions and a Rogue—Marek’s henchman, all of them armed with semiautomatic weapons—poured in and started squeezing off rounds. Elise felt a heavy weight curl down around her, pulling her into the shelter of hard muscle. Tegan’s breath sawed roughly in her ear, but his free arm was wrapped around her, his body arched over her to protect her from the fray.
She felt helpless, watching Lucan battle three opponents while she cowered in the cage of Tegan’s body. Lucan dodged many of the rapid-fire rounds, but a good lot of them hit their mark. The Gen One warrior weathered the assault, returning fire as the dance of combat put the room in a smoke-filled, ear-splitting chaos. The Rogue went down in the fray, killed by Lucan’s titaniumlaced bullets. The body sizzled and convulsed on the floor, writhing as death swiftly claimed it.
When one of the Minions came in closer, his sights trained on Lucan, who was eluding the gunfire of another and sending back more of the same, Elise reached down to feel for the hilt of her dagger. She pulled it loose of the sheath, knowing she would have to throw it, and she would have only one shot.
Tegan growled her name in warning as she rolled free of his arms. She came up to her feet and took quick aim, then brought her hand back and let the blade fly.
The Minion roared as the dagger embedded deep under his arm. He fell back with his weapon still firing, sending a spray of bullets high into the rafters. Some of them hit the black ceiling, the sound of shattering glass an ominous counterpoint to the battle taking place below.
“Oh, God,” Elise gasped as painted shards dropped from the broken skylights.
The ceiling was glass—recently coated with black paint to blot out the sun. Marek must have taken that immediate precaution when he set up camp in the humans’ house.
Now, as another large piece of glass broke away and fell to the floor, Elise stared up at the sky overhead.
A sky that was slowly pinkening with the first early light of dawn.
CHAPTER
Thirty-four
They’d been scouring the steep, jagged crag for some hours and still no trace of the crypt. Night was starting to fade. None of the warriors scaling the rocks had any real affection for the sun—particularly Dante, after a nasty UV tangle a few months ago—but as later generation Breed, they could each withstand daylight for a short amount of time. With the aid of their solar-protection gear, they might be able to double that exposure.
But not so for the Ancient they hunted now. If the Gen One offspring of that alien being began to blister and burn in under ten minutes, the Ancient’s UV-allergic skin and eyes would incinerate in seconds. That made for a decent backup plan, if the Order somehow failed to take the creature’s head.
Assuming they could even find the suckhead’s hiding place amid all this inhospitable rock.
Dante shot an assessing glance up at the sky. “If we don’t get a hit on something in the next half hour or so, we’d better start heading back down.”
Chase nodded. He stood beside Dante in the mouth of a shallow cave that had yielded nothing but some discarded beer bottles and the days-old remnants of an extinguished campfire. “Maybe we’re off somehow. Some of us could branch out along the farther ridge and check closer to the summit.”
“It’s got to be here,” Dante said. “You saw the tapestry. That range Kassia sewed into the design is this one, right where we’re standing. We’re close, I’m telling you—”
“Hey, D.” Nikolai was perched on a rocky promontory several yards above the mouth of the cave. “Rio and Reichen just found another opening up here. It’s pretty tight, but it goes deep into the mountain. You might wanna have a look.”
Dante and Chase made a quick scramble up to where the others had gathered. The mouth of the cave—if you could even call it that—was a vertical slit in the rock. Small enough to be concealed unless you were right on top of it, yet wide enough for a man to sidle through with care.
“Chisel marks,” Dante observed, running his hand along the edge of the opening. “Based on the weathering, they’ve been here for a while. This could be the place.”
Six sober gazes held his as he drew the sword he carried and quietly gave the operation’s commands. He would go in first, see how far the opening went and if there was anything on the other side. The others would wait for his orders—two on guard outside the mouth of the cave, and the rest ready to move in behind him on his signal if they had in fact found the crypt.
He squeezed between the vertical plates of rock, his head turned toward the pitch blackness ahead of him. The smell of bat dung and mold offended his senses the deeper he crept inside. The air in here was cold, damp. There was no sound at all, only the soft scrape of his movement as he progressed.
Somewhere along the way, he noticed that the crush of stone was easing. The walls began to widen incrementally, then, at last, they opened up onto a cavernous space deep within the mountain.
Dante stepped on something that crunched beneath his boot.
His eyes were keenest in the dark, and what he saw made the blood drain from his head.
Holy hell.
They’d found Dragos’s secret. No doubt about it. Dante was standing in the middle of the Ancient’s hibernation chamber, a crypt carved into the side of a mountain, just like Kassia’s tapestry had said it would be.
Dante didn’t recall speaking—hell, he wasn’t even sure he was drawing breath in that moment—but within moments he was joined by his brethren.
“Jesus Christ,” one of them murmured, hardly audible.
Rio’s whispered prayer in Spanish spoke for everyone: “God help us all.”
Tegan lifted his head, turning a fleeting, uncertain gaze up to the broken skylights above their heads.
Fuck.
He didn’t dare look long. Even dawn’s early, filtered wash of light was like acid pouring over his retinas. Lucan was feeling the effects too. He took a hit in the thigh, the remaining Minion’s shot driving him down to the floor. As a Gen One vampire, he could absorb more damage than others of their race, and he had, his body expelling the rounds he hadn’t been able to dodge, the wounds bleeding but already beginning to heal over.
But he was under the open ceiling now, and thin tendrils of smoke began to rise up off his exposed skin. He bellowed, transforming in his rage. His lips peeled back as his fangs ripped out of his gums and his eyes went bright amber.
The Minion started to retreat now, realizing what he was up against. Lucan rolled out of the light and pulled the trigger of his 9mm. A single shot rang out. The Minion dropped, but he wasn’t dead yet. Lucan squeezed off another round, finishing the bastard.
Then, silence.
The hollow click of an empty cartridge.
At the same time, Tegan’s own Gen One abilities were slowly coming back to life. But he couldn’t yet physically break the bonds that held him. He wasn’t at all sure he should. The Crimson he’d been made to ingest was thrumming through every cell in his body, corrupting him like the poison it was.
He felt his Bloodlust rising, compelling him to feed the thirst that wanted to rule him.
He snarled as Elise came over to him and tried to work one of his manacles free. “Get away, damn it! I don’t want you here. Get out of here while you still can.”
She kept tugging on the cuff, ignoring him completely. “There’s got to be a way to get these off you.”
He saw her eyes sweep the room, searching for a tool. “Elise, goddamn it!”
She scurried over to one of the dead Minions and pulled the semiauto out from under the heavy bulk of the body. “Take this,” she ordered him, slapping the weapon into his free hand. “Shoot the chains, Tegan. Do it now!”
He hesitated, and she made a hasty grab for the gun.
“Damn it, if you don’t, I will!”
She didn’t have the chance. The gun clattered to the floor, and, in a blur of movement, Elise was yanked off her feet by invisible hands and thrown several yards away. She crashed down, landing hard in the litter of broken glass. The scent of heather and roses swamped the room.
Marek stood in the open doorway, a sword in one hand, his other raised and pointed in Elise’s direction, holding her there with the power of his mind. His mental grasp closed around her throat, cutting off precious air. She choked and clawed at the tight band of energy that was strangling her.
“She bleeds, warrior,” he taunted Tegan. “And how your Rogue eyes thirst for it.”
Lucan drew a blade from his hip and sent it flying. In that instant, Marek’s focus switched, flicking to the airborne dagger and deflecting it with a thought. Undaunted, Marek strode forward, chuckling as he came up on Lucan’s bloodied, UV-scorched face. “Ah, my brother. Your death will be particularly sweet after all these years of waiting. I only wish you could live to see my rule come to pass before we say good-bye.”
Marek raised his sword and swung it hard. Lucan rolled at the last second, leaving only hard wood planks in the way of his brother’s weapon. The blade bit deep into the floor, momentarily frozen there.
In a flash of movement, Lucan was up on his feet. He grabbed the nearest thing he could find—his hands closing on a length of copper utility pipe that ran up the wall. He wrenched it loose. Water spurted from the severed connection like a small fountain.
“Lucan!” Tegan called out as Marek yanked his sword free and spun to bring it down on his brother.
Lucan met the blow, blocking the downward arc with the long tube of copper. It bent under the strain, but Lucan held fast, fury blazing in his amber eyes. Marek’s dark glasses were knocked askew in the scuffle, revealing still more amber as brother met brother in a murderous bid for control. Marek tried to drive the sword harder, leaning into the blade with all the considerable strength of his right arm. Lucan didn’t give an inch. The two Gen One warriors grunted as they held each other at an impasse.
Above them, the sky was growing brighter, hotter, singeing both where the light touched open skin.
Released of Marek’s hold, Elise coughed and gasped, struggling to breathe. Her pain lanced across Tegan like a physical blow. And the sight of her bleeding—the bright red lacerations on her hands, on her face—sent a jolt of adrenaline arrowing through Tegan’s veins. He ripped his other arm loose of its bonds, roaring up into the rafters.
And across the space from him, Marek and Lucan’s stalemate was taking a treacherous turn. It happened in an instant, Marek’s hissed oath was vicious, the only hint of what was to come. Bearing down on Lucan with his right arm, he reached into his shirt with his free hand and withdrew a small vial of red powder.
With a quick slash of his wrist, the Crimson flew at Lucan’s face, coating his eyes and cheeks in the fine dust. He lost his hold on the pipe.
Ah, Christ.
Lucan.
Marek drew back with a smile as his brother heaved forward. He raised the sword high above his head. And as he began to swing it down, a sudden flash of light cut across Marek’s face, hovering in his eyes. It was piercingly bright, the sun reflected in a powerful ray that burned Marek’s eyes and nearly blinded Tegan where he stood.
He averted his gaze and found Elise on her knees in the broken glass. In her hands was a large shard, which she held steady and unflinching, throwing the light in a deliberate beam into Marek’s face.
It was all the chance Tegan needed.
Crossing the room in long strides, he swung the chains that hung from his wrists. He caught Marek around the neck with one, coiling the thick links and wrenching the vampire off his feet. The other snaked around his sword arm, losing Marek his weapon. Marek fought Tegan with his mind, but every attempt was blocked by Tegan’s rage. He pinned the bastard under his foot, ignoring the sudden pleas for mercy and forgiveness.
“It ends here,” Tegan snarled. “You end here.”
Tegan unslung the chains from Marek’s arm and reached down to retrieve the sword. He saw Lucan’s somber nod as he raised the blade over Marek’s neck. Marek howled a curse, then fell silent as Tegan brought the sword down in a swift, lethal swing.
“Tegan!” Elise cried, racing over to him as soon as it was over.
She threw her arms around him, helping to unwind his chains from Marek’s lifeless body. She was at Lucan’s side next, helping Tegan to move him into a shaded corner of the room.
Tegan saw her glance anxiously up at the open ceiling. “Come on. We have to get you both out of here right away.”
She led them down the stairs, then disappeared into one of the bedrooms. She came out carrying a large duvet and a thick wool blanket. “Take these,” she said, helping to drape the shrouds over both of them. “Stay under there. I’ll help you out of the house and into the car.”
Neither of the two warriors had any argument. They let this petite female—Tegan’s mate, he thought with a swelling surge of pride—guide them into full-on daylight, then into the back of Reichen’s car.
“Keep your heads down and stay covered,” Elise ordered them. She closed the back door, then ran around to the driver’s seat and hopped in. The engine fired up, tires squealing a bit as she hit the gas. “I’m getting us the hell out of here.”
And, by God, so she did.
CHAPTER
Thirty-five
Elise watched Tegan sleep, relieved that his ordeal was over. With Marek’s death, there would be much healing to come, not only for Tegan and her as well, but for Lucan and the rest of the Order. A dark chapter of their past had closed at last, the secrets aired. Now they could all look ahead to the future, and whatever tests the new dawn would bring.
Elise had thought she’d feel some sense of triumph over Marek’s death: the one ultimately responsible for Camden’s suffering was no more. She’d made good on her promise, with Tegan’s help.
But she didn’t feel victorious as she smoothed a strand of soft, tawny hair off Tegan’s brow. She felt anxious and concerned. Desperate that he be all right. The Crimson that Marek had given him was slow to wear off. He’d been sleeping fitfully since they arrived back at Reichen’s Darkhaven estate. Bouts of convulsions had wracked him, and his skin was still clammy to the touch.
“Oh, Tegan,” she whispered, leaning over him to press her lips to his. “Don’t leave me.”
God, if she lost him to that hideous drug too, after everything they’d been through…
The tears slid down her cheeks, the first time she’d allowed herself to break down in the hours since they’d been back. The first time she’d actually let herself consider what would be the worst scenario.
What if Tegan didn’t fully revive? He’d been so close to Rogue once before—what would it take for him to slide into that pit of hopelessness? And if he did, would he be able to climb back out?
“You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
She wasn’t sure if she heard the words spoken out loud, or merely as a wish in her heart. But when Elise drew back, she was looking into Tegan’s eyes. His gorgeous, gem-green eyes. Only the barest trace of amber remained.
His name was a sigh on her lips, a thankful prayer. She kissed him hard, and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders on the bed. His answering growl of interest made her smile against his mouth.
“You’re back,” she murmured, so relieved.
“Mmm,” he grunted, his hands coming up to caress her. “I’m back, Breedmate. Thanks to you.”
“So, you finally admit it—you need me.”
His smile was wicked. “Come up here with me. I want to show you just how much.”
She got up on the bed with him, straddling his hips and fully expecting him to pull her down on top of him and begin the seduction he was so skilled at. But he only looked at her. When he stroked her cheek, his fingers were tender, reverent.
“I admit it,” he said, his gaze so sincere it made her heart clench. “I’ll admit it to you now, and to anyone, anytime. I need you, Elise. I love you. You are mine. My woman, my mate, my beloved. My everything.”
Her vision swam with watery happiness. “Tegan…I love you so much. Tell me this is real. That this is forever.”
“You think I’m the type of male to settle for anything less?”
She shook her head, bleary-eyed with joy as she leaned down and kissed him.
The staccato rap on the door went ignored for a couple of seconds, but then Lucan’s deep voice sounded on the other side. There was a tense edge to the warrior’s tone. “How we doing in here?”
“Come in, Lucan,” Elise called to the Order’s leader—after what they went through together today, her dear, trusted friend.
She got up from Tegan’s body despite his groan of protest and walked over to meet Lucan as he came inside. He was cleaned up and healing, but it would take some time before his body was completely restored. He gave Tegan a weary smile as Tegan swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.
“What is it?” Tegan asked, snapping back into warrior mode despite the fact that he’d been leveled for the past few hours. “What’s happened?”
Lucan didn’t mince words. “Dante and the others just called in from Prague. They found the crypt up in the mountains, just like Kassia’s clues said they would. It was all there, T. A cave carved into the rock, a hibernation chamber full of dermaglyphic symbols and the bones of the humans Dragos fed his father in preparation of his long sleep.”
“But,” Tegan prompted, pulling Elise toward him like he wanted something firm to hold on to.
“But it was empty.” Lucan shook his head, ran his hand through his dark hair. “The goddamn crypt had already been opened. Someone freed the bastard. We can only guess how long ago, but it appears to have been years. Decades, even.”
“Then…he’s out there somewhere?” Elise asked, dreading confirmation of that terrible fact. “What are we going to do?”
“We start looking,” Tegan said. “Christ, assuming the Ancient is alive, he could be anywhere. A needle in a haystack.”
Lucan nodded. “And we’re going to need all the resources we can get. Rest up, both of you. We won’t be heading back to Boston until the others return from Prague tonight.”
With that, Lucan turned and started for the door. Halfway there, he paused. He came back to Tegan’s bedside, his expression serious. “From the beginning, Tegan, you were more brother to me than any kin by blood. You still are.”
Tegan felt likewise, in spite of all they’d been through. Maybe because of it. “I’ll always have your back, Lucan. You can count on it.”
Lucan held out his hand to him. As the two warriors clasped their palms together, Tegan felt the warmth of friendship—of brotherhood—flowing between them. It surprised him, how welcome that affection actually was to him. And how much he’d missed it.
Lucan nodded. The powerful Gen One vampire’s eyes warmed with unmistakable respect as he turned to Elise.
“The Order is in your debt,” he told her, now holding his hand out to her. “For what you did to bring us Dragos’s secret, and for what you did here today for Tegan and me…I am personally in your debt. Thank you, Elise.”
She gave a little shake of her head as she placed her fingers in his broad palm. “No thanks are necessary. I’m happy to do whatever I can to help the Order. And Tegan.”
Lucan smiled as he carried her hand to his lips. His kiss of gratitude was chaste and sincere, but it still made Tegan growl a little.
“You are well mated,” he said, that sage look shifting to Tegan.
“Yes, I am,” Tegan agreed without the slightest hesitation. He grinned at Elise, desire sparking as always just to look at her and know that by some miracle of fate, she was his. “I am very well mated.”
Lucan nodded. “Rest up. I won’t bother you again until we’re ready to move out and head back to Boston.”
As soon as he was gone, Elise wrapped Tegan in a loving embrace, her lips warm with promise as she kissed him. He felt the strength of her love surrounding him, and he knew that no matter how dark the coming days might be, he would always have this light to hold him. He kissed her back, interest stirring rigidly to life.
“You heard Lucan,” she murmured against his mouth, a smile in her voice. “You need to get some rest.”
“So?” he growled, playfully nipping her supple lower lip.
Elise laughed. “So, maybe we should wait to do this until we get home.”
Tegan rolled her onto the bed with him, smoothly pinning her under his awakening body. He looked down into her wide lavender eyes, which held him with so much love it staggered him.
He kissed her slowly, tenderly, sincerely.
“I am home,” he said, his voice rough with emotion as he pressed her down beneath him. “This is the only home I’ll ever need.”
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author LARA ADRIAN lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Read on for a sneak peek of
Midnight Rising
by
LARA ADRIAN
Coming from Dell in spring 2008
Midnight Rising
On Sale spring 2008
Chapter One
The woman looked completely out of place in her pristine white blouse and tailored ivory pants. Long, coffee-dark hair cascaded over her shoulders in thick waves, not a single strand disturbed by the moist haze that hung in the air of the forest. She was wearing tall elegant heels, which hadn’t seemed to keep her from climbing up a wooded path that had the other hikers around her huffing in the humid July heat.
At the crest of the steep incline, she waited in the shade of a bulky, moss-covered rock formation, unblinking as half a dozen tourists passed her by, some of them snapping pictures of the overlook beyond. They didn’t notice her. But then, most people couldn’t see the dead.
Dylan Alexander didn’t want to see her either.
She hadn’t encountered a dead woman since she was twelve years old. That she would see one now, twenty years later and in the middle of the Czech Republic, was more than a little startling. She tried to ignore the apparition, but as Dylan and her three traveling companions made their way up the path, the woman’s dark eyes found her and rooted on her.
You see me.
Dylan pretended not to hear the static-filled whisper that came from the ghost’s unmoving lips. She didn’t want to acknowledge the connection. She’d gone so long without one of these weird encounters that she’d all but forgotten what it was like.
Dylan had never understood her strange ability to see the dead. She’d never been able to trust it or control it. She could stand in the middle of a cemetery and see nothing, then suddenly find herself up close and personal with one of the departed, as she was here in the mountains about an hour outside Prague.
The ghosts were always female. Always youthful-looking and vibrant, like the one who stared at her now with an unmistakable desperation in her exotic, deep brown gaze.
You must hear me.
The statement was tinged with a rich, Hispanic accent, the tone pleading.
“Hey, Dylan. Come here and let me get a picture of you next to this rock.”
The sound of a true, earthly voice jolted Dylan’s attention away from the beautiful dead woman standing in the nearby arch of weathered sandstone. Janet, a friend of Dylan’s mother, Sharon, dug into her backpack and pulled out a camera. The summer tour to Europe was Sharon’s idea; it would have been her last great adventure, but the cancer came back in March and this time the chemotherapy wasn’t making so much as a dent in the disease. Sharon was still in the hospital, and at her insistence, Dylan had taken the trip in her place.
“Gotcha,” Janet said, clicking off a shot of Dylan and the towering pillars of rock in the wooded valley below. “Your mom sure would love this place, honey. Isn’t it breathtaking?”
Dylan nodded. “We’ll e-mail her the pictures tonight when we get back to the hostel.”
She led her group away from the rock, eager to leave the whispering otherworldly presence behind. They walked down a sloping ridge, into a stand of thin-trunked pines growing in tight formation. Russet leaves and conifer needles crushed on the damp path underfoot. It had rained that morning, topped off with a sweltering heat that kept many of the area’s tourists away.
The forest was quiet, peaceful…except for the awareness of ghostly eyes following Dylan’s every step deeper into the woods.
“I’m so glad your boss let you have the time off to come with us,” said one of the women from behind her on the path. “I know how hard you work at the paper, making up all those stories—”
“She doesn’t make them up, Marie,” Janet chided gently. “There’s got to be some truth in Dylan’s articles or they couldn’t print them. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Dylan scoffed. “Well, considering that our front page usually runs at least one alien abduction or demonic possession story, we don’t tend to let facts get in the way of a good story. We publish entertainment pieces, not hard-hitting journalism.”
“Your mom says you’re going to be a famous reporter one day,” Marie said. “A budding Woodward or Bernstein, that’s what she says.”
“That’s right,” Janet put in. “You know, she showed me an article you wrote during your first newspaper job, fresh out of college—you were covering some nasty murder case upstate. You remember, don’t you, honey?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said, navigating them toward another massive cluster of soaring sandstone towers that rose out of the trees. “I remember. But that was a long time ago.”
“Well, no matter what you do, I know that your mom is very proud of you,” Marie said. “You’ve brought a lot of joy into her life.”
Dylan nodded, struggling to find her voice. “Thanks.”
Both Janet and Marie worked with her mother at the women’s center in Brooklyn. Nancy, the other member of their travel group, had been Sharon’s best friend since high school. All three of the women had become like extended family to Dylan in the past few months. Three extra pairs of comforting arms, which she was really going to need if she ever lost her mom.
In her heart, Dylan knew it was more a matter of when than if. The relapse had come on fast, the cancer proving even more relentless than the first time.
Nancy came up and gave Dylan a warm, if sad, smile. “It means the world to Sharon that you would experience the trip for her. You’re living it for her, you know?”
“I know. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Dylan hadn’t told her travel companions—or her mother—that taking off for two weeks on such short notice was probably going to cost her her job. Part of her didn’t really care. She hated working for the cut-rate tabloid anyway. She’d attempted to sell her boss on the idea that she was sure to return from Europe with some decent material—maybe a Bohemian bigfoot story, or a Dracula sighting out of Romania.
But selling bullshit to a guy who peddled it for a living was no easy task. Her boss had been pretty clear about his expectations: If Dylan left on this trip, she’d better come back with something big, or she didn’t need to come back at all.
“Whoo, it’s hot up here,” Janet said, sweeping her baseball cap off her short silver curls and running her palm over her brow. “Am I the only wimp in this crowd, or would anyone else like to rest for a little bit?”
“I could use a break,” Nancy agreed.
She shrugged off her backpack and set it down on the ground beneath a tall pine tree. Marie joined them, moving off the path and taking a long pull from her water bottle.
Dylan wasn’t the least bit tired. She wanted to keep moving. The most impressive climbs and rock formations were still ahead of them. They had only scheduled one day for this part of the trip, and Dylan wanted to cover as much ground as she could.
And then there was the matter of the beautiful dead woman who now stood ahead of them on the path. She stared at Dylan, her energy fading in and out of visible form.
See me.
Dylan glanced away. Janet, Marie and Nancy were seated on the ground, nibbling on protein bars and trail mix.
“Want some?” Janet asked, holding out a baggie of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds.
Dylan shook her head. “I’m too antsy to rest or eat right now. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to take a quick look around on my own while you all hang out here. I’ll come right back.”
“Sure, honey. Your legs are younger than ours, after all. Just be careful.”
“I will. Be back soon.”
Dylan avoided the spot where the dead woman’s image flickered up ahead. Instead, she cut off the established trail and onto the densely wooded hillside. She walked for a few minutes, simply enjoying the tranquility of the place. There was an ancient, wildly mysterious quality to the jutting peaks of sandstone and basalt. Dylan paused to take pictures, hoping she could capture some of the beauty for her mother to enjoy.
Hear me.
At first Dylan didn’t see the woman, only heard the broken-static sound of her spectral voice. But then, a flash of white caught her eye. She was farther up the incline, standing on a ridge of stone halfway up one of the steep crags.
Follow me.
“Bad idea,” Dylan murmured, eyeing the tricky slope. The grade was fierce, the path uncertain at best. And even though the view from up there was probably spectacular, she really had no desire to join her ghostly new friend on the Other Side.
Please…help him.
Help him?
“Help who?” she asked, knowing the spirit couldn’t hear her.
They never could. Communication with her kind was always a one-way street. They simply appeared when they wished, and said what they wished—if they spoke at all. Then, when it became too hard for them to hold their visible form, they just faded away.
Help him.
The woman in white started going transparent up on the mountainside. Dylan shielded her eyes from the hazy light pouring down through the trees, trying to keep her in sight. With a bit of apprehension, she began the trudge upward, using the tight growth of pines and beech to help her over the roughest of the terrain.
By the time she clambered up onto the ridge where the apparition had been standing, the woman was gone. Dylan carefully walked the ledge of rock, and found that it was wider than it appeared from below. The sandstone was weathered dark from the elements, dark enough that a deep vertical slit in the rock had been invisible to her until now.
It was from within that narrow wedge of lightless space that Dylan heard the detached, ghostly whisper once again.
Save him.
She looked around her and saw only wilderness and rock. There was no one up here. Now not even a trace of the ethereal figure, who lured her this far up the mountain alone.
Dylan turned her head to look into the gloom of the rock’s crevice. She put her hand into the space and felt cool, damp air skate over her skin.
Inside that deep black cleft, it was still and quiet.
As quiet as a tomb.
If Dylan was the type to believe in creepy folklore monsters, she might have imagined one could live in a hidden spot like this. But she didn’t believe in monsters, never had. Aside from seeing the occasional dead person, who’d never caused her any harm, Dylan was about as practical—even cynical—as could be.
It was the reporter in her that made her curious to know what she might truly find inside the rock. Assuming you could trust the word of a dead woman, who did she think needed help? Was someone injured in there? Could someone have gotten lost way up here on this steep crag?
Dylan grabbed a small flashlight from an outer pocket of her backpack. She shined it into the opening, noticing just then that there were vague chisel marks around and within the crevice, as if someone had worked to widen it. Although not anytime recently, based on the weathered edges of the tool marks.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness. “Is anyone in here?”
Nothing but silence answered.
Dylan pulled off her backpack and carried it in one hand, her other hand wrapped around the slim barrel of her flashlight. Walking forward she could barely fit through the crevice; anyone larger would have been forced to go in sideways.
The tight squeeze only lasted a short distance before the space angled around and began to open up. Suddenly she was inside the thick rock of the mountain, her light beam bouncing off smooth, rounded walls. It was a cave—an empty one, except for some bats rustling out of a disturbed sleep overhead.
And from the look of it, the space was mostly manmade. The ceiling rose at least twenty feet over Dylan’s head. Interesting symbols were painted on each wall of the small cavern. They looked like some odd sort of hieroglyphics: a cross between bold, tribal markings and gracefully geometric patterns.
Dylan walked closer to one of the walls, mesmerized by the beauty of the strange artwork. She panned the small beam of her flashlight to the right, breath-taken to find the elaborate decoration continuing all around her. She took a step toward the center of the cave. The toe of her hiking boot knocked into something on the earthen floor. Whatever it was clattered hollowly as it rolled away. Dylan swept her light over the ground and gasped.
Oh, shit.
It was a skull. White bone glowed against the darkness, the human head staring up at her with sightless, vacant sockets.
If this was the him the dead woman wanted Dylan to help out, it looked like she got there about a few hundred years too late.
Dylan moved the light farther into the gloom, unsure what she was searching for, but too fascinated to leave just yet. The beam skidded over another set of bones—Jesus, more human remains scattered on the floor of the cave.
Goose bumps prickled on Dylan’s arms from a draft that seemed to rise out of nowhere.
And that’s when she saw it.
A large rectangular block of stone sat on the other side of the darkness. More markings like the ones covering the walls were painted onto the carved bulk of the object.
Dylan didn’t have to move closer to realize that what she was looking at was a crypt. A thick slab had been placed over the top of the tomb. It was moved aside, skewed slightly off the stone crypt as if pushed away by incredibly strong hands.
Was someone—or something—laid to rest in there?
Dylan had to know.
She crept forward, flashlight gripped in suddenly perspiring fingers. A few paces away now, Dylan angled the beam into the opening of the tomb.
It was empty.
And for reasons she couldn’t explain, that thought chilled her even more than if she’d found some hideous corpse turning to dust inside.
Over her head, the cave’s nocturnal residents were getting restless. The bats stirred, then bolted past her in a hurried rush of motion. Dylan ducked to let them pass, figuring she’d better get the hell out of there too.
As she pivoted to find the crevice exit, she heard another rustle of movement. This one was bigger than bats, a low snarl of sound followed by a disturbance of loose rock somewhere in the cave.
Oh, God.
Maybe she wasn’t alone in here after all.
The hairs at the back of her neck tingled and before she could remind herself that she didn’t believe in monsters, her heart started beating in overdrive.
She fumbled around for the way out of the cave, her pulse jackhammering in her ears. By the time she found daylight, she was gasping for air. Her legs felt rubbery as she scrambled back down the ridge, then raced to rejoin her friends in the safety of the bright midday sun below.
He’d been dreaming of Eva again.
It wasn’t enough that the female had betrayed him in life—now, in her death, she invaded his mind while he slept. Still beautiful, still treacherous, she spoke to him of regret and how she wanted to make things right.
All lies.
Eva’s visiting ghost was only a part of Rio’s long slide into madness.
His dead mate wept in his dreams, begging him to forgive her for the deception she’d orchestrated a year ago. She was sorry. She still loved him, and always would.
She wasn’t real. Just a taunting reminder of a past he would be glad to leave behind.
Trusting the female had cost him much. His face had been ruined in the warehouse explosion. His body was broken in places, still recovering from injuries that would have killed a mortal man.
And his mind…?
Rio’s sanity had been fracturing apart bit by bit, worsening in the time he’d been holed up alone on this Bohemian mountainside.
He could bring it all to a halt. As one of the Breed—a hybrid race of humans bearing vampiric, alien genes—he could drag himself into the sunlight and let the UV rays devour him. He’d considered doing just that, but there remained the task of closing the cave and destroying the damning evidence it contained.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there. The days and nights, weeks and months, had at some point merged into an endless suspension of time. He wasn’t sure how it had happened. He’d arrived there with his brethren of the Order. The warriors had been on a mission to locate and destroy an old evil secreted away in the rocks centuries ago.
But they were too late.
The crypt was empty; the evil had already been freed.
It was Rio who volunteered to stay behind and seal the cave while the others returned home to Boston. He couldn’t go back with them. He didn’t know where he belonged. He’d intended to find his own way—maybe go back to Spain, his homeland.
That’s what he’d told the warriors who’d long been like brothers to him. But he hadn’t carried out any of his plans.
Now, easily months later, he lurked in the darkness of the cave like the bats that inhabited the dank space with him. He no longer hunted, no longer had the desire to feed. He merely existed, conscious of his steady descent into a hell of his own making.
For Rio, that descent had finally proven too much.
Beside him on a hollowed-out ledge of rock ten feet up from the floor of the cave rested a detonator and a small cache of C-4. It was enough boom to seal up the hidden crypt forever. Rio intended to set it off that night…from the inside.
Tonight, he would finish it.
When his lethargic senses roused him from a heavy sleep to warn him of an intruder, he thought it to be just another tormenting phantom. He caught the scent of a human—a young female, judging by the musky warmth that clung to her skin. His eyes peeled open in the dark, nostrils flaring to pull more of her fragrance into his lungs.
She was no trick of his madness.
She was flesh and blood, the first human to venture anywhere near the obscure mouth of the cave in all the time he’d been there. The woman shined a bright light around the cave, temporarily blinding him, even from his concealed position above her head. He heard her footsteps scuffing on the sandstone floor of the cavern. Heard her sudden gasp as she knocked into some of the skeletal litter left behind by the original occupant of the place.
Rio shifted himself on the ledge, testing his limbs in preparation of a leap to the floor below. The stirring of the air disturbed the bats clinging to the ceiling. They flew out, but the woman remained. Her light traveled more of the cave, then came to rest on the tomb that lay open.
Rio felt her curiosity chill toward fear as she neared the crypt. Even her human instincts picked up on the evil that had once slept in that block of stone.
But she shouldn’t be there.
Rio couldn’t let her see any more than she already had. He heard himself snarl as he moved on the rocky jut overhead. The woman heard it too. She tensed with alarm. The beam of her flashlight ricocheted crazily off the walls as she made a panicked search for the cave’s exit.
Before Rio could command his limbs to move, she was already slipping away.
She was gone.
She’d seen too much, but soon it wouldn’t matter.
Once night fell, there would be no further trace of the crypt, the cave, or of Rio himself.
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT RISING
A Dell Book /April 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Lara Adrian, LLC
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33746-1
v3.0
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
With my humble gratitude and deepest respect
to all veterans of war
CHAPTER
One
The woman looked completely out of place in her pristine white blouse and tailored ivory pants. Long, coffee-dark hair cascaded over her shoulders in thick waves, not a single strand disturbed by the moist haze that hung in the air of the forest. She was wearing tall elegant heels, which hadn’t seemed to keep her from climbing up a wooded path that had the other hikers around her huffing in the humid July heat.
At the crest of the steep incline, she waited in the shade of a bulky, moss-covered rock formation, unblinking as half a dozen tourists passed her by, some of them snapping pictures of the overlook beyond. They didn’t notice her. But then, most people couldn’t see the dead.
Dylan Alexander didn’t want to see her either.
She hadn’t encountered a dead woman since she was twelve years old. That she would see one now, twenty years later and in the middle of the Czech Republic, was more than a little startling. She tried to ignore the apparition, but as Dylan and her three traveling companions made their way up the path, the woman’s dark eyes found her and rooted on her.
You see me.
Dylan pretended not to hear the static-filled whisper that came from the ghost’s unmoving lips. She didn’t want to acknowledge the connection. She’d gone so long without one of these weird encounters that she’d all but forgotten what it was like.
Dylan had never understood her strange ability to see the dead. She’d never been able to trust it or control it. She could stand in the middle of a cemetery and see nothing, then suddenly find herself up close and personal with one of the departed, as she was here in the mountains about an hour outside Prague.
The ghosts were always female. Generally youthful-looking and vibrant, like the one who stared at her now with an unmistakable desperation in her exotic, deep brown gaze.
You must hear me.
The statement was tinged with a rich, Hispanic accent, the tone pleading.
“Hey, Dylan. Come here and let me get a picture of you next to this rock.”
The sound of a true, earthly voice jolted Dylan’s attention away from the beautiful dead woman standing in the nearby arch of weathered sandstone. Janet, a friend of Dylan’s mother, Sharon, dug into her backpack and pulled out a camera. The summer tour to Europe was Sharon’s idea; it would have been her last great adventure, but the cancer came back in March and the final round of chemotherapy several weeks ago had left her too weak to travel. More recently, Sharon had been in and out of the hospital with pneumonia, and at her insistence Dylan had taken the trip in her place.
“Gotcha,” Janet said, clicking off a shot of Dylan and the towering pillars of rock in the wooded valley below. “Your mom sure would love this place, honey. Isn’t it breathtaking?”
Dylan nodded. “We’ll e-mail her the pictures tonight when we get back to the hotel.”
She led her group away from the rock, eager to leave the whispering, otherworldly presence behind. They walked down a sloping ridge, into a stand of thin-trunked pines growing in tight formation. Russet leaves and conifer needles from seasons past crushed on the damp path underfoot. It had rained that morning, topped off with a sweltering heat that kept many of the area’s tourists away.
The forest was quiet, peaceful…except for the awareness of ghostly eyes following Dylan’s every step deeper into the woods.
“I’m so glad your boss let you have the time off to come with us,” added one of the women from behind her on the path. “I know how hard you work at the paper, making up all those stories—”
“She doesn’t make them up, Marie,” Janet chided gently. “There’s got to be some truth in Dylan’s articles or they couldn’t print them. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Dylan scoffed. “Well, considering that our front page usually runs at least one alien abduction or demonic possession account, we don’t tend to let facts get in the way of a good story. We publish entertainment pieces, not hard-hitting journalism.”
“Your mom says you’re going to be a famous reporter one day,” Marie said. “A budding Woodward or Bernstein, that’s what she says.”
“That’s right,” Janet put in. “You know, she showed me an article you wrote during your first newspaper job fresh out of college—you were covering some nasty murder case upstate. You remember, don’t you, honey?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said, navigating them toward another massive cluster of soaring sandstone towers that rose out of the trees. “I remember. But that was a long time ago.”
“Well, no matter what you do, I know that your mom is very proud of you,” Marie said. “You’ve brought a lot of joy into her life.”
Dylan nodded, struggling to find her voice. “Thanks.”
Both Janet and Marie worked with her mother at the runaway center in Brooklyn. Nancy, the other member of their travel group, had been Sharon’s best friend since high school. All three of the women had become like extended family to Dylan in the past few months. Three extra pairs of comforting arms, which she was really going to need if she ever lost her mom.
In her heart, Dylan knew it was more a matter of when than if.
For so long, it had been just the two of them. Her father had been absent since Dylan was a kid, not that he’d been much of a father when he was present. Her two older brothers were gone too, one of them dead in a car accident, the other having cut all family ties when he joined the service years ago. Dylan and her mom had been left to pick up the pieces, and so they had, each there to lift the other one up when she was down, or to celebrate even the smallest triumphs.
Dylan couldn’t bear to think of how empty her life would be without her mom.
Nancy came up and gave Dylan a warm, if sad, smile. “It means the world to Sharon that you would experience the trip for her. You’re living it for her, you know?”
“I know. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Dylan hadn’t told her travel companions—or her mother—that taking off for two weeks on such short notice was probably going to cost her her job. Part of her didn’t really care. She hated working for the cut-rate tabloid anyway. She’d attempted to sell her boss on the idea that she was sure to return from Europe with some decent material—maybe a Bohemian Bigfoot story, or a Dracula sighting out of Romania.
But selling bullshit to a guy who peddled it for a living was no easy task. Her boss had been pretty clear about his expectations: if Dylan left on this trip, she’d better come back with something big, or she didn’t need to come back at all.
“Whooee, it’s hot up here,” Janet said, sweeping her baseball cap off her short silver curls and running her palm over her brow. “Am I the only wimp in this crowd, or would anyone else like to rest for a little bit?”
“I could use a break,” Nancy agreed.
She shrugged off her backpack and set it down on the ground beneath a tall pine tree. Marie joined them, moving off the path and taking a long pull from her water bottle.
Dylan wasn’t the least bit tired. She wanted to keep moving. The most impressive climbs and rock formations were still ahead of them. They had only scheduled one day for this part of the trip, and Dylan wanted to cover as much ground as she could.
And then there was the matter of the beautiful dead woman who now stood ahead of them on the path. She stared at Dylan, her energy fading in and out of visible form.
See me.
Dylan glanced away. Janet, Marie, and Nancy were seated on the ground, nibbling on protein bars and trail mix.
“Want some?” Janet asked, holding out a plastic zipper bag of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds.
Dylan shook her head. “I’m too antsy to rest or eat right now. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to take a quick look around on my own while you all hang out here. I’ll come right back.”
“Sure, honey. Your legs are younger than ours after all. Just be careful.”
“I will. Be back soon.”
Dylan avoided the spot where the dead woman’s image flickered up ahead. Instead, she cut off the established trail and onto the densely wooded hillside. She walked for a few minutes, simply enjoying the tranquillity of the place. There was an ancient, wildly mysterious quality to the jutting peaks of sandstone and basalt. Dylan paused to take pictures, hoping she could capture some of the beauty for her mother to enjoy.
Hear me.
At first Dylan didn’t see the woman, only heard the broken-static sound of her spectral voice. But then, a flash of white caught her eye. She was farther up the incline, standing on a ridge of stone halfway up one of the steep crags.
Follow me.
“Bad idea,” Dylan murmured, eyeing the tricky slope. The grade was fierce, the path uncertain at best. And even though the view from up there was probably spectacular, she really had no desire to join her ghostly new friend on the Other Side.
Please…help him.
Help him?
“Help who?” she asked, knowing the spirit couldn’t hear her.
They never could. Communication with her kind was always a one-way street. They simply appeared when they wished, and said what they wished—if they spoke at all. Then, when it became too hard for them to hold their visible form, they just faded away.
Help him.
The woman in white started going transparent up on the mountainside. Dylan shielded her eyes from the hazy light pouring down through the trees, trying to keep her in sight. With a bit of apprehension, she began the trudge upward, using the tight growth of pines and beech to help her over the roughest of the terrain.
By the time she clambered up onto the ridge where the apparition had been standing, the woman was gone. Dylan carefully walked the ledge of rock, and found that it was wider than it appeared from below. The sandstone was weathered dark from the elements, dark enough that a deep vertical slit in the rock had been invisible to her until now.
It was from within that narrow wedge of lightless space that Dylan heard the detached, ghostly whisper once again.
Save him.
She looked around her and saw only wilderness and rock. There was no one up here. Now, not even a trace of the ethereal figure who lured her this far up the mountain alone.
Dylan turned her head to look into the gloom of the rock’s crevice. She put her hand into the space and felt cool, damp air skate over her skin.
Inside that deep black cleft, it was still and quiet.
As quiet as a tomb.
If Dylan was the type to believe in creepy folklore monsters, she might have imagined one could live in a hidden spot like this. But she didn’t believe in monsters, never had. Aside from seeing the occasional dead person, who’d never caused her any harm, Dylan was about as practical—even cynical—as could be.
It was the reporter in her that made her curious to know what she might truly find inside the rock. Assuming you could trust the word of a dead woman, who did she think needed help? Was someone injured in there? Could someone have gotten lost way up here on this steep crag?
Dylan grabbed a small flashlight from an outer pocket of her backpack. She shined it into the opening, noticing just then that there were vague chisel marks around and within the crevice, as if someone had worked to widen it. Although not any time recently, based on the weathered edges of the tool’s marks.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness. “Is anyone in here?”
Nothing but silence answered.
Dylan pulled off her backpack and carried it in one hand, her other hand wrapped around the slim barrel of her flashlight. Walking forward she could barely fit through the crevice; anyone larger than her would have been forced to go in sideways.
The tight squeeze only lasted a short distance before the space angled around and began to open up. Suddenly she was inside the thick rock of the mountain, her light beam bouncing off smooth, rounded walls. It was a cave—an empty one, except for some bats rustling out of a disturbed sleep overhead.
And from the look of it, the space was mostly manmade. The ceiling rose at least twenty feet over Dylan’s head. Interesting symbols were painted on each wall of the small cavern. They looked like some odd sort of hieroglyphics: a cross between bold tribal markings and interlocking, gracefully geometric patterns.
Dylan walked closer to one of the walls, mesmerized by the beauty of the strange artwork. She panned the small beam of her flashlight to the right, breathless to find the elaborate decoration continuing all around her. She took a step toward the center of the cave. The toe of her hiking boot knocked into something on the earthen floor. Whatever it was clattered hollowly as it rolled away. Dylan swept her light over the ground and gasped.
Oh, shit.
It was a skull. White bone glowed against the darkness, the human head staring up at her with sightless, vacant sockets.
If this was the him the dead woman wanted Dylan to help out, it looked like she got there about a hundred years too late.
Dylan moved the light farther into the gloom, unsure what she was searching for, but too fascinated to leave just yet. The beam skidded over another set of bones—Jesus, more aged human remains scattered on the floor of the cave.
Goose bumps prickled on Dylan’s arms from a draft that seemed to rise out of nowhere.
And that’s when she saw it.
A large rectangular block of stone sat on the other side of the darkness. More markings like the ones covering the walls were painted onto the carved bulk of the object.
Dylan didn’t have to move closer to realize that she was looking at a crypt. A thick slab had been placed over the top of the tomb. It was moved aside, skewed slightly off the stone crypt as if pushed away by incredibly strong hands.
Was someone—or something—laid to rest in there?
Dylan had to know.
She crept forward, flashlight gripped in suddenly perspiring fingers. A few paces away now, Dylan angled the beam into the opening of the tomb.
It was empty.
And for reasons she couldn’t explain, that thought chilled her even more than if she’d found some hideous corpse turning to dust inside.
Over her head, the cave’s nocturnal residents were getting restless. The bats stirred, then bolted past her in a hurried rush of motion. Dylan ducked to let them pass, figuring she’d better get the hell out of there too.
As she pivoted to find the crevice exit, she heard another rustle of movement. This one was bigger than bats, a low snarl of sound followed by a disturbance of loose rock somewhere in the cave.
Oh, God. Maybe she wasn’t alone in here after all.
The hairs at the back of her neck tingled and before she could remind herself that she didn’t believe in monsters, her heart started beating in overdrive.
She fumbled around for the way out of the cave, her pulse jackhammering in her ears. By the time she found daylight, she was gasping for air. Her legs felt rubbery as she scrambled back down the ridge, then raced to rejoin her friends in the safety of the bright midday sun below.
He’d been dreaming of Eva again.
It wasn’t enough that the female had betrayed him in life—now, in her death, she invaded his mind while he slept. Still beautiful, still treacherous, she spoke to him of regret and how she wanted to make things right.
All lies.
Eva’s visiting ghost was only a part of Rio’s long slide into madness.
His dead mate wept in his dreams, begging him to forgive her for the deception she’d orchestrated a year ago. She was sorry. She still loved him, and always would.
She wasn’t real. Just a taunting reminder of a past he would be glad to leave behind.
Trusting the female had cost him much. His face had been ruined in the warehouse explosion. His body was broken in places, still recovering from injuries that would have killed a mortal man.
And his mind…?
Rio’s sanity had been fracturing apart, bit by bit, worsening in the time he’d been holed up alone on this Bohemian mountainside.
He could bring it all to a halt. As one of the Breed—a hybrid race of humans bearing vampiric, alien genes—he could drag himself into the sunlight and let the UV rays devour him. He’d considered doing just that, but there remained the task of closing the cave and destroying the damning evidence it contained.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there. The days and nights, weeks and months, had at some point merged into an endless suspension of time. He wasn’t sure how it had happened. He’d arrived there with his brethren of the Order. The warriors had been on a mission to locate and destroy an old evil secreted away in the rocks centuries ago.
But they were too late.
The crypt was empty; the evil had already been freed.
It was Rio who volunteered to stay behind and seal the cave while the others returned home to Boston. He couldn’t go back with them. He didn’t know where he belonged. He’d intended to find his own way—maybe go back to Spain, his homeland.
That’s what he’d told the warriors who’d long been like brothers to him. But he hadn’t carried out any of his plans. He had delayed, tormented by indecision and the weight of the sin he’d been contemplating.
In his heart, he’d known he had no intention of leaving this tomb. But he had put off the inevitable with weak excuses, waiting for the right time, the right conditions, for him to do what he had to do. But those excuses were just that. They only served to make the hours stretch into days, the days into weeks.
Now, easily months later, he lurked in the darkness of the cave like the bats that inhabited the dank space with him. He no longer hunted, no longer had the desire to feed. He merely existed, conscious of his steady descent into a hell of his own making.
For Rio, that descent had finally proven too much.
Beside him on a hollowed-out ledge of rock ten feet up from the floor of the cave rested a detonator and a small cache of C-4. It was enough boom to seal up the hidden crypt forever. Rio intended to set it off that night…from the inside.
Tonight, he would finish it.
When his lethargic senses had roused him from a heavy sleep to warn him of an intruder, he’d thought it to be just another tormenting phantom. He caught the scent of a human—a young female, judging by the musky warmth that clung to her skin. His eyes peeled open in the dark, nostrils flaring to pull more of her fragrance into his lungs.
She was no trick of his madness.
She was flesh and blood, the first human to venture anywhere near the obscure mouth of the cave in all the time he’d been there. The woman shined a bright light around the cave, temporarily blinding him, even from his concealed position above her head. He heard her footsteps scuffing on the sandstone floor of the cavern. Heard her sudden gasp as she knocked into some of the skeletal litter left behind by the original occupant of the place.
Rio shifted himself on the ledge, testing his limbs in preparation of a leap to the floor below. The stirring of the air disturbed the bats clinging to the ceiling. They flew out, but the woman remained. Her light traveled more of the cave, then came to rest on the tomb that lay open.
Rio felt her curiosity chill toward fear as she neared the crypt. Even her human instincts picked up on the evil that had once slept in that block of stone.
But she shouldn’t be there.
Rio couldn’t let her see any more than she already had. He heard himself snarl as he moved on the rocky jut overhead. The woman heard it too. She tensed with alarm. The beam of her flashlight ricocheted crazily off the walls as she made a panicked search for the cave’s exit.
Before Rio could command his limbs to move, she was already slipping away.
She was gone.
She’d seen too much, but soon it wouldn’t matter.
Once night fell, there would be no further trace of the crypt, the cave, or of Rio himself.
CHAPTER
Two
Hidden Crypt Unlocks Secrets of an Ancient Civilization!
Dylan scowled and held down the backspace key on her notebook computer. She needed a different title for the piece she was working on—something sexier, less National Geographic. She pecked out a second attempt, trying for something that would shout just as loudly from the newsstands as the latest Hollywood starlet in rehab story plastered on the front pages any given week.
Ancient Human Sacrifices Discovered in Dracula’s Backyard!
Yeah, that was better. The Dracula bit was a stretch since the Czech Republic was several hundred miles away from bloodthirsty Vlad Tepes’s place in Romania, but it was a start. Dylan stretched her legs out on her hotel room bed, balanced her computer in her lap, and began typing the first draft of her story.
Two paragraphs into it, she stalled out. Pressed the backspace key until the page was blank again.
The words simply weren’t coming. She couldn’t focus. The ghostly visitation she’d had on the mountain had put her on edge, but it was the phone call to her mother that really had Dylan distracted. Sharon had tried to sound cheerful and strong, telling her all about a river cruise fund-raiser the shelter was putting on in a few nights and how she looked forward to attending.
After losing another girl to the street life recently—a young runaway named Toni, whom Sharon had really thought was going to make it—she had ideas for a new program she wanted to pitch to the runaway shelter’s founder, Mr. Fasso. Sharon was hoping for a private audience with him, a man she had admitted on more than one occasion that she was a little infatuated with, to no one’s surprise, especially not her daughter’s.
Where her mother was always ready—even eager—to fall in love, Dylan’s romantic life was a complete contrast. She’d had a handful of relationships, but nothing meaningful, and nothing she’d ever allowed to last. A cynical part of her doubted the entire concept of forever, despite her mother’s attempts to convince her that she would find it, someday, when she least expected it.
Sharon was a free spirit with a big, open heart that had been stomped on far too often by unworthy men, and, now, by the unfairness of fate. Still, she kept smiling, kept soldiering on. She had been giggling as she confided in Dylan that she bought a new dress for the shelter’s cruise, which she chose for its flattering cut and the color that was so similar to Mr. Fasso’s eyes. But even while Dylan joked with her mom not to flirt too outrageously with the reportedly handsome and evidently unmarried philanthropist, her heart was breaking.
Sharon was trying to act her normal upbeat self, but Dylan knew her too well. There was an out-of-breath quality to her voice that couldn’t be explained away by the long distance phone service in the little Bohemian town of Jiáín, where Dylan and her travel companions were spending the night. She’d only spoken with her mother for about twenty minutes, but when they hung up, Sharon had sounded thoroughly exhausted.
Dylan exhaled a shaky sigh as she closed her computer and set it beside her on the narrow bed. Maybe she should have gone for beer and brats in the pub with Janet, Marie, and Nancy, instead of staying behind to work. She hadn’t felt much like socializing—still didn’t, in fact—but the longer she sat by herself in the tiny bunk room, the more aware she became of just how alone she truly was. The quiet made it hard to think about anything but the final, dreaded silence that was going to fill her life once her mother…
Oh, God.
Dylan wasn’t even prepared to let the word form in her mind.
She swung her legs down off the bed and stood up. The first-floor window looking out over the street was open to let in some air, but Dylan felt stifled, suffocating. She lifted the glass wide and took a deep breath, watching as tourists and locals strolled past.
And damn if the ethereal woman in white wasn’t out there too.
She stood in the middle of the road, unfazed by the rush of cars and pedestrians all around her. Her image was translucent in the dark, her form far less delineated than it had been earlier that day, and dimming by the second. But her eyes were fixed on Dylan. The ghost didn’t speak this time, just stared with a bleak resignation that made Dylan’s chest ache.
“Go away,” she told the apparition under her breath. “I don’t know what you want from me, and I really can’t deal with you right now.”
Some part of her scoffed at that, because with her job on the line like it was, maybe she shouldn’t be so eager to turn away visitors from the Other Side. Nothing would please her boss, Coleman Hogg, more than having a reporter on staff who could honest-to-God see dead people. Hell, the opportunistic bastard probably would insist on bankrolling a brand-new side business with her as the main attraction.
Yeah, right. So not happening.
She’d let one man exploit her for the peculiar, if unreliable, gift she’d been born with—and look how that had turned out. Dylan hadn’t seen her father since she was twelve years old. Bobby Alexander’s last words to his daughter as he drove out of town and out of her life for good had been a nasty string of profanity and open disgust.
It had been one of the most painful days of Dylan’s life, but it had taught her a good hard lesson: there were precious few people you could trust, so if you wanted to survive, you’d better always look out for Number One.
It was a philosophy that had served her well enough, the only exception being when it came to her mom. Sharon Alexander was Dylan’s rock, her sole confidante, and the only person she could ever truly count on. She knew all of Dylan’s secrets, all of her hopes and dreams. She knew all of her troubles and fears too…except one. Dylan was still trying to be brave for Sharon, too scared to let on to her about how petrified she was that the cancer had come back. She didn’t want to admit that fear just yet, or give it strength by speaking it out loud.
“Shit,” Dylan whispered irritably as her eyes began to sting with a warning of oncoming tears.
She willed them into submission with the same steely control she’d been practicing most of her life. Dylan Alexander did not cry. She hadn’t since she was that brokenhearted, betrayed little girl watching her father speed off into the night.
No, getting sloppy with self-pity and hurt never did her a lick of good. Anger was a much more useful coping method. And where anger failed, there were few things that couldn’t be fixed with a healthy dose of denial.
Dylan turned away from the window and shoved her bare feet into her well-worn pair of trail shoes. Not trusting to leave her computer unattended in the room, she slipped the slim silver laptop into her messenger bag, grabbed her pocketbook, and headed out to find Janet and the others. Maybe a little company and chitchat wouldn’t be so bad after all.
By dusk, most of the humans traipsing through the woods and along the mountain paths had gone. Now that it was fully dark outside the cave, there wasn’t a soul around to hear the explosion Rio was rigging to go off from within the lightless space of rock.
He had just enough C-4 on hand to permanently seal the cave’s entrance, but not so much that he would bring the whole damn mountain down. Nikolai had thought to make sure of that before the Order had left Rio there to secure the site. Thank God for that, because Rio sure as hell didn’t trust his cracked brain to remember the particulars.
He cursed sharply as he fumbled one of the tiny wires on the detonator. His vision was already starting to swim, irritating him even more. Sweat broke out on his brow, dampening the overlong hanks of hair that hung down into his eyes. With a snarl, he swept his hand over his face and up his scalp, staring fiercely at the lumps of pale explosive material in front of him.
Did he stuff the blasting caps into the cakes yet?
He couldn’t remember…
“Focus, idiot,” he berated himself, impatient over the idea of something that should come so easily to him—and had, before he’d gotten his bell rung in that warehouse back in Boston—should now take him literally hours to even get started.
Add to that his body’s sluggishness from deprivation of vital blood and he was a real piece of work. A goddamn waste of space, that’s what he was.
With a surge of self-hatred fueling him, Rio stuck his finger into one of the small puttylike blocks of C-4 and tore it open.
Good. The charge was in there, just like it should be.
It didn’t matter he couldn’t remember placing it there, or that based on the mangled appearance of another of the cakes, he’d probably gone through this very exercise at least once before. He gathered up the supply of C-4 and carried them into the narrow mouth of the cave. He packed them into carved niches in the sandstone, just like Niko had told him to do. Then he went back into the cavern to retrieve the detonator.
Damn it!
The wires on the thing were all fucked up.
He had fucked them up. How? And when?
“Son of a bitch!” he roared, glaring down at the device, blind with a swift, sudden rage.
He felt dizzy with anger, his head spinning so badly it buckled his knees. He went down on the hard ground like his body was made of lead. He heard the detonator skid into the dust somewhere, but he didn’t reach for it. His arms were too heavy and his head was weightless, his consciousness floating, detached from reality, like his mind wanted to separate from the wreck of the body that caged it and fly away to escape.
A thick nausea pressed him down, and he knew if he didn’t work fast to get a hold of himself he was going to pass out.
It had been foolish to stop hunting all those weeks ago. He was Breed. He needed human blood for strength, for life. Blood would help him to stave off the pain and madness. But he could no longer trust himself to hunt without killing. He’d come too close, too many times, since he’d arrived here on this towering forest crag.
Too often on those few times he ventured out in hunger he’d nearly been seen by the humans living in the surrounding towns and villages. And since the explosion he’d survived in Boston a year ago, his was a face not soon forgotten.
Maldecido.
The word hissed at him from somewhere distant. Not the night outside, but from deep out of his past, in the language of his mother’s country.
Manos del diablo.
Comedor de la sangre.
Monstruo.
Even through the fog of his tormented mind, he recognized the epithets. Names he heard from his earliest childhood. Words that haunted him, even now.
The cursed one.
Devil’s hands.
Blood-eater.
Monster.
And so he was, more now than ever. Ironic that his life would begin in hiding, skulking like an animal among the night-dark woodlands and hills…only to end much the same way.
“Madre de Dios,” he whispered as he made a feeble, but failed grab for the detonator. “Please…let me end it.”
Dylan had barely set down her empty pilsner glass before another full one came to rest in front of her. It was the third round for the table since she’d arrived in the tavern and met up with her travel companions—this latest serving delivered with an extra-wide grin from the young man tending the bar.
“With my compliments, ladies,” he announced in thickly accented English, one of the few locals in the rural village who spoke anything more than Czech or German.
“Oh, my goodness! Thank you, Goran,” Janet exclaimed, giggling as she surrendered her empty for a fresh glass of frothy amber beer. “What a dear you are, telling us all about your lovely town and now bringing us free drinks. You really don’t have to do this.”
“My pleasure,” he murmured.
His friendly brown eyes lingered the longest on Dylan, which she might have taken as a bigger compliment if her companions weren’t all qualified for AARP membership. Dylan herself probably had five to ten years on the boyishly handsome barkeep, but that didn’t stop her from working his obvious attraction to her best advantage.
Not that she was interested in drinks or dating. It was Goran’s talk of the surrounding mountains and their various lore that held Dylan captivated. The young Czech had grown up in the area, and had spent a good amount of time exploring the very range where Dylan had been climbing that morning.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Nancy told him. “The tourist brochure didn’t lie; this truly is a paradise.”
“And such a vast, unusual terrain,” Marie added. “I think we’d need a whole month to see everything out there. Too bad we have to return to Prague tomorrow.”
“Yes, that is too bad,” Goran said, directing the comment at Dylan.
“What about caves?” She’d been trying to gather details for her story without being too conspicuous, knowing that the locals probably wouldn’t appreciate the fact that she’d ventured off the established trails to climb the mountains on her own. “I saw a few caves marked on our map, but I imagine there’s a lot more out there. Even some that haven’t been uncovered yet, stuff that’s not open to the public?”
The young man nodded. “Oh, yes. There are maybe hundreds of caves and several abysses too. Most of them are still being documented.”
“Dylan saw an old stone coffin in one of the caves today,” Janet blurted innocently as she sipped her beer.
Goran chuckled, his expression dubious. “You saw a what?”
“I’m not sure what I saw.” Dylan gave a nonchalant shrug, not wanting to tip her hand if she had truly discovered something significant. “It was pitch-black inside, and I think the heat was playing tricks on my mind.”
“What cave were you in?” the young man asked. “I know it, maybe.”
“Oh, I don’t remember where I was exactly. It doesn’t really matter.”
“She said she felt a presence,” Janet piped in again. “Isn’t that how you described it, honey? Like a…a dark presence coming awake while you were in the cave. I believe that’s what you said.”
“It was nothing, I’m sure.” Dylan shot a pained scowl across the table at the well-meaning, but aggravatingly chatty older woman. For all the good it did. Janet gave her a sweet little matchmaker’s wink as Goran leaned down next to Dylan at the table.
“You know, there used to be talk of evil in those mountains,” he said, his voice lowered to a confidential, if amused, tone. “Many old legends warn of demons living in the woods.”
“Is that right?” she asked drolly.
“Oh, yes. Terrible beasts that looked like humans, but were not human at all. The villagers were convinced they were living among monsters.”
Dylan scoffed lightly as she lifted her glass. “I don’t believe in monsters.”
“Neither do I, of course,” Goran said. “But my grandfather does. So did his grandfather before him and all the rest of my family who farmed in this area, going back hundreds of years. My grandfather owned the property at the edge of the woods. He said he saw one of these creatures just a couple of months ago. It attacked one of his field workers.”
“Is that so.” Dylan glanced at the barkeep, waiting for a punch line that didn’t come.
“According to my grandfather, it was just after dusk. He and Matej were bringing some equipment into the barn for the night when Grandfather heard an odd sound coming from the field. He went to look, and saw Matej on the ground. Another man was bent over him, holding Matej’s neck to his mouth—bleeding him from the throat.”
“Good Lord!” Janet gasped. “Did the poor man survive?”
“Yes, he did. Grandfather said by the time he ran back inside the barn to get something to use as a weapon against the creature, Matej was lying there alone. There were no marks on him except a bit of blood on his shirt, and he had no memory of the attack at all. The man who attacked Matej—or the demon, if my grandfather’s account can be believed—has never been seen again.”
Janet clucked her tongue. “And good riddance! Why, it’s like something straight out of a horror movie, isn’t it?”
Nancy and Marie looked equally aghast, all three women evidently buying Goran’s tall tale—hook, line, and sinker. Dylan remained skeptical to say the least. But in the back of her mind she wondered if her story about an empty mountain crypt littered with old human remains might be even juicier with a firsthand account of some kind of demon vampire attack. Never mind the fact that the alleged victim couldn’t corroborate with either memory or physical evidence; her boss at the paper wouldn’t hesitate to go to print on the word of a superstitious, likely vision-impaired, backwoods old man alone. Hell, they’d gone to print on far less than that before.
“Do you think I could talk to your grandfather about what he saw?”
“Dylan is a journalist,” the ever-helpful Janet, to no one’s surprise, felt compelled to explain. “She lives in New York City. Have you ever been to New York City, Goran?”
“I have never been there, but I should like very much to see it one day,” he replied, glancing at Dylan again. “You are a journalist, really?”
“No, not really. Maybe someday. Right now, the stuff I write is…I guess you could call them human interest stories.” She smiled up at the bartender. “So, do you think your grandpa would be willing to speak with me?”
“He is dead, I’m sorry to say. He had a stroke in his sleep last month and never woke up.”
“Oh.” Dylan’s heart clenched with true remorse, her hunger for a story taking an immediate backseat. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Goran.”
He gave a tight nod. “He was a lucky man. If only we all live to be ninety-two, like my grandfather, eh?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said, feeling the gazes of her mom’s friends fixed on her in sympathy. “If only.”
“I have new customers,” he announced as a small group of people came into the tavern. “I must go now. When I come back, Dylan, maybe you will tell me about New York City.”
As he left, and before Janet could enthuse over what a great idea it would be for Dylan to invite the adorable young Goran to the States, marry him, and have his babies, Dylan faked a brilliant, big yawn.
“Wow, guess I had too much fresh air today—I’m really beat. I think I’m going to turn in early. I have a bit of work to do yet tonight, and some e-mails I need to take a look at before I hit the hay.”
“You sure, honey?”
Dylan gave Janet a weak bob of her head. “Yeah. Long day.” She got up and grabbed her messenger bag from the back of her wooden pub chair. Pulling out enough Czech koruny to cover her portion of the bar tab and a nice tip for their host, Dylan set the money down on the table. “I’ll see you back at the room.”
As she made the short walk from the tavern to the hotel down the street, Dylan’s fingers were itching to hit her keyboard. She closed herself inside the room, fired up her computer, and tried to keep up as the story spilled out of her. Dylan smiled as the piece took shape. It was no longer simply a report of an old cavern tomb and some dusty skeletons, but a blood-curdling account of a living, breathing evil that may well be still at large in the wilderness terrain above an otherwise tranquil European town.
She had the words.
All she needed now were some pictures of the demon’s mountain lair.
CHAPTER
Three
It was early morning in the mountain region, too early for most of the tourist groups and day hikers to be out and about. Still, Dylan avoided the main entrance and ventured into the woods on her own. A light rain began soon after she entered the forest, the soft summer shower falling from gunmetal gray clouds overhead. Dylan’s trail shoes padded wetly on the damp pine needles beneath her feet as she picked up the pace and located the mountain path she’d been on the day before with her companions.
There was no sign of the dark-haired lady in white today, but Dylan didn’t need the apparition’s help in finding her way to the cave. Guided there by memory and a rising thrum in her veins, she climbed the steep, tricky incline to the ledge of sandstone outside the hidden cave.
In the overcast haze, the narrow crevice opening seemed even darker today, the sandstone giving off an earthy, ancient scent. Dylan swung her backpack down off her arm and grabbed her small flashlight from one of the pack’s zippered pockets. She twisted the thin metal barrel and sent a beam of light ahead of her into the dark passageway of the cave.
Go in, get a few pictures of the crypt and the funky wall art, then get the hell out.
Not that she was afraid. Why should she be? This was just an old burial site of some sort—and a long-abandoned one at that. Absolutely nothing to fear.
And wasn’t that just what those clueless horror movie actresses would say right before they ate it in gory detail on-screen?
Dylan mentally scoffed at herself. This was real life after all. The odds of a chainsaw-wielding lunatic or a flesh-eating zombie lurking in the dark of this cave were about the same as her coming face-to-face with the bloodsucking monster Goran’s grandfather claimed to have seen. In other words, less than nil.
With the rain pattering gently behind her, Dylan stepped between the narrow walls of rock and carefully navigated her way into the cave, the beam of her flashlight leading the way. Several feet in, the passageway opened up onto more darkness. Dylan swung the light around the perimeter of the cave, as awestruck as she had been yesterday, by the elaborate wall markings and the rectangular slab of stone at the center of the space.
She didn’t see the man lying in a careless sprawl on the ground until she was nearly on top of him.
“Jesus!”
She sucked in a startled breath and leaped back, the beam of her flashlight ricocheting crazily in the second it took for her to get over the shock. She angled the light back down to where he lay…and found nothing.
But he’d been right there. In her mind she could still see his head of shaggy dark brown hair, and his dusty, tattered black clothing. A vagrant, no doubt. It probably wasn’t that unusual for some of the region’s homeless poor to squat in this area.
“Hello?” she said, swinging the beam across the entire floor of the cave. A couple of ancient skulls and scattered bones lay about in morbid disarray, but that was it. No sign of anything living—not within the past hundred years or so, by Dylan’s guess.
Where had he gone? She slid a glance at the large, open crypt a few feet away.
“Look, I know you’re in here. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she added, even though it seemed absurd that she should be reassuring him. The guy had to be more than six feet tall, and even from the brief glimpse she’d gotten of him, she noted that his long arms and legs were thick with muscle. But his broken crumple on the floor of the cave had emanated pain and despair. “Are you hurt? Do you need some help? What’s your name?”
No reply. Not a sound of any kind.
“Dobrý den?” she called, trying to reach out to him with her pitifully limited knowledge of Czech. “Mluvíte ánglicky?”
No such luck.
“Sprechen zie Deutsch?”
Nothing.
“Sorry, but that’s about all I’ve got unless you want me to break out some of my rusty junior high Spanish and really embarrass myself.” She pivoted with her flashlight, angling it upward as she scanned the high walls of the cavern. “Somehow I don’t think ¿Como esta usted? is going to get us any further here. Do you?”
As she slowly turned, the light glanced off a jutting ledge high above her head. Some ten feet up was a sheer, arcing rise of sandstone. No way anyone could get up there.
Or was there…?
No sooner had she thought it than the thin stream of light shooting up to the ledge began to flicker. It dimmed steadily, then went utterly dark.
“Shit,” Dylan whispered low under her breath. She banged the barrel on her palm a couple of times before somewhat frantically attempting to turn the damn thing on again. Despite fresh batteries installed before she left the States, the light was dead. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Engulfed in total blackness, Dylan felt the first twinge of unease.
When she heard the scrape of rock overhead, every nerve in her body went tense. There was a long beat of silence, followed by the sudden crunch of booted feet hitting solid earth as whoever—or whatever—had been hiding in the shadows above now dropped to the floor of the cave beside her.
She smelled like juniper and honey and warm summer rain. But beneath all that was a sudden, citrusy spike of adrenaline now that he was near her. Rio circled the woman in the dark of the cave, seeing her perfectly while she stumbled in the abrupt lack of light. Her feet carried her backward…only to connect with a wall of stone at her spine.
“Damn it.”
She swallowed audibly, pivoting to try another tack, then swore again as her useless flashlight slipped out of her fingers and clinked on the hard floor of the cave. Rio had burned precious energy in mentally extinguishing the device. Manipulating objects by thought was a simple Breed talent, but in his current weakened state, Rio didn’t know how long he could hold it.
“Um, you’re probably not in the mood for company,” the woman said, her eyes wide in the darkness as they darted left and right, trying to locate him. “So, I’m just going to leave now, okay? Just gonna…walk right out of here.” A nervous moan caught in her throat. “God, please, where is the frigging way out of this place?”
She took a step to the right, edging along the cavern wall. Away from the exit, although Rio saw no point in telling her that just yet. He kept moving, trailing her deeper into the cave, trying to decide what to do with his repeat intruder. When he’d first awakened, startled to find he was still alive and not alone, he’d reacted on instinct—a vulnerable beast fleeing to the safety of the shadows.
But then she’d started talking to him.
Coaxing him out, even though she could not have known how dangerous a proposition that really was. He was furious and half-mad in the head, a deadly enough combination on its own, but being near the female now reminded him that even though he was broken, he was still very much male.
To his marrow, he was still Breed.
Rio breathed in more of the female’s scent, finding it hard to resist touching her pale, rain-dampened skin. Hunger flooded him—hunger he hadn’t known for some long time. His fangs surged from his gums, the sharp points jabbing the soft flesh of his tongue. He was careful to keep his eyelids low over his eyes, knowing the topaz-colored irises would soon be awash in the glow of fiery amber, his pupils thinning to vertical slits as the thirst for blood rose in him.
That she was young and beautiful only deepened his desire to taste her. He wanted to touch her…
He flexed his hands, then fisted them at his sides.
Manos del diablo.
He could hurt her with those hands. The strength given him by his vampire genes was immense, but it was Rio’s other skill—the terrible talent he’d been born with—that could do the most damage here. With a centered thought and a simple touch, he could draw away human life in an instant. Once he’d come to understand his power, Rio had managed it with judicious, rigid control. Now anger ruled his deadly gift, and the blackouts he suffered since the warehouse explosion had made it impossible for him to trust himself not to do harm.
It was part of the reason he’d left the Order, and part of his eventual decision to stop hunting for blood. The Breed seldom, if ever, killed their human Hosts while feeding; that was all that separated them from the worst of vampire kind, the Rogues. It was the blood-addicted Rogues who knew no better, who had so little control.
As Rio stared with feral, thirsting eyes at the woman who’d wandered into his hellish domain, fear of losing control with her was the thing that kept him at heel.
That, and the simple fact that she’d been kind to him.
Unafraid, if only because she couldn’t see the beast he really was.
She gave up on following the wall and moved toward the center of the small cave. Rio stood right behind her now, so close the curling ends of her flame-red hair brushed his ragged shirt. That springy strand of silk tempted him sorely, but Rio kept his hands at his sides. He closed his eyes, wishing he had stayed on the ledge above. Then she might still be talking to him, not stiff and panting with rising anxiety.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally, his voice a rough growl in the darkness.
She sucked in a quick breath, spinning around as soon as her ear had triangulated his location. She backed away, retreating from him again. Rio should have been glad for that.
“You do speak English,” she said after a long moment. “But your accent…you’re not American?”
He saw no reason to say otherwise. “You are, evidently.”
“What is this place? What are you doing up here?”
“You need to leave now,” he told her. The words sounded thick to him, hard to push out of his mouth for the obstruction of his extruded fangs. “You’re not safe here.”
Silence hung between them as she weighed the warning. “Let me see you.”
Rio scowled at the pretty, peach-freckled face that searched the gloom for him. She reached out as if to find him with her hands now. He recoiled from her sweeping arm, but only barely.
“Do you know what they say in town?” she asked, a note of challenge in her voice now. “They say there’s a demon living up here in the mountains.”
“Maybe there is.”
“I don’t believe in demons.”
“Maybe you should.” Rio stared at her through the overgrown thicket of his hair, hoping the long hanks would conceal the glow of his eyes. “You have to go. Now.”
She slowly lifted the backpack she was carrying and held it in front of her like armor. “Do you know anything about this crypt? That’s what it is, right—some kind of old crypt and sacrificial chamber? What about the symbols on the walls in here…what are they, some kind of ancient language?”
Rio went very still, very silent. If he thought he could let her simply walk away, she’d just proved him wrong. Bad enough she saw the cave once, now she was back and making assumptions about it that were far too close to the truth. He could not permit her to leave—not with her memory of the place, or of him, intact.
“Give me your hand,” he said as gently as he could. “I’ll show you the way out of here.”
She didn’t budge, not that he expected her to obey. “How long have you been living on this mountain? Why do you hide up here? Why won’t you let me see you?”
She asked questions one after the other, with an inquisitiveness that bordered on interrogation.
He heard a zipper rasp on her pack.
Ah, hell. If she pulled out another flashlight, he wouldn’t have the mental strength to douse it—not when he’d need all his concentration just to scrub her memory.
“Come,” he said, a bit more impatiently now. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He would try his damnedest not to, but already the task of staying upright was draining him. He needed to conserve all he could in order to blow the cave and not black out again before he could finish it. Right now, he had to deal with the more immediate problem in front of him.
Rio started toward her when she remained unmoving. He reached out for her, meaning to grab her backpack and haul her out, but before his fingers could close around it she withdrew something from one of the bag’s pockets and brought it up in front of her.
“Okay, I’ll go. I just…there’s something I need to do first.”
Rio scowled in the darkness. “What are you—”
There was a faint click, then a stunning blast of light.
Rio roared, wheeling back on instinct. More explosions of light fired off in rapid succession.
Logic told him it was a digital camera flash blinding him, but in a startling instant, he was hurtled back in time…back inside that Boston warehouse, standing beneath an airborne bomb as it detonated.
He heard the sudden boom of the explosion, felt it vibrate into his bones and knock the breath from his lungs. He felt the shower of heat in his face, the suffocating thickness of clouding ash as it engulfed him like a wave.
He felt the bite of hot shrapnel as it ripped through his body.
It was agony, and he was right there, living it—feeling it—all over again.
“Nooo!” he bellowed, his voice no longer human but transformed to something else, as he was, by the fury that ran through him like acid.
His legs gave way beneath him and he sank to the floor, his vision blinded by reverberating light and ruthless memories.
He heard footsteps scuffing past him in a rush, and through the phantom stench of smoke and metal and ruined flesh, he smelled the faint, fleeting traces of juniper, honey, and rain.
CHAPTER
Four
Dylan’s heart was still racing later that morning, after she and her companions had boarded the train that would take them from Jiáín to Prague. It seemed ridiculous to let herself get so rattled by the vagrant she’d run into in the cave, even if he probably was a little bit psycho to be living up there like some kind of wild man. He hadn’t harmed her after all.
Based on his bizarre meltdown when she tried to get some pictures of the cave before he could physically toss her out of there, she had probably scared him even more than he had her.
Dylan sat back in her compartment seat on the train, her computer open on her lap. Thumbnail images from her digital camera queued up on-screen as they downloaded to her computer from the thin black cable that connected the two devices. Most were from the past couple of days’ travel, but it was the final handful Dylan was most interested in now.
She double-clicked on one of the dark images from the cave, the first of the sequence. The photo expanded, filling the small screen of her laptop. Dylan considered the face that was all but concealed by a growth of overlong, unkempt hair. The dull, espresso-brown waves hung limply over razor-sharp cheekbones and fierce eyes that reflected back at the lens in the strangest shade of amber she’d ever seen. The jaw looked as rigid as iron, the full lips peeled back in a vicious snarl that wasn’t quite hidden behind the large hand that had come up to block the shot.
Jesus, it wouldn’t take much Photoshopping back at the office in New York to make the guy look positively demonic. He was more than halfway there already.
“How did your pictures come out, honey?” Janet’s curly silver head leaned over from beside Dylan on the cushioned bench seat. “Good Lord! What is that?”
Dylan shrugged, unable to take her eyes off the photo. “Just some whack-job squatter I ran into up at the cave this morning. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to be the star of my next story for the paper. What do you think? Just look at that face and tell me if you don’t see a blood-drinking savage who lurks in the mountains, waiting for his next hapless victim.”
Janet shuddered and went back to her crossword puzzle. “You’re gonna give yourself nightmares dreaming up stories like that.”
Dylan laughed as she clicked over to the next image on the screen. “Not me. Never had a nightmare. In fact, I don’t dream at all. Blank slate, each and every night.”
“Well, consider yourself lucky,” the older woman said. “I’ve always had the most vivid dreams. When I was a young girl, I used to dream recurrently about a white poodle with painted toenails who liked to sing and dance at the end of my bed. I would beg him to stop and let me sleep, but he just always kept singing. Can you imagine? He sang old show tunes mostly, those were his favorite. I’ve always enjoyed show tunes, myself as well…”
Dylan heard Janet’s voice beside her, but as she scrolled through the rest of the cave photographs on her computer, she was only half-listening at best. In her frantic pan of the place, she’d gotten one decent shot of the stone crypt and a couple of the elaborate wall art. The designs were even more impressive now that she had a chance to really study them.
Interlocking arcs and graceful, swirling lines ran the entire length of the cavern wall, rendered in a dark russet-brown ink. It looked semi-tribal yet oddly futuristic—unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Still more symbols and intertwining lines decorated the side of the crypt…one in particular that made the fine hairs at the back of Dylan’s neck tingle.
She zoomed in on the strange design.
What the hell?
The teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol was unmistakable, nestled within a series of curving lines and geometric patterns. Dylan stared at it in astonishment, and not a little confusion. This one mark was not unfamiliar to her at all. She’d seen it before, countless times. Not in a photograph, but on her own body.
How on earth could that be?
Dylan brought her hand up to the nape of her neck, bewildered by what she was seeing. Her fingers ran over the smooth skin at the top of her spine, where she knew she bore a tiny crimson birthmark…exactly like the one she was looking at on the screen.
With a steady, cold gaze fixed on the mouth of the cave, Rio jabbed the button on the C-4 detonator. There was a quiet beep as the remote device engaged, barely a half-second pause before the plastic explosives packed into the rock went off. The blast was loud and deep, a tremor that rumbled like thunder in the surrounding night-dark forest. Thick yellow dust and pulverized sandstone shot out of the passageway, tapering off as the walls of the cave’s entry closed in, sealing the chamber and its secrets tight within.
Rio watched from the ground below, knowing that he should have been inside—would have been, if not for his own weakness and the intrusion by the female earlier that day.
It had taken a great deal of his strength to climb down from the mountain as dusk fell. Determination had carried him most of the way; self-directed rage had kept him focused and clearheaded as he took up his position below the cave and triggered the detonator.
As the smoke and debris dissipated on the breeze, Rio cocked his head. His acute hearing picked up movement in the woods. Not animal, but human—the brisk, two-legged stride of a hiker straggling alone past dark.
Rio’s fangs stretched at the thought of easy prey. His vision sharpened on instinct, his pupils narrowing as he pivoted his head to pan the area.
There—coming down a ridge just south of him. A lean human male with a camper’s pack slung onto his back tromped through the thicket, his short blond hair glowing like a beacon against the darkness. Rio watched the hiker casually skid and jog down a leafy incline to the trimmed path below. In another few minutes, he would be walking right past the very spot where Rio stood.
He was too depleted to hunt, but everything Breed in him was on full alert, ready and waiting for the chance to spring.
To feed, as he so desperately needed to do.
The human strode nearer, unaware of the predator watching him from the cover of the trees. He didn’t see the strike coming, not until Rio launched himself out of hiding in one great leap. The human screamed then—a sound of sheer terror. He flailed and struggled, all for nothing.
Rio worked quickly, throwing the young man to the ground and pinning him prone under the bulk of his large backpack. He bit down on the bared column of the human’s neck, and filled his mouth with the sudden, hot spill of fresh blood. The nourishment was immediate, sending renewed strength into muscle and bone and mind.
Rio drank what he needed from his Host and no more. A sweep of his tongue sealed the wound; a sweep of his hand over the human’s sweat-soaked brow erased all memory of the attack.
“Go,” he told him.
The man got up, and soon the flaxen head and bulky pack disappeared into the night.
Rio glanced up at the crescent moon overhead, feeling the hard pound of his pulse as his body absorbed the gift of the human’s blood.
He needed this strength, because his night’s hunting had only just begun.
Rio tipped his head back and dragged the night air through his teeth and fangs, deep into his lungs. His Breed senses sharpened, searching for the scent of his true quarry. She had been on this path hours ago, tearing out of the woods in fear. As well she should fear him. The flame-haired beauty had no idea of the secret she’d stumbled upon in that cave. Nor of the beast she’d roused in the process.
Rio’s mouth curved into a smile as he sifted through the olfactory stew of the woodland air, finally registering the scent he sought. He breathed in the trace, lingering fragrance of her. Her trail was hours-old and fading fast in the humid night wind, but Rio would know her anywhere.
He would find her.
No matter how far she’d run.
CHAPTER
Five
As the topper to a day that had started out weird and gotten even weirder, Dylan probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find an e-mail from Coleman Hogg waiting for her when she fired up her computer after dinner that night in Prague. She’d submitted her story and a few pictures from the mountain cave once she’d arrived at the hotel around noon, not expecting to hear anything from her boss until she got home in a couple more days.
But he was interested in what she’d found on the mountain outside Jiáín—so interested, in fact, he had taken it upon himself to hire a freelance photographer in Prague to go back with Dylan and get a few more shots for the piece.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Dylan grumbled as she scanned the message from her boss.
“You’d better get packing, honey. We don’t want to miss our train.” Janet dropped a collection of half-empty toiletry bottles into a plastic bag and zipped it closed. “Would anyone like the hotel hand lotion from out of the bathroom, or can I have it? And there’s also a bar of hand soap in there that hasn’t been opened…”
Dylan ignored the chatter from her traveling companions as the trio of them continued rounding up their things in preparation of their departure from Prague that evening.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Nancy asked as she zipped up her small suitcase and propped it on one of the two queen beds in their shared room.
“My boss must not realize that when I said I was leaving Prague tonight, that meant I was leaving Prague tonight.”
Or rather he did understand, and didn’t care. According to his e-mail, Dylan was supposed to meet the Czech photographer tomorrow for a return trip to Jiáín.
Marie came over and glanced at the computer. “Is this about your story?”
Dylan nodded. “He thinks it could be interesting with a few more pictures. He wants me to meet someone about it in the morning. He’s already set up the appointment for me.”
“But we’re due at the train station in less than an hour,” Janet pointed out.
“I know,” Dylan said, as she started typing a reply message to that effect.
She explained that she and her companions were taking the evening train to Vienna—their last stop on the tour before they departed back home for the States. She wouldn’t be able to meet with the photographer because as of ten o’clock tonight, she wasn’t going to be around.
Dylan finished typing the reply, but as she moved her cursor over the Send button, she hesitated to let the message go. She already had a reserved seat on Coleman Hogg’s shit list. If she turned down this appointment—for any reason—she knew without a doubt that she would be kissing her job good-bye.
And as tempting as the thought actually was, getting herself fired was something she really couldn’t afford to do right now.
“Damn it,” she muttered, sliding her mouse over to click the Delete button instead. “It’s too late for me to cancel this meeting, and I probably shouldn’t anyway. You all are going to have to continue on to Vienna without me. I have to stay behind and take care of this story.”
Rio disembarked in Prague from a train packed with humans. Thanks to the blood he’d consumed and the rage that was coursing through every nerve ending in his body, his Breed instincts were locked on full alert as he stepped onto the platform of the busy station. Apparently his quarry had fled here, to Prague, after their confrontation earlier today. He’d been able to track her scent from the mountain into Jiáín. From there, with a bit of mental persuasion, the operator of the small hotel in town had been cooperative enough to direct him toward Prague, where the American female and her companions had mentioned they were heading for the last leg of their stay abroad.
The tranced human had also been persuaded to fit Rio with a lightweight trench coat from the hotel’s lost-and-found. Although the taupe garment was out of season and several sizes too small, it did a decent job hiding the worst of the filthy, bloodstained rags he wore underneath. He didn’t give a shit about style or his looks, or even his certain stench, but he didn’t need to draw undue attention by walking into a public place like some kind of castaway freak show.
Rio tried to mask his muscular bulk and height, assuming a hunched yet purposeful shuffle as he ambled through the busy station. No one gave him anything more than a passing glance, the humans subconsciously dismissing him as one of the dozen-plus homeless unfortunates who loitered near the platforms or slept in corners of the station as the trains screeched and roared through the terminal.
With his head down to hide the scar-riddled left side of his face, eyes intense beneath the fall of his unkempt hair, Rio headed for the exit that would put him on a direct path into the heart of the city, where his hunt for the woman and her damning pictures would resume.
Anger kept him focused, even when his head began to spin in the noisy, harshly lit cavern of the station. He ignored the swamping feelings of dizziness and confusion, pushing them down deep so he could find his course and keep it.
Forcing his vision to clear, he moved through a tight knot of young men engaged in a sudden argument in the middle of the terminal. The verbal contest turned physical as Rio passed, one skinny kid from the group getting shoved into a well-dressed English tourist who was yammering on a cell phone as he hurried for the train. The unwitting mark scowled as he recovered from the very deliberate collision and continued on, unaware that he’d just lost his wallet to the gang of professional pickpockets. The thieves moved off with their score, dispersing into the crowd where they would probably pull the same stunt a few more times before the night was through.
In another time, another place, Rio might have gone after the juvenile deliquents, just to set them straight. To show them that the night had eyes…and teeth, if they were too cocky to take a helpful hint.
But he was through playing the dark angel to the humans who lived alongside his kind. Let them cheat and kill one another. He frankly didn’t care. As of lately, there wasn’t much of anything he cared about—save his oath of honor pledged to his brethren of the Order.
Damn fine job he’d done upholding that vow.
He’d let them down by not sealing the mountain crypt as they’d trusted him to do several months ago. Now that failure was compounded. Now there was a witness. With photographs.
Yeah, absolutely stellar job he’d done so far.
Now the situation was as fucked up as he was.
Rio strode hard for the station exit, inhaling the countless scents that filled the air around him and processing them with a ruthless, determined concentration.
His feet stopped moving at the first trace of juniper and honey.
He swung his head around, following the tickle in his nose like a hound let loose on felled game. The scent of the one he sought was fresh—too fresh to be anything but immediately present.
Madre de Dios.
The woman he hunted was here, in the train station.
“You sure you’re going to be okay by yourself, honey? I don’t feel right about leaving you behind like this.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Dylan gave Janet and the other two women quick hugs as the group of them stood inside Prague’s central train station. It was busy even at this time of night, the art deco building crowded with travelers, panhandlers, and quite a number of sleeping homeless people.
“What if something should happen to you?” Janet asked. “Your mom would never forgive us—and I would never forgive myself—if you get hurt or lost or mugged.”
“Thirty-two years in New York hasn’t killed me. I’m pretty sure I can survive a day here on my own.”
Marie’s brow furrowed. “And what about your flight home?”
“Already taken care of. I changed everything online back at the hotel. I’ll be flying out of Prague the day after tomorrow.”
“We could wait for you, Dylan.” Nancy hefted her backpack up over her shoulder. “Maybe we should forget about Vienna and rebook our flights too, so we can all go home together.”
“Yes,” Marie agreed. “Maybe we should.”
Dylan shook her head. “Absolutely not. I’m not going to ask any of you to spend the last day of your trip babysitting me when it’s really not necessary. I’m a big girl. Nothing’s going to happen. Go on, I’ll be perfectly fine.”
“You’re sure, honey?” Janet asked.
“Positive. Enjoy yourselves in Vienna. I’ll see you back home in the States in a couple of days.”
It took a further round of fretting and tongue-clucking before the three women finally made their way to the departure platform. Dylan walked along with them, waiting as they boarded. She watched the train roll out of the station, then turned to leave with the rest of the people who’d come to see loved ones off that night.
As she walked toward the station exits, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being observed. Paranoia, no doubt, brought on by Janet’s worrying on her behalf. But still…
Dylan glanced around her in a casual pan of the area, trying not to look anxious or lost—emotional beacons for the types of people who liked to prey on stupid tourists. She held her purse in front of her, one arm locked down over it to keep it close to her body. She knew public transportation areas were prime targets for thieves, just like in the States, and she didn’t miss the fact that the group of local teens hanging at a bank of pay phones near the exit were casting measured looks at the crowds as they dispersed. Pickpockets, most likely. She’d heard they often ran in packs around these places.
Just to be safe, she cut a wide berth and avoided them, taking the farthest door from the group.
She was feeling pretty street-savvy when she noticed a uniformed security guard walk up to the guys and show them the door. They loped off, and Dylan reached for the push bar on the glass door in front of her.
In the reflection coming back at her from the glass, she saw a familiar face—one that made her heart seize up in her chest.
Behind her, almost close enough to touch her, was a very large man barreling at her from the direction of the train platforms. Fierce eyes seemed to burn like coals under the fall of his dark hair.
And his mouth…
Good God, she’d never seen a more terrifying sneer in her life. A row of perfect white teeth were clamped tightly behind the lips that were peeled back in a feral snarl, pulling the muscles of his lean face into a stark, deadly mask.
It was him—the man she’d found in the mountain cave outside Jiáín.
He’d followed her all this way? Evidently so. She’d thought he might be crazy when she saw him earlier that day, but now she was certain. The way he looked at her now, he had to be an utter psychopath.
And he was gunning for her like he meant to tear her apart with his bare hands.
Dylan shrieked; she couldn’t hold back her sharp gasp of fear. She ducked away from the exit, pulling a hard left and running, hopefully out of his path. A quick glance backward only made her pulse slam harder.
“Oh, Jesus,” she murmured, fright arrowing through her.
It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t be here looking for her…
But it was him.
And from the knot of terror that was lodged in her throat, she wasn’t about to stand around and ask him what he wanted from her.
She raced over to the station security guard and grabbed the man by the arm. “Help, please! Someone’s after me.” She flung a look over her shoulder, pointing behind her. “He’s back there—light trench coat and long dark hair. Please. You have to help me!”
The uniformed Czech frowned, but he must have understood her because he followed her panicked gesture, his narrowed eyes scanning the station. “Where?” he asked, his English thickly accented. “Show me this man. Who is bothering you?”
“I don’t know who he is, but he was right behind me. You can’t miss him—more than six feet tall, shoulders like a linebacker, dark, dingy hair hanging over his face…”
Feeling safer now, she turned around, ready to confront the lunatic and hopefully watch him be carted off to the local asylum.
Except he wasn’t there. Dylan searched the crowds for the big man who would stand out like a rabid, snarling wolf in the center of a herd of milling sheep. There was no sign of him at all. People filed past in ordered calm, nothing out of sorts, no hint of disruption anywhere.
It was as if he’d simply vanished.
“He’s got to be here somewhere,” she murmured, even though she couldn’t find him—not among the throngs entering and leaving the terminal, nor among the station’s population of homeless people. “He was right here, I swear. He was coming after me.”
She felt like a fool as the security guard’s gaze swung back to her and he gave her a polite smile. “Not anymore. You are okay now?”
“Yeah, sure. Okay, I guess,” Dylan said, feeling anything but okay.
She cautiously headed for the front entrance of the station. Although it was a beautiful summer night, with clear skies and plenty of people walking through the surrounding park and on the streets leading deeper into the city, Dylan hailed a taxi to take her the few blocks back to her hotel.
She kept telling herself that she must have been imagining things—that she couldn’t possibly have seen the man from the mountain cave stalking up behind her in the train station. Still, as she climbed out of the taxi and hurried into the posh lobby of her hotel, her nape continued to prickle with anxiety. The feeling persisted as she stood outside her room door, fumbling with her electronic key card.
As she finally got the door open, a noise behind her made her pause. She glanced around but saw nothing, despite the continued wash of paranoid apprehension that hung over her. She rushed inside like her life depended on it, feeling a startling blast of ice-cold air envelop her in the dark of her room.
“Air conditioner, doofus,” she told herself as she reached for the light switch and flipped it on. She had to laugh at her own paranoia, even as she quickly turned all the locks behind her.
She didn’t see him until she took a step farther into the dimly lit room.
The man from the mountain cave, the lunatic from the train station, was somehow—impossibly—standing not ten feet from her.
Dylan’s mouth dropped open in shock.
And then she screamed.
CHAPTER
Six
Rio closed his hand around the female’s open mouth just as the first high note of terror ripped through the room. He’d moved too quickly for her human eyes to track him, employing the same Breed ability he’d used to tail her taxi from the station and follow her up into her hotel room. She’d probably felt him move past her as he had entered ahead of her—registering him only as a sudden draft of chill air—but even now he could tell that her mind was struggling to make sense of what her eyes were seeing.
She twisted her head, attempting to break free of his unrelenting grasp. Another scream formed in the back of her throat and blasted hotly against his palm, but the effort was useless. The hard clamp of Rio’s fingers snuffed out all but the barest tremor of her cries.
“Quiet.” He held fast, and pinned her with a look that demanded obedience. “Not one more sound, do you understand? I’m not going to hurt you.”
Even though he meant it—at least for now—he could see that she was far from convinced. She was trembling hard, her entire body taut and rigid, fear pouring off her in vibrating waves. Over the edge of his palm, her gold-flecked green eyes were huge and wild. Her fine nostrils flared with every short, panicked breath she took.
“Do as I tell you, and you won’t get hurt,” he said, holding that wide, wary gaze. Very slowly, he began to ease some of the pressure from her mouth. The moist heat of her lips and sawing breath seared his palm as she adjusted to the tiny bit of freedom he’d granted her. “Now, I’m going to take my hand away. I need you to stay quiet. Agreed?”
She blinked slowly. Gave him a faint, tremulous nod.
“All right.” Rio began to lift his hand. “All right, that’s good.”
The female didn’t scream.
She bit him.
No sooner had Rio relaxed his hold than he felt the sudden, blunt force of her teeth latching on to the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. He spat a vicious curse, more pissed off that he hadn’t seen the attack coming than he was put off by the pain of her bite.
She drew back just as swiftly as she’d struck and managed to break away from him. She lunged for the locked door but didn’t even make it one step. Rio tackled her from behind, his arms wrapped around her like iron bands.
“Oh, God—no!” she cried, and went down hard on her knees, too fast for him to cushion her fall.
She collapsed in a clumsy, face-first sprawl on the floor. Rio heard her breath whoosh out of her on the abrupt impact and knew her lungs had to be screaming. Not that it sapped her of her determination. Damn, she was tenacious.
She made a last-ditch, frantic scrabble on her belly, trying to drag herself over the carpeted floor to get away from him. But she stood no chance, certainly not against one of his kind.
Rio crawled up the length of her, trapping her under the weight of his body. She was panting as he flipped her over onto her back and sat himself astride her. She wriggled, still fighting him for all she was worth, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Rio had her imprisoned beneath him, holding her arms tight against her sides with the strength of his muscled thighs.
She was completely at his mercy now, and from the look in her eyes as she stared up at him, she didn’t expect he had much to give.
Rio could guess what he looked like—Jesus, what he smelled like too. This close, he couldn’t hope that his scars were hidden behind his overlong hair. He saw her terrified gaze flick to the left side of his face, where the flames and flying shrapnel had left their mark a year ago. The tight, reddish-silver tangle of ruined skin must look especially hideous underneath all his grime. He must look like some kind of half-crazed monster…
Yeah, he did, because that’s just what he was.
And he was also suddenly, acutely aware of the soft, warm woman trapped beneath him. Where he was dressed to offend, in torn clothes that were too far gone months ago to even make decent rags, she was wearing a curve-hugging, cap-sleeved tee-shirt with a pleasantly deep V-neck and light tan cargo pants that rode just below her hips. She smelled clean and fresh, infinitely female.
And she was beautiful.
Holy mother, was she ever.
He’d never seen eyes of her precise color, a rich, verdant green flecked with pale gold. A thick fringe of dark brown lashes framed those intelligent, mesmerizing eyes, which stared up at him now in such wary uncertainty. Her cheekbones were delicate and high, accentuating the graceful line of her jaw. She had the kind of beauty that made her seem both innocent and wise, but it was the shadows in her incredible eyes that intrigued Rio the most.
This woman had known disappointment and hurt in her life. Maybe even betrayal. She’d been wounded before, and now here he was adding a new brand of terror to her life experience.
Even worse, she aroused him.
Not only the knowledge that he had her caught between his thighs, but the sight of her pretty mouth, which was stained with a trace smear of his blood from when she’d bitten him. Everything male in Rio was alert with the feel of her beneath him. Everything Breed in him was tuned in to that scarlet smudge on her tempting lips…and to the thrumming tick of her pulse where it beat so quickly at the base of her creamy throat.
He wanted her.
After the months of exile in that godforsaken cave, after Eva’s deception that had left him dead in so many ways, Rio looked at this woman and felt…alive.
He felt ravenous, and she likely picked up on that fact from the low growl he could do nothing to suppress. He felt his vision sharpen as his pupils began to narrow with his interest. His gums ached as his fangs began to elongate behind the tight line of his lips.
And his cock was suddenly, achingly erect. There was no hiding that fact, even as he shifted his hold on his captive.
“Please…don’t do this,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheekbone and into her silky red hair. “Whatever you’re thinking, just…let me go. If it’s money you need, take it. My purse is right over there—”
“I don’t want you or your money,” Rio ground out tightly. He got off her, angered with himself for the twin physical reactions he was having a hard time holding at bay. “Come on, stand up. All I want is your camera.”
She slowly pulled herself to her feet. “My what?”
“The camera you had with you in the cave, and the pictures you took. I need all of it.”
“You want…the pictures? I don’t understand—”
“You don’t need to. Just give them to me.” When she didn’t move to comply, Rio trained a piercing look on her. “Get them. Now.”
“O-okay,” she stammered, and hurried over to a large backpack that stood in the corner of the room. She dug through it and pulled out the slim digital camera.
When she started to open it up to pop out the image disk, Rio said, “I’ll do that. Give it to me.”
She held the camera out to him with shaking fingers. “You followed me all the way to Prague for this? What’s so important about those pictures? And just how did you find me anyway?”
Rio ignored her questions. In a few minutes, none of this would matter. He’d have the images and then he’d scrub the female’s memory of the entire chain of events.
“Is this all of them?” he asked her as he turned the camera on and scrolled through the contents of the disk. “Have you downloaded them to any other devices?”
“That’s it,” she replied quickly. “That’s everything, I swear.”
He reviewed the handful of shots from the cave, the ones of himself in partial transformation, and the ones that showed the Ancient’s hibernation chamber and the glyphs painted in human blood on the walls. “Have you shown these to anyone?”
She swallowed, then shook her head. “I still don’t understand what this is about.”
“And that’s how we’re going to keep it,” Rio said.
He walked toward her, only three steps between them. She backed away, but came up against the window on the far wall of the room. “Oh, my God. You said you weren’t going to hurt me…”
“Be calm,” he instructed her. “It will be over soon.”
“Oh, shit.” A strangled moan curled audibly in the back of her throat. “Oh, my God…you’re really going to kill me…”
“No,” Rio said grimly. “But I need your silence.”
He reached out for her. All it would take was a brief settling of his hand on her forehead to erase her knowledge of the mountain cave and him from her mind.
But as his hand descended toward her, she drew in her breath, then let it out on a string of words that made him freeze in place where he stood.
“I’m not the only one who knows!” She panted with fear. Words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush. “Other people know where I am. They know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing. So, whatever you think those pictures mean, killing me won’t protect you because I’m not the only one who’s seen them.”
She lied to him. Rio’s anger spiked at the deception. “You said no one else knew.”
“And you said you weren’t going to hurt me.”
“Jesus.” He saw little point in arguing with her, or in defending his intentions. “You need to tell me who you’ve shown the pictures to. I need names and locations.”
She scoffed, too bold for her own good. “Why? So you can go after them too?”
Rio’s mind switched into immediate reconnaissance mode. He threw a glance at her belongings and saw a messenger bag slung over the hotel chair. The bag looked like it probably contained a computer. He stalked over to it and withdrew a thin silver laptop.
He opened it and hit the power button, which must have given the woman an idea that she could make another break for the door. She bolted, but Rio cut her off at the pass. He stood in front of her, his back against the heavily locked panel, before she even had a chance to imagine freedom.
“Holy shit,” she gasped, blinking at him in disbelief. “How did you get—? You were all the way across the room—”
“Yes, I was. And now I’m not.”
Rio stepped forward, away from the door, forcing her to retreat. She backed up as he kept advancing, obviously unsure what to make of him now.
“Sit down,” he ordered her. “The sooner you cooperate, the sooner this will be over.”
She took a seat on the edge of the bed, watching as he went back to her computer and fired up her Internet connection. Her e-mail was a revelation. Aside from the usual personal garbage and a recent airline ticket change, Rio found several messages in her Sent folder going out to some kind of news organization—a few of them complete with photos. He clicked one open and quickly scanned the contents.
“Ah, Christ. You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered. He swung a glare at her over his shoulder. “You’re a goddamn reporter?”
She didn’t answer, just sat there biting her lip like she wasn’t sure if a yes might get her killed faster than a no.
Rio put down the laptop and started pacing tightly.
He thought the situation had been bad before? Well, now he was faced with a nuclear-grade disaster. A reporter. A reporter with a camera and a computer and an Internet connection. No amount of mind-scrubbing was going to take care of that.
He needed an assist here, and he needed one pronto.
Rio grabbed her computer and called up the instant messaging software. He typed in a masked ID that would route to the Order’s tech lab at the compound in Boston. The address was monitored 24/7 by Gideon, the warriors’ resident computer genius. Rio entered a cryptic message using code that identified him, his location, and his need to contact.
The response came back from Gideon almost immediately. Whatever Rio needed, the Order would provide. Gideon was standing by for details.
“You got a cell phone?” he asked the reporter sitting mutely near him. When she shook her head, Rio snatched the desk phone and typed in the hotel’s landline. “What room number is this? The number, damn it!”
“Uh, it’s 310,” she replied. “Why? Who are you calling? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Damage control,” he said, about a second before the telephone started ringing.
He picked up the receiver, knowing it was Gideon even before he heard the slight English accent on the other end. “I’m calling on a scrambled signal, Rio, so speak freely. What’s up? More importantly, where the fuck have you been all this time? For crissake, it’s been five months since you went off grid. You don’t write, you don’t call…don’t you love me no more?”
God, it was good to hear a familiar voice. Rio might have smiled at the thought but things were too far south on his end. “I’ve got a situation here—it’s not good, my friend.”
Gideon’s humor vanished and the warrior was all business. “Talk to me.”
“I’m in Prague. There’s a reporter here with me—a female. American. She’s got pictures from the mountain, Gideon. Pictures of the hibernation chamber and the glyphs on the walls.”
“Jesus. How did she get in there to take pictures? And when? That cave’s been sealed up since you guys were there in February.”
Ah, hell. No getting around it. He had to just spit the truth out. “The cave wasn’t sealed. There were some delays…I didn’t secure the damn thing until today. After the pictures were taken.”
Gideon blew out a curse. “All right. I’m assuming you’ve scrubbed her, but what about the photos? Do you have them?”
“Yeah, I have them, but here’s where it gets worse, Gid. She’s not the only one who’s seen them. They’ve already gone out via e-mail to the paper she works for and several other individuals. If I could’ve contained this by scrubbing her, I would have. Unfortunately, it’s bigger than that, my friend.”
Gideon was quiet for a long moment, no doubt calculating the endless ramifications of Rio’s fuckup, even though he was too much of a diplomat to list them off. “First thing we need to do is get you out of there and somewhere secure. The woman too. Think you can hold her until I can arrange a pickup?”
“Anything you say. This is my mess, I’m sure as hell going to do whatever I need to in order to clean it up.”
Rio heard the vague clatter of a keyboard in the background. “I’m contacting Andreas Reichen in Berlin.” There was a few seconds’ pause, then Gideon started talking on another phone line back in Boston. He came back to Rio in no time. “I’ve got pickup for you and transport to Reichen’s Darkhaven, but it might take up to an hour for his contact to reach you.”
“That’s no problem.”
“Confirming now,” Gideon replied, deftly handling the logistics like hauling Rio’s ass out of trouble was nothing but cake. “Okay, you’re all set. I’ll call again when the transport is in place.”
“I’ll be ready. Hey, Gideon…thank you.”
“No problem at all. Good to have you back, Rio. We need you, man. Things don’t feel right around here without you.”
“I’ll report in from Berlin,” he said, thinking that now probably wasn’t the time to tell Gideon that he wasn’t coming back into the fold.
His date with death had been postponed, but as soon as he had this current situation under control, he was checking out for good.
CHAPTER
Seven
Dylan sat quietly on the bed and watched as the dark stranger confiscated her computer and camera, then rifled through the rest of her belongings. She had little choice but to stay out of his way. Her slightest movement drew his attention every time, and after the mind-boggling, warp-speed maneuver he’d pulled when he blocked her from reaching the hotel room door, she hadn’t found the nerve to attempt another escape.
She had no idea what to think of him.
He was dangerous, no question. Probably deadly when he wanted to be, although she didn’t think murder was foremost on his mind at the moment. If he wanted to harm her, he’d had plenty of opportunity already. Like when she’d been trapped underneath him on the floor, very attuned to the fact that she’d had more than two hundred pounds of hard, muscular male on top of her and little to no hope of throwing him off. He could have wrapped those big hands around her throat and strangled her, right there on her hotel room floor.
But he hadn’t.
He hadn’t acted on the other impulse that had so obviously occurred to him either. Dylan hadn’t missed the way he’d looked at her, his eyes fixed intensely on her mouth. The very male response of his body as he’d straddled her had been swift, unmistakable, yet he hadn’t laid a finger on her. In fact, he’d seemed about as alarmed by his arousal as she’d been. So, he apparently wasn’t a cold-blooded psychopath or a rapist, regardless of the fact he’d stalked her all the way from Jiáín to Prague.
So, what did that make him?
He moved too fast, was far too precise and agile, to be some kind of crazed survivalist or a garden variety vagrant. No, he wasn’t either of those things. He might be filthy and ragged, one side of his face scarred from some horrific event she could only speculate on, but underneath all the grime he was something…else.
This man, whoever he truly was, was huge and strong, and dangerously alert. His keen eyes and ears missed nothing. His senses seemed to be tuned to a higher frequency than was humanly possible. Even if he was half insane, he carried himself like he was well aware of his own power and knew just how to use it.
“Are you military or something?” she asked, guessing aloud. “You talk like you could be. Act like it too. What are you, some kind of special forces? Ex-military, maybe. What were you doing on that mountain near Jiáín?”
He shot her a glare as he stuffed her computer and camera back into her messenger bag, but he didn’t answer.
“You know, you might as well fill me in on some of what’s going on. I’m a journalist”—well, admittedly, that was a bit of a stretch—“but I am a reasonable person. If those pictures are sensitive or classified or a matter of national security, just say so. Why are you so concerned about people seeing what was in that cave?”
“You ask too many questions.”
She shrugged. “Sorry. Hazard of the job, I guess.”
“That’s not the only hazard of your job,” he said, slanting her a look of dark warning. “The less you know about this, the better.”
“You mean, about the ‘hibernation chamber’?” He stiffened visibly, but Dylan kept going. “That’s what you called it, right? That’s what you told your friend Gideon. Some kind of shit is about to hit the fan because I took pictures of this hibernation chamber thingy and the, uh, ‘glyphs’ as you called them.”
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed. “You shouldn’t have been listening to any of that.”
“It was kind of hard not to. When you’re being held against your will and pretty damn certain you’re going to be killed, you tend to pay attention.”
“You’re not going to be killed.”
His cold, matter-of-fact tone wasn’t exactly reassuring. “Sounded to me like you thought about it, though. Unless ‘scrubbing’ someone means something different to you than it does to everyone else who’s ever seen a mafia movie.”
He scoffed, giving a curt shake of his head.
“What was in that cave?”
“Forget it.”
Not likely. Not when he seemed so protective of the information. As in, do-or-die protective. “What do all those weird symbols on the walls mean? Is it some kind of ancient language? Some kind of code? Just what are you so desperate to hide?”
He came at her so fast, she didn’t even see him move. She blinked and suddenly he was bearing down on her, the broad bulk of his body towering over her, making her shrink back on the bed.
“Listen to me and hear me well, Dylan Alexander,” he said tightly. The sound of her name rolling off his lips was jarring in its intimacy. “This is not a game. It’s not a puzzle for you to piece together. And it sure as hell isn’t a story that I’m going to permit you to tell. So do us both a favor and stop asking questions about something that doesn’t concern you.”
His eyes were livid, the topaz color of them flashing with anger. It was that hot, penetrating gaze that scared her the most—even more than the threat of his coiled strength or the terrible scars that stretched across the left side of his face and made him look so frightening.
But he was wrong when he said that the cave and whatever secrets it might contain did not concern her. She was personally invested in the story, and not just because it was beginning to feel like the kind of story that would not only save her so-called career, but quite possibly make it.
Dylan’s interest in the cave and its strange wall art had gotten very personal from the moment she noticed the teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol that identically matched the birthmark she had on the back of her neck.
She considered that bizarre coincidence as the hotel phone began to ring. Her uninvited guest picked it up and carried on a short, confidential exchange. He hung up, slung her messenger bag over his shoulder then went over to grab the backpack containing the rest of her belongings. He took her pocketbook off the nightstand and tossed it to her.
“That’s our ride,” he said as she caught the small handbag. “Time to go.”
“What do you mean, our ride?”
“We’re leaving, right now.”
A wave of dread roared up on her, but she tried to maintain a brave front. “Forget it. You really are crazy if you think I’m going anywhere with you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
He came toward her, and Dylan knew that she stood little chance of overpowering him or outrunning him. Not when she had to navigate three floors of the hotel in order to get away from him. But she could sure as hell scream for help—and would, the very second he dragged her into the hotel lobby.
Except he didn’t bring her into the very public lobby so she could make her escape.
He didn’t even open the door that led out into the hallway outside her room.
With that same speed and strength she couldn’t help but be amazed by, he grabbed her at the wrist and pulled her to the window that overlooked a side street several dizzying yards below. He threw open the glass and climbed out onto the fire escape, still holding fast to her arm as he started to haul her outside with him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dylan dug in her heels, her eyes wide with fear. “Are you insane? You’re going to break both our necks if you—”
He didn’t give her a chance to finish the thought, let alone speak it.
Before Dylan realized what was happening, she was lifted out the window and over the solid bulk of his shoulder. She heard his boots clanking on the rattling iron of the fire escape. Then she felt her whole world shift as he incredibly—impossibly—vaulted over the railing with her.
They hit the dark pavement three stories below.
It wasn’t the bone-breaking crash she anticipated, but a soft, almost graceful connection between his feet and the ground. She was still trying to process how that could be when suddenly she was pushed into the back of an open delivery truck that idled near the place they’d touched down.
Dylan tumbled in with her abductor right behind her. Disoriented and thoroughly confused, she was too stunned to form a single word as he brought the heavy trailer door down with a hard thump and enclosed them in darkness.
The truck’s engine roared to life, and with a sharp squeal of tires, the vehicle took off with its cargo.
Back in Boston, it was nearly five A.M. and the last of the Order’s warriors were heading in from their night patrols. Lucan, Tegan, and Dante—the mated ones, like Gideon, with females awaiting their return to the compound—had been in for about an hour already. Sterling Chase, the ex–Darkhaven Enforcement Agent who’d joined up with the Order last year and had proven to be a formidable—enthusiastically lethal—addition to the group, was present and accounted for too.
Now, as the three remaining members of the Order filed in, Gideon wasn’t surprised to find Nikolai bringing up the rear. Although he was the youngest of the warriors, Niko was also the most relentless fighter Gideon had ever seen. An adrenaline junkie and vicious combatant, the Russian-born vampire never called it a night until dawn was creeping over the horizon, forcing him off the streets.
And when it came to high-octane weaponry, Niko was an absolute demon.
Tonight, as the black-clad warrior with the golden-blond hair and glacial blue eyes sauntered in behind the two newest members of the cadre, Kade and Brock, Gideon noted that he was armed with some of his latest creations. A nasty-looking 9mm semiauto with a clip full of titanium hollowpoint rounds rode at Niko’s hip, and a laser-sighted sniper rifle tricked out with the same custom ammo was slung from a strap over his shoulder.
Even from behind the glass enclosure of the compound’s tech lab, Gideon could smell fresh death on the warrior. Not human, as the Breed in general tried to maintain as peaceful a cohabitation as possible with their Homo sapiens cousins. They fed from humans in order to survive, but it was rare that a vampire killed his Host. It was a matter of simple logic after all. No sense wiping out your sole food source, or, for that matter, exposing yourself as a mortal threat to that food source and encouraging them to wipe you out instead.
But there was a small, splintered percentage of the vampire nation that didn’t give a damn for solid logic. Rogues—vampires who’d become addicted to blood and gone feral, living only to feed that addiction—were the ones who found themselves in the crosshairs of the Order’s lethal brand of justice.
The Order had been combating the problematic minority within the Breed since the Middle Ages, a task that had given the warriors a reputation as merciless killers among the vampire nation at large. Not that Gideon or any of his brethren were looking for accolades or public adoration. They had a grim job to do, and they did it very well.
Gideon met the three returning warriors in the corridor outside the lab, wrinkling his nose at the Rogue stench that Nikolai carried in with him.
“I take it the hunting was decent tonight.”
Niko grinned. “It ended on a good note at any rate. Tracked and smoked a suckhead out of the city after he attacked a woman walking her dog in Beacon Hill.”
“My man here tracked the Rogue thirty-five miles—on foot,” Brock added, giving a roll of his dark brown eyes. “Had the Rover gassed up and waiting on the corner. We could have run the son of a bitch to the ground in three minutes flat, but Jackie Joyner decides to hoof it instead.”
Niko chuckled. “Hey, might as well make it interesting. Besides, it was a slow night up until then.”
“Been a slow month,” Kade replied, his tone not complaining so much as stating fact.
Things around the city had become considerably quieter since last February, when the Order had finally killed the vampire responsible for a rash of violence in and around Boston. Marek was no more, and following his death the warriors had been hunting down and eliminating all those who’d served him. As far as that went, Marek’s human Minions were no problem—the blood-depleted mind slaves could not survive without their Master; wherever they were, they simply stopped breathing at the same time he did, and dropped dead of what would appear to be abrupt, yet perfectly natural, causes.
Marek’s personal retinue of Rogues, on the other hand, were not as accommodating as their human counterparts. The blood-addicted vampires who’d been recruited, and sometimes forced, under Marek’s command as his bodyguards and lieutenants were now left to their own misrule. Without Marek around to keep them in line and provide the victims required to slake their Bloodlust, the Rogue vampires had dispersed into the surrounding human populations to hunt like the insatiable predators they were.
Since the winter, the Order had smoked ten of the suckheads between Boston and Marek’s last known headquarters in the Berkshires region two hours to the west. Eleven Rogues, counting the one Niko took out tonight.
And although what Kade had said about the current state of quiet was true, Gideon had lived long enough to know that a calm like the one they knew now wasn’t meant to last. It was often just the lull preceding a hellish storm.
Given what the Order had uncovered on that Bohemian mountain last February, there was little question that a storm of epic proportions was on the rise. An ancient evil had been sleeping in the crypt on that mountain—a vampire unlike any in existence today. Now that powerful, alien creature was loose somewhere, and the Order’s newest, most critical mission was to find it and destroy it before its terror was unleashed on the world.
That job was going to prove a lot harder if the secret realm of the Breed—and the escalating trouble within it—were suddenly exposed to humankind by way of a curious reporter who’d somehow wandered into the middle of all this.
“Got an interesting call from Prague tonight,” Gideon said. “Rio’s back on grid.”
Nikolai’s tawny brows crashed together. “He’s not in Spain? When did he get back to Prague?”
“Doesn’t sound like he ever left. He ran into some trouble there, in the form of an American reporter. She knows about the cave. She’s been inside the Ancient’s hibernation chamber. Took a bunch of pictures too, evidently.”
“What the fuck? When did all this go down?”
“I don’t have all the details yet. Rio’s working on getting the situation secured. He and the woman are on their way to Reichen’s place in Berlin as we speak. He’s going to report in once he arrives so we can determine how to best contain this potential disaster.”
“Shit.” Brock exhaled, running a hand over his dark brow. “Rio’s actually still breathing, eh? Gotta say, I’m surprised. Since he’s been AWOL for so long, I kind of expected he wasn’t coming back, you know what I’m saying? Edgy guy like that, seemed to me like a prime candidate to off himself.”
“Maybe he should have,” Kade put in, chuckling. “I mean, hell, we’ve got Chase and Niko to contend with already. Does the Order really need another raving lunatic in the ranks?”
Nikolai sprang on the other warrior like a viper. There was no warning, no hint that Niko was going to grab Kade’s throat in his hand and slam the big male up against the wall of the corridor. He was seething with defensive anger as he held Kade in a near death grip.
“Jesus Christ!” Kade hissed, clearly as shocked as anyone else by the unexpected reaction. “It was just a joke, man!”
Nikolai snarled. “Do you see me laughing? Do I look like I’m fucking laughing?”
Kade’s sharp silver eyes narrowed but he didn’t say anything else to provoke him.
“I could give a damn what you say about me,” Niko growled, “but if you know what’s good for you, lay the hell off Rio.”
Gideon might have guessed this wasn’t about Kade unintentionally insulting Nikolai. It was about Niko’s friendship with Rio. The two warriors had been as close as true brothers in the time before the warehouse explosion that left Rio scarred and broken. Afterward, it was Niko who made sure Rio fed, Niko who dragged Rio’s ass out of the infirmary to train in the compound’s weapons facility as soon as the wounded warrior was able to stand up.
It had been Nikolai who argued the most vehemently every time Rio announced that he was too far gone to be useful and he was pulling out of the Order. In the nearly five months that Rio had been currently off grid, not a week passed that Niko didn’t ask if there had been any word from him.
“Niko, damn, buddy,” Brock said. “Ease up.”
The huge black warrior moved in, looking like he was about to peel him off Kade, but Gideon held him back with a look. Although Nikolai relaxed his grip, his anger was still a palpable force filling the hallway.
“You don’t know dick about Rio,” he told Kade. “That warrior has more honor than the both of us combined. So this is the last time I want to hear you talking shit about him. Understand?”
Kade nodded tightly. “Yeah. Like I said, it was just a damn joke. I didn’t mean any offense.”
Nikolai stared at him for a long moment, then stalked away in silence.
CHAPTER
Eight
Dawn was inching up over the horizon as the delivery truck from Prague wheeled into a gated, heavily secured lakefront estate on the outskirts of Berlin.
The Darkhaven was held by a Breed vampire named Andreas Reichen, a civilian, but also a trusted ally of the Order since he’d assisted with the discovery of the mountain cave a few months ago. Rio had only met him briefly that past February, but the German greeted him like an old friend as he came around to the back of the truck and opened the trailer door.
“Welcome,” he said, then sent an anxious glance up at the pinkening sky overhead. “You made excellent time.”
The male was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit and a pristinely pressed white shirt that lay unbuttoned at the throat. With his thick chestnut hair loose around his shoulders, the perfect waves setting off his striking, angular features, Reichen looked like he’d just come off a photo shoot for a men’s designer ad.
One dark brow lifted slightly as he took in Rio’s negligent appearance, but he remained the consummate gentleman. With a nod, Reichen offered his hand in greeting as Rio climbed out of the truck. “No trouble along the way, I hope?”
“None.” Rio gave a brief shake of the vampire’s hand.
“We were stopped at the border into Germany, but they didn’t search the truck.”
“For the right price, they don’t,” Reichen said, smiling pleasantly. He glanced behind Rio into the darkened trailer, to where Dylan Alexander lay on the floor. She was curled up on her side and resting peacefully, her head cushioned by the lumpy edge of her backpack. “Tranced, I take it?”
Rio nodded. He’d put her out about an hour into the trip, when her endless, probing questions and the swaying motion of the truck had been too much for him to deal with. Even though he’d fed earlier that night, his body was still in need of nourishment and not yet operating on all cylinders. To say nothing of his other problems.
He had spent most of the five-plus-hour drive fighting off nausea and blackout—a weakness he wasn’t about to risk exposing to the woman he’d just forcibly abducted. Better that she spend the duration of the trip in a light, psychically induced doze than have her make some desperate bid to overpower him and attempt an escape while they were in transit.
“She’s attractive,” Reichen said, a casual observation that didn’t even begin to do the female justice. “Why don’t you take her inside. I have a room prepared for her upstairs. One for you as well. Third floor, end of the hall to the right.”
Reichen waved off Rio’s murmured thanks. “You are welcome to stay as long as you require, of course. Anything you need, just ask. I’ll be along with her things as soon as I compensate my Czech friend for doing this favor on such short notice.”
As the German went around to the front of the truck to pay the driver, Rio climbed back inside to retrieve his sleeping captive. She stirred lightly as he lifted her into his arms and carried her outside. He walked briskly toward the mansion and up the short climb of steps that led into the opulent foyer.
None of the Darkhaven’s residents were around, even though it wouldn’t have been unusual to see some of the civilian vampires or their female mates who lived together as a community in the vast estate. Reichen had probably made sure the house would be quiet for Rio’s arrival, devoid of curious eyes and ears. Not to mention, protecting those same civilians from being identified by someone like Dylan Alexander.
A goddamn reporter.
Rio’s jaw clamped tight at the thought of the damage the woman in his arms could do. Just a stroke of her pen—or keyboard, as it were—and she could put this Darkhaven and the hundred or so others like it in Europe and the United States in terrible danger. Persecution, subjugation, and, ultimately, wholesale annihilation were certain outcomes if humankind were to have proof of vampires living among them. Aside from some assorted, mostly incorrect, vampire folklore widely dismissed as fiction by modern man, the Breed had kept itself hidden from discovery for thousands of years. It was the only way they’d survived this long.
But now, through his own carelessness—his weakness—Rio might have undone all of that in one reckless moment. He had to make it right, no matter what it might take to stanch the bleeding wound this woman’s story could cause.
Rio carried her through the empty foyer and up the massive staircase at the center of the elegant mansion. At the third floor landing, he followed the walnut-paneled hallway to the end of the line and opened the guest room door on his right. It was dim inside; like any Darkhaven residence, the windows were outfitted with electronic, UV-blocking shades to shut out deadly sunlight. Rio brought Dylan into the room and placed her on the large four-poster bed.
She didn’t look so dangerous like this, coming to rest there in the middle of the plush, silk-covered mattress. She looked innocent, almost angelic in her silence, her skin as clear as milk except for the spatter of tiny freckles that marched across her cheeks and the bridge of her small nose. Her long red hair fell around her head and shoulders like a halo of fire. Rio couldn’t resist touching one of the molten strands that had fallen over her creamy cheek. The tendril rasped against his callused fingers, which looked so dark and unclean against the coppery silk.
He had no right to touch her—no good reason to sift the beautiful lock between his fingers, marveling at the resilient strength contained within so much mesmerizing softness.
There was no cause at all for him to bend his head down to where she lay, passive only because he made her so, and to breathe the appealing scent of her into his lungs. Saliva surged into his mouth as he held himself very still over her, his face mere inches from the side of her neck. His thirst rose swiftly, along with a hot, swelling need.
Madre de Dios.
Had he really thought her to look like no threat to him now?
Wrong again, he thought, recoiling from her bedside as her eyelids fluttered with waking consciousness. The lull of the trance was dissipating; it would fall away completely once Rio wasn’t in the room to hold the effect in place.
She stirred a bit more and he turned away from her briskly. He’d better get out of there, before he revealed himself any further with the current, rather obvious presence of his fangs.
When he looked up, he found Andreas Reichen standing in the hall outside the open door. “Do you find the room suitable, Rio?”
“Yes,” he replied, stalking over to take the backpack and pocketbook from the German’s hands. “I’ll keep these with me for now.”
“Of course. As you wish.” Reichen stepped back as Rio came out to the hallway and closed the guest room door. The German handed him a key for the lock beneath the antique crystal knob. “The window shades are centrally controlled, and the glass behind them is equipped with alarms. Outside, the estate grounds are secured by motion detectors and a perimeter fence. But these measures were designed to keep people off the property, not in. If you think the woman is a flight hazard, I can post a guard at the door—”
“No,” Rio said as he turned the key in the lock. “It’s bad enough she can ID me. The fewer individuals we bring into this, the better. She’s my responsibility. I’ll make sure she stays put.”
“Very well. I’ve had the adjoining suite prepared for you. You’ll find the wardrobe fully stocked with brand-new men’s attire. Help yourself to anything you like. There’s a bath and sauna in the suite as well, if you’d, ah, like to freshen up.”
“Yeah.” Rio nodded. His head was still pounding from the long ride in the back of the truck. His body was taut and edgy, hot all over, and he couldn’t blame any of that on the trip or his rocky state of mind. Behind his closed lips, he ran his tongue over his still-present fangs.
“A shower sounds great,” he told Reichen.
Preferably an ice-cold one.
If Dylan was confused before she and her abductor left Prague, their arrival in what she could only assume was somewhere in or around Berlin made things all the muddier to her. When she woke up in the middle of a large, silk-covered bed in a darkened room that looked like an upscale European bed-and-breakfast suite, she wondered if she’d dreamt the whole thing.
Where the hell was she? And how long had she been here?
Even though she felt fully awake and alert, there was a kind of cloudiness to her senses, like her head had been wrapped in thick cotton.
Maybe she was still dreaming.
Maybe she was still somehow in Prague and none of what she recalled had actually happened at all. Dylan turned on a nightstand lamp, then got off the bed and walked over to the tall windows on the other side of the luxurious room. Behind the beautiful drapes and curtain sheers, a tightly fitted panel shade covered the glass. She looked for a pull-cord or some other means to open it, but she couldn’t find anything. The blind was completely immobile, as though it was locked in place over the glass.
“The shade is electronic. You won’t be able to open it from in here.”
Startled, Dylan spun around at the sound of the deep, but now familiar male voice.
It was him, sitting in a delicate antique chair in the opposite corner of the room. She knew the unmistakable dark, accented voice, but the man staring at her from the shadows didn’t look anything like the filthy, ragged lunatic she expected to see.
He was clean now, and wearing fresh clothes—a black button-down dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, black trousers, and black loafers that were probably Italian and probably very expensive. His dark hair gleamed from a fresh washing, no longer the dingy hanks that hung limply into his face but swept back now in glossy espresso-brown waves that set off the unusual color of his intense, topaz eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked him, taking a few steps closer to where he sat. “What is this place? How long have you been sitting there watching me? What the hell did you do to me that I can hardly remember coming here?”
He smiled, but it couldn’t be called friendly. “Barely awake and already starting in with the questions. You were a lot easier to take when you were sleeping.”
Dylan wasn’t sure why she should feel insulted by that. “Then why don’t you let me go if I annoy you so much?”
The smile quirked a little, softening the grim line of his mouth. Good God, if not for the scars that ran from temple to jaw on the left side of his face, he would have been drop-dead gorgeous. No doubt he had been, before whatever accident had happened to him.
“I would like nothing better than to let you go,” he said. “Unfortunately, the decision of what to do with you is not mine to make alone.”
“Then whose is it? The man you were talking to in the hallway before?”
She’d only been half-conscious, but she’d been awake enough to hear the exchange of two male voices as she was placed in the room—one of them belonging to the man glaring at her now, the other clearly German based on the accent. She glanced around at the wealth of antique furniture and fine art, at the ten-foot ceilings and ornate crown moldings, all of which practically screamed multimillion-dollar estate. And then there were those light-blocking, Pentagon-grade window shades.
“What is this place—headquarters to some kind of government spy ring?” Dylan laughed, a bit nervously.
“You’re not going to tell me you’re part of a well-funded foreign terrorist cell, are you?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “No.”
“No, you won’t tell me, or no, you aren’t a terrorist?”
“The less you know, the better, Dylan Alexander.” The corner of his mouth lifted as he said it, then he shook his head. “Dylan. What kind of name is that for a female?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. “Don’t blame me, I had nothing to do with it. I happen to come from a long line of hippies, groupies, and tree-huggers.” He just looked at her, those dark brows lowering over his eyes. He didn’t get it, apparently. The reference seemed to go right past him, like he had never bothered with pop culture and probably had better things to do with his time. “My mom named me Dylan—you know, as in Bob Dylan? She was really into him around the time I was born. My brothers were named after musicians too: Morrison and Lennon.”
“Ridiculous,” her captor replied, scoffing under his breath.
“Well, it could be worse. We’re talking the mid-seventies, after all. I had just as good a chance of being named Clapton or Garfunkel.”
He didn’t laugh, just held her in his piercing topaz gaze. “A name is no insignificant thing. It frames your world as a child, and it lasts forever. A name should mean something.”
Dylan shot him a sardonic look. “This coming from a guy named Rio? Yeah, I heard your German friend call you that,” she added when he pinned her with a narrowed gaze. “It doesn’t seem that much better than Dylan, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you. And that’s not my name. Only a small portion of it.”
“What’s the rest of it?” she asked, genuinely curious, and not just because it seemed like a good idea to gather whatever information she could about this man who was holding her captive.
She looked at him—at his scarred, yet ruggedly attractive face, the powerful body contained within his expensive new clothes, and she wanted to know more. She wanted to know his name and all the rest of his secrets, which she was certain had to be plentiful. He was a mystery she wanted to solve, and she had to admit that interest had very little to do with the cave, her story, or even her own sense of self-preservation.
“I’ve gone through your computer files and e-mail,” he told her, ignoring her question like she fully expected him to do. “I know you’ve sent the cave photos to several individuals, including your employer.” He calmly rattled off the full names of her boss, Janet, Marie, Nancy, and her mom. “I’m sure we could find them with little effort, but this will go much faster if you give me their current addresses and places of employment.”
“Forget it.” Dylan bristled at the idea of her privacy being so casually invaded. Inappropriately intrigued by him or not, she was not about to unleash this man or his shady cohorts on anyone she knew. “If you have a problem with me, fine. But don’t think I’m going to drag anyone else into this.”
His face was grimly set, unflinching. “You already have.”
Dylan’s heart sank at the flat statement that seemed so calm, yet so ripe with threat. When she said nothing else, he got up out of the dainty chair. God, he was huge, every inch of him swathed in lean, powerful muscle.
“Now that you’re awake,” he said, “I’ll see that you have something to eat.”
“And give you the opportunity to drug my food? No thanks, I’d rather fast.”
He exhaled a low chuckle. “I’ll bring you some food. Whether or not you choose to eat it will be up to you.”
Dylan hated that her stomach seemed to churn eagerly at the thought of eating. She didn’t want to accept anything from this man or his associates, even if it meant starving to death in the process. But she was beyond hungry and she knew that even if he brought her a bowl of lumpy, ice-cold gruel she’d gratefully gobble it down.
“Don’t get any ideas about leaving this room,” he added. “The door will be locked from outside, and I’ll know the instant you try anything. I think you know that you wouldn’t get far before I caught you.”
She did know that, in a place inside her that was all raw, animal instinct. This man, whoever he was, now held her completely at his mercy. Dylan didn’t like it, but she was smart enough to know that whatever she was dealing with here was deadly serious. Like the woman in her, the journalist couldn’t deny a certain fascination too, a need to know more—not only about what was truly going on, but also about the man himself.
About Rio.
“What, um…what happened to you…to your face?”
He threw a scowl at her, one that said of all her many questions, this one angered him the most. She didn’t miss the way he turned his head slightly to the left, an almost unconscious move that helped to hide the worst of the damage. But Dylan had already seen the burn scars and pebbled skin. From the look of them, she guessed that they had to be combat wounds. Very grave, frontline combat wounds.
“I’m sorry,” she said, although whether she meant she was sorry for asking or sorry for what he went through, she wasn’t totally certain.
He reached up with his left hand and raked it through the thick hair at his temple, like he didn’t care if she stared now. But it was too late for him to call back his initial self-conscious reflex, and no matter how darkly he glared at her, Dylan knew he was bothered by his condition.
And as he moved, she caught a glimpse of an intricate pattern of tattoos on his forearm. They peeked out on both arms from under the rolled sleeves of his shirt, quasi–tribal markings done in a unique, variegated color blend of pale scarlet and gold. On first glance, she thought maybe they were some kind of membership markings, like the kinds American gangs used to show their allegiance.
No, not like that, she decided the longer she stared at them. Not like that at all.
The markings on Rio’s arms were very much like the symbols and strange writings that were on the walls and crypt inside that cave.
He brought his hand down and the flash of warning in his eye all but dared her to question him about them.
“Tell me what they mean,” she said, looking up to meet his hard gaze. “The tattoos. Why do you have the same kind of symbols on your body that were in that mountain cave?”
He didn’t answer. In silence, he stood there unmoving, looking even more dangerous in his civilized, tailored clothing than he had in the tattered rags he’d been wearing before. She knew he was immense, tall and broad and covered in lean, hard muscle, but he looked even more so as she approached him, determined to have this answer.
“What do the markings mean, Rio?” She took hold of his arm. “Tell me.”
He stared down at her fingers wrapped around him. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Like hell it doesn’t!” she replied, her voice rising. “Why would you have the same kind of markings on your body that are in that cave—on that crypt?”
“You are mistaken. You don’t know what you saw. Then or now.”
It wasn’t an argument so much as a complete refusal to take the conversation any further. And that really pissed Dylan off.
“I’m mistaken, am I?” She grabbed her long, loose hair and lifted it around to one side of her neck. “Look at this and tell me I don’t know what I saw.”
She bent her head, putting the exposed base of her neck—the patch of skin that bore her unusual birthmark—in plain view to him.
The silence seemed endless.
Then, finally, a hissed curse.
“What does it mean?” she asked him, lifting her head and letting her hair fall back in place.
Rio didn’t answer her. He backed up as if he didn’t want to be near her for another second.
“Tell me, Rio. Please…what does all of this mean?”
He was quiet for a long moment, his dark brows low over his eyes as he stared at her.
“You will know soon enough,” he said softly as he went to the door and stepped outside.
He closed her in, then turned the lock, leaving her in there alone and confused, and very certain that the path her life had been taking had just irrevocably changed course.
CHAPTER
Nine
A Breedmate.
Madre de Dios, but he hadn’t been expecting that. The small crimson birthmark on the nape of Dylan Alexander’s slender neck changed everything. The teardrop-and-crescent-moon skin marking she bore wasn’t something that occurred very often in nature, and its meaning was indisputable.
Dylan Alexander was a Breedmate.
She was a human female, but with the specific, extremely unusual blood properties and DNA that made her cellular physiology compatible with that of the Breed. Females like her were rare, and once women like Dylan were known to Rio’s kind, they were cherished and protected as closely as blood kin.
They had to be. Without Breedmates to carry the seed of future vampire generations, Rio’s kind would cease to exist. It was the curse of the Breed that all offspring of its hybrid race were born male—a genetic anomaly that occurred when the cells of the vampiric otherworlders mixed with those of the special human females that bore their young.
Women like Dylan Alexander were to be revered, not stalked like common prey and abducted off the street in fear for their lives. They were to be treated with great respect, not locked up like prisoners and held against their will, no matter how elegant the cage.
“Cristo en cielo,” Rio muttered aloud as he stormed down the Darkhaven estate’s gleaming mahogany staircase to the foyer below. “Un qué desastre.”
Yes, this truly was a disaster. He himself was a disaster—one that worsened by the moment. His skin was tight with hunger, and he didn’t have to check the dermaglyphs on his forearms to know that they were probably no longer their normal pale henna hue, but reddish-gold, reflecting his mounting need to feed. A nagging throb was kicking up in his temples, portent of the blackout he’d be dealing with if he didn’t lie down soon or get some nourishment to stave it off.
But sleep was out of the question and so was hunting for a blood Host. He needed to check in with the Order and fill them in on the added complication to a situation that had been fucked-up royal to begin with, all thanks to him.
He took the stairs a couple at a time, wishing like hell he could just continue walking right out the front door of the Darkhaven and into broad, deadly daylight. But he’d made this mess, and he’d be damned if he was going to leave it for anyone else to clean up.
As he hit the marble of the foyer below, Andreas Reichen was just opening the double doors from within one of the many rooms situated on the first floor. He wasn’t alone. An anxious-looking Darkhaven male with a mop of strawberry blond hair was with him, both of the vampires coming out of the dark-paneled study in the midst of a hushed conversation. Reichen looked up at once and met Rio’s eyes. He murmured something reassuring to his civilian companion as he clapped him gently on the shoulder. The younger male nodded, then politely got the hell out of the area with only the most furtive glance at the scarred warrior standing nearby.
“My nephew, bringing me some unpleasant news from one of the region’s other Darkhavens,” Reichen explained once they were alone in the foyer. “It seems there was an incident a couple of nights ago. A rather high-profile individual was found missing his head. Unfortunately for him and his family, the killing occurred at a blood club.”
Rio grunted, thoroughly unmoved. Blood clubs had been outlawed as barbaric underground sport decades ago, and most of the vampire population agreed with the ruling. But there were some within the race who still got off on the secret, invitation-only gatherings where human victims could be chased down in a contained area, raped, fed upon, and murdered like wild game. Helpless wild game, since not even the strongest Homo sapiens, male or female, was any match for a pack of bloodthirsty vampires.
The blood club killing was obviously a Breed-on-Breed altercation.
“Did they get the vampire who did it?”
“No. They’re still investigating the murder.” Reichen cleared his throat and went on. “Since the deceased was an elder—Gen One, in fact—and a member of the Enforcement Agency, there is understandable concern that the whole thing is set to explode into scandal. It’s a very sensitive situation.”
Rio gave a wry snort. “No doubt.”
Well, at least he wasn’t the only one among the Breed with piss-poor judgment lately. Even the fully sane, cultured members of the vampire nation had their bad days. Not that it made Rio regret his own fleet of mistakes any less.
“I need to touch base with Boston,” he told Reichen, running his palm over his brow to wipe away the sheen of cold sweat that was beginning to gather there. A wave of nausea tried to rise up on him but he held it back with sheer willpower. Damn. He had to hold his shit together at least until sundown, when he could run out for a while and feed.
If the coming blackout didn’t drop him before he got the chance.
“Is anything wrong?” Reichen asked him, concern furrowing his brow.
“I’m fine,” Rio muttered.
The other vampire didn’t look the least bit convinced, even if he was too well-bred to say so. His dark gaze flicked down to Rio’s arms, where beneath the rolled-back sleeves of his shirt, his glyphs were infusing with deeper, more intense color. He could claim from here to Sunday that he was right as rain, but those skin markings would give him away every time. The damn things were emotional barometers that visually broadcasted a Breed vampire’s state of mind—from hunger to satiation, rage to joy, lust, contentment, and everything in between.
At the moment, Rio’s dermaglyphs had saturated in hues of deep red, purple, and black—plain evidence that he was hurting and hungry.
“I need a phone with a secure line,” he told Reichen.
“Now. If you could, please.”
“Of course. Come, you may use my office.”
Reichen gestured for Rio to follow him back into the room where he’d been meeting with his nephew. The study was large and richly appointed, full of Old World elegance like the rest of the Darkhaven estate. Reichen went around a claw-footed monstrosity of a desk and opened a small hidden panel built into the polished mahogany surface.
He pushed a button on an electronic keypad, which made two of the tall bookcases across the room begin to separate, revealing a large, flat panel screen mounted behind them.
“Video teleconferencing, available if you wish,” he said, as Rio came farther into the room. “Dial an eight to reach our operator for a secure outside line. And take as long as you like in here. You’ll have complete privacy.”
Rio nodded his thanks.
“Do you need anything else right now?” his generous host asked. “Or anything for our, ah, guest upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Rio said. “Actually, I told her I’d bring her something to eat.”
Reichen smiled. “Then I’ll go have something special prepared for her.”
“Thank you,” Rio said. Then, “Hey, Reichen. There’s something you probably should know. That female up there…she’s a Breedmate. I didn’t realize it until just a few minutes ago, but she’s got the mark. It’s on the back of her neck.”
“Ah.” The German vampire considered that for a moment. “And does she know what that makes her? What that makes the rest of us?”
“No. Not yet.” Rio picked up the cordless phone on Reichen’s desk and hit the number eight on the keypad. Then he started dialing the private line that would route him to the Order’s compound. “She doesn’t know anything about any of that. But I have a feeling I’m going to be spelling it all out for her real soon.”
“Then perhaps I’d better have a cocktail prepared for the lady as well. A strong one.” Reichen strode to the open double doors of the study. “I will let you know when her meal is ready. If there is anything you need, just ask and it is yours.”
“Thanks.”
When the heavy wood doors clicked shut, Rio turned his full attention to the ringing phone line on the other end of his call. The compound’s computerized answering intercepted and he punched in the code for the tech lab.
Gideon picked up without hesitation. “Talk to me, buddy.”
“I’m at Reichen’s,” Rio said, unnecessary information since the compound’s system had certainly already confirmed the incoming phone number. But Rio’s head was pounding too hard for him to do a lot of extraneous processing. He needed to convey his relevant intel while he was still making sense. “The trip was uneventful, and I’m here with the woman at Reichen’s Darkhaven.”
“You got her contained somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Rio replied. “She’s cooling her heels in a guest room upstairs.”
“Good. Nice work, man.”
The unwarranted praise made him clamp his teeth together hard. And the combination of his churning hunger and the spin of his head made him suck in a ragged breath of air. He let it back out on a low curse.
“You all right, Rio?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, my ass,” Gideon said. Not only was the vampire a genius when it came to technology, but he also had the uncanny ability to smell a load of horseshit when it was being shoveled at him. Even when it was being shoveled at him from another continent away. “What’s going on with you? You don’t sound good at all, amigo.”
Rio rubbed his drumming temple. “Don’t worry about me. We’ve got a bigger problem over here. Turns out the female reporter is a Breedmate, Gideon.”
“Ah, fuck. Are you serious?”
“I saw her birthmark with my own eyes,” Rio replied.
Gideon murmured something urgent yet indiscernible to someone else apparently in the lab with him. The answering deep growl of a cool Gen One voice could belong to none other than Lucan, the Order’s founder and leader.
Great, Rio thought. Although it wasn’t as if he was planning to keep the news from the highest-ranking warrior of the group, so he might as well clue him in on all the facts now.
“Lucan’s here,” Gideon informed him, in case he missed that fact. “You alone over there, Rio?”
“Yep. Sitting all by my lonesome in Reichen’s study.”
“All right. Hang on. I’m gonna put you on video telecom.”
Rio’s mouth twisted grimly. “I thought you might.”
He glanced up as the large flat-panel blinked on across from him. Like a window opened on a next-door room, the screen filled with a real-time image of Gideon and Lucan seated in the Boston compound’s tech lab. Gideon’s eyes were intense as he gazed over the rims of his pale blue shades, his cropped blond hair a spiky, mad-scientist mess, as usual.
Under Lucan’s furrowed black brows, his gaze was also serious, his light gray eyes narrowed as he leaned back in one of the big leather chairs that circled the Order’s conference table.
“The female is safe here at the Darkhaven, and she has not been harmed in any way,” Rio began without preamble. “Her name is Dylan Alexander, and from what I’ve gathered off her computer files she lives and works in New York City. I’m guessing she is in her late twenties, but there’s a chance she could be near thirty—”
“Rio.” Lucan leaned forward, peering intently at the video screen where Rio’s image was being projected back home. “We’ll get to her in a minute. What’s going on with you, man? You’ve been out of contact since February, and no offense, but you look like hell.”
Rio shook his head, raked a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “I’m good. Just want to take care of this problem and be done with it, you know?”
He wasn’t sure if he was talking about Dylan Alexander and her photos, or the other, longer-term problems he’d been dealing with since the warehouse explosion that might have killed him. Should have killed him, damn it.
“Everything’s cool with me, Lucan.”
The vampire’s expression held steady, measuring on the other end of the video feed. “I don’t appreciate being lied to, my friend. I need to know if the Order can still count on you. Are you still with us?”
“The Order is all I have, Lucan. You know that.”
It was the truth, and it seemed to satisfy the shrewd Gen One. For now.
“So, the reporter you’re holding over there is a Breedmate.” Lucan sighed, rubbing his palm over his strong square jaw. “You’re going to have to bring her in, Rio. To Boston. You need to explain a few things to her beforehand, about the Breed and about her link to us, and then you need to bring her in. Gideon will handle the transportation.”
The other warrior was already typing away furiously at his keyboard, making it happen. “I can have our private jet waiting to pick you up at Tegel Airport tomorrow night.”
Rio acknowledged the plans with a firm nod, but there were still a few loose ends to consider. “She was booked on a flight out of Prague to New York today. She has family and friends who’ll be expecting her home.”
“You’ve got access to her e-mail,” Gideon put in.
“Send a group message using her account, explaining that she’s been delayed for a few days and will be in contact as soon as possible.”
“What about the pictures she took of the cave?” Rio asked.
Lucan answered that one. “Gideon tells me you have the camera and her computer. She needs to understand that everyone who has copies of those pictures is a risk to us—one we can’t afford to let slide. So, she’ll have to help us by killing her story and destroying every copy of every photograph she’s let loose.”
“And if she won’t cooperate?” Rio could already imagine how well this conversation was going to go with her. “What do we do then?”
“We track down those individuals she’s been in contact with, and we obtain the images by whatever means necessary.”
“Mind-scrub them all?” Rio asked.
The set of Lucan’s mouth was grave. “Whatever it takes.”
“And the woman?” Rio wanted to be clear. “As a Breedmate, we can’t just scrub her arbitrarily. She would be given some choice in this, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes,” Lucan said. “She does have a choice. Once she knows about the existence of the Breed and the mark she bears that links her to us, she can decide whether she wants to be a part of our world, or return to her own and give up all knowledge of our kind. That’s the way it has always been done. It’s the only way.”
Rio nodded. “I’ll take care of it, Lucan.”
“I know you will,” he said, no challenge or doubt in the statement, just pure trust. “And, Rio?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed those livid glyphs on you, my man.” Narrowed silver eyes fixed on him over the distance. “Make sure you feed. Tonight.”
CHAPTER
Ten
Dylan sat near the head of the four-poster bed, staring intently at the illuminated digital display on her cell phone.
Looking for service…Looking for service…
“Come on,” she whispered softly under her breath as the message repeated in agonizing slow motion. “Come on, work, damn it!”
Looking for service…
No signal available.
“Shit.”
She’d lied to her abductor about having a cell phone. Her razor-thin mobile had been stashed in one of the side pockets of her cargo pants all this time, not that having it was doing her much good right now.
Her expensive international service was sketchy at best. Dylan had tried dialing out for help several times in the past hour, with the same frustrating result. All she was doing by refusing to give up was wasting precious battery time. She’d lost the cell phone charger and the power converter doohickey a few days into the trip; now she only had two bars of juice left, and this current ordeal seemed far from over.
As if to punctuate that fact, the lock on the door snicked free and someone twisted the crystal knob from outside.
Dylan hurriedly powered the device down and stuffed it under the pillow behind her. She was just bringing her hand out as her posh prison door swung open.
Rio strode in carrying a wooden tray of food. The aromas of fresh sourdough bread, garlic, and roasted meat drifted in ahead of him. Dylan’s mouth watered as she caught a glimpse of a thick, grilled sandwich heaping with sliced chicken, marinated red peppers and onion, cheese, and crisp green lettuce.
Oh, God, did it look wonderful.
“Here’s your lunch, as promised.”
She forced a careless shrug. “I told you, I’m not going to eat anything you give me.”
“Suit yourself.”
He set the tray down on the bed next to her. Dylan tried not to look at the scrumptious sandwich or the cup of ripe strawberries and peaches that accompanied it. There was also a bottle of mineral water on the tray and a short cocktail glass with a generous two-and-a-half-finger pour of pale amber liquid that smelled sweet and smoky, like very pricey Scottish whisky. The kind her father used to pickle himself in nightly, despite that they couldn’t afford his habit.
“Is the liquor to help me wash down the sedatives you put in the food, or did you put the mickey in the drink?”
“I have no intention of drugging you, Dylan.” He sounded so sincere, she almost believed him. “The drink is there to relax you, if you need it. I’m not going to force anything on you.”
“Huh,” she said, noticing a subtle change in his demeanor from before. He was still immense and dangerous-looking, but when he stared at her now, there was a sober, almost pained resignation about him. Like he had some unpleasant business that he needed to get out of the way.
“If you’re not here to force anything on me, then why do you look like you’re delivering me my last meal?”
“I came to talk to you, that’s all. There are some things I need to explain to you. Things you need to know.”
Well, it was about time she got some answers. “Okay. You can start by telling me when you’re going to let me out of here.”
“Soon,” he said. “Tomorrow night we’ll be leaving for the States.”
“You’re taking me back to America?” She knew she sounded too hopeful, especially when he was still including himself in the scenario. “Are you going to release me tomorrow? Are you letting me go home?”
He walked slowly around the foot of the bed, over to the wall with the shaded window. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, his tattooed, muscular arms crossed over his chest. For a long minute, he didn’t say anything. Just stood there until Dylan wanted to scream.
“You know, I was supposed to meet someone in Prague this morning—someone who knows my boss and has probably already called him to ask about me. I’m booked on a flight back to New York this afternoon. There are people expecting me back home. You can’t just pluck me off the street and think no one is going to notice I’m gone—”
“No one is expecting you now.”
Dylan’s heart started to thud heavily in her chest, as if her body was aware something big was coming even before her brain was fully on board with it. “What…what did you just say?”
“Your family, friends, and your place of work have all been informed that you are safe and sound, but expect to be out of contact for a while.” At her certain look of confusion, he said, “They all received an e-mail from you a few minutes ago, letting them know that you were taking some extra time off to see more of Europe on your own.”
Anger flared in her now, even stronger than the wariness she knew just a second before. “You contacted my boss? My mother?” The job was of little concern to her at the moment, but it was the thought of this man getting anywhere near her mom that really set Dylan off. She swung her legs off the bed and stood up, practically shaking with rage. “You bastard! You manipulative son of a bitch!”
He drew back, out of her path as she charged at him. “It was necessary, Dylan. As you said, there would have been questions. People would have been worrying about you.”
“You stay the fuck away from my family—do you hear me? I don’t care what you do to me, but you leave my family out of this!”
He remained calm, considerate. Maddeningly so. “Your family is safe, Dylan. And so are you. Tomorrow night, I will be taking you back to the States, to a secret location that belongs to those of my kind. I think once you’re there, a lot of what you’re going to hear now will be easier for you to understand.”
Dylan stared at him, her mind stumbling over his odd choice of words: those of my kind.
“What the hell is going on here? I’m serious…I need to know.” Ah, hell. Her voice was quaking like she was about to lose it in front of him—this stranger who had stolen her freedom and violated her privacy. She would be damned before she showed any weakness to him, no matter what she was about to hear. “Please. Tell me. Give me the truth.”
“About yourself?” he asked, his deep, accented voice rolling through the syllables. “Or about the world you were born to be a part of?”
Dylan couldn’t find words to speak. Instinct made her hand move up to the back of her neck, where her nape seemed to tingle with heat.
Rio nodded soberly. “It’s a rare birthmark. Maybe one in half a million human females are born with it, probably less. Women bearing the mark—women like you, Dylan—are very special. It means that you are a Breedmate. Women like you have certain…gifts. Abilities that separate you from other people.”
“What kind of gifts and abilities?” she asked, not even sure she wanted to have this conversation.
“Extrasensory skills, primarily. Everyone is different, with different levels of capabilities. Some can see the future or the past. Some can hold an object and read its history. Others can summon storms or command the will of living things around them. Some heal with a simple touch. Some can kill with just a thought.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Nobody has those kinds of abilities outside of tabloid magazines and science fiction.”
He grunted, his mouth lifting at the corner. He was studying her too closely, trying to peel her apart with that penetrating topaz gaze. “I’m certain that you have a special skill too. What is yours, Dylan Alexander?”
“You can’t be serious.” She shook her head and gave a dismissive roll of her eyes.
But all the while she was thinking about the one thing that had always made her different. Her unreliable, inexplicable link to the dead. It wasn’t the same thing as what he was describing, though. It was something else completely.
Wasn’t it…?
“You don’t have to confide in me,” he said. “Just know that there is a reason you are not like other women. Maybe you feel that you don’t fit in with the world at large. Many women like you are more sensitive than the rest of the human population. You see things differently, feel things differently. There is a reason for all of that, Dylan.”
How could he know? How could he understand so much about her? Dylan didn’t want to believe anything he was saying. She didn’t want to believe that she was part of anything he was describing, yet he seemed to understand her more intimately than anyone ever had.
“Breedmates are uniquely gifted,” Rio said when she could only look at him in incredulous silence. “But the most extraordinary gift possessed by each is the ability to create life with those of my kind.”
Jesus. There it was again—the deliberate reference to his kind. And now he was talking about sex and breeding?
Dylan stared at him, reminded swiftly and vividly of just how easily he’d been able to pin her beneath his powerful, fully aroused body in that hotel in Prague. It didn’t take much to recall the heat of all that muscle pressed against her, though why the thought should make her heart beat faster, breath come harder, she really didn’t want to know.
Was he setting her up here for a repeat performance? Or did he actually think she was gullible enough to be seduced into believing any of this stuff about being different, about belonging to some mysterious other world she knew nothing about until now?
And why should she believe it? Because of that tiny birthmark on the back of her neck?
One that still felt kind of warm and electric against her palm. She brought her hand down and tucked her arms around herself.
Rio tracked her movements with his keen, too-sharp gaze. “I think you’ve noticed that I’m not quite like other men either. There is a reason for that as well.”
A heavy silence filled the room as he seemed to take his time measuring his words.
“It’s because I’m not just a man. I’m something more than that.”
Dylan had to admit he was more man than any other she’d known before. His size and power alone seemed to put him in a separate class. But he was all male, that she knew by the way he looked at her, his eyes hot as they traveled over her face and down her body.
He stared at her, unblinking, heatedly intense. “I am one of the Breed, Dylan. In your lexicon, for lack of a better term, I am a vampire.”
For one stunned second, she thought she had misunderstood him. Then, all the unease and tension that she had been feeling since Rio had walked into the room vanished in a great rush of relief.
“Oh, my God!” She couldn’t hold back her laughter. It barked out of her almost hysterically, a flood of disbelief and amusement washing away all her anxiety in an instant. “A vampire. Really? Because, you know, that makes so much more sense than everything I was guessing you might be. Not military, not a government spy, or a terrorist operative, but a vampire!”
He wasn’t laughing.
No, he simply stood there, unmoving. Watching her. Waiting until she looked up and met his unsmiling eyes.
“Oh, come on,” she chided him. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”
“I realize it must be difficult to grasp. But it’s the truth. That’s what you asked for, Dylan. What you’ve been asking for since the moment you and I first saw each other—the truth. Now you have it.”
Good Lord, he seemed so serious about all of this. “What about the other people living here? And don’t try to tell me that there’s no one else in this huge estate because I’ve heard them walking the hallways, and I’ve heard muffled conversations. So, what about them? Are they vampires too?”
“Some,” he said quietly. “The males are Breed. The females living here in this Darkhaven are human. Breedmates…like you.”
Dylan recoiled internally. “Stop saying that. Stop trying to pretend that I’m a passenger on this crazy train with you. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough.” He cocked his head at her, a move that seemed almost animalistic. Unconsciously so. “The mark on you is all I need to know about you, Dylan. You are a part of this now, an inextricable part. Whether or not either of us like that fact.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” she blurted out, getting anxious again. “I want you to let me out of this room. I want to go back to my home, back to my family and my job. I want to forget all about that fucking cave and you.”
He gave a slow shake of his dark head. “It’s too late for that. There’s no going back, Dylan. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” she hissed. “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re insane! You’re sick in your goddamn head—”
With a smooth flex of muscle, he came out of his lean near the wall and within one instant he was standing in front of her. Not even a bare inch separated them. He reached out as if he was going to touch her cheek, his fingers hovering so near, yet resisting.
Dylan’s heart slammed in her chest but she didn’t move away. She couldn’t—not when he was holding her in that smoldering, almost hypnotic, topaz gaze.
Was she breathing? God help her, she wasn’t sure. She waited to feel his touch light on her skin, astonished to realize just how badly she wanted it. But on a slow growl, he let his hand fall back down to his side.
He bent his head close to her ear. His deep voice was a whisper of heat across her throat. “Eat your meal, Dylan. It would be a shame to waste good food when you know you need the nourishment.”
Well, that went down about as smoothly as a glass of razor blades.
Rio locked her door, then stormed into his adjacent guest room, hands clenched at his sides. There had been a time when he would have carried out a task like this with charm and diplomacy. Hard to imagine himself in that role now. He’d been blunt and ineffective, and he couldn’t blame all of that on his lingering head trauma or the hunger that was gnawing at him like wolves on carrion.
He didn’t know how to handle Dylan Alexander.
He didn’t know what to make of her, or what to make of his own unwilling reaction to her.
Since Eva, there hadn’t been another woman to pique his interest beyond the most basic physical need. Once he’d been strong enough to leave the compound—long weeks into his recovery—Rio had satisfied his carnal itch the same way he slaked his hunger for blood. With cold, impersonal efficiency. It seemed so strange to him, a male who had unrepentantly enjoyed life’s many pleasures as a vital part of living itself.
But he hadn’t always been that way. It had taken him many years to rise above the dark origins of his birth and do something meaningful, to make something good of his life. He thought he had. Hell, he’d really thought he’d had it all. It vanished in an instant—one blinding, white-hot instant a summer ago, when Eva sold the Order out to their enemy.
Rio had long thought his Breedmate’s betrayal had ruined him for anyone else, and a part of him had been glad to be rid of emotional entanglements and the complications that came with them.
But now there was Dylan.
And she was in that next room thinking he was a lunatic. Not that far off the mark, he admitted grimly. What would she think once she realized that what he’d told her just now was the truth?
It didn’t matter.
Before long, she would know everything. A decision would be placed before her, and she would have to choose her path: a life in the sheltering arms of the Darkhavens, or a return to her old life, back among humankind.
He didn’t plan on sticking around to find out which door she picked. He had his own path to walk, and this was merely a frustrating detour.
A rap on the closed door of his guest suite snapped Rio out of his grim thoughts.
“Yeah,” he barked, still glaring with self-directed anger as the panel swung wide and Reichen entered.
“Everything go all right?” the Darkhaven male asked.
“Just fucking great,” Rio growled, as sharp as a blade.
“What’s up?”
“I’m going into the city tonight and I thought you might like to join me.” He glanced meaningfully at Rio’s dermaglyphs, which were flushed with deep color. “The place is decadent, but very discreet. As are the women who work there. Give any of Helene’s angels an hour of your time, and I guarantee you they’ll make you forget all your troubles.”
Rio grunted. “Where do I sign up?”
CHAPTER
Eleven
The Berlin brothel that Reichen brought him to that evening was everything Rio had been told to expect—and then some. Prostitution had been legalized here a few years ago, and as far as beautiful, ready, willing, and able women went, the sex club Aphrodite was clearly home to the cream of the crop.
Three of the club’s finest examples, wearing nothing but minuscule G-strings, danced together in a slow grind in front of the private table where Rio and his Darkhaven host were seated with the club’s stunning female owner, Helene. With her long dark hair, flawless face, and sinuous curves, Helene herself would fit right in with the flock of gorgeous young females in her employ. But beneath her blatant sex appeal, it was obvious that the woman had a shrewd business mind and enjoyed being the one calling the shots.
Reichen certainly seemed content to let Helene have her head with him. Situated beside her on the crescent-shaped velvet seat across from the one Rio occupied by himself, Reichen lounged against the tufted squabs with one foot propped on the squat round cocktail table in front of him, his thighs spread wide in order to give Helene’s roaming hands free access to whatever they might find intriguing.
At the moment, she seemed focused on teasing him, sliding her scarlet-polished nails up and down the inner seam of his tailored pants while she conducted a hushed, don’t-bullshit-me conversation in German on her cell phone.
Reichen met Rio’s gaze from across the short distance and nodded in the direction of the three females gyrating and stroking one another just an arm’s length away.
“Help yourself, my friend—to one or all of them. Your choice. They’re here for your personal amusement, compliments of Helene when I told her I’d be bringing you by tonight.”
Helene sent a catlike smile at Rio as she continued to conduct her club business like the tigress she no doubt was. As she spoke curt instructions into her cell, Reichen smoothed her dark hair off her shoulder and traced his fingertips tenderly along the side of her neck.
They were an odd pairing, even as frequent but casual lovers, which Reichen insisted them to be.
Breed males seldom took a prolonged interest in mortal human women, even in a mainly sexual way. The risk of exposing the Breed’s existence to humankind was generally seen as too great for a vampire to dare any kind of relationship for the long term. And there was always the danger that a human might fall into Rogue hands, or worse, be turned Minion by one of the more powerful, but corrupt, members of the Breed.
Helene was not a Breedmate, but she was a trusted ally of Reichen’s. She knew what he was—what Rio and the rest of the Breed were too—and she held that secret as closely as she would one of her own. She’d proven trustworthy and loyal to Reichen, something Rio hadn’t even been able to claim about the Breedmate female he’d bonded to all those years ago.
He tore his gaze away from the couple and stared out at the club’s surroundings. Walls of smoked glass enclosed the low-lighted private room they were in, affording a 360-degree view of the action taking place on Aphrodite’s main floor just outside. Sex acts in every variation, and in every combination of partners, filled Rio’s line of vision. Closer still, were the three lovely females evidently on tap for his personal service.
“Beautiful, aren’t they? Touch them if it pleases you.”
Reichen curled his finger at them and the three prostitutes made a deliberately seductive approach to Rio’s side of the table. Bare breasts bobbed with artificial firmness as the girls ran their hands over themselves and one another, a show they’d probably performed a thousand times before. One of them sauntered closer and placed herself between his knees, her tan hips moving in time with the drone of bass and smoky vocals coming through the sound system in the background. Her two friends flanked her, caressing her body as she performed her little private dancer routine, the scrap of satin covering her sex hovering mere inches from Rio’s mouth.
He felt oddly detached from the whole event, willing to let it happen, yet uninterested in anything being offered to him at the moment. He’d be using them as much as they intended to use him.
Helene ended her phone call on the other side of the table. As she closed the slim device, Reichen stood up and offered her his hand. She slid off the velvet seat and under the sheltering curve of her vampire lover’s arm.
“They will provide everything you wish,” Reichen said.
When Rio glanced up at him in question, the other Breed male read his look without hesitation or error. His gaze slid to Rio’s livid glyphs, subtly acknowledging his rising state of blood hunger. “The glass in this room is one-way, completely private. Whatever your appetite demands, no one will know anything that occurs in here. Stay as long as you like. My driver will take you back to the mansion whenever you’re ready.” He smiled, flashing only the very tips of his emerging fangs. “I’ll be late.”
Rio watched the pair stroll over to the elevator situated in the center of the private space. They were already caught in a fiercely passionate kiss as the doors closed and the car began its ascent to Helene’s apartment and offices on the top floor of the building.
A pair of hands began unbuttoning Rio’s black shirt.
“Do you like my dance?” asked the female grinding between his legs.
He didn’t answer. They weren’t really interested in making conversation, but then, neither was he. Rio looked up into the trio of beautiful, painted faces. They smiled, and pouted, and arranged their glossy mouths in sensual poses meant to titillate…but not one pair of eyes would meet his for more than the most fleeting instant.
Of course, he thought, smirking at their polite avoidance. None of them wanted to look too closely at his scars.
They kept pawing at him, rubbing against him like they couldn’t wait to get busy with him…just like they were trained so well to do. They stroked him, cooing over how well-built he was, how strong and sexy they found him.
Carefully averting their gazes from his so they could continue pretending that what they saw didn’t repulse them.
He hadn’t been happy when Dylan confronted him about his scars. He wasn’t used to that kind of head-on honesty, or the true compassion he’d heard in her voice when she’d gently asked him how he’d been injured. Rio had been caught off guard, self-conscious under Dylan’s sincere interest, and it had made him want to crawl into the floor to get away from it.
But at least she hadn’t hit him with this kind of infuriating falsehood. These women, so professionally trained to charm and seduce, couldn’t mask their aversion.
They writhed and undulated in front of him, and as the minutes passed, the room began to swirl along with them. The club’s garish colors blended into a dizzying smear of red and gold and electric blue. The music swelled louder, crashing against Rio’s skull like a hammer dropping on fragile glass. He choked on the cloying odors of perfume, liquor, and sex.
The floor beneath him was spinning now. His temples were being crushed, madness rising like a black wave that would pull him under if he didn’t get a grip.
He closed his eyes to block out some of the sensory bombardment. The darkness lasted only a moment before an image began to form out of the ether of his cracked mind….
Amid the storm of pain and fear suddenly churning around him, he saw a face.
Dylan’s face.
Her creamy, peach-freckled skin seemed close enough for him to touch. Her golden-green eyes were half-closed, but fixed on him, beautiful and unafraid. As he gazed at her behind his dropped eyelids, she smiled and slowly bent her head to the side. Her fiery, silken hair slid loosely over her shoulder, as gently as a caress.
And then Rio saw the scarlet kiss of twin punctures below her ear.
Cristo, but the sight of her like this was so real. His gums ached, and the tips of his fangs pressed sharply against his tongue. Thirst rolled up on him hard. He could almost taste the juniper and honey sweetness of the blood that pearled from her wounds.
That was how he knew for certain this was merely illusion—because he would never know the taste of her.
Dylan Alexander was a Breedmate, and that meant drinking from her was out of the question. One sip of her blood would create a bond breakable only by death. Rio had been down that road before, and it had nearly killed him.
Never again.
Rio snarled as his lap dancer decided it was a good time to get cozier. When he snapped his eyes open, she murmured something dirty, then planted her hands on his thighs and spread them wide. Licking her lips, she sank down onto her knees before him. When she went for the zipper of his trousers, it wasn’t lust that turned his veins molten, but a spike of hot fury instead.
His head pounded, mouth felt as dry as sand.
Shit. He was going to lose it if he stayed any longer.
He had to get the fuck out of there.
“Get up,” he growled. “Get off me, all of you.”
They scrambled back like they’d just provoked a wild animal. One of them tried to be brave. “You want something different, baby? It’s okay. Tell us what you like.”
“Nothing you’ve got,” he said tightly, giving them a long, hard dose of the ruined left side of his face as he shot to his feet.
None too steady, he staggered out of the private room, out of the throbbing, musk-heavy club. He found the quiet back entrance where he and Reichen had come in, shoved past the bouncers who wisely moved out of his way when they saw him coming.
The street outside was dark. The summer night air was cool on his heated skin; he drank it in through his mouth, breathing deeply in an effort to calm his roiling head. Cursed when it didn’t do anything to soothe him.
His vision was sharper out here in the darkness, but it was more than just his basic nocturnal acuity giving everything a crisp edge. His pupils were narrowed from his anger and need, the amber glow of his transformed irises throwing faint light on the concrete under his feet. His steps were uneven, the limp he’d almost overcome now creeping into his gait.
His fangs filled his mouth. One look at the glyphs on his forearms and he knew he was in bad shape.
Damn it. He should have taken the vein of one of the females back there. He needed to feed hours ago, and now his shit was getting critical.
Head down, fists shoved deep into the pockets of his pants, Rio started walking at a fast, none-too-graceful clip. He thought about heading for one of the city’s parks, where the homeless and itinerant made easy prey for creatures of the night like him. But as he cut up a side street off the main drag, he saw a young punky woman puffing on a cigarette at the head of the alleyway. She was leaning back against the side of a brick building, picking at her fingernails as she blew out a cloud of noxious smoke.
If her black platform stilettos and tight miniskirt didn’t give her away, the gravity-defying tube top she wore over her large breasts certainly would. The low-rent version of what Rio had just left behind glanced up and caught him watching her.
“Ich bin nicht arbeiten,” she said, her voice a caustic snarl as she went back to massacring her nails. “Not at work right now.”
He walked toward her undeterred, a wraith moving out of the shadows.
She snorted, getting annoyed. “My work tonight is done, ja? No sex.”
“That’s not what I need from you.”
“Huh,” she scoffed. “Well, then, fuck off—”
Rio moved on her so fast, she didn’t even have time to scream. He crossed the several yards’ distance in a blink and flipped the woman around so that she was facing the bricks. Her dark hair was short, making easy access to her neck. Rio struck with viper speed, sinking his fangs deep into yielding flesh and drawing hard from her vein.
She struggled only at first, twitching through the initial shock. But then she loosened as his bite drew out and the pain gave way to pleasure. Rio drank quickly, gulping down what his body so desperately needed. He licked the wound he’d made, sealing the bite with his tongue. The mark would be all but gone in a few minutes, and as for her memory of what just transpired? Rio reached around her head and placed his palm over her eyes.
It took only a second to erase the last few minutes of her recollection, but it was time enough for a man to come around the corner of the building and see the two of them standing there.
“Hey! Was zur Hölle ist das?”
He was beefy and bald, and he didn’t seem happy at all. Wiping his hands on a stained bar apron, he barked something at the whore in German—a stern command she jumped to follow. Evidently not fast enough for Big Man. As she scrambled away, he lashed out and cuffed the side of her head with his fist. When she yelped and ran off around the corner of the building, Big Man started approaching Rio in the alleyway.
“Do yourself a favor and leave,” Rio growled in a voice that no longer sounded human. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Big Man shook his jowly head. “You want sex with Uta, you pay me.”
“Then come and try to collect your piece,” Rio said, low enough that anyone with half an ounce of sense would have taken it as the warning it truly was.
But not this guy. He reached behind him and withdrew a knife from somewhere at his back. It was a deadly mistake. Rio saw the threat, and he was still too far gone to let it slide. As the pimp came forward like he meant to cut some cash out of Rio’s hide, Rio sprang at him.
He took the human down onto the pavement, his hands wrapped around the thick neck. A frantic pulse hammered against his palm, beat after beat of warm blood rushing beneath the rough skin.
Distantly, Rio registered the drum of the human’s heart, but his mind was not fully his own. Not anymore. His blood hunger was temporarily appeased, but rage had him firmly in its grip. The squeeze on his mind, on his own will, was relentless, bringing on the darkness he feared the most.
Maldecido.
Monstruo.
He felt himself sliding into that oblivion…
The names he was called as a young boy rose up in his ears like a battering storm. He remembered the dark forest and the smell of spilled blood on rough earth. The cottage where his mother had been killed before his eyes…
As darkness descended over him, he was that wild foundling he’d been in Spain so long ago. A confused and frightened child with no home, no family, and no one like him to show him the way of what he truly was.
Comedor de la sangre.
With a roar, he bent over his quivering prey and bit into the fleshy throat. He was savage, not from hunger but from fury and an old anguish that made him feel like a monster. Like the accursed. A terrifying blood-eater.
Manos del diablo.
Those devil’s hands were no longer his own. The blackout was rising fast now, swamping him. Rio could no longer see the street in front of him. Logic and control shorted out like wires popping in his brain. He could hardly think. But he knew the instant the human’s heart went silent beneath his fingers.
He knew, as the darkness pulled him under, that he had killed tonight.
A loud thump in the adjacent room woke Dylan out of a fitful sleep. She sat up, completely awake now. More noises sounded next door, low groans and heavy-footed stumbling, like someone—or something—large was in a world of agony.
The connecting suite was Rio’s. He’d told her so earlier that evening, when he’d come back with a light dinner and her backpack of clothes, and told her to make herself comfortable for the night. He’d warned that he would be right on the other side of the wall, never more than a few seconds out of reach. Which hadn’t exactly added to her comfort level in any way.
In spite of his threat, Dylan had suspected he’d gone out at some point. The neighboring room had been quiet for several hours, until this four A.M. wake-up call.
So much for Rio’s claim that he was a deadly creature of the night. From the sloppy arrival going on over there, it sounded as if he was just another drunk, coming back from a hell of a bender in town.
Dylan sat there, arms crossed over her chest as she listened to him groan, knock into a heavy piece of furniture, curse ripely as his legs gave out beneath him.
How many nights did her father come home in similar condition? Jesus, far too many to count. He’d stumble in from the bar, so polluted it took her mom, Dylan, and both of her older brothers to haul him to bed before he fell and cracked open his skull. She’d developed a rigid lack of sympathy for men who let their weaknesses own them like that, but she had to admit that the noises Rio was making now seemed something other than your basic drunk-and-disorderly.
She climbed off the bed and moved quietly over to the connecting door. With her ear pressed to the cool wood, she could hear his breath rasping shallowly. She could almost imagine him lying on the floor where he crumbled, unable to move for whatever it was that he was dealing with over there.
“Hello?” she asked softly. “Um…Rio, is that you?”
Silence.
It dragged out, long and uneasy.
“Are you okay in there?”
She put her hand on the doorknob, but it didn’t give at all. Locked, just like it had been all night.
“Should I call for someone to help y—”
“Go back to bed, Dylan.”
The voice was low and snarly—Rio’s voice, yet somehow very different than she’d ever heard it before.
“Move away from the door,” came the strange growl of words again. “I don’t need help.”
Dylan frowned. “I don’t believe you. You don’t sound good at all.”
She tried the knob again. It was old hardware; maybe she could jiggle it open.
“Dylan. Get away from the goddamn door.”
“Why?”
“Because if you stay there one more second, I’m going to open it.”
He exhaled sharply, and when he spoke again his voice was raw gravel. “I can smell you, Dylan, and I want to…taste you. I want you, and I’m not sane enough to keep my hands off you if I were to see you right now.”
Dylan swallowed. She should be terrified of the man on the other side of that door. And yes, part of her was. Not because of his unbelievable claim that he was a vampire. Not because he had abducted her and seemed intent on keeping her prisoner, albeit in a gilded cage. She was terrified because of the honesty in what he’d just said—that he wanted her.
And as much as she wanted to deny it, deep down, that knowledge made her burn just a little to know Rio’s touch.
She couldn’t speak. Her feet started moving beneath her, pulling her back from the door. Back to reality, she hoped, because what she’d just been considering was not only unrealistic but downright stupid. She padded over to the bed and got in, sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms locked tightly around her shins.
There would be no more sleep for her tonight.
CHAPTER
Twelve
She didn’t expect to see him in her room first thing that morning.
Dylan came out of the guest suite’s spacious shower and dried off with one of the half dozen luxurious towels folded neatly on a built-in shelf in the bathroom. She rubbed out most of the water from her hair, then threw on the last of her clean clothes from her bag. The layered double camisoles and drawstring capris were rumpled, but it wasn’t like she had anyone to impress. Barefoot, her damp hair clinging to her bare arms, she opened the bathroom door and padded out to the main room.
And there he was.
Rio, seated in the chair near the door, waiting for her to come out.
Dylan stopped short, startled to find him there.
“I knocked,” he said, a strangely considerate thing, coming from her kidnapper. “You didn’t answer, so I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Seems like I should be asking you the same thing.” She cautiously walked farther into the main area of the suite. Although there was no reason she should be concerned about the man who was holding her against her will, she was still rattled by what she’d heard in the other room a few hours ago. “What happened to you last night? You sounded like you were in pretty bad shape.”
He didn’t offer an explanation, just stared at her from across the dim room. Looking at him now, she had to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing. Dressed in a dove gray tee-shirt and tailored charcoal pants, his dark hair perfectly swept back from his face, he looked well rested and relaxed. Still his broody man-of-few-words self, but less on edge somehow. In fact, he looked as though he’d slept like a baby for a full night straight, while Dylan herself felt like roadkill after lying awake speculating about him since the predawn hours.
“You might want to tell your friends that they need to fix the timer on the blinds in here,” she said, gesturing to the tall window that should be bathing the room with daylight but was instead blocked by the remote-controlled window shades. “They opened on their own last night, then closed before sunrise. Functionality’s a bit backward, don’t you think? Nice view, by the way, even in the dark. What lake is that out back—the Wannsee? It’s kind of big to be the Grunewaldsee or the Teufelssee, and based on all the old trees surrounding this place, I’m guessing we have to be somewhere near the Havel River. That’s where we are, right?”
No reaction from the other side of the room, except for a slow exhale as Rio watched her with dark, unreadable eyes.
He’d brought her breakfast. Dylan strolled over to the squat table and dainty sofa in the center of the parlor area, where a bone china plate containing an omelette, sausage links, roasted potatoes, and a thick slab of toast waited. There was a glass of orange juice, coffee, and a starched white linen napkin tucked beneath a gleaming set of real silver flatware. She couldn’t resist the coffee as she wandered over to have a look at everything he brought her. She dropped two sugar cubes into the cup, then poured in enough whole cream to turn the coffee a light shade of tan, sweet and milky, just the way she liked it.
“You know, apart from the incarceration portion of my stay, I have to admit that you folks certainly know how to treat your hostages.”
“You’re not a hostage, Dylan.”
“No, a prisoner is more like it. Or does your kind, as you put it, prefer a less obvious term—detainee, maybe?”
“You are none of those things.”
“Well, great!” she replied with mock excitement. “Then when can I go home?”
She didn’t really expect him to answer. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his long legs, one ankle propped on the opposite knee. He was thoughtful today, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. And she didn’t miss the fact that as she took a seat on the sofa and began nibbling at the buttered toast, his gaze lingered hotly on her body.
Not to mention her throat.
She flashed back to what he’d said to her several hours ago: I can smell you, Dylan, and I want to taste you. I want you…
She definitely had not imagined that. The words had been playing in her mind, practically over and over, since he’d growled them at her through the door. And as he watched her so closely now, with a broody interest that was all male, Dylan could hardly breathe.
She dropped her gaze to her plate, suddenly very self-conscious.
“You’re staring at me,” she murmured, the silent scrutiny driving her crazy.
“I’m merely wondering how it is that an intelligent woman like you would choose the line of work you’re in. It doesn’t seem to fit you.”
“It fits well enough,” Dylan said.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t fit at all. I’ve read some of the articles on your computer—including a few of the older ones. Articles that weren’t written for that rag that employs you.”
She took a sip of her coffee, uncomfortable with his praise. “Those files are private. I really don’t appreciate you excavating my hard drive like you own it.”
“You wrote a lot about a murder case in upstate New York. The pieces I read on your computer were a few years old, but they were good, Dylan. You are a very smart, compelling writer. Better than you may think.”
“Jesus,” Dylan muttered under her breath. “I said those files are private.”
“Yeah, you did. But now I’m curious. Why did that particular case matter so much to you?”
Dylan shook her head and leaned back from her breakfast. “It was my first assignment fresh out of college. A little boy went missing in a small town up north. The police had no suspects and no leads, but there was speculation that the father might have been involved. I was hungry to make a quick name for myself, so I started digging into the guy’s history. He was a recovering alcoholic who never held a steady job, one of those class-act dead-beat dads.”
“But was he a killer?” Rio asked soberly.
“I thought so, even though all the evidence was circumstantial. But in my gut, I was sure of his guilt. I didn’t like him, and I knew if I looked hard enough I’d find something that pointed to his guilt. After a few false leads, I ran across a girl who’d babysat for the kids. When I questioned her for my story, she told me she’d seen bruises on the boy. She said the guy beat his kid, that she’d even witnessed it personally.” Dylan sighed. “I ran with all of it. I was so eager to get the story out there that I didn’t fully check my source.”
“What happened?”
“Turns out the babysitter had slept with the guy and had some personal axe to grind. He was no Father of the Year, but he never laid a hand on his son, and he sure as hell didn’t kill him. After I was fired from the newspaper, the case blew apart when DNA evidence linked the boy’s death to a man who lived next door to him. The father was innocent, and I took an extended leave from journalism.”
Rio’s dark brows arched. “And from there you ended up writing about Elvis sightings and alien abductions.”
Dylan shrugged. “Yeah, well, it was a slippery slope.”
He was staring again, watching her with that same thoughtful silence as before. She couldn’t think when he was looking at her like that. It made her feel exposed somehow, vulnerable. She didn’t like the feeling one bit.
“We’ll be leaving tonight, as I mentioned yesterday,” he said, breaking the awkward silence. “You’ll have an early dinner, if you like, then, at dusk, I’ll come back to prepare you for travel.”
That didn’t sound good. “Prepare me…how?”
“You can’t be allowed to identify this location, or the one we’re traveling to. So tonight before we leave, I will have to place you in a light trance.”
“A trance. As in, hypnotize me?” She had to laugh. “Get real. Anyway, that kind of stuff never works on me. I’m immune to the power of suggestion, just ask my mother or my boss.”
“This is different. And it will work on you. It already has.”
“What’re you talking about, it already has?”
He gave a vague shrug of his shoulder. “How much do you recall of the trip from Prague to here?”
Dylan frowned. There wasn’t much, actually. She remembered Rio pushing her into the back of the truck, then darkness as the vehicle started rolling. She remembered being very frightened, demanding to know where he was taking her and what he intended to do with her. Then…nothing.
“I tried to stay awake, but I was so tired,” she murmured, trying to recall even another minute of what had to have been several hours of travel and coming up blank. “I fell asleep on the way here. When I woke up I was in this room…”
The small curve of his lips seemed a bit too self-satisfied. “And you’ll sleep again this time until I want you awake. It has to be this way, Dylan. I’m sorry.”
She wanted to make some crack about how ludicrous this whole situation was sounding—from the vampire bullshit he’d tried to feed her yesterday, to this nonsense about trances and traveling to secret locations—but suddenly it didn’t seem very funny to her. It seemed impossibly serious.
It suddenly seemed all too real.
She looked at him sitting there, this man who was unlike any other man she’d ever known, and something whispered in her subconscious that this was no joke. Everything he’d told her was true, no matter how unbelievable it might sound.
Dylan’s gaze fell from his stoic, unreadable face to the powerful arms that were crossed over his thick chest. The tattoos that snaked around his biceps and forearms were different from the last time she’d seen them. Lighter now, just a few shades deeper than his olive skin tone.
Yesterday the ink in them had been red and gold—she was sure of it.
“What happened to your arms?” she blurted. “Tattoos don’t just change colors…”
“No,” he said, glancing down at the now-subtle markings. “Tattoos don’t change colors. But dermaglyphs do.”
“Dermaglyphs?”
“Naturally occurring skin markings within the Breed. They pass down from father to son and serve as an indicator of an individual’s emotional and physical states.” Rio pushed up the short sleeves of his tee-shirt, baring more of the intricate pattern on his skin. Beautiful, swirling arcs and geometric, tribal designs tracked all the way up onto his shoulders and disappeared under his shirt.
“Dermaglyphs functioned as protective camouflage for the forebears of the race. The Ancients’ bodies were covered from head to foot. Each generation of Breed offspring is born with fewer, less elaborate glyphs as the original bloodlines dilute with Homo sapiens genes.”
Dylan’s head was spinning with so many questions, she didn’t know which one to ask first. “I’m supposed to believe that not only are you one of the undead, but that the undead can reproduce?”
He scoffed mildly. “We’re not undead. The Breed is a very long-lived, hybrid species that began thousands of years ago on this planet. Genetically, we are part human, part otherworlder.”
“Otherworlder,” Dylan repeated, more calmly than she could believe. “You mean…alien? To be clear here, you’re talking about vampire aliens. Am I getting that right? Is that what you’re saying?”
Rio nodded. “Eight such creatures crashed on Earth a long time ago. They raped and slaughtered countless humans. Eventually, some of those rapes were done on human females who could sustain the alien seed and carry it to term. Those women were the first known Breedmates. From their wombs, the first generation of my kind—the Breed—took root.”
Everything she was hearing bordered on the knife’s edge of pure, delusional insanity, but there was no mistaking the sincerity of Rio’s tone. He believed what he was saying, one hundred percent. And because he was so gravely serious, Dylan found it hard to dismiss him.
To say nothing of the fact that she could personally vouch that the marks on his skin, whatever they were and wherever they had truly come from, had done something that defied all logic. “Your dermaglyphs are just a little darker than your skin color today.”
“Yes.”
“But yesterday they were a mix of red and gold because—”
“Because I needed to feed,” he said evenly. “I needed blood very badly, and it had to be taken directly from an open human vein.”
Oh, Jesus. He really was serious.
Dylan’s stomach lurched.
“So, you…fed last night? You’re telling me that you went out last night and you drank someone’s blood.”
He gave only the slightest incline of his head. There was remorse in his eyes, some kind of private torment that made him seem both lethal and vulnerable at the same time. He was sitting there, seemingly intent on convincing her that he was a monster, but she’d never seen a more haunted expression in all her life.
“You don’t have fangs,” she lamely pointed out, her mind still rejecting what she was hearing from him. “Don’t all vampires have fangs?”
“We have them, but they’re not normally prominent. Our upper canines lengthen with the urge to feed, or in response to heightened emotion. The process is physiological, much like the reaction of our dermaglyphs.”
As he spoke, Dylan carefully watched his mouth. His teeth were straight and white and strong behind his full, sensual lips. It didn’t look like a mouth meant for savagery, but for seduction. And that probably made it all the more dangerous. Rio’s beautifully formed mouth was one that any woman would welcome on her own, never suspecting it could turn deadly.
“Because of our alien genes, our skin and eyes are hypersensitive to sunlight,” he added, as calmly as he might discuss the weather. “Prolonged ultraviolet exposure is deadly to all of the Breed. That’s why the windows are shaded during the day.”
“Oh,” Dylan murmured, feeling her head bob like that made perfect sense.
Of course they had to block out UV light. Any idiot knew that vampires incinerated like tissue paper under a magnifying glass if you left them out in the sun.
Now that she was thinking about it, she’d not once seen Rio out in daylight. In the mountain cave, he was protected from the sun. When he’d tracked her from Jiáín to Prague, it had been late evening, total darkness. Last night, he’d gone out to hunt prey but obviously had made sure he was back before dawn.
Get a grip, Alexander.
This man was not a vampire—not really. There had to be some better explanation for what was going on here. Just because Rio sounded calm and reasonable didn’t mean he wasn’t completely deranged and delusional. A total nutjob. He had to be.
What about the other people in this high-rent estate? Just more vampire fantasists like him, who believed they descended from a solar-allergic alien race?
And here she was, the unwitting participant, abducted and held captive against her will by a wealthy, blood-drinking cult who believed she was somehow linked to them by virtue of a simple birthmark. Hell, it sounded like a story that was tailor-made for a tabloid front page.
But if anything Rio had said was true…?
Good Lord, if there was anything real about what she’d just heard, then she was sitting on a news story that would literally change the world. One that would alter reality for every human being on the planet. A chill ran up her spine when she considered how important this could be.
“I have a million questions,” she murmured, venturing a glance across the room at Rio.
He nodded as he got up from the chair. “That’s understandable. I’ve given you a lot to absorb, and you’ll be hearing even more before it’s time for you to decide.”
“Time for me to decide?” she asked, watching as he strode over to the door to leave. “Wait a second. What am I going to have to decide?”
“Whether you become a permanent part of the Breed, or go back to your old life with no knowledge of us at all.”
She didn’t eat the breakfast Rio brought her, and the dinner he delivered later that day sat untouched too. She had no appetite for food, only a gnawing hunger for answers.
But he told her to save her questions, and when he came back in to inform her that it was time for the two of them to leave, Dylan felt a sudden rush of trepidation.
A gate was being thrown open before her, but it was dark on the other side. If she looked into that darkness, would it consume her?
Would there be any turning back?
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she said, held in the mesmerizing snare of Rio’s eyes as he came toward her in the room. “I’m…I’m afraid of where we’re going. I’m afraid of what I’m going to see there.”
Dylan looked up into the handsome, tragic face of her captor and waited for some words of encouragement—anything to give her hope that she would come out of this all right in the end.
He didn’t offer any such thing, but when he reached out and placed his palm to her brow, his touch was gentle, incredibly warm. God, it felt so good.
“Sleep,” he said.
The firm command filtered through her mind like the soft rasp of velvet over bare skin. He wrapped his other arm around the back of her, just as her knees began to sway. His hold on her was strong, comforting. She could melt into that strength, she thought, as her eyes drifted closed.
“Sleep now, Dylan,” he whispered against her ear. “Sleep.”
And she did.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
One of the Order’s black SUVs was waiting inside a private hangar as the small jet out of Berlin taxied in from a corporate runway at Boston’s Logan Airport.
Rio and Dylan were the only passengers aboard the sleek Gulfstream twin engine. The jet and its human pilots were on round-the-clock retainer for the Order, although as far as the two flyboys knew, they pocketed their sizable cash salaries on behalf of a very private, very wealthy corporation that demanded—and received—complete loyalty and discretion.
They were paid extremely well to not so much as lift an eyebrow when Rio had carried a dead-to-the-world, psychically tranced woman into the aircraft in Berlin, nor when he took her off the jet in the same condition some nine hours later in Boston. With Dylan resting soundly in his arms, her backpack and messenger bag slung over his shoulder, Rio headed down the brief flight of steps to the concrete below.
As he crossed the short distance to the Range Rover idling in the hangar, Dante got out of the driver’s side, jacking one elbow up on the open door. He was dressed in night patrol gear—long-sleeved tee-shirt, fatigues, and combat boots—all of it as black as his thick, shoulder-length hair. A black semiauto pistol was holstered under his left arm, another gun strapped to his thigh, but it was the two curved titanium blades sheathed at his hips that Dante never left home without.
One of the Order’s newer members was with Dante too, riding shotgun. Ex–Darkhaven Enforcement Agent Sterling Chase, also garbed in combat gear and loaded for bear, gave Rio a nod of greeting from inside the vehicle. Chase looked as hard-ass as any warrior, his razor-cut golden hair covered in a black skullcap, steel blue eyes hard and steady in his lean face, the shrewd gaze a little emptier than Rio recalled it from a few months ago. Now there was hardly any trace of the uptight, holier-than-thou bureaucrat who’d showed up last summer asking the Order for help and then laying down his own rules of how he expected the warriors to work with him. Dante had not-so-affectionately dubbed the Darkhaven Agent “Harvard,” a nickname that stuck even after Chase left his old civilian life and joined up with the Order.
“Jay-zus,” Dante said, cracking a broad smile as Rio approached with Dylan lying slack in his arms. “Talk about going off grid, man. Five months is a helluva vacay.” The warrior chuckled as he opened the SUV’s back door and helped Rio get Dylan and her gear situated inside. When they were settled, Dante shut them in, then hopped back behind the wheel. He pivoted around to face Rio. “At least you came home with a nice souvenir, eh?”
Rio grunted, flicking a glance at Dylan sleeping on the backseat beside him. “She’s a reporter. And a Breedmate.”
“So I heard. We all did. Gideon told us all about your run-in with Lois Lane back there in Prague,” Dante said.
“No worries, man. We’re gonna clamp a hard lid on her story and her pictures before any of that shit goes public. As for her, calls have already been made to find her a place in the Darkhavens if that’s her choice after all this is over. It’s as good as handled.”
Rio didn’t doubt a word Dante said, but he couldn’t help wondering which way Dylan was going to go in the end. If she chose the Darkhavens, it would only be a matter of time before a savvy Breed male convinced her that she needed him and ought to be his mate. God knew she’d have no shortage of candidates. With her unusual beauty, she would be the flame they all converged on, and the thought of her being pursued by a bunch of sophisticated, smooth-talking, mostly useless civilians set Rio’s teeth on edge.
Though why he should give a damn what she did or with whom, he didn’t know.
He had no claim on her, other than the immediate goal of thwarting the disaster that her presence was stirring up. Or rather, the disaster he’d invited by wallowing in his own misery instead of blowing that damn cave like he’d been entrusted to do. Being back in Boston only made him wish he was back on that mountainside, pressing the detonator and watching as a ton of rock sealed him in for good.
“What were you doing over there all this time?” Chase asked, a casually phrased question that didn’t quite mask the male’s suspicion. “You told Nikolai that you were going to secure the cave and take off on your own for Spain. The way he told it, you’d up and quit the Order. That was five months ago and no word out of you until now, when you show up bringing bad news and trouble. What the fuck gives?”
“Chill it, man,” Dante advised, throwing a dark look across the front seat. To Rio he said, “Feel free to ignore Harvard. He’s had a hard-on all night because he didn’t get to play with his Beretta.”
“No, really,” Chase said, not about to give it up. “I’m curious is all. What exactly happened over there with you since February when we left you on that mountainside with a duffel full of C-4? Why’d you wait this long to do the damn job? Why the change of plans?”
“There was no change of plans,” Rio replied, meeting the measuring gaze of the warrior in the passenger seat. He couldn’t be offended by the challenging tone. Chase had every right to question him—they all had the right—and there wasn’t much Rio could say in his defense. He’d let his weakness own him these past several months, and now he had to set that to rights. “I had a mission to carry out, and I failed in it. Simple as that.”
“Well, we’re not exactly batting a thousand on this end either,” Dante put in. “Since we found that hibernation chamber outside Prague, we’ve been running leads on the possible existence of an Ancient and they’ve all come up empty. Chase has been doing some covert internal digging with the Darkhavens and the Enforcement Agency, but those sources aren’t turning up anything useful either.”
In the passenger seat, Chase gave an affirmative nod. “It doesn’t seem possible, but if the Ancient is out there, the son of a bitch is deep underground and laying very low.”
“What about the Breed family from Germany that was linked to the Ancient back in the Middle Ages?” Rio asked.
“The Odolfs,” Dante said, shaking his head. “No survivors that we’ve found. The few who didn’t go Rogue and end up dead from Bloodlust over the years turned up missing or dead of other causes. The entire Odolf line is no more.”
“Shit,” Rio murmured.
Dante nodded. “That’s about all we’ve got. Just a whole lot of silence and dead ends. We’re not about to give up, but right now we’re looking for a fucking needle in a haystack.”
Rio frowned, considering the difficulties in hiding the existence of an otherworldly creature like the one the Order hunted now. It would be damn hard not to notice a nearly seven-foot-tall, hairless, dermaglyph-covered vampire with an insatiable thirst for blood. Even among the most savage dregs of Breed society, the Ancient would stand out.
The only reason the Ancient had gone undetected for as long as it had was because of the hibernation chamber that housed it on the remote mountain in the Czech countryside. Someone had freed the Ancient from its hidden crypt, but the Order had no way of knowing when, or how, or even if the bloodthirsty creature had survived its awakening.
With any luck, the savage son of a bitch was long dead.
The other alternative was a scenario no one, Breed or human, would want to imagine.
Dante cleared his throat in the long stretch of silence, his tone going serious. “Listen, Rio. Whatever your deal was these past months you’ve been AWOL, it’s good to have you back in Boston. We’re all glad you’re back.”
Rio nodded stiffly as he met the warrior’s eyes. No sense telling Dante or anyone else that his return was only temporary. The last thing the Order needed was a liability like him in the ranks. No doubt they’d already discussed that subject when Gideon alerted them about Rio’s return.
Dante met his gaze in the rearview. “You ready to roll, amigo?”
“Yeah,” Rio said. “I’m more than ready.”
The metallic clack of a lock being freed echoed like a gunshot against the tunnel of rough-hewn granite walls. The door was old, the oiled wood as dark as pitch and as aged as the stone that had been hollowed out of the earth to create the long tunnel and the locked chamber secreted at its end.
But here was where the primitiveness of the place ended.
Beyond the stone and wood and crude iron locks was a laboratory equipped with the finest state-of-the-art technology. It had evolved over the years, employing the best science and robotics that money could buy. The staff of humans operating the facility had been collected from some of the most advanced biological institutions in the nation. They were Minions now, their minds enslaved, loyalty unquestioningly ensured.
All for one purpose.
A single individual, unlike any that existed in all the world.
That individual waited at the end of the tunneled corridor, behind the electronic quadruple-bolted steel door. Inside was a cell constructed specifically to hold a man who was no man at all, but a vampiric, alien creature from a planet far different from the one he inhabited now.
He was an Ancient—the last remaining forebear of the hybrid race known as the Breed. Many thousands of years old, he was more powerful than an army of humans, even kept as he was currently, in a managed state of near starvation. The hunger weakened him, as intended, but it also pissed him off, and rage was always a factor when it came to controlling a powerful creature like the one lifting its hairless, glyph-riddled head within the cell.
Bars of highly concentrated ultraviolet light caged the cell in two-inch increments, more effective than the strongest steel. The Ancient would not test them; he’d already done that years ago and nearly lost his right arm from the resulting solar burns. He was masked to keep him calm, and to protect his eyes from the intensity of his UV prison. He was naked because there was no need for modesty here, and because it was crucial that his keeper be able to monitor even the most subtle changes in the dermaglyphs that covered every inch of his alien skin.
As for the robotic restraints on the creature’s neck, limbs, and torso, they were in place as preparation for the day’s assorted fluid and tissue extractions.
“Hello, Grandfather,” drawled the one who held the Ancient prisoner for the past fifty-odd years. He himself was very old by human standards—easily four hundred if he was a day. Not that he kept track anymore, and not that it mattered in the least. As one of the Breed, he appeared in the prime of his youth. With the Ancient kept secretly, and successfully, under his control all this time, he felt like a god.
“Yesterday’s test results, Master.”
One of the humans who served him handed him a file of reports. They didn’t call him by name; no one did. There were none around who knew who he truly was.
He’d been born the son of Dragos, his sire a first generation Breed male fathered by the very creature contained within the UV prison cell built in this underground lair. Birthed in secret and sent away to be raised by strangers, it had taken him many long years to finally understand his purpose.
Longer still to get his hands on the prize that would lift him to greatness.
“Did you have a pleasant rest?” he idly asked his prisoner, as he closed the file of test results and readings.
The creature didn’t answer, just peeled its lips back and breathed in slowly, air hissing through the large, elongated fangs.
He’d stopped speaking about a decade ago, whether from madness, anger, or defeat, his keeper didn’t know. Nor did he particularly care. There was no love between them. The Ancient, despite being close kin, was primarily a means to an end.
“We’ll begin now,” the keeper told his prisoner.
He entered a code into the computer that would command the robotics in the cell to commence with the extractions. The tests were painful, plentiful, and prolonged…but all necessary. Body fluids were collected, tissue samples harvested. So far, the experiments had yielded only minor successes. But there was promise, and that was enough.
By the time the last specimen was retrieved and catalogued, the Ancient slumped with exhaustion in the cell. Its huge body quivered and spasmed as its advanced physiology worked to heal the damage inflicted by the procedure.
“Just one more process left to complete,” the keeper said.
It was this last one that was most crucial—and most primal—for the vampire recuperating behind the UV light bars of his cell.
Locked within another, more rudimentary prison, was a heavily sedated human female, recently captured off the streets. She too was naked, her dyed black goth-styled hair cut away entirely to better expose her neck. Her eyes were unfocused, pupils dilated from the drugs injected into her system a short while ago.
She didn’t scream or struggle as she was led out of her confinement by two Minions and into the main holding area of the laboratory. Her small breasts jiggled with each shuffling step she took, and her head lolled back on her shoulders, revealing the little teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark she bore underneath her chin. Her bare feet moved listlessly as she was placed into stirrups on an automated seat that would carry her past the UV barrier and directly into the center of the Ancient’s cell.
She hardly flinched as the chair tipped back, positioning her for what was to come. Inside the cell, the restraints on the huge male loosened slightly, freeing him to move in on her like the predator he was.
“You will feed now,” the keeper told him. “And then you will breed on her.”
CHAPTER
Fourteen
It felt goddamn strange to be in the compound again. But as strange as it was, Rio found it even more surreal to be entering his private apartments within the Order’s subterranean headquarters just outside Boston proper.
Dante and Chase had gone off to the tech lab as soon as they arrived, leaving Rio to contend with Dylan on his own. He supposed the warriors were also giving him a chance to reacquaint himself privately with his old life—the one Eva had stolen from him a year ago with her betrayal. He hadn’t been in his quarters at the compound for a long time, but the place looked exactly as he remembered it. Exactly as he’d left it, following the warehouse explosion that had sent him into the compound’s infirmary for several months of hard recuperation.
The apartments he’d once shared with Eva were like a time capsule. Everything was frozen in its place from that hellish night, when he and his brethren had gone topside to take out a lair of Rogue vampires only to walk headlong into a deadly ambush.
An ambush orchestrated by the female who’d been his Breedmate.
And it was here in the compound, after Eva’s deception had been uncovered and Rio denounced her, that she put a blade to her own throat.
She killed herself over his bed in the infirmary, but it was here in their living quarters where Rio felt her presence the most. Eva’s personal touches were everywhere, from the flamboyant artwork he’d reluctantly agreed to let her hang on the walls, to the large mirrors positioned near the walk-in closet and across the room from the foot of the huge bed.
Rio carried Dylan past the elegant sitting room and through the curtained French doors that led to the bedroom suite. He caught his reflection in the glass as he brought her over to the four-poster bed and carefully placed her on the dark plum bedding.
He cringed at the swarthy, ruined face of the stranger peering back at him. Even dressed in the fine clothes Reichen had given him, he still looked like a monster—all the more so when he saw the limp beauty asleep in his arms and totally at his mercy.
He was a monster, and he couldn’t lay the blame for that solely at Eva’s feet. He’d been born a beast and a killer; now he just happened to look the part as well.
Dylan stirred a bit as he settled her on the mattress and tucked one of the plump pillows under her head.
“Wake now,” he said, brushing his palm lightly over her brow. “You have rested long enough, Dylan. You may wake up now.”
He didn’t need to stroke her cheek in order to lift the trance. He didn’t need to let his fingertips linger on the velvety skin with its charming spray of diminutive, peachy freckles. He didn’t need to play his touch along the delicate line of her jaw…but he couldn’t resist taking his time.
Her eyelids fluttered open. The dark brown fringe of lashes lifted, and Rio was caught in the golden-green light of her gaze. Belatedly, he let his hand fall away from her face, but he could see that she knew he’d taken the liberty. She didn’t flinch from him, just drew in a soft breath through her parted lips.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, her voice small and thready from the long sleep he’d put her in. She wasn’t aware of the trance or the travel. To her human mind, she was still in Reichen’s Darkhaven, her consciousness put on pause in the moments before she and Rio left for Boston. “I’m afraid of where you’re taking me…”
“You’re already here,” Rio told her. “We just arrived.”
A look of panic bled into her eyes. “Where—”
“I’ve brought you to the Order’s compound. You’re in my quarters, and you’re safe here.”
She glanced around her, quickly taking in her surroundings. “You live here?”
“I used to.” He stood up and backed away from the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. If you need anything at all, just ask. I’ll see that you get it.”
“How about a ride to my place in New York?” she said, her systems clearly coming back online now. “Or a GPS map of where you’re currently holding me, and I’ll find my own way home?”
Rio crossed his arms over his chest. “This is your home for now, Dylan. Because you are a Breedmate, you will be treated with all the respect due you. You’ll have food and comfort, whatever you need. You won’t be locked inside these apartments, but I assure you there is nowhere for you to run even if you tried. The compound is completely secure. My brethren and I will not harm you, but if you attempt to leave these quarters, we’ll know before you take the first step into the corridor. If you try to escape, I will find you, Dylan.”
She was quiet for a long second, watching him speak, measuring his words. “And then what will you do to me, hold me down and take a bite out of my throat?”
Cristo.
Rio felt all the blood drain from his head at the very thought. He knew she expected the act to be one of violence, but to him the image of pressing Dylan down beneath him as he pierced her tender skin with his fangs was one of total sensuality.
Arousal spiraled through him in a hot coil, all of it pooling in his groin.
He could still feel the silky warmth of her skin in his fingertips, and now another part of him craved to know her. He turned away, angered at his body’s swift, urgent reaction to her.
“When I was in Jiáín, I heard about a man who was attacked by a demon. An old farmer witnessed it, said this demon came down off a nearby mountain to feed. To drink human blood.”
Rio stood there, staring at the door in front of him while Dylan spoke. He knew the night she referred to, remembered it clearly because it was the last time he’d allowed himself to feed. He’d gone more than two weeks without nourishment when he prowled onto a humble farm outside the forest at the base of the mountains.
He’d been starving and it had made him careless. An old man came upon him—saw the attack, saw Rio holding the human throat in his teeth. It was a reckless slip, and the interruption was likely the only thing that saved Rio’s prey from an out of control feeding that might have meant his death. He stopped hunting that very night, afraid of what he might become.
“It was just an exaggeration, right?” Dylan’s voice got a little quieter during his answering silence. “You didn’t really do that. Did you, Rio?”
“Make yourself comfortable,” he growled. As he started to leave, he grabbed her messenger bag that contained her laptop computer and digital camera. “I have things I need to do.”
He didn’t wait for her to protest or say anything more, just knew he had to get the hell out of there. A few brisk strides carried him to the open French doors and the living room beyond.
“Rosario…?”
He stopped walking at the sound of her voice behind him. Scowling, he pivoted his head to look back at her. She had lifted up on the bed at some point, now bracing herself on her elbows.
God, she looked deliciously disheveled like that, beautifully drowsy. It didn’t take much to imagine this was how Dylan might look after a night of rousing sex. The fact that she was lying against the plum-colored silk of his bed only made the image all the more erotic.
“What?” His voice was a thick scrape of sound in his throat.
“Your name,” she said, like he should know what she meant. She tilted her head as she studied him from across the room. “You told me that Rio is only part of your name, so I just wondered what it’s short for. Is it Rosario?”
“No.”
“Then, what is it?” When he didn’t answer right away, her light brown brows knit together in impatience. “After everything else you’ve told me these past couple of days, what can it hurt to tell me the name you were born with?”
He scoffed inwardly, recalling all the things he’d been called since his birth. None of them were kind. “Why is it important to you to know?”
She shook her head, gave a mild lift of her slender shoulder. “It’s not important. I guess I’m just curious to know more about you. Who you really are.”
“You know enough,” he said. A ripe curse slipped off his tongue. “Trust me, Dylan Alexander. You don’t want to know anything more about me than you already do.”
He was wrong about that, Dylan thought, watching Rio stalk away from her and out of the spacious suite. He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the softly lit apartment.
She pivoted off the side of the big bed. Her legs were wobbly, like she hadn’t used them for several hours. Like she’d been out cold for the better part of the night. If what he’d said was true—that they’d left Berlin and arrived in the States—then she figured she was missing about nine hours of conscious memory.
Could that really be possible?
Had he truly put her into some kind of trance this whole time?
She’d been stunned to feel his fingers caressing her face as she woke up. His touch had felt so soothing, so protective and warm. But it had been fleeting too, gone as soon as he realized she’d become aware of it.
She didn’t want to feel any warmth from Rio, nor toward him, but she could hardly deny that there was something electric in the way he looked at her. There was something unmistakably seductive in the way he touched her. She wanted to know more about him—needed to know more. After all, as his captive it would be in her best interest to learn everything she could about the man who held her. As a journalist hoping to break a big story, it was her duty to gather even the smallest fact and chase it down to its bare truth.
But it was her interest as a woman that bothered Dylan the most.
It was that very personal desire to know more about the kind of man Rio was that sent her gaze roaming around the bedroom. The decor was lush and sultry, an explosion of jewel-tone colors, from the plum silk bedding to the gold-hued paint on the walls. A collection of abstract paintings, so bright they hurt Dylan’s eyes, crowded one entire wall of the bedroom suite. Another wall sported a giant, ornately framed mirror…strategically placed to reflect the big four-poster bed and whatever might be going on atop it.
“Subtle,” Dylan murmured, rolling her eyes as she wandered over to a double set of doors on another side of the room. She drew them open and felt her jaw go slack as she looked in on a walk-in closet that had more square footage than her studio apartment in Brooklyn. “My. God.”
She went inside, vaguely aware of even more mirrors in here—and why wouldn’t you want to admire yourself from every angle when you had half of Neiman Marcus to choose from?
She was tempted to nose around in what had to be many thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes and shoes, but a bleak thought registered at once: only about a quarter of the closet contained men’s clothing. The rest belonged to a woman—a petite woman, with obviously very expensive taste.
These might be Rio’s quarters, but he sure as hell didn’t live here alone.
Oh, shit. Was he married?
Dylan backed out of the walk-in and closed the doors, wishing she hadn’t looked in the first place. She drifted into the living area of the apartment, seeing a woman’s touch everywhere now. Nothing remotely close to her own style, but then what did she know about quality interior design? Her best piece of furniture was a Crate and Barrel sleeper sofa she got secondhand.
Dylan let her hand trail over the back of a carved walnut, claw-footed chair as she took in the garishly elegant furnishings of the place. She wandered over to a gold velvet sofa, and paused as her gaze caught on a small assortment of framed photographs on the table behind it.
The first thing she saw was a picture of Rio. He was seated in the open passenger side of a vintage cherry red Thunderbird convertible that had been parked on a moonlit stretch of beach. Dressed in an open black silk button-down and black trousers, he lounged in a lazy sprawl, as much in the car as out of it. His thighs were parted in a casual vee, his bare toes dug into the fine white sand. His dark topaz gaze gleamed with private wisdom, and his smoky smile made him seem equal parts danger and decadent fun.
Good Lord, he was handsome.
To be fair, he was about a hundred miles ahead of handsome.
The photo didn’t seem very old. There were no scars riddling the left side of his face, so the injury he sustained must have been fairly recent. Whatever happened had robbed him of his classic, impossibly good looks, but it was the anger he carried inside him that seemed the bigger tragedy. Dylan looked at the picture of Rio in happier times and she had to wonder how he’d fallen as far as he apparently had in the time since.
She glanced to another picture, this one an antique. It was a sepia-toned studio image of a dark-haired woman with a Gibson Girl updo and a high-necked, frothy lace Victorian dress. Dylan bent down to get a better look, wondering if the exotic beauty with the coy smile might be Rio’s grandmother. The dark eyes stared directly into the camera lens, a look of pure seduction. She was gorgeous and sensual, despite the prim fashion of her time.
And her face…it seemed strangely familiar.
“Oh, my God.”
Disbelief, as well as an overriding sense of wonder, swamped Dylan as her gaze traveled to another photograph on the sofa table. This one was full-color, obviously taken within the past decade or less…and it featured the same woman from the antique picture. This later one was a nighttime shot of a woman standing on a stone bridge in the middle of a city park, laughing as her long black hair blew playfully around her head. She seemed so happy, but Dylan saw a sadness in her dark eyes—pained secrets hiding in the deep brown gaze that was fixed so tightly on whoever it was that took the photo.
And she recognized that face for certain, she realized now, though not merely from the impossible time range of photographs displayed on Rio’s sofa table.
This was the same face she’d seen on the mountain in Jiáín…the face of a dead woman.
The beautiful ghost who led Dylan to the cave where she found Rio was his wife.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
It was almost as if he’d never been gone.
Rio stood in the compound’s tech lab surrounded by Lucan, Gideon, and Tegan, who’d each greeted him with a hand offered in genuine friendship and trust.
Tegan’s grasp lingered the longest, and Rio knew that the stony warrior with the tawny hair and gem-green eyes was able to read his guilt and uncertainty through the link of their clasped hands. That was Tegan’s gift, to divine true emotion with a touch.
He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. “Shit happens, man. And God knows we all have our own personal demons yanking our chains. So, no one’s here to judge you. Got it?”
Rio nodded as Tegan let go of his hand. As he passed off Dylan’s messenger bag to Gideon, he cast a glance toward the back of the lab, where Dante and Chase were cleaning their weapons for the night. Dante gave him a tip of his chin, but Chase’s steely look said his jury was still out when it came to Rio. Smart man. Rio figured the ex–Darkhaven Agent’s reaction was probably the same one he’d have if the tables were turned and Chase was the one flying in deadstick and in need of a rescue.
“How much does the woman know about us?” Lucan asked.
At nine hundred years old and first generation Breed, the Order’s founder and formidable leader could command control of an entire room with just a quirk of his black brows. Rio considered him a friend—all of the warriors were as near as kin to one another—and he hated like hell that he might have disappointed him.
“I only gave her the basics,” Rio replied. “I don’t think she fully believes it yet.”
Lucan grunted, nodding thoughtfully. “It’s a hell of a lot to deal with. Does she understand the purpose behind that crypt in the rock?”
“Not really. She heard me call it a hibernation chamber when Gideon and I were talking, but she doesn’t know anything more than that. I sure as hell don’t plan to clue her in. Bad enough she saw the damn thing for herself.” Rio exhaled a harsh breath. “She’s smart, Lucan. I don’t think it will take her long to start putting the pieces into place.”
“Then we’d better act fast. The fewer potential details we have to clean up later, the better,” Lucan said. He glanced at Gideon, who had Dylan’s laptop open on the computer console beside him. “How hard do you think it will be to hack in and lose those pictures she’s sent out via e-mail?”
“Deleting the source files on her camera and computer is easy. Half a minute’s work.”
“What about getting rid of the recipients’ image and text files?”
Gideon scrunched up his face as if he were calculating the square root of Bill Gates’s net worth. “About ten minutes for delivery of your basic hard-drive wrecking ball to all of the computers on her distribution list. Thirteen, if you’re looking for something with a little more finesse.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about finesse,” Lucan said. “Just do whatever you need to trash the pictures and kill any text references to what she found on that mountain.”
“I’m on it,” Gideon replied, already working his magic on both devices.
“We can destroy the electronic files, but we still need to deal with the people she’s been in contact with about the cave,” Rio pointed out. “Aside from her employer, there’s the three women she was traveling with, and her mother.”
“I’m going to leave that to you,” Lucan said. “I don’t care how you go about it—use her to deny the story, discredit her, or go out and find the folks she’s talked to and scrub the memory of every last one of them. Your choice, Rio. Just handle it, like I know you will.”
He nodded. “I give you my word, Lucan. I will fix this.”
The Gen One vampire’s expression was as grave as it was certain. “I don’t doubt you. Never have, never will.”
Lucan’s confidence was unexpected, and a gift Rio didn’t plan to squander, no matter how wrecked he knew himself to be. For so many years, the Order and the warriors serving within it were his chief purpose in life—even above his love for Eva, which had seeded a quiet, but festering resentment in her. Rio was honor-bound to every last one of these men like his own blood kin, pledged to fight alongside them, even die for them. He looked around him, humbled by the grim, courageous faces of the five Breed males whom he knew without question would lay down their lives for him as well.
Rio cleared his throat, feeling awkward for the nearly unanimous welcome from his brethren. Across the lab, the glass doors whisked open as Nikolai, Brock, and Kade strode in from the corridor outside. The three of them were talking animatedly, giving off an air of easy camaraderie as they swept into the lab.
“Hey,” Niko said, a greeting tossed out to no one in particular. His ice-blue gaze lit on Rio for half a second before he looked to Lucan and began relaying the details of the trio’s night patrol. “Smoked a Rogue down by the river about an hour ago. Bastard was sleeping off a kill inside a Dumpster when we found him.”
“Think it was one of Marek’s hounds?” Lucan asked, referring to the army of Rogue vampires his own brother had been amassing until the Order stepped in. Marek was dead at the hands of the Order, but the remnants of his army were still vermin in need of extermination.
Nikolai gave a shake of his head. “This suckhead wasn’t a fighter, just an addict scratching his permanent itch for blood. I figure he was only a few nights out of the Darkhaven based on how easy he went down.” The Russian-born vampire looked past Rio to crack a crooked grin at Dante and Chase. “Any action over on the South Side?”
“Not a damn thing,” Chase muttered. “Too busy running errands out at the airport.”
Nikolai grunted, acknowledging the comment with a glance in Rio’s direction. “Long fucking time, man. Good to see you in one piece.”
Rio knew the male too well to think the reply was friendly. Of all the warriors in the Order, it was Nikolai that Rio expected to be first in line to defend him—whether or not Rio deserved it. Niko was the brother Rio never had, both of them born in the past century, both having joined the Order in Boston around the same time.
Odd that Niko had been absent for Rio’s arrival at the compound, although knowing the vampire and his love for combat, he probably was pissed off that his patrol was cut short with still a couple of hours to go until dawn.
Before Rio could say anything to his old friend, Nikolai’s attention swung back to Lucan. “The Rogue we found tonight was young, but the kill he left behind looked like the work of more than one vampire. I’d like to head back tomorrow night and sniff around, see if we turn up anything more.”
Lucan nodded. “Sounds good.”
With that out of the way, Niko turned to Kade and Brock. “Got enough time before sunrise to do a little hunting of our own. Anyone else feeling thirsty all of a sudden?”
Kade’s wolflike eyes glittered like quicksilver. “There’s an after-hours place in the North End that’s probably just getting interesting. Plenty of sweet young things just ripe for the plucking.”
“Count me in,” Chase drawled, coming out of his chair next to Dante to join the three other unmated males as they started heading for the lab’s exit.
For a moment, Rio watched them go. But as Nikolai stepped out to the corridor behind the rest of the pack, Rio hissed a curse and shot after him.
“Niko, wait.”
The warrior kept walking like he couldn’t hear him.
“Hold up, man. Goddamn it, Nikolai. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
As Chase, Brock, and Kade paused to look back, Niko waved them on ahead. They continued moving, rounding a corner in the corridor and disappearing from view. After a long few seconds, finally, Nikolai pivoted around.
The face staring back at Rio in the stark white tunnel was hard and unreadable. “Yeah. Here I am. What do you want?”
Rio didn’t know how to answer that. Hostility rolled off his old friend like a winter chill. “Have I done something to piss you off?”
Nikolai’s sharp bark of laughter scraped against the polished marble walls. “Fuck you, man.”
He wheeled around and began stalking away.
Rio caught up to him in a blink. He was about to grab the warrior’s shoulder and force him to stop, but Niko moved faster. He spun back and plowed into Rio broadside with his forearm against Rio’s sternum, driving his spine into the hard wall on the other side of the corridor.
“You want to die, you son of a bitch?” Niko’s eyes were narrowed, amber firing into the blue as a result of his anger. “You want to fucking kill yourself, that’s your business. Don’t ever use me to help you do it. We clear?”
Rio’s muscles were tensed and ready for a fight, his combat instincts rising even though he was facing a long-trusted ally. But as Nikolai spoke, Rio’s swiftly igniting battle rage ebbed a crucial fraction. Suddenly Niko’s fury toward him made sense. Because Nikolai knew that Rio had stayed behind on that Bohemian mountain intending to end his life. If he hadn’t known it those five months ago, he sure as hell knew it now.
“You lied to me,” Niko seethed. “You looked me right in the eye and you lied to me, man. You were never going back to Spain. What were you going to do with that supply of C-4 I gave you? Strap it on and detonate the shit for some private jihadist fun, or maybe you just planned on sealing yourself inside that godforsaken tomb for the rest of eternity? What was it going to be, amigo? Which way did you plan on checking out?”
Rio didn’t answer. There was no need. Of all the warriors in the Order, Nikolai knew him best. He saw him for the weak coward that he truly was. He alone knew how close Rio had been to ending the whole damn thing—even before his arrival on that Czech mountain.
It had been Niko who refused to let Rio wallow in self-loathing, making it his personal mission to pull Rio out of his dark tailspin last summer. Niko who took Rio topside with him in the weeks that followed, hunting for him when Rio had been too weak to look after himself. Nikolai, the brother Rio had never had.
“Yeah,” Niko scoffed. “Like I said. Fuck you.”
He dropped his arm away from Rio’s chest and backed off with a growled curse. Rio watched him go, Niko’s boots chewing up the polished marble as he stormed off to meet the other warriors already on their way topside.
“Shit,” Rio hissed, raking his hand through his hair.
This clash with Nikolai was just more evidence that he shouldn’t have come back to Boston—even if it meant leaving the problem of Dylan Alexander to someone else to handle. He didn’t fit in here anymore. He was an outsider now, a weak link in an otherwise solid steel chain of courageous Breed warriors.
Even now he could feel his temples pounding from the rush of adrenaline that had kicked in a few minutes ago, when it looked like Niko wanted to tear him apart. His vision started to swim as he stood there. If he didn’t get moving and find somewhere private to host the oncoming mental meltdown, he knew it would likely be only minutes before he woke up ass-planted on the marble right there in the corridor. And frankly, having Lucan and the others come out of the tech lab to stare over him like he was week-old roadkill was not something he wanted to experience.
Rio commanded his legs to start moving, and with no small degree of difficulty, he managed to find his way back to his quarters. He stumbled inside and closed the door behind him, sagging against it as a fresh wave of nausea swept over him.
“Are you okay?”
The female voice came from somewhere distant in the apartment. At first it didn’t register as familiar; his brain was struggling to perform basic motor movements, and the bright, crystalline voice didn’t seem to belong in this place full of old, musty memories.
He shoved away from the door and dragged himself through the living room toward his bedroom, his skull feeling like it was going to shatter.
Hot water. Darkness. Quiet. He needed all three right away.
He pulled off his shirt and let it fall onto Eva’s ridiculous gold velvet settee. He really ought to burn all of her shit. Too bad he couldn’t toss the deceptive bitch into the pyre along with it.
Rio clung to his fury for Eva’s betrayal, a feeble grounding, but the only thing he had at the moment. He reached the open French doors to the bedroom and heard a small gasp from inside.
“Oh, my God. Rio, are you all right?”
Dylan.
Her name bled through the fog of his mind like a balm. He looked up to find his unwilling guest sitting on the edge of the bed, something flat and rectangular resting on her lap. She set the object aside on the nightstand and rushed over to him in the instant before his knees gave out.
“Shower,” he managed to croak.
“You can hardly stand up.” She helped him over to the bed, where he gratefully collapsed. “You look like you need a doctor. Is there anyone here who can help you?”
“No,” he rasped. “Shower…”
He was too far gone to use his Breed ability to mentally turn the water on, but he didn’t need to try. Dylan was already running to the adjacent bathroom. He heard the sharp hiss of the shower coming on, then Dylan’s soft footsteps on the carpet as she came back out to where he was slumped pathetically on his side toward the foot of the bed.
Vaguely he registered the slowing of her stride the closer she got to him. He hardly heard the quick, indrawn breath above him. But there was no mistaking the shaky exhale as she blew out a quiet, pitying oath.
“Jesus Christ.” Too much silence followed her whispered curse. Then, “Rio…My God. What kind of hell have you been through?”
Using every last ounce of strength he had, Rio peeled his eyes open. Big mistake. The horror he saw in Dylan’s gaze was undeniable. She was looking at the exposed left side of his body…at the chest and torso that had been shredded by shrapnel and nearly flayed off his bones by the flames of the explosion he’d barely survived.
“Did she…” Dylan’s soft voice drifted off. “Did your wife have something to do with what happened to you, Rio?”
His pulse froze. The blood that had been beating like a drum in his ears turned to ice as he stared up blearily into Dylan’s questioning, concerned face.
“Did she do this to you, Rio?”
He followed Dylan’s outstretched hand as she reached toward the item she’d set down on the nightstand. It was a framed photograph. He didn’t need to see the picture under the glass to know that it was a snapshot of Eva, from an evening walk they’d taken along the Charles River. Eva, smiling. Eva, telling him how much she loved him, while behind his back she conspired with the Order’s enemy to fulfill her own selfish goals.
Rio snarled when he thought of his own stupidity. His own blindness.
“It doesn’t concern you,” he muttered, still adrift in the darkness that was rising up on him from within his broken mind. “You don’t know anything about her.”
“She was the one who led me to you. I saw her on the mountain in Jiáín.”
An irrational suspicion sharpened his anger to something deadly. “What do you mean, you saw her? You knew Eva?”
Dylan swallowed, gave a small shrug of her shoulder. She held the picture frame out toward him. “I saw her…her spirit was there. She was there on the mountain with you.”
“Bullshit,” he growled. “Don’t talk to me about that female. She’s dead, and that’s where she belongs.”
“She asked me to help you, Rio. She sought me out. She wanted me to save you—”
“I said that’s bullshit!” he roared.
Fury brought his body up off the mattress like a viper lashing out to strike. He knocked the frame out of Dylan’s hands, and his rage hurled it across the room in blinding speed. It crashed into the large mirror on the wall opposite the bed, splintering on impact and sending shards of polished glass exploding out like a hail of tiny razor blades.
He heard Dylan cry out, but it wasn’t until he smelled the juniper-sweet scent of her blood that he realized what he’d done.
She held her hand up to her cheek, and when her fingers came away, they were stained scarlet from a small, bleeding gash just below her left eye.
It was the sight of that wound that snapped Rio out of his downward spiral. Like a bucket of cold water thrown over his head, seeing Dylan injured jolted him instantly sober.
“Ah, Cristo,” he hissed. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”
He moved to touch her, to assess how badly he’d hurt her—and she backed away from him with wide, terrified eyes.
“Dylan…I didn’t mean to—”
“Stay away from me.”
He reached out, meaning only to reassure her that he meant no harm.
“No.” She flinched, shaking her head wildly. “Oh, my God. Don’t you touch me.”
Madre de Dios.
She was gaping at him in utter horror now. She was trembling, eyes fixed on him in fear and confusion.
When his tongue brushed across the pointed tips of his extended fangs, Rio understood the source of her terror. He stood before her, the vampire he’d told her he was but which her human mind refused to comprehend.
Now, it did.
She was seeing the truth of it for herself, in the physical changes that had come over him and transformed him from scarred madman to a creature out of a nightmare. There was no hiding the fangs that stretched even larger as his hunger for her swelled. No way to mask the elliptical sharpening of his pupils as the amber glow of bloodthirst swamped his vision.
He looked at the small cut, the rivulet of blood trailing down from it so red against the creamy skin of Dylan’s cheek, and he could hardly form a coherent thought.
“I tried to tell you, Dylan. This is what I am.”
CHAPTER
Sixteen
Vampire.”
Dylan heard the word slip past her lips, despite the fact that she could hardly believe what she was seeing.
In a matter of moments, Rio had transformed before her eyes. She stared in shock at the changes she’d just witnessed. His irises glowed like embers, no longer the smoky topaz color they normally were, but an incredible shade of amber that nearly swallowed up his impossibly thinned pupils. The bones of his face seemed starker now, lean, blade-sharp cheekbones and a squared jaw that seemed carved of stone.
And behind the lush cut of his mouth, Rio sported a pair of fangs like something straight out of the movies.
“You…” Her voice trailed off as those hypnotic amber eyes drank her in. She sat down weakly on the edge of the bed. “My God. You really are…”
“I am Breed,” he said simply. “Just as I told you.”
Seated in front of him, her vision filled with the broad musculature of his bare chest. The complicated pattern of skin markings on his forearms tracked up over his shoulders and down along his pectorals. The entire array of markings—dermaglyphs, he’d called them the first time she noticed them—were livid with color now, the darkest they’d been yet. Deep reds, purples, and black saturated the beautiful flourishes and arcing lines.
“I can’t stop the change,” he murmured, as if he felt obligated to explain himself. “The transformation is automatic for every Breed male when he senses fresh spilled blood.”
His gaze shifted slightly down from her eyes, to where her cheek burned from the bite of the glass that struck her. She felt the warm track of blood sliding toward her chin like a tear. Rio watched that droplet fall with an intensity that made Dylan tremble. He licked his lips and swallowed, but clamped his teeth together as rigidly as a vise.
“Stay here,” he said, scowling hard, his voice dark and commanding.
Instinct told Dylan she might be smarter to run, but she refused to be afraid. Strange as it seemed, she felt she’d come to know this man over the past handful of days they’d been thrust together. Rio was no saint, that was for sure. He had abducted her, imprisoned her, and she still wasn’t certain what he meant to do with her, but she didn’t think he was a danger to her.
What she’d just witnessed here wasn’t exactly cause for celebration, but in her heart, she didn’t fear what he was.
Well, not completely, anyway.
The water was still running in the shower. She heard it turn off, then Rio came out holding a damp white washcloth. He offered it to her at arm’s length. “Press this to the wound. It will stanch the bleeding.”
Dylan took the cloth and held it to her cheek. She didn’t miss Rio’s long exhale as she covered the gash, like he was relieved he didn’t have to look at it anymore. The fiery color of his eyes slowly began to dim, his slender pupils resuming their round shape. But his dermaglyphs were still flushed with color, and his fangs still looked deadly sharp.
“You really are…aren’t you?” she murmured. “You’re a vampire. Holy shit, I can’t believe it’s true. I mean, how can it be true, Rio?”
He sat down next to her on the bed, no less than two feet of space between them. “I already explained it to you.”
“Blood-drinking extraterrestrials and human women with alien-friendly DNA,” she said, recalling the outlandish story about a vampiric hybrid race she’d tried to dismiss as science fiction. “It’s all fact?”
“The truth is a bit more complicated than your understanding of it, but yes. Everything I told you is fact.”
Incredible.
Absolutely mind-blowingly incredible.
A mercenary part of her nearly shouted with excitement over the potential fame and fortune there would be in breaking such an enormous news story. But it was another part of her—the part that reminded her of the little birthmark on the back of her neck and its apparent connection to this strange new world—that made her feel instantly protective, as though Rio and the world he lived in was a delicious secret that belonged exclusively to her.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” she told him quietly. “I shouldn’t have been nosing around in your things when you weren’t here.”
His head came up sharply, dark brows crushed together. The curse he muttered was ripe and vivid. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Dylan. I’m the one at fault. I should never have come in here the way I was. No one should be near me when I’m like that.”
“You seem a little better now.”
He nodded, head slumped down toward his chest. “The rage subsides…eventually. If I don’t black out first, it does eventually pass.”
It didn’t take much to see him as he had been when he stumbled into his quarters a short while ago. He’d been almost mindless, his limbs hardly working as he struggled with each difficult step. He’d been barely coherent, a shuddering bulk of muscle and bone and unfocused fury.
“What brings it on, Rio?”
He shrugged. “Little things. Nothing at all. I can never know.”
“Is that kind of rage just part of being what you are? Do all of the Breed have to go through that kind of torment?”
“No.” He scoffed under his breath. “No, this problem is mine alone. My head’s not screwed on right anymore. It hasn’t been right since last summer.”
“Was it an accident?” she asked gently. “Is that what happened to you?”
“It was a mistake,” he said, a brittle edge to his voice. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.”
Dylan looked at the terrible damage his body had weathered. His face and neck bore serious scars, but his left shoulder and half of his muscled torso looked like it had been through hell and back. Her heart clenched tightly in her chest when she thought about the kind of pain he must have endured, both in the event that injured him and in what had to have been many long months of recovery.
He sat there so rigidly, so solitary and unreachable even though he was less than an arm’s length away from her on the edge of the big bed. He seemed so alone to her. Alone and adrift.
“I’m sorry, Rio,” she said, and before she could stop herself, she put her hand over the top of his where it rested on his thigh.
He flinched as though she’d put hot coals on his skin.
But he didn’t move away.
He stared down at her fingers, which rested lightly across his, pale white over buttery olive. When he looked over at her, it was with a stark wildness in his eyes. She wondered how long it had been since he’d been touched with any kind of tenderness.
How long had it been since he’d allowed himself to be touched?
Dylan smoothed her fingers over the top of his hand, studying the incredible size and strength of him. His skin was so warm, so much coiled power in him even when he seemed determined to hold himself perfectly still.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, Rio. I mean that.”
His jaw was clamped so hard it made a tendon twitch in his face. Dylan set the cold compress down on the bed next to her, hardly aware that she was moving because her senses were so fixed on Rio and the electricity that seemed to be pooling where their hands connected.
She heard a low rumble gathering from within him, something between a growl and a moan. His gaze drifted down to her mouth, and for a second—one fast, fleeting heartbeat—she wondered if he was going to kiss her.
She knew she should draw back. Move her hand away from his. Anything but sit there unable to breathe as she waited and wondered—wished so desperately—that he would lean in and brush his lips against hers.
She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to him now. She moved her free hand up toward his face, and felt a sudden blast of cold air coming at her, pushing at her like a physical wall.
“I don’t want your pity,” Rio snarled in a voice she didn’t recognize as his own. The rolling Spanish accent was there as always, but the syllables were harsh, the timbre not quite human, reminding her of just how little she understood about him or his kind. He pulled his hand out from under hers and stood up from the bed. “That cut of yours is still bleeding. You need attention I can’t give you.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Dylan replied, feeling like an idiot for putting herself out there like that with him. She grabbed the damp washcloth and dabbed at her cheek. “It’s no big deal. I’m fine.”
There was no sense talking since it was obvious he wasn’t listening to her anyway. She watched him walk past the broken glass of the shattered mirror, into the living room outside. He picked up the cordless telephone and dialed a short sequence of numbers.
“Dante? Hey. No, nothing wrong. But I, ah…is Tess there? I need to ask a favor of her.”
Rio paced like a caged animal in the short minutes it took for his rescue to arrive. He stayed out of the bedroom, confining himself to a small space of real estate near the main entry of his quarters. As far away from Dylan as he could get without actually bolting out of the damn apartment and waiting outside.
Madre de Dios.
He’d nearly kissed her.
Still wanted to, and the admission—even to himself—was like a sucker punch to the gut. Kissing Dylan Alexander was a guaranteed way to turn a bad situation into something catastrophic. Because Rio knew without a shred of doubt that if he kissed the fiery beauty, it wouldn’t stop there.
Just thinking about feeling the press of her lips on his made his blood quicken in his veins. His glyphs pulsed with the colors of his desire—churning in shades of dark wine and gold. And there was no denying the other evidence of that desire. His cock was as hard as granite, and had been since the instant she so unexpectedly laid her hand atop his.
Holy hell.
He didn’t dare look back into the bedroom for fear that he wouldn’t be able to keep his feet from doing an about-face march through the closed French doors and right into Dylan’s arms.
Like she would actually have him, he thought viciously.
That pat of his hand had been a sweet gesture, the kind of “there, there” comfort a mother might offer a pouting child. Or worse than that, it might have been the pained sympathy of a charitable angel consoling one of God’s most unfortunate blunders.
Maldecido.
Manos del diablo.
Monstruo.
Yes, he was all those things. And now Dylan had seen how ugly he truly was. To her credit she hadn’t recoiled at all the twisted flesh or his fangs, but then she was made of stronger stuff than that.
But to think she might welcome his touch? That she might get close enough to his ruined face to let him kiss her?
Not fucking likely. And he thanked God for that, because it saved him from seeing her disgust. It saved him from doing something really stupid, like forgetting for even one second that she was in the compound—in his private quarters—only until he corrected the mistake he’d made in letting her get close to that cave. The sooner he could do that and get her gone, the better.
A staccato rap sounded on the door.
Rio pulled it open with a growl of self-directed frustration.
“You sounded like shit, so I thought I’d come along with Tess and take a look at you for myself.” Dante’s mouth quirked into that cocky grin of his as he stood at the threshold with his gorgeous Breedmate close at his side. “You gonna let us in, man?”
“Yeah.” Rio backed off to give the couple space to enter.
Dante’s mate looked prettier than ever. Her long honey-brown waves were pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her wise aquamarine eyes were soft, even when looking Rio full in the face.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said, and without hesitation she strode over to him and went up on her toes to give him a quick embrace and a kiss on his cheek. “Dante and I both have been so worried about you these past months, Rio.”
“No need,” he replied, but he couldn’t deny that the concern warmed him.
Tess and Dante had only been together since late autumn of last year; she’d come into the Order’s compound with an extraordinary gift for healing and restoring life with her tender hands. Tess’s touch held amazing power, but not even she had been able to fix all that was wrong with Rio. He was too far gone by the time Tess arrived. His scars were permanent, both inside and out, though not for lack of trying on Tess’s part.
Dante put his arm around his Breedmate in a move that was both protective and reverent, and it was then that Rio noticed the gentle swell of her belly underneath the pale rose tee-shirt and khaki pants she wore. She caught his downward glance and smiled as beatific as the Madonna herself.
“I’m just out of my first trimester,” she said, turning all of that glowing love on Dante now. “Someone’s making it his new mission in life to spoil me rotten.”
Dante chuckled. “I aim to please.”
“Congratulations,” Rio murmured, genuinely happy for the pair.
It wasn’t common for warriors and their mates to raise a family within the Order. Practically unheard of, in fact. Breed males who looked to devote their lives to combat typically weren’t the home-and-hearth types. But then Dante never had been one to color within the lines.
“Where is Dylan?” Tess asked.
Rio gestured toward the closed French doors across the room. “I made an ass of myself in there with her. I had a meltdown and I…ah, damn, I shattered a mirror. Some of the flying glass cut her cheek.”
“You’re still experiencing the blackouts?” Tess asked, frowning. “The headaches too?”
He shrugged, not wanting to discuss his own numerous problems. “I’m okay. Just…do what you can to take care of her, all right?”
“I will.” Tess took a small black medical bag from Dante’s hands. At Rio’s questioning look, she said, “Since I’ve been expecting, my healing abilities have dimmed. I understand it’s normal for pregnancy to draw a Breedmate’s energy inward. It should come back once the baby is born. Until then, I’ll have to rely on good old-fashioned medicine.”
Rio cast a look over his shoulder at the bedroom. He couldn’t see Dylan, but he figured she was in there needing to see someone kind and gentle. Someone who could patch her up and talk to her like a normal person. Reassure her that she was safe, among people she could trust. Especially after the spectacular display of raging psychotic-turned-lecherous freak he’d put on for her in there.
“It’s okay,” Tess said. “I’ll take care of her.”
Dante cuffed Rio in the biceps. “Come on. There’s still an hour or so before dawn. You look like you could use some fresh air, my man.”
CHAPTER
Seventeen
Dylan was crouched on the floor near the foot of the bed, picking up broken glass, when the French doors opened softly into the bedroom.
“Dylan?”
It was a female voice, the one she’d heard talking quietly with Rio and another man in the other room a minute ago. Dylan looked up and felt the instant warmth of a caring bright teal gaze light on her.
The beautiful young woman smiled. “Hi. I’m Tess.”
“Hi.” Dylan set a glass shard off to the side and bent to retrieve another.
“Rio asked me to come in and see if you were all right.” Tess carried a small black leather bag as she came into the room. “Are you okay?”
Dylan nodded. “It’s just a scratch.”
“Rio feels really awful about this. He’s been having…problems for some time now. Ever since the warehouse explosion last summer. He’s lucky to be alive.”
Oh, God. So that explained the burns and shrapnel scars. An explosion did all of that damage? He really had been through hell and back.
Tess went on. “Because of his brain trauma from the blast, he blacks out from time to time. On top of that, he also has severe headaches, mood swings…well, I think you saw for yourself, it’s no picnic. He didn’t mean for you to get hurt, I promise you that.”
“I’m fine,” Dylan said, not about to worry over the scratch on her cheek. “I tried to tell him it was no big deal. The cut’s not bleeding anymore.”
“That’s a relief,” Tess said as she set the medical satchel down on the bureau. “I’m glad to see it’s not as bad as Rio feared. The way he described it to me on the phone, I thought we were looking at half a dozen stitches at least. A little antiseptic and a bandage ought to do the trick.” She walked over to where Dylan had been collecting pieces of the shattered mirror. “Here—let me help you with this.”
As she approached, Dylan noticed that Tess’s palm rested lightly on the little swell of her stomach. She was pregnant. Not that far along from the looks of it, but she beamed with an inner radiance that left no doubt whatsoever.
And the hand that cradled the early stages of a growing baby bump had a small birthmark on it. Dylan couldn’t help staring at the scarlet teardrop-and-crescent-moon shape on Tess’s right hand—the very same mark Dylan herself had been born with on the nape of her neck.
“You live here?” Dylan asked. “With…them?”
Tess nodded. “I live with Dante. He’s a warrior of the Order, like Rio and the others who live here at the compound.”
Dylan gestured to the tiny birthmark between Tess’s thumb and forefinger. “You’re his…Breedmate?” she asked, recalling the term Rio had used after he’d seen Dylan’s identical birthmark. “You’re married to one of them?”
“Dante and I were mated last year,” Tess said. “We’re blood-bonded, which connects us in a way that’s even deeper than marriage. I know Rio’s told you a bit about the Breed—how they live, where they come from. After what happened in here with him, I’m sure you have no doubt about what they are.”
Dylan nodded, still incredulous that any of this could actually be true. “Vampires.”
Tess smiled gently. “That’s what I thought too, at first. It’s not that simple to define them. The Breed is a complicated race, living in a complicated world full of enemies. Things can be very dangerous for them, and for those of us who love them. For the few males who’ve pledged themselves to the Order, every night is a risk to their lives.”
“Was it an accident?” Dylan blurted out. “The explosion that injured Rio…was it some kind of terrible accident?”
Something pained moved across the other woman’s expression. She stared at Dylan for a long moment, as if she wasn’t quite sure how much to say. But then she gave a slight shake of her head. “No. It wasn’t an accident. Someone close to Rio betrayed him. The explosion happened during a raid on an old warehouse in the city. Rio and the rest of the Order were ambushed.”
Dylan glanced down and she realized she was staring at the broken picture frame that Rio had hurtled across the room in his fit of rage. She carefully picked it up, flipped it over in her palms. Sweeping away the spiderweb of broken glass over the color snapshot, she stared down at the exotic dark eyes and the smile that didn’t quite reach them.
“Eva,” Tess confirmed. “She was Rio’s Breedmate.”
“But she betrayed him?”
“She did,” Tess said after a long pause. “Eva made a deal with one of the Order’s enemies—a powerful vampire who was also the brother of the Order’s leader, Lucan. For information that would help this vampire kill Lucan, something Eva wanted as much as Lucan’s brother, she was assured of two things. That Rio would live, and that he would be wounded badly enough that he would never be able to fight again.”
“Jesus,” Dylan gasped. “So she got what she wanted?”
“Not exactly. The Order was ambushed, based on information Eva delivered, but the vampire she bargained with had no intention of upholding his part of their deal. He sent in a bomb. The explosion might have killed them all, but ironically, Rio took the biggest hit. And then he had to learn afterward that it was Eva who made it happen.”
Dylan couldn’t speak. She tried to absorb the weight of what it must have been like for him—not only the physical pain of his injuries, but also the emotional hurt of a deception like the one dealt to him.
“I saw her.” Dylan glanced over at Tess and saw her frown deepen, confusion evident in her questioning gaze. Dylan hadn’t known this woman for more than a few minutes, and she wasn’t used to sharing herself with anyone, especially not the secret that made her so different from other people. But something in Tess’s caring eyes let her know that she was safe. She felt an instant affinity that made her trust she was with a friend. “The dead come to me from time to time—well, women do, anyway. Women who are no longer living. Eva came to me a few days ago when I was hiking with friends on a mountain outside Prague.”
“She…came to you,” Tess said cautiously. “How do you mean?”
“I saw her spirit, I guess you’d say. She led me to a hidden cave. I didn’t know it, but Rio was inside. She—Eva—led me there and asked me to save him.”
“My God.” Tess slowly shook her head. “Does he know this?”
Dylan glanced meaningfully at the destruction lying at her feet. “Yeah, he knows. When I told him, that’s when he really lost it.”
Tess’s look was apologetic. “He has a lot of anger where Eva’s concerned.”
“Understandably,” Dylan replied. “Is he okay, Tess? I mean, considering what he’s gone through, is Rio going to be…okay?”
“I hope so. We all hope so.” Tess cocked her head slightly, studying her somehow. “You’re not afraid of him.”
No, she wasn’t. She was curious about him absolutely, and uncertain of his intentions where she was concerned, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Crazy as it was, even after seeing him as he’d been a short while ago in this very room, Dylan wasn’t afraid. In fact, just thinking about Rio did a lot of things to her, none of them scary. “Do you think I should be afraid of him?”
“No,” Tess said without hesitation. “What I mean is, this can’t be easy on you. God knows I didn’t take it very well when I first heard all of this talk of blood and fangs and war.”
Dylan shrugged. “I write for a quasi-tabloid newpaper. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot of bizarre things. I don’t shock easily.”
Tess smiled, but she didn’t hold Dylan’s gaze for long. The words she didn’t say were clear as a bell in those quickly averted eyes: This wasn’t just a bizarre tabloid story. This was real.
“What was in that cave, Tess? It was apparently some kind of crypt—a hibernation chamber, I heard Rio call it. But what the hell was in there? Did something get loose up there on the mountainside?”
Tess lifted her eyes, but only gave a small shake of her head. “I don’t think you really want to know.”
“Yes, I do,” Dylan insisted. “Whatever it was, it’s obviously important enough that Rio felt he had to kidnap me and lock me up to keep me quiet about what I saw.”
Tess’s silence put a knot of dread in Dylan’s gut. The Breedmate knew what was in that cave, and the knowledge of it clearly terrified her.
“Tess, something was sleeping in that hidden tomb—from the look of it, I’d say it had been holed up there for a very long time. What kind of creature was it…or is it?”
Tess stood up and dropped some broken glass into a wastebasket beside the bureau. “Let me take a look at your cut. We should clean it up and get a bandage on it so you don’t scar.”
Confined within the UV light cell, the Ancient threw his head back and let out a hellish roar. Blood dripped off the huge fangs and onto the broad, naked chest that was livid with the pulsing color of the vampire’s glyphs.
“Lock down those damn restraints,” barked his keeper, speaking to his Minions through a small microphone in the observation room outside the cell. “And for crissake, clean up that mess in there.”
The robotic shackles snaked out sharply and caught the Ancient’s thick arms and legs. With a programmic command, they seized up tight, yanking him nearly off his feet. He struggled against the bonds, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Thrashing futilely, he peeled back his lips and bellowed again. The wordless howl was one of unmistakable fury as his immense body was dominated by industrial-grade titanium and steel.
He was still erect from the breeding that had gone so violently wrong, still lusting for blood and for the body of the lifeless female that was being hastily—and posthumously—evacuated from the cage.
The Breedmate had been savaged. Hard nails and fangs left their mark all over her, and before the Ancient could be pulled off her, the female was dead. She wasn’t the first, not even close. Over the nearly five decades since the Ancient had been awakened from his hibernation and brought under his keeper’s control, feeding him—and breeding him—had proven to be a very costly, frustrating endeavor.
For all the technology and money at his disposal, there was no science in existence that could replace the kind of base rutting that had taken place in the prisoner’s cell a short while ago. Flesh on flesh coupling was the only viable means of conception when it came to the Ancient, and the rest of the Breed as well. But sex was only part of the process. It took ejaculation, along with a simultaneous exchange of blood at that precise moment, for vampire life to take root in a Breedmate female’s body.
Normally, bonded couples looking to conceive reveled in the deliberate, sensual act of creating life. Not so in this place. Down here, with the savage, alien creature rendered insane from starvation, pain, and confinement, conception was a life-and-death gamble. Casualties like the one today were part of the equation. Deaths were to be expected.
But there had been successes, and that made all the risk worthwhile. For every Breedmate killed in this process, two others made it out alive…with the seeds of a powerful new generation planted deep in their wombs.
The Ancient’s keeper smiled privately despite the day’s loss.
That powerful new generation was already growing, coming of age in secret.
And its allegiance belonged entirely to him.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Rio killed the last couple of hours before dawn topside in the estate’s back courtyard with Dante, then headed below to the compound for some alone time in the chapel. The quiet little sanctuary where the Order carried out their most important and personal ceremonies had always been a haven for him. Not now. All he saw in the candlelit space were reminders of Eva’s deception.
Because of her, over a year ago they’d had to anoint and shroud one of the Order’s most noble members in funeral white and place him on the altar at the front of the rows of pews. Conlan’s death in a subway tunnel last summer had been unintentional—the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—but his blood was on Eva’s hands.
Rio could still see her standing in the chapel at his side, clinging to him and weeping, yet all the while hiding her deceit. Waiting until the next chance she got to collude with the Order’s enemies as part of some misguided attempt to see Rio pulled from the Order—even by seeing him maimed—so he could finally belong to her alone.
The irony of it was, he never would have left the Order.
He didn’t want to now, and wouldn’t, if he felt the least bit useful to the warriors who’d been like kin to him for nearly a century. If he hadn’t been robbed of his sanity and his self-control by the blast that might have—should have—killed him.
“Shit,” he muttered, pivoting around to get the hell out of the chapel.
He didn’t need to linger there any longer with his old ghosts or the misery they brought him. All it took to revive Eva in his mind was a glance in a mirror or a reflection in a window. He tried damn hard not to do that, not only because of the shock of seeing what stared back at him, but also because he wanted Eva severed from his life completely. Just hearing her name was enough to send him into a fit of uncontrollable rage.
As Dylan could unfortunately attest.
He wondered if she was okay. Tess would have taken excellent care of her, even if her healing touch was absent now that she was pregnant.
But still, Rio wondered. He hated himself for the way he’d reacted. Dylan was probably feeling likewise. If she wasn’t too busy pitying him for the mental train wreck he’d proven himself to be.
Feeling as alone and detached as a ghost himself, Rio wandered away from the compound’s chapel and down the labyrinth of corridors until he reached the empty infirmary. He took a quick shower in the medical recovery room that had been his home during the months following the explosion, letting the hot water wash away the aches in his muscles and the rising pound in his temples.
And as he cut the spray and toweled off, his thoughts returned to Dylan. It wasn’t doing her any good at all to be kept here against her will. And getting her gone meant he had to get that story of hers derailed ASAP.
It was morning now, which may mean lights out for the Breed, but not for the humans living topside. They’d be going about their usual weekday habits, which meant one more day for Dylan’s boss at the paper to think about running her story. One more day for the women Dylan had been traveling with to talk about the cave she’d found and speculate on what it might have contained. One more day for Rio’s fuckup to put the Order and all of the vampire nation in jeopardy of discovery by humankind.
He threw on a pair of loose navy warm-ups and a tank that were still folded in the closet with a few other things leftover from his extended stay in the infirmary wing. When he stepped into the corridor and navigated his way back to his quarters, it was with new purpose. His head was clearer now, and he was good and ready to get Dylan working on the kibosh to that cave story before another minute passed.
Except when he opened the door to his private apartments, the place was dark. Only a small table lamp glowed in the corner of the living room, like a night light left on for him in case he came back. He glared at the welcome little glow as he slipped inside and quietly shut the door.
Dylan was sleeping. He could see her in his bed in the other room, curled up on top of the duvet. No doubt she was exhausted. The past three days had to have taken a toll on her. Hell, they’d taken a toll on him too.
He walked into the dark bedroom and promptly forgot all about his original purpose in coming into the apartment as he got an eyeful of Dylan’s long, bare legs. She was wearing a babydoll tee-shirt and pastel plaid boxers, stuff evidently taken out of her travel bag, which lay open next to the bed.
The cotton combo was nothing overtly sexy as far as sleepwear went—certainly nothing close to the expensive scraps of lace and satin that Eva used to parade around in for him. But damn if Dylan didn’t look good in next to nothing…and look good sleeping in his bed.
Cristo, far too good.
Rio pulled a silk throw from a chair in the corner of the room and carried it over to the bed to cover her up. He wasn’t doing it merely to be courteous. As one of the Breed, his vision was even sharper in the dark. All of his senses were more acute, and at the moment, they were conspiring to kill him with input about the half-naked female lying so vulnerably within his reach.
He tried not to notice that her breasts were bare beneath the little cap-sleeved shirt, her nipples pressing deliciously against the thin cotton. The temptation to stare at her smooth white skin—especially the exposed wedge of her abdomen where the tee-shirt was twisted and riding up so nicely above her navel—was more than he could handle.
But as he neared the edge of the bed with the blanket, she stirred slightly, shifting her legs and rolling a little farther onto her back. Rio stood there, unmoving, praying she didn’t wake up and find him looming over her like a phantom.
Looking at her put a hot ache in his chest. He had no claim on Dylan, but a surge of possession ran through his blood like several thousand volts of live electricity. She wasn’t his—wouldn’t be his, no matter what path she chose in the end. Whether she wanted a future living among the Breed in a Darkhaven or one lived topside without any recollection of Rio and his kind, she wasn’t going to belong to him. She deserved better, that’s for sure.
Another man—be he Breed or human—would be much better suited to care for a woman like Dylan. It would be another man’s privilege to explore her soft curves and silky skin. Another man’s pleasure to taste the delicate pulse that beat in the sweet hollow at the base of her throat. Only another Breed male should have the honor of piercing Dylan’s veins with a tender, wholly reverent bite.
It would be the solemn vow of another—never him—to protect her from all harm and to sustain her faithfully and forever with the blood and strength of his immortal body.
Not his right at all, Rio thought grimly as he placed the blanket over her as lightly as he could. Not one damn bit of her was his to desire.
But yet he did.
God, did he ever.
He burned with want, even knowing he shouldn’t. Rio told himself it was purely accidental that his hands brushed along her curves as he dragged the silk coverlet higher. He didn’t mean to let his fingers trail through her soft hair, the flame-red waves dampened slightly from a recent washing. He couldn’t resist smoothing his thumb along the fine slope of her cheek and over the velvety skin below her ear.
And there was no biting back his whispered curse as his gaze lit on the small bandage that covered the cut he’d given her.
Shit. This was all he truly had to offer her—pain and apologies. And the only reason she was letting him get this close to her now was because she didn’t know he was there.
Wasn’t awake to see the beast standing over her in the dark, stealing touches and contemplating what it would be like to do far more. Wanting her so badly that his fangs were biting into his tongue, and his lust-changed eyes were throwing off some seriously intense amber light. Those Breed high beams were bathing her in a burnished glow, illuminating every dip and swell and delectable curve.
He drew his hand away from her and she stirred, probably from the heat of his transformed gaze. A quick downward sweep of his lids cut the twin spotlights, plunging the room into total darkness again.
Rio backed away from her without making a sound.
Then he crept out of the bedroom before he could prove himself any more of the thief he feared he could easily become when it came to this female.
At first Dylan thought it was the touch that woke her, but the tender fingers caressing her cheek had been a soothing warmth that made sleep feel more luxurious. It was the abrupt absence of that warmth that pulled her out of what had been a very pleasant dream.
She opened her eyes, seeing nothing but darkness in the bedroom.
Rio’s bedroom.
Rio’s bed.
She sat up at the realization, feeling awkward as hell that she’d fallen asleep here after taking a shower earlier that night. Or was it day? She didn’t know, and couldn’t tell, since there were no windows to be found in all two-thousand-plus square feet of Rio’s apartment.
The place was dark and still, but Dylan didn’t think she was alone.
“Hello?”
A whole lot of quiet was all she heard in response.
She peered out toward the living room and noticed that the lamp she’d left on was off now. And someone definitely had been in here at some point, because whoever it was had covered her with a light blanket that used to be draped over one of the bedroom chairs.
It was Rio. She knew it absolutely.
It had been him beside the bed not a moment ago. His touch that had felt so good against her skin, and so cold when it was gone.
Dylan pivoted around and put her bare feet on the floor. She padded to the closed French doors, opening them softly as she strained to see anything in the lightless living room on the other side.
“Rio…are you asleep?”
She didn’t ask if he was there; she knew he was. She could feel his presence in the way her heart was racing, blood speeding through her veins. Dylan walked across the carpeted floor to where she remembered seeing a squat ginger jar lamp on a little writing desk. She felt her way there, reaching out carefully for the cold porcelain base of the lamp.
“Leave it off.”
Dylan swiveled her head toward the sound of Rio’s voice. He was to her right, near the center of the room. Now that her eyes were adjusting to the lack of light, she could see him in the large, dark form seated on the velvet sofa, his body and long limbs devouring the petite lines of the furniture.
“You can have your bed. I didn’t mean to fall asleep there.”
She walked deeper into the room…and heard a low growl rumble from his direction.
Oh, God. She froze where she was standing, just a few steps away from the sofa. Was he in the throes of another meltdown like earlier? Or had he not fully recovered from that one yet?
Dylan cleared her throat. Braved another step toward him. “Are you…um, do you…need anything? Because if there’s something I can do—”
“Goddamn it!” The sound of his voice was more desperate than angry. He pulled one of his faster-than-you-can-blink maneuvers, shooting up off the sofa and moving back against the far wall. As far as he could get from her. “Dylan, please. Just go back to bed. You need to stay away from me.”
That was probably really good advice. Staying away from a vampire with a traumatic brain injury and a nuclear-grade level of uncontrollable rage was probably about the smartest thing she could do. Yet Dylan’s feet kept moving, like all her common sense and survival instincts had packed up and gone on a sudden vacation.
“I’m not afraid of you, Rio. I don’t think you’re going to hurt me.”
He didn’t say anything to confirm or deny it. Dylan could hear him breathing—if the sharp, shallow panting qualified as such. She felt like she was walking up on a wounded wild animal, unsure if reaching out to him was going to win her a bit of uneasy trust or a vicious taste of fang and claw.
“You were in the bedroom with me a few minutes ago…weren’t you?” She inched steadily forward, undaunted by the weight of his silence or the darkness that concealed him in shadow. “You touched me. I felt your hand on my face. I…I liked it, Rio. I didn’t want you to stop.”
He hissed a nasty, violent curse. She felt rather than saw his head come up sharply. There was a pause, and then he must have opened his eyes because the darkness was suddenly pierced by two glowing embers aimed straight at her.
“Your eyes…” she murmured, caught like a moth in a flame.
She’d seen Rio’s eyes transform from topaz to amber when he’d stumbled into his quarters a few hours ago, but this…this was different. There was a smoldering quality to them now, something other than anger or pain. More intense, if that was possible.
Dylan couldn’t move, just stood there in the heated path of Rio’s gaze, feeling it rake her body from head to toe. Her heart flipped and stuttered as that amber gaze burned over her, into her.
Now he was moving, striding toward her with slow, predatory grace.
“Why did you come up on that mountain?” he asked her, his voice harsh, accusing.
Dylan swallowed, watching him approach her in the dark. She started to say that it was Eva who sent her there, but that was only partly true. The ghost that was Eva had showed her the way, but Dylan returned to the cave because of Rio.
As much as anything—including the job she thought she might be saving with her story of a demon in the Bohemian hills—it was Rio who compelled her to stay in the cave and try to reach out to him when good sense would have told her to flee. It was he who compelled her now, desire for him keeping her feet rooted to the floor when fear should have been sending her running as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
He was right in front of her now, still masked by darkness except for the eerie, seductive glow of his vampire eyes.
“Goddamn it, Dylan. Why did you come up there?” His hands were firm as he took hold of her upper arms. He gave her a little shake, but he was the one who trembled. “Why? Why did you have to be the one?”
She knew the kiss was coming, even in the dark, but the initial press of his mouth on hers went through Dylan like an uncontained flame. It seared her, hot desire shooting into her core. She melted, losing herself in the brush of Rio’s lips—and, oh, Christ—his fangs. She felt the pointed tips of them as he pushed her mouth open with his tongue, forcing her to take what he had to give her now.
Dylan wasn’t about to fight it. She’d never known anything as erotic as the graze of Rio’s fangs as he kissed her. There was so much lethal power in him; she could feel it, coiled and dangerous, but on the very knife’s edge of breaking loose. Rio held her tightly, kissed her harshly, and Dylan had never been so turned on in all her life.
He pushed her down onto the sofa behind her, his strong hands braced at her back to ease the fall. He went with her, the weight of his hard body bearing her down beneath him. She could feel the thick ridge of his sex. It felt enormous and stiff as stone where it wedged between their bodies. Dylan ran her hands up his back, slipping them under the cotton tank he wore so she could feel the flex of his strong muscles as he moved atop her.
“I want to see you,” she gasped in between his hungry kisses. “I need to see you, Rio…”
She didn’t wait for his permission.
Casting her hand about, she found the lamp beside the sofa and clicked it on. Soft yellow light bathed the room in illumination. Rio was poised above her, straddling her hips with his knees as he stared down at her in what looked to be pure misery.
His eyes were glowing fiery amber. His features were drawn taut, his jaw held locked but not quite able to mask the astonishing length or sharpness of his fangs. The dermaglyphs on his shoulders and arms were churning with color—beautiful, deep saturations in a range of burgundy, indigo, and gold.
And his scars…well, she saw them too. Couldn’t really ignore them, and she didn’t try to.
Dylan came up onto one elbow and reached up to him with her other hand. He flinched, turning his face to the left like he meant to hide his ruined cheek. But Dylan wasn’t about to let him hide. Not now. Not from her. She reached out again, tenderly placing her palm against the hard line of his jaw.
“Don’t,” he said thickly.
“It’s okay.” She gently turned him to face her full-on. With the utmost care, she lightly caressed the scarred skin. She followed the damage to his body, smoothing her fingers down the side of his neck, to his shoulder and biceps, over the skin that had once been as smooth and flawless as the rest of him. “Does it hurt for me to touch you like this?”
He said something, but it came out strangled, unintelligible.
Dylan sat up fully, lifting herself until her face was level with his. She held his gaze, making sure those thin, catlike pupils stayed rooted on her eyes as she softly stroked his cheek, his jaw, his wonderfully sensual mouth.
“Don’t look at me, Dylan,” he croaked, the very thing he’d said before, she realized now. “Fuck…how can you look at me so closely—how can you put your hands on me—and not be revolted?”
Dylan’s heart squeezed up like a fist in her breast. “I’m looking at you, Rio. I see you. I’m touching you. You,” she said with emphasis.
“These scars—”
“Are incidental,” she finished for him. She smiled as she glanced down at his mouth and at the perfectly white, perfectly incredible pair of fangs that had sprouted from his gums. “Your scars are the most ordinary thing about you, if you want to know the truth.”
His lip curled back as if he were going to push her away with more talk of his perceived defects, but Dylan didn’t give him the chance. She held his face in her hands and leaned in close, giving him a deep, unhurried, passionate kiss.
She moaned as his hands wove into her hair and he kissed her back.
Dylan wanted him so fiercely, she could hardly stand it. God, the whole thing made no sense—this craving she had for a man she hardly knew and for so many reasons should be terrified of, not kissing like there was no tomorrow.
But she didn’t want to stop kissing Rio. She put her arms around his shoulders and drew him down with her, back onto the sofa. His hair was silky against her palm, his mouth hot and questing on hers. His hand was strong but gentle as he slipped beneath the hem of her tee-shirt and smoothed his palm up her stomach and then over her bare breasts. Dylan writhed as he caressed her, his fingers teasing her nipples into hard, aching buds while his tongue played along the seam of her mouth.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, burning for him already.
He wedged himself deeper between her thighs, spreading her wide with his knees and grinding his stiff erection against her through their clothes. She nearly came from the delicious friction of their bodies. Good Christ, she was going to climax for sure if he kept up that fluid rhythm that left no doubt as to what kind of lover he would be once they had their clothes off.
Dylan lifted her feet and locked her ankles around his hips, letting him know that she was willing to go wherever he wanted to take this. She wasn’t used to throwing herself at a man’s feet—could hardly remember the last time she’d had sex at all, let alone good sex—but she could think of nothing she wanted more than to be making love with Rio. Right here. Right now.
He sucked her lower lip between his teeth as he rolled his hips against hers. She reveled in the graze of his fangs, in the hard, driving thrust of his body and the flex of his muscles under her palms. He slid his hand between her legs, his fingers cleaving her wet, hot flesh, and Dylan could not hold back the cry that curled up from her throat.
“Yes,” she hissed sharply as an orgasm rolled up on her out of nowhere. “Oh, God…Rio…”
She was spiraling inside, lost in pleasure, and clutching Rio as her core pulsed with her release. She heard his wild sounding growl, registered dimly that he had broken their kiss to let his lips wander down along the column of her throat. She wrapped her arms around him as he nuzzled her neck, his tongue playing hotly against her tender skin.
The rough stroke of his teeth in that spot startled her.
She tensed, even though she didn’t want to be afraid of what might come next. But she couldn’t call back the automatic reaction, and Rio drew away from her as if she’d screamed at the top of her lungs.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, reaching for him but he was already gone, moving off her and taking himself more than an arm’s length from the sofa. Dylan sat up, feeling oddly bereft. “I’m sorry, Rio. I just wasn’t sure…”
“Don’t apologize,” he muttered sullenly. “Madre de Dios, do not apologize to me, please. This was my fault, Dylan.”
“No,” she said, desperate that he stay with her. “I want this, Rio.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “And I would not have been able to stop.”
He raked his hand through his dark hair, staring at her with those blazing amber eyes. “This would have been a terrible mistake for both of us,” he said after a long moment. “Ah, fuck. It already is a terrible mistake.”
Before she could say anything, Rio simply turned around and left. As the apartment door closed behind him, Dylan pulled her tee-shirt back down and adjusted her skewed boxers. In the quiet he left her with, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins, then reached over and clicked off the lamp.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Rio lifted a 9mm pistol and aimed it toward a target at the end of the compound’s firing range. The gun felt foreign as hell in his hand despite that it was his own weapon, one he’d carried on him for years and had been lethally proficient with…before.
Before the warehouse explosion.
Before the injuries that had taken him out of combat and dropped him into a sickbed, broken in mind and body.
Before his blindness to Eva’s duplicity had made him question everything he was and ever could be again.
A sheen of sweat broke out on Rio’s lip as he held his target in his sights. His trigger finger was shaky, and it took all his concentration to focus in on the small head-and-shoulders silhouette printed on the paper target some twenty yards down the range.
But that was exactly the point of his coming here.
After what had happened with Dylan a few minutes ago, Rio needed a distraction in a major way. Something that would command all of his focus, cool him out. Hopefully dull the edge of the carnal hunger that gnawed at him even now. He wanted Dylan with a need that was still pounding through his veins in a deep, primal beat.
He could still feel her body moving beneath his, so soft and welcoming. So passionately responsive. So accepting of him, even though he was fit only to play Beast to her Beauty.
It was a fantasy he’d let himself indulge in as he’d kissed Dylan, as he pressed her down beneath him and wondered if the intense attraction he felt for her might actually be mutual. No one was that good an actor. Eva had claimed to love him once. The depth of her betrayal had been a shock, but in the back of his mind, he’d known she wasn’t happy with him the way he was, in the life he’d chosen as a warrior.
She hadn’t wanted him to join in the first place. She’d never understood his need to do some good, his need to be useful. More than once, she’d asked him why she wasn’t enough for him. Why loving her, making her happy, couldn’t be enough. He had wanted both, but even she had been able to see that he wanted the Order more.
Rio could still recall one night, strolling in a city park with Eva, taking pictures of her on a little bridge over the river. She’d told him that night how she wanted him to leave the Order and give her a baby. Demands he couldn’t—or, rather, wouldn’t—comply with.
Give it time, he’d told her. The warriors had been putting out fires with a small surge in Rogue activity in the region, so he’d told her to be patient. Once things settled down, maybe they could think about a family.
Looking back, he wasn’t sure he’d meant it. Eva hadn’t believed him; he’d seen that in her eyes, even then. Hell, maybe it had been at that very moment she’d decided to take matters into her own hands.
He had let Eva down and he knew it. But she had paid him back in spades. Her betrayal had rattled him on a soul-deep level. It had made him question everything, including why the hell he should be taking up precious space in this world.
When Dylan kissed him—when she looked at him full in the face and her eyes reflected back only honesty—Rio could believe, at least for a moment, that he wasn’t just a pitiful waste of air and space. When he’d looked into Dylan’s eyes and felt her hand cradling his scars, he could believe life might actually be worth living after all.
And he was a selfish bastard for thinking that he had anything to offer a woman like her. He’d already destroyed one woman’s life, and nearly his own; he wasn’t about to take a second chance with Dylan’s life.
Rio narrowed his gaze on the target down the way and forced an iron steadiness into his hold on the gun. He pulled the trigger, felt the familiar kick of his weapon as the Beretta discharged and a bullet went blasting into the smallest center ring of the target’s bull’s-eye.
“Good to see you haven’t lost a bit of your aim. Still dead-on like always.”
Rio set the weapon down on the shelf in front of him. When he turned around it was to find Nikolai standing behind him, his broad back leaned up against the wall. Rio had known he wasn’t alone here; he’d heard Niko and the three other unmated warriors talking on the far end of the facility as they cleaned their weapons and rehashed their late-night prowl of the human after-hours club.
“How was the hunting topside?”
Niko shrugged. “A lot of the usual.”
“Hot babes without enough sense to run when they see you coming?” Rio asked, a tentative stab at breaking the ice that was present between them since his arrival at the compound.
To his relief, Niko chuckled. “Nothing wrong with loose and easy when it comes to women, my man. Maybe next time you should hang with us. I can hook you up with something sweet and nasty.” Twin dimples notched his lean cheeks. “You know, if you’re not planning to off yourself or anything in the meantime. You dumb bastard.”
It was said without venom, only the solemn knowledge of a friend concerned about one of his own.
“I’ll let you know,” Rio said, and he could tell by Nikolai’s narrowed look that the warrior understood he wasn’t talking about the prospect of getting a little action topside.
Niko’s voice dropped to a confidential tone. “You can’t let her win, you know? ’Cause that’s what giving up is. Yeah, she screwed you over, and I’m not saying you need to forgive and forget because frankly I don’t think I could if I were you. But you’re still here. So fuck her,” Niko said harshly. “Fuck Eva. And fuck the bomb that went off in that warehouse. Because you, my friend, are still here.”
Rio scoffed, but it was a weak sound in his tight throat. He tried to clear the obstruction, feeling awkward as hell for caring that someone cared about him. “Damn, amigo. Just how much Oprah have you been watching since I’ve been gone? Because coming from you, that was really touching.”
Niko chortled. “On second thought, forget all that shit I just said. Fuck you too.”
Rio laughed, the first real laugh to come out of his mouth…Jesus, in about a full year’s time.
“Hey, Niko.” Kade came strolling up from the other end of the facility, the Alaskan’s black spiky hair and sharp silver eyes giving him a wild, wolflike look. “I’m turning in. Tonight if we run into that other Rogue out of the Darkhavens, don’t forget you promised he was mine.”
“If I don’t get to the suckhead first,” Brock put in, coming up behind the other warrior and smiling as he artfully placed the edge of a huge dagger under Kade’s chin.
Brock’s rich chuckle boomed out of him good-naturedly enough, but it was plain to see that the warrior the Order had recruited from Detroit would be as grim and thorough as the Reaper himself in combat. He let Kade go, and the two of them continued to argue over dibs on the Rogue as they headed out of the weapons room to their own separate corners of the compound.
Chase was the last to come around from the back of the facility. His black tee-shirt had a long rip down the front, like someone had tried to get a piece of him. Judging by the sated color of the vampire’s glyphs and the chilled-out look in his normally hard-ass eyes, it appeared he’d taken his fill of everything the club girls were offering topside tonight.
He gave Rio a slight incline of his head in greeting, then spoke to Nikolai. “If you hear anything more out of Seattle, let me know. I’m curious why a killing of this nature hasn’t been acknowledged by the Agency yet.”
“Yeah,” Niko said. “I’d like to know that myself.”
Rio frowned. “Who turned up dead in Seattle?”
“One of the longest-standing members of the Darkhaven out there,” Niko said. “The guy was Gen One, in fact.”
The hairs at the back of Rio’s neck did a sudden ten-hut at that bit of news. “How was he killed?”
Nikolai’s look was grave. “Bullet to the brain, pointblank range.”
“Where?”
“Typically the brain is located in the head region,” Chase drawled, his thick arms crossed over his chest.
Rio slid a narrowed glare on the male. “Thanks for the anatomy lesson, Harvard. I mean where was this Gen One at when he was killed?”
Niko met Rio’s sober look. “Shot in the backseat of his chauffeured limousine. My contact said the poor bastard was returning from the opera or the ballet or some damn thing, and while he was waiting at a traffic light, someone popped him in the head and vanished before the driver even realized what had happened. Why?”
Rio shrugged. “Maybe nothing, but when I was in Berlin, Andreas Reichen told me about a Gen One killing that happened recently over there. Only this Darkhaven elder ate it at a blood club.”
“Those private sports clubs have been outlawed for decades,” Chase said.
“Right,” Rio agreed, all sarcasm, since the ex–Darkhaven Agent seemed intent on being a prick. “So now they print the invitations in invisible ink and you need a secret decoder ring to get past the door.”
“Same MO on the Berlin Gen One?” Niko asked.
“No, not a gunshot wound. According to Reichen’s sources, this sports lover ended up losing his head.”
Niko whistled low under his breath. “That’s two of the top three methods for killing a first generation Breed vampire. Option Three being UV exposure, and let’s face it, the least effective way unless you have a leisurely ten to fifteen minutes to devote to your work.”
“The two killings could be unrelated,” Rio said, not sure his instincts could be trusted on this anyway. But damn if warning bells weren’t clamoring in his head like a cathedral belfry on Easter Sunday.
“Something’s off,” Chase said, finally getting with the program. “I don’t like the feel of this either. Two dead Gen Ones in a matter of, what, a week’s time? And both of them smelling like executions?”
“We don’t know that’s what they were,” Niko cautioned. “Come on, think of the odds here. If you live for a thousand years or so, you’re bound to piss someone off. Someone who might want to shoot you in the back of your limo, or guillotine you at a blood club.”
“And the Darkhavens don’t want word of either slaying going public?” Rio added.
Chase’s tawny brows came together tightly. “Berlin’s on hush mode, too?”
“Yeah. Reichen said they were keeping it quiet to avoid a scandal. Doesn’t look good to anyone if a pillar of your community gets toppled in a sports club full of blooded, dead humans.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Chase agreed. “But two dead Gen Ones is a pretty serious hit to the entire vampire nation. There can’t be more than twenty first generation individuals still alive among the entire population—Lucan and Tegan included. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Nikolai nodded. “That’s true. And it’s not like we can make any more.”
A chilling thought sank into Rio’s gut. “Not unless we had a live Ancient, a Breedmate, and about twenty years’ lead time.”
Both warriors looked at him with grave expressions.
Niko raked a hand through his blond hair. “Ah, fuck. You don’t think—”
“I pray to God I’m wrong,” Rio said. “But we’d better wake Lucan.”
CHAPTER
Twenty
Being alone after Rio left had made Dylan restless as hell. Her mind was spinning, emotions churning. And she couldn’t help thinking about her life back in New York. She had to let her mother know that she was all right at the very least.
Flipping on a lamp, Dylan padded into the bedroom and retrieved her cell phone from its hiding place. She’d practically forgotten about it since she arrived there, having taken it out of her pants pocket and stuffed it under the mattress of Rio’s bed the first chance she’d gotten to ditch the thing for safekeeping.
She powered it up, trying to muffle the musical chime as the phone came alive. It was a miracle there was any juice left in the battery at all, but she figured the single bar of remaining power was better than nothing.
Voice mail waiting, the illuminated display informed her.
She had service again.
Oh, thank God.
The number for call-back on the first voice mail was a New York exchange—one of Coleman Hogg’s office lines. She retrieved the message and wasn’t a bit surprised to hear him sputter and curse about her rudeness in standing up his freelance photographer in Prague.
Dylan skipped the rest of his diatribe and went to the next message. It was her mom, received two days ago, just calling to check in and say she loved her and hoped she was having fun. She sounded tired, that feathery quality to her voice making Dylan’s heart go tight in her chest.
There was another message from her boss. This time he was even more angry. He was docking her pay for the cameraman’s fee, and he was considering the e-mail he’d received from her about taking extra time abroad to be her resignation. Effective immediately, Dylan was unemployed.
“Great,” she muttered under her breath as she skipped to the next call.
She couldn’t really get worked up over the loss of the job itself, but the lack of a paycheck was going to hurt real quick. Unless she found something better, something bigger. Something monumental. Something with real teeth…or fangs, as it were.
“No,” she told herself sharply before the idea could fully form in her mind.
No way could she take this story public now. Not when she still had more questions than answers—when she had become a part of the story herself, bizarre as it was to think that.
And then there was Rio.
If she needed one reason to protect what she’d learned about another species existing alongside humankind, he was it. She didn’t want to betray him, or put his kind at risk of any sort. She was past that, now that she was coming to know him. Now that she was coming to care for him, as dangerous as that might prove to be.
What happened between them a short while ago rattled her big-time. The kiss had been amazing. The feel of Rio’s body pressed so intimately against hers had been the hottest thing she’d ever known. And the feel of his teeth—his fangs—grazing the fragile skin of her neck had been both terrifying and erotic. Would he really have bitten her? And if he had, what would it have done to her?
Based on how fast he bolted out of the room, she didn’t expect she would ever have those answers. And really, she shouldn’t feel so empty at the thought.
What she needed to do was get herself out of this place—wherever she was—and get back to her own life. Back to being there for her mom, who was probably going crazy with worry now that Dylan had been out of touch for three full days.
The next three incoming calls had been from the runaway shelter, all received yesterday and last night. There were no messages, but the close timing of them seemed to indicate some urgency.
Dylan hit the speed-dial button for her mom’s house and waited as the phone rang unanswered on the other end. No answer on her mom’s cell phone either. With her heart in her throat, Dylan brought up the number for the shelter. Janet picked up her mom’s extension.
“Good morning. Sharon Alexander’s office.”
“Janet, hi. It’s Dylan.”
“Oh…hi, honey. How are you doing?” The question sounded oddly careful, as if Janet already knew—or thought she knew—that Dylan was probably not having a good day. “Are you at the hospital?”
“The what—no.” Dylan’s stomach sank. “What’s going on? Is it Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Lord,” Janet breathed softly. “You mean, you don’t know? I thought Nancy was going to call you…Where are you, Dylan—are you back home yet?”
“No,” she said, hardly aware she was talking for the cold ache opening up her chest. “No, I’m, ah…I’m still out of town. Where’s my mom, Janet? Is she okay? What’s happened to her?”
“She’d been feeling a little run-down after the river cruise the other night, but yesterday afternoon she collapsed here at the shelter. Dylan, honey, she’s not doing well right now. We took her to the hospital and they admitted her.”
“Oh, God.” Dylan’s whole body felt numbed out, frozen in place. “Is it a relapse?”
“They think so, yes.” Janet’s voice was the quietest it had ever been. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
Lucan hadn’t been happy to be roused out of bed with Gabrielle in the middle of the day, but as soon as he heard the reason for the interruption, the Order’s leader was all business, instantly snapped to attention. He’d thrown on a pair of dark jeans and an unbuttoned silk oxford, and came out to the corridor where Rio, Nikolai, and Chase waited.
“We’re going to need Gideon to run some record checks,” Lucan said, flipping out his cell phone and speed-dialing the warrior’s quarters. He murmured a greeting and an abrupt apology for the intrusion, then gave Gideon the same news Rio and the others had just shared with him. As the four of them headed down the hallway toward the tech lab, Gideon’s personal command center, Lucan finished up the short conversation and snapped the cell phone shut. “He’s on the way. I sure hope like hell you’re wrong about this, Rio.”
“So do I,” he said, no more eager than anyone else to consider the possibility.
It didn’t take Gideon more than a couple of minutes to join the impromptu meeting. He came into the lab in gray sweats and a white muscle shirt, sneakers unlaced like he’d just shoved his feet into them and ran. He dropped ass into the wheeled swivel chair at his computer command center and started launching programs from several of the machines.
“Okay, we’re sending feelers out to every reporting agency and Darkhaven resident bank, including the International Identification Database,” he said, watching the monitors as data slowly began to scroll up on the screens. “Huh. That’s odd. You said one of the two dead Gen Ones was out of Seattle?”
Nikolai nodded.
“Well, not according to this. Seattle came back with zip—no recent deaths reported. No record of a Gen One in their population at all, although that alone isn’t completely unheard of. The IID’s only been around for a few decades, so it’s by no means thorough. We have a few of the Breed’s eldest members catalogued, but the majority of the twenty or so Gen Ones still breathing tend to be a bit protective of their privacy. Rumor has it that more than a couple of them are bona fide recluses who haven’t been near a Darkhaven for a century or more. I guess they feel they’ve earned some autonomy after about a thousand or more years of living. Ain’t that right, Lucan?”
Lucan, himself aged around nine hundred and not in the IID register, only grunted in response, his gray eyes narrowed on the computer monitors. “What about Europe? Anything coming back on the Gen One that Reichen mentioned?”
Gideon banged out a lightning-fast sequence on his keyboard, burrowing into yet another secured software system like it was child’s play. “Shit. Nope, nothing showing up there either. I gotta tell you, this level of silence is eerie as hell.”
Rio had to agree. “So, if no one’s reporting Gen One deaths, there could actually be more than just the two we know of so far.”
“That’s something we need to find out,” Lucan said.
“How many Gen Ones are registered in the IID across all Breed locations, Gideon?”
The warrior ran a quick search. “I’ve got seven between the States and Europe. I’m sending the report of names and Darkhaven affiliations to the printer now.”
When the single-page listing came off the laser, Gideon swiveled around and handed it to Lucan. He looked it over. “Most of these names are familiar to me. I know of a couple more that aren’t listed. Tegan can probably come up with a couple more too.” He put the list of data down on the meeting table so that Rio and the others could have a look. “Any Gen One names you see missing from that list?”
Rio and Chase shook their heads.
“Sergei Yakut,” Niko murmured. “I saw him once in Siberia when I was a kid. He was the first Gen One I ever knew—hell, the only one, until I came to Boston and met Lucan and Tegan. Yakut’s name is not on this list.”
“You think you could find him if you had to?” Lucan asked. “Assuming he’s not already some long years dead, that is.”
Nikolai chuckled. “Sergei Yakut is one mean son of a bitch. Too mean for death. I’m willing to bet he’s still alive, and yeah, I think I could probably locate him if he is.”
“Good,” Lucan said, his expression dark. “I want to get a handle on this fast. Just in case we are looking at a potential serial situation, we need to get names and locations of every Gen One in the population.”
“I’m sure the Enforcement Agency knows of a few more than what we have here,” Chase added. “I’ve still got one or two friends left over there. Maybe someone knows something or can point me to someone who does.”
Lucan nodded. “Yeah. Check it out, then. But I know I don’t need to tell you to keep your cards close when you’re dealing with them. You may have a few friends in the Agency, but the Order sure as shit doesn’t. And no offense to you, Harvard, but I trust those useless Darkhaven ass-kissers about as far as I can drop-kick them.”
Lucan turned a serious look on Rio. “As for the other potential you brought up—that the Ancient may be revived and being used to breed a new line of first generation vampires?” He shook his head and exhaled a low curse. “Nightmare scenario, my friend. But it could very well be a solid one.”
“If it is,” Rio said, “then we’d better hope we get a lead on it soon. And that we’re not a couple of decades behind the bastard.”
It wasn’t until after he’d said it that Rio realized he was using the word “we” when talking about the warriors and their goals. He was including himself in his thinking about the Order. More than that, he was actually starting to feel a part of the whole again—a functioning, valid member—as he stood there with Lucan and the others, making plans, talking strategy.
It felt good, in fact.
Maybe there still could be a place for him here after all. He was a mess and he’d made some mistakes, but maybe he could get back to what he was before.
He was still reaching out for that hope as a little beep started up on one of Gideon’s monitoring stations for the compound. The warrior wheeled over to the computer, frowning.
“What is it?” Lucan asked.
“I’m picking up an active cell phone signal here in the compound—not one of ours,” he replied, then looked over at Rio. “It’s outbound, originating from your quarters.”
Dylan.
“Holy fuck,” Rio ground out, anger spiking—at himself and at her. “She said she didn’t have one on her.”
Goddamn it. Dylan had lied to him.
And if he’d had his eye on the ball like he should, he would have body-searched her from head to toe before he so much as thought about taking the female at her word.
A reporter with a cell phone in her possession. For all he knew she could be sitting in his apartments phoning in everything she’d seen and heard to CNN—exposing the Breed to the humans and doing it right under his fucking nose.
“There was nothing in her bags to indicate she had a cell with her,” Rio muttered, a feeble excuse and he knew it. “Damn it, I should have checked her over.”
Gideon typed something on one of his many control panels. “I can throw up some interference, shut down the signal.”
“Do it,” Lucan said. Then, to Rio: “We’ve got some loose ends that need to be snipped, my man. Including the one down the hall in your quarters.”
“Yeah,” Rio said, knowing Lucan was right. Dylan had a decision to make, and time was getting crucial now that the Order had other things to contend with.
Lucan put a hand on Rio’s shoulder. “I think it’s time I should meet Dylan Alexander personally.”
“Janet—hello? I didn’t get Mom’s room number. Hello…Janet? Are you still there?”
Dylan pulled her cell phone away from her ear. Signal failed.
“Shit.”
She held the device out in front of her and started pacing the room, looking for a spot where she might get a stronger signal. But…nothing. The damn thing was dead, just cut out on her even though the battery hadn’t quite choked yet.
She could hardly think straight for the panicked drum of her pulse.
Her mom was in the hospital.
Relapse…Oh, God.
She narrowly resisted the urge to pitch the dead cell phone into the nearest wall. “Damn piece of shit!”
Frantic now, she headed out to the living room to try the call again—
And nearly jumped out of her skin when the apartment door flew inward like it had been blown open by a storm force gale in the corridor. Rio stood there.
And good Lord, he was pissed off.
“Give it to me.”
His flashing amber eyes and emerging fangs put a knot of fear in her stomach, but she was pissed off too, and torn in pieces over her mother’s turn for the worse. She needed to see her. Needed to get the hell out of this unreality she’d been kidnapped into and get back to the things that really mattered to her.
Jesus Christ, she thought, on the verge of losing it. Her mom was sick again, and alone in some city hospital room. She had to get there.
Rio strode into the room. “The phone, Dylan. Give it to me. Now.”
It was then that she noticed he wasn’t alone. Standing behind him in the corridor was a tank of a man—easily six-and-a-half feet tall, with a mane of black hair and an air of menace that belied his calm exterior. He hung back as Rio stalked inside and approached Dylan.
“Did you do something to my phone?” she demanded hotly, more than a little terrified of Rio and this new threat but too worried about her mom to care what might happen to her in the next minute. “What did you do, make it stop working? Tell me! What the hell did you do!”
“You lied to me, Dylan.”
“And you fucking abducted me!” She hated the tears that suddenly ran down her cheeks. Almost as much as she hated her captivity and cancer and the cold ache in her chest that had opened up during her call to the shelter.
Rio put his hand out as he walked up to her. The man in the corridor prowled into the apartment now too. No question about it, he was a vampire—a Breed warrior, like Rio. His gray eyes seemed to penetrate her like blades, and in the same way an animal sensed a predator on the wind, Dylan sensed that where Rio was dangerous, this other man was exponentially more powerful. Older despite his youthful appearance. And more deadly.
“Who were you calling?” Rio demanded.
She wasn’t about to tell him. She clutched the slim cell phone in her fist, but at that very instant she felt an energy force pulling at her fingers, prying them open. She couldn’t keep them closed no matter how hard she tried. Dylan gasped as her cell phone flew out of her hand and onto the palm of the vampire now standing beside Rio.
“There’s a couple of messages here from the newspaper,” he announced darkly. “And several outgoing calls to other New York numbers. Residence of one Sharon Alexander, a cell number for the same, and a connected call to a blocked number in Manhattan. That’s the one we shut down.”
Rio swore vividly. “Did you tell anyone about us just now? Or about what you’ve seen?”
“No!” she insisted. “I haven’t said anything, I swear. I’m no threat to you—”
“There is the matter of the pictures you distributed, and the story you sent to your employer,” the dark one reminded her, the way you might remind the condemned of why they were heading for the gas chamber.
“You don’t have to worry about any of that,” she said, ignoring Rio’s harsh scoff as she spoke. “That message from the newspaper? That was my boss, letting me know I was fired. Well, technically it was an involuntary resignation, on account of the fact I no-showed an appointment in Prague because I was busy being abducted.”
“You lost your job?” Rio asked, slanting her a scowl.
Dylan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But I doubt at this point my boss is going to use any of the pictures or the story I sent him.”
“That’s no longer a concern.” The grim one stared at her like he was measuring her reaction. “By now the virus program we sent him should have wiped out every hard drive in his office. He’ll be putting out that fire for the rest of the week.”
She really didn’t want to feel the least bit happy about that, but Coleman Hogg up to his quivering jowls in hard drive crashes was one tiny bright spot in an otherwise unbearable situation.
“The same virus went out to everyone you distributed those photos to,” he informed her. “That takes care of any hard evidence leaks, but we still have to deal with the fact that several people are walking around with knowledge we can’t afford to let them keep. Knowledge they could, willingly or unwittingly, pass on to others. So we need to remove that risk.”
Something icy settled in Dylan’s gut. “What do you mean…remove the risk?”
“You have a choice to make, Miss Alexander. Tonight you will either be relocated into one of the area’s Darkhaven sanctuaries under the protection of the Breed, or you will be returned to your residence in New York.”
“I have to go home,” she said, no decision at all. She looked at Rio and found him staring at her, his face unreadable. “I have to get back to New York right away. Do you mean I’m going to be free to go?”
That hard gray gaze turned to Rio now, without giving her an answer. “Tonight you leave for Miss Alexander’s home in New York. I want you to handle things with her; Niko and Kade can scrub the other folks she’s been in contact with.”
“No!” Dylan blurted. The ice in her stomach suddenly turned into a glacial sort of fear. “Oh, my God—no, you can’t…Rio, tell him—”
“End of discussion,” the dark one said, directing his attention at Rio, not her. “You’ll leave at dusk.”
Rio nodded solemnly, accepting the orders like it didn’t faze him at all. Like he’d done this sort of thing a hundred times before.
“As of tonight, Rio, no more loose ends.” The flinty eyes slid pointedly to Dylan, then back to Rio. “Not one.”
As his terrifying friend departed, Dylan turned shakily to Rio. “What did he mean, remove the risk? No more loose ends?”
Rio glowered over at her darkly. There was accusation in that piercing topaz gaze, a scathing coldness and very little of the wounded, tender man she’d been kissing in this very room just a short time ago. She felt cold under the blast of that hard glare, like she was looking into the face of a stranger.
“I’m not going to let you or your friends hurt anyone,” she told him, wishing her voice didn’t falter as she said it. “I’m not going to let you kill them!”
“No one’s going to die, Dylan.” His tone was flat, so detached it was hardly reassuring. “We’re going to take their memory of what they saw in your photographs, and of anything you might have told them about the Breed or the cave. We’re not going to hurt anyone, but we need to scrub their minds of any recollection of those things.”
“But how? I don’t understand—”
“You don’t have to understand,” he said softly.
“Because I’m not going to remember either. Is that what you mean?”
He looked at her for a long moment in silence. She searched his face for some hint of emotion beyond the stony resolve he projected. All she saw was a man fully prepared for the task he’d been given, a warrior committed to his mission. And none of the tenderness she’d seen in him before, or the need she thought he’d felt for her, was going to stand in his way. She was a captive at his mercy. An inconvenient problem he intended to eliminate.
Rio’s brows came together slightly as he gave a vague shake of his head. “Tonight you go home, Dylan.”
She should be happy to hear it—relieved, at least—but Dylan felt oddly bereft as she watched him leave the room and close the door behind him.
CHAPTER
Twenty-One
He came back for her after a couple of hours and told her it was time to go. Dylan wasn’t surprised that her next conscious memory was waking up in the backseat of a dark SUV as Rio brought it to a stop at the curb outside her Brooklyn apartment building. As she sat up drowsily, Rio met her gaze in the rearview mirror.
Dylan scowled at him. “You knocked me out again.”
“For the last time,” he said, his voice low, apologetic.
He killed the engine and opened the driver side door. He was alone up front, no sign of the two others who were supposed to be riding along. The ones who’d been ordered to take care of the other “loose ends” while Rio personally took care of her.
God, the thought of her mom coming in contact with the kind of dangerous individuals that Rio was apparently associated with made her shake with anxiety. Her mother was dealing with enough as it was; Dylan didn’t want her anywhere near this dark new reality.
Dylan wondered how fast Rio would catch her if she tried to bolt out of the SUV. If she could get a large enough lead, she might be able to make a run for the subway station into Midtown where the hospital was. But who was she kidding? Rio had tracked her from Jiáín to Prague. Finding her in Manhattan might prove a challenge for him…for all of about thirty seconds.
But damn it, she needed to see her mom. She needed to be with her, at her bedside, and see her face so she could know for certain that she was okay.
Please Lord, let her be okay.
“I thought you were going to have company for this trip,” Dylan said, hoping by some miracle there had been a change of plans and Rio’s friends had stayed behind. “What happened to the other guys who were supposed to come with you?”
“I dropped them off in the city. They didn’t need to be here with us. They’ll report back to me when they’re finished.”
“When they’re finished terrorizing a bunch of innocent people, you mean? How do you know your vampire buddies won’t decide to take a little blood donation along with the memories they’re going to steal?”
“They have a specific mission, and they’ll adhere to it.”
She looked into the smoky topaz eyes staring back at her in the mirror. “Just like you, right?”
“Just like me.” He got out of the vehicle and came to the back to grab her backpack and messenger bag from the seat beside her. “Come on, Dylan. We don’t have a lot of time to wrap this up.”
When she didn’t move, he reached in and startled her with a gentle stroke of her cheek. “Come on. Let’s get inside now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She climbed out of the leather seat and walked up the concrete steps with him to her building’s front door. Rio handed her the keys from out of her bag. Dylan turned the entryway lock and stepped inside the stale-smelling, robin’s egg blue vestibule, feeling like she hadn’t been home in ten years.
“My apartment’s on the second floor,” she murmured, but then Rio probably already knew that. He followed close behind her as the two of them climbed the stairs up to her hole-in-the-wall place at the back of the common hallway.
She unlocked the door and Rio walked in ahead of her, keeping her in back of him as though he were accustomed to entering dangerous places and doing it at the front of the line. He was a warrior, all right. If his cautious demeanor and immense size didn’t confirm it, the big gun he was concealing in the back waistband of his black cargo pants would have done so in spades. She watched as he checked out the place, pausing next to a computer workstation that sat on a small writing desk in the corner.
“Am I going to find anything on this machine that shouldn’t be there?” he asked as he turned it on and the monitor lit him up in a pale blue light.
“That computer is old. I hardly ever use it.”
“You won’t mind if I check,” he said, not really a question when he was already bringing up files and having a look at what they contained. He wouldn’t find anything but some of her earliest articles and old correspondence.
“Do you have a lot of enemies?” Dylan asked, trailing over to him.
“We have enough.”
“I’m not one of them, you know.” She flipped on a light, more for her benefit than his, since he obviously didn’t mind the dark. “I’m not going to tell anyone about what you’ve told me, or what I’ve seen these past several days. None of it, I swear to you. And not because you’re going to take those memories away from me either. I would keep your secrets safe, Rio. I just want you to know that.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said, facing her now. “It wouldn’t be safe. Not for you, or for us. Our world protects its own, but there are dangers and we can’t be everywhere. Letting someone outside the vampire nation carry information about us could be catastrophic. Occasionally it is done, even though it’s ill-advised. A human here or there has been trusted with the truth, but it’s rare in the extreme. Personally I’ve never seen it work out well in the end. Someone always gets hurt.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He chuckled, but there was little humor in it. “I have no doubt. But this is different, Dylan. You’re not just a human. You’re a Breedmate, and that will always mean you’re different. You can bond with a male of my kind through blood and you can live forever. Well, something close to forever.”
“You mean like Tess and her mate?”
Rio nodded. “Like them, yes. But to be a part of the Breed’s world, you would have to cut your ties to the human one. You’d have to leave them behind.”
“I can’t do that,” she said, her brain automatically shutting down the idea of leaving her mom. “My family is here.”
“The Breed is your family too. They would care for you as family, Dylan. You could make a very nice life for yourself in the Darkhavens.”
She couldn’t help but notice that he was talking about all of this from a comfortable distance, keeping himself totally out of the equation. Part of her wondered if it would be so easy to turn him down if he were asking her personally to join his world.
But he wasn’t doing that at all. And Dylan’s choice, easy or not, would have been the same regardless of what he was offering her.
She shook her head. “My life is here, with my mom. She’s always been there for me, and I can’t leave her. I wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever.”
And she needed to find a way to get to her soon, she thought, weathering Rio’s steady, measuring gaze. She didn’t want to wait until he decided to start scrubbing her memory now that she’d opted out of the vampire lottery.
“I…um…I’ve got to use the bathroom,” she murmured. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to stand guard over me while I go?”
Rio’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave a slow shake of his head. “Go on. But don’t take long.”
Dylan couldn’t believe he was actually letting her walk into the adjacent bathroom and shut herself inside. For all his cautious recon of her apartment, he must have missed the fact that there was a small window next to the toilet.
A window that opened onto a fire escape, which led down to the street below.
Dylan turned on the faucet and ran a hard stream of cold water into the sink while she considered the insanity of what she was about to attempt. She had two-hundred-plus pounds of combat-trained, seriously armed vampire waiting for her on the other side of the door. She’d already witnessed his lightning-fast reflexes, so the odds of outrunning him were pretty much zilch. All she could hope for was a sneak escape, and that would mean getting the decrepit window open without making too much noise, then climbing down the rickety fire escape without having it crumble beneath her. If she managed to clear those sizable obstacles, all she’d have to do is start running till she hit the subway station.
Yeah, piece of cake.
She knew it was nuts, even as she hurried to the window and slid the sash lock free. The window needed a good jab to loosen the several coats of old paint that had all but sealed it shut. Dylan coughed a couple of times, loud enough to mask the noise as she knocked the window frame with the heel of her palm.
She waited a second, listening for movement in the other room. When she didn’t hear any, she lifted the window and got a faceful of humid city night air.
Oh, Christ. Was she really going to do this?
She had to.
Nothing else mattered but seeing her mom.
Dylan put herself halfway out the window to make sure the way down was clear. It was. She could do this. She had to try. With a couple of good deep breaths to gird herself, Dylan tapped the flusher and then climbed out the window as the toilet whooshed into action behind her.
Her descent down the fire escape was rushed and clumsy, but in a few seconds her feet touched down on the pavement. As soon as she hit the ground, she gunned it for the subway.
Over the rush of water running in the bathroom sink, Rio had indeed heard the nearly silent slide of the window being pushed open behind that closed door. The flushing toilet didn’t quite mask the metallic clank of the fire escape as Dylan carefully climbed out onto it.
She was attempting escape, just as he expected she would.
He’d seen the wheels turning in her head as he talked with her, a look of rising desperation coming into her eyes every moment she was forced to stay in the apartment with him. He’d known, even before she made the excuse of needing to use the bathroom, that she was going to try to get away from him at her first opportunity.
Rio could have stopped her. He could stop her now, as she clambered down the rickety steel ladder to the street below her apartment. But he was more curious about where she planned to run. And to whom.
He’d believed her when she said she had no intention of exposing the Breed to human news outlets. If it turned out she was lying to him, he didn’t know what he would do. He didn’t want to think he could be so wrong about her—told himself none of that would matter at all if he just wiped her mind clean of the knowledge.
But he’d hesitated to scrub her on the spot after she said she wouldn’t leave her human world for that of the Breed. He hesitated because he realized, selfishly, that he wasn’t quite ready to erase himself from her thoughts.
And now she was running off into the night, away from him.
With a headful of memories and knowledge that he damn well couldn’t allow her to keep.
Rio got up from Dylan’s computer desk and walked into the small bathroom. It was empty, as he knew it would be, the window yawning open onto the dark summer night outside.
He climbed out, boots hitting the fire escape for a split second before he leaped from the structure and landed on the asphalt below. Tipping his head back, he dragged the air into his lungs until he caught Dylan’s scent.
Then he went after her.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Two
Dylan stood outside the windowed door of her mother’s room on the hospital’s tenth floor, trying to rally her courage to go inside. The cancer ward was so quiet up here at night, only the hushed chatter from the nurses on duty at their station and the occasional shuffle of a patient’s slippered feet as they made a brief circuit around the wing, fingers clasped around the wheeled IV pole that rolled along beside them. Her mom had been one of those tenacious, but weary-eyed patients not so long ago.
Dylan hated to think there was more of that pain and struggle ahead of her mother now. The biopsy the doctors had ordered wouldn’t be in for a couple of days, according to the nurse at the desk. They were hopeful that in the likelihood it did come back positive, they might have caught the relapse early enough to begin a new, more aggressive round of chemotherapy. Dylan was praying for a miracle, despite the heaviness in her chest as she steeled herself for bad news.
She hit the hand sanitizer dispenser mounted next to the door, squirted a blob of isopropyl gel into her palms and rubbed it in. As she pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box on the counter and put them on, everything she’d been through in the past several days—even the past few hours—fell away, forgotten. Her own problems just evaporated as she pushed open the door, because nothing mattered right now except the woman curled up on the bed, tethered to monitoring wires and intravenous lines.
God, her mother looked so tiny and frail lying there. She’d always been petite, smaller than Dylan by a good four inches, her hair a richer shade of red, even with the handful of grays that had crept in since the first battle with cancer. Now Sharon’s hair was kept short, a spiky, spunky cut that made her look at least a decade younger than her true age of sixty-four. Dylan felt a pang of irrational, but jabbing anger for the fact that a renewed round of chemo was going to ravage that glorious crown of thick copper hair.
She walked softly toward the bed, trying not to make any noise. But Sharon wasn’t sleeping. She rolled over as Dylan came close, her green eyes bright and warm.
“Oh…Dylan…hi, baby.” Her voice was feathery, the only real physical giveaway in her that she was ill. She reached out and took Dylan’s gloved hand in a tight hold.
“How was the trip, sweetheart? When did you get back?”
Shit. That’s right—she’d supposedly extended her stay in Europe. It seemed like a year had passed in the few days she’d been with Rio.
“Um, I just came home a little while ago,” Dylan answered, a partial lie.
She took a seat on the edge of the thin hospital room mattress, her hand still caught in her mother’s clutching grasp.
“I got a little concerned when you changed your plans so abruptly. Your e-mail that you were staying a bit longer by yourself was so short and cryptic. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. The lie she had to keep hurt even worse knowing that she’d made her mom worry. “I would have called you if I could have. Oh, Mom…I’m sorry you don’t feel well.”
“I feel all right. Better, now that you’re here.” Sharon’s gaze was steady, level with a calm resolve. “But I’m dying, baby. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Don’t say that.” Dylan squeezed her mom’s hand, then brought the cool fingers up to her lips and kissed them. “You’ll get through this, just like you did before. You’re going to be fine.”
The silence—the tender indulgence—was a palpable force in the room. Her mother wasn’t going to push the subject, but it was there, like a ghost lurking in the corner.
“Well, let’s talk about you instead. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing, where you’ve been…tell me about everything you’ve seen while you were gone.”
Dylan glanced down, unable to hold her mother’s eyes if she couldn’t tell her the truth. And she couldn’t tell her the truth. Most of it would be unbelievable anyway, especially the part where Dylan confessed that she feared she was developing feelings for a dangerous, secretive man. A vampire for crissake. It sounded crazy just to think the words.
“Tell me more about that demon’s lair story you’re working on, baby. Those pictures you sent me were really something. When is your story going to run?”
“There is no story, Mom.” Dylan shook her head. She was sorry she ever mentioned it to her mother—or to anyone, for that matter. “Turns out that cave was just a cave,” she said, hoping to convince her. “Nothing strange about it.”
Sharon looked skeptical. “Really? But that tomb you found—and the incredible markings on the walls. What was all of that doing in there? It must have meant something.”
“Just a tomb. Probably a very old, tribal burial chamber of some kind.”
“And the picture you took of that man—”
“A vagrant, that’s all,” Dylan lied, hating every syllable that passed her lips. “The pictures made everything seem more important than it was. But there is no story, not even one suitable for a rag like Coleman Hogg’s paper. In fact, he let me go.”
“What? He didn’t!”
Dylan shrugged. “Yeah, he did. And it’s fine, really. I’ll find something else.”
“Well, that’s his loss. You were too good for that place, anyway. If it’s any consolation, I thought you did a great job on that story. Mr. Fasso thought so too. In fact, he mentioned he had contacts with some big news outlets in the city. He could probably find you something if I asked him to look into it.”
Oh, shit. A job interview was the last thing she needed to worry about. Not when the rest of what she’d just heard had put a knot of dread in her throat. “Mom—you didn’t tell him about that story, did you?”
“You’re darn right I did. I showed off your pictures too. I’m sorry, but I can’t help bragging about you. You’re my little star.”
“Who did you…Ah, God, Mom, please tell me you didn’t talk about it with a lot of people…did you?”
Sharon patted her hand. “Don’t be so shy. You’re very talented, Dylan, and you should be working on bigger, more hard-hitting stories. Mr. Fasso agrees with me. Gordon and I talked all about you on the river cruise a couple of nights ago.”
Dylan’s stomach was clenched over the thought of more people being privy to what she’d seen in that cave, but she couldn’t help noticing the little glint of joy in her mother’s eyes when she mentioned the man who founded the runaway shelter. “So, you’re on a first-name basis with Mr. Fasso now, are you?”
Sharon giggled, a sound so youthful and impish that Dylan forgot for a moment that she was sitting beside her mom in a hospital room in the cancer ward. “He’s very handsome, Dylan. And utterly charming. I’d always thought him to be so aloof, almost chilly, but he’s actually a very intriguing man.”
Dylan smiled. “You like him.”
“I do,” her mother confessed. “Just my luck I should find a real gentleman—who knows, maybe my true prince?—when it’s too late for me to fall in love.”
Dylan shook her head, hating to hear that kind of talk from her. “It’s never too late, Mom. You’re still young. You have a lot of living left to do.”
Shadows crossed her mother’s eyes as she looked up at Dylan from her recline on the bed. “You’ve always made me so very proud. You know that, don’t you, baby?”
Dylan nodded, throat constricted. “Yeah, I know. I could always count on you, Mom. You were the only one in my life that I could count on. Still are. Two musketeers, right?”
Sharon smiled at the mention of their long-running reference to themselves, but there were tears glistening in her eyes. “I want you to be all right, Dylan. With this, I mean. With my leaving you soon…with the fact that I’m going to die.”
“Mom—”
“Hear me out, please. I worry about you, sweetheart. I don’t want you to be alone.”
Dylan wiped at a hot tear that ran down the side of her face. “You shouldn’t be thinking about me now. Just focus on you, on getting better. You need to think positively. The biopsy might not—”
“Dylan. Stop, and listen to me.” Her mother sat up, a stubborn look that Dylan recognized very well coming over her pretty but fatigued features. “The cancer is back, worse than before. I know it. I feel it. And I’ve come to terms with it. I need to know that you will be able to come to terms with this too.”
Dylan looked down at their clasped hands, hers masked in yellow latex, her mother’s nearly translucent, the bones and tendons stark beneath the cool, too-pale skin.
“How long have you been looking after me, baby? And I don’t mean just since I’ve been sick. From the time you were a little girl, you were always worrying about me and trying your best to take care of me.”
Dylan shook her head. “We look out for each other. That’s how it’s always been—”
Gentle fingers came up under her chin, lifting her gaze. “You’re my child. I’ve lived for you, and for your brothers too, but you were always my constant. You shouldn’t have had to live for me, Dylan. You shouldn’t have had to be the adult in this relationship. You should have someone to take care of you.”
“I can take care of myself,” she murmured, not very convincingly when the tears were streaming down her cheeks now.
“Yes, you can. And you have. But you deserve something more out of life. I don’t want you to be afraid to live, or to love, Dylan. Can you promise me that?”
Before Dylan could say anything, the door swung open and one of the attending nurses came in with a couple new bags of fluids. “How we doing, Sharon? How’s your pain right now?”
“I could use a little something,” she said, her eyes sliding to Dylan as if she’d been hiding her discomfort until now.
Which, of course, she had been. Everything was much worse than Dylan wanted to accept. She got up from the bed and let the nurse do her thing. After she was gone, Dylan came back over to her mother’s side. It was so hard not to break down, to be the strong one as she looked down into the soft green eyes and saw that the spark in them—the fight that needed to be there—was gone.
“Come here and give me a hug, baby.”
Dylan leaned down and wrapped her arms around the delicate shoulders, unable to dismiss the fragility of her mother’s entire being. “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you.” Sharon sighed as she settled back against the pillow. “I’m tired, sweetheart. I need to rest now.”
“Okay,” Dylan answered, her voice thick. “I’ll just stay here with you while you sleep.”
“No, you won’t.” Her mother shook her head. “I won’t have you sitting here worrying about me. I’m not going to leave you tonight, or the next day, or even next week—I promise. But you need to go home now, Dylan. I want that for you.”
Home, Dylan thought, as her mother drifted off to a drug-induced sleep. The word felt oddly empty to her when she pictured her apartment and the few possessions she had there. That wasn’t home to her. If she had to go somewhere now, somewhere she felt safe and protected, that pitiful hole in the wall wasn’t it. Never really had been.
Dylan rose from the bed and turned to leave the room. As she wiped at her teary eyes, her gaze lit on a shadowed face and broad shoulders silhouetted by the hallway lights outside.
Rio.
He’d found her, followed her there.
Where her every instinct should have been to run away from him, Dylan went to him instead. She pulled open the door and met him outside her mother’s room, incapable of speaking as she wrapped her arms around his solid warmth and wept softly into his chest.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Three
He hadn’t expected her to run to him when she saw him standing there.
Now that Dylan was in his arms, her body trembling as she cried, Rio found himself at a complete loss. He’d worked up a healthy amount of anger and suspicion in the time it took him to track her across the city. His head was ringing from all the noise, and from the endless, overcrowded presence of humans everywhere he looked. His temples were screaming from the bright lights, all of his senses battering him from within.
But none of that mattered in the long moments he stood there, holding Dylan, feeling her shake with bone-deep fear and anguish. She was hurting, and Rio felt an overwhelming need to protect her. He didn’t want to see her in pain like this.
Madre de Dios, but he hated seeing her this way.
He caressed her delicate back, pressed his mouth to the top of her head where it nestled beneath his chin, murmuring quiet words of reassurance. Feeble gestures, but all he could think to do for her.
“I’m so afraid I’m going to lose her,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Rio…I’m terrified.”
He didn’t have to guess at who Dylan was talking about. The patient sleeping in the adjacent room had the same creamy coloring, the same fiery-hued hair as the younger version Rio was holding in his embrace.
Dylan tilted her tear-streaked face up at him. “Will you take me out of here, please?”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” Rio smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, erasing the wet tracks. “Do you want to go home?”
Her sad little laugh sounded so broken, lost, somehow. “Can we just…walk for a little while?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He nodded, tucking her under his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
They walked in silence, down to the elevator and then out of the hospital to the warm night outside. He didn’t know where to take her, so he just walked with her. A few blocks up from the hospital was a footbridge that led to the East River promenade. They crossed it, and as they strolled along the water’s edge, Rio felt people staring at him as they passed on the walkway.
There were furtive glances at his scars, and more than one wondering look that seemed to question what he was doing with a beauty like Dylan. A damn good question, and one he didn’t have a sensible answer for at the moment. He’d brought her into the city on a mission—one that sure as hell didn’t allow for detours like this.
Dylan slowed at last, pausing at the iron rail to look over the water. “My mom got really sick last fall. She thought it was bronchitis. It wasn’t. The verdict was lung cancer, even though she never smoked a day in her life.” Dylan went quiet for a long moment. “She’s dying. That’s what she just told me tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” Rio said, drawing up next to her.
He wanted to touch her, but he wasn’t sure she needed his consolation—wasn’t sure she’d accept it. Instead he settled for touching a strand of her loose red hair, easier to pretend he was catching the errant tendril from blowing into her face on the light summer breeze.
“I wasn’t supposed to be on that trip to Europe. It was going to be her big adventure with her friends, but she wasn’t well enough to go so I took her place. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I never would have set foot in that damn cave. I never would have met you.”
“Now you wish you could undo it.” He didn’t ask the question, merely stated what had to be simple fact.
“I do wish I could undo it, for her. I wish she could have had her adventure. I wish she wasn’t sick.” Dylan turned her head and looked at him. “But I don’t wish I could undo meeting you.”
Rio was stunned silent by her admission. He brought his hand up to the soft line of her jaw, looking down into a face so fair and beautiful it stole his breath. And the way she was gazing up at him—as if he were a man worthy of her, a man she could love…
She exhaled a quiet, unsteady breath. “I would take it all back in a second, Rio. But not this. Not you.”
Ah, Cristo.
Before he could tell himself it was a bad idea, Rio bent his head down and kissed her. It was a gentle meeting of their mouths, a tender brush of lips that shouldn’t have made him burn like it did. He reveled in the sweet taste of her, in the way she felt so right in his arms.
He shouldn’t want this so badly. He shouldn’t feel this need, this tender affection that was kindling inside him every time he thought about Dylan.
He shouldn’t be pulling her closer to him, splaying his fingers into the warm silk of her hair as he brought her deeper into his embrace, lost in her kiss.
It took him a long time to break it. But even after he lifted his head, he couldn’t stop caressing her face. He couldn’t let go of her.
A group of teenagers shuffled past them on the promenade, rowdy human boys in clothes several sizes too big for them, talking loudly and shoving at one another as they went. Rio kept his eyes on the youths, suspicion spiking as he watched the gang pause near the railing and take turns spitting over the edge. They didn’t seem overtly dangerous, but they did appear to be the types perpetually ready for trouble.
“Demetrio?”
Rio glanced down at Dylan, confused. “Hmm?”
“Am I getting close? Your real name, I mean…is it Demetrio?”
He smiled, and couldn’t resist kissing the freckled tip of her nose. “No, that’s not it.”
“Okay. Well, then, is it…Arrio?” she guessed, beaming up at him in the moonlight as she stepped slightly out of his arms. “Oliverio? Denny Terrio?”
“Eleuterio,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Ay-lay-oo-what?”
“My full name is Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio.”
“Wow. I guess that does make ‘Dylan’ seem a bit mundane, huh?”
Rio chuckled. “Nothing about you is mundane, I assure you.”
Her smile was surprisingly shy. “So, what does it mean—a gorgeous name like that?”
“A loose translation would be ‘he who is free and of the night everlasting.’”
Dylan sighed. “That’s beautiful, Rio. My God, your mother must have adored you to give you an amazing name like that.”
“It wasn’t my mother’s doing. She was killed when I was very young. The name came later, from a Breed family living in a Darkhaven in my homeland. They found me, and took me in as one of their own.”
“What happened to your mother? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t—I know, I ask too many questions,” she said, shrugging apologetically.
“No, I don’t mind telling you,” he said, finding it remarkable that he really meant that.
As a rule, he hated talking about his past. No one in the Order knew the details surrounding his awful beginnings, not even Nikolai, whom he considered his closest friend. There’d been no need to talk about it with Eva, since they’d met in the Spanish Darkhaven where Rio was raised and she knew his ignoble history.
Eva had politely chosen to ignore the ugly facts surrounding his birth and the years he’d spent as a foundling, killing because he had to, because he didn’t know any better. The young savage he’d been before he was brought into the Darkhaven and shown how to live like something better than the animal he’d had to become in order to survive on his own.
Rio didn’t want to see Dylan look upon him in fear or disgust, but a bigger part of him wanted to give her the truth. If she could look at his outward scars and not despise him, maybe she would be strong enough to see the ones that ruined him on the inside too.
“My mother lived on the outskirts of a very small, rural village in Spain. She was just a girl—perhaps sixteen—when she was raped by a vampire who’d gone Rogue.” Rio kept his voice low to avoid being overheard, but the nearest humans—the group of adolescent thugs still amusing themselves several yards down the promenade—were paying no attention anyway. “The Rogue fed on her as he violated her, but my mother fought back. She bit him, apparently. Enough of his blood entered her mouth, and, subsequently, her body. Since she was a Breedmate, the combination of blood and seed resulted in a pregnancy.”
“You,” Dylan whispered. “Oh, God, Rio. How terrible for her to go through that. But at least she had you in the end.”
“It was a wonder she didn’t rout me out of her womb,” he said, looking out at the black, glistening river and remembering his mother’s anguish over the abomination she’d given birth to. “My mother was a simple country girl. She wasn’t educated, not in the traditional sense, or in life matters. She lived alone in a cottage in the forest, cast out by her kin years before I came along.”
“What for?”
“Manos del diablo,” Rio replied. “They feared her devil’s hands. You remember how I told you that all females born with the Breedmate mark also have special gifts…psychic abilities of some sort?”
Dylan nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, my mother’s gift was dark. With a touch and a focused thought, she could deliver death.” Rio scoffed under his breath and held up his own lethal hands. “Manos del diablo.”
Dylan was quiet for a moment, studying him in silence. “You have that ability as well?”
“A Breedmate mother passes down many traits to her sons: hair, skin, and eye color…as well as her psychic gifts. I think if my mother had known exactly what was growing in her belly, she would have killed me long before I was born. She did try at least once, after the fact.”
Dylan’s brow creased, and she gently placed her hand over his where it rested on the iron grate. “What happened?”
“It’s one of my first vivid memories,” Rio confessed. “You see, Breed offspring are born with small, sharp fangs. Right out of the womb, they need blood to survive. And darkness. My mother must have figured all of this out on her own, and tolerated it, because somehow I made it out of infancy. To me, it was perfectly natural to avoid the sun and to take my mother’s wrist for nourishment. I think I must have been about four years old when I first noticed that she cried every time she had to feed me. She despised me—despised what I was—yet I was all she had.”
Dylan stroked the back of his hand. “I can’t even imagine how it must have been for you. For both of you.”
Rio shrugged. “I knew no other way to live. But my mother did. On this particular day, with our cottage shutters bolted tight to ward off daylight, my mother offered me her wrist. When I took it, I felt her other hand come up around the back of my head. She held it there, and the pain jolted me like a bolt of lightning arrowing into my skull. I cried out and opened my eyes. She was weeping, great, terrible sobs as she fed me and held my head in her hand.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dylan whispered, her shock evident.
“She meant to kill you with her touch?”
Rio recalled his own marrow-deep shock when he made that same realization for himself—a child watching in terror as the person he trusted above all others tried to end his life. “She couldn’t go through with it,” he murmured flatly. “Whatever her reasons, she drew her hand away and ran out of the cottage. I didn’t see her again for two days. By the time she came back, I was starving and terrified. I thought she’d abandoned me for good.”
“She was afraid too,” Dylan pointed out, and Rio was glad not to hear any trace of pity for him in her voice. Her fingers were warm and reassuring as she took his hand in her grasp. The hand he’d just told her could wield death with a touch. “The both of you must have felt so isolated and alone.”
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose we did. It all ended about a year later. Some of the village men saw my mother and took an interest in her, apparently. They showed up one day at the cottage while we were sleeping. There were three of them. They kicked in the door and went after her. They must have heard the rumors about her because the first thing they did was bind her hands so she couldn’t touch them.”
Dylan’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh, Rio…”
“They dragged her outside. I ran after them, trying to help her, but the sunlight was intense. It blinded me for a few seconds that felt like an eternity while my mother was screaming, begging them not to harm her or her son.”
Rio could still picture the trees—everything so green and lush, the sky so blue overhead…an explosion of colors he’d only seen in darker, muted shades when he was out in the safety of night. And he could still see the men, three large human men, taking turns on a defenseless female while her son watched, frozen by terror and the limitations of his five-year-old body.
“They beat her, calling her ugly things: Maldecido. Manos del diablo. La puta de infierno. Something snapped in me when I saw her blood run red on the ground. I leaped on one of the men. I was so furious I wanted him to die in agony…and he did. Once I understood what I’d done, I went after the next man. I bit him in the throat and fed on him as my touch slowly killed him.”
Dylan was staring at him now, saying nothing. Standing there, so very still.
“The last one looked up and saw what I’d done. He called me the same things he called my mother, then added two more names I’d never heard before: Comedor de la sangre. Monstruo. Blood-eater. Monster.” Rio exhaled a brittle laugh. “Until that moment, I didn’t know what I was. But as I killed the last of my mother’s attackers and watched as she lay dying in the sunlit grass, some knowledge buried deep within me seemed to come awake and rise up. I finally understood that I was different, and what that meant.”
“You were just a child,” Dylan said softly. “How did you survive after that?”
“For a while I went hungry. I tried feeding from animals, but their blood was like poison. I hunted my first human about a week after the attack. I was out of my mind with hunger, and I had no experience with finding my own food. I killed several innocent people those first few weeks I was on my own. I would have gone Rogue eventually, but then something miraculous happened. I was tracking prey in the woods when a huge shadow came out of the trees. It was a man, I thought, but he moved so fast and so stealthily I could hardly keep focus on him. He was hunting too. He went after the peasant I’d set my sights on, and with a grace I was sorely lacking, he brought the human down and began to feed from the wound he’d opened in the man’s throat. He was a blood-eater, like me.”
“What did you do, Rio?”
“I watched in fascination,” he said, remembering it as clearly as if it had just happened a few minutes ago.
“When it was over, the human got up and walked away as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. I was astonished, and when I drew in my breath, that’s when the blood-eater saw me hiding nearby. He called me out and after hearing that I was alone, he brought me with him to his home. It was a Darkhaven. I met many others like me, and learned that I was part of a race called the Breed. As my mother had not seen fit to give me a name, my new family in the Darkhaven gave me the one I have now.”
“Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio,” Dylan said, the words sounding far too sweet as she spoke them. Her hand, as she placed it tenderly on the scarred side of his face felt far too comforting. “My God, Rio…it’s a miracle you’re standing here with me at all.”
She moved closer to him now, looking up into his eyes. Rio could hardly breathe as she rose onto her toes and tilted his chin down to meet her kiss. Their lips came together for the second time that night…and with a need that neither one of them seemed willing or able to conceal.
He could have kissed her forever.
But it was at that precise moment that the quiet promenade erupted in a sudden cacophony of gunfire.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Four
Panic flooded Rio’s veins like acid.
The gunfire came again, another rapid report that split the night. The sharp staccato pops were coming from somewhere close; in his head they were cannon fire, the sound of them—the shock of a sudden attack—ripping through his senses, filling his mind with a thick fog that swallowed the here and now.
Dylan, he thought fiercely.
Had to keep her safe.
He was only barely conscious of his actions as he grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down onto the grass beneath him. Her cry of alarm was muted, more felt than heard as he covered her body with his, willing to sacrifice himself for her.
Protecting her was all that mattered.
But as they hit the hard earth together, Rio felt his mind splintering off. Past and present began to blend, mesh…morph into a hazy confusion of thought and fracturing logic.
Suddenly he was in the warehouse again—Lucan, Nikolai, and the other warriors moving in on a raid of a Rogue lair in Boston. He was glancing up into the rafters of the abandoned building, noting the movement of enemies in the shadows.
Seeing the silver glint of an electronic device in the suckhead’s hands.
Hearing Niko shout a warning that a bomb was set to blow…
Ah, fuck.
Rio roared as remembered pain blasted into his head, into every inch of his body. He felt like he was on fire, flesh burning, filling his nostrils with the stench of seared skin and hair.
Cool hands came up to his face, but he was too far gone to make sense of what was real and what was a nightmare from his recent past.
“Rio?”
He heard the soft voice, felt those soothing hands moving over his face.
And, from somewhere not far away the hoots and chortles of several human youths. The laughter was accompanied by the slap of sneakers on pavement, all of it growing distant now.
“Rio. Are you all right?”
He knew that voice. It filtered through the swelling madness that was engulfing him, a lifeline thrown to him in the dark of his mind. He reached for it, feeling her voice ground him where nothing else ever had.
“Dylan,” he managed to rasp out between the panting of his breath. “Don’t want you to get hurt…”
“I’m fine. It was only firecrackers.” She smoothed her fingers over the cold clamminess of his forehead. “Those boys set them off by the railing over there. It’s okay now.”
Like hell it was.
He felt one of his blackouts coming on, and coming on fast. He rolled away from Dylan with a groan. “Shit…my head hurts…can’t think straight.”
She must have leaned over him, because he felt her breath skate across his cheek as she blew out a low curse. “Your eyes, Rio. Shit. They’re changing…they’re glowing amber.”
He knew they must be. His fangs were biting into his tongue, his skin tightening up all over his body as rage and pain transformed him. He was at his most deadly like this, when his mind was not his own. When his devil’s hands were at their most unpredictable, and most powerful.
“We have to get you someplace less public,” Dylan said. She slipped her hands underneath his shoulders.
“Hold on to me. I’m going to help you stand up.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Leave me,” he rasped.
Dylan scoffed. “Like hell I will. You can’t lie out here like this in the middle of Manhattan and expect not to be noticed. Now, come on. Get. Up.”
“I can’t…don’t want to touch you. I don’t want to hurt you, Dylan.”
“Then don’t,” she said, and put her weight into the task of hoisting him up onto his feet.
Rio had no choice but to put his hands on her shoulders to steady himself as the fog in his mind grew thicker, swallowing up his vision. He fought to keep the blackout at bay, knowing Dylan would be safest only if he remained lucid.
“Lean on me, damn it,” she ordered him. “I’m going to help you.”
Dylan wedged herself under Rio’s arm and took his wrist in her hand, bearing as much of his weight as she could while she tried to find somewhere private for him to deal with the aftershocks of the attack that had come over him. She led him off the riverside walkway and up a one-way side street where there was less traffic, and far less people around to get close enough to see his transformation.
“Still good?” she asked him, hurrying toward an old brick church with plenty of shadows behind it. “Can you make it a bit farther?”
He gave a nod and grunted, but each step was more sluggish than the last. “Blacking…out…”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” she said. “It’s okay, Rio. Just hang in with me for another minute, okay?”
No answer this time, but she could feel him working to stay upright and moving. Struggling to stay lucid long enough for her to help him.
“You’re doing great,” she told him. “Almost there.”
She pulled him into the dark behind the building, guiding him to an alcove near a rusted, padlocked door. Using the brick wall as back support for Rio, Dylan carefully eased him down into a sitting position on the ground. She threw a glance in both directions, relieved to see that they were fairly concealed from the side street and any passersby. They were safe there for now.
“Tell me what to do, Rio. What do you need to get through this?”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he was incapable. Dylan smoothed his dark hair away from his face and searched his eyes for any sign that he was still cognizant. The thin vertical pupils were always a shock, but no more so than the blast of amber that surrounded them. Rio’s eyes burned like hot coals set into his skull. Anyone driving or walking past the small church would have to be blind to miss the otherworldly glow.
Dylan glanced at the old door and its decrepit lock. She’d seen Rio turn on lamps and water spigots with his mind, so pulling off a B&E on the church should have been no big thing. Except he clearly was in no condition to attempt it. His head slumped down onto his chest and with a pained groan, he started listing to the side.
“Shit,” Dylan hissed.
She left him only long enough to search the lightless lot for something heavy. She came back with a piece of broken cinder block that had been keeping the lid of a Dumpster closed. The brick was rough in her hands, and made an echoing crack and a bright spark as she slammed it against the padlock on the church door. It took two more hard strikes before the lock dropped away with a thump.
“Rio,” she whispered fiercely as she lifted his thick shoulders back up. “Rio, can you hear me? We have to get you inside. Can you stand up?”
She raised his chin and stared into open eyes that were unseeing now, vacant pits of fire.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered, then winced at the poor choice of expletives, considering she was about to bring an unconscious creature of the night into a heavenly sanctuary for protection.
Dylan eased the church door open and listened for any signs of occupation. It was all quiet, not a single light on inside the small antechamber or in the main area of the nave beyond.
“Okay, here we go,” she said under her breath as she went around to Rio’s head and grabbed his arms to pull him over the threshold.
He was heavy as hell, two-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle and bone, none of it cooperating with her. Dylan tugged and dragged him into the darkness, then closed the door behind them.
It didn’t take long to find a couple of candles and a box of matches in the cabinets. Dylan lit the pair of white tapers then ducked back outside to grab the cinder block as a makeshift holder. She stuffed the candles into the cylindrical holes of the cement brick, then went to check on Rio.
“Hey,” she said softly, leaning over his sprawled, unresponsive body where he lay on the floor. His eyes were closed now, but restless behind his lids. A muscle in his jaw twitched, his limbs unmoving yet tense with a coiled energy Dylan could feel as she got near him.
She stroked his face with a feather-light touch, running the backs of her fingers over the flawless cheek that made him so jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and the other side that completely broke her heart. Who could have predicted these past several days, and all the things she would experience? What could possibly have prepared her for meeting this complicated, incredible man?
Would she ever truly be able to forget him, even if he erased himself from her memory like he intended to do?
She doubted it. Even if her mind were forced to forget him, she didn’t think her heart ever would.
Dylan bent down and pressed her lips to his slack mouth.
Rio’s eyes snapped open. His hands shot around her throat so fast, she didn’t have a chance to draw breath enough to cry out.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Five
He didn’t know what yanked him harder out of the dead fog of his mind: the feel of soft lips on his mouth, or the realization a split second later that he was holding a slender throat in his hands. Squeezing tight, fury flowing from the confusion of his blackout into the tips of his fingers where they pressed with deadly intent on a delicate female larynx.
He couldn’t let go.
His eyes were open, but he couldn’t focus on the face before him. He heard a choked gasp, a moan vibrating against his locked thumbs.
None of it broke him out of the thick darkness.
It wasn’t until he felt soft hands come up to his face—his scars—that he felt the first glimmer of clarity.
Dylan.
Cristo…he was hurting her.
With a roar, Rio threw himself off her, releasing her the instant he realized what he was doing. He scrambled into the shadows of the unfamiliar surroundings, horrified at what he’d done.
Holy hell…what he might have done, if he’d held on any longer.
He heard her suck in a few rapid breaths of air behind him. He waited to hear her footsteps take off at a panicked run. He wouldn’t have blamed her. He wouldn’t have gone after her either. Not even for the purpose of scrubbing her mind in protection of the Breed and the secret let loose from that Bohemian cave.
If she ran now, she would have her freedom from him completely.
“Go, Dylan. Get far away from me…please.”
He heard a rustle of movement as she got up. He closed his eyes, ready to let her go.
Praying she would.
Instead she drew nearer to him. Rio flinched as her hand landed gently on his head and then drifted slowly down his hair.
“Go,” he rasped. “Before I lose my fucking mind again and do something even worse. For fuck’s sake, I might have killed you just now.”
He hissed as she knelt down beside him on the floor. With the slightest coaxing, she brought his head around to face her. “I’m okay, as you can see. You scared me a little, but that’s all. God, Rio…how often does this happen to you?”
He scowled and shook his head, not interested in having this conversation right now.
“How do you get through it?” she asked. “I’d like to help you—”
“You can’t.”
He couldn’t force his gaze away from her throat as he said it, hard as he tried to avoid looking at the graceful column of Dylan’s neck. He hadn’t bruised her—a small miracle—but he could still feel the velvety skin against his palms, the heat of her still tingling in his fingertips.
And there, near the hollow at the base of her throat, beat a strong, tempting pulse.
“You need blood, don’t you,” she said, too smart to miss the weakness that he couldn’t conceal. “Would it be better for you if you fed?”
“Not from you.”
“Why not, if you need it?”
He cursed, head still pounding from the lingering effects of his meltdown. “Your blood in my body will create a lasting, unbreakable bond. I would always feel you—be drawn to you—for as long as you are alive.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “And we definitely wouldn’t want that. Not when you prefer to feel isolated and alone.”
Rio scoffed. “You don’t know how I feel.”
“When did you start hating yourself?” she asked, unfazed by the fire he was throwing off with his narrow glare. “Was it after Eva betrayed you, or much earlier than that? Back in that forest cottage in Spain?”
He snarled, turning away from her before she stoked his anger any higher. He was volatile in his current state, a deadly predator teetering on the very edge of sanity.
Just another good reason why he should put the beast down. Before he hurt someone again. Before he let himself think that the future might hold anything of worth for him.
And damn well before he considered Dylan’s reckless offer any longer than he had already.
“My mother’s been fighting for her life for nearly a year. You can’t wait to throw yours away.”
“What do you think you’d be doing if you let me drink from you now?” he shot back, his voice rough, combative. A bit desperate, even. “I’m the last thing you need, Dylan. If you reach into the trap to pull me out, I can’t promise I won’t take your arm off in the process.”
“You’re not going to hurt me.”
Rio grunted, a coarse, animalistic sound. “How do you know I won’t?”
“Because I’m going to trust you not to.”
He made the very grave mistake of turning back to look at her. With her eyes on his now, Dylan pulled her hair over to one shoulder and moved closer, until her neck was poised near his mouth. Rio stared at the exposed column of pale skin, his gaze rooting on the rapid tick of her pulse beneath the tender flesh.
He growled a violent curse.
Then he curled his lips off his fangs and sank them into her neck.
Oh…God.
Dylan’s entire body seized up in the instant Rio’s bite penetrated her skin. There was a sudden, piercing shock of white-hot pain, then…bliss.
Warmth filled her as Rio’s lips fastened to the wound he’d made and his tongue coaxed her blood to begin flowing into his mouth. He drew from her with a needy intensity, his fangs grazing her skin, his tongue creating a demanding, delicious friction with each hard, wet pull at her vein.
“Rio,” she whispered, her breath leaking out of her in a long, shuddering sigh.
He made a low noise in the back of his throat, a rumbling growl that vibrated through her skin and bones as he eased her down beneath him to the floor. His strong arms cushioned her, the heat of his body warming her as he covered her.
Dylan melted into him, losing herself in the dizzying pleasure of Rio’s darkly erotic kiss. She was burning up inside. She writhed beneath him, desire swamping her as he held her close to him and drank more of her blood.
He was on fire too.
Dylan could feel the rigid line of his cock pressing against her hip as he lay atop her. His thigh was wedged between her legs, spreading her open. She wanted to be naked with him. She wanted to feel him driving into her as he suckled at her neck. She moaned with the need that was rising up in her, making her grind against his thigh.
“Rio…I want…Oh, God, I need to have you inside me.”
He groaned thickly, his pelvis kicking as he pushed the stiff ridge of his erection harder against her. But at her throat, his suckling grew less needy now, slowing to a calmer tempo. Tender, where Dylan wanted to feel more fire. She felt his tongue sweep over the bite, creating a tingly sensation that traveled through her like electricity. He lifted his head and Dylan moaned at the loss of his mouth on her skin.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she told him, reaching for him. “Don’t stop.”
He gazed down at her and said something low under his breath in Spanish. It sounded furious and profane.
Dylan stared up into his scorching amber eyes. “Now you hate me too, right?”
“No,” he snarled, fangs gleaming in the dim light of the candles.
He pulled one arm out from under her and touched her face. His fingers were shaking, but so very gentle. He smoothed her hair off her brow, then let his hand travel slowly down her cheek, her chin, and along the line of her sternum. Dylan sucked in a sigh as he caressed her breasts. He unbuttoned her shirt in mere moments, then snapped the front closure of her bra.
“You’re so soft,” he murmured as his palm covered her bare flesh.
He moved down and kissed her nipple, sucking the pearled tip of her breast into the heat of his mouth. Dylan arched up with the sudden arrow of pleasure that shot through her, her desire spiraling tight as a spring.
Rio came back up to kiss her mouth as he worked the button and zipper of her jeans loose and slipped his hand inside her panties. The coppery tang of her blood on his tongue shouldn’t have made her so hot, but knowing he’d fed from her—that he’d taken strength and comfort from her body in such a primal, intimate way—was the strongest aphrodisiac she’d ever known.
And what he was doing to her with his fingers now almost had her coming in his hand.
She cried out, on the verge of losing it. “Rio, please…”
He stripped out of his shirt and pants, then pulled her jeans off. Her panties went slower, as Rio kissed every inch of skin between her thigh and ankle as he eased the scrap of satin down from her legs and cast it aside.
He sat back on his folded knees, gloriously naked. “Come to me, Dylan.”
She wanted to explore the muscled beauty of his body, but her need for him was more immediate. He took her hands and brought her up onto his lap. His sex thrust up between them, a thick spear of hard flesh. Its broad head glistened with moisture, so temptingly ripe Dylan couldn’t resist bending over it and sucking him deep into her mouth.
“Cristo,” he hissed, his cock leaping against her tongue.
He tunneled his fingers into her hair as she teased him with a few slow slides up and down the rigid length of him. When she lifted her head, Rio’s eyes burned into her. His fangs seemed immense now, his face drawn taut. He caressed her as she climbed up onto him and straddled his thighs.
He kissed her breasts, her shoulder, her throat, her mouth.
“What have you done to me,” he rasped, throwing his head back as she took hold of his sex and guided it into the slick cleft of her body. “Ah, fuck…Dylan.”
She seated herself onto him and slowly sank down to the hilt.
Oh, it felt good.
Rio filled her with a heat she’d never known before. At first, Dylan could only hold herself there, unmoving, reveling in the pure heaven of their joined bodies. Rio wrapped his arms around her as she began a slow, shuddering rhythm. He met her stroke for stroke, his erection kicking, surging deeper with each downward thrust of her hips.
It didn’t take long for Dylan’s climax to build. She’d been more than halfway there before they started, every nerve ending alive with sensation and looking for release. She rode him harder, clutching his shoulders as the first wave of her orgasm flooded over her. She cried out with the pleasure of it, quaking inside, splintering into a million shimmering pieces.
Rio’s possessive growl as she came made her smile. He hooked his arms under hers and leaned down, guiding her back onto the floor, their bodies still intimately joined. He drove into her, a hard push of his cock. His tempo was urgent, fierce, full of barely restrained power.
Dylan held on as he rocked against her, reveling in the feel of his muscles bunching and flexing under her palms. Overhead, the candles threw erotic shadows on the ceiling, the flames flaring brighter as Rio buried himself deep inside her and shouted with the force of his release.
As Dylan stroked his strong back, she felt like weeping for the depth of pleasure she’d just experienced with him…and for the voice in her head that warned she would be a fool to fall in love with him.
A fact she had to admit, had already come to pass.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Six
If he’d been worried about making more mistakes, particularly where Dylan was concerned, Rio had to admit he’d just crossed one gaping point of no return.
Taking her vein like he had was bad enough; Breed males with even the smallest scrap of honor would never feed from a Breedmate simply for their own gain. That quenching taste of Dylan’s blood had pulled him through what would have been hours of anguish, and a blackout that would have left him vulnerable to discovery by humans, other vampires…shit. Vulnerable on more levels than he cared to examine.
But whether he’d needed it or not, it had been wrong to take Dylan’s blood. Even though she’d given it to him freely, she hardly understood what she was doing—binding herself to him, and for what? Charity. Maybe even pity.
It burned him to think he’d been too weak to turn her away. He’d wanted what she was offering—all of it. And it was a little too late to call his actions back. What he’d done here was irrevocable. He knew it, and maybe instinctively she did too, since she’d become so quiet as she rested in his arms.
Rio was linked to her now, by a bond that could not be undone. With her blood swimming through his body, into his cells, Dylan was a part of him. Until death took one of them, Rio would sense her presence, her emotional state—the very essence of her—no matter how distant their separate futures might take them.
As he stroked the impossibly soft curve of her bare shoulder as she lay in his arms, he had to wonder if the blood bond was somewhat incidental to the profound attraction he was feeling for this woman. He’d felt a connection building with her from the very beginning, ever since she wandered into that cave and he heard her voice in the dark.
Making love with Dylan tonight had been perhaps as big a mistake as drinking from her: now that he’d tasted her passion, he only wanted more. He was selfish and greedy, and he’d already proven to himself that he couldn’t count on honor to keep his wants at bay.
He focused instead on her—shallow breaths, careful silence…a heaviness within her that had nothing to do with the myriad mistakes that had transpired between them.
She was mourning privately.
“How bad off is she…your mother?”
Dylan swallowed, her hair sifting over his chest as she gave a vague shake of her head. “It’s not good. She keeps getting weaker.” Dylan’s voice trailed off. “I don’t know how much longer she can fight it. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how much longer she will try.”
“I’m sorry,” Rio said, caressing her back and knowing that he could only offer feeble words.
He didn’t want Dylan to hurt, and he knew that she was weathering a deep pain. It didn’t take a blood bond to tell him that. And he was ten kinds of bastard for doing what he did with her here tonight.
“We can’t stay here,” he said, not meaning it to come out like a snarl. “We need to get moving.”
He shifted beneath her uncomfortably, groaning when he only succeeded in making their position even more awkward. He muttered a curse in Spanish.
“Are you okay?” Dylan asked. She lifted her head and looked up at him, frowning with concern. “Is the pain coming back now? How do you feel?”
Frustration rose up in his throat on a scoff, but he bit it back. Instead reached out to stroke her cheek. “Have you always tried to take care of everyone around you before yourself?”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t need taking care of. I haven’t needed that in a very long time.”
“How long, Dylan?”
“Ever.”
As she said it, her chin went up a bit, and Rio found it easy to picture Dylan as a freckle-faced little girl stubbornly refusing any and all help, regardless of how badly she might need it. As a woman, she was much the same. Defiant, proud. So afraid to be hurt.
He knew that kind of fear personally as well. He’d walked a similar path from the time he was a child. It was a lonely one; he’d almost not survived it himself. But Dylan was stronger than him in so many ways. He was only now coming to realize just how strong she really was.
And how alone as well.
He recalled that she had passingly mentioned having brothers—a pair of them, both named for rock stars—but he’d never heard her speak of her father. In fact, the only family she seemed to have in her life at all was the woman currently residing in the cancer wing of the hospital down the street. The family she was likely going to lose before long.
“Has it been just the two of you for a while now?” he asked.
She nodded. “My dad left when I was twelve—abandoned us, actually. They divorced soon afterward, and Mom never remarried. Not for lack of interest.” Dylan laughed, but it was a sad kind of humor. “My mom has always been a bit of a free spirit, always falling in love with a new man and swearing to me that she’s finally found The One. I think she’s in love with the state of being in love. Right now, she’s crushing on the man who owns the runaway center where she works. God, for her to have so much love left to give even when the cancer is taking so much away from her…”
Rio smoothed his fingers down Dylan’s arm as she fought the sudden hitch in her voice. “What about your father? Have you been in touch with him about what’s going on?”
She scoffed sharply. “He wouldn’t care, even if I knew where he was and he was sober enough to listen to me. His family was only of value to him when we were bailing him out of trouble or helping him score more booze and drugs.”
“Sounds like a real bastard,” Rio said, anger for Dylan’s hurt spiking in his belly. “Too bad he’s gone. I wish I could meet the son of a bitch.”
“You want to hear why he left?”
He petted her hair, watching the candlelight play over the burnished waves. “Only if you want to tell me.”
“It was my ‘gift’ as you called it. My weird ability to see the dead.” Dylan idly traced one of his glyphs as she spoke, remembering what had to be unpleasant times. “When I was little, elementary school age and before, my parents never paid much attention to the fact that I occasionally would talk to invisible people. It’s not that unusual for kids to have imaginary friends, so I guess they ignored it. Plus, with all the arguing and problems in our house, it wasn’t like they heard a lot of what I was saying anyway. Well, not until a few years later, that is. In one of his rare sober moments, my father ran across my diary. I’d been writing about seeing these dead women from time to time, and hearing them speak to me. I was trying to understand why it was happening to me—what it meant, you know?—but he saw it as an opportunity to cash in on me.”
“Jesus.” Rio was despising the man more and more.
“Cash in on you how?”
“He could never hold a job for long, and he was always looking for ways to make a fast buck. He thought if he charged people to come and speak with me—people who’d lost loved ones and were hoping to connect with them somehow—he could just sit back and count the cash as it poured in.” She shook her head slowly. “I tried to tell him that’s not how my visions worked. I couldn’t bring them up on command. I never knew when I’d see them, and even when they appeared, it wasn’t like I could carry on a conversation with them. The dead women I see speak to me, tell me things they want me to hear, or want me to act on, but that’s it. There’s no chatting about who’s hanging out with them on the Other Side, or any of the other parlor game type of stuff you see on TV. But my father wouldn’t listen. He demanded I figure out how to use my skill…and so, for a while, I tried to fake it. It didn’t last long. One of the families he tried to swindle pressed charges, and my father split. That was the last we ever saw or heard from him.”
Good riddance, Rio thought savagely, but he could understand how that kind of abandonment must have hurt the child Dylan was.
“What about your brothers?” he asked. “Weren’t they old enough to step in and do something about your father?”
“By that time, both of them were gone.” Dylan’s voice sounded very quiet, more pained than at any time when she’d been reliving her father’s betrayal. “I was only seven when Morrison died in a car accident. He’d just gotten his license that week, just turned sixteen. My father took him out to celebrate. He got Morrie drunk, and evidently my father was in even worse shape, so he gave the keys to Morrie to drive them home. He missed a turn and ran the car into a telephone pole. My father walked away with a concussion and a broken collarbone, but Morrie…he never came out of his coma. He died three days later.”
Rio couldn’t contain the growl that boiled up from his throat. The urge to kill, to avenge and protect this woman in his arms was savage, a seething fire in his veins. “I really need to find this so-called man and give him a taste of true pain,” he muttered. “Tell me your other brother beat your father to within an inch of his useless life.”
“No,” Dylan said. “Lennon was older than Morrie by a year and a half, but where Morrie was loud and outgoing, Len was quiet and reserved. I remember the look on his face when Mom came home and told us Morrie had died and our father would be spending a couple days in jail once he got out of the hospital. Len just…dissolved. I saw something in him die that day too. He walked out of the house and straight into a military recruiter’s office. He couldn’t wait to get away…from us, from all of it. He never looked back. Some friends of his said he’d been shipped out to Beirut, but I don’t know for sure. He never wrote or called. He just…disappeared. I just hope he’s happy, wherever his life took him. He deserves that.”
“You deserve it too, Dylan. Jesus, you and your mother both deserve more than what life has given you so far.”
She lifted her head and pivoted to face him, her eyes glistening and moist. Rio cupped her beautiful face and brought her to him, kissing her with only the lightest brush of his lips across hers. She wrapped her arms around him, and as he held her there, he wondered if maybe there was a way that he could give Dylan some hope…some piece of happiness for her and the mother she loved so dearly.
He thought of Tess—Dante’s Breedmate—and the incredible skill she had to heal with her touch. Tess had helped Rio mend from some of his injuries, and more than once he’d witnessed firsthand how she could take away battle wounds and knit broken bones back together again.
She’d said the ability had diminished now that she was pregnant, but what if there was a chance…even a slim one?
As his mind started chugging away on the possibilities, his cell phone went off. He grabbed it from out of the pocket of his discarded jacket and flipped it open.
“Shit. It’s Niko.” He hit the talk button. “Yeah.”
“Where the fuck are you, man?”
He glanced at Dylan, looking so delectably naked in the soft glow of the candles. “I’m in the city—Midtown. I’m with Dylan.”
“Midtown with Dylan,” Niko repeated, a sardonic edge to his voice. “I guess that explains why the Rover’s sitting at the curb and there’s no one here at her place. You two decide to take in a show or something? What the hell’s going on with you and that female, amigo?”
Rio didn’t feel like explaining at the moment. “Everything’s cool here. Did you and Kade run into any problems?”
“Nope. Located all four individuals and did a gentle little soft-shoe on their memories from the cave.” He chuckled. “Okay, maybe we weren’t so gentle on that asshole she works for at the paper. Guy was a first-class dick. The only one left to do is the female’s mother. Tried her home address and the shelter where she works, but no luck either place. You got any idea where she is?”
“Ah…yeah,” Rio said. “Don’t worry about it, though. It’s under control. I’m going to handle that situation myself.”
There was a beat of silence on the other end. “Okay. While you’re, ah, handling the situation, you want Kade and I to run the Rover out and pick you up? Time’s gonna be getting tight soon if we want to make it back to Boston before the sun comes up.”
“Yeah, I need pickup,” Rio said. He rattled off the cross-streets of the hospital complex. “See you in twenty.”
“Hey, amigo?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we picking you up solo, or should we expect company for the ride back?”
Rio glanced at Dylan, watching as she began putting her clothes back on. He didn’t want to say good-bye to her, but bringing her back to the compound with him didn’t seem like the kindest thing for him to do either. He’d already dragged her far enough into his problems tonight, first by drinking from her, then by seducing her. If he brought her back with him now, what might he be tempted to do for an encore?
But yet there was a part of him that wanted to hold her close, despite the knowledge that she could—and should—do better than him. He had so little to offer Dylan, yet that didn’t keep him from wishing he could give her the world.
“Just call me when you get here,” he told Niko. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Seven
Dylan finished getting dressed while Rio made his plans with Nikolai on the phone. He was going back to Boston tonight. From the sound of it, he’d be taking off as soon as the other warriors came to get him. Twenty minutes, he’d said. Not long at all.
And no mention whatsoever of where that left the two of them now.
Dylan tried not to let that sting, but it did. She wanted some indication that what happened between them tonight had meant something to him too. But he was silent behind her in the little back room of the church as he snapped his cell phone closed and started putting his clothes on.
“Are Nancy and the others all right?”
“Yes,” he said from somewhere behind her. “They’re all fine. Niko and Kade didn’t harm them, and the process of erasing their memories is painless.”
“That’s good.” She leaned over the two half-melted candles and blew them out. In the darkness, she found the courage to ask him the question that had been hanging between them all night. “So, what now, Rio? When are you going to scrub my memory?”
She didn’t hear him move, but she felt the stir in the air as he drew up to her back and his strong, warm hands came to rest softly on her shoulders. “I don’t want to do that, Dylan. For your sake—maybe for my own too—I should erase myself from your memory, but I don’t want that. I don’t think I could.”
Dylan shut her eyes, holding the tender words close. “Then…where do we go from here?”
Slowly, he turned her around to face him. He kissed her sweetly, then rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t know. I only know that I’m not ready to say good-bye to you right now.”
“Your friends are going to be here soon.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t go with them.”
He tilted his chin down and pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I have to.”
In her heart, even before he said it, Dylan knew he had to go back. His world was with the Order. And regardless of the birthmark that granted her a special place among the Breed, Dylan had to remain with her mom.
She burrowed her cheek into Rio’s chest, listening to the solid beat of his heart. She wasn’t sure she could let go of him, now that she had her arms wrapped around him. “Will you come with me, back to the hospital? I want to check in on her one more time tonight.”
“Of course,” Rio said, disengaging from her and taking her hand in his.
They left their makeshift haven in the empty church and walked hand in hand back to the hospital complex. Visiting hours had ended some time ago, but the guard at the front desk seemed used to making exceptions for family members heading up to the cancer ward. He waved Dylan and Rio through, and they took the elevator up to the tenth floor.
Rio waited outside the room as Dylan put her gloves on and opened the door. Her mother was asleep, so Dylan took a seat in the chair beside the bed and just sat there quietly watching her breathe.
There was so much she wanted to tell her—not the least of which being the fact that she had met an extraordinary man. She wanted to tell her mother that she was falling in love. That she was excited and scared and filled with a desperate kind of hope for all that might await in her future with the man standing right outside the hospital room.
She wanted her mom to know that she was falling head over heels in love with Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio…a man like no other she’d ever known before.
But Dylan couldn’t say any of those things. They were secrets she had to keep, for now, certainly. Maybe forever.
She reached out and stroked her mom’s hair, carefully pulled the thin blanket up under her delicate chin. How she wished her mother could have known one true, profound love in her lifetime. It seemed so unfair that she’d made so many bad choices, loved too many bad men, when she deserved someone decent and kind.
“Oh, Mommy,” Dylan whispered quietly. “This is so damn unfair.”
Tears welled up and flooded over. Maybe she’d saved a lifetime of crying in preparation of this moment, but there was no stopping them now. Dylan wiped at her tears but they kept coming, too many for her to sweep away with her latex-covered hands. She got up and went around to grab a tissue from the box on her mother’s wheeled bed tray. As she dabbed at her eyes, she noticed a ribboned package sitting on a table at the other side of the small room. She walked over and saw that it was chocolates. The box was unopened, and from the look of it, expensive. Curious, Dylan picked up the tiny white card tucked under the silk grosgrain bow.
It read: To Sharon. Come back to me soon. Yours, G. F.
Dylan mulled over the initials and realized it had to be the runaway shelter’s owner, Mr. Fasso. Gordon, her mother had called him. He must have come to visit her sometime after Dylan had left. And the message on the card sounded a bit more intimate than your basic boss-to-employee, get-well sentiment…
Good Lord, could this actually be something more than one of her mom’s many disastrous infatuations?
Dylan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry even harder at the idea that her mother might have found someone decent. Granted, she didn’t know Gordon Fasso outside his general reputation as a wealthy, charitable, somewhat eccentric, businessman. But as far as her mother’s taste in men ran, Dylan figured she could—and had—done a lot worse.
She can’t hear me.
Dylan froze at the sudden sound of a female voice in the room.
It wasn’t her mother’s.
It wasn’t an earthly voice at all, she realized in the split second before she processed the static-filled whisper and then turned around to face the spirit of a young woman.
I tried to tell her, but she can’t hear me…can you…hear me?
The ghost’s lips didn’t move, but Dylan heard her speak as clearly as any other specter her Breedmate gift had allowed her to see. She held the sorrowful gaze of a dead girl who looked to be less than twenty years old.
A distant familiarity sparked as Dylan took in the goth clothing and the pair of black braids that hung over the girl’s shoulders. She’d seen her before at the shelter. The girl had been one of her mother’s favorites—Toni. The runaway who’d no-showed at the job Dylan’s mom had gotten for her. Sharon had been so disappointed when she told Dylan about losing Toni to the streets. Now, here that poor lost child was, reaching out at last, but from the grave and truly too far gone for anyone to help her.
So, why was she trying to communicate with Dylan?
In the past, she might have tried to ignore the apparition, or deny her ability to see it, but not now. Dylan nodded when the ghost asked again if she was being heard.
Too late for me, said the unmoving lips. But not for them. They need you.
“Need me for what?” Dylan asked quietly, knowing her own voice never carried into the afterlife. “Who needs me?”
There are more of us…your sisters.
The young woman tilted her head, exposing the underside of her chin. Riding on the slender line of her ethereal skin was the birthmark Dylan knew well.
“You’re a Breedmate,” she gasped.
Holy shit.
Had they all been Breedmates? All the ghosts she’d ever seen were exclusively female, always young, seemingly healthy-looking women. Had they all been born with the same teardrop-and-crescent-moon stamp that she had?
Too late for me, the ghost of Toni said.
Her form was beginning to break up, fading in and out like a weak hologram. She was becoming transparent, little more than a detached crackle of electricity in the air. Her voice was less than a whisper now, growing weaker as Toni’s image dissolved to nothingness.
But Dylan heard what she said, and it chilled her.
Don’t let him kill any more of us…
Dylan’s face was ashen as she came out of her mother’s room.
“What happened? Is she okay?” Rio asked, his heart knotting at the thought of Dylan possibly facing her mother’s passing all alone. “Did anything—”
Dylan shook her head. “No, my mom’s fine. She’s asleep. But there was…Oh, God, Rio.” She lowered her voice and pulled him to a private corner of the hallway. “I just saw the ghost of a Breedmate.”
“Where?”
“In the room with my mom. The girl was a runaway from the shelter, one my mom was very close to until she went missing recently. Her name was Toni, and she—” Dylan broke off, wrapping her arms around herself. “Rio, she just told me she was murdered, and that she’s not alone. She said there are more like her. She showed me her Breedmate mark and then she told me not to let any more of ‘my sisters’ be killed too.”
Holy…hell.
Dread coiled in Rio’s gut as Dylan relayed the unearthly message of warning. Instantly he thought of Dragos’s corrupt son, and the very real possibility that the bastard had unleashed the Ancient from its crypt, just as the Order feared. He could be breeding the creature right now, creating multiple new Gen One vampires on multiple females.
For crissake, Dragos’s son could be harvesting Breedmates from the four corners of the world for that very purpose.
“She said ‘don’t let him kill any more of us,’ like I was in danger as well.”
Rio’s skin went tight with foreboding. “You’re sure this is what you saw—what you heard?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.” He took a step toward the room. “I need to see this for myself. Is it still in there?”
Dylan shook her head. “No, she’s gone now. The apparitions are like mist…they don’t stay visible for very long.”
“Did you ask her where the others might be, or who it was that killed her?”
“It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. They can speak, but I don’t think they can hear me wherever they are. I’ve tried, but that never works.” Dylan stared at him for a long moment. “Rio, I think every one of these visitations I’ve had—from the very first, when I was just a kid—has been the spirit of a dead Breedmate. I always thought it was odd that I only saw females, young females, who should have been in prime health. When I saw the birthmark under Toni’s chin, it all clicked into place in my mind. Rio, I get it now—I feel it. They’ve all been Breedmates.”
Rio ran a hand over his scalp, letting a sharp oath hiss through his teeth. “I need to call Boston and fill them in on this.”
Dylan nodded, still staring up into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice was a little shaky. “Rio, I’m scared.”
He pulled her close, knowing what it cost her to admit that, even to him. “Don’t be. I’ll keep you safe. But I can’t leave you here tonight, Dylan. I’m taking you back with me to the compound.”
She frowned. “But my mom—”
“If I can help her too, I will,” he said, putting it all out there for her now. “But first I need to know that you’ll be safe.”
Dylan’s eyes pleaded with him, then, at last, she gave a small nod of her head. “All right, Rio. I’ll go back with you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Eight
Rio didn’t trance Dylan for the ride back to Boston.
Despite sidelong looks from Nikolai and Kade in the front of the SUV that suggested he was an idiot to break protocol on that, Rio couldn’t treat Dylan with anything but total faith. He knew he was taking one hell of a gamble that she could be trusted with the location of the Order’s headquarters, even though he wasn’t sure how long—or in what capacity—she’d be staying with him there, but he did trust her.
Hell, more than that, he was pretty damn sure he loved her.
He kept that stunning realization to himself, however, seeing very clearly that Dylan was anxious about leaving her mother alone in New York. Each mile they traveled closer to Boston, he felt her heart beat a bit faster. He didn’t need to be bonded to her by blood to feel the tang of indecision rolling off her body in waves as she rested quietly against him in the backseat, her gaze fixed on the blur of scenery speeding past the tinted windows.
She didn’t want to be here.
Rio didn’t doubt that she felt some affection toward him. After tonight, he knew she did. And he had to believe that under different circumstances, she wouldn’t feel so much like she wanted to bolt from the moving vehicle and race back home to New York.
“Hey,” he murmured next to her ear as Niko swung the Rover into the gated drive of the compound. “We’re going to figure all of this out, okay?”
She gave him a small smile, but her eyes were sad. “Just hold me, Rio.”
He drew her farther into his embrace and pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss. “I won’t let anything bad happen. I promise you that.”
He wasn’t entirely sure how he could make good on a sizable vow like that, but seeing the look of hope in Dylan’s eyes as she gazed up at him, damn if he wouldn’t make it his life’s mission to see the promise through, whatever it took.
The SUV rolled through and headed for the Order’s secured fleet garage. Rio hated to let go of Dylan as the car came to a stop inside the hangar.
“Home, sweet home,” Kade drawled, opening the passenger door and climbing out.
Nikolai shot Rio a look over the front seats. “We’re gonna head down to the lab. Should we tell Lucan and the others you’ll be around shortly?”
Rio nodded. “Yeah, right behind you. Give me ten minutes.”
“You got it.” Niko glanced to Dylan. “Listen, I’m really sorry about your mother. That’s got to be tough. There just are no adequate words, you know?”
“I know,” she murmured. “But thank you, Nikolai.”
Niko held her gaze for a moment, then he clapped his palm on the seatback. “Okay. See you below, my man.”
“Tell Lucan I’m going to be bringing Dylan in on the meeting.”
Both she and Niko threw looks of surprise in his direction. Outside the Rover, Kade exhaled a wry curse and started laughing under his breath like Rio had lost his mind.
“You want to bring a civilian into a meeting with Lucan,” Niko said. “A civilian he fully expects that you scrubbed tonight, like he told you to do.”
“Dylan saw something tonight,” Rio said. “I think the Order ought to hear about firsthand.”
Nikolai considered him in silence for a very long time. Then he nodded like he could see that Rio wasn’t going to budge on this. Rio could tell that his old friend realized that Dylan was not merely a civilian, or a mission Rio had failed to execute. By the glint of the warrior’s wintry blue eyes, Rio could see that Niko understood just how much Dylan had come to mean to him. He understood, and based on the crooked smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth, he approved.
“Shit, amigo. Yeah. I’ll tell him what you said.”
As Niko and Kade strode off to the compound’s elevator together, Rio and Dylan got out of the Rover and headed in a couple of minutes behind them. Hands linked, they took the elevator down the three-hundred-foot descent to the Order’s headquarters.
It felt strange to walk the labyrinth of secured corridors and not feel like he had for the long months following the explosion—like a lost beast left to roam its lair without place or purpose.
Now, he had both, the heart of which could be summed up in one word: Dylan.
“Will you be comfortable talking about what you saw in that hospital room tonight?” he asked her as they traveled the corridors. “Because if you’d rather not, I can do it for—”
“No, it’s fine. I want to help, if you think I can.”
He stopped her in the long stretch of white marble hallway, not far from the glass walls of the tech lab where his brethren would be waiting.
“Dylan, what you did for me tonight—giving me your blood, staying with me when you had every right to leave me there and never look back…Everything that happened between us tonight, I want you to know that it meant something to me. I am…”
He wanted to say that he was falling in love with her, but he hadn’t said those words in so long—hadn’t believed he would ever mean them again, let alone mean them as deeply and honestly as he did now. He stumbled over the admission, and the awkward pause made the chasm seem even wider.
“I am…grateful to you,” he said, settling on the other emotion that was filling his heart when he looked at her. “I don’t know that I can ever repay you for all that you gave me tonight.”
Some of the light seemed to dim from her eyes as she listened to him. “Do you think I would ask you to repay me?” She shook her head slowly. “De nada. You don’t owe me anything, Rio.”
He started to say something more—some other feeble attempt to explain what she had come to mean to him. But Dylan was already walking ahead of him.
“Shit,” he hissed, raking his hand through his hair.
He caught up to her a few paces up the corridor, just in time to hear Lucan’s voice boom through the glass of the tech lab.
“What the fuck do you mean, he’s bringing her in with him? My man had better have a goddamn good reason for bringing that reporter back into this compound.”
Any irritation Dylan had felt toward Rio for his polite gratitude was dwarfed by the dread that ran cold in her veins when she heard the Order’s leader bellow in outrage. She didn’t want to think she needed Rio’s protection, but the presence of his broad palm coming to rest at the small of her back as they entered the meeting room full of eight grim-faced, combat-garbed vampire warriors was the only thing that kept her knees from quaking beneath her.
Dylan’s eyes made a quick scan of the menace she faced: Lucan, the dark-haired one in charge, was obvious. He’d been with Rio earlier today, laying down the curt instructions that she be taken back home to New York and mind-scrubbed like her mom, her boss, and her friends.
Beside Lucan at an impressive command center of more than half a dozen computer workstations and twice as many monitors was a Breed male with spiky blond hair that looked like it had been raked into a state of total anarchy on the top of his head. He glanced at Dylan from over the tops of thin rectangular sunglasses with pale sky blue lenses. Of all of the warriors gathered there, this one seemed the least threatening, even though he was easily more than six feet tall and had a body as lean and fit and muscular as the others.
“This is Dylan Alexander,” Rio announced to the group. “I’m sure by now you’ve heard all about what happened in Jiáín, with the cave, and the pictures Dylan took of what was inside.”
Lucan crossed his arms over his chest. “What I’d like to know is why you apparently ignored mission directives and brought her back with you tonight. She may be a Breedmate, but she’s a civilian, Rio. A civilian with media contacts, for fuck’s sake.”
“Not anymore,” Dylan interjected, speaking for herself before Rio was forced to defend her. “My media contacts, such as they were, are gone. And even if they weren’t, you have my word that I would never willfully divulge any of what I know to the outside world. I wish I’d never taken those pictures or written that story. I am truly sorry for anything I’ve done to put the Breed at risk of exposure.”
If they believed her, none of them gave any clear indication of that. The rest of the Order stared at her from where they were seated at a large conference table, like a jury measuring the convicted. Niko and Kade were there, sitting next to a black warrior with a skull-trim and shoulders that would dwarf the biggest NFL linebacker. But if that guy looked menacing, the one across the table from him was even more intimidating. With shoulder-length tawny hair and shrewd, jewel-green eyes, the warrior looked like he’d seen—and likely done—it all…and then some.
He watched Dylan with a narrowed, studying gaze, as did the remaining two males in the room—a cocky-looking warrior polishing a rather nasty pair of curved blades, and a military-type with a tight buzz cut, chiseled chin and cheekbones, and grim, steel blue eyes.
Rio’s arm came around her shoulders. It was a light embrace that made her feel safe, as if she wasn’t standing alone before this dangerous cadre of combat-trained warriors. Rio supported her, perhaps her sole ally in the room.
He trusted her. Dylan could feel that trust in the warmth of his body, and in the tender way he looked at her as he addressed his brethren.
“You all are aware of Dylan’s discovery of the hidden cave on that mountain, but you haven’t heard exactly how it was that she was able to find it.” Rio cleared his throat. “Eva showed her the way.”
A rumble of disbelief—even blatant hostility—rolled through the room. But it was Lucan’s voice that rose above them all.
“Now you’re telling us she’s somehow connected to that traitorous bitch? Just how the hell is that possible when Eva’s been dead for the past year?”
“Dylan saw Eva’s ghost that day on the mountain,” Rio said. “That is Dylan’s special ability, to see and hear the dead. Eva appeared to her and guided her to me up in that cave.”
Dylan watched the warriors absorb that bit of news. She could see from nearly every hard face in the room that Eva had no friends among them. And no wonder, considering what she’d done to Rio. What she’d done to them all through her betrayal.
“Tonight Dylan saw another dead female,” Rio said.
“She saw another Breedmate, actually. This time the apparition appeared in her mother’s hospital room. The dead girl said something I think you’re all going to want to hear.”
He turned to Dylan and gave her a nod to continue the explanation herself. She met the grave stares and carefully relayed everything Toni’s spirit had told her, line for line, recalling every word in case it might help make sense of the warning from the Other Side.
“Jesus Christ,” said the warrior over at the bank of computer equipment as Dylan finished speaking. He raked his fingers over his scalp, further mussing the cropped blond spikes. “Rio, remind me again what you said the other day about someone potentially breeding another population of first generation Breed vampires?”
Rio nodded, and the grim look on his face put a chill in Dylan’s spine. “If the Ancient has been awakened successfully from its hibernation, what’s to say it’s not procreating? Or being made to procreate?”
As Dylan listened to them talk, pieces of a puzzle she’d been mulling over for the past several days—ever since she set foot in that cave—now clicked into place in her mind. The hidden crypt with its open tomb. The strange, otherworldly symbols on the walls. The unshakable sense of evil that permeated the dark cavern, even though its original occupant was gone…
The cave had been a holding tank—a hibernation chamber, just like Rio had inadvertently told her.
And the dangerous creature that had been sleeping inside it was now loose somewhere.
Breeding.
Killing.
Oh, God.
From across the long table, Nikolai shot a frown in Rio’s direction. “With the last of those alien savages back in the baby-making business, the question then would be, how long has he been going at it?”
“And on how many Breedmates,” Lucan added soberly. “If we truly have a scenario here where Breedmates are being captured and held somewhere, and, in at least a few cases, killed, then I hate to even consider where this could be heading. Gideon, you wanna run a check on Darkhaven records, see if there are any missing persons reports on Breedmates over the past decade or so?”
“On it,” he replied, hitting the keyboard and firing off what appeared to be multiple searches on multiple computers.
The warrior at the conference table who looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune, spoke up next. “Well, nothing short of a miracle, but the Enforcement Agency’s Regional Director has actually agreed to a meeting tonight. You want me to mention this newsflash from the dead Breedmate to Director Starkn?”
Lucan seemed to ponder the idea, then he gave a vague shake of his head. “Let’s hold off on that for now, Chase. We’re not sure precisely what we’re looking for yet, and we’ll be upsetting the Agency’s apple cart bad enough when we tell them we think the population’s few remaining Gen Ones are being targeted for assassination.”
Chase nodded in agreement.
As the group began talking amongst themselves, Lucan walked over to speak with Rio and Dylan privately.
“I appreciate the information,” he told her. “But as valuable as it may prove to be, this compound is no place for a civilian.” He glanced at Rio, those silvery eyes studying him closely. “She was given a choice and she made it. You know we can’t permit her to stay. Not as a civilian.”
“Yeah,” Rio said. “I know that.”
Lucan waited, obviously tuned in to the fact that something intimate had passed between Dylan and Rio. He cleared his throat. “So, if you’ve got something to tell me, my man…”
Through the lengthy silence that answered, Dylan unconsciously held her breath. She didn’t know what she was waiting for Rio to say: That he was prepared to challenge Lucan’s rule? That he loved her and would fight to keep her at his side, no matter what the rest of the Order thought of her?
But he didn’t say anything like that.
“I need to talk to Dante,” he told Lucan. “And I need to talk to Tess. There’s something important I need to ask her.”
Lucan considered him through narrowed eyes. “You know what I expect, Rio. You let me know if anything changes.”
“Yeah,” Rio replied.
When Lucan turned and strode back to converse with Gideon, Rio lifted Dylan’s chin on the edge of his hand. “I promised you that I was going to try to help your mother,” he reminded her gently. At her nod, he went on. “I don’t know if it can be done, but before we can talk about you and I, that question needs to be answered. I know I can’t ask you to stay with me when you’re hurting to be near your family. I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
Hope flickered in her chest. “But do you…want to ask me to stay with you?”
He caressed her cheek, smoothing her hair back behind her ear. “God, yes. I want that, Dylan, very much.”
Rio bent his head down and kissed her, right there in front of the other warriors. It was brief but so, so sweet. When he drew back, Dylan felt the eyes of the Order on her—on both of them. But it was Rio’s eyes that held her spellbound. They were heated with desire and tender affection, the huge irises flashing with sparks of amber light.
“Let me take you back to my quarters and get you something to eat. I have to talk to Dante and Tess, but I won’t be long.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Nine
Rio’s quarters were quiet when he returned to them a short while later. He could smell the trace scents of the other Breedmates who’d been there not long ago to bring her food and keep her company, but it was Dylan’s juniper and honey essence that drew him through the empty rooms toward the bedroom suite. The shower was running in the adjacent bathroom, and it didn’t take much for him to imagine a lot of rolling steam and sudsy hot water licking her beautiful body.
He approached the partially open door and discovered that the reality was even better than his imagination.
Dylan stood beneath the double heads of the huge walk-in shower, her hands braced on the tiles, spine arched in a graceful curve that caught the drenching blasts of the sprays. Her chin was tilted back, eyes closed. Her fiery hair was soaked to a dark copper shot with gold, clinging to her like wet silk as she rinsed the shampoo from its length.
Frothy white suds ran over the round cheeks of her backside…Cristo, down between them too, into the tight cleft of her ass and onto her long, slender thighs.
Rio licked his lips, his mouth gone suddenly dry. He felt the ache of his emerging fangs, and the answering throb of his cock as hunger rose within him for this female.
His female, answered an impulse that was purely male, purely Breed.
He wanted her. Wanted her wet and warm beneath him, and he didn’t think he could wait too long to have her.
He must have made some kind of noise because Dylan’s head came down sharply and turned toward him. Her eyes snapped open, then she smiled at him through the glass…a slow, seductive smile that made him wish he was naked right now, climbing under the water with her.
But making love in the darkness of a small church alcove was a far different thing than doing it face-to-face, body to body, in the bright yellow light and mirrored expanse of where they were now. In here, he had nowhere to hide. Dylan would see him—all of him, all of the scars she may not have noticed when they were making love in the dark several hours ago.
Shame made him want to douse the dozen recessed lights overhead. He flicked an irritated glance upward, but Dylan’s voice distracted him from the thought.
“Rio…join me.”
Madre de Dios, but the sound of that husky invitation was almost enough to distract him from all thought completely…except for the one that urged him to take his clothes off and do as she was asking him to.
He met her eyes through the glass of the shower door, his own heavy-lidded and sharp with the flood of swamping amber that was surely turning his pupils into thinnest slivers of black.
“I want you in here with me,” Dylan said. She held his stare as she ran her palms up her flat belly and over the buoyant swells of her breasts. “Come in here with me…I want to feel your hands on me. All over me.”
Holy…fuck.
Rio’s jaw was clamped so tightly his molars should have shattered. It was damn hard to wallow in self-doubt or shame when the only woman he wanted—a woman he wanted more than anything ever before in his entire existence—was looking at him like she intended to devour him whole.
He got rid of his boots and socks, then stripped out of his shirt and pants and boxers. He stood there, naked, fully erect, his dermaglyphs pulsing with all the colors of his desire. Hands fisted at his sides, he let Dylan take a good long look at him. It was excruciating—those first few seconds as her darkening eyes lowered and her gaze swept slowly over him.
He knew what she was seeing. Hell, he could see it well enough for himself: his battered torso, the skin of which was glossy and tight in some places, rough in others, where he still carried tiny pieces of shrapnel embedded several layers down into his flesh. And farther down was the thick red scar that ran down the length of his left thigh, the gash that had almost cost him the limb entirely.
Dylan was seeing all of that ugliness now.
He waited for her eyes to lift.
He waited to see pity in her face, dreaded that he might see revulsion.
“Rio,” she murmured thickly.
Her head came up slowly and her eyes met his. Her peridot gaze was the color of a night-dark forest now, her pupils large beneath the heavy fall of her lashes. There was no pity there, nothing but dusky, feminine desire.
Rio wanted to throw his head back and shout his relief, but the sight of Dylan’s parted lips, her hungry eyes drinking him in so wantonly, robbed him of his voice.
She opened the glass door of the shower. “Get in here,” she demanded, her mouth curling into the most incredibly sexy smile. “Get in here…right now.”
He grinned and stepped inside, joining her under the warm spray.
“That’s better,” Dylan purred as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down into a deep, wet kiss.
She felt so good against him, all that slick, hot skin, all those exquisite curves. Rio held her close, burrowing his fingers into her wet hair, feeling the warm beat of her pulse against his wrist where it rested at the side of her neck.
“I want to taste you,” she said, already breaking away from his mouth to kiss a slow trail down his throat, to the hollow at its base, then along the line of his shoulder. She sank lower still, playing her tongue over the muscled slabs of his chest, teasing his male nipples into tight little buds. “You taste good, Rio. I could eat you up.”
He groaned as she let her mouth travel down his sternum, nipping at him as she went along. Her kiss got less playful as she moved toward his scarred left side.
Rio sucked in his breath. “Don’t,” he rasped, awkward panic seizing him when he thought of her getting anywhere near those hideous marks. She glanced up at him in question and he wanted to die from shame. “It’s all right. You don’t have to…”
“Will it hurt you if I touch you there?” she asked gently, her fingers skating so carefully over the ruined skin. “Does that hurt at all, Rio?”
He managed a weak shake of his head.
It didn’t hurt. What little he could feel through the damaged nerve endings and scars felt good.
Cristo en cielo, it felt so very good to be touched by her.
“Does this hurt?” she asked, pressing the lightest, most caring kiss to the ugliest part of him. “How does that feel, Rio?”
“Good,” he rasped, his throat going thick, and not just from the sheer pleasure of Dylan’s mouth on his body. Her tender gift just now—that sweet, accepting kiss—touched a place in him so deep and forgotten he thought it had been long dead. “Dylan…you are…Jesus, but you are the most incredible woman I have ever known. I truly mean that.”
She smiled up at him, beaming now. “Well, brace yourself, because I’m only getting started.”
Going down on her knees on the tiles before him, Dylan kissed his pelvis and thighs, lapping at the thin rivulets of water that sluiced down from over his shoulders. Each brush of her mouth near his cock made his erection ratchet tighter, harder. When she reached up and took him in her small wet hands, he thought he was going to lose it.
“How does this feel?” she asked as she stroked him from balls to head and back again, the wicked look in her eyes telling him she knew precisely how it must feel.
Good thing, because he was incapable of talk so long as she was lavishing such slow, rhythmic attention on him.
And as if that weren’t glorious enough, Dylan’s tongue joined the party too. She slid along the length of his shaft, then wrapped her lips around the head of his cock and sucked him deep into her mouth.
Rio let out a hoarse moan, and it was all he could do to hold his balance as she swallowed even more of him. He shuddered as she tongued the underside of his penis, her mouth moving up and down on him, tightening the pressure that was already building at the base of his spine. A fierce orgasm was roaring up on him like a freight train.
Ah, fuck, if he didn’t stop her soon he was going to—
With an animal snarl, he lifted Dylan off his throbbing sex. “My turn now,” he said, his voice deep and otherworldly.
She gasped as he pushed her back against the tiles and kissed her with the same slow torment she’d dealt to him. He played his mouth along her throat and down between her breasts, where the fluttering drum of her heartbeat danced against his tongue. He kissed her perfect rosy nipples, using only the slightest tips of his fangs to graze her as he moved lower, to the dip of her navel and then the pleasing curve of her hip.
“You taste very good too,” he told her thickly, giving her a glimpse of his fully extended fangs. Her eyes widened, but not in fear. He heard her sharp intake of breath as he bent his head and sucked gently at the sweet little vee of red curls between her thighs. “Mmm,” he moaned against her creamy flesh. “You taste very, very good.”
She cried out at the first press of his mouth on her sex, then melted into a slow, sultry moan as his tongue cleaved into the tender folds of her core. He was merciless, wanting to hear her scream from the pleasure he was giving her. He burrowed deeper between her soft thighs, reveling in the sharp twist of his hair as she grabbed his head and held him to her, trembling as he stoked her toward release.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered tightly, her breath panting. “Oh, Rio…yes…”
She said his name again, not just the nickname everyone knew him by, but his true name. The one that sounded so right on her lips. She screamed his name as her orgasm overtook her, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever known.
Rio wanted to hold her, but his need was too great now. His cock was ready to explode, and he wanted to be inside her—needed to be—the same way he needed breath and blood to survive.
He stood up and smoothed the wet hair from her face. “Turn around,” he rasped. “Put your hands against the tiles and arch your back, like you were when I first came in here.”
With a pleasured smile, she obliged him, planting her palms wide and putting that beautiful backside right in front of him. Rio caressed her flawless skin, letting his fingers trail into the cleft between the round cheeks, and into the slick mouth of her sex. She drew in her breath as he spread her open and played the tip of his cock against the swollen, dark pink folds.
“This is what I wanted to do to you when I saw you in here, Dylan.”
“Yes,” she whispered, trembling as he stroked her so intimately.
He pushed inside and felt the hot walls of her womb grip his hard flesh. He withdrew, shuddering all the way from the sheer bliss of it. Holy hell, but he wasn’t going to last long like this. Nor did he care if he did. He needed to lose himself inside Dylan’s warmth, surrender all he had to her, because he knew in his heart that their time together was fleeting.
She would be going back to her world before long, while he remained in his.
Rio wrapped his arms around Dylan’s body, holding her as close as he could bring her as his climax started to break over him. He shouted with the sudden blast of his release.
And even after it was over, his arms remained tightly wrapped around the woman he knew he couldn’t keep.
CHAPTER
Thirty
Dylan wasn’t sure how many hours had passed since Rio took her to his bed. They had toweled each other off then made love again, more slowly the second time, as if to memorize every nuance of the moment and hold it close.
As much as she didn’t want to think it, Dylan knew she couldn’t stay here with Rio much longer. She had a life in progress back in New York, and not being near her mother at a time when she needed Dylan the most was tearing her up inside.
But God, it felt good to lie in Rio’s arms like this.
With her cheek resting against his bare chest, Dylan stroked his soft skin, idly tracing the elegant flourish of one of his dermaglyphs. The markings were just a shade darker than his olive skin tone now, but as she touched them, color began to infuse the intricate patterns, making them blush with a color she was learning indicated waking arousal.
Still another indication of his interest was starting to rouse as well, nudging hard against her belly.
“Keep that up, and you may never get out of this bed,” he drawled, his deep voice vibrating against her cheek.
“I’m not sure I want to get out of this bed any time soon,” she replied. When she glanced up at him, Rio’s eyes were closed, his sensual, wickedly talented mouth curved in a satisfied smile. “I can’t remember ever feeling this happy, Rio. It feels like a dream, being with you like this. I know I have to wake up sometime, but I don’t want to.”
His lids lifted and Dylan basked in the warmth of his dark topaz gaze. “What’s happening between us has been…very unexpected, Dylan. Until you walked into that mountain cave, I thought my life was over. I knew it was, because I was prepared to end it myself. That very night, in fact.”
“Rio,” she whispered, heart twisting at the thought.
“Nikolai left me with a cache of explosives when the Order first discovered the hidden crypt in February. They all returned to Boston, but I stayed behind. I was supposed to seal the cave so no one else could find it. I promised I would, and told Niko I would go home to Spain for a while, once I had carried out my mission.” He exhaled a short sigh. “I never intended to leave that mountain. All I had to do was set up the C-4 and detonate it from inside…”
“You were going to trap yourself in there?” Dylan asked, horrified. “My God, Rio. That would have been a long, terrible, lonely way to die.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t care. I thought it would have to be better than living like I was.”
“But you were there for several months before I found the cave. You must have found some hope to keep you from going through with your plans.”
His bitter chuckle seemed to scrape in the back of his throat. “I delayed at first because I didn’t have the balls to finish it. Then my headaches and blackouts started up again, so bad I thought I was losing my mind.”
“Your blackouts—you mean, like what happened to you last night by the river?”
“Yes. They can be pretty bad. I wasn’t feeding anymore by then, so starvation only added to the fun. At some point, I lost track of all time.”
“Then I came along.”
He smiled. “Then you came along.” He lifted her hand and kissed her palm, then the pulse point at her wrist. “You have been so very unexpected, Dylan. You bring me a happiness I’ve never known either.”
“Never? Not even…before, with Eva?” Dylan hated asking him to compare them, yet she really needed to know the answer. When Rio was quiet for a moment, her heart began to sink. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean to make this awkward for you.”
He shook his head, brows pinched together. “Eva was sultry and flirtatious. She was a very beautiful woman. Every male who saw her wanted her—Breed and human alike. I was astonished that she noticed me. Even more so when she made it clear that she wanted to be my mate. She pursued me like she did anything else she set her sights on, and my ego knew no bounds. Things cooled between us a bit after I joined the Order. Eva resented sharing me with my calling as a warrior.”
Dylan listened, awash in a very unpleasant state of jealousy for what she was hearing, and regret that she had brought this feeling on herself by forcing him to talk about the woman he’d loved before.
“After the disaster of what happened with Eva, I wasn’t looking to open myself up to another woman. But you, Dylan…” He picked up a strand of her hair, following the golden-red light in it as the silky wave curled around his finger. “You are pure flame. I touch you and I ignite. I kiss you and I burn to have more. You consume me…like no other woman before you, and, I am certain, like no other ever could again.”
She rose up and kissed him, holding his face in her hands. When she drew back, she couldn’t keep from blurting out just how much he meant to her. “I love you, Rio. It scares me to death to say it out loud, but I do. I love you.”
“Ah, Dios,” he whispered roughly. “Dylan…I have been falling in love with you since the very beginning. How you could love me, the way I am now, I don’t know…”
“The way you are now,” Dylan said, slowly shaking her head in wonder, “the way you look at me, the way you touch me, how could I not love you? You, Rio. Just as you are now.”
She caressed him with all the emotion she felt for him, letting her fingers skate gently down the rugged left side of the handsome face she would never tire of seeing.
She hardly noticed the scars now. Oh, tragically, there was no reversing what he’d been through. The evidence of the hell he’d survived would always be there, on his face and on his body. But when Dylan looked at Rio, she saw his courage, his strength.
She saw his honor, and to her eyes, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
“I love you, Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio. With all my heart.”
Something fiercely tender flashed across his features. With a tight sound caught in his throat, he crushed her against him and simply held her there.
“More than anything, I want your happiness,” he murmured beside her ear. “I know that your family—your mother’s well-being—means the world to you. I know that you need to be with her.”
“Yes,” Dylan whispered. She drew out of his embrace and met his gaze. “I can’t leave her now, Rio. I just…I can’t.”
He nodded. “I know. I understand that you need to be there for her, Dylan. But there is a selfish part of me that would try to convince you that this is where you belong now. With me, bonded in blood, as my mate.”
Oh, she liked the sound of that. She recalled quite vividly how incredible it had been to have Rio feed from her vein. She wanted that again…now, when the love she felt for him was overflowing her heart.
But she couldn’t stay.
“I won’t ask it of you now, Dylan. But I want you to know that’s what I want, to be with you, always. It’s what I’m willing to wait for.”
Joy erupted inside her at the tenderness of his words. “You’ll wait…”
“For as long as it takes, I will wait for you, Dylan.” He smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek, and hooked it behind her ear. “You remember I told you I would try to find a way to help your mother once we came back here to the compound?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why I needed to speak with Tess. She is Dante’s Breedmate.”
Dylan nodded. “She helped me clean and bandage my cheek the other day.”
“Right. She’s a healer. Before her pregnancy, Tess was gifted with the ability to heal open wounds with her touch alone. She’s healed internal ailments as well. There’s an ugly little terrier running around the compound that’s alive only because Tess was able to cure about half a dozen things that were killing it. Including cancer, Dylan. I didn’t want to say anything to you about this until I had a chance to talk with Tess and Dante first.”
Dylan wasn’t breathing. She stared at Rio in astonishment, not sure she could trust her ears. “Tess can cure cancer? But only in animals, right? I mean, you’re not saying that she could possibly help…”
“Her gift doesn’t appear to be limited to animals, but there is a complication. Since her pregnancy, her skills are diminished. She’s not sure it could work for your mother, but she told me that she’d be willing to try—”
Dylan didn’t let him finish. A hope so bright it was a blinding burst to life inside her as she launched herself at Rio and threw her arms around him in a fierce hug. “Oh, my God! Rio, thank you.”
He peeled her off him with gentle hands. “It’s not a guarantee. It’s only the slimmest possibility, and even that is being optimistic. The odds are very good that Tess won’t be able to help.”
Dylan nodded, accepting the idea that it was a long shot, yet elated that there might be even a glimmer of a chance to save her mother.
“She would have to be brought here, to the mansion. Dante won’t risk letting Tess travel now that she’s expecting. And we can’t risk letting your mother know where we’re located or what was done to her, so if this is what she wants, it will mean scrubbing her memory of the entire thing once it’s finished. And that’s still no guarantee that her cancer will be cured.”
“But it’s a chance,” Dylan said. “That’s more than what she has now. Without that chance, she probably only has a few more months. And if Tess can help her…”
Then that miracle would likely buy her mother years, even decades. At sixty-four and in good health, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her mom to live another twenty-five or thirty years.
At what point would Dylan be willing to abandon her for her own slice of happiness back here with Rio?
She looked at him and saw that the question was one he’d already considered too. He was willing to try to help Dylan’s mother because he knew Dylan couldn’t bear to lose her, even though he also knew it could mean pushing what he wanted that much farther out of his reach.
“Rio…”
“I would wait,” he said solemnly. “Until you’re ready, I will wait for you.”
She closed her eyes and felt his love pour over her like a balm. That he would give her such a selfless gift—the gift of hope—made Dylan adore him all the more. She kissed him with all the devotion she felt in her heart, needing to be close to him…to feel him inside her in every way possible.
She thought of the bond he’d mentioned—that of blood, something to be shared as his mate. She wanted that. Needed to feel linked to him in that very primal, exclusively Breed way.
“Make me yours,” she murmured against his mouth. “Right now, Rio…I want you to make me yours through blood. I want to be bonded with you. I don’t want to wait for that.”
His low, approving growl made her tingle with anticipation. “It’s unbreakable. Once done, it cannot be undone.”
“Even better.”
She nipped his lower lip and was rewarded with an answering graze of his fangs as he rolled over with her and pressed her down beneath him on the bed. Sparks of amber crowded the smoky topaz color of his irises. His pupils were razor sharp, fixed on her in desire. He kissed her, and Dylan let her tongue play at the tips of his long fangs, dying to feel them piercing the fine skin of her neck.
But Rio drew back, bracing himself over her on his fists. He looked so powerful poised above her, so beautifully, nakedly male. “I shouldn’t do this to you,” he said softly, reverently. “If you take my blood into your body, Dylan, then I will always be a part of you…even if you decide to live your life without me. You will always sense me in your veins, whether you will it or not. I should give you more freedom than this.”
Dylan stared up at him without the slightest reservation. “I want this, Rio. I want you to be a part of me always. My heart will know you forever, whether or not we bond by blood right now.”
He cursed softly, shaking his head. “You’re sure this is what you want? You’re sure that you want…me?”
“Forever,” she told him. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
His breath rasped out of him raggedly as he straddled her waist and sat back on his knees. He brought his wrist up to his mouth. With his hot amber stare fixed on her eyes, Rio curled his lips off his fangs and sank the sharp points into his flesh.
Blood began a steady run down his forearm, the punctures pulsing with each hard beat of his heart. Very gently, he raised Dylan’s head and shoulders up from the pillow and held his wound out to her.
“Drink from me, love.”
She felt the hot, wet liquid against her lips, smelled the spicy dark scent of his blood as she drew a breath and covered his bite with her mouth.
The first brush of her tongue across his open vein was electric. Power crackled through her entire body at the first tentative swallow she took from him. She felt her limbs tingle, fingers and toes prickling with a strange, enjoyable heat. The warmth spread, into her chest and stomach, then into her very being. She was melting with the intensity of it, desire starting a swift, steady burn in her core.
And God, he tasted so good.
Dylan drew from him, lost in the pulsing heat he fed her from his veins. She glanced up and found him watching her, his look one of raw need and pure masculine pride. His cock stood fully erect, larger than ever.
Dylan reached for him, stroking him as she suckled hard at his wrist. When she spread her thighs and guided him toward her, Rio threw his head back and hissed, the cords of his neck as taut as cables. He dropped his head back down and she was blasted with amber from his passion-swamped eyes.
It took only the barest flex of her hips to seat him at her core. He entered her on a long, hard thrust, stretching his legs out with hers as he covered her with his body.
“You are mine now, Dylan.”
His voice was thick below her ear, not quite his own now, but sexy as hell. He rocked against her as she drank from him, her climax already screaming to a peak.
As she shattered beneath him in that next blinding second, Rio buried his face into her neck and bit down into her vein.
CHAPTER
Thirty-One
It was damn hard to watch Dylan get showered and dressed that next morning, knowing that she was leaving.
But Rio didn’t try to stop her. She was going somewhere he couldn’t follow—into a daylight world that would probably keep her away from him longer than he wanted to admit. Maybe longer than he could actually bear.
The hours they had shared in his bed, forging a bond through mingling blood and promises that this wasn’t really good-bye, had to be enough for him. At least for now.
He couldn’t keep her from the life that waited her outside, as much as it killed him to walk her to the compound’s elevator and ride the long distance up to the Order’s fleet garage above.
They paused together as they stepped out of the elevator. Rio held out the keys to one of his cars. Not one of the sports coupes with the barely legal engines, but a nice, safe Volvo sedan. Hell, he would have put her in an armored tank if he had one to give her. He clicked the remote lock entry button and the Volvo five vehicles back responded with a little chirp.
“You call me every hour and let me know you’re okay,” he said, putting the keys and her cell phone in her hand. “The encrypted number I programmed into your phone comes directly to me. I want to hear from you every hour, just so I know everything’s good.”
“You want me to risk getting a ticket for operating a motor vehicle while talking on a cell phone?” She smiled and arched a brow at him. “Maybe you want to plug me with a GPS chip before I go too?”
“The car’s already equipped with GPS,” he said, glad she was keeping it light, especially since he was feeling anything but. “If you wait here for a second, I’m sure Gideon or Niko could come up with something for you as well.”
Dylan’s quiet laugh was a bit hollow. She reached up and smoothed her fingers into the hair at his nape. “It’s killing me to leave you too, you know. I miss you already.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “I know. We’ll figure this out, work it all out somehow. But I wasn’t joking about having you call me every hour from the road. I want to know where you are, and that you make it back safely.”
“I’ll be fine.” She shook her head and smiled up at him. “I’ll call you when I get to the hospital.”
“Okay,” he said, knowing he was being unreasonable. Concerned over nothing. Just making one weak excuse after another to cover for the deep need he had to hold her close and keep her there. He released her and took a step back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his loose jeans. “Okay. Call me when you get there.”
Dylan came up on her toes and kissed him again. When she tried to pull away, he couldn’t resist wrapping his arms around her one more time.
“Ah, hell,” he swore harshly under his breath. “Get out of here before I take you back to my quarters and shackle you to the bedpost.”
“That could be interesting.”
“Remind me later,” he said, “when you come back.”
She nodded. “I have to go.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you,” she said, and pressed a tender kiss to his cheek. “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Rio stood there, fists thrust deep into his pockets as he watched her head for the car. She climbed in and started it up, then slowly rolled the car out of its parking space in the hangar. She gave him a little wave, too smart to slide the window down and give him more time to try to talk her out of leaving.
He hit the button on the hangar’s automatic door, and had to shield his eyes from the light pink wash of dawn that filtered in through the estate’s surrounding thicket of trees. Dylan drove out into the daylight. Rio wanted to wait until the taillights turned the bend in the property’s long drive, but the glare of UV rays was too much for him to take, even for his late-generation Breed eyes.
He punched the keypad again and the wide door closed.
When he got off the elevator back down in the compound, Nikolai was coming up the corridor from the weapons range like hell on wheels. Rio could practically see steam pouring out of the vampire’s ears, he was so furious.
“What’s going on?” he asked, meeting the cold blue eyes.
“I just got fucked,” Niko replied, and evidently not in a good way.
“By who?”
“Starkn,” he hissed. “Turns out the Director of the region’s Enforcement Agency was just blowing a lot of smoke up our asses. When Chase and I met with the guy last night and told him that we suspect these are targeted hits, he assured us he would put the word out to all the known Gen Ones in the population. Well, guess what he didn’t do.”
Rio scoffed. “Put the word out to all the known Gen Ones in the population.”
“Right,” Niko said. “My Gen One contact, Sergei Yakut, says he hasn’t heard shit out of the Agency in Montreal where he’s living now, and neither have any of the other first generation individuals he knows. To top it off, this morning we got word out of Denver of another killing. Another Gen One beheading, Rio. This shit is getting critical fast. Something big is going down.”
“You think Starkn could have a hand in it somehow?”
Nikolai’s shrewd blue eyes were icy with suspicion. “Yeah, I do. My gut is telling me the son of a bitch is dirty.”
Rio nodded, glad for the distraction that could take him away from feeling sorry for himself over missing Dylan and put him back into the Order’s business. His business, his world.
When Niko headed off for the tech lab, Rio fell in alongside him, just like old times.
It took about five hours to make the drive from Boston into Manhattan, which put Dylan at the hospital around one in the afternoon. She’d called Rio from the car as she waited for the parking attendant, assured him that she was safe and sound, then she headed into the lobby to grab an elevator to the cancer ward.
God, to think this could be one of the last days her mom might spend in this place. One of the last days she’d be sick. Dylan wanted that so badly, she was almost giddy with the thought as she stepped off at the tenth floor and walked through the swinging double doors that led to her mother’s wing.
The nurses on duty were dealing with some kind of printer malfunction, so she just walked past the station without stopping to ask for an update or any news on the biopsy. Dylan paused outside her mom’s room door, about to hit the hand sanitizer when she saw that a nurse was just coming out. The woman was carrying an armful of half-empty IV bags. When she saw Dylan, she gave a little nod and a rather sad-looking smile.
“What’s going on?” Dylan asked as the nurse came out into the hallway.
“We’re taking her off her meds and fluids. Shouldn’t be more than another half hour or so before she’s released.”
“Released?” Dylan frowned, totally confused. “What happened? Did we get the biopsy results back or something?”
A mild nod. “We got them in this morning, yes.”
And based on the flat tone, the results weren’t good. Still, she had to ask, because she really didn’t want to imagine the worst. “I’m not sure I understand. If you’re taking her off fluids and medication, does that mean she’s going to be all right?”
The nurse’s expression fell a bit. “You haven’t talked with her yet…”
Dylan glanced over her shoulder into the room. Her mother was sitting on the edge of her bed facing the window as she put on a sky blue cardigan sweater. She was fully dressed, hair combed and styled. Looking like she was ready to walk out of the hospital any minute.
“Why is my mother being released?”
The nurse cleared her throat. “I, um…I really think you need to talk with her about that, okay?”
As the woman left, Dylan scrubbed her hands with the alcohol gel and went inside.
“Mom?”
She pivoted on the bed and gave her a big, happy smile. “Oh! Dylan. I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, baby. I would have called you later.”
“Good thing I came when I did. I just heard they’re letting you go home in a few minutes.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, it’s time. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
Dylan didn’t like the resignation in her mother’s voice. It was too light, too accepting.
It sounded a lot like relief.
“Your nurse just told me the biopsy came back this morning.”
“Let’s not talk about that.” She waved her hand dismissively and walked over to the table where the now opened box of chocolates sat. She picked up the candies and held them out to Dylan. “Try one of these truffles. They’re delicious! Gordon brought them for me last night—in fact, he was here just minutes after you left. I wish you had waited so you could meet him. He wants to meet you, Dylan. He was very interested when I told him that you’re going to need a new job—”
“Oh, Mom. You didn’t,” Dylan groaned. It was bad enough her mother had bragged to her boss about Dylan’s story regarding the mountain cave, but to have her trying to find Dylan a job from her hospital bed was too much.
“Gordon has connections with a lot of important people in the city. He can help you, baby. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could help you land something with one of the big news companies?”
“Mom,” Dylan said, more forcefully now. “I don’t want to talk about a job, or about Gordon Fasso, or anything else. All I want to talk about is what’s going on with you. Obviously, the test results weren’t good. So, why are you being released today?”
“Because that’s what I want.” She sighed, and walked over to Dylan. “I don’t want to stay here anymore. I don’t want any more tests, or tubes, or needles. I’m tired, and I just want to go home.”
“What did the doctors say? Can we talk with them about the biopsy results?”
“There’s nothing more they can do, sweetheart. Except prolong the inevitable, and only for a little while.”
Dylan lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “What if I told you that I know someone who might be able to make you healthy?”
“I don’t want any more treatments. I’m done—”
“This wouldn’t be anything like that. It’s a kind of…alternative healing. Something you can’t get in a hospital. It’s not a guarantee, but there is a chance that you could be cured completely. I think it might be a good chance, Mom. I think it might be the only one…”
Her mother smiled gently as she laid her cool fingers against Dylan’s cheek. “I know how hard this is for you, baby. I do. But the choice is mine to make, on my own. I’ve had a full life. I’m not looking for miracles now.”
“What about me?” Dylan’s voice was thick. “Would you try it…for me?”
In the long silence that answered, Dylan tried desperately to hold back the sob that was rising up in her throat. Her heart was cracked in pieces, but she could see that her mother’s mind was made up. It had probably been made up long before this moment. “Okay,” she said finally. “Okay, then…tell me what you want me to do, Mom.”
“Take me home. Let’s have lunch together, and some tea, and let’s just talk. That’s what I’d really like right now, more than anything.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-Two
Rio didn’t hear from Dylan again until late that afternoon. When his cell phone went off in his pocket, he was in the lab with Lucan, Gideon, Niko, and Chase, the five of them discussing Gerard Starkn’s apparent snow job and how the Order could best take control of things with the Gen One situation. He excused himself from the meeting and took Dylan’s call out in the corridor.
“What’s wrong?” It wasn’t much of a greeting, but he could sense her upset on the other end as soon as the call connected and the feeling went through him like live electricity. “Are you okay?”
There was a pause, then: “I’m okay, yeah. I’m going to be okay eventually, I think.”
“How is your mother?”
“Tired,” Dylan said, sounding weary herself. “Oh, Rio…I’ve been with her all afternoon at her apartment in Queens. She checked herself out of the hospital today, and she’s refusing any further treatment. She wants to…she doesn’t want to live anymore, Rio. She’s made up her mind about that.”
He swore softly, feeling Dylan’s anguish like it was his own. “Did you tell her about Tess?”
“I tried to, but she wouldn’t hear it. It’s killing me, but if this is what she truly wants, then I know I have to let her go.”
“Ah, love. I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s all right. I don’t know what I need to hear right now.” Dylan sniffled a little, but she was holding herself together with admirable courage. “We spent the day talking—something we haven’t been able to do for a long time. It was nice. I told her about you, that I met a very special man and that I love him very much. She’s looking forward to meeting you sometime.”
Rio smiled, wishing he could be there right now. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”
“I talked with her doctor as we were leaving the hospital. He says that realistically, without treatment, Mom probably only has weeks left…maybe a couple of months. They’re going to give her medicine for the pain, but they warned us that the time she has left isn’t going to be easy.”
“Shit, Dylan. Do you want me to come out there tonight? It’s almost sundown. If you need me there, I could leave right at dusk and be in the city by around eleven.”
“What about the Order? I’m sure you have other things you have to do.”
“That’s not what I asked you.” In fact, he was supposed to be on a mission tonight, but fuck it. If Dylan wanted him with her, Lucan would have to assign someone else to the patrol. “Do you need me there tonight, Dylan?”
She sighed. “I’d love to see you. You know I’d never turn you down, Rio. Do you really want to come all this way tonight?”
“Just try to stop me,” he said, sensing her brighten on the other end. In the background now, he heard a truck horn blast. “Are you driving somewhere?”
“Uh-huh. I’m on my way to pick up some of my mom’s things at the shelter. We called her friends over there as we were leaving the hospital, just to fill them in on what’s going on. Everyone’s pretty worried about her, as you can imagine. And I guess some of the shelter clients and their kids made up a special card for her too.”
“She’ll like that.”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “I’m going to swing by and grab some takeout for dinner back at Mom’s place. She wants baby back ribs, sweet potatoes, and cornbread—oh, and some fancy champagne, as she put it, to celebrate my newfound love.”
“Sounds like you have quite an evening planned.”
Dylan was quiet for a moment. “It’s really good to see her smiling, Rio. I want her to enjoy these next few weeks as much as she can.”
He understood, of course. And as Dylan wrapped up the conversation and promised to call him when she was back at her mother’s apartment, Rio wondered how he was going to get through the weeks—perhaps a couple of months—away from Dylan. It wasn’t a long time, certainly not by Breed standards, but for a male in love with his mate, the duration was going to seem endless.
He needed to be with Dylan through this.
And he knew that she needed him too.
When he flipped the cell phone closed, he found Lucan standing outside the tech lab doors. Rio had told him earlier about Dylan’s mother, and about what Dylan meant to him, how deeply he’d fallen in love with her. He’d laid it all out for Lucan—from the fact that he and Dylan were blood-bonded now, to the offer he’d made her concerning Tess’s healing abilities.
Rio didn’t know how long Lucan had been standing there, but the shrewd gray eyes seemed fully aware that things were not going well on the other end.
“How is Dylan holding up?”
Rio nodded. “She’s strong. She’ll get through this.”
“What about you, my man?”
He started to say that he’d be fine too, but Lucan’s stare tore through that bullshit before the words even left Rio’s lips.
“I told her I’d be there tonight,” he told the Order’s leader. “I have to go to her, Lucan. For my own sanity, if nothing else. If I stay here, I’m not sure what good I’d be, to tell you the truth. She’s the only thing that’s held me together in a very long time. I’m a wreck for this woman, my friend. She owns me now.”
“Even more than the Order?”
Rio paused, deliberating over what he was being asked. “I would die for the Order—for you and any one of my brethren. You know that.”
“Yes. I know you would,” Lucan replied. “Hell, you almost have, more than once.”
“I’d die to serve the Order, but Dylan…Cristo. This woman, more than anything before, gives me a reason to live. I have to be with her now, Lucan.”
He nodded soberly. “I’ll put one of the other guys on your patrol tonight. You do what you have—”
“Lucan.” Rio met the male’s gaze and held it. “I have to be with Dylan until she’s through this ordeal with her mother. It could be weeks, maybe months.”
“So, what are you telling me?”
Rio cursed under his breath. “I’m telling you that I’m leaving to be with her, for as long as it takes. I’m quitting the Order, Lucan. I head out for New York tonight.”
“Here’s a box for those things, honey.” Janet came into Dylan’s mom’s office carrying an empty copy paper container. “It’s nice and sturdy and it’s got a lid too.”
“Thanks,” Dylan said, setting it down on the cluttered desk. “Mom is kind of a pack rat, isn’t she?”
Janet laughed. “Oh, honey! That woman hasn’t thrown away a note or a greeting card or a photograph since I’ve known her. She saves everything like it was gold, bless her heart.” The older woman glanced around the room, her eyes going moist with tears. “We sure are going to miss Sharon around here. She had such a way with the girls. Everyone adored her, even Mr. Fasso was charmed by her and he’s not easily impressed. Her free spirit drew people to her, I think.”
Dylan smiled at the sentiment, but it was very hard hearing her mother referred to in the past tense already. “Thanks for the box, Janet.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, honey. Would you like some help finishing up in here?”
“No, thanks. I’m almost done.”
She waited as Janet made her exit, then she went back to the task at hand. It was difficult to tell what might be important to her mother and what could be tossed, so finally Dylan just started gathering papers and old photos by the handful and placing them in the box.
She paused to look at a few of the pictures—her mother standing with her arms around the thin shoulders of two young shelter girls with bad 1980s hair, tube tops, and short shorts; another of her mom smiling behind the counter of an ice cream shop, beaming at the “Employee of the Month” award the young girl next to her was holding up like a prize.
Her mother had befriended nearly every troubled young woman who came through the place, genuinely invested in seeing them succeed and rise above the problems that had made the girls run away from home or feel that they didn’t, or couldn’t, fit into normal society. Her mother had tried to make a difference. And in a lot of cases, she had.
Dylan wiped at the tears of pride that sprang into her eyes. She looked for a tissue among the clutter and couldn’t find any. Just what she didn’t need, to be sitting in her mother’s office crying like a baby in front of the evening shift staff.
“Shit.” She remembered seeing a stack of loose paper towels in one of the drawers of the back credenza. Pivoting her mother’s chair around, she scooted across the worn carpet and began a quick search of the cabinet.
Ah. Success.
Dabbing at her wet eyes and face, she spun back around and nearly fell out of her seat.
There, standing before her on the other side of her mother’s desk, was a ghostly apparition. The young woman was joined by another, both of them wavering in and out of visibility. Then another girl appeared, and still another. And then, finally, there was Toni again, the girl Dylan had seen in her mother’s hospital room the other night.
“Oh, my God.” She gaped at them, only half-conscious of the shelter employees going about their business outside, completely unaware of the ghostly gathering. “Are you all here because of my mom?”
The group of them stared at her in eerie silence, their forms rippling like candle flames caught in a stuttering breeze.
Help them, one of the unmoving mouths told her. They need you to help them.
Damn it, she did not have time for this now. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with any of this right now.
But something prickled within her, something that told her she had to listen.
She had to do something.
He won’t stop hurting them, said another ghostly voice. He won’t stop the killing.
Dylan grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen and started writing down what she was hearing. Maybe Rio and the Order could help make sense of it, if she couldn’t.
They’re underground.
In darkness.
Screaming.
Dying.
Dylan heard the pain and fear in the mingled whispers as the dead Breedmates tried to communicate with her. She felt a kinship to each one of them, and to the ones they said were still alive but in terrible danger.
“Tell me who,” she said quietly, hoping she couldn’t be heard outside the door. “I can’t help you if you don’t give me something more than this. Please, hear me. Tell me who’s hurting the others like us.”
Dragos.
She didn’t know which one of them said it, or even if—or how—she might have been heard through the barrier that separated the living from the dead. But the word branded into her mind in an instant.
It was a name.
Dragos.
“Where is he?” Dylan asked, trying for more. “Can you tell me anything else?”
But the group of them were already fading. One by one, they dissipated…vanished into nothingness.
“I almost forgot to give you these, honey.” Janet’s singsong voice in the doorway startled a gasp out of Dylan. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay.” Dylan shook her head, still dazed by the other encounter. “What do you have?”
“A couple of pictures I took from the river cruise Mr. Fasso hosted earlier this week. I think your mom would like to have them.” Janet came in and put a couple of color prints on the desk. “Doesn’t she look nice in that blue dress? Those girls at the table with her are a few of the ones she was mentoring. Oh—and there’s Mr. Fasso way in the back of the room. You can hardly make him out, but that’s the side of his face. Isn’t he handsome?”
He was, actually. And younger than she imagined him. He had to be about twenty years younger than her mother—in his late forties at most, and probably not even that old.
“Will you take these to your mom for me, honey?”
“Sure.” Dylan smiled, hoping she didn’t look as rattled as she felt.
It wasn’t until Janet had toddled off again that Dylan took a good look at the pictures. A really good look.
“Jesus Christ.”
One of the girls seated at the table with her mom on that river cruise a few short days ago was among the group of dead Breedmates she’d just seen in the office.
She grabbed a stack of older photographs from the box she’d packed them into and sifted through the images. Her heart sank. There was another young woman’s face that she’d just seen in spectral form a minute ago.
“Oh, God.”
Dylan felt sick to her stomach as she bolted out of the office for the ladies room. She dialed the number Rio gave her and barely gave him a chance to say hello before she blurted out everything that had just happened.
“One of them said the name Dragos,” she told him in a frantic whisper. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Rio’s sudden silence made the ice in her stomach grow even colder. “Yeah. Son of a bitch. I know the name.”
“Who is he, Rio?”
“Dragos is the one who created the hibernation chamber in that cave. His son freed the creature that had been sleeping there. He’s evil, Dylan. About the worst kind you’d ever want to know.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-Three
Sharon Alexander was making another pot of tea when a knock sounded on her twelfth-floor apartment door.
“It’s open, baby,” she called from the kitchen. “What’d you do, forget your key?”
“I never had one.”
Sharon jolted at the unexpected boom of a deep male voice. She recognized the dark baritone, but hearing it in her apartment—unannounced, and after dark—was something of a shock.
“Oh. Hello, Gordon.” She tugged self-consciously at her cardigan, wishing she’d put on something less lived-in, more appealing to a sophisticated man like Gordon Fasso. “I’m…well, my goodness…this is such an unexpected surprise.”
He sent his cool gaze around the small, embarrassingly cluttered apartment. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“No, of course not.” She smiled but he didn’t return it. “I was just making some tea. Would you like some?”
“No. I can’t stomach the stuff, actually.” Now he did smile, but the slow spreading grin didn’t make her feel any more comfortable. “I stopped by the hospital, but the nurse there told me you were released. I understand your daughter brought you home.”
“Yes,” Sharon replied, watching as he took a leisurely stroll around her living room. She smoothed her hair, hoping it wasn’t a complete disaster. “I really enjoyed the chocolates you gave me. You didn’t have to bring me anything, you know.”
“Where is she?”
“Hmm?”
“Your daughter,” he said tightly. “Where is Dylan?”
For a second, maternal instinct told Sharon to lie and say that Dylan wasn’t around and wouldn’t be coming back any time soon. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it?
She had no reason to fear Mr. Fasso. Gordon, she reminded herself, trying to see the charming gentleman he’d shown himself to be recently.
“I can smell her, Sharon.”
The statement was so odd, it took her aback completely. “You can…what?”
“I know she’s been here.” He pinned her with an icy glare. “Where is she, and when is she coming back? These aren’t difficult questions.”
A bone-deep chill settled in her as she looked at this man she truly knew so little about. A word skated through her mind as he moved toward her…evil.
“I told you I wanted to meet the girl,” he said, and as he spoke, something very strange was happening to his eyes. The icy color of them was changing, turning fiery with amber light. “I’m tired of waiting, Sharon. I need to see the bitch, and I need to see her now.”
Sharon started mouthing a prayer. She backed up as he approached her, but she had few places to go. The walls would hem her in, and the slider in the living room opened onto a short balcony that overlooked a twelve-story drop to the street below. A warm breeze filtered in through the slider screen, and carrying with it the din of the rushing traffic out on busy Queens Boulevard.
“W-what do you want with Dylan?”
He smiled, and Sharon nearly fainted at the sight of his grotesquely long teeth.
No, she thought in near incomprehension. Not teeth at all.
Fangs.
“I need your daughter, Sharon. She’s an unusual woman, who can help give birth to the future. My future.”
“Oh, my God…you’re crazy, aren’t you? You’re sick.” Sharon inched farther away from him, panic hammering in her chest. “What the hell are you, really?”
He chuckled, low and menacing. “I’m your Master, Sharon. You just don’t know it yet. Now I’m going to bleed you, and you’re going to tell me everything I want to know. You’re going to help me find Dylan. I’m going to turn you into my slave, and you’re going to deliver your daughter right into my hands. And then I’m going to make her my whore.”
He bared those huge, dripping fangs and hissed like a viper about to strike.
Sharon didn’t know what possessed her, beyond the consuming terror of what this man—this terrible creature—could do to Dylan. She didn’t doubt for a second that he could do precisely what he threatened. And it was that certainty that carried her feet toward the screen door.
Gordon Fasso laughed as she fumbled with the flimsy plastic sliding lock. She threw the screen open.
“What do you think you’re going to do, Sharon?”
She backed out onto the balcony but he followed, the broad shoulders of his suitcoat filling the open space of the slider. Sharon felt the rail of the balcony press hard at her spine. Far, far below, horns blasted and engines screamed with the speeding rush of traffic.
“I won’t let you use me to get to her,” she told him, her breath rasping through her lips.
She didn’t look over the edge. She kept her eyes trained on the glowing embers of the monster’s gaze in front of her. And took some small measure of satisfaction when he roared and made a hasty grab for her…too late.
Sharon toppled backward over the railing, onto the dark pavement below.
Traffic on the street outside her mother’s apartment building was backed up for two blocks. Up ahead in the dark, emergency lights flashed, and police were directing vehicles to an alternate access onto Queens Boulevard. Dylan tried to peer around the minivan in front of her, to what looked like a pretty active crime scene. Yellow tape cordoned off the street below her mom’s building.
Dylan tapped the steering wheel, sliding a glance over at the takeout that was getting cold. She was later than she intended. The episode at the runaway shelter had put her back about an hour, and all the phone calls to her mother’s apartment had gone to voice mail. She was probably resting, probably wondering what the hell had happened to their little dinner celebration.
She tried the apartment again and got the message service again. “Shit.”
A couple of kids swaggered by on the sidewalk, coming from the direction of all the activity. Dylan slid the window down.
“Hey. What’s going on up there? Are they going to start letting cars through?”
One of the boys shook his head. “Some old lady took a header off her balcony. Cops are up there trying to clean up the mess.”
Dread settled in Dylan’s stomach like a stone. “Do you know what building?”
“Nah. One of the high-rises on 108th Street.”
Oh, fuck. Oh, holy Christ…
Dylan jumped out of the car without even killing the engine. She had her cell phone in hand, dialing her mother as she headed at a dead run up the sidewalk toward all the commotion near the intersection a couple blocks away. As she got closer, cutting into the gathered crowd, her feet slowed of their own accord.
She knew.
She just…knew.
Her mother was dead.
But then her cell phone went off like a bank alarm. She stared down at the display and saw her mother’s cell number on the lighted screen.
“Mom!” she cried as she picked up the call.
There was silence on the other end.
“Mom? Mom, is that you?”
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. She whipped her head around and found herself staring into the cruel eyes of a man she’d seen only recently in a photograph from her mother’s office.
Gordon Fasso held her mother’s pink cell phone in his other hand. He smiled, baring the tips of his fangs. When he spoke, Dylan heard his deep voice vibrate in her ears and in her palm, as his words carried through the speaker of her mother’s phone into her own.
“Hello, Dylan. So good to finally meet you.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-Four
Somewhere in Connecticut, a couple of hours into the drive from Boston to New York, Rio’s chest felt like it had been yanked open by ice-cold hands. He was on speakerphone with the compound, trying to find out if Gideon had been able to uncover any intel about the dead Breedmates Dylan reported seeing at the runaway shelter. The Order had the pictures she’d sent from her cell phone, and Gideon was searching for further missing persons information from the Darkhavens and human populations.
Rio heard the other warrior talking to him now, but the words weren’t penetrating his skull.
“Ah, fuck,” he groaned, rubbing at the tight blast of cold that seemed to have moved into the region of his heart.
“What’s going on?” Gideon asked. “Rio? You still with me?”
“Yeah. But…something’s wrong.”
Dylan.
Something was very wrong with Dylan. He could sense her fear, and a sorrow so profound it nearly blinded him.
Not a good thing when he was speeding along I-84 at roughly ninety miles an hour.
“I’ve got a bad feeling, Gideon. I have to get ahold of Dylan right now.”
“Sure. Be right here when you’re done.”
Rio clicked off the call and dialed Dylan. It rang into voice mail. Repeatedly.
That bad feeling was getting worse by the second. She was in real danger—he knew it by the sudden frantic drum of his pulse, his blood bond with her telling him that something terrible was happening to her.
Right now, while she was easily three hours away from him.
“Goddamn it,” he growled, stomping on the gas.
He speed-dialed Gideon again.
“Any luck reaching her?”
“No.” A deeper chill went through him. “She’s in trouble, Gid. She’s in pain somewhere. Goddamn it! I should never have let her out of my sight!”
“Okay,” Gideon, the calm one, said. “I’m going to run a track on the Volvo’s GPS, and I’ll run one on her cell phone too. We’ll locate her, Rio.”
He heard the keyboard clacking on the other end of the line, but the dread in his gut told him that neither device was going to bring him any closer to Dylan. And sure enough, Gideon came back a second later with bad news.
“The car’s sitting on Jewel Avenue in Queens, and the cell phone tracks to a location one block away from that. There’s no movement coming out of either one.”
As Rio cursed, he heard Nikolai’s voice in the background, barely audible over the speaker. Something about Director Starkn and one of the photographs Dylan took.
“What did he just say?” Rio demanded. “Get Niko on the line. I want to know what he just said.”
Gideon’s voice was hesitant…and the vivid oath he swore an instant later did nothing to reassure Rio either.
“Damn it, what did he say?”
“Niko just asked me what Starkn was doing in the background of one of Dylan’s pictures…”
“Which one?” Rio asked.
“The one from that charity cruise her mother was on. The one Dylan ID’d as being the runaway shelter’s founder, Gordon Fasso.”
“That can’t be,” Rio said, even while a voice inside of him was telling him the exact opposite. “Put Niko on.”
“Hey, man,” Nikolai said a second later. “I’m telling you. I saw Starkn with my own eyes. I’d know him anywhere. And the dude standing in the background of this picture is Enforcement Agency Regional Director Gerard fucking Starkn.”
The name sank into his brain like acid as Rio weaved around a sluggish semi-trailer and floored the gas pedal through an empty stretch of pavement.
Gerard Starkn.
What the hell kind of name was that?
Gordon Fasso.
Another odd spelling.
And then there was Dragos, and his treacherous son. Couldn’t forget that bastard. He was mixed up in this somehow too, Rio was certain of it.
Could Gordon Fasso and Gerard Starkn be in collusion with Dragos’s son?
Oh, Holy Mother…
Gordon Fasso. Son of Dragos.
The letters began to jumble and resequence in Rio’s mind. And then he saw it, as clear as the blare of red taillights that stretched up ahead of him for about a mile solid.
“Niko,” he said woodenly. “Gordon Fasso is the son of Dragos. Gordon Fasso’s not a name. It’s a fucking anagram. Son of Dragos.”
“Ah, Christ,” Nikolai replied. “And if you mix up the letters of Gerard Starkn…you get another anagram: dark stranger.”
“That’s who’s got Dylan.” Rio rolled up on the parking lot of traffic and slammed his hand down on the dashboard. “Dragos’s son has Dylan, Niko.”
She was alive, that much he was sure of, and it was enough to keep him from losing his mind.
But his enemy had her, and Rio had no way of telling where he might have taken her.
And even without the bottleneck that was blocking all southbound lanes of the highway, he was still some long hours away from the New York state line.
He could be losing her forever…right now.
Dylan came awake in the dark backseat of a fast moving vehicle. Her head was thick, her senses dazed. She knew this foggy feeling; she’d been tranced at some point, and was now, somehow, breaking out of it. Through the heavy psychic cloak that had been dropped over her mind, Dylan felt another force reaching out to her.
Rio.
She could feel him in her veins. She could sense him in the power of their blood connection and in her heart as well. It was Rio reaching past Fasso’s trance to give her strength, urging her to hang on. To stay alive.
Oh, God.
Rio.
Find me.
The low hum of the road beneath the vehicle’s spinning wheels vibrated in her ears. She tried to see where they were heading, but through the bare slit of her lids, all she saw was darkness outside the tinted windows. Treetops rushing by, black against the night sky.
Her face ached from the blow Gordon Fasso had dealt her when she’d fought against her capture. She’d tried to scream, to escape, but he and the bulky guard who accompanied him had proven too strong for her.
Fasso alone would have been far too powerful for her to fight off.
But then, he would be, since he wasn’t a man at all, but a vampire.
She had the very real sense that he was not even Gordon Fasso, if that man ever existed.
The monster who had her now was also the one who killed her mother. She didn’t have to see her mother’s broken body to know that it was Gordon Fasso who murdered her, either by pushing her off that twelfth-floor balcony, or by scaring her so totally that she leapt to her own death to escape him.
Maybe she’d done it for Dylan, a thought that made the loss even harder for Dylan to bear.
But she could grieve for her mother another time, and she would. Right now she had to stay alert and try to find a way out of this horrific situation.
Because if her captor succeeded in bringing her to wherever he intended, Dylan knew that there would be no escaping.
All that awaited her at the end of this path was pain and death.
At some point well into Connecticut, Rio realized that no matter how fast he drove, he stood no chance of finding Dylan. Not in New York, certainly. He was still a couple of hours away, and there was no telling where she was—or even if she was in New York anymore at all.
He was losing her.
Close enough that he could feel her reaching out to him, yet too far to grab hold of her.
“Goddamn it!”
Fear permeated every cell in his body, combined with a sorrow so profound it shredded him from the inside. He was raw, bleeding…racked with futile rage.
His vision swam with the rising pound of his temples. His skull screamed as the blackout started crowding his senses.
“No,” he growled, stomping on the accelerator.
He rubbed at his eyes, commanding them to stay focused. He could not let his weakness overtake him now. He could not fail Dylan—not like this.
“No, goddamn it. I have to reach her. Ah, Cristo,” he choked, a broken sob catching in his throat. “I cannot lose her.”
Go to the reservoir.
Rio heard the static-filled whisper but at first it didn’t register.
Croton Reservoir.
He whipped his head around to the passenger seat and caught a glimpse of dark eyes and sable hair. The image was nearly transparent, and the one face he knew better than to trust.
Eva.
He snarled and cut away from the ghostly hallucination. Until now, he’d only seen Eva in the darkness of his dreams. Her false apologies and tearful insistence that she wanted to help him had just been illusions, tricks of his cracked mind. Maybe this was too.
Dylan’s life on the line. He’d be damned before he let his own madness steer him off course now.
Rio, hear me. Let me help you.
Eva’s voice crackled like a weak radio signal, but her tone was unmistakably emphatic. He felt a chill on his wrist and looked down to see her spectral hand lighting there. He wanted to shake off her touch like the poison it was, refuse to let Eva betray him again. But when he glanced over at the other side of the car, the ghost of his dead enemy was weeping, her pale cheeks glistening with tears.
You haven’t lost her yet, said the unmoving lips that had lied so easily to him in the past. There is still time. Croton Reservoir…
He stared as her form began to wobble and fade out. Could he believe her? Could anything Eva said be trusted, even in this form? He’d hated her for everything she’d taken from him, so how could he think for one second that he could take her at her word now?
Forgive me, she whispered.
And with one last flicker of visibility…she vanished.
“Fuck,” Rio hissed.
He looked out at the endless road ahead of him. He had precious few options here. One wrong move and Dylan was as good as dead. He had to be sure. He had to make the right choice or he would never be able to live with himself if he failed her now.
With a murmured prayer, Rio hit the speed dial on his cell phone. “Gideon. I need to know where the Croton Reservoir is. Right now.”
There was an answering clatter of fingers flying over a keyboard. “It’s in New York…Westchester County, off Route 129. The reservoir is part of an old dam.”
Rio glanced up at the Connecticut highway sign half a mile away from him. “How far is it from Waterbury?”
“Ah…looks like maybe an hour if you take I-84 west.” Gideon paused. “What’s going on? You got a hunch about the dam?”
“Something like that,” Rio replied.
He murmured his thanks to Gideon for the info, then killed the call, hit the gas, and veered into the exit lane.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Five
Rio drove like a bat out of hell.
He put all his mental energy into reaching out for Dylan, trying to let her know that he was coming for her. That he would find her, or die trying.
He sped along Route 129, hoping he was getting close. He could feel it in his blood that he wasn’t far from Dylan now. Their bond was calling to him, urging him on with a certainty that it wouldn’t be long before he found her.
And then—
As a dark sedan came flying up the road from the opposite direction, Rio’s veins lit up like firecrackers.
Madre de Dios.
Dylan was in that car.
With a hard crank of the wheel, he threw his vehicle into a sideways skid, blocking the road and ready to fight to the death for Dylan. The oncoming sedan’s brakes squealed, tires smoking on the pavement. It lurched to a stop, then the driver—a human, by the look of the big man at the wheel—made a sharp right and gunned it up a dark, tree-lined service road.
With a curse, Rio threw his car into gear and went after them.
Up ahead, the sedan crashed through a temporary barricade in the road, then made a hard stop. Two people climbed out of the backseat—Dylan and the vampire who held her. The bastard had a gun jammed under her chin as he hauled her up the quiet road into the dark.
Rio braked to a stop and leapt out of the driver’s seat, his own gun pulled from its holster and leveled at her captor’s head. But he couldn’t shoot. The chance of hitting Dylan was too great. More than he was willing to risk.
Not that he had much time to consider it.
The huge guard who’d been at the wheel of the sedan came around the car and started firing at Rio. A bullet ripped into his shoulder, searing hot pain. He kept shooting at Rio, trying to drive him back with a relentless hail of gunfire.
Rio dodged the attack and vaulted across the distance using all the Breed power at his command. He fell upon the human—a Minion, he realized as he stared down into the dead eyes. Rio grabbed him by the throat and then put his other hand on the bastard’s forehead. He sent all his fury into his fingertips, draining the life out of the Minion with that brief, simple touch.
He left the corpse in the middle of the road and took off on foot to find Dylan.
Dylan stumbled alongside her captor, the hard cold press of a gun’s muzzle jammed under her chin. She could hardly see where he was taking her, but somewhere, not very distant, rushing water roared like thunder.
And then gunfire.
“No!” she screamed, hearing the sharp blasts behind her in the dark. She felt a jab of pain and knew that Rio had been hit. But he was still breathing. Thank God, he was still alive. Still reaching out to her through the heat that coursed through her blood.
A cruel yank of her head brought Dylan back around. The vampire who held her forced her to run with him, up the narrow pavement and closer to the source of the falling water.
Before she knew it, they were heading onto a tall bridge. On one side, a reservoir spread out for what looked like miles, the dark water sparkling in the moonlight. And on the other side, a sheer drop from what looked like about two hundred feet.
The spillway below was white with the rush of water cascading over the graduated incline and the huge rocks that spread down into the churning river at its base. Dylan stared over the tall metal rail of the bridge, seeing a certain death in all that furious water.
“Dragos.”
Rio’s voice cut through the darkness on the entrance of the bridge.
“Let her go.”
Dylan’s captor jerked her to a halt on the bridge. He swung her around, the gun still biting into her jaw. His chuckle vibrated against her, low and malicious.
“Let her go? I don’t think so. Come and get her.” Rio took a step toward them and that cold nose of the gun at Dylan’s throat stuck even deeper. “Put down your weapon, warrior. She will die right here.”
Rio glared, amber flashing in his eyes. “I said let her go, damn it.”
“Put the gun down,” her assailant said. “Do it now. Or would you prefer to see me tear out her throat?”
Rio’s gaze went to Dylan’s. His jaw was tight, his tension visible even in the darkness. With a hissed oath, he slowly put his weapon on the ground and stood back up. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Now let’s finish this, you and I. Leave her out of it, Dragos. Or should I call you Gerard Starkn? Gordon Fasso, maybe?”
The vampire chuckled, clearly amused. “My little ruse has come to an end, has it? No matter. You’re about fifty years too late. I’ve been busy. What my father started by hiding the Ancient, I am finishing. While the Order has been chasing its ass, taking out Rogues like they were actually making a difference in the world, I’ve been sowing the seeds of the future. A great many seeds. Today you call me Dragos; soon the world will call me Master.”
Rio inched forward and Dylan’s captor turned the gun from its aim on her to Rio instead. Dylan felt the flex of the vampire’s muscles as he prepared to squeeze the trigger and she took the only chance she had. With a sharp jut of her hand, she knocked his arm and the bullet shot off into the trees.
She didn’t see the blow coming.
Her captor drew his other arm back and let his fist fly, connecting with the side of her head. She went careening, crashing hard onto the pavement.
“No!” Rio shouted.
With a speed and agility that still shocked her, he leapt into the air. Dragos returned the challenge, and with an otherworldly roar, the two powerful Breed males smashed into each other and locked into a fierce hand-to-hand combat.
Rio latched on to Dragos’s maniacal spawn in pure rage, the two of them thrashing in midair, each fighting for the chance to kill the other. With a bellow, the vampire spun Rio around and drove him into the metal rail of the bridge. Rio roared, flipping Dragos off him and sending the bastard into the opposite side of the narrow road atop the bridge.
He didn’t know how long the battle raged. Neither was willing to stop until the other was dead. Both vampires were fully transformed now, their fangs huge, the night lit up by the blare of two sets of amber eyes.
Somehow Dragos got loose and jumped up onto the railing. Rio followed him, finally driving the bastard down on one knee. Dragos wobbled, nearly losing his balance over the roar of the spillway below. Then he lunged, barreling headfirst into Rio’s midsection.
Rio felt his feet slip on the rail. He pitched sharply, then fell.
“Rio!” Dylan screamed from above on the bridge. “Oh, my God! No!”
Not even a half-second later, Dragos made the same error. But like Rio, he also managed to grab hold of the metal superstructure before the plunge took him down onto the rocks and rushing water.
The fight continued below the bridge, both of them clutching the beams with one hand while they punched and struck each other from their suspension above the wicked drop. Rio’s shoulder was burning from the bullet he took earlier. The pain was bringing on a blackout, but he shook it off, focusing all his rage—all his pain, and the fear he’d felt at the thought of losing Dylan—on the task of ending the Dragos line here and now.
And he could feel Dylan giving him strength as well.
She was in his mind and in his blood, in his very heart and soul, lending him her own tenacious determination. He absorbed all of it, using what his bond to Dylan gave him, as he went for another hard strike at Dragos. They continued pounding each other, roaring with the fury of battle.
Until a gunshot ripped out over their heads.
They both looked up and there was Dylan, one of the pistols gripped in her hands. She brought the muzzle down and aimed it at Dragos.
“This is for my mother, you son of a bitch.”
She fired, but Dragos was Breed, and he was faster than she anticipated. He swung away at the last second, getting a better grip farther down the rail. She followed, keeping him trained in her sights. When she went to fire again, one of his hands shot up through the slats and locked on to her ankle.
She fell backward, hitting the bridge hard. Rio heard the breath whoosh out of her lungs, then watched in horror as she was suddenly dragged toward the railing by Dragos’s strong grasp on her leg.
In an instant, Rio flung himself up over the rail and onto the road above. He grabbed Dylan’s arm in one hand, the dropped pistol in his other.
“Let her go,” he commanded Dragos and brought the gun level with the vampire’s head. It was hard to kill one of the Breed, but a bullet to the brain was generally sufficient.
“You think this is over, warrior?” Dragos taunted, fangs flashing. “This is only the beginning.”
With that he let go of Dylan and dropped, fast as a stone, into the roiling water below. The spillway ate him up, and the river beneath it was pitch dark, impossible to see.
Dragos was gone.
Rio turned to Dylan and gathered her into his arms. He held her close, so relieved that he was able to feel her warmth against him. He kissed her and smoothed away the blood and grit from her face.
“It’s over,” he whispered, kissing her again. He stared down at the black water below the bridge, but saw no sign of Dragos in the speeding current. “You’re safe with me, Dylan. It’s all over now.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around him. “Take me home, Rio.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-Six
Nearly a week had passed since Rio brought Dylan back with him to the Order’s compound in Boston…back to the home he hoped to make for them with her forever at his side.
He was still healing from the gunshot wound in his shoulder. Tess had tried to speed the mending of his skin after the bullet had been extracted, but as she’d feared, the power of her healing touch was hampered almost entirely by the baby growing in her womb. She wasn’t able to help Rio, nor would she have been able to help Dylan’s mother.
The funeral for Sharon Alexander had taken place two days ago in Queens. Rio had gone back to New York with Dylan the night before the service—as had the rest of the Order and their Breedmates, in a show of support for the newly mated pair. It pained Rio that he couldn’t be at Dylan’s side as her mother was laid to rest that sunny summer afternoon, but he was glad for the company that Tess, Gabrielle, Savannah, and Elise were able to provide for her in his place.
Dylan had been brought into the fold like she’d always belonged there. The other Breedmates adored her, and as for the warriors, even Lucan had been impressed with Dylan’s willingness to roll up her sleeves and offer her help to the Order. She’d spent the better part of the day in the tech lab with Gideon, poring through IID records and missing persons reports out of the Darkhavens in an effort to identify Breedmates who’d come to her from the afterlife.
Now, as evening approached and the Order was soon to head out on patrols, all of the compound’s residents were gathered around the large dining room table in Rio’s quarters. As the women shared a meal, the warriors covered Order business and planned the night’s missions. Nikolai was soon to be heading out to meet with the Gen One he knew, in the hopes of getting his help to track down the source of the recent slayings.
As for Gerard Starkn, the Order hadn’t been surprised to find his New York residence vacant when they’d raided it a few nights ago. The bastard had cleared out entirely, leaving no clues about the double life he’d been leading as Gordon Fasso, AKA the son of Dragos, and zero trace of where he might have fled after his clash with Rio at the Croton dam. A search of the area near the dam had yielded nothing, but Rio and the others weren’t about to give up.
There was much yet to be done in the Order’s quest to stop the evil Dragos was sowing, but Rio could think of none better to have on his side than the group seated with him now. He glanced around at the faces of his brethren and their mates—his family—and felt a surge of pride, and of deep, humbling gratitude, that he was a part of them once more. For always.
But it was when he turned to look at Dylan that his heart squeezed as if it were caught in a warm fist.
It was she who’d brought him back from the brink. She’d pulled him out of an abyss he never thought he’d escape. Her nourishing blood gave him strength, but it was the boundless gift of her love that truly made him whole.
Rio reached over and took Dylan’s hand in his. She smiled as he lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them, his eyes locked onto hers. He loved her so deeply, could hardly stand to be away from her now that she was with him. Knowing that she awaited him in his bed every night upon his return from patrol was both a torment and a balm.
“Be careful,” she whispered to him, as he and the other warriors prepared to suit up for their missions.
Rio nodded, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly.
“Jesus,” Nikolai said around a wry chuckle as everyone else began to disperse. “Get a room, you two.”
“You’re standing in it,” Rio shot back, still holding on to Dylan. “How long before we go topside?”
Niko shrugged. “About twenty minutes, I’d guess.”
“Long enough,” Rio said, turning a hungry look on his woman.
She laughed and even blushed a little, but there was a definite spark of interest in her eyes. As Nikolai made a hasty exit and closed the door behind him, Rio took Dylan by the hand.
“Just twenty minutes,” he said, soberly shaking his head. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
Dylan arched a brow at him as she started inching toward the bedroom. “Oh, I think you’ll figure it out.”
Dylan was amazed at just how thoroughly Rio used those twenty minutes.
And when he returned from patrol much later that night, he’d set out to amaze her even more. He’d made love to her for hours, then wrapped her in his strong arms as she drifted off to sleep. She wasn’t sure exactly when Rio had left their bed, but it was his absence that woke her about an hour before dawn. She drew on his thick terry robe and padded out of the apartment, following the buzzing in her veins that would lead her to her blood-bonded mate.
He wasn’t in the compound or the mansion that sat above it on ground level. He was outside, in the garden courtyard behind the estate. Dressed in just a pair of black warm-ups, Rio was seated on the wide marble steps that spread out to the manicured lawn, watching a small bonfire a few yards out on the grass. Next to him was a box of framed photographs and a couple of the bright abstract paintings taken from the walls of his quarters.
Dylan looked out at the fire and saw the distorted shapes of more of his belongings slowly being consumed by the flames.
“Hey,” he said, obviously sensing her as she approached him from behind. He didn’t look back at her, just stretched his arm out to the side, waiting for her to take his hand. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“It’s okay.” Dylan wrapped her fingers around his. “I don’t mind being up. I missed your warmth.”
As she spoke, he pulled her into a tender hold next to him. He circled her thighs with his arm and simply held her there, his gaze still fixed on the fire. Dylan glanced down into the box beside him, seeing the pictures of Eva and a few of the two of them together in happier times. Eva’s artwork was in the container, as were some of her clothes.
“I woke up a while ago and realized I needed to clear out a few things that no longer belong in my life,” he said.
His voice was calm, not angry or bitter. Just…resolved.
Rio seemed to be in a state of true peace; her sense of it registered all the way into her veins as he embraced her in silence, watching the fire dance on the lawn.
“For the past year, I’ve hated her,” he said. “With every breath in my body, I prayed she was burning in hell for what she did to me. I think my hatred for Eva was the only thing that kept me alive. For a long time, it was the only thing I could feel.”
“I know,” Dylan said softly. She tunneled her fingers into his thick hair, caressing his head as he rested his cheek against her hip. “But it was Eva who led me to you on that mountain. She cared about you, Rio. I think in her own misguided way, she loved you very much. In life, she made some terrible mistakes trying to keep you all to herself. She did some terrible things, but I think she wishes she could correct them in death.”
Rio slowly stood up, still keeping a hold on her as he rose to his feet beside her. “I can’t hate her anymore, because she brought me to you. And not just that day up there in the cave. Eva was in my car the night Dragos took you.”
Dylan frowned. “You saw her?”
“I was still hours outside of New York, knowing that if Dragos had you, I’d never be able to reach you in time. Cristo, the fear that went through me at the very thought—” He broke off and pulled her closer to him. “I was on the highway, driving as fast as I could, praying like hell for some kind of miracle. Anything to give me hope that I wasn’t going to lose you. That’s when I heard her voice beside me. I looked over and there she was—Eva, in the car with me. She told me where Dragos had taken you. She gave me the location of the dam, told me to trust her. I didn’t know if I could—not ever again—but I also knew that it could be my only hope of finding you. Without her, I would have lost you. She could have told me I’d find you in the middle of a raging inferno and I would have gone in after you. She could have betrayed me again, led me into another ambush, and I would have gone, just for the hope of finding you alive.”
“But she didn’t,” Dylan said. “She told you the truth.”
“Yes. Thank God.”
“Oh, Rio.” Dylan rested her cheek against his chest, hearing the heavy pound of his heart as if it were her own. She felt his love pour into her as warm as sunshine, a love she sent back to him tenfold. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” he said, then tipped her chin up and kissed her, long and slow and sweet. “I’m going to love you forever, Dylan. If you’ll have me, there’s nothing I want more than to spend every day—and night—of my life loving you.”
“Of course I’ll have you,” she told him, reaching up to smooth her fingertips over his cheek. She smiled slowly and with seductive promise. “I’ll have you every day and night of my life…and in every way imaginable.”
Rio growled deep in his throat, a spark of amber lighting in his gaze. “I like the sound of that.”
“I hoped you would.” She smiled up into his face, a face she would never tire of seeing, especially when he was looking at her with so much tender devotion in his eyes it left her breathless.
She glanced down at the box of Eva’s personal effects, then out at the bonfire. “You know you don’t have to do this. Not for me.”
Rio shook his head. “I’m doing it for both of us. Maybe I’m doing it for her too. It’s time to let go of everything that happened before. I’m ready to do that now…because of you. Because of the future I see with you. I’m done looking back.”
Dylan nodded gently. “Okay.”
Rio picked up the box and looked to her to accompany him to the fire. They walked together, silent as they neared the undulating flames.
With a soft push, Rio sent the box of pictures, art, and clothing into the middle of the bonfire. It roared to life for a brief moment, shooting a spray of sparks and smoke high into the dusky periwinkle sky.
In a thoughtful silence, Dylan and Rio watched the fire burn for a while, until the flames grew less hungry, their fuel spent. When it was just smoke and embers, Rio turned to Dylan and brought her into his arms. He held her close, whispering a quiet prayer of gratitude next to her ear.
And in the rising smoke from the dying bonfire behind him, Dylan watched over his broad shoulder as an ethereal, feminine shape took form between the flurry of floating ash.
Eva.
She smiled a bit sadly as she watched the two of them embrace. But then she gave a slow nod to Dylan and gradually faded away.
Dylan closed her eyes as she wrapped her arms around Rio and buried her face in the solid warmth of his chest. After a little while, her cheek rumbled with the vibration of his voice.
“About that ‘having me every way imaginable’ promise of yours,” he said, clearing his throat. “You want to explain some of what you had in mind?”
Dylan looked up at him and smiled, her heart overflowing with love. “Why don’t I show you instead?”
He chuckled, the tips of his fangs already starting to emerge. “I thought you’d never ask.”
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author LARA ADRIAN lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
THE MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
By Lara Adrian
“Evocative, enticing, erotic…Enter Lara Adrian’s vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
He watches her from across the crowded dance club, a sensual black-haired stranger who stirs Gabrielle Maxwell’s deepest fantasies. But nothing about this night—or this man—is what it seems. For when Gabrielle witnesses a murder outside the club, reality shifts into something dark and deadly. In that shattering instant she is thrust into a realm she never knew existed—a realm where vampires stalk the shadows and a blood war is set to ignite.
Lucan Thorne despises the violence carried out by his lawless brethren. A vampire himself, Lucan is a Breed warrior, sworn to protect his kind—and the unwitting humans existing alongside them—from the mounting threat of the Rogues. Lucan cannot risk binding himself to a mortal woman, but when Gabrielle is targeted by his enemies, he has no choice but to bring her into the dark underworld he commands.
Here, in the arms of the Breed’s formidable leader, Gabrielle will confront an extraordinary destiny of danger, seduction, and the darkest pleasures of all.…
Take a sneak peek inside …
It was wrong to pursue the woman.
Lucan knew this, even as he had waited on Gabrielle Maxwell’s apartment steps that evening, showing her a detective’s badge and photo ID card. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t real, in fact, only a hypnotic manipulation that made her human mind believe he was who he had presented himself to be.
A simple trick for elders of his kind, like himself, but one he seldom stooped to use.
Yet now, here he was again, some time past midnight, stretching his slim personal code of honor even thinner as he tried the latch on her front door and found it unlocked. He knew it would be; he’d given her the suggestion while he had talked with her that evening, when he had shown her what he wanted to do with her and read the surprised, but receptive, response in her soft brown eyes.
He could have taken her then. She would have Hosted him willingly, he was certain, and knowing the intense pleasure they would have shared in the process had nearly been his undoing.
KISS OF CRIMSON
He comes to her more dead than alive, a towering black-clad stranger riddled with bullets and rapidly losing blood. As she struggles to save him, veterinarian Tess Culver is unaware that the man calling himself Dante is no man at all, but one of the Breed, vampire warriors engaged in a desperate battle. In a single erotically charged moment Tess is plunged into his world—a shifting, shadowed place where bands of Rogue vampires stalk the night, cutting a swath of terror.
Haunted by visions of a dark future, Dante lives and fights like there is no tomorrow. Tess is a complication he does not need—but now, with his brethren under attack, he must shield Tess from a growing threat that includes Dante himself. For with one reckless, irresistible kiss, she has become an inextricable part of his underworld realm…and his touch awakens her to hidden gifts, desires, and hungers she never knew she possessed. Bonded by blood, Dante and Tess must work together to thwart deadly enemies, even as they discover a passion that transcends the boundaries of life itself.…
Take a sneak peek inside …
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?”
Nobody answered. And now the noises she’d heard before had gone still as well.
Great. She’d just announced her presence to an intruder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic. Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shelter who’d found his or her way into the clinic from the back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something else was in there as well.
Ph, that’s right. The tranq syringe, full of enough anesthetic to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out cold.
“Is someone back there?” she asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception station and reached for the phone. The damn thing wasn’t cordless—she’d gotten it cheap on closeout—and the receiver barely reached her ear over the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started punching 911 on the key pad. “You’d better get out of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”
“No … please … don’t be afraid …”
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn’t have reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if the words had been whispered right up next to her head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
With a dagger in her hand and vengeance on her mind, Darkhaven beauty Elise Chase prowls Boston’s streets in search of retribution against the Rogue vampires who took from her everything she cherished. Using an extraordinary psychic gift, she tracks her prey, well aware that the power she possesses is destroying her. She must learn to harness this gift, and for that she can turn to only one man—the deadliest of the Breed warriors, Tegan.
No stranger to loss, Tegan knows Elise’s pain. He knows fury, but when he slays his enemies it is with ice in his veins. He is perfect in his self-control, until Elise seeks his aid in her personal war. An unholy alliance is forged—a bond that will link them by blood and vow—and plunge them into a tempest of danger, desire, and the darkest passions of the heart….
Take a sneak peek inside …
She swam to the steps and came out of the water, evidently too piqued to care that Tegan was staring openly at her wet body. His eyes honed in on the birthmark riding the inner edge of her thigh, drawn there unerringly like a heat-seeking missile locked on a target.
Saliva surged into his mouth as he watched rivulets of water slide down her smooth, bare thighs. His skin felt tights all over, heat moving in his veins, and in the dermaglyph markings that covered his body and declared him one of the Breed. His gums ached with the sudden press of his fangs. He clamped his jaws together, curbing the startling jolt of hunger.
He didn’t want to look at the female, but damned if he could tear his eyes away from her now.
“Sterling hasn’t convinced me of anything,” she said as she grabbed her towel and covered herself with it. “He won’t even speak to me, if you want to know the truth. I think he must hate me after what happened last fall.”
Tegan studied her smart lavender eyes. “Is that really what you think—that he hates you?”
“Sterling was my mate’s brother—by marriage, he is my brother. It would be completely improper—”
Tegan scoffed. “Men have gone to war with their own brothers for the want of the same woman. Desire could give a damn about propriety.”
Elise held the towel closed between her breasts and paced from him. “I don’t like where this conversation is heading.”
“Do you have feelings for him?”
“Of course not.” She looked at Tegan, clearly, rightfully, appalled. “And what right have you to ask me that?”
Thirsty for more?
Read on for a sneak peak
of the next novel in Lara Adrian’s
Midnight Breed series
Veil of Midnight
Coming from Dell in December 2008
Veil of Midnight
On sale December 2008
On stage in the cavernous jazz club below Montreal’s street level, a crimson-lipped singer drawled into the microphone about the cruelty of love. Although her sultry voice was pleasant enough, the lyrics about blood and pain and pleasure clearly heartfelt, Nikolai wasn’t listening. He wondered if she knew—if any of the dozens of humans packed into the intimate club knew—that they were sharing breathing space with vampires.
The two young females sucking down pink martinis in the dark corner banquette sure as hell didn’t know it.
They were sandwiched between four such individuals, a group of slick, leather-clad males who were chatting them up—without much success—and trying to act like their bloodthirsty eyes hadn’t been permanently fixed on the women’s jugulars for the past fifteen minutes straight. Even though it was clear that the vampires were negotiating hard to get the humans out of the club with them, they weren’t making much progress with their prospective blood Hosts.
Nikolai scoffed under his breath.
Amateurs.
He paid for the beer he’d left untouched on the bar and headed at an easy stroll toward the corner table. As he approached, he watched the two human females scoot out of the booth on unsteady legs. Giggling, they stumbled for the restrooms together, disappearing down a dim, crowded hallway off the main room.
Nikolai sat down at the table in a negligent sprawl.
“Evening, ladies.”
The four vampires stared at him in silence, instantly recognizing their own kind. Niko lifted one of the tall, lipstick-stained martini glasses to his nose and sniffed at the dregs of the fruity concoction. He winced, pushing the offending drink aside.
“Humans,” he drawled in a low voice. “How can they stomach that shit?”
A wary silence fell over the table as Nikolai’s glance traveled among the obviously young, obviously civilian Breed males. The largest of the four cleared his throat as he looked up at Niko, his instincts no doubt picking up on the fact that Niko wasn’t local, and he was a far cry from civilized.
The youth adopted something he probably thought was a hardass look and jerked his soul-patched chin toward the restroom corridor. “We saw them first,” he murmured. “The women. We saw them first.” He cleared his throat again, like he was waiting for his trio of wingmen to back him up. None did. “We got here first, man. When the females come back to the table, they’re gonna be leaving with us.”
Nikolai chuckled at the young male’s shaky attempt to stake his territory. “You really think there’d be any contest if I was here to poach your game? Relax. I’m not interested in that. I’m looking for information.”
He’d been through a similar song and dance twice already tonight at other clubs, seeking out the places where members of the Breed tended to gather and hunt for blood, looking for someone who could point him toward a vampire elder named Sergei Yakut.
It wasn’t easy finding someone who didn’t want to be found, especially a secretive, nomadic individual like Yakut. He was in Montreal, that much Nikolai was sure of. He’d spoken to the reclusive vampire by phone as recent as a couple of weeks earlier, when he’d tracked Yakut down to inform him of a threat that seemed aimed at the Breed’s most powerful, rarest members—the twenty or so individuals still in existence who were born of the first generation.
Someone was targeting Gen Ones for extinction. Several had been slain within the past month, and for Niko and his brothers-in-arms back in Boston—a small cadre of highly trained, highly lethal warriors known as the Order—the business of rooting out and shutting down the elusive Gen One assassins was mission critical. For that, the Order had decided to contact all of the known Gen Ones remaining in the Breed population and enlist their cooperation.
Sergei Yakut had been less than enthusiastic to get involved. He feared no one, and he had his own personal clan to protect him. He’d declined the Order’s invitation to come to Boston and talk, so Nikolai had been dispatched to Montreal to persuade him. Once Yakut was made aware of the scope of the current threat—the stunning truth of what the Order and all of the Breed were now up against—Nikolai was certain the Gen One would be willing to come on board.
First he had to find the cagey son of a bitch.
So far his inquiries around the city had turned up nothing. Patience wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but he had all night, and he’d keep searching. Sooner or later, someone might give him the answer he was looking for. And if he kept coming up dry, maybe if he asked enough questions, Sergei Yakut would come looking for him instead.
“I need to find someone,” Nikolai told the four Breed youths. “A vampire out of Russia. Siberia, to be exact.”
“That where you’re from?” asked the soul-patched mouthpiece of the group. He’d evidently picked up on the slight tinge of an accent that Nikolai hadn’t lost in the long years he’d been living in the States with the Order.
Niko let his glacial blue eyes speak to his own origins. “Do you know this individual?”
“No, man. I don’t know him.”
Two other heads shook in immediate denial, but the last of the four youths, the sullen one who was slouched low in the booth, shot an anxious look up at Nikolai from across the banquette table.
Niko caught that telling gaze and held it. “What about you? Any idea who I’m talking about?”
At first, he didn’t think the vampire was going to answer. Hooded eyes held his in silence, then, finally, the kid lifted one shoulder in a shrug and exhaled a curse.
“Sergei Yakut,” he murmured.
The name was hardly audible, but Nikolai heard it. And from the periphery of his vision, he noticed that an ebony-haired woman seated at the bar nearby heard it too. He could tell she had from the sudden rigidity of her spine beneath her long-sleeved black top, and from the way her head snapped briefly to the side as though pulled there by the power of that name alone.
“You know him?” Nikolai asked the Breed male, while keeping the brunette at the bar well within his sights.
“I know of him, that’s all. He doesn’t live in the Darkhavens,” said the youth, referring to the secured communities that housed most of the Breed civilian populations throughout North America and Europe. “Dude’s one nasty mofo from what I’ve heard.”
Yeah, he was, Nikolai acknowledged inwardly. “Any idea where I might find him?”
“No.”
“You sure about that?” Niko asked, watching as the woman at the bar slid off her stool and prepared to leave. She still had more than half a cocktail in her glass, but at the mere mention of Yakut’s name, she seemed suddenly in a big hurry to get out of the place.
The Breed youth shook his head. “I don’t know where to find the dude. Don’t know why anyone would willingly look for him, either, unless you got some kind of death wish.”
Nikolai glanced over his shoulder as the tall brunette started edging her way through the crowd gathered near the bar. On impulse, she turned to look at him then, her jade-green gaze piercing beneath the fringe of dark lashes and the glossy swing of her sleek, chin-length bob. There was a note of fear in her eyes as she stared back at him, a naked fear she didn’t even attempt to hide.
“I’ll be damned,” Niko muttered.
She knew something about Sergei Yakut.
Something more than just a passing knowledge, he was guessing. That startled, panicked look as she turned and broke for an escape said it all.
Nikolai took off after her. He weaved through the thicket of humans filling the club, his eyes trained on the silky black hair of his quarry. The female was quick, as fleet and agile as a gazelle, her dark clothes and hair letting her practically disappear into her surroundings.
But Niko was Breed, and there was no human in existence who could outrun one of his kind. She ducked out the club door and made a fast right onto the street outside. Nikolai followed. She must have sensed him hard on her heels because she pivoted her head around to gauge his pursuit and those pale green eyes locked on to him like lasers.
She ran faster now, turning the corner at the end of the block. Not two seconds later, Niko was there too. He grinned as he caught sight of her a few yards ahead of him. The alley she’d entered between two tall brick buildings was narrow and dark—a dead end sealed off by a dented metal Dumpster and a chain link fence that climbed some ten feet up from the ground.
The woman spun around on the spiked heels of her black boots, panting hard, eyes trained on him, watching his every move.
Nikolai took a few steps into the lightless alley, then paused, his hands held benevolently out to his sides. “It’s okay,” he told her. “No need to run. I just want to talk to you.”
She stared in silence.
“I want to ask you about Sergei Yakut.”
She swallowed visibly, her smooth white throat flexing.
“You know him, don’t you.”
The edge of her mouth quirked only a fraction, but enough to tell him that he was correct—she was familiar with the reclusive Gen One. Whether or not she could lead Niko to him was another matter. Right now, she was his best, possibly his only, hope.
“Tell me where he is. I need to find him.”
At her sides, her hands balled into fists. Her feet were braced slightly apart as if she were prepared to bolt. Niko saw her glance subtly toward a battered door to her left.
She lunged for it.
Niko hissed a curse and flew after her with all the speed he possessed. By the time she’d thrown the door open on its groaning hinges, Nikolai was standing in front of her at the threshold, blocking her path into the darkness on the other side. He chuckled at the ease of it.
“I said there’s no need to run,” he said, shrugging lightly as she backed a step away from him. He let the door fall closed behind him as he followed her slow retreat into the alley.
Jesus, she was breathtaking. He’d only gotten a glimpse of her in the club, but now, standing just a couple of feet from her, he realized that she was absolutely stunning. Tall and lean, willowy beneath her fitted black clothing, with flawless milk-white skin and luminous almond-shaped eyes. Her heart-shaped face was a mesmerizing combination of strength and softness, her beauty equal parts light and dark. Nikolai knew he was gaping, but damn if he could help it.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me your name.”
He reached for her, an easy non-threatening move of his hand. He sensed the jolt of adrenaline that shot into her bloodstream—he could smell the citrusy tang of it in the air, in fact—but he didn’t see the roundhouse kick coming at him until he took the sharp heel of her boot squarely in his chest.
Goddamn.
He rocked back, more surprised than unfooted.
It was all the break she needed. The woman leapt for the door again, this time managing to disappear into the darkened building before Niko could wheel around and stop her. He gave chase, thundering in behind her.
The place was empty, just a lot of naked concrete beneath his feet, bare bricks and exposed rafters all around him. Some fleeting sense of foreboding prickled at the back of his neck as he strode deeper into the darkness, but the bulk of his attention was focused on the female standing in the center of the vacant space. She stared him down as he approached, every muscle in her slim body seeming tensed for attack.
Nikolai held that sharp stare as he drew up in front of her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know.” She smiled, just a slight curve of her lips. “You won’t get that chance.”
Her voice was velvety smooth, but the glint in her light green eyes took on a cold edge. Without warning, Niko felt a sudden, shattering tightness in his head. A high-frequency sound cranked up in his ears, louder than he could bear. Then louder still. He felt his legs give out beneath him. He dropped to his knees, his vision swimming while his head felt on the verge of exploding.
Distantly, he registered the sound of booted feet coming toward him—several pairs, belonging to sizable males, vampires all of them. Muted voices buzzed above him as he suffered out the sudden, debilitating assault on his mind.
It was a trap.
The bitch led him there deliberately, knowing he’d follow her.
“Good work, Renata,” said one of the Breed males who’d entered the room. “You can release him now.”
Some of the pain in Nikolai’s head subsided with the command. He glanced up in time to see the beautiful face of his attacker staring down at him where he lay near her feet.
“Get him out of here before his strength returns,” she said to her companions.
Nikolai sputtered a few ripe curses at her, but his voice strangled in his throat, and she was already walking away, the thin spikes of her heels clicking over the field of cold concrete underneath him.
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
PRAISE FOR LARA ADRIAN’s
MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
MIDNIGHT RISING
“Fans are in for a treat…. Ms. Adrian has a gift for
drawing her readers deeper and deeper into the
amazing world she creates…. I eagerly await the
next installment of this entertaining series!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Packed with danger and action, this book
also explores the tumultuous emotions of guilt,
anger, betrayal and forgiveness. Adrian has
hit on an unbeatable story mix.”
—Romantic Times
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
“This is one of the best paranormal series around. Compelling characters and good world-building make this a must-read series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“One of the Top 10 Best Romance Novels of 2007.”
—Selected by the Editors at Amazon.com
“Ms. Adrian’s series just gets better and
better…. Midnight Awakening was exactly what I hoped
it would be, then so much more…. I’m intrigued and
without a doubt completely hooked.”
—Romance Junkies
“Vengeance is the driving force behind this entry in the
intense Midnight Breed series. Things look bad for the
characters, but for the readers it’s nothing but net!”
—Romantic Times
KISS OF CRIMSON
“Vibrant writing heightens the suspense, and hidden
secrets provide many twists. This dark and steamy
tale … is a winner and will have readers eager for the
next Midnight Breed story.”
—Romance Renews Today
“Hot sensuality with emotional drama and high-stakes
danger… [Adrian] ensures that her latest is terrific
supernatural entertainment.”
—Romantic Times
“[Adrian] pens hot erotic scenes and vivid action
sequences.” —Romantic Reader
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
“Evocative, enticing, erotic. Enter Lara Adrian’s
vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
“Kiss of Midnight is dark, edgy and passionate, an irresistible vampire romance.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Lara Adrian delivers a fast-paced, sexy
romantic suspense that… stands above the
rest. A gripping, sensual love story.”
—Romance Reader
“Gritty and dangerous, this terrific launch book
sets up an alternate reality filled with treachery
and loss. The Midnight Breed series is poised
to deliver outstanding supernatural thrills.”
—Romantic Times
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
MIDNIGHT RISING
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
A Dell Book /January 2009
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Lara Adrian, LLG
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.,
and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33817-8
v3.0_r1
Contents
Praise for Lara Adrian s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
For Lindsey,
steel magnolia with a heart of solid gold.
This one is for you, in hope of better, brighter days.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It bears repeating (again and again) that I am very grateful to so many for the privilege of being able to wake up each day and do something I genuinely love. A debt of thanks to: my fabulous agent, Karen Solem, and my wonderful editor, Shauna Summers, for getting me into print; to my awesome readers for keeping me there; to the booksellers, librarians, and bloggers who’ve so generously spread the word about my books; to my friends and family for all the love.
And to my husband, cherished friend, beloved partner, keeper of my heart. Thank you for every moment of this life together.
CHAPTER
One
On stage in the cavernous jazz club below Montreal’s street level, a crimson-lipped singer drawled into the microphone about the cruelty of love. Although her sultry voice was pleasant enough, the lyrics about blood and pain and pleasure clearly heartfelt, Nikolai wasn’t listening. He wondered if she knew—if any of the dozens of humans packed into the intimate club knew—that they were sharing breathing space with vampires.
The two young females sucking down pink martinis in the dark corner banquette sure as hell didn’t know it.
They were sandwiched between four such individuals, a group of slick, leather-clad males who were chatting them up—without much success—and trying to act like their bloodthirsty eyes hadn’t been permanently fixed on the women’s jugulars for the past fifteen minutes straight. Even though it was clear that the vampires were negotiating hard to get the humans out of the club with them, they weren’t making much progress with their prospective blood Hosts.
Nikolai scoffed under his breath.
Amateurs.
He paid for the beer he’d left untouched on the bar and headed at an easy stroll toward the corner table. As he approached, he watched the two human females scoot out of the booth on unsteady legs. Giggling, they stumbled for the restrooms together, disappearing down a dim, crowded hallway off the main room.
Nikolai sat down at the table in a negligent sprawl.
“Evening, ladies.”
The four vampires stared at him in silence, instantly recognizing their own kind. Niko lifted one of the tall, lipstick-stained martini glasses to his nose and sniffed at the dregs of the fruity concoction. He winced, pushing the offending drink aside.
“Humans,” he drawled in a low voice. “How can they stomach that shit?”
A wary silence fell over the table as Nikolai’s glance traveled among the obviously young, obviously civilian Breed males. The largest of the four cleared his throat as he looked at Niko, his instincts no doubt picking up on the fact that Niko wasn’t local, and he was a far cry from civilized.
The youth adopted something he probably thought was a hardass look and jerked his soul-patched chin toward the restroom corridor. “We saw them first,” he murmured. “The women. We saw them first.” He cleared his throat again, like he was waiting for his trio of wingmen to back him up. None did. “We got here first, man. When the females come back to the table, they’re gonna be leaving with us.”
Nikolai chuckled at the young male’s shaky attempt to stake his territory. “You really think there’d be any contest if I was here to poach your game? Relax. I’m not interested in that. I’m looking for information.”
He’d been through a similar song-and-dance twice already tonight at other clubs, seeking out the places where members of the Breed tended to gather and hunt for blood, looking for someone who could point him toward a vampire elder named Sergei Yakut.
It wasn’t easy finding someone who didn’t want to be found, especially a secretive, nomadic individual like Yakut. He was in Montreal, that much Nikolai was sure of. He’d spoken to the reclusive vampire by phone as recently as a couple of weeks earlier, when he’d tracked Yakut down to inform him of a threat that seemed aimed at the Breed’s most powerful, rarest members—the twenty or so individuals still in existence who were born of the first generation.
Someone was targeting Gen Ones for extinction. Several had been slain within the past month, and for Niko and his brothers in arms back in Boston—a small cadre of highly trained, highly lethal warriors known as the Order—the business of rooting out and shutting down the elusive Gen One assassins was mission critical. For that, the Order had decided to contact all of the known Gen Ones remaining in the Breed population and enlist their cooperation.
Sergei Yakut had been less than enthusiastic to get involved. He feared no one, and he had his own personal clan to protect him. He’d declined the Order’s invitation to come to Boston and talk, so Nikolai had been dispatched to Montreal to persuade him. Once Yakut was made aware of the scope of the current threat—the stunning truth of what the Order and all of the Breed were now up against—Nikolai was certain the Gen One would be willing to come on board.
First he had to find the cagey son of a bitch.
So far his inquiries around the city had turned up nothing. Patience wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but he had all night, and he’d keep searching. Sooner or later, someone might give him the answer he was looking for. And if he kept coming up dry, maybe if he asked enough questions, Sergei Yakut would come looking for him instead.
“I need to find someone,” Nikolai told the four Breed youths. “A vampire out of Russia. Siberia, to be exact.”
“That where you’re from?” asked the soul-patched mouthpiece of the group. He’d evidently picked up on the slight tinge of an accent that Nikolai hadn’t lost in the long years he’d been living in the States with the Order.
Niko let his glacial blue eyes speak to his own origins. “Do you know this individual?”
“No, man. I don’t know him.”
Two other heads shook in immediate denial, but the last of the four youths, the sullen one who was slouched low in the booth, shot an anxious look up at Nikolai from across the table.
Niko caught that telling gaze and held it. “What about you? Any idea who I’m talking about?”
At first, he didn’t think the vampire was going to answer. Hooded eyes held his in silence, then, finally, the kid lifted one shoulder in a shrug and exhaled a curse.
“Sergei Yakut,” he murmured.
The name was hardly audible, but Nikolai heard it. And from the periphery of his vision, he noticed that an ebony-haired woman seated at the bar nearby heard it too. He could tell she had from the sudden rigidity of her spine beneath her long-sleeved black top and from the way her head snapped briefly to the side as though pulled there by the power of that name alone.
“You know him?” Nikolai asked the Breed male, while keeping the brunette at the bar well within his sights.
“I know of him, that’s all. He doesn’t live in the Darkhavens,” said the youth, referring to the secured communities that housed most of the Breed civilian populations throughout North America and Europe. “Dude’s one nasty mofo from what I’ve heard.”
Yeah, he was, Nikolai acknowledged inwardly. “Any idea where I might find him?”
“No.”
“You sure about that?” Niko asked, watching as the woman at the bar slid off her stool and prepared to leave. She still had more than half a cocktail in her glass, but at the mere mention of Yakut’s name, she seemed suddenly in a big hurry to get out of the place.
The Breed youth shook his head. “I don’t know where to find the dude. Don’t know why anyone would willingly look for him either, unless you got some kind of death wish.”
Nikolai glanced over his shoulder as the tall brunette started edging her way through the crowd gathered near the bar. On impulse, she turned to look at him then, her jade-green gaze piercing beneath the fringe of dark lashes and the glossy swing of her sleek, chin-length bob. There was a note of fear in her eyes as she stared back at him, a naked fear she didn’t even attempt to hide.
“I’ll be damned,” Niko muttered.
She knew something about Sergei Yakut.
Something more than just a passing knowledge, he was guessing. That startled, panicked look as she turned and broke for an escape said it all.
Nikolai took off after her. He weaved through the thicket of humans filling the club, his eyes trained on the silky black hair of his quarry. The female was quick, as fleet and agile as a gazelle, her dark clothes and hair letting her practically disappear into her surroundings.
But Niko was Breed, and mere was no human in existence who could outrun one of his kind. She ducked out the club door and made a fast right onto the street outside. Nikolai followed. She must have sensed him hard on her heels because she pivoted her head around to gauge his pursuit and those pale green eyes locked on to him like lasers.
She ran faster now, turning the corner at the end of the block. Not two seconds later, Niko was there too. He grinned as he caught sight of her a few yards ahead of him. The alley she’d entered between two tall brick buildings was narrow and dark—a dead end sealed off by a dented metal Dumpster and a chain-link fence that climbed some ten feet up from the ground.
The woman spun around on the spiked heels of her black boots, panting hard, eyes trained on him, watching his every move.
Nikolai took a few steps into the lightless alley, then paused, his hands held benevolently out to his sides. “It’s okay,” he told her. “No need to run. I just want to talk to you.”
She stared in silence.
“I want to ask you about Sergei Yakut.”
She swallowed visibly, her smooth white throat flexing.
“You know him, don’t you.”
The edge of her mouth quirked only a fraction, but enough to tell him that he was correct—she was familiar with the reclusive Gen One. Whether she could lead Niko to him was another matter. Right now, she was his best, possibly his only, hope.
“Tell me where he is. I need to find him.”
At her sides, her hands balled into fists. Her feet were braced slightly apart as if she were prepared to bolt. Niko saw her glance subtly toward a battered door to her left.
She lunged for it.
Niko hissed a curse and flew after her with all the speed he possessed. By the time she’d thrown the door open on its groaning hinges, Nikolai was standing in front of her at the threshold, blocking her path into the darkness on the other side. He chuckled at the ease of it.
“I said there’s no need to run,” he said, shrugging lightly as she backed a step away from him. He let the door fall closed behind him as he followed her slow retreat into the alley.
Jesus, she was breathtaking. He’d only gotten a glimpse of her in the club, but now, standing just a couple of feet from her, he realized that she was absolutely stunning. Tall and lean, willowy beneath her fitted black clothing, with flawless milk-white skin and luminous almond-shaped eyes. Her heart-shaped face was a mesmerizing combination of strength and softness, her beauty equal parts light and dark. Nikolai knew he was gaping, but damn if he could help it.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me your name.”
He reached for her, an easy, nonthreatening move of his hand. He sensed the jolt of adrenaline that shot into her bloodstream—he could smell the citrusy tang of it in the air, in fact—but he didn’t see the roundhouse kick coming at him until he took the sharp heel of her boot squarely in his chest.
Goddamn.
He rocked back, more surprised than unfooted.
It was all the break she needed. The woman leapt for the door again, this time managing to disappear into the darkened building before Niko could wheel around and stop her. He gave chase, thundering in behind her.
The place was empty, just a lot of naked concrete beneath his feet, bare bricks and exposed rafters all around him. Some fleeting sense of foreboding prickled at the back of his neck as he raced deeper into the darkness, but the bulk of his attention was focused on the female standing in the center of the vacant space. She stared him down as he approached, every muscle in her slim body seeming tensed for attack.
Nikolai held that sharp stare as he drew up in front of her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know.” She smiled, just a slight curve of her lips. “You won’t get that chance.”
Her voice was velvety smooth, but the glint in her eyes took on a cold edge. Without warning, Niko felt a sudden, shattering tightness in his head. A high-frequency sound cranked up in his ears, louder than he could bear. Then louder still. He felt his legs give out beneath him. He dropped to his knees, his vision swimming while his head felt on the verge of exploding.
Distantly, he registered the sound of booted feet coming toward him—several pairs, belonging to sizable males, vampires all of them. Muted voices buzzed above him as he suffered out the sudden, debilitating assault on his mind.
It was a trap.
The bitch had led him there deliberately, knowing he’d follow her.
“Enough, Renata,” said one of the Breed males who’d entered the room. “You can release him now.”
Some of the pain in Nikolai’s head subsided with the command. He glanced up in time to see the beautiful face of his attacker staring down at him where he lay near her feet.
“Strip him of his weapons,” she said to her companions. “We need to get him out of here before his strength returns.”
Nikolai sputtered a few ripe curses at her, but his voice strangled in his throat, and she was already walking away, the thin spikes of her heels clicking over the field of cold concrete underneath him.
CHAPTER
Two
Renata couldn’t get out of the warehouse fast enough. Her stomach roiled. A cold sweat popped out along her forehead and down the back of her neck. She craved the fresh night air like her last breath, but she kept her stride even and strong. Her fisted hands held rigidly at her sides were the only outward indicator that she was anything but calm and collected.
It was always like this for her—the aftermath of using her mind’s crippling power.
Outside now, alone in the alley, she gulped in a few quick mouthfuls of air. The rush of oxygen cooled her burning throat, but it was all she could do not to double over from the rising pain that was coursing like a river of fire through her limbs and into the center of her being.
“Damn it,” she muttered into the empty darkness, rocking a bit on her tall heels. Taking a few more deep breaths, she stared at the black pavement under her feet and focused simply on holding herself together.
Behind her came the swift, heavy shuffle of booted feet from out of the warehouse. The sound drew her head up sharply. Forced a look of cool apathy over the hot tightness in her face.
“Careful with him,” she said, glancing at the slack bulk of the big, nearly unconscious male she’d disabled, and who was now being carried like felled game by the four guards working with her. “Where are his weapons?”
“Catch.”
A black leather duffel bag came sailing at her with barely a warning, heaved toward her by Alexei, the appointed leader of tonight’s detail. She didn’t miss the smirk on his lean face as the heavy duffel full of metal crashed into her chest. The impact felt like the pounding of a thousand nails into her sensitive skin and muscles, but she caught the bag and swung the long strap up over her shoulder without so much as a grunt of discomfort.
But Lex knew. He knew her weakness, and he never let her forget it.
Unlike her, Alexei and her other companions were vampires—Breed, all of them. As was their captive, Renata had no doubt. She’d sensed as much when she’d first seen him in the club, a suspicion confirmed by the simple fact that she was able to take him down with her mind. Her pyschic ability was formidable, but not without its limitations. It only worked on the Breed; the more simplistic human brain cells were unaffected by the high-frequency blast she was able to mentally project with little more than a moment’s concentration.
She herself was human, if born slightly different from basic Homo sapiens stock. To Lex and his kind, she was known as a Breedmate, one of a small number of human females born with unique extrasensory skills and the even rarer capability to successfully reproduce with those of the Breed. For women like Renata, ingesting Breed blood provided even greater strength. Longevity too. A Breedmate could live for some long centuries with regular feedings from a vampire’s nourishing veins.
Until two years ago, Renata had no idea why she was different from everyone else she knew, or where she might belong. Crossing paths with Sergei Yakut had quickly brought her up to speed. He was the reason that she and Lex and the others were on guard tonight, prowling the city and looking for the individual who’d been asking around for the reclusive Yakut.
The Breed male Renata found at the jazz club had been so careless with his inquiries all night, she had to wonder if he was trying to provoke Sergei Yakut into coming to him. If so, the guy was either an idiot or suicidal, or some combination of both. She’d have her answer to that question soon enough.
Renata took her cell phone out of her pocket, flipped it open, and speed-dialed the first number on file. “Subject retrieved,” she announced when the call connected. She gave their location, then snapped the phone closed and put it away. Glancing over to where Alexei and the other guards had paused with their limp captive, she said, “The car’s on the way. Should be here in about two minutes.”
“Drop this sack of shit,” Lex ordered his men. They all released their grasps on the Breed male, and his body hit the asphalt with a jarring thud. Hands on his hips, fists framing his holstered pistol and a large hunting knife sheathed on his belt, Lex peered down into the unconscious face of the vampire at his feet. He pulled in a sharp, disapproving breath, then spat, narrowly missing the blade-sharp cheek below. The foamy white glob of his saliva landed with a wet splat on the dark pavement not an inch away from the man’s blond head.
When Alexei glanced up again, there was a hard glint in his dark eyes. “Maybe we should kill him.”
One of the other guards chuckled, but Renata knew that Lex wasn’t joking. “Sergei said to bring him in.”
Alexei scoffed. “And give his enemies another chance to take his head?”
“We don’t know that this man had anything to do with the attack.”
“Can we be certain he didn’t?” Alexei turned to stare unblinkingly at Renata. “From now on, I trust no one. I would think you’d be as unlikely to risk his safety as I am.”
“I follow orders,” she replied. “Sergei said to find whoever was in town asking about him and bring him in for questioning. That’s what I intend to do.”
Lex’s eyes narrowed under the severe brown slashes of his brows. “Fine,” he said, his voice too calm, too level. “You’re right, Renata. We have our orders. We’ll bring him in, like you say. But what are we going to do while we wait out here for pickup?”
Renata stared at him, wondering where he was heading now. Lex strolled around to the side of the unconscious Breed male and gave an experimental jab of his boot into the unprotected ribs. There was no reaction at all. Only the soft rise and fall of the male’s chest as he breathed.
Alexei peeled his lips back and grinned, jerking his chin toward the other men. “My boots are dirty. Maybe this useless baggage will clean them off while we wait, ah?”
At the encouraging chortles of his companions, Lex lifted one of his feet and let it hover over the unresponsive face of their captive.
“Lex—” Renata began, knowing he would ignore her if she tried to persuade him to stop. But it was at that precise moment that she noticed something strange about the blond male lying on the ground. His breathing was steady and shallow, his limbs unmoving, but his face… he was holding himself too still, even if he truly was unconscious. He wasn’t.
In a split second of clarity, Renata realized without a shred of doubt that he was very much awake. Very much aware of everything that was happening.
Oh, Christ.
Alexei chuckled now, lowering his leg as he started to bring the thick sole of his boot down onto the man’s face.
“Lex, wait! He’s not—”
Nothing she could have said would have changed the resulting explosion of chaos.
Lex was still in motion as the man brought his hands up and caught him at the ankle. He clamped down and twisted hard, sending Lex flying off him and howling in agony on the ground nearby. Not a second passed before the man rolled up onto his feet, fluid and strong, like nothing Renata had ever seen in a fighter before.
And holy shit—he had Lex’s pistol.
Renata dropped the cumbersome duffel and grappled for her own gun, a .45 concealed in a holster at her back. Her fingers were still sluggish from her earlier mental exertion, and one of the other guards responded before she could free her weapon. He squeezed off a hasty round, missing his target by half a foot.
And faster than any of them could track him, the former captive returned fire, putting a bullet squarely in the front of the guard’s skull. One of Sergei Yakut’s hand-picked, longest-serving bodyguards went down on the pavement in a lifeless heap.
Oh, Jesus, Renata thought in mounting worry as the situation rapidly headed south. Could Alexei have been right? Was this Breed male the same assassin who had tried to strike here before?
“Who’s next?” he asked, one foot planted on the center of Lex’s spine while he coolly swung the pistol from the other two guards to Renata. “What, no takers now?”
“Kill this son of a bitch!” Lex roared, writhing like a trapped bug under the heavy heel that held him down. His cheek mashed against the pavement, fangs emerging in his rage, Lex threw a slivered glare at Renata and his men. “Blow his head off, goddamn it!”
Before the command was totally out of Alexei’s mouth, he was yanked up onto his feet. He screamed as his weight shifted to his injured ankle, but it was the sudden presence of his own pistol nuzzled behind his ear that really made his amber eyes go wild with panic. His captor, on the other hand, was as calm and steady as could be.
Oh, sweet Mother Mary.
Just who the hell were they dealing with?
“You heard him,” Lex’s captor said. His voice was low and unrushed, his gaze piercing even in the dark. He stared straight at Renata. “Bring it on, if any of you are man enough. Then again, if you’d rather not see his brain splattered all over this building wall, then I suggest you drop your weapons. Down on the pavement, nice and easy.”
Beside her in the alley Renata registered the low grunts and snuffles of transformed Breed males. Individually any one of the vampires was physically far stronger than she was; as a pair, they might be stronger than Lex’s attacker, although neither of them seemed willing to find out. A soft clack of metal sounded as a weapon was placed carefully on the asphalt. That left only one guard on backup with her. A second later, he surrendered his gun too. Both vampires retreated a couple of slow paces, surrendering in wary silence.
And now Renata stood alone against this unexpected threat.
He gave her a half smile in acknowledgment, baring his teeth and the tips of his emerging fangs. He was angry; those lengthening canines were evidence of that. As was the amber light that was beginning to fill his eyes as they too began to transform with his Breed features. His smile broadened, twin dimples appearing beneath his razor-sharp cheekbones. “Looks like it’s down to you and me, sweetheart. I’m not going to ask any more politely the longer you make me wait. Put your fucking gun down or I’ll waste him.”
Renata quickly considered her options—what few she had at the moment. Her body was still as raw as an exposed nerve, the aftershocks of her mental exertion still battering her, beating her down. She could attempt another assault on his mind, but she knew she was operating on fumes. Even if she hit him with all she had, she wouldn’t be able to take him down again, and once she was spent to that degree, she would be of no use to anyone.
Her only other option was an equally large risk. Ordinarily she was a crack shot, reflex fast and sniper accurate, but she couldn’t count on either skill when it would take a great deal of her focus just to command her limbs and fingers to work. No matter what she did, right now it seemed pretty slim odds that Alexei might come out of this in one piece. Hell, the chances of her or anyone else walking away from this situation were looking nil.
This Breed male was holding all the cards, and the look in his eyes as he watched, waited for her to decide her fate, seemed to say that he was very comfortable in his power position. He had Renata, Lex, and the rest of them right where he wanted them.
But she’d be damned if she’d go down without a fight.
Renata inhaled to gather her resolve, then she brought her gun around and leveled it on him. Her arms screamed with the effort it took to hold them out and steady, but she sucked up the pain, pushed it aside.
She flipped off the gun’s safety. “Release him. Now.”
The muzzle of Lex’s weapon remained jammed up tight behind his ear. “You don’t actually think we’re negotiating here, do you? Drop. Your. Weapon.”
Renata had a clean shot, but so did he. And he had the added benefit of superhuman speed. He might be able to dodge her bullet since he’d easily see it coming. There was a fraction of a second delay between chambering rounds, even at her best time. That meant ample opportunity for him to open fire as well, whether he chose to shoot Lex first or after he took her out. In another second, they might all be eating lead. This man was Breed; with his accelerated metabolism and healing power, he stood a decent chance of surviving getting shot, but her? She was staring at certain death.
“You got a problem with me specifically, or is it him you really want to see dead tonight? Maybe you just hate anything with a dick. That it?”
Although he kept his aim locked, his tone was light, as if he were only toying with her. Not taking her seriously at all. The arrogant prick. She didn’t answer, just cocked the pistol’s hammer back and rested her index finger lightly on the trigger.
“Let him go. We don’t want any trouble from you.”
“Too late for that, don’t you think? All you’re looking at is trouble now.”
Renata didn’t flinch. She didn’t dare so much as blink for fear that this man would sense it as weakness and decide to act.
Lex was shaking now, sweat pouring down his face. “Renata,” he gasped, but whether he wanted to tell her to stand down or make her best move, she wasn’t sure. “Renata… for fuck’s sake …”
She kept a steady aim on Alexei’s captor, her elbows locked, both hands gripped on her gun. A light summer breeze kicked up, and the soft gust of air raked over her hypersensitive skin like jagged shards of glass. In the distance she could hear the pop of fireworks from the finale of the weekend’s festival, the muted explosions vibrating like thunder in her aching bones. Traffic buzzed and braked on the street outside the alley, vehicle engines throwing off a sickening melange of exhaust fumes, heated rubber, and burning oil.
“How long do you want to drag this out, sweetheart? Because I gotta tell you, patience isn’t one of my virtues.” His tone was casual, but the threat couldn’t have been more dire. He brought the pistol’s hammer back, prepared to bring the night to its bloody end. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fill this asshole’s brain with lead.”
“Because he is my son.” The low male voice came from halfway up the darkened alley. The words were devoid of emotion but ominous in their cadence and thickly accented with the cold rasp of Sergei Yakut’s Siberian homeland.
CHAPTER
Three
Nikolai swung his head around and watched Sergei Yakut approach in the narrow alleyway. The Gen One vampire strode ahead of two anxious-looking bodyguards, his stark, unblinking gaze moving casually from Niko to the Breed male still being held at gunpoint. With a nod of acknowledgment, Niko clicked the pistol’s safety back into place and slowly lowered the weapon. As soon as he loosened his grasp, Yakut’s son threw him off with a growled curse and moved himself well out of reach.
“Insolent bastard,” he snarled, all venom and fury now that he was standing some safe distance away. “I told Renata this cur was a threat, but she wouldn’t listen. Let me kill him for you, Father. Let me give him pain.”
Yakut ignored both his son’s plea and his presence, instead striding in silence up to where Nikolai stood waiting.
“Sergei Yakut,” Niko said, turning the disarmed gun around and offering it to him in a gesture of peace. “Hell of a welcome wagon you’ve got here. My apologies for taking one of your men. He left me no choice.”
Yakut merely grunted as he took the pistol and handed it off to the guard standing nearest to him. Dressed in a cotton gauze tunic and worn leather pants that looked more like weathered hide, his light brown hair and beard wild and overgrown, Sergei Yakut had the look of a shrewd feudal warlord, centuries out of his time.
Then again, despite his unlined face and tall, muscular build, which aged him in the vicinity of his early forties at most, only the Breed male’s thick pattern of swirling, interlocking dermaglyphs tracking down his bared forearms gave any indication that Yakut was an elder member of the Breed. As a Gen One, he could be a thousand years old or more.
“Warrior,” Yakut said darkly, his stare unwavering, twin lasers locked on target. “I told you not to come. You and the rest of the Order are wasting your time.”
In his peripheral vision, Niko caught the exchanged looks of surprise that traveled between Yakut’s son and the rest of his guards. The female especially—Renata, she was called—seemed completely taken aback to hear that he was a warrior, one of the Order. Yet as quickly as the surprise registered in her gaze, it vanished, gone as though she had forced all emotion from her features. She was placid calm now, cold even, as she stood a few feet behind Sergei Yakut and watched, her weapon still in hand, her stance tentative and ready for his any command.
“We need your help,” Nikolai said to Yakut. “And based on what’s been going down near us in Boston and elsewhere within the Breed population, you’re going to need our help too. The danger is very real. It’s lethal. Your life is at risk, even now.”
“What would you know about that?” Yakut’s son scowled at Niko in accusation. “How the fuck can you know anything about that? We’ve told no one about the attack last week—”
“Alexei.” The sound of his name on his sire’s lips shut the younger Yakut up as if a hand had been clamped over his mouth. “You do not speak for me, boy. Make yourself useful,” he said, gesturing toward the vampire Nikolai had shot dead. “Take Urien up to the warehouse roof and leave him there for the sun. Then sweep this alleyway clean of evidence.”
Alexei glared for a second, as if the task were beneath him but he didn’t quite have the guts to say so. “You heard my father,” he snapped to the other guards standing around idle with him. “What are you all waiting for? Let’s get rid of this worthless pile of rubbish.”
When they started to move off at Alexei’s bidding, Yakut glanced toward the female. “Not you, Renata. You can drive me back to the house. I am finished here.”
The message to Niko was clear: He was uninvited, unwelcome to stay in Yakut’s domain. And, as of now, summarily dismissed.
Probably the smartest thing to do would be to check in with Lucan and the rest of the Order, tell them that he had given it his best shot with Sergei Yakut but came up empty, then leave Montreal before Yakut decided to hand him his balls on his way out. The short-tempered Gen One had done worse to others for far lesser sins.
Yeah, packing it in and heading out was definitely the wisest course of action at this point. Except Nikolai wasn’t accustomed to taking no for an answer, and the situation facing both the Order and the whole of the Breed—hell, humankind as well—was not going away anytime soon. It was growing more volatile, more disastrous with every passing second.
And then there was Alexei’s careless blurt about a recent attack…
“What happened here last week?” Nikolai asked, once it was just Yakut, Renata, and himself in the dark alley. He knew the answer but posed the question anyway. “Someone tried to assassinate you…just as I warned would happen, isn’t that right?”
The aged Breed male swung a glower on Niko, his shrewd eyes flinty. Niko held that challenging stare, seeing a long-lived, arrogant fool who believed himself beyond the reach of death, even though it had likely been knocking on his door only a few days ago.
“There was an attempt, yes.” Yakut’s lip curled in a mild sneer, one thick shoulder lifting in a shrug. “But I survived—just as I assured you I would. Go home, warrior. Fight the Order’s battles back in Boston. Leave me to look after my own.”
He jerked his chin at Renata, and the wordless command put her in motion. As her long legs carried her out of earshot up the alleyway, Yakut drawled, “My thanks for the warning. If this assassin is idiot enough to strike again, I will be ready for him.”
“He will strike again,” Niko replied with total certainty. “This thing is worse than we first suspected. Two more Gen Ones have been killed since you and I last spoke. That brings the count to five now—out of less than twenty of your generation still in existence. Five of the oldest, most powerful members of the Breed nation, all dead in the space of a month. Each one apparently targeted and taken out by expert means. Someone wants all of you dead, and he has a plan already in play to make it happen.”
Yakut seemed to consider that, but only for a moment. Without another word, he pivoted and began stalking away.
“There is more,” Niko added grimly. “Something I wasn’t able to tell you when we spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Something the Order discovered hidden in a mountain cave in the Czech Republic.”
As the elder vampire continued to ignore him, Niko exhaled a low curse.
“It was a hibernation chamber, a very old one. A crypt where one of the most powerful of our kind had been tucked away in secret for centuries. The chamber had been made to protect an Ancient.”
Finally Niko had his attention.
Yakut’s steps slowed, then stopped altogether. “The Ancients were all killed in the great war within the Breed,” he said, reciting the history that had until very recently been accepted by all the Breed as irrefutable fact.
Nikolai knew the story of the uprising as well as anyone else of his kind. Of the eight savage otherworlders who had fathered the first generation of the vampire race on Earth, none survived the battle with the small group of Gen One warriors who’d declared war against their own fathers for the protection of both Breed and humankind alike. Those courageous few warriors had been led by Lucan, who to this day retained his role as leader of what was to become the Order.
Yakut slowly turned to face Nikolai. “All of the Ancients have been dead for some seven hundred years. My own sire was put to the sword back then—and rightly so. If he and his alien brethren had been left unchecked, they would have destroyed all life on this planet in their insatiable Bloodlust.”
Niko nodded grimly. “But there was someone who disagreed with the edict that the Ancients should be destroyed: Dragos. The Order has uncovered proof that instead of taking out the creature who fathered him, Dragos instead helped to hide him. He made a sanctuary for the creature in a remote area of the Bohemian Mountains.”
“And the Order knows this to be true?”
“We found the chamber and saw the crypt for ourselves. Unfortunately, it was empty by the time we got there.”
Yakut grunted, considering. “And what about Dragos?”
“He is dead—killed in the old war—but his line lives on. So does his treachery. We believe it was Dragos’s son who located the chamber before we did and freed the Ancient from his sleep. We also suspect Dragos’s son is the one behind the recent assassinations among the nation’s Gen Ones.”
“To what gain?” Yakut asked, arms crossed over his chest.
“That’s what we intend to find out. We’ve got some good intel on him, but it’s not enough. He’s gone to ground, and it’s going to be harder than hell to flush him out. But we’ll get him. In the meantime, we can’t afford to let him make any progress with whatever plans he’s got in motion. That’s why the Order is reaching out to you and the rest of the Gen Ones. Anything you might hear, anything you may have seen—”
“There was a witness,” Yakut said, interrupting Niko with the abrupt admission. “A young girl, a member of my household. She was there. She saw the individual who attacked me last week. In fact, she startled the bastard enough that I was able to break away and escape.”
Nikolai’s head was spinning with this unexpected news. He doubted very much that a child could scare off a seasoned, skilled assassin, but he was interested enough to hear more. “I need to talk to this girl.”
Yakut nodded vaguely, lips pressed flat as he glanced up at the dark sky overhead. “It will be dawn in a few hours. You can wait out the daylight at my home. Ask your questions, do your business for the Order. Then, tomorrow night, you leave.”
As far as cooperation went, it wasn’t much. But it was more than he’d had even a few minutes ago from the cocky Gen One vampire.
“Fair enough,” Niko replied, as he fell in beside Sergei Yakut and walked with him to the waiting black sedan that idled at the curb.
CHAPTER
Four
Renata had no idea what the blond stranger might have said to persuade Sergei Yakut into inviting the outsider home to his private compound north of the city. In the two years since Renata had been introduced to life as a member of Yakut’s personal guard, no one outside the vampire’s small circle of servants and private security detail had ever been permitted on the secluded woodland grounds of the lodge.
Suspicious by nature and reclusive, cruel to the point of tyranny, Sergei Yakut’s world was one of scrutiny and mistrust. God help you if you crossed him in any way, for when the fist of his rage came crashing down, it came down like an anvil. Sergei Yakut had few friends and even fewer enemies; neither seemed to survive long in the chill of his shadow.
Renata had come to know the male she served well enough to sense that he was not exactly amenable to the notion of uninvited company, but the fact that he hadn’t killed this interloper—this warrior, as he’d referred to him back in the alleyway—seemed to indicate at least some small degree of respect. If not for the warrior himself, then for the group he belonged to, the Order.
As she swung the armored, custom Mercedes up to the entrance of the rough-timbered main house at the end of the long drive, Renata couldn’t resist flicking a glance in the rearview mirror to the two vampires seated in silence behind her.
Ice-blue eyes met her gaze in the glass. He didn’t blink away, not even as the seconds stretched beyond curiosity to that of bald challenge. He was pissed off, his ego no doubt still bruised by the fact that she had duped him in the alley and led him into a trap. Renata feigned polite ignorance as she broke the heavy hold of his stare and brought the car to a halt in front of the lodge.
One of the Breed males on guard at the entrance came down the wide plank steps to open the back door of the sedan. Behind him a few paces stood another guard, this one holding a pair of leashed Russian wolfhounds. Their bared teeth gnashing, the big watchdogs barked and growled like savages until the moment Sergei Yakut came out of the car. The animals were as well trained as the rest of the vampire’s household: one look from their master and they fell into an instant, submissive silence, massive heads held low as he and the warrior stalked into the house.
The guard standing near the car closed the open back door and shot a questioning glance at Renata through the tinted glass of the window.
Who the hell is that? was the obvious look on his face, but before he could motion for her to roll down the window so he could ask it, she put the sedan into gear and tapped the gas.
As she eased the car off the gravel drive and took it around to the garage in back of the lodge, the pain and tension she’d been feeling earlier began to creep back into her body. She was tired from the whole confrontation tonight, her limbs and mind equally wrung out. All she wanted was her bed and a long, hot soak in the tub. She really didn’t care which came first.
Renata had her own small quarters in the lodge, a luxury that Yakut did not afford any of the males who served him. Even Alexei bunked with the other guards in common quarters, sleeping on fur pallets spread out on the floor, like a garrison straight out of the Middle Ages. Renata’s room was only fractionally better than that: a narrow space big enough only for the twin bed, night-stand, and the trunk that held her meager clothing. A bathroom with a footed tub was located down the hall and shared with the only other female in Sergei Yakut’s charge.
The amenities were rustic at best, as was the rest of the hundred-year-old log compound, and the furnishings were sparse. Not to mention a bit revolting.
Although Yakut once told her he and his household had only been living there for the past decade, the old hunting lodge was filled with what seemed to be half a century’s worth of animal pelts, stuffed game, and mounted antlers. She assumed the taxidermy decor had belonged to the previous owner, but Yakut didn’t seem to mind sharing his home with all the morbidity. In fact, he seemed to relish the primitiveness of the place. Renata knew the Siberian vampire was older than he appeared—much, much older, as those of his kind often were. But it didn’t take a lot to imagine him clothed in skins and furs, armed with steel and iron, and wreaking bloody havoc on the defenseless villages of Russia’s remote northern regions. Time hadn’t smoothed away any of his edge, and Renata could testify firsthand to Yakut’s deadly nature.
That she could serve someone like that made her gut twist with regret. That she was pledged to protect him, to be loyal to him, both in thought and action, made her feel herself a stranger in her own skin. She had her reasons for staying—especially now—but there was still so much she wished she could change. So much still to regret…
She pushed aside the thoughts that were too dangerous to even let form in her mind. If Sergei Yakut were to sense the slightest weakness in her allegiance to him, there would be swift, severe repercussions.
Renata closed her door after she entered her room. She unfastened her weapon holsters and laid the guns and knives neatly on top of the old trunk at the foot of the bed. She ached all over, muscles and bones screaming from the earlier tax on her mind. Her neck was stiff, full of knots that made her wince as she tried to massage them away.
God, she needed some peace from the pain.
A gentle scratching noise started up on the other side of the wall. It grated in her ears like nails on a chalkboard, her head feeling as fragile as a glass bell.
“Rennie?” Mira’s girlish voice was soft, just a meek little whisper coming through the gaps in the logs. “Rennie … is that you?”
“Yes, mouse,” Renata answered. She moved up to the head of the bed and rested her cheek against the rounded timber of the wall. “It’s me. What are you doing still awake?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep.”
“More nightmares?”
“Uh-huh. I keep … seeing him. That bad man.”
Renata sighed, hearing the hesitation in the soft admission. She thought about the warm bath that was only a few minutes out of her reach. It was a welcome solitude she needed more than anything at times like this, when the aftermath of her psychic ability—the very thing that had spared her life two years ago on this plot of remote, wooded land—seemed determined to kick her ass.
“Rennie?” came Mira’s quiet voice again. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
She pictured the innocent face through the knotted pine. She didn’t have to see the child to know that Mira had probably been sitting there in the darkness all this time, waiting to hear Renata come back so she wouldn’t feel so alone. She’d been pretty shaken up the past few days—understandably, given what she’d witnessed.
Oh, screw the damn bath, Renata thought harshly. Swallowing down the pain that ran over her skin as she stood up, she reached over and pulled a Harry Potter novel out of her nightstand drawer.
“Hey mouse? I can’t sleep right now either. How about if I come over and read to you for a little while?”
Mira’s joyful shriek sounded muffled, as though she’d had to cover her mouth with her pillow to keep from alarming the entire household with her outburst.
Despite her pain and fatigue, Renata smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Sergei Yakut led Nikolai into a large, open room that might have been a banquet hall when the old hunting lodge was in its heyday. Now there were no rows of tables or benches, only a pair of big leather club chairs arranged in front of a towering stone fireplace at the far end of the room and a massive wooden desk crouched nearby.
The pelts of bears and wolves and other, more exotic predators lay spread out as rugs on the wood plank floor. Mounted to the stone above the fireplace was the head of a bull moose with a huge rack of broad bone-white antlers, his dark glass eyes fixed on some distant point across the wide expanse of the hall. His long-gone freedom? Niko thought wryly as he followed Yakut to the leather chairs at the hearth and sat down at the Gen One’s gestured invitation.
Nikolai idly glanced around, guessing the lodge to be at least a century old, and built for human residents originally, although the sparse windows were currently rigged with crucial UV-blocking shutters. It wasn’t the sort of place you might expect a vampire to settle in as his home. The Breed tended to prefer more modern, luxurious surroundings, living in family groups or communities called Darkhavens for the most part, many such places equipped with perimeter alarms and security fences.
As civilian Breed domiciles went, Yakut’s rustic camp, while remote enough for a good amount of privacy from curious humans, was anything but typical. Then again, neither was Sergei Yakut himself.
“How long have you been in Montreal?” Nikolai asked.
“Not long.” Yakut shrugged, his elbows braced on the arms of the chair he was slouched into. His posture may have been relaxed, but his eyes had not stopped studying Niko—assessing him—since the moment they sat down. “I find it to my benefit to keep on the move and not get too comfortable in any one place. Trouble has a way of catching up to you when you overstay your welcome.”
Nikolai considered the comment, wondering if Yakut spoke from personal experience or if it was meant as some kind of warning to his unexpected guest.
“Tell me about the attack on you,” he said, unfazed by either the flat stare or the obvious suspicious nature of the Gen One. “And I’ll need to talk to that witness too.”
“Of course.” Yakut motioned over one of his Breed guards. “Fetch the child.”
The tall male nodded in acknowledgment, then left to carry out the order. Yakut sat forward in his chair. “The attack occurred here in this room. I had been sitting in this very chair, reviewing a few of my accounts when the guard on watch heard a noise outside the lodge. He went to investigate, and returned to tell me that it was only raccoons that had gotten into one of the sheds out back.” Yakut shrugged. “This was hardly unusual, so I sent him out to drive the pests away. When several minutes passed and he did not come back, I knew there was trouble. By then, no doubt, the guard was already dead.”
Nikolai nodded. “And the intruder was already inside the lodge.”
“Yes, he was.”
“What about the girl—the witness?”
“She had taken her evening meal and was resting in here with me. She’d fallen asleep on the floor near the fire, but she awoke just in time to see that my assailant was Standing directly behind me. I hadn’t even heard the bastard move, he was so stealthy and quick.”
“He was Breed,” Niko suggested.
Yakut inclined his head in agreement. “No question, he was Breed. He was dressed like a thief, all in black, his head and face covered with a black nylon mask that left only his eyes visible, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was our kind. If I had to guess, I would say he might even have been Gen One himself based on his strength and speed. If not for the child opening her eyes and crying out a warning, I would have lost my head to him in that next instant. He brought a thin wire garrote down on me from behind the chair. Mira’s scream drew his attention away for a crucial second, and I was able to bring up my hand to block the wire from slicing across my throat. I twisted out of his range, but before I could leap on him myself or call in my guards, he escaped.”
‘Just like that, he turned tail and ran?” Nikolai asked.
‘Just like that,” Yakut replied, a slow smile teasing at the corner of his mouth. “One look at Mira, and the coward fled.”
Niko swore under his breath. “You were damn lucky,” he said, finding it hard to reconcile that the sight of a mere child could cause such a distraction for what had to be a highly trained, expert assassin. It just didn’t make sense.
Before he could point that out to Yakut, footsteps approached from the other end of the long room. Walking in ahead of the guard Yakut had dispatched was Renata and a delicate waif of a girl. Renata had shucked her weapons somewhere, but she strolled alongside the child protectively, her cool gaze wary as she brought Mira farther into the room.
Nikolai couldn’t help staring at the girl’s odd attire. The pink pajamas and bunny slippers were unexpected, but it was the short black veil that covered the top of her face that he found most jarring.
“Renata was reading me a story,” Mira supplied, her soft voice chiming with a bright innocence that seemed so out of place in Yakut’s crude domain.
“Is that so?” the Gen One asked, a slow reply that seemed directed more at Renata than the child. “Gome closer, Mira. There is someone who wants to meet you.”
The guard stepped back once Mira stood before Yakut, but Renata’s booted feet held steady at the girl’s side. At first Niko wondered if the child might be blind, but she moved without hesitation, walking the few remaining steps to where Yakut and Nikolai now stood.
The small head pivoted toward Nikolai without error. She definitely was sighted. “Hello,” she said to him, and gave a polite little nod.
“Hello,” Nikolai replied. “I heard what happened the other night. You must be very brave.”
She shrugged, but it was impossible to read her expression when just her small nose and mouth were visible beneath the hem of the head covering. Nikolai looked at the young girl—the impish, three-and-a-half-foot waif who had somehow driven away a Breed vampire on a mission to kill one of the most formidable members of their kind. It had to be a joke. Was Yakut jerking him around somehow? What could this child possibly have done to thwart the attack?
Nikolai looked to Yakut, ready to call him out for what had to be a line of pure bullshit. There was no way in hell the attack could have gone down the way he’d described.
“Remove your veil,” Yakut instructed the girl, as if he knew the line of Niko’s thinking.
Her small hands reached up to grasp the edge of the short black strip of gauze. She swept the veil back off her face but seemed careful to keep her eyes downcast. Renata stood very still beside the child, her expression placid even while her fingers curled into fists at her sides. She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting with an air of wary anticipation.
“Lift your eyes, Mira,” Yakut commanded her, his mouth curving into a smile. “Look at our guest, and show him what he wants to know.”
Slowly the fringe of dark brown lashes came up. The girl raised her chin, tipping her head up and meeting Niko’s gaze.
‘Jesus Christ,” he hissed, hardly aware that he was speaking at all as he got his first glimpse at Mira’s eyes.
They were extraordinary. The irises were so white they were clear, as liquid and fathomless as a pool of colorless water. Or, rather, a mirror, he amended, looking deeper into them because he couldn’t help it, drawn closer by the startling, unusual beauty of her gaze.
He didn’t know how long he stared—couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds at most—but now her pupils were getting smaller, shrinking down to tiny pinpricks of black within the endless circle of silvery white. The color shimmered, rippling as though a breeze had skated across the tranquil surface. Incredible. He’d never seen anything like it. He peered deeper, unable to resist the strange play of light in her eyes.
When it cleared, Nikolai saw himself reflected there.
He saw himself and someone else… a woman. They were naked, bodies pressed together, sheened with sweat. He was kissing her heatedly, burying his hands in the dark glossy strands of her hair. Pushing her down beneath him as he thrust deep inside her. He saw himself baring his fangs, lowering his head and placing his mouth to the tender curve of her neck.
Tasting the sweetness of her blood as he pierced her skin and vein and began to drink—
“Holy hell,” he ground out, tearing his gaze away from the startling, all-too-real reflection. His voice was rough, his tongue thick behind the sudden emergence of his fangs. His heart was racing, and farther down, his cock had gone stiff as stone. “What just happened?”
Everyone was staring at him except for Renata, who seemed more concerned with helping Mira replace her veil. She whispered something in the girl’s ear, soothing words, by the soft tone of them. Sergei Yakut’s low, rumbling chuckle was echoed by a few amused chortles from the other men.
“What did she just do to me?” Niko demanded, not the least bit entertained. “What the fuck was that?”
Yakut leaned back in his chair and grinned like a tsar making a public joke of one of his subjects. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Myself,” Nikolai blurted, still trying to make sense of it. The vision was so real. As if all of it were truly happening just then, not the mirage it had to be. God knew his body was convinced it was real.
“What else did you see?” Yakut asked blithely. “Tell me, please.”
Fuck that. Niko mutely shook his head. He’d be damned if he was going to lay the whole salacious thing out for everyone in the room. “I saw myself… some vision of myself, reflected in the girl’s eyes.”
“What you saw was a glimpse of your future,” Yakut informed him. He motioned for the girl to come to his side, where he wrapped his arm around her thin shoulders and pulled her close, like a prized possession. “One look into Mira’s eyes and you see a vision of events in your life that are destined to come.”
It didn’t take much to conjure the image back into his head. Oh, hell no, not much at all. That picture was as good as permanently burned into his memory and all of his senses. Nikolai willed his thrumming pulse to calm. Called his raging hard-on to heel.
“What did Mira show your attacker last week?” he asked, desperate to turn the attention away from himself now.
Yakut shrugged. “Only he can know. The girl has no knowledge of what her eyes reflect.”
Thank God for that. Niko hated to think of the education she might have just gotten otherwise.
“Whatever the bastard saw,” Yakut added, “it was enough to make him hesitate and give me a chance to escape the death he came to deliver.” The Gen One smirked. “The future can be startling, especially when you are not expecting it, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Nikolai murmured. “I suppose it can be.”
He’d just gotten a decent dose of that knowledge firsthand.
Because the woman who’d been wrapped around him, naked and writhing so passionately in his arms? It was none other than cold, beautiful Renata.
CHAPTER
Five
Those carnal, all-too-real images dogged Nikolai for the next couple of moonlit hours as he prowled the forested grounds of the lodge, looking for any evidence that might remain from the aborted attack on Sergei Yakut. He checked the perimeter of the main house but found nothing. Not even a single trace footprint in the loamy, muddy soil.
The trail, if the intruder had left one, was dead cold now. Still, it wasn’t difficult to guess how the assailant might have gotten close to his target. This deep in the woods, without security fences, cameras, or motion detectors to alert the household of trespassers on the property, Yakut’s attacker could have hidden out in the surrounding forest most of the night, waiting for the best chance to strike. Or he might have chosen a more brazen location, Nikolai thought, his gaze settling on a small barn that sat a few yards from the back of the lodge.
He strode over to it, figuring the outbuilding to be a recent addition to the property. The wood was dark, not from natural weathering like the rest of the place, but from a walnut stain that made it blend into its surroundings. There were no windows on any side of it, and the wide paneled door in front was reinforced with a Z of two-by-fours and outfitted with a large steel lock.
Through the oily stink of the varnished wood, Nikolai could have sworn he caught a vague whiff of copper.
Human blood?
He dragged in another breath, sifting the taste of it through his teeth, over the sensitive glands of his tongue. It was definitely blood, and definitely human. Not very much had been spilled on the other side of the door, and by the faint tickle it put in his nostrils, he judged it to be long dried and aging probably several months or more. He couldn’t be certain unless he had a look inside.
Curious now, he palmed the big lock and was about to yank it loose when the snap of a twig behind him drew his attention. As he turned to meet the noise, he reached for one of his guns—and cursed to remember that Yakut was still holding all of his weapons.
He looked up to find Alexei glaring at him from where he stood at the corner of the barn. Judging by the contempt sparking in his eyes, it appeared his bruised pride hadn’t yet recovered from their confrontation in the city. Not that Niko cared. He had little use for strutting dick-head civilians, especially those with entitlement issues and delicate egos.
“You got a key for this lock?” he asked, his hand still curved around the cold lump of reinforced steel. If he wanted to, being Breed, he could tear the thing loose with a flex of his wrist. Cleaner still, he could flex his mind and open the lock with a mental command. But it was more interesting to piss in Alexei’s direction for the time being. “You mind opening this door, or maybe you need to get permission from your papa first.”
Alexei grunted at the barb, arms folded over his chest. “Why should I open it for you? There’s nothing of interest in there. It’s just a storage barn. Empty besides.”
“Yeah?” Niko let the lock fall from his hand, the metal thumping heavily against the wood panels. “Smells like you’ve been storing humans in there. Bloody ones. The stench of hemoglobin just about knocked me over the closer I got.”
An exaggeration, but he wanted to see Alexei’s reaction.
The young vampire frowned and threw a cautious look at the barred door. He slowly shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. The only humans who ever stepped foot in this barn were the local carpenters who built it a few years ago.”
“Then you won’t mind if I have a look,” Nikolai prompted.
Alexei chuckled low under his breath. “What are you really doing here, warrior?”
“Looking to figure out who tried to kill your father. I want to know how the intruder might have gotten close enough to strike and where he might have fled afterward.”
“Pardon my surprise,” Alexei said, no apology in his tone, “but I find it hard to believe that one failed attack— even on a Breed elder like my father—is enough to bring out a member of the Order for a personal visit.”
“Your father was lucky. There’ve been five other Gen Ones within the population who weren’t so fortunate.”
Alexei’s smug look faded, replaced with a somber gravity. “There have been other attacks? Other killings?”
Nikolai gave a grim nod. “Two in Europe, the others in the States. Too many to be random, and too expert to be anything but the work of a professional. And it doesn’t seem to be a solo effort either. For the past weeks, once we learned of the first couple of assassinations, the Order has been contacting all of the known Gen Ones to warn them of what’s been going down. They need to understand the potential danger so they can take appropriate security measures. Your father didn’t tell you?”
Alexei’s scowl furrowed his dark brow. “He said nothing of this. Damn it, I would have guarded him personally.”
That Sergei Yakut hadn’t informed his son of Niko’s recent contact, or of the current rash of Gen One slayings, was telling. No matter how Alexei tried to posture himself as his father’s right arm, Yakut evidently held him at some distance when it came to trust. Not surprising, given Yakut’s suspicious nature. Evidently that suspicion extended to his own blood kin as well.
Alexei cursed. “He should have told me. I would have made certain he had proper protection in place at all times. Instead, the bastard who attacked him is still on the loose. How can we be sure he won’t come back to try again?”
“We can’t be sure of that. In fact, we’re better to go on the assumption that there will be another attack. My guess would be sooner than later.”
“You need to keep me informed,” Alexei said, his tone taking on that irritating edge of entitlement again. “I expect to be alerted immediately of anything you find, and anything you or the Order may know about these attacks. Anything at all. Understood?”
Nikolai let his answering smirk spread slowly over his face. “I’ll try to remember.”
“My father thinks he’s untouchable, you see. He has his hand-picked bodyguards, all of them trained by him, loyal to him. And he has the counsel of his private oracle too.”
Niko gave an acknowledging nod. “The child, Mira.”
“You’ve seen her?” Alexei’s gaze narrowed, though whether with mistrust or basic curiosity Nikolai couldn’t guess. “So,” Yakut’s son said, “he let you meet her, then. He let you look into her witchy eyes.”
“He did.”
When Niko’s jaw remained firm, probably rigid, Alexei grinned. His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Pleasant glimpse she gave you of your fate, was it, warrior?”
An instant replay of the heated vision ran through his mind like a brush fire, searing him from the inside. He shrugged with a cool he damn well didn’t feel. “I’ve seen worse things.”
Alexei laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. The little bitch’s talent is far from perfect. She can’t show you everything of your future, only brief flashes of what may come, based on the now. And she can’t help you put anything of what you see into context either. Personally I don’t find the brat nearly as amusing as my father seems to.” He grunted, lifted one shoulder along with the corner of his sneering mouth. “The same could be said of the other female he insists on keeping around despite my doubts.”
There was no question who he meant. “You’re not fond of Renata, I take it?”
“Fond of her,” Alexei muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s an arrogant one. Thinks herself above everyone else because she’s managed to impress my father a time or two with her mind skill. Since the night she arrived here, she’s been far too bold for her own good. You’d be hard-pressed to find a man among all those in my father’s employ who wouldn’t like to see her taken down a notch. Put the cold, uppity bitch in her rightful place, eh? Maybe you feel the same way, after what she did to you tonight in the city?”
Nikolai shrugged. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t irk him on some primal level that a female had laid him low in combat. As grating as it was to have been on the receiving end of her mental assault, Nikolai couldn’t deny some amount of awe. Obviously she was a Breedmate, since nature was averse to wasting powerful extrasensory gifts on basic Homo sapiens stock.
“I’ve never seen anything like her,” he admitted to Alexei. “Never even heard of a Breedmate with that level of ability. I can see why your father would sleep better knowing she was nearby.”
Alexei scoffed. “Don’t be too impressed with her, warrior. Renata’s skill has its merits, I’ll grant you. But she’s too weak to control it.”
“How so?”
“She can send the mental wave out, but the power bounces back at her, like an echo. Once the reverberation hits her, she’s utterly useless until it passes.”
Nikolai recalled the debilitating blast of mental energy that Renata had unleashed on him in the warehouse. He was Breed—his alien genes giving him the strength and resilience of easily ten human men—and he had been unable to bear the pain of the incredible sensory assault. For Renata to go through that same anguish every time she used her skill?
“Christ,” Niko said. “It must be pure torture for her.”
“Yes,” Alexei agreed, not bothering to conceal his light tone. “I’m quite sure it is.”
Nikolai didn’t miss the smile on the younger Yakut’s lean face. “You enjoy that she suffers?”
Alexei grunted. “I couldn’t care less. Renata is unsuitable for the role my father has given her. She’s ineffective as his bodyguard—a risk I fear might yet get him killed one day. If I were in his place, I wouldn’t hesitate to turn her out on her haughty ass.”
“But you’re not in your father’s place,” Niko reminded him, if only because Alexei seemed overly eager to imagine it.
The vampire stared at Niko in silence for a long, awkward time. Then he cleared his throat and spat on the ground. “Finish your search, warrior. If you find anything at all of interest, you will inform me at once.”
Nikolai merely stared back at Yakut’s son, wordlessly daring the civilian to command his promise. Alexei didn’t press it, just pivoted slowly on his heel and marched back in the direction of the lodge.
CHAPTER
Six
Renata quietly opened the door to Mira’s room and peered inside at the sleeping child who rested peacefully on the bed. Just a normal little girl in pink pajamas, her soft cheek lying against the thin pillow, breath puffing rhythmically out of her delicate cherub’s mouth. On the rustic little table next to the bed lay the short black veil that shielded Mira’s remarkable eyes at all times when she was awake.
“Sweet dreams, angel,” Renata whispered low under her breath, hopeful words.
She worried about Mira more and more lately. It wasn’t just the nightmares that had set in after the attack she’d witnessed but Mira’s overall health that concerned Renata the most. Even though the girl was strong, her mind quick and sharp, she wasn’t well.
Mira was rapidly losing her sight.
Each time she was made to exercise her gift of precognitive reflection, some of her own eyesight deteriorated. It had been fading steadily for months before Mira had confided in Renata about what was happening to her. She was afraid, as any child would be. Perhaps more so, because Mira was wise beyond her eight years of age. She understood that her value to Sergei Yakut would evaporate the moment the vampire deemed her of no more use to him. He would cast her out, perhaps even put her to death if it pleased him.
So on that night, Renata and Mira had made a pact: They would keep Mira’s condition a secret between them—take it to the grave, if need be. Renata had taken the promise one step further, vowing to Mira that she would protect her with her life. She swore no harm would ever come to her, not from Yakut or from anyone else, human or Breed. Mira would be safe from the pain and darkness of life in a way that Renata herself had never known.
That the girl had been trotted out to entertain Sergei Yakut’s uninvited guest tonight only added to Renata’s current irritated state. The worst of her psychic reverb had passed, but a headache still lingered at the edges of her senses. Her stomach hadn’t yet stopped pitching. Small waves of nausea lapped at her like a slowly receding tide.
Renata closed Mira’s door, shivering a little with the roll of another body tremor. The long bath she’d just come from had helped ease some of her discomfort, but even beneath her loose-fitting graphite-colored yoga pants and soft white cotton jersey, her skin still tingled, raw with the crackling electricity that swam underneath her skin.
Renata rubbed her palms over the sleeves of her shirt, trying to chase away some of the fiery sensation still traveling along her arms. Too wired for sleep, she stopped by her own room only long enough to retrieve a small cache of blades from her weapons trunk. Training always proved a welcome outlet for her restlessness. She relished the hours of physical punishment she inflicted on herself, glad for the rigorous training exercises that wore her out, toughened her up.
Since the terrible night she found herself plunged into Sergei Yakut’s dangerous world, Renata had honed every muscle in her body to its peak condition, worked slavishly to make sure that she was as sharp and lethal as the weapons she carried in the silk-and-velvet wrapper now clutched in her hand.
Survive.
That simple guiding thought had been her beacon from the time she was a child—even younger than Mira. And so alone. An orphan abandoned in the chapel of a Montreal convent, Renata had no past, no family, no future. She existed; no more than that.
And for Renata, it had been enough. It was enough, even now. Especially now, navigating the treacherous underworld of Sergei Yakut’s realm. There were enemies all around her in this place, both hidden and overt. Countless ways for her to misstep, to misspeak. Endless opportunities for her to displease the ruthless vampire who held her life in his hands and end up bleeding and dying. But never without a fight.
Her mantra from her early childhood days served her just as aptly here: Survive another day. Then another, and another.
There was no room for softness in that equation. No allowances for pity or shame or love. Especially not love, not in any form. Renata knew that her affection for Mira—the nurturing impulse that made her want to smooth the way for the child, to protect her like her own kin—was probably going to cost her dearly in the end.
Sergei Yakut had wasted little time exploiting that weakness in her; Renata had the scars to prove it.
But she was strong. She’d been dealt nothing in this life that she could not bear, physical or otherwise. She had survived it all. Sharp and strong, lethal when she had to be.
Renata stepped outside the lodge and strode through the darkness to one of the peripheral outbuildings in back. The hunter who’d originally built the woodland compound had evidently doted on his dogs. An old timber kennel stood behind the main residence, laid out like a stable, with a wide space cutting down the center and four gated pens lining each side. The open-beam roof overhead peaked some fifteen feet high.
Although small, it was an open, airy space. There was a larger, newer barn on the property that would allow for better movement, but Renata tended to avoid the other building.
One time inside that dark, dank place was plenty. If she had her way, she’d burn the damn thing down to cinders.
Renata flicked on the switch inside the kennel door and winced as the bare bulb overhead poured a wash of harsh yellow light into the space. She walked in, over the smooth, hard-packed earthen floor, past the dangling ends of two long, braided leather straps that were looped around the center rafter beam of the structure.
At the far end of the kennel interior stood a tall wooden post that used to be rigged with small iron hooks and loops for storing leashes and other gear. Renata had pried away the rigging months ago, and now the post functioned as a stationary target, dark wood scored with deep gashes, gouges, and nicks.
Renata placed her wrapped blades on a tight bale of straw that squatted nearby. She slipped out of her shoes, then padded barefoot to the center of the kennel and reached up to take the pair of long leather straps, one in each hand. She looped the leather around her wrists a couple of times, testing the slack. When it was comfortable, she flexed her arms and lifted herself up off the floor as smoothly as though she had wings.
Suspended, feeling weightless, temporarily transported, Renata began her warm-up with the straps. The leather creaked softly as she turned and shifted her body several feet off the ground. This was peace to her, the feel of her limbs burning, growing stronger and more agile with each controlled movement.
Renata let herself slide into a light meditation, eyes closed, all her senses trained inward, concentrating on her heartbeat and breathing, on the fluid concert of her muscles as she stretched from one long, taxing hold to another. It wasn’t until she had pivoted into an upside-down pose, her ankles now caught securely in the straps to hold her aloft, that she felt a stirring in the air around her. It was sudden and subtle, but unmistakable.
As unmistakable as the heat of an exhaled breath that now warmed her cheek.
Her eyes snapped open. Struggled to focus on the inverted surroundings and the intruder who stood under her. It was the Breed warrior—Nikolai.
“Shit!” she hissed, her inattention making her sway a bit from the straps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Easy now,” Nikolai said. He lifted his hand as if he meant to steady her. “Wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“You don’t.” Flat words, spoken coldly. With a liquid flex of her body, she moved herself out of his reach. “Do you mind? You’re interrupting my training.”
“Ah.” His dark blond brows quirked upward as his gaze followed the line of her body to where she still hung by her ankles. “What exactly is it you’re training for up there, Cirque du Soleil?”
She didn’t dignify the jab with a reply. Not that he waited for one. He pivoted away from her and walked over to the post at the far end of the kennel. He reached out, fingers tracing the deeper of the wood’s many scars. Then he found her blades and lifted the cloth that contained them. Metal clinked together softly within the folded square of ribbon-tied silk and velvet.
“Don’t touch those,” Renata said, freeing herself of the straps and swinging around to bring her feet onto the ground. She stalked forward. “I said, don’t touch them. They’re mine.”
He didn’t resist when she snatched the prized possession—the only things of value she could claim as her own—out of his hands. The spike in her emotions made her head spin a little, lingering aftereffects of the psychic reverberation that she’d hoped was past. She took a step backward. Had to work to steady her breath.
“You okay?”
She didn’t like the look of concern in his blue eyes, as if he could sense her weakness. As if he knew she wasn’t as strong as she wanted to—needed to—appear.
“I’m fine.” Renata brought the blades over to one of the kennel pens and unwrapped them. One by one, she carefully set each of the four hand-tooled daggers down on the wooden ledge in front of her. She forced a smug lightness into her voice. “Seems like I should be the one asking you that question, don’t you think? I dropped you pretty hard back there in the city.”
She heard his low grunt somewhere behind her, almost a scoff.
“We can never be too cautious when it comes to outsiders,” she said. “Especially now. I’m sure you understand.”
When she finally glanced over at him, she found him staring at her. “Sweetheart, the only reason you had the chance to drop me was because you played dirty. Making sure I’d notice you, pretending you had something to hide and knowing I’d follow you out of that club. Right into your little trap.”
Renata lifted her shoulder, unapologetic. “All’s fair in love and war.”
He gave her a slow smile that hinted at twin dimples in his lean cheeks. “War, is it?”
“It sure as hell isn’t love.”
“No,” he said, all serious now. “Never that.”
Well, at least they agreed on something.
“How long have you been working for Yakut?”
Renata shook her head as if unable to recall specifically, even though that night was etched in her mind as if it had been burned there. Blood-drenched. Horrific. The beginning of an end. “I don’t know,” she said lightly. “A couple of years, I guess. Why?”
‘Just wondering how a female—even a Breedmate with your powerful psychic ability—would end up in this line of work, particularly for a Gen One like him. It’s unusual, that’s all. Hell, it’s unheard of. So, tell me. How was it you hooked up with Sergei Yakut?”
Renata stared at this warrior—this stranger, dangerous and cunning, suddenly intruding on her world. She wasn’t sure how to answer. She certainly wasn’t about to give him the truth. “If you have questions, maybe you should ask him.”
“Yeah,” he said, studying her too closely now. “Maybe I’ll do that. What about the kid—Mira? Has she been here as long as you?”
“Not as long, no. Just six months.” Renata tried to sound casual, but a fierce protective instinct rose in her at the mention of Mira’s name on this Breed male’s lips. “She’s been through a lot in that short time. Things no child should have to witness.”
“Like the attack on Yakut last week?”
And other, darker, things, Renata acknowledged inwardly. “Mira has nightmares just about every night now. She hardly sleeps more than a couple hours at a time.”
He nodded in sober acknowledgment. “This is no damn place for a kid. Some might say it’s no place for a female either.”
“Is that what you would say, warrior?”
His answering chuckle neither confirmed nor denied it.
Renata watched him, questions of her own bubbling into her mind. One in particular. “What did you see in Mira’s eyes earlier tonight?”
He grunted something low under his breath. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to know.”
“I’m asking, aren’t I? What did she show you?”
“Forget it.” Holding her gaze, he raked a hand through the golden strands of his hair, then exhaled a ripe curse and looked away from her. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The girl definitely got it wrong.”
“Mira is never wrong. She hasn’t been wrong once, not in all the time I’ve known her.”
“Is that so?” His penetrating blue stare swung back to her, both hot and cold as it traveled the length of her body in a slow, assessing glance. “Alexei tells me her skill is imperfect—”
“Lex.” Renata scoffed. “Do yourself a favor and don’t put your faith in anything Lex tells you. He says and does nothing without an ulterior motive.”
“Thanks for the tip.” He leaned back against the blade-scarred post. “So, then, it’s not true, what he said—that Mira’s eyes only reflect events that could happen in the future, based on the now?”
“Lex may have his own personal reasons for wishing it wasn’t so, but Mira’s never wrong. Whatever she showed you tonight, it’s fated to be.”
“Fated,” he said, sounding amused by that. “Well, shit. Then I guess we’re doomed.”
He looked pointedly at her as he said it, all but daring her to ask if he deliberately included her in that observation. Since he seemed to find the idea so damned entertaining, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of asking him to explain why.
Renata picked up one of her blades and tested the weight of it in her open palm. The cold steel felt good against her skin, solid and familiar. Her fingers itched to be working. Her muscles were limber from the warm-up, ready to be pushed with an hour or two of hard training.
She pivoted around with the blade in hand and motioned to the post Nikolai was leaning up against. “Do you mind? I wouldn’t want to misjudge my mark and accidentally hit you instead.”
He glanced at the post and shrugged. “Wouldn’t you rather make it interesting, spar with a real opponent—one that can strike back? Or maybe you operate best with the odds stacked unevenly in your favor.”
She knew he was baiting her, but the glint in his eye was playful, teasing. Was he actually flirting with her? His easy nature made her hackles raise with wariness. She ran her thumb along the edge of the blade as she stared at him, unsure what to make of him now. “I prefer to work alone.”
“Okay.” He inclined his head but took only a fractional step out of the way. Challenging her with a look. “Suit yourself.”
Renata frowned. “If you’re not going to move, how can you be sure I won’t aim for you?”
He grinned, full of cocky amusement, his thick arms crossed over his chest. “Aim all you want. You’ll never hit me.”
She let the blade fly without the slightest warning.
Sharp steel bit into the wooden post with a solid crack, striking home exactly where she’d sent it. But Nikolai was gone. Just like that, vanished from her line of sight completely.
Shit.
He was Breed, far faster than any human and as agile as a jungle predator. She was no match for him with weapons or physical strength; she knew that even before she sent the dagger airborne. But she’d hoped to at least nick the cocky son of a bitch for goading her.
Her own reflexes honed to precision, Renata threw her arm out and reached for another one of her waiting blades. But just as her fingers closed around the tooled grip, she felt the air stir behind her, heat sifting through the swaying chin-length strands of her hair.
Razor-sharp metal came up under her jaw. A wall of hard muscle crowded her spine.
“You missed me.”
She swallowed carefully around the light press of the blade beneath her chin. As smoothly as she could manage, she relaxed her arms at her sides. Then brought the hand with the dagger in it from behind her to rest meaningfully between his parted thighs. “Looks like I found you.”
Simply because she could, Renata hit him with a small jolt of her mind’s power.
“Fuck,” he growled, and in the instant his hold on her eased up, she slipped out of his reach and whirled to face him. She expected anger from him, feared it a little, but he only lifted his head and gave her a small shrug. “No worries, sweetheart. I’ll just have to toy with you until the reverb kicks in and takes you down.”
When she stared at him, confused and stricken that he could know about the flaw in her ability, he said, “Lex clued me in to a few things about you too. He told me what happens to you every time you fire off one of those psychic missiles. Powerful stuff. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste it just because you feel you need to prove a point.”
“Screw Lex,” Renata muttered. “And screw you too. I don’t need your advice, and I sure as hell don’t need either of you talking shit about me behind my back. This conversation is over.”
Angry now, she recoiled her arm and released the dagger in his direction, knowing he could easily step out of its path just like before. Only this time he didn’t move. With a lightning-quick snap of his free hand, he reached out and caught the sailing blade in midair. His smug grin totally set her off.
Renata snatched the last dagger from its resting spot on the kennel ledge and let it fly at him. Like the other before it, this one too was plucked from the air and now caught in the Breed warrior’s nimble hands.
He watched her, unblinking, and with a masculine heat that should have left her cold, but didn’t. “Now what will we do for fun, Renata?”
She glared at him. “Entertain yourself. I’m out of here.”
She turned, ready to stalk out of the kennel. No sooner had she taken two steps than she heard a whooshing sound on either side of her head—so close it made a few errant strands of her hair blow forward into her face.
Then, ahead of her, a blur of flying, polished steel blasting toward the far wall.
Thunk-thunk.
The two daggers that had sailed past her head with unerring aim were now buried into the old wood halfway to their hilts.
Renata spun around, furious. “You assho—”
He was right on top of her, his massive body forcing her backward, blue eyes flashing with something deeper than amusement or basic male arrogance. Renata retreated a pace, only far enough that she could brace her weight on one heel. She rocked back and pivoted, her other leg coming up in a roundhouse kick.
Fingers as unyielding as iron bands locked down around her ankle and twisted.
Renata went down onto the kennel floor, flat on her back. He followed her there, spreading himself over her and trapping her beneath him while she fought with flailing fists and pumping legs. It took him all of a minute to subdue her.
Renata panted from the exertion, chest heaving, pulse racing. “Now who’s the one with something to prove, warrior? You win. Happy now?”
He stared down at her in an odd sort of silence, neither gloating nor glowering. His gaze was steady and calm, too intimate. She could feel his heart hammering against her sternum. His thighs straddled hers, and he’d caught both her hands above her head in one of his. He held her firmly, his fingers trapping coiled fists in a loose, incredibly warm grasp. His gaze strayed up to their locked hands, fiery light crackling in his irises as he found the little crimson teardrop-and-crescent moon birthmark that rode on the inside of her right wrist. His thumb stroked over that very spot, a mesmerizing caress that sent heat coursing through her veins.
“You still wanna know what I saw in Mira’s eyes?”
Renata ignored the question, certain it was the last thing she needed to know right now. She struggled hard underneath the heavy muscular slab of his body weight, but he held her down with damn little effort. Bastard. “Get off me.”
“Ask me again, Renata. What did I see?”
“I said, get off me,” she snarled, feeling panic rise within her chest. She took a calming breath, knowing she had to keep her head. She had to get the situation under control, and fast. The last thing she needed was Sergei Yakut coming out and finding her pinned and powerless beneath this other male. “Let me up now.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing, goddamn you!”
She made the mistake of lifting her gaze to his. Amber heat sparked inside the blue of his eyes, flame devouring ice. His pupils were narrowing swiftly, and behind the peeled-back grimace of his lips, she saw the sharp points of his emerging fangs.
If he was angry now, that was only part of the cause of his physical transformation; where his pelvis bore down on hers she felt the hard ridge of his groin, the very obvious length of his cock pressing deliberately between her legs.
She shifted, trying to escape that hot, erotic grind of their bodies, but it only wedged him tighter against her. Renata’s racing pulse jumped into a more urgent tempo, and an unwanted warmth began to bloom in her core.
Oh, God. Not good. This was so not good.
“Please,” she moaned, hating herself for the weak quaver of the word. Hating him too.
She wanted to close her eyes, refuse to see his searing, hungry gaze or his mouth so near her own. She wanted to refuse to feel everything illicit that he was stirring in her— the danger of this unexpected, deadly desire. But her eyes stayed rooted on his, unable to look away, her body’s response to him stronger than even her iron will.
“Ask me what the child showed me tonight in her eyes,” he demanded, his voice as low as a purr. His lips were so close to hers, the soft skin brushed against her mouth as he spoke. “Ask it, Renata. Or maybe you’d rather see for yourself.”
The kiss went through her blood like fire.
Lips pressing together hotly warm breath rushing, mingling. His tongue tracing the seam of her mouth, thrusting inside on her wordless gasp of pleasure. She felt his fingers caressing her cheek, sliding into the hair at her temple, then around to her sensitive nape.
He lifted her to him, deeper into the kiss that was melting her, breaking down all her resistance.
No.
Oh, God. No, no, no.
Can’t do this. Cannot feel this.
Renata tore herself away from the erotic torture of his mouth, turning her head aside. She was shaking, emotions spiked to a dangerous level. She risked so much here, with him now. Too much.
Mother Mary, but she had to extinguish this flame he’d lit within her. It was molten, deadly so. She had to snuff it out fast.
Warm fingers touched her chin, guided her gaze back to the source of her distress. “Are you all right?”
She extracted her hands from his loose, one-fisted grasp above her head and shoved at him, incapable of speech.
He moved off at once. He took her hand and helped her up to her feet, assistance she didn’t want but was too stricken to refuse. She stood there, unable to look at him, trying to collect herself.
Praying like hell she hadn’t just signed her own death warrant.
“Renata?”
When she finally found her voice, it leaked out of her, quiet and cold with desperation. “Gome near me again,” she said, “and I swear I will kill you.”
CHAPTER
Seven
Alexei had been kept waiting more than ten minutes outside his father’s private chambers, his request for an audience given no more consideration than any one of Yakut’s other servant guards. The lack of respect—the flagrant disregard—no longer stung Lex as it had at one time. He’d moved past that useless bitterness ages ago, in favor of more productive things.
Oh, in the deepest pit of Lex’s belly he still burned to know that his father—his only living kin—could think so little of him, but the heat of constant, blatant rejection had at some point become less painful. It was simply how things were. And Lex was stronger for it, in fact. He was his father’s equal in ways the hard old bastard could never imagine, let alone stoop to acknowledge.
But Lex knew his own capabilities. He knew his own strengths. He knew without any doubt that he could be so much more than what he was now, and he yearned for the opportunity to prove it. To himself and, yes, to the son of a bitch who fathered him as well.
The snick of the metal latch as the door finally opened brought Lex’s pacing feet to a halt. “About fucking time,” he snarled at the guard who stepped aside to let him enter.
The room was dim, lit only by the glow of the logs that burned in the massive stone fireplace on the opposite wall. The lodge was wired for electricity, but it was seldom used—no real need for lights when Sergei Yakut and the rest of the Breed had preternaturally acute vision, especially in the dark.
The Breed’s other senses were also keenly sharp, but Lex suspected that even a human would be hard-pressed to miss the combined odors of blood and sex that mingled with the tang of woodsmoke.
“My apologies for the interruption,” Lex murmured as his father came out of an adjacent room.
Yakut was naked, his cock still partially erect, its ruddy length bobbing obscenely with his each swaggering stride. Revolted by the sight, Lex blinked, started to look away. He quickly thought better of it, refusing to give in to a weak impulse that was sure to be counted against him. Instead he watched his father enter the room, the old vampire’s eyes glowing like amber coals set deep into his skull, pupils reduced to narrow vertical slits at their center. His fangs were huge in his mouth, points fully extended and sharp as blades.
A sheen of sweat coated Yakut’s body, every inch of him livid with color from the pulsing hues of his dermaglyphs, the unique Breed skin markings that spread from the Gen One’s throat to his ankles. Fresh blood—unmistakably human, yet weak-scented enough to indicate a Minion source—smeared across his torso and flanks.
Lex wasn’t surprised by the evidence of his father’s recent activity nor by the fact that the trio of muffled voices in the other room were those of his current stock of human mind slaves. Creating and keeping Minions, something only the most powerful, purest bloodlines of the race were capable of doing, had long been an illegal practice among polite Breed society. However, that was among the least of Sergei Yakut’s offenses. He made his own rules, dispensed his own justice, and here, in this remote place, he made it clear to all that he was king. Even Lex could appreciate that kind of freedom and power. Hell, he could practically taste it.
Yakut aimed a dismissive glance at him from across the wide space of the room. “I look at you, and I see the dead standing before me.”
Lex frowned. “Sir?”
“If not for the warrior’s restraint and my intervention tonight, you would be lying beside Urien on that warehouse roof back in the city both of your corpses awaiting sunrise.” Contempt edged every syllable. Yakut picked up an iron tool from hearthside and stabbed at the logs on the grate. “I spared your life tonight, Alexei. What more do you expect I owe you this evening?”
Lex bristled at the reminder of his earlier humiliation, but he knew anger wouldn’t serve him well, particularly not when he was facing his father. He gave a deferential bow of his head, finding it a damned hard struggle to keep the edge out of his voice. “I am your faithful servant, Father. You owe me nothing whatsoever. And I ask nothing of you but the honor of your continued trust and confidence in me.”
Yakut grunted. “Spoken more like a politician than a soldier. I have no need for politicians in my ranks, Alexei.”
“I am a soldier,” Lex replied quickly, raising his head and watching as his father continued to jab the iron poker into the fire. The logs broke apart, sparks shooting upward, crackling in the long, deadly silence that fell over the room. “I am a soldier,” Lex stated again. “I want to serve you as best I can, Father.”
A scoff now, but Yakut swiveled his shaggy head to regard Lex from over his shoulder. “You give me words, boy. I put neither trust nor confidence in words. Lately I can’t see that you’ve offered me anything more.”
“How do you expect me to be effective if you don’t keep me better informed?” When those amber-hued eyes with their slivered pupils narrowed sharply on him, Lex hurried to add “I ran into the warrior on the grounds. He told me about the recent Gen One killings. He said the Order had contacted you personally to warn you of the potential danger. I should have been made aware of that, Father. As the captain of your guard, I deserve to be informed—”
“You deserve?” The question hissed from between Yakut’s lips. “Please, Alexei… tell me just what it is you feel that you deserve.”
Lex remained silent.
“Nothing to add, son?” Yakut cocked his head at an exaggerated angle, his mouth pulled into a tight sneer. “A similar charge was hurled at me some years ago from the lips of a stupid female who thought she could appeal to my sense of obligation. My mercy, perhaps.” He chuckled, turning his attention back to the fire to stab again at the incinerating logs. “No doubt you recall what that got her.”
“I recall,” Lex answered carefully, surprised by the dry catch in his throat as he spoke.
Memories swirled out of the undulating flames in the fireplace.
Northern Russia, the dead of winter. Lex was a boy, barely ten years old, but the man of his meager household for as long as he could remember. His mother was all he had. The only one who knew him for what he truly was, and loved him regardless.
He’d worried the night she told him she was taking him to meet his father for the first time. She said Lex had been a secret she’d been keeping—her little treasure. But the winter had been hard, and they were poor. The country was in turmoil, unsafe for a woman raising a child like Lex on her own. They needed shelter, someone to protect them. She prayed Lex’s father would provide for them. She promised that he would open his arms to them in welcome once he met his son.
Sergei Yakut had welcomed them with cold fury and a terrible, unthinkable ultimatum.
Lex remembered his mother’s pleas for Yakut to take them in… completely ignored. He remembered the proud, beautiful woman getting down on her knees before Yakut, begging that if he would not care for them both that he look to Alexei alone instead.
The words rang in Lex’s ears, even now: He is your son! Isn’t he worth anything to you? Doesn’t he deserve something more?
How quickly the scene had spun out of control.
How easy it was for Sergei Yakut to draw his sword and slice that blade cleanly through the neck of Lex’s defenseless mother.
How brutal his words, that he had room only for soldiers in his domain, and that Lex had a choice to make in that moment: serve his mother’s killer, or die along with her.
How weak Lex’s answer had been, hiccuped through his sobs.
I will serve you, he’d said, and felt a bit of his soul desert him as he stared down in horror at his mother’s broken, bleeding body. I will serve you, Father.
How cold the silence that followed.
As cold as a grave.
“I am your servant,” Lex said aloud now, bowing his head more from the weight of old memories than out of deference to the tyrant who sired him. “My allegiance has always been to you, Father. I serve at your pleasure only.”
A sudden heat, so intense it felt like open flame, pressed to the underside of Lex’s chin. Startled, he lifted his head, flinching away from the pain with a hissed cry. He saw smoke curl up in front of his eyes, smelled the sweet, sickly stink of seared flesh—his own.
Sergei Yakut stood before him, holding the long iron poker in his hand. The glowing tip of the metal rod smoldered, red-hot except for the spot of ashy white skin that clung to it from where it had torn away from Lex’s face.
Yakut grinned, baring the points of his fangs. “Yes, Alexei, you serve at my pleasure only. Remember that. Just because my blood happens to run in your veins doesn’t mean I am opposed to spilling it.”
“Of course not,” Lex murmured, jaw clenched for the blistering agony of his burns. Hatred seethed in him for the insult he could only swallow and for his own impotence when it came to the Breed male daring him with his glower to make a move against him now.
Yakut backed off at last. He dragged a brown linen tunic from off a chair and shrugged into it. His eyes were still lit with blood hunger and lust. He let his tongue skate across his teeth and fangs. “As you are so eager to serve me, go and fetch Renata. I have need of her now.”
Lex gritted his teeth so hard they should have shattered in his mouth. Wordlessly he walked out of the room with his spine held rigid, his own eyes flashing with the amber light of his outrage. He didn’t miss the confused look of the guard on post at the door, the uneasy drift of the other vampire’s eyes as he took in the odor of scorched flesh and the likely heat of Lex’s roiling fury.
His burn would heal—in fact, it already was, his accelerated Breed metabolism mending the seared skin as Lex’s feet carried him into the main area of the lodge. Renata was just coming in from outside. She saw Lex and paused, turning around as if she meant to avoid him. Not fucking likely.
“He wants you,” Lex barked from across the lodge, not caring how many other guards heard him. All of them knew she was Yakut’s whore, so there was no reason to pretend otherwise. “He told me to send you in. He’s waiting for you to service him.”
Gold jade-green eyes leveled on him. “I’ve been training outdoors. I need to wash off the dirt and sweat.”
“He said now, Renata.” A clipped command, one he knew would be obeyed. There was more than a little satisfaction in that small, rare triumph.
“Very well.” She shrugged, padded over on bare feet.
Her bland expression as she neared said she didn’t care what anyone thought of her, least of all Lex, and that lack of suitable humiliation only made him want to degrade her further. He sniffed in her direction, more for effect than anything else. “He won’t mind your filth. Everyone knows the best whores are the dirty ones.”
Renata didn’t so much as blink at the vulgar remark. She could cut him down with a blast of her mental power if she chose to—in fact, Lex almost hoped she would, if just to prove that he had wounded her. But the cool flick of her gaze told him she didn’t feel he was worth the effort.
She strode past him with a dignity Lex couldn’t even begin to fathom. He watched her—all of the guards in the immediate area watched her—as she walked toward Sergei Yakut’s chambers as calmly as a noble queen on her way to the gallows.
It didn’t take much for Lex to imagine a day when he might be the one in control of all who served this household, including haughty Renata. Of course, the bitch wouldn’t be so haughty if her mind, will, and body belonged entirely to him. A Minion to serve his every base whim… and those of the other males at his command.
Yes, Lex mused darkly, it would be damned good indeed to be king.
CHAPTER
Eight
Nikolai pulled one of Renata’s daggers free from the thick wooden post where she’d thrown it. He had to give her credit; her aim was dead-on. If he’d been human, not Breed, cursed with a human’s sluggish reflexes, Renata’s strike would have surely skewered him.
He chuckled at that as he placed the blade on its elegant wrapper with the other three of the set. They were beautiful weapons, sleek and perfectly balanced, obviously handcrafted. Niko let his gaze stray over the tooling on the carved sterling silver hilts. The pattern appeared to be a flourish of vines and flowers, but as he looked closer he realized that each of the four blades also bore a single word engraved lovingly within its ornate design: Faith. Courage. Honor. Sacrifice.
A warrior’s creed? he wondered. Or were they the tenets of Renata’s personal discipline instead?
Nikolai thought about the kiss they’d shared. Well, to say they had shared it was a stretch, considering how he’d descended on her mouth with all the finesse of a freight train. He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Yeah, and just who was he trying to kid? He couldn’t have stopped himself from doing it if he’d tried. Not that it was any excuse. And not that Renata had given him any chance to fumble through excuses or apologies.
Niko could still see the horror in her eyes, the unexpected yet obvious revulsion for what he had done. He could still feel the sincerity of the threat she delivered just before she hightailed it out of the building.
The dented part of his ego tried to soothe him with the possibility that maybe she really did despise males in general. Or that maybe she was just as cold as Lex seemed to think, a sexless, frigid soldier who just happened to have the face of an angel and a body that called to mind all manner of sins. Too many sins, each more tempting than the last.
Nikolai had an easy charm when it came to women; not a total boast, but a conclusion he’d reached based on years of experience. When it came to females, he enjoyed easy, uncomplicated conquests—the more temporary the better. Chases and struggles were amusing, but best saved for true combat, in bloody battles with Rogue vampires and other enemies of the Order. Those were the challenges he relished most.
So why was he fighting such a wicked urge to go after Renata now and see if he couldn’t thaw some of the ice that encased her?
Because he was an idiot, that’s why. An idiot with a raging hard-on and an apparent death wish.
Time to get his eye back on the damned ball. It didn’t matter what his body was telling him—no more than it mattered what he saw in Mira’s gaze. He had a job to do, a mission for the Order, and that was the only reason he was here.
Niko carefully wrapped Renata’s daggers in their silk-and-velvet case and placed the small bundle on the bale of straw to await her return for them and her discarded shoes.
He left the kennel outbuilding and headed into the darkness to pick up his search of the lodge grounds. A crescent moon hung high in the night sky, veiled by a smattering of thin, coal-gray clouds. The midnight breeze was warm, sifting gently through the spiny firs and tall oaks of the surrounding woods. Scents mingled in that humid summer air: the tang of pine pitch, the musty stamp of shaded soil and moss, the mineral crispness of fresh, rolling water from a stream that evidently cut through the property not far from where Niko stood.
Nothing unexpected. Nothing out of place.
Until…
Nikolai lifted his chin and cocked his head slightly to the west. Something very unexpected drifted across his senses. Something that could not, should not, belong here.
It was death he smelled now.
Subtle, old… but certain.
He jogged in the direction his nose led him. Deeper into the forest. Some hundred yards away from the lodge, the thicket dipped sharply. Niko slowed as he reached the place where his nostrils began to burn with the stench of aging decay. At his feet, the leaf-strewn, vinetangled ground dropped away into a steep ravine.
Nikolai glanced down into the cleft, sickened even before his eyes settled on the carnage.
“Holy hell,” he muttered, low under his breath.
A pit of death lay at the bottom of the ravine. Human skeletal remains. Dozens of bodies, unburied, forgotten, simply dumped one on top of another like rubbish. So many, it would take time to count them all. Adults. Children. A slaughter that showed no discrimination or mercy in its victims. A slaughter that might have taken years to accomplish.
The pile of bones glowed white under the scant moonlight, legs and arms tangled together wherever the dead had fallen, skulls staring up at him, mouths agape in ghoulish, silent screams.
Nikolai had seen enough. He stepped back from the edge of the ravine and hissed another curse into the darkness. “What the fuck has been going on out here?”
In his gut, he knew.
Jesus Christ, there wasn’t much room for doubt.
Blood club.
Fury and disgust rolled through him in a black wave. He had the instant, overwhelming urge to rip the limbs from every vampire involved in the outlawed, wholesale killings of these people. Not that he had that right, even as a warrior member of the Order. He and his brethren didn’t have a lot of friends among the Breed’s governing branches, least of all the Enforcement Agency, which acted as both police and policymakers for the general vampire populations. They considered the Order and the warriors who served it to be on the far outer fringe of civilized society. Vigilantes and militants. Wild dogs just begging for an excuse to be put down.
Nikolai knew he was out of bounds on this one, but that didn’t make the itch to dispense his own brand of justice any less tempting.
Even though he seethed with outrage, Niko willed himself to calm. His fury wouldn’t help any of the lives that were scattered below. Too late for them. Nothing to be done, except show them some bit of respect—something they’d been denied even after death.
Solemn now, if only for a few needed moments, Nikolai knelt down at the sharp drop of the ravine. He spread his arms wide, calling upon a bright power within him, a Breed talent that was uniquely his and, in his line of work particularly, of little use to him. He felt that power kindle in his core as he summoned it. The power grew in force and in light, spreading through his shoulders and down into his arms, then into his hands, twin orbs that glowed beneath the skin at the centers of his palms.
Nikolai touched his fingers to the earth at either side of him.
Vines and bramble rustled around him in response, green tendrils and small forest wildflowers waking up at his beckoning. All of it growing at accelerated speed. Niko sent the burgeoning shoots into the ravine, then stood to watch as the dead were soon draped by a blanket of soft new leaves and blossoms.
As a burial rite, it wasn’t much, but it was all he had to offer the souls who’d been left mere to rot in the open.
“Rest in peace,” he murmured.
When the last bone was covered over, he headed back toward the lodge at a hard clip. The storage barn where he’d smelled blood earlier now drew his eye.
Just to confirm his suspicions, Niko stalked over and willed the lock loose. He pushed open the door, looked inside. The barn was empty, just as Lex had told him. But then again, the steel cages built inside weren’t constructed for any kind of permanent storage. They were tall pens, locked holding cells designed for one purpose—human prisoners of the temporary sort.
Live game to be released for illegal sport here in the remote woods of Sergei Yakut’s domain.
With a growl, Nikolai left the barn and stalked into the main lodge.
“Where is he?” he demanded of the armed guard who leapt to attention the second he flew through the door. “Where the fuck is he? Tell me now!”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Not when two other guards, both posted outside a closed door off the great hall, took on a sudden battle stance. Behind them, Yakut’s private quarters, obviously.
Nikolai stormed over and shoved one of the steakheads out of his way. The other brought a rifle around and started to level it on him. Niko smashed the weapon into the guard’s face, then tossed the stunned vampire into the nearest wall.
He kicked in the door, splintering old wood jambs and breaking oiled iron hardware clean off their fixtures. Nikolai strode through the showering debris, ignoring the shouts of Yakut’s men. He found the Gen One half dressed on a leather sofa, sprawled possessively over the bared throat of a dark-haired female who was caged within the vampire’s arms.
At the disruption, Yakut lifted his head from his feeding and looked up. So did his blood Host…
Renata.
No fucking way.
She was blood-bonded? Could she possibly be a Breedmate to this monster?
All of the accusations Nikolai was prepared to hurl at Sergei Yakut died a sudden death in his throat. He stared, his already roiling Breed senses ratcheting tighter at the sight of the female’s blood on Yakut’s lips and dripping from his huge fangs. The scent of it carried across the room, slamming hard into Niko’s brain. He wouldn’t have expected such an odd contrast to her chilly demeanor, but her blood scent was a warm, heady mix of sandalwood and fresh spring rain. Soft, feminine. Arousing.
Hunger coiled in Nikolai’s gut, a visceral reaction that he had to fight damn hard to hold back. He told himself it was simply his Breed nature rearing up. There were few among his kind that could resist the siren’s call of an open vein, but when his eyes locked on to Renata’s unblinking gaze across the distance, a new heat flared to life inside him. Even stronger than the primal thirst to feed.
He wanted her.
Even while she was lying beneath another male, allowing that male to drink from her, Nikolai hungered for her with a ferocity that staggered him. Bound by blood to another or not, Renata made Niko burn to have her.
Which, by even his own flexible code of honor, lowered him to something close to Yakut’s despicable level.
Niko had to mentally shake himself loose of the disturbing realization, yanking his focus back to the trouble at hand.
“You’ve got a serious problem,” he told the Gen One vampire, hardly able to contain his contempt. “Actually I’m guessing you’ve got about three dozen of them, rotting out there in your woods.”
Yakut said nothing, but the glow of his transformed, amber gaze darkened to one of defiance. A low growl curled out of him before he turned his head back to his interrupted meal. Yakut’s tongue slid from between his lips to lick at the punctures he’d put in Renata’s neck, sealing the wounds closed.
Only then, as Yakut’s tongue swept her skin, did she look away from Niko. He thought he saw something quiet, something resigned, pass across her face in the seconds before Yakut stood up and released her. Once free, Renata moved to the corner of the room, tugging her clingy shirt back to some semblance of order. She was still dressed in her clothes from before, still barefoot as she had been outside.
She must have come straight here after what happened between Niko and her.
Had she run to Yakut for protection? Or for simple comfort?
Jesus.
Niko felt like even more of an ass when he thought about kissing her the way he had. If she was blood-bonded to Sergei Yakut, that bond was sacred, intimate… exclusive. No wonder she’d reacted as she had. Nikolai kissing her would have been insult and degradation both. But he wasn’t there to apologize now—not to Renata or her apparent mate.
Nikolai turned a hard look on the vampire. “How long have you been hunting humans, Yakut?”
The Gen One grunted, smiling.
“I found the holding pens in the barn. I found the bodies. Men, women… children.” Nikolai hissed a curse, unable to contain his disgust. “You’ve been running a god-damnblood club out here. From the looks of it, I’d say you’ve been at this for years.”
“What of it?” Yakut asked blithely. He didn’t even attempt a respectable show of denial.
And in the corner of the room, Renata remained silent, her eyes rooted on Niko but showing no shock at all.
Ah, Christ. So, she knew about it too.
“You sick fuck,” he said, looking back to Yakut now. “All of you are sick. You won’t be allowed to continue this. It stops right here, right now. There are laws—”
The Gen One laughed, his voice warped from the transformation to his more savage side. “I am the law here, boy. No one, not the Darkhavens and their vaunted Enforcement Agency—not even the Order—has any say in my affairs. I invite anyone to come here and try to tell me otherwise.”
The threat was clear. Despite the fact that everything honorable and just screamed for Nikolai to launch at the smug son of a bitch with weapons flying, striking to kill, this was no ordinary vampire. Sergei Yakut was Gen One. Not only gifted with strength and powers exponentially greater than Niko’s or any other later-generation Breed, but a member of a rare class of individual. There were only a few Gen Ones in existence—fewer still, following the rash of recent assassinations.
As abhorrent as the outlawed practice of blood clubs was among Breed society, attempting to kill a first-generation vampire was an even bigger offense. Nikolai couldn’t raise a hand against the bastard, no matter how badly he wanted to.
And Yakut knew as much. He wiped his mouth with the hem of his dark tunic, dabbing at Renata’s sweet-scented blood.
“Hunting is in our nature, boy.” Yakut’s voice was deadly calm, utterly confident, as he strode toward Nikolai. “You are young, born of weaker stock than some of us. Maybe your blood is so diluted with humanity, you simply cannot understand the need in its purest form. Maybe if you had a taste of the hunt, you’d be less sanctimonious of those of us who prefer to live as we were meant to be.”
Niko gave a slow shake of his head. “Blood clubs aren’t about hunting. They’re about slaughter. You can shovel your bullshit however deep you want it, but in the end, it’s still bullshit. You’re an animal. What you really need is a muzzle and a choke collar. Someone needs to shut you down.”
“And you think that you or the Order is up for that task?”
“Do you think we’re not?” Niko challenged, some reckless part of him hoping the Gen One would give him a reason to draw his weapons. He didn’t expect he’d walk away from a confrontation with the elder vampire, but he sure as hell wouldn’t go down without a damned vicious fight.
Instead, Yakut backed off, amber eyes blazing, their elliptical pupils tiny slivers of black. His bearded chin came up, head cocked severely to the side. His lips parted with his savage, fang-baring grin. Like this, it wasn’t hard at all to see the alien part of him—the part that made him and all the rest of the Breed what they were: blood-drinking predators not quite belonging to this mortal, Earth-born world.
“I told you once that you were not welcome in my domain, warrior. I have no use for you, or for your proposed alliance with the Order. My patience is at its end, and so is your stay here.”
“Yeah,” Niko agreed. “I’m fucking gone from this place, and gladly. But don’t think this is the last you’ll hear from me.”
He couldn’t help glancing over at Renata as he said it. As contemptuous as he found Yakut to be, he couldn’t muster the same kind of fury for her. He waited for her to tell him that she didn’t know about the crimes taking place on this patch of blood-soaked land. He wanted her to say that—to say anything to convince him that she wasn’t actually a knowing party to Yakut’s sick practices.
She merely stared back at him, her arms crossed over her chest. One hand reached up to idly fìnger the healing wound on her neck, but she remained silent.
Watching as Nikolai stalked out of the open door and past Yakut’s befuddled guards.
“Return the warrior’s personal effects and see that he leaves the property without incident,” Yakut instructed the pair of armed men outside his private chamber.
When the two set off to carry out the command, Renata started to follow after them. Some unbalanced part of her hoped she might be able to catch up to Nikolai privately and…
And what?
Explain the truth of how things were for her here? Try to justify the choices she’d been forced to make?
To what end?
Nikolai was leaving. He would never have to return to this place, while she would be here to her dying breath. What good would it do to explain any of this to him, a stranger who probably wouldn’t understand, let alone care?
And still, Renata’s feet kept moving.
She didn’t even get as far as the door. Yakut’s hand clamped down on her wrist, holding her back.
“Not you, Renata. You stay.”
She glanced at him with a look she hoped was devoid of the queasiness she was trying so hard to tamp down. “I thought we had finished here. I thought maybe I should go along with the others, just to make sure the warrior doesn’t decide to do anything stupid on his way off the property.”
“You will stay.” Yakut’s smile chilled her to the bone. “Tread carefully, Renata. I wouldn’t want you doing anything stupid either.”
She swallowed the sudden lump of cold unease in her throat. “I’m sorry?”
“You will be,” he answered, his grip tightening on her arm. “Your emotions betray you, beauty. I can feel the rise in your heart rate, the spike of adrenaline that’s running through your veins even now. I felt the change in you from the moment the warrior entered the room. I felt it earlier as well. Care to tell me where you were tonight?”
“Training,” she replied, quickly but firmly. Giving him no reason to doubt her, since it was essentially the truth. “Before you sent Lex to call for me, I was outside, running through my training exercises in the old kennel. It was a taxing workout. If you felt anything from me, that’s all it was.”
A long silence stretched, and still that hard grip stayed latched onto her wrist. “You know how much I value loyalty, don’t you, Renata?”
She managed a brief nod.
“I value it as much as you value the life of that child sleeping in the other room,” he said coldly. “I think it would destroy you if she should end up in the boneyard.”
Renata’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins at the threat. She stared up into the evil eyes of a monster—one who grinned at her now with sick pleasure.
“Like I said, dear Renata. Tread very carefully.”
CHAPTER
Nine
The city of Montreal, named for the broad mount that afforded such a royal view of the Saint Lawrence River and the valley below, glittered like a bowl of gemstones under the crescent sliver of the moon. Elegant skyscrapers. Gothic church spires. Verdant parkways, and, in the distance, a shimmering ribbon of water that nestled the city in its protective embrace. It truly was a spectacular view.
No wonder the leader of the Montreal Darkhaven chose to settle his community near the summit of Mount Royal.
Standing on the baroque-style limestone balcony off the mansion’s second-floor drawing room made the old hunting lodge outside the city seem a thousand miles away. A thousand years away from this polite, civilized manner of living. Which, of course, it was.
The wait to meet with Edgar Fabien, the Breed male who oversaw the Montreal vampire population, seemed to take forever. Fabien was well known around the city and rumored to be very well connected, both within the Darkhavens and their policing arm known as the Enforcement Agency. He was the natural choice for a delicate situation like this.
Still, it was a gamble that the Darkhaven leader would be willing to cooperate. This unannounced late-night visit had been a spontaneous thing, and a very risky one at that.
Just by coming here, he was declaring himself an enemy of Sergei Yakut.
But he’d seen enough.
Endured enough.
The prince was sick and tired of licking his father’s boots. It was time for the tyrant king to fall.
Lex turned at the sound of footsteps approaching from within the drawing room. Fabien was a slim male, tall and meticulously dressed, as if he’d been born in his tailored suit and shiny leather loafers. His ash-blond hair was slicked back from his face with some kind of perfumed oil, and when he smiled at Lex in greeting, his thin lips and narrow birdlike facial features became even more severe.
“Alexei Yakut,” he said, coming out onto the balcony and offering Lex his hand. No fewer than three rings sparkled on his long fingers, gold and diamonds to rival the glitter of the city outside. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long. I’m afraid we’re not accustomed to receiving unannounced guests here at my personal residence.”
Lex gave him a tight nod and took his hand out of Fabien’s grasp. The Darkhaven leader’s private home wasn’t exactly going to turn up in any Montreal tour guides, but a few questions posed to the right people in town had led Lex there without too much trouble.
“Come in, please,” the Darkhaven male said, motioning for Lex to follow him back into the house. Fabien settled himself onto a fancy settee, leaving room for Lex on the other side. “I must admit, I was surprised when my secretary told me who had come to see me. A shame we’ve not had the opportunity to meet until now.”
Lex took a seat beside the Darkhaven male, unable to keep his eyes from traveling over the endless luxury of his surroundings. “But you know who I am?” he asked Fabien cautiously. “Do you also know the Gen One who is my father, Sergei Yakut?”
Fabien gave a mild nod. “Only by name, alas. I am remiss in not having made formal introductions when you folks first arrived in my city. However, your father’s bodyguards made it clear when my emissary inquired about a meeting that your father was something of a recluse. I understand he enjoys a quiet, rural life outside the city communing with nature or some such.” Over the steeple of his bejeweled fingers, Fabien’s smile did not quite reach his eyes. “I suppose there is something to be said for living with that kind of… simplicity.”
Lex grunted. “My father chooses such a life because he believes himself above the law.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Lex said. “I have information. Critical information that needs to be acted on quickly. Covertly.”
Edgar Fabien leaned back against the cushions of the settee. “Has something… happened out at the lodge?”
“It’s been happening for a long time,” Lex admitted, feeling a queer sense of freedom as the words spilled out of his mouth.
He told Fabien everything about his father’s illegal activities, from the blood club and the boneyard full of his victims’ remains, to the keeping and frequent killing of his human Minions. Lex explained, not quite truthfully, how it had been eating him up to keep this secret for so long and how it was his own sense of morality—his sense of honor and respect for Breed law—that compelled him to seek out Fabien’s help in putting a stop to Sergei Yakut’s private reign of terror.
It was excitement—thrill at the depth of his courage— that put a quiver in Lex’s voice, but if Fabien took it for regret, so much the better.
Fabien listened, his expression carefully schooled, sober. “You understand, Fm sure, that this is no small matter. What you’ve described is … problematic. Disturbingly so. But there will be certain factors that will come into play on this type of investigation. Your father is Gen One. There will be questions for him to answer, protocols that will need to be observed—”
“Investigation? Protocol?” Lex scoffed. He shot to his feet, awash in both fear and fury. “That could take days or even weeks. A fucking month!”
Fabien nodded apologetically. “It could, yes.”
“There’s no time for that now! Don’t you get it? I am handing my father to you on a platter—all the evidence you would need for an immediate arrest is right there on his property. For fuck’s sake, I am risking my goddamn life just by standing here!”
“I am sorry.” The Darkhaven leader held up his hands. “If it’s any comfort to you, we would be more than willing to offer you protection. The Agency could remove you once the investigation begins, take you someplace safe—”
Lex’s sharp bark of laughter cut him off. “Send me into exile? I’ll be dead long before then. Besides, I’m not interested in going into hiding like a whipped dog. I want what I deserve. I want what I am due, after all these years of waiting for handouts from that bastard.” It was impossible to mask his true feelings now. Lex’s rage was on a full boil. “You want to know what I really want from Sergei Yakut? His death.”
Fabien’s gaze narrowed shrewdly. “That’s very dangerous talk.”
“I’m not the only one to think it,” Lex replied. “In fact, someone even had the balls enough to attempt it just last week.”
Narrower and narrower went those cunning little eyes. “What do you mean?”
“He was attacked. An assailant stole into the lodge and tried to sever his head with a length of wire, but in the end he failed. Of all the damned luck,” Lex added under his breath. “The Order feels it’s the work of a professional.”
“The Order,” Fabien repeated airlessly. “How are they involved in any of what you’ve described?”
“They sent a warrior here tonight to meet with my father. Apparently they are trying to warn the Gen Ones about the recent slayings among the population.”
Fabien’s mouth worked for a second without forming words, as if he wasn’t sure what question to tackle first. He cleared his throat. “There is a warrior here in Montreal? And what is this about recent slayings? Whatever are you talking about?”
“Five dead Gen Ones, between North America and Europe,” Lex said, recalling what Nikolai had told him. “Someone seems hell-bent on picking off the whole remaining first generation, one by one.”
“My word.” Fabien’s face was the picture of astonishment, but something about him was bothering Lex.
“You didn’t know anything about the killings?”
Fabien rose slowly, shook his head. “I am stunned, I assure you. I had no idea. What a terrible thing.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Lex remarked.
As he stared at the Darkhaven leader, Lex noticed a sudden stillness coming over the vampire—so still he had to wonder if Fabien was actually breathing. There was a subdued but rising panic in his raptorlike eyes. Edgar Fabien held his body in check with rigid precision, but from the look in his shifting gaze, he looked as though he wanted to bolt from the room.
How intriguing.
“You know, I would have expected you to be better informed, Fabien. Your reputation around the city paints you as quite the player. With all your Enforcement Agency friends, are you trying to tell me that none of them clued you in? Maybe they don’t trust you, eh? Maybe they have good cause.”
Now Fabien met Lex’s gaze. Amber sparks flashed in his irises, a telltale sign of a pricked nerve. “Just what kind of game are you trying to play here?”
“Yours,” Lex said, sensing an opportunity and pouncing on it. “You know about the Gen One slayings. The question is, why would you lie about it?”
“I don’t publicly discuss Agency issues.” Fabien all but spat his reply, puffing out his thin chest with self-righteous indignation. “What I know or do not know is my own business.”
“You knew about the attack on my father before I mentioned it, didn’t you? Were you the one who called for his death? What about the others who’ve been killed?”
“Good Christ, you are mad.”
“I want in,” Lex said. “Whatever scheme you’re involved with, Fabien, I want in.”
The Darkhaven leader expelled his breath sharply, then gave Lex his back as he casually walked over to one of the tall bookcases built into the silk-papered wall. He smoothed his hand along the polished wood, chuckling idly. “As illuminating and entertaining as our conversation has been, Alexei, perhaps it should end here. I think it best if you go away and calm yourself before you say anything more foolish.”
Lex charged forward, determined to convince Fabien of his worth. “If you want him dead, I am willing to help get it done.”
“Unwise” came the hissed reply. “I can snap my fingers and have you held on suspicion of intent to commit murder. I may still, but right now you’re going to leave and neither one of us will speak another word of this conversation.”
The drawing room door opened and four armed guards filed inside. At Fabien’s nod, the group of them surrounded Lex. Given no choice, he started to leave.
“I’ll be in touch,” he told Edgar Fabien with a light baring of his teeth. “You can count on that.”
Fabien said nothing, but his shrewd gaze remained fixed on Lex with grim understanding as he walked to the drawing room doors and gently closed them tight.
Once Lex was out on the street alone, his mind began to churn over his options. Fabien was corrupt. What a surprising, and sure to be useful, bit of information. With any luck, it wouldn’t be long before Fabien’s connections were Lex’s as well. He didn’t particularly care how he had to acquire them.
He glanced up at the beautiful Darkhaven mansion and all its pristine luxury. This was what he wanted. This kind of life—lifted high above the filth and degradation he’d known under his father’s boot heel. This was what he truly deserved.
But first he would need to get his hands dirty if just one last time.
Lex strolled along the tree-lined, meandering road and headed back down into the city with renewed purpose.
CHAPTER
Ten
Nikolai woke up in total darkness, his head resting against the coffin of an apparently well-to-do Montreal man who’d been dead for sixty-seven years. The private mausoleum’s marble floor had made for a hard few hours of rest, but it served Niko well enough. The night had been creeping dangerously close to dawn when he’d left Yakut’s place, and he’d sure as hell slept the daylight off in worse places than the cemetery he found at the city’s northern edge.
With a groan, he sat up and flipped open his cell phone to check the display for the time. Shit, just after one P.M. He still had about seven or eight hours to wait in here before sundown, when it would be safe for him to be outside. Seven or eight more hours, and he was already feeling itchy from sitting idle for so long.
No doubt Boston was wondering about him by now. Niko hit the speed dial for the Order’s headquarters. Halfway through the second ring, Gideon picked up.
“Niko, for fuck’s sake. About time you reported in.” The warrior’s vague English accent sounded a bit rough. Not surprising, considering that Niko was calling in the middle of the day. “Talk to me. You good?”
“Yeah, I’m good. My objective here in Montreal is fucked ten ways to Sunday, but other than that, ‘sall good.”
“No luck finding Sergei Yakut, I take it?”
Niko chuckled. “Oh, I found the bastard all right. The Gen One is alive and well and living north of the city like some kind of throwback to Ghengis Khan.”
He gave Gideon a quick rundown of everything that had happened since his arrival in Montreal—from the ass-kicking welcome he’d gotten from Renata and the other guards, to the strange handful of hours he’d spent at Yakut’s lodge, culminating with his discovery of the dead humans discarded out back and his subsequent ejection from the property.
He described the recent failed attempt on the Gen One’s life and the incredible role Mira played in thwarting that attack. Niko left out the part about what he’d personally seen in Mira’s eyes. He saw no reason to share the details of a vision, which, despite Renata’s insistence that Mira was never wrong, had roughly zero chance—no, scratch that; it had exactly zero chance—of happening now.
It should have come as a relief to him to know that. The last thing he needed was to get mixed up with a female, especially a piece of work like Renata. Yakut’s blood-bonded mate. The thought still gnawed at him, far more than it should. And he wasn’t feeling particularly chipper about the fact that even the slightest recollection of that kiss with her was enough to render him as hard as the granite tomb that surrounded him.
He wanted her, and there had been a split second as he was leaving the lodge that he thought she might come after him. He had no reason to think it, but it had been a nudge in his gut, a sense that maybe Renata might run up behind him and ask him to get her out of there.
And if she had? Christ, he might have been just stupid enough to consider it.
“So,” he told Gideon, mentally steering himself back to reality. “The net of it is, we can’t count on any cooperation out of Sergei Yakut. He basically told me to shove it, and that was before I called him a sick fuck in need of a muzzle and choke collar.”
‘Jesus, Niko,” Gideon sighed, probably, on the other end of the line, scrubbing his hand through his spiky blond hair in frustration. “You really said that to him—to a Gen One? You’re damn lucky he didn’t tear your tongue out before he sent you on your way.”
Probably true, Nikolai acknowledged to himself. And he’d have lost more than just his tongue if Yakut knew the kind of lust he had been feeling for Renata. “You know I’m allergic to ass-kissing, even if the ass in question happens to be Gen One. If this was a total public relations mission, you picked the wrong guy.”
“No shit.” Gideon chuckled around another low curse. “You coming back in to Boston, then?”
“I see no reason to linger. Unless you figure Lucan will look the other way if I decide to go back and put a torch to Yakut’s house of horrors. Put him out of business, at least for a while.”
He was kidding… mostly. But Gideon’s answering silence told him that his fellow warrior knew the wheels were turning inside Niko’s head.
“You know you can’t do anything of the sort, my man. Way out of bounds.”
“And doesn’t that suck,” Nikolai muttered.
“Yeah, it does. But this kind of thing belongs to the Enforcement Agency, not us.”
“Tell me how Yakut is any different from the Rogues we take off the streets, Gid. Hell, from what I’ve seen of him, he’s worse. At least the Rogues can blame their savagery on Bloodlust. Yakut can’t even cling to blood addiction as his excuse for hunting those humans out there. He’s a predator, a killer.”
“He is protected,” Gideon said, firmly now. “Even if he wasn’t Gen One, he’s still a civilian, still a member of the Breed. We can’t touch him, Niko. Not without a lot of serious shit hitting the fan. So, whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
Nikolai exhaled sharply. “Forget I said it. What time should I plan on catching a ride back to Boston tonight?”
“I’ll have to make a couple of calls to get a flight plan filed on short notice, but the private jet’s still waiting for you at the airport. I can text you the time once I have it firmed up.”
“Okay. I’ll chill and wait for your go.”
“Where are you at, anyway?”
Nikolai glanced at the coffin behind him, the other one across from him, and the bronze urn gathering dust on a pedestal against the back wall of the dark mausoleum. “I found a quiet little place to grab a rest in the north end of the city. Slept like the dead, in fact. Or with them, at any rate.”
“Speaking of dead,” Gideon said, “we’ve got a report of another Gen One killing overseas.”
“Christ. Picking them off like flies, aren’t they?”
“Or trying to, from the looks of it. Reichen’s following up on the report from Berlin. Got an e-mail from him that he’ll be calling in later today with an update.”
“Good to know we’ve got eyes and ears that we can trust over there,” Niko said. “Shit, Gideon. Never would have thought I’d have any use for a Darkhaven civilian, but Andreas Reichen is proving to be a damn good ally. Maybe Lucan ought to officially recruit him into the Order?”
Gideon chuckled. “Don’t think he hasn’t considered it. Alas, we’re just a part-time gig for Reichen. He may have the soul of a warrior, but his heart belongs to his Berlin Darkhaven.”
And a certain human female, from what Nikolai understood. According to Tegan and Rio, the two warriors who’d spent the most time with Andreas Reichen at his Berlin headquarters, the German Darkhaven leader was romantically involved with a brothel owner named Helene.
It was unusual for a Breed male to have more than a casual, short-term relationship with a mortal woman, but Niko wasn’t about to question it since Helene was also proving instrumental in the Order’s intelligence-gathering efforts overseas.
“So, listen,” Gideon said. “Cool your heels where you are, and I’ll let you know once I have your departure info for tonight. Sound good?”
“Yeah. You know how to find me.”
The murmur of a velvety female voice, soft from sleep, carried vaguely through the receiver.
“Ah, hell, Gid. Don’t tell me you’re in bed with Savannah.”
“I was,” he replied, leaning hard on the past tense. “Now that she’s awake, she says she’s tossing me over for a hot shower and a cup of strong coffee.”
Nikolai groaned. “Shit. Tell her I’m sorry for the interruption.”
“Hey babe,” Gideon called to his beloved, blood-bonded mate of some thirty-odd years. “Niko says he’s sorry for being such a rude bastard and waking you up at this ungodly hour.”
“Thanks,” Niko muttered.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll check in with you again from the plane heading home.”
“Sounds good,” Gideon said. Then, to Savannah on the side: “Hey love? Niko wants me to tell you that he’s hanging up now. He says you ought to come back to bed and let me ravish you slowly from your clever and beautiful head to your delectable little toes.”
Nikolai chuckled. “Sounds like fun. Put me on speaker so I can listen at least.”
Gideon snorted. “Not a chance. She’s all mine.”
“Selfish bastard,” Niko drawled wryly. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Right, later. And Niko—about the Yakut situation? Seriously. Don’t even think about being a cowboy, yeah? We’ve got bigger issues to contend with than trying to corral one loose-cannon Gen One. It’s not our area, especially not right now.”
When Niko didn’t immediately agree, Gideon cleared his throat. “Your silence isn’t exactly giving me the warm fuzzies, my man. I need to know you’re hearing me on this.”
“Yeah,” Nikolai said. “I’m hearing you. I’ll see you in Boston later tonight.”
Niko closed his cell phone and slid it back into his pocket.
As much as it fried him to think of turning a blind eye to Yakut and his sick activities, he knew Gideon was right. What’s more, he knew that the Order’s leader, Lucan, as well as the rest of the warriors at the Boston compound would say the same thing to him.
Forget about Sergei Yakut, at least for the time being. That was the sensible, smartest thing to do.
And while he was at it, he would be wise to forget all about Renata too. She’d made her bed, after all. The fact that she’d evidently made it with sadistic scum like Sergei Yakut was none of Nikolai’s business whatsoever. Beautiful, ice maiden Renata was not his problem, so good riddance to her.
Good riddance to the entire nest of vipers he’d uncovered in Yakut’s domain.
Just a few more hours to kill before nightfall, and then he could put it all behind him.
She never had gotten used to sleeping through the daylight hours, not in the whole two years she’d been living in service to a vampire.
Renata lay in her bed, restless, unable to relax and close her eyes even for a few minutes. She tossed and turned, flipped onto her back and blew out a sigh, staring up at the timber rafters.
Thinking about the warrior … Nikolai.
He’d been gone for hours—nearly half an entire day— but she still felt the weight of his contempt pressing down on her. She hated that he’d seen Yakut feeding from her. It had been hard to pretend she wasn’t ashamed when he caught her gaze from across the room. She’d tried to appear unaffected, defiant. Inside she’d been shaking, her pulse jackhammering almost out of control.
She hadn’t wanted Nikolai to see her like that. Even worse that he had learned of Yakut’s brutal crimes and clearly thought her to be a part of it as well. She couldn’t get the withering, accusatory look he’d given her out of her head.
Which was ridiculous.
Nikolai was Breed, like Yakut. He was a vampire, the same as Yakut. Like Yakut, Nikolai had to feed on humans in order to survive. Even in her limited understanding of their kind, Renata knew that drinking from human beings was the only way the Breed could obtain nourishment. No convenient vampire-friendly blood banks where they could pick up a pint of O-Negative for the road. No animal predation as a substitute for the real thing.
Sergei Yakut and all the rest of the Breed shared the same driving thirst: the need for Homo sapiens red cells, taken directly from an open vein.
They were deadly savages who happened to look human most of the time, but who at their core—in their soul, if they even had one—lacked all humanity. Why she should think that Nikolai was any different was beyond her.
But he had seemed different, if only a little.
When she’d sparred with him in the kennel—when he’d kissed her, for God’s sake—he had in fact seemed remarkably different from the others of his kind that she knew. Not like Yakut at all. Not like Lex either.
Which probably only proved that she was a fool.
And she was weak as well. How else could she explain the wrenching wish she’d had that Nikolai might have taken her out of this place when he’d left today? She didn’t often indulge in futile hopes, or waste time imagining things that could never come to pass. But there had been a moment… a brief, selfish moment when she pictured herself torn away from Sergei Yakut’s unbreakable hold.
For one unfettered instant, she wondered what it might feel like to be free of him, free of everything that held her there … and it had been glorious.
Shamed by her thoughts, Renata swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She couldn’t lie there for another minute, not as long as her head was spinning with thoughts that would do her no good at all.
The fact of the matter was, this was her life. Yakut’s world was her world, the lodge and its many ugly secrets her unshakable reality. She didn’t feel sorry for herself; she never had. Not at the convent orphanage all those years as a child, nor the day she was tossed out of her home with the Sisters of Benevolent Mercy at the age of fourteen and forced to leave for good.
Not even on the night, just two summers before, when she’d been plucked off the streets in Montreal and brought with a group of other frightened humans to the locked holding pens of the barn on Sergei Yakut’s property.
She hadn’t shed a single self-pitying tear in all this time. She sure as hell wasn’t about to start now.
Renata got up and left her modest room. The main lodge was quiet at this hour, the few windows in the place shuttered tight to banish the sun’s lethal rays. Renata took the thick iron bar off the exterior door and walked out into a gloriously warm and bright summer afternoon.
She headed straight for the kennel outbuilding.
Amid all the drama that had occurred last night, both alone with Nikolai and in the time afterward, she’d completely forgotten her blades outside. The careless oversight bothered her. She never let the daggers out of her possession. They were a part of her now, as they had been the day she’d received them.
“Stupid, stupid,” she whispered to herself as she entered the old kennel and looked to the post where she expected to find the embedded blade she’d thrown at Nikolai.
It wasn’t there.
A cry slipped past her lips, disbelief and anguish.
Had the warrior taken her blades for himself? Had he fucking stolen them?
“Damn it. No.”
Renata stormed across the center aisle of the building … then came to an abrupt halt as she reached the back of the place and her eyes settled on the stout bale of straw near the scarred wooden post.
Carefully folded atop it and placed neatly beside the pair of shoes she’d left behind last night as well was the silk-and-velvet wrapper that contained her treasured daggers. She picked it up, just to reassure herself that the fabric sheath wasn’t empty. Its familiar weight settled into her palm and she couldn’t hold back her smile.
Nikolai.
He’d taken care of the blades for her. Collected them, wrapped them up, and left them here for her as if he knew how much they meant to her.
Why would he do that? What did he expect his kindness to buy him? Did he actually think her trust might come so cheaply, or was he just hoping for another chance to force himself on her the way he had with that kiss?
She really didn’t want to think about kissing Nikolai. If she thought about his mouth on hers, then she would have to admit to herself that as unexpected and uninvited as his kiss had been, force was hardly to blame for it happening.
The truth was, she’d enjoyed it.
Mother Mary but just thinking on him now lit a slow, liquid heat in her core.
She’d wanted more of him, despite that every survival instinct in her body had been screaming for her to get away from him, and get away fast. She hungered for him—then and now. Burned for him, in a place she’d long thought to be frozen over and dead.
And that little admission made what he’d said about Mira—the implication that whatever he’d seen in the child’s eyes might somehow involve Renata and him intimately together—all the more unsettling.
Thank God he was gone.
Thank God he would likely never return after what he’d discovered here.
It had been a long time since Renata had gone down on her knees to pray. She knelt before no one anymore, not even Yakut at his terrifying worst, but she bowed her head now and begged heaven to keep Nikolai away from this place.
Away from her.
No longer in the mood for training, especially when memories of what had taken place here last night were still ripe and swimming in her head, Renata grabbed her shoes and walked back to the lodge. She went inside, replaced the bar on the door, then walked the hallway leading to her room and what she hoped might be at least a few hours’ sleep.
She sensed something out of place even before she noticed Mira’s door was unlatched.
No lights were on in the child’s room, but she was awake. Renata heard her soft voice in the dark, complaining that she was sleepy and didn’t want to get up. More nightmares? Renata wondered, feeling a pang of sympathy for the child. But then another voice hissed over Mira’s groggy protests, this one cold and harsh, clipped with impatience.
“Stop your sniveling and open your eyes, you little bitch.”
Renata pressed her hand to the paneled door and pushed it wide. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Lex?”
He was bent over Mira’s bed, the child’s shoulders caught in a bruising hold. His head swiveled around as Renata came into the room, but he didn’t let go of Mira. “I have need of my father’s oracle. And I don’t answer to you, so kindly get the fuck out of here.”
“Rennie, he’s hurting my arms.” Mira’s voice was tiny, pinched with pain.
“Open your eyes,” Lex snarled at her. “Then maybe I’ll stop hurting you.”
“Take your hands off her, Lex.” Renata stopped at the foot of the bed, her sheathed blades a tempting weight in her grasp. “Do it. Now.”
Lex scoffed. “Not until I’m through with her.”
When he gave Mira a hard shake, Renata let loose with a blast of mental fury.
It was just a spurt of power, only a fraction of what she could give him, but Lex howled, his body jerking as though he’d been hit with a few thousand volts of electricity. He reeled back, dropping Mira and falling away from the bed, ass-planted on the floor.
“You bitch!” His eyes bled amber fire, pupils tight slivers in their center. “I should kill you for that. I should kill the brat and you both!”
Renata hit him again, another small taste of agony. He slumped, clutching his head and moaning from the debilitating second blast. She waited, watching as he worked to collect himself from his sprawl on the floor. He didn’t pose much of a threat to her like this, but in a few hours he would be recovered and she would be the vulnerable one. Then she might have a bit of hell to pay.
But for the time being, Mira was no longer of interest to Lex, and that was all that mattered.
Lex glared up at her as he dragged himself to his feet. “Get out of my… way… goddamn … whore.”
The words were choked, sputtered between his gasps for breath as he clumsily moved toward the open door. When he was out of sight, his footsteps scuffing along the hallway outside, Renata went to Mira’s bedside and hushed her softly.
“Are you all right, kiddo?”
Mira nodded. “I don’t like him, Rennie. He scares me.”
“I know, honey.” Renata pressed a kiss to the child’s brow. “I’m not going to let him hurt you. You’re safe with me. That’s a promise, right?”
Another nod, weaker this time as Mira settled her head back onto her pillow and exhaled a sleepy sigh. “Rennie?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, mouse?”
“Don’t ever leave me, okay?”
Renata stared down at the innocent little face in the dark, feeling her heart squeeze tightly in her breast. “I’m not going to leave you, Mira. Not ever…just like we promised.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
The moon rose high, casting dappled light over Lake Wannsee in an exclusive area outside Berlin. Andreas Reichen leaned back in his cushioned chaise on the rear lawn of his private Darkhaven estate, trying to absorb some of the peace and quiet of the evening. Despite the warm, pleasant breeze and the calm of the night-dark water, his thoughts were morose, turbulent.
The news of the latest Gen One killing, this time in France, weighed him down. It seemed to him that the world was going increasingly mad around him. Not only the world of the Breed—his world—but that of humankind as well. So much death and destruction. So much anguish everywhere one looked.
He had the terrible feeling, deep in his gut, that this was only the beginning. Darker days were coming. Perhaps they had been coming for a long time already and he’d been too ignorant—too caught up in his own personal pleasures—to notice.
One of those pleasures came up behind him now, her elegant stride unmistakable as she walked through the estate’s manicured gardens and down onto the grass.
Helene’s lithe arms wrapped around his shoulders. “Hello, darling.”
Reichen reached up to caress her warm skin as she bent over him and kissed him. Her mouth was soft, lingering, her long dark hair fragrant with the lightest trace of rose oil.
“Your nephew told me when I arrived that you’ve been out here for the past couple of hours,” she murmured, lifting her head to gaze out at the lake. “I can see why. It’s a lovely view.”
“It just got lovelier,” Reichen said, as he tipped his chin up and looked at her.
She smiled without coyness, having long become accustomed to his flattery. “Something is troubling you, Andreas. It’s not like you to sit alone and brood.”
Could she know him so well? They had been lovers for the past year, a casual dalliance that had somehow turned into something deeper if not entirely exclusive. Reichen knew Helene had other men in her life—human men—as he also occasionally took his pleasure with other women. Theirs was not a relationship plagued by jealousies or possessiveness. But that didn’t mean it was devoid of affection. They shared a mutual concern for each other, and a bond of trust that extended beyond the barriers that generally made human and Breed relationships impossible.
Helene had become a friend and, of late, an indispensable partner in Reichen’s important remote work with the warriors back in Boston.
Helene came around to the front of the chair and seated herself on the broad arm. “Have you relayed the news to the Order about the recent assassination in Paris?”
Reichen nodded. “I did, yes. And they tell me there was also an attempted killing in Montreal a few nights ago. At least that one failed, by some miracle of fate. But there will be others. I fear there will be many more deaths to come before the smoke finally clears. The Order is convinced they will put a stop to the madness, but there are times when I wonder if the evil at work here isn’t greater than any amount of good.”
“You’re letting this consume you,” Helene said as she idly petted his hair off his brow. “You know, if you were looking for something to do with your time, you could have come to me instead of the Order. I could have put you to work at the club as my personal assistant. It’s not too late to change your mind. And I assure you, the fringe benefits alone would be worth it.”
Reichen chuckled. “Tempting, indeed.”
Helene bent down and nibbled his earlobe, her breath tickling and heated on his skin. “It would only be a temporary position, of course. Say twenty or thirty years—a blink of time to you. But by then I will be wrinkled and gray, and you will be eager for a new, more appealing plaything who can still keep up with your wicked demands.”
Reichen was surprised to hear the twinge of wistfulness in Helene’s voice. She’d never talked about the future with him, nor he with her. It was more or less understood that there could never be a future, given that she was mortal with a finite life span and he—barring prolonged UV exposure or massive bodily harm—would continue living for something close to eternity.
“What are you doing wasting your time with me when you could have your pick of any man?” he asked her, running his fingers along the smooth line of her shoulder. “You could be married to someone who adores you, raising a litter of clever, beautiful children.”
Helene arched a flawlessly manicured brow. “I suppose I never was one to make the conventional choice.”
Neither was he, in fact. Reichen acknowledged that it would be very easy to ignore everything he and the Order had discovered a few months ago. He could forget about the evil they’d tracked to that mountain cave in the Bohemian hills. He could pretend none of that existed, renege on his offer to help the warriors in whatever way he could. It would be the simplest thing in the world to retreat to his role as head of his Darkhaven household and slide back into his carefree, libertine ways.
But the simple truth was, he’d grown tired of that lifestyle long ago. Someone years past had once accused him of being a perpetual child—selfish and irresponsible. She’d been right, even then. Especially then, when he’d been fool enough to let that woman and the love she’d given him slip through his fingers. After too many decades of self-indulgence, it felt good to be making a difference. Or trying to, as it were.
“I don’t expect you came by tonight just to distract me with kisses and attractive offers of employment,” he said, sensing a seriousness had come over Helene.
“No, I didn’t, unfortunately. I thought you should know that one of my girls at the club may be missing. You recall me mentioning that Gina, one of my newer girls, showed up with bite marks on her neck last week?”
Reichen nodded. “The one who’d been talking about a rich new boyfriend she was dating.”
“That’s right. Well, it’s not the first time she’s missed her shift at work, but her housemate told me this afternoon that Gina hasn’t been home or telephoned for more than three days. It could be nothing, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes,” he said. “Do you have any information on the male she was seeing? A description, a name, anything at all?”
“No. The housemate had never met him, naturally, so she couldn’t tell me anything.”
Reichen considered the numerous things that could happen to a young woman who found herself unwittingly mixed up with one of his kind. Although most of the Breed were law-abiding members of the vampire nation, there were others who reveled in their savage side. “I need you to discreetly ask around at the club tonight, see if any of the other girls heard Gina mention this boyfriend of hers. I’m looking for names, places she might have gone with him, even the smallest detail could be important.”
Helene nodded, but there was a note of interest in her eyes. “I rather like this serious side to you, Andreas. It’s incredibly sexy.”
Her hand trailed down the open front of his silk shirt, her long painted nails playing over the ridges of his muscled abdomen. Although his thoughts were grim, his body responded to her expert touch. His dermaglyphs began to saturate with color, and his vision sharpened with the flood of amber that was swiftly filling his irises. Lower still, his cock stiffened, swelling where it now rested beneath her palm.
“I really shouldn’t stay,” she murmured, her voice husky and teasing. “I don’t want to be late for work.”
When she started to get up, Reichen held her back. “Don’t worry about that. I know the woman who runs the place, I’ll make your excuses for you. I have it on good authority that she fancies me.”
“Do you now?”
Reichen grunted, baring the points of his fangs with his broad grin. “Poor dear is mad for me.”
“Mad for an arrogant thing like you?” Helene teased. “Darling, don’t flatter yourself. She may want you only for your decadent body.”
“True enough,” he replied, “but you won’t hear me complaining either way.”
Helene smiled, not resisting in the least as he pulled her down onto his lap for a deep, hungered kiss.
By nightfall, Lex was fully recovered from the agony Renata had dealt him. His rage—his festering hatred for her—remained.
He cursed her over and over in his mind as he leaned against a rotting wall of a rat-infested crack house in Montreal’s worst slum, watching as a young human male tied off his arm with an old leather belt. The loose tail caught between a smattering of broken, decayed teeth, the junkie stuck the needle of a filthy syringe into the field of scabs and bruises that tracked along his emaciated arm. He moaned as the heroin entered his bloodstream.
“Ah, fuck, man,” he rasped around a shaky sigh as he released his tourniquet and fell back against a putrid mattress on the floor. He ran his tattooed hands over his pale, pimply face and greasy brown hair. “Ah, Christ… that right there’s some prime shit, baby.”
“Yes,” Lex said, his voice airless in the dank, urine-soaked darkness.
He’d spared no expense on the drugs; money was of little concern to him. No doubt the lowlife junkie he’d picked up selling his body on the street had never had such an expensive high. Lex was willing to bet the young man’s personal services had never fetched such a rich sum either. He’d all but leapt into the car when Lex pulled over and flashed a hundred dollars and a bag of heroin in front of his face.
Lex cocked his head and watched as the human savored his fix. They were alone in the squalid room of the abandoned apartment building. The place had been overrun with vagrants and addicts when they’d first arrived, but it took Lex only a few minutes—and an irresistible mental command, courtesy of his second-generation Breed lineage—to drive the humans out so he could conduct his business in private.
Still reclining on the floor, the junkie stripped out of his sleeveless T-shirt then began to unbutton his loose-fitting, grime-stained blue jeans. He crudely fondled himself as he worked the fly open, bleary eyes rolling in his skull, searching listlessly through the dark.
“So, you want me to suck your dick or what, man?”
“No,” Lex said, repulsed by the very idea.
He stepped away from his position across the room and walked slowly toward the junkie. Where to begin with him? he wondered idly. He had to play this thing out carefully or he’d be back on the street, searching for someone else.
Wasting precious time.
“You like my ass instead, baby?” the human whore slurred. “If you want to fuck me, you gotta pay double. That’s my rule.”
Lex’s laugh was low, genuinely amused. “I’m not interested in fucking you. Bad enough I have to look at you, that I have to smell your revolting stench. Sex is not the reason you’re here.”
“Well, what the hell then?” A note of panic edged the stale air, a sudden kick of human adrenaline that Lex’s heightened senses easily detected. “You sure as shit didn’t bring me here for a little polite conversation.”
“No,” Lex agreed pleasantly.
“Okay. So, what the fuck do I look like to you, asshole?”
Lex smiled. “Bait.”
With movements so fast not even the soberest human eye could track them, he reached out and hauled the junkie up off the floor. Lex had a knife in his hand. He stuck it into the human’s gaunt belly and ripped a slash across his midsection.
Blood surged out of the wound, hot and wet and fragrant.
“Oh, Jesus!” the human screamed. “Oh, my fucking God! You stabbed me!”
Lex drew back and let the man fall back limply onto the floor. It was all he could do to keep himself from lunging after him in a blind thirst.
Lex’s physical transformation was swift, brought on by the sudden presence of fresh, flowing blood. His vision sharpened with the narrowing of his pupils, an amber glow washing over the room as his eyes changed to that of a predator. His fangs stretched long behind his lips, saliva gushing into his mouth as the urge to feed swelled.
The junkie was sobbing now, sputtering pathetically as he clutched at the gaping wound in his belly. “Are you crazy you fucking asshole? You might have killed me!”
“Not yet,” Lex replied thickly around his fangs.
“I have to get out of here,” the man murmured. “Gotta get help—”
“Stay,” Lex ordered him, smiling as the feeble human mind wilted under his command.
He had to force himself to keep his distance. Let the situation play out as he intended it to. A gut wound would bleed hard, but death would come slowly. Lex needed him alive for a while, long enough for his scent to travel out onto the street and into the surrounding alleyways.
The human he’d bought tonight was merely chum to be tossed into the water. Lex was looking to attract bigger fish.
He knew as well as any other member of the Breed that nothing drew a vampire faster, or more surely, than the prospect of bleeding human prey. This deep into the underbelly of the city where even the dregs of human society rushed about in an unspoken state of terror, Lex was counting on the presence of Rogues.
He wasn’t disappointed.
The first two came sniffing around the crack house in mere minutes. Rogues were hopeless addicts, as much as the junkie now curled up in a fetal position and weeping quietly on the floor as his life slowly leeched out of him.
Although few of the Breed lost themselves to Bloodlust— the permanent, insatiable thirst for blood—the ones who did rarely, if ever, came back from it. They lived in the shadows, savage, rootless monsters whose only purpose in living was to feed their hunger.
Lex slid back into the corner of the room as the two predators crept inside. They immediately fell upon the human, tearing at him with fangs that never receded, eyes burning with the color and heat of fire.
Another Rogue found the room. This one was larger than the others, more brutal as he threw himself into the carnage and began to feed. A scuffle broke out among the feral vampires. The three of them turned on each other like snarling, rabid dogs. Fists pounding, fingers tearing, fangs ripping through flesh and bone, each powerful male fought viciously to win his prey.
Lex watched transfixed. Giddy from the violence, and drunk from the scent of so much spilled blood, human and Breed.
He watched, and he waited.
The Rogues would fight one another to the death, like the base animals they were. Only one of them would prove the strongest in the end.
And that was the one Lex needed.
After a whole day of waiting for nightfall, now he had another two hours to kill before he could catch his ride back to Boston.
Nikolai seriously considered skipping the airport rendezvous and heading out on foot instead, but even with his Breed stamina and hyperspeed, he would hardly clear the state of Vermont before sunrise drove him into hiding again. And frankly, the idea of bunking down in some low-country barn with a bunch of agitated livestock didn’t exactly have him dying to strap on a pair of Nikes and hit the open road.
So, he would wait.
Damn it.
He and patience had never been the closest of friends. He’d been just about batshit with boredom by the time the sun had finally set and he was able to get out of the mausoleum shelter.
He supposed it was that same boredom that led him into the humid tenderloin of Montreal, where he hoped to find something diverting to do while he cooled his heels. He didn’t much care how he used the time, but he’d deliberately sought out the one area of the city where the odds of finding a reason to burn off steam with his knuckles or his weapons were better than good.
In this particular block of rat-infested alleys and low-rent slums, his immediate choices were limited to crack-heads, traffickers—be they dealers in narcotics or skin—and vacant-eyed streetwalkers of both genders. More than one idiot eyeballed him as he strode the block in no particular direction. Someone was even stupid enough to flash the business end of a blade at him as he passed, but Niko just paused and gave the toothless scumbag a dimpled, fang-tipped grin of invitation and the threat was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Although he wasn’t opposed to confrontation in any form, fighting humans was a bit beneath him. He preferred more of a challenge. What he really itched to find right now was a Rogue. Last summer, Boston had been knee-deep in blood-addicted vampires. The fighting had been hard and heavy—with at least one tragic loss on the Order’s side— but Nikolai and the rest of the warriors had made it their mission to sweep the city clean.
Other metropolitan areas still lost the occasional civilian to Bloodlust, and Niko would have bet his left nut that Montreal was no different. But aside from the pimps, pushers, and prostitutes, this stretch of brick and asphalt was feeling about as dead as the crypt where he’d been forced to spend the day.
“Hey baby.” The female smiled at him from a shadowed doorway as he walked past. “You lookin’ for something specific, or just window-shoppin’?”
Nikolai grunted, but he paused. “I’m a specific kind of guy.”
“Well, maybe I got what you need.” She grinned at him and hopped off her perch on the concrete stoop. “Matter of fact, I’m sure I got just exactly what you need, sugar.”
She wasn’t a beauty, with her brittle, teased-up brassy hair, dull eyes, and sallow skin, but men again Nikolai didn’t expect he was going to be spending much time looking at her face. She smelled clean, if deodorant soap and hairspray could be considered clean-smelling scents. To Niko’s acute senses, the woman reeked of cosmetics and perfumes, with an undercurrent of recent narcotic use that seeped from her pores.
“Whattaya say?” she asked, sidling up to him now. “You wanna go someplace for a little while? If you got twenty bucks, I’ll give you half an hour.”
Nikolai stared at the pulse point ticking in the woman’s neck. It had been several days since he’d last fed. And he did have two hours of do-nothing ahead of him…
“Yeah,” he said, giving her a nod. “Let’s take a walk.”
She took his hand and led him around the corner of the building and down an empty alley.
Nikolai didn’t waste any time. As soon as they were secluded from potential onlookers, he took her head in his hands and bared her neck for his bite. Her startled cry was squashed the instant he sank his fangs into her carotid and began to drink.
The woman’s blood was unremarkable—the usual copper heaviness of human red cells, but laced with a bittersweet tang of the speedball she’d had before stepping out for her night’s work. Nikolai gulped down several mouthfuls, feeling the blood’s energy course through his body in a low vibration. It wasn’t unusual for a Breed male to get aroused by the act of feeding. The response was purely physical, an awakening of cells and muscles.
That his cock was fully erect now and straining for relief didn’t surprise him at all. It was the fact that his head was swimming with thoughts of a certain raven-haired female—a female he had no intention of seeing ever again—that made Niko rear back in alarm.
“Mmm, don’t stop,” his human companion moaned, pulling his mouth back to the wound at her neck. She too was feeling the effects of the feeding, enthralled as all humans became when held under the bite of the Breed. “Don’t stop, baby.”
Nikolai’s vision was swamped with amber fire as he clamped back down on her throat. He knew she wasn’t Renata, but as his hands skimmed up the woman’s bare legs and under the short denim skirt she wore, he pictured himself caressing Renata’s long, beautiful thighs. He imagined it was Renata’s blood that fed him. Renata’s body that responded so eagerly to his touch.
It was Renata’s fevered gasps that drove him as he ripped at the cheap thong panties with one hand and worked to free himself with the other.
He needed to be inside her.
He needed—
Holy hell.
A light breeze eddied through the alleyway, carrying with it the stench of vampires gone Rogue. And there was spilled blood too. Human blood. A damned lot of it, mixed with the vile odor of bleeding Rogues.
Nikolai froze with his hand still on his fly, shocked stupid in one blinding instant.
“Jesus Christ.”
What the fuck was going on?
He yanked the woman’s skirt back down and swept his tongue over her neck wound, sealing up his bite.
“I said, don’t st—”
Niko didn’t give her a chance to finish the thought. With a glance of his palm over her brow, he scrubbed her mind of the entire thing. “Get out of here,” he told her.
He was already jogging up the alley by the time she shook out of her daze and started moving. He followed his nose to a dilapidated building not far from where he’d been. The stench emanated from inside, a couple floors off the street.
Nikolai climbed the lightless stairwell to the second floor. His eyes were practically watering from the overwhelming stink of death that rolled out from under a closed door. His hand on the gun holstered at his hip, Niko approached the place. There was no sound on the other side of the battered, graffiti-tagged door. Only death, human and Breed. Niko turned the loose knob and braced himself for what he would find.
It had been a massacre.
An apparent junkie lay in a supine sprawl amid discarded syringes and other trash that littered the blood-soaked floor and a fouled mattress. The body was so ruined it was hardly recognizable as human, let alone a distinguishable gender. The other two bodies were savaged as well, but definitely Breed—without question, both of them Rogues judging by the size and stench of them alone.
Nikolai could guess what might have happened here: a lethal struggle over prey. This fight was fresh, maybe only minutes old. And the two dead suckheads wouldn’t have been able to shred each other so thoroughly before one or the other went down.
There had been at least one more Rogue involved in this scuffle.
If Niko was lucky the victor might still be in the area, licking his wounds. He hoped so, because he’d love to give the diseased bastard a taste of his 9mm’s custom rounds. Nothing said “Have a nice day” like a Rogue’s corrupted blood system going into allergic meltdown from a dose of poisonous titanium.
Nikolai went to the boarded-up window and tossed the crudely nailed panels aside. If he was looking for action, he’d just found it in spades. Below, on the street, stood an enormous Rogue. He was bloodied and battered, looking like ten kinds of hell.
But holy shit… he wasn’t alone.
Alexei Yakut was with him.
Incredibly, Lex and the Rogue walked toward a waiting sedan and got in.
“What the fuck are you up to?” Niko murmured under his breath as the car roared up the street.
He was about to leap out the open window and follow on foot when a shrill scream sounded behind him. A woman had wandered into the carnage and now gaped at him in terror, an accusing, shaky finger pointed in his direction. She screamed again, loud enough to wake every crackhead and dealer in the neighborhood.
Nikolai eyed the witness and the bloody evidence of a struggle that looked anything but human.
“Damn it,” he growled, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Lex’s car disappear around the corner. “It’s all right,” he told the shrieking banshee as he left the window and approached her. “You didn’t see a thing.”
He wiped her memory and shoved her out of the room. Then he took out a titanium blade and stuck it into the remains of one of the dead Rogues.
As the body began to sizzle and dissolve, Niko set about cleaning up the rest of the mess that Lex and his unlikely associate had left behind.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Renata stood at the counter of the lodge’s galley kitchen, a knife gripped loosely in her hand. “What kind of jelly do you want tonight—grape or strawberry?”
“Grape,” Mira replied. “No, wait—I want strawberry this time.”
She was perched on the edge of the wood countertop next to Renata, her legs swinging idly. Dressed in a purple T-shirt, faded blue jeans, and scuffed sneakers, Mira might have seemed like any other normal suburban little girl waiting on her dinner. But normal little girls weren’t made to eat the same thing, practically day in and day out. Normal little girls had families to love and care for them. They lived in nice houses on pretty, tree-lined streets, with bright kitchens and stocked pantries and mothers who knew how to cook endless wonderful meals.
At least, that’s what Renata imagined when she thought of the ideal picture of normal. She didn’t know from any kind of personal experience. As a child of the streets before Yakut found her and brought her to the lodge, Mira didn’t know what normal was either. But it was that wholesome, normal kind of life that Renata wished for the child, as futile a wish as it seemed, standing in Sergei Yakut’s dingy kitchen, next to a beat-up range that probably wouldn’t work even if it did have a gas line running to it.
Since Renata and Mira were the only ones at the lodge who ate food, Yakut had left it up to Renata to see that she and the child were regularly fed. Renata didn’t particularly care what she had for sustenance—food was food, a necessity of function, nothing more—but she hated not being able to treat Mira to something nice once in a while.
“Someday you and I are going to go out and have ourselves a real dinner, one with five entirely different courses. Plus dessert,” she added, slathering the strawberry jam over the slice of white bread. “Maybe we’ll have two desserts apiece.”
Mira smiled under the short black veil that fell to the tip of her little nose. “Do you think they’ll be chocolate desserts?”
“Definitely chocolate. Here you go,” she said, handing the plate to her. “PB&J, heavy on the J, and no crusts.”
Renata leaned back against the counter as Mira bit into the sandwich and ate like it was as delicious as any five-course meal she could imagine. “Don’t forget to drink your apple juice.”
“M-kay.”
Renata stabbed the plastic straw into the juice box and placed it next to Mira. Then she started putting things away, wiping down the counter. Every muscle tensed when she heard Lex’s voice in the other room.
He’d been gone since dusk. Renata hadn’t really missed him, but she had wondered what he’d been up to in the time since he’d left. The answer to that question came in the form of a drunken female cackle—several drunken females, by the sound of the laughter and squealing going on in the main area of the lodge.
Lex often brought human women home to serve as his blood Hosts and general entertainment. Sometimes he’d keep them for days at a time. Occasionally he’d share his spoils with the other guards, all of them using the women however they saw fit before scrubbing their memories and dumping them back into their lives. It sickened Renata to be under the same roof while Lex was in a party mood, but no more than it infuriated her that Mira had to be exposed—even peripherally—to his games as well.
“What’s going on out there, Rennie?” she asked.
“Finish your sandwich,” Renata told her when Mira stopped eating to listen to the ruckus in the other room. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Renata walked out of the galley and down the hallway toward the disruption.
“Drink up, ladies!” Lex shouted, dropping a box of liquor bottles on the leather sofa.
He wouldn’t be consuming the alcohol, nor the other party favors he’d procured. A couple of clear, rolled-up plastic bags, each fat with what was likely cocaine, were tossed out onto the table. The sound system came on, a bass beat throbbing behind crude hip-hop lyrics.
Lex grabbed the curvy brunette with the giddy cackle and brought her under his arm. “I told you we were going to have us some fun tonight! Come here and show me some proper gratitude.”
He certainly was in a rare, good mood. And no wonder. He’d come back with quite a haul: five young females dressed in tall heels, skimpy tops, and micro-short skirts. At first, Renata guessed them to be prostitutes, but on closer look she decided they were too clean, too fresh under their heavy makeup to be part of the street life. They were probably just naive club girls, unaware that the persuasive, attractive man who picked them up was actually something out of a nightmare.
“Gome in and meet my friends,” Lex told the giggling group of women as he motioned the other Breed males around to view his evening’s catch. There was a moment of palpable apprehension as the four muscle-bound, heavily armed guards leered hungrily at their human appetizers. Lex pushed three of the women toward the eager vampires. “Don’t be shy, ladies. This is a party, after all. Go say hello.”
Renata noticed he was keeping a tight hold on the two prettiest girls. Typical of Lex, he had obviously reserved the best for himself. Renata was about to turn around and go back to Mira in the kitchen—to try to ignore the bloody orgy that was about to begin—but before she took two steps away, Sergei Yakut came thundering out of his private quarters.
“Alexei.” Fury rolled off the elder vampire in waves of heat. He glared at Lex, his eyes flashing amber. “You’ve been gone for hours. Where were you?”
“I’ve been in the city Father.” He attempted a magnanimous smile, as if to say his time away from his duties hadn’t been entirely about serving his own selfish needs. “Look what I brought you.”
Lex pulled one of the females away from the guards and held her out for Yakut’s inspection. Yakut didn’t even spare a glance for the prize Lex offered. He stared only at the two women Lex was keeping for himself.
The Gen One grunted. “You would scrape shit off your boot heels and tell me it’s gold?”
“Never,” Lex replied. “Father, I would never so much as consider—”
“Good. These two will do,” he said, indicating Lex’s females.
As irate as he had to be, as humiliated as he must have felt by the public jab to his pride, Lex didn’t say a word. He dropped his gaze and waited in silence as Yakut collected his two female companions and strode with them toward his private quarters.
“I expect not to be disturbed,” Yakut ordered darkly. “Not for any reason.”
Lex gave a nod of restrained obeisance. “Yes, Father. Of course. Whatever you wish.”
Nikolai heard music and loud voices before he was even five hundred feet out from the lodge. He stole in close, moving through the woods like a ghost, past Lex’s car parked around back, the hood still warm from the drive out of the city.
Niko wasn’t sure what he was going to find. He wasn’t expecting a damned party, but that’s what seemed to be going on inside the main house. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree, light pouring out of the windows of the great room where someone was apparently entertaining a number of females. Hard-core rap vibrated all the way into the earth beneath Nikolai’s boots as he drew up to the side of the building and peered inside.
Lex was there, all right. He and the rest of Yakut’s bodyguards, gathered together in the rustic hall. Three young women danced on the pelt rugs in just their panties, all of them clearly intoxicated, based on the amount of liquor and narcotics spread out on the table nearby. The four Breed guards howled and cheered them on, the vampires probably just seconds away from pouncing on the unsuspecting females.
Lex, meanwhile, sat in a pensive slouch on the leather sofa, his dark eyes fixed on the women even though his thoughts seemed to be miles away. There was no outward sign of the Rogue Lex had been cozying up to in the city. No sign of Sergei Yakut either, and the fact that his entire security detail was tied up with this convenient little peep show made Niko’s warrior instincts switch to instant red alert.
“What the hell are you up to?” Niko mouthed under his breath.
But he knew the answer even before he started moving for the rear of the lodge, where Yakut kept his private chambers. Where a subtle yet persistent odor confirmed Niko’s suspicions with the worst kind of dread.
Goddamn.
The Rogue was here.
Nikolai smelled freshly spilled blood too, basic human stock, the scent of it almost overwhelming the closer he got to Yakut’s quarters. Blood and sex, to be exact, as if the Gen One had been gorging himself on both for some time.
A sudden scream rent the night.
Female. A sound of total terror, coming from within Yakut’s chambers.
Then, muffled gunfire.
Pop, pop, pop!
Nikolai flew through a rear door of the lodge, hardly surprised to find it unlocked to the outside and flapping open. He crashed into Yakut’s room, his semiauto pistol gripped in hand and ready to unload its chamber full of titanium high-test rounds.
The scene that greeted him was total carnage.
On the bed was Sergei Yakut, sprawled naked atop a female who was pinned beneath his lifeless body, her throat torn open where the vampire had been feeding on her just a second before. She wasn’t moving, and there was no telling the color of the woman’s skin or hair because most of her was currently saturated in blood—her own and Yakut’s.
Half of the Gen One’s face was missing. Sergei Yakut’s head was little more than shattered bone, tissue, and gore from the trio of bullets that had been shot point-blank into the back of his skull. He was dead, and the Rogue who killed him was too gripped by Bloodlust to realize Nikolai’s presence. The suckhead had put down the gun he’d used to kill Yakut and was currently getting busy with another naked female who’d been trapped in the corner of the room. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and she wasn’t moving. Shit, she wasn’t breathing either, although the Rogue kept drinking from her, savaging her neck with his huge fangs.
Niko moved in behind the suckhead and put the muzzle of his Beretta against the big, shaggy head. He squeezed the trigger—two dead-on, titanium-laced blasts into the bastard’s brain. The Rogue dropped to the floor, writhing and spasming from the hit. The titanium kicked in fast, and the dying vampire let loose with a howl so loud and otherworldly it shook like thunder in the old wooden rafters of the lodge.
Renata flew out of the kitchen with her pistol drawn. Her battle senses had gone as taut as piano wire at the low, distant crack of gunshots—and the inhuman howl that followed—coming from elsewhere in the lodge.
Music was still blaring in the great room. Lex’s visitors were no longer clothed and raucous from the continued free-flowing drugs and alcohol. The women were all over the guards and one another as well, and from the rapt look in the Breed males’ hungering eyes, they wouldn’t have noticed if a bomb went off in the other room.
“Idiots,” Renata accused under her breath. “Didn’t any of you hear that?”
Lex looked up, concern darkening his expression, but she wasn’t really waiting for an answer from him. She ran toward the hallway and Yakut’s private chambers. The hall was dark, the air thick. Everything too silent back here. Too still.
Death hung like a shroud, almost choking her as she neared the open door of the vampire’s quarters.
Sergei Yakut was no longer alive; Renata felt that truth in her bones. Gunpowder, blood, and an overwhelming, sickly sweet scent of rot and decay warned her that she was about to walk into something awful. Though nothing could have truly prepared her for what she saw as she pivoted around the doorjamb, gun raised and gripped in both hands. Ready to kill whoever stood in its path.
The sight of so much death, so much blood and gore, took her aback. It was everywhere: the bed, the floor, the walls.
And it was on Sergei Yakut’s apparent killer too.
Nikolai stood in the center of the carnage, his face and dark shirt splattered scarlet. In his hand was a large semiautomatic pistol, the nose of the blunt black barrel still smoking from its recent discharge.
“You?” The word slipped past her lips, shock and disbelief like a ball of ice in her gut. She glanced at Yakut’s body—his obliterated remains—sprawled across the bed on top of a lifeless female. “My God,” she whispered, stunned to see him here at the lodge again, but even more shocked by the rest of what she was seeing. “You… you killed him.”
“No.” The warrior shook his head somberly. “Not me, Renata. There was a Rogue in here with Yakut.” He indicated a large mass of smoldering cinders on the floor—the source of the offending stench. “I killed the Rogue, but I was too late to save Yakut. I’m sorry—”
“Put down your weapon,” she told him, uninterested in apologies. She didn’t need them. Renata felt some pity for Yakut’s violent end, a sense of stunned incredulity that he was actually dead. But no sorrow. None of that absolved Nikolai of his apparent guilt. She steadied her aim on him and cautiously stepped farther into the room. “Put your gun down. Now.”
He kept his grip firm on the 9mm pistol. “I can’t do that, Renata. I won’t, not so long as Lex is still breathing.”
She frowned, confused. “What about Lex?”
“This murder was his doing, not mine. He brought the Rogue here. He brought the women to distract Yakut and the guards, so the Rogue could get close enough to kill.”
Renata listened but kept her gun locked on target. Lex was a snake, sure, but a murderer? Would he actually take steps to kill his own father?
Just then, Lex and the other guards approached from up the hall.
“What’s going on? Is something wrong in—”
Lex fell silent as he reached the open doorway to his father’s chambers. In her peripheral vision Renata saw him look from Yakut’s body on the bed to Nikolai. He staggered back a half-pace, not so much as breathing. Then he exploded, total rage. “You son of a bitch! You goddamned murdering son of a bitch!”
Lex lunged, but it was a halfhearted attempt, one he abandoned completely as Nikolai’s pistol swung in his direction. The warrior didn’t flinch, not his gaze nor a single muscle. He was utterly calm as he stared at Lex down the barrel of his weapon, even while Renata’s gun and those of the other guards were trained on him. “I saw you in the city tonight, Lex. I was there. The crackhouse. The bait you laid out to attract Rogue vampires. The suckhead you brought back with you here tonight… I saw it all.”
Lex scoffed. “Fuck you and your lies! You saw no such thing.”
“What did you have to promise that Rogue in exchange for your father’s head? Money doesn’t matter to blood addicts, so whose life did you offer up as the price—Renata’s? Maybe that tender little child instead?”
Renata’s chest went tight at the thought. She dared a quick glance at Lex and found him sneering coldly at the warrior, giving a slow shake of his head.
“You’d say anything right now to save your own neck. It won’t work. Not when you yourself threatened my father’s life not even twenty-four hours ago.” Lex turned to look at Renata. “You heard him say as much, didn’t you?”
Reluctantly she nodded, recalling how Nikolai had given Sergei Yakut a very public warning that someone needed to shut him down.
Now Nikolai was back and Yakut was dead.
Mother Mary, she thought, glancing once more to the lifeless body of the vampire who’d kept her practically a prisoner for the past two years. He was dead.
“My father wasn’t in any kind of danger at all until the Order came into the picture,” Lex was saying. “One failed attempt on his life, now this… this bloodbath. You were the one who lay in wait to make your move. You and the Rogue you brought with you tonight, waiting for the chance to strike. I can only guess that you came here looking to kill my father from the start.”
“No,” Nikolai said, a flash of amber lighting his wintry blue eyes. “The one who needs killing is you, Lex.”
In a split-second reaction, just as she saw the tendons in his arm flex as his finger began to depress the trigger of his gun, Renata hit Nikolai with a hard mental blast. As little affection as she felt for Alexei, she could not stand more death tonight. Nikolai roared, spine arching, face contorting with pain.
More effective than bullets, the blast took him down to his knees in an instant. The other guards stormed into the room and grabbed his gun and the rest of his weapons. The barrels of four pistols were trained on the warrior’s head, awaiting kill orders. One of the guards cocked the hammer back, eager for more bloodshed even though the room was ripe with death already.
“Stand down,” Renata told them. She looked to Lex, whose face was tight with anger, his eyes avid and glittering, his sharp fangs visible between his parted lips. “Tell them to stand down, Lex. Killing him now will do nothing but make all of us murderers in cold blood too.”
Incredibly, it was Nikolai who began to chuckle. He lifted his head, an obvious effort while the blast still held him down. “He has to kill me, Renata, because he can’t risk a witness. Isn’t that right, Lex? Can’t have somebody walking around who knows your dirty secret.”
Lex drew his own pistol now and strolled right up to Nikolai to put the nose of the gun up against the warrior’s forehead. He snarled, his arm quivering with the ferocity of his rage.
Renata went stock-still, horrified that he might actually pull the trigger. She was torn, part of her wanting to believe what Nikolai had said—that he was innocent—and afraid to believe him. What he said about Lex simply could not be true.
“Lex,” she said, the only sound in the room. “Lex… do not do this.”
She was less than a breath away from hitting him with some of what she gave Nikolai when the gun slowly lowered.
Lex growled, finally easing off. “I wish a slower death on this bastard than I am capable of giving him. Take him to the main hall and restrain him,” he told the guards. “Then someone get in here and look after my father’s body. One of you scrub those females in the other room and dump them off the property. I want this bloody mess cleaned up immediately.”
Lex turned a dark look on Renata as the guards began dragging Nikolai out of the room. “If he tries anything at all, unleash all you’ve got and lay the son of a bitch flat.”
CHAPTER
Thirteen
Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur Fabien. There is a telephone call for you, sir. From a Monsieur Alexei Yakut.”
Edgar Fabien gave a dismissive wave to the Breed male who served as his personal secretary and continued to admire the crisp cut of his custom-tailored slacks in the wardrobe mirror. He was being fitted for a new suit, and, at the moment, nothing Alexei Yakut had to say to him was important enough to warrant an interruption.
“Tell him Fm in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I have already informed him that you were unavailable. He says it’s an urgent matter. One that requires your immediate personal attention.”
Fabien’s reflection glowered back at him from under his pale, manicured brows. He didn’t attempt to hide the outward signs of his rising irritation, which showed in the amber glint of his eyes and in the sudden, churning colors of the dermaglyphs that swirled and arced over his bare chest and shoulders.
“Enough,” he snapped at the expert tailor sent over from Givenchy’s downtown store. The human backed off at once, collecting his pins and measuring tape and obediently slinking away at his master’s command. He belonged to Fabien—one of many Minions the second-generation Breed vampire employed around the city. “Get out of here, both of you.”
Fabien stepped off the wardrobe dais and stalked over to his desk phone. He waited until both servants had left the room and the door was closed behind them.
With a snarl, he picked up the receiver and punched the blinking button that would connect him to Alexei Yakut’s holding call. “Yes,” he hissed coldly. “What is this urgent matter of yours that simply could not wait?”
“My father is dead.”
Fabien rocked back on his heels, truly taken off guard by the news. He exhaled a sigh meant to sound of boredom. “How convenient for you, Alexei. Shall I offer my congratulations along with my condolences?”
Sergei Yakut’s heir apparent ignored the jab. “There was an intruder at the lodge tonight. Somehow he managed to sneak into the place. He killed my father in his bed, in cold blood. I heard the disturbance and tried to intervene, but… well. Unfortunately, I was too late to save him. I am grief-stricken, of course—”
Fabien grunted. “Of course.”
“—but I knew that you would want to be notified of the crime. And I knew that you and the Enforcement Agency would want to come out here immediately to arrest my father’s assailant.”
Every cell in Fabien’s body stilled. “What are you saying—that you have someone in custody? Who?”
A low chuckle on the other end of the line. “I see I finally have your attention, Fabien. What would you say if I told you that I have a member of the Order subdued and waiting for you here at the lodge? I’m sure there are some individuals who would be of the mind that one less warrior around to contend with, the better.”
“You’re not actually trying to convince me that this warrior is responsible for killing Sergei Yakut, are you?”
“I’m telling you that my father is dead and I am in command of his domain now. Fm telling you that I have a member of the Order in my keeping, and I am willing to hand him over to you. A gift, if you will.”
Edgar Fabien was quiet for a long moment, considering the sizable prize Alexei Yakut was presenting him. The Order and its vigilante members had few allies within the Enforcement Agency. Fewer still within the private circle to which Fabien belonged. “And what are you expecting in return for this … gift?”
“I’ve already told you, when we met before. I want in. I want a piece of whatever action it is that you’re dealing. A big piece, you understand?” He chuckled, so very full of himself. “You need me on your side, Fabien. I should think that’s obvious to you now.”
The last thing Edgar Fabien or any of his associates needed on their side was a grasping pissant like Alexei Yakut. He was a loose cannon, one that would have to be dealt with carefully. If Fabien had his druthers, he’d opt for swift extermination, but there was someone else who ultimately would need to make that call.
As for the captive member of the Order? Now, that was intriguing. That was a boon well worth considering, and the many appealing possibilities it presented made Fabien’s four-hundred-year-old heart beat a little faster.
“I will have to make a few… arrangements,” he said. “It may take me an hour or so to line up resources and make the drive out to the lodge to retrieve the prisoner.”
“One hour,” Alexei Yakut agreed eagerly. “Don’t keep me waiting any longer than that.”
Fabien bit back his acid reply and ended the call with a terse “I will see you then.”
He sat down on the edge of his desk and looked out at the nighttime skyline twinkling in the distance beyond his Darkhaven estate. Then he walked to his safe and twisted the combination lock, turned the crank handle to open the secured storage box.
Inside was a cell phone reserved for emergency calls only. He hit a programmed number and waited for the encrypted signal to connect.
When the airless voice on the other end answered, Fabien said, “We have a situation.”
Heavy chains circled his bare torso, binding him to a rough-hewn wooden chair. Nikolai felt similar restraints on his hands, which were caught behind him, and his feet, which were bound at the ankles and held hard against the chair legs.
He’d taken a hell of a beating, and not just from the debilitating mind blast he’d gotten courtesy of Renata. Thanks to that crippling blow, he had been in and out of consciousness for some time, struggling just to lift his eyelids even now. Of course, part of the problem there was that his face was bruised and battered, his eyes swollen, lips cracked open and bitter with the taste of his own blood. He’d been too weak to put up much of a fight when Lex and his guards had worked him over like a punching bag as they stripped him down to his skivvies and hauled him into the lodge’s great room to await his fate.
Nikolai didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there. Long enough that his hands felt numb from lack of circulation. Long enough to have noticed when Renata had come through the room a while ago, protectively ushering Mira away from the whole ugly scene. He had watched her from under a hank of his sweat-soaked hair, seeing the pain and tension in her face as she’d shot a baleful glance in his direction.
Her reverb was probably hitting her pretty hard by now, he guessed. Niko told himself that the twinge he felt was just another muscle screaming from abuse; he couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to feel any kind of sympathy for the female’s suffering He couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to care what she thought of him—that she might actually think he’d done what Lex accused him of—but damn it, he did care. His frustration at not being able to talk to Renata only amplified his physical pain and fury.
Across the room from him, the four guards were examining his weapons and the handmade hollowpoint titanium rounds that were one of Nikolai’s personal creations. They had all of his gear laid out on a trestle table, well out of his reach. Niko’s cell phone—his link to the Order—lay in shards on the floor. Lex had taken great pleasure in smashing it under his boot heel before he left Nikolai to the supervision of his guards.
One of the beefy Breed males said something that made the other three laugh before he pivoted around with Niko’s semiauto and pointed it in his direction. Nikolai didn’t flinch. In fact, he barely breathed, watching from within the puffy slit of his left eye, every muscle slumped as if he were still unconscious and unaware of his surroundings.
“Whattaya say we wake him up?” joked the guard with the gun in his hand. He swaggered toward Niko, temptingly within arm’s reach, if Niko’s arms hadn’t been heavily secured behind him. The nose of the 9mm lowered slowly, down past his chest, then past his abdomen too. “I say we castrate this murdering piece of shit. Blow his balls off and let the Enforcement Agency take him away in pieces.”
“Kiril, stop being a jackass,” one of the others warned. “Lex said we couldn’t touch him.”
“Lex is a pussy.” Polished black steel grated with a cold snick as Kiril chambered a round. “In two seconds, this warrior’s going to be nothing but a pussy too.”
Nikolai held himself very still as the gun pressed snugly against his groin. Part of his patience was born of genuine fear, as he was rather fond of his manly bits and had no wish to lose them. But overriding even that was the understanding that his opportunities to turn this situation in his favor were few and fleeting. He had shaken off most of the internal effects of Renata’s talent, but he couldn’t be sure of his physical strength unless he tried it.
And if he tried it now and failed… well, he didn’t want to contemplate the odds of walking away with his manhood intact if he tried to break out of his bonds and succeeded only in upsetting trigger-happy Kiril.
A hard palm cuffed the side of his skull. “You in there, warrior? I got something for you. Time to wake up.”
Eyes closed to conceal their change from blue to amber, Nikolai let his head loll bonelessly with the blow. But inside of him, fury was beginning to kindle in his belly. He had to hold it at bay. Couldn’t let Kiril or the others see the change in his dermaglyphs and risk telegraphing the fact that he was very much awake and aware and totally pissed off.
“Wake up,” Kiril growled.
He started to lift Niko’s chin, but then a noise outside the lodge drew his attention away. Gravel spraying and crunching underneath the tires of approaching vehicles. A fleet of them, by the sound of it.
“The Agency is here,” one of the other guards announced.
Kiril backed away from Nikolai, but he took his time disarming the pistol. Outside, the vehicles were slowing down, coming to a halt. Doors opened. Boots hit the gravel drive as the Darkhavens’ policing agents poured out. Nikolai counted more than half a dozen pairs of feet moving toward the lodge.
Shit.
If he didn’t get himself out of this disaster pretty damn quick, he was going to wake up in the hands of the Enforcement Agency. And for a member of the Order, a group the Agency had long wished extinct, arrest by them would make Lex and his guards’ treatment seem like a trip to a spa. If he fell into the Agency’s hands now— particularly as an accused killer of a Gen One—Niko knew without question he was as good as dead.
Lex greeted the new arrivals like he was holding court for visiting dignitaries. “This way,” he called from somewhere outside the lodge. “I have the bastard contained and waiting for you in the hall.”
“He has the bastard contained,” Kiril muttered sourly. “I doubt Lex could contain his own ass if he was using both hands.”
The other guards chuckled cautiously.
“Come on,” Kiril said. “Let’s get the warrior on his feet so the Agency can take him out of here.”
Hope surged in Niko’s chest. If they freed him of the restraints, he might have a slim chance of escaping. Very slim, considering the approaching pound of boots and firepower headed in his direction from outside the lodge, but slim was a hell of a lot better than none.
He kept up his lifeless slump in the chair, even as Kiril squatted in front of him and unlocked the chains around his ankles. Impatience gnawed at him. Nikolai’s every impulse was to bring his knee up and crack the guard under the jaw.
He had to clamp his molars down onto his tongue to keep himself unmoving, breathing as shallowly as he could, waiting for the better opportunity when the guard then went around the back of him and picked up the lock binding the chains on his torso and wrists. A twist of the key. A crisp clack of carbide steel as the lock fell open.
Nikolai flexed his fingers, took a deep, unconstricted breath.
He opened his eyes. Grinned at Kiril’s comrades the instant before he brought his arms up and around and grabbed onto Kiril’s big head in both hands.
In fluid motion, he gave a violent twist and vaulted up off the chair. The chains fell away and Nikolai was on his feet with the loud snap of Kiril’s breaking neck.
“Holy Christ!” shouted one of the remaining guards.
Someone fired a wild shot. The other two scrabbled for their weapons.
Niko yanked Kiril’s gun out of its holster and returned fire, dropping one guard with a bullet to the head.
The commotion brought shouts of alarm from the hallway outside. Boots started pounding. A small army of Enforcement Agents storming in to take control of the situation.
Damn it.
Not much time left to make a break for it before he would be staring down the barrels of no less than half a dozen guns—a few seconds at most.
Nikolai hauled the dead bulk of Kiril’s body around in front of him and held it there like a shield. The corpse took a couple of quick hits as Niko started moving backward, toward the window on the other side of the long room.
In the open doorway now, a crowd of black-clad Agents in SWAT gear, all of them bristling with some fairly serious-looking semiauto firepower.
“Freeze, asshole!”
Niko shot a look over his shoulder at the window a few feet behind him. It was his best, only option. Surrendering now and going out peacefully with his Agency executioners was an alternative he refused to consider.
With a roar, Niko grabbed two fistfuls of Kiril’s deadweight and swung the body into the glass. He held on as the window shattered around him, using the forward momentum of the vampire’s corpse to carry him off his feet and through the makeshift hole.
He heard a shouted command behind him—an order for one of the Agents to open fire.
He felt cool night air on his face, in his sweat-dampened hair.
Then, before he could so much as register the smallest taste of freedom—
Pow! Pow! Pow!
His bare back lit up as though it were on fire. His bones and muscles went limp, melting away inside him as a surge of bile and acid scorched the back of his throat. Nikolai’s vision swam toward a sudden, consuming darkness. He felt the earth come up fast beneath him as he and dead Kiril tumbled out onto the ground beneath the window.
Then he felt no more.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Lex stood with Edgar Fabien under the eaves of the main lodge, watching as the Enforcement Agents shoved the warrior’s body into the back of an unmarked black van.
“How long will the sedatives hold him?” Lex asked, disappointed to have learned that the weapon Fabien had ordered to open fire on Nikolai contained tranquilizer darts instead of bullets.
“I don’t expect the prisoner will wake up until long after he is securely housed at the Terrabonne containment facility.”
Lex glanced over at the Darkhaven leader. “A containment facility? I thought those places were used for processing and rehabilitating blood addicts—some kind of Enforcement Agency holding tank for Rogue vampires.”
Fabien’s smile was tight. “No need to trouble yourself with the details, Alexei. You did the right thing in contacting me about the warrior. Obviously an individual as dangerous as he has proven to be warrants special consideration. I will personally see to it that he is handled in the proper manner. I’m sure you have enough on your mind during this time of unimaginable, tragic loss.”
Lex grunted. “There is still the matter of our… agreement.”
“Yes,” Fabien replied, letting the word trail out slowly between his thin lips. “You’ve surprised me, Alexei, I must admit that. There are some introductions I would like to make on your behalf. Very important introductions. Naturally this will require the utmost discretion.”
“Yes, of course.” Lex could hardly contain his eagerness, his greed to know more—to know everything there was to know—right here and now. “Who do I need to meet? I can be at your place first thing tomorrow night—”
Fabien’s condescending chuckle grated. “No, no. Fm not talking about anything as public as that. This would require a special meeting. A secret meeting, with a few of my associates. Our associates,” he amended with a conspiratorial look.
A private audience with Edgar Fabien and his peers. Lex was practically salivating at the very idea. “Where? And when?”
“Three nights from now. I will send my car to pick you up and bring you to the location as my personal guest.”
“I look forward to it,” Lex said.
He offered his hand to the Darkhaven male—his powerful new ally—but Fabien’s gaze had strayed past Lex’s shoulder to the broken window of the lodge’s great room. Those shrewd eyes narrowed, and Fabien’s head cocked to the side.
“You have a child out here?” he asked, something dark gleaming in his raptorlike gaze.
Lex turned, just in time to see Mira attempting to duck out of sight, her short black veil swinging with the quick movement. “The brat served my father, or so he liked to think,” he said dismissively “Ignore her. She is nothing.”
Fabien’s pale brows rose slightly. “Is she a Breedmate?”
“Yes,” Lex said. “An orphan my father picked up some months ago.”
Fabien made a low noise in the back of his throat, somewhere between a grunt and a purr. “What is the girl’s talent?”
Now it was Fabien who seemed unable to hide his avid interest. He was still watching the open window, craning his neck and searching as though willing Mira to appear there again.
Lex considered that eager look for a moment, then said, “Would you like to see what she can do?”
Fabien’s glittering gaze was answer enough. Lex led the way back into the lodge and found Mira creeping down the hallway toward her bedroom. He went up and grabbed her by the arm, wheeling her around to face the Darkhaven leader. She whimpered a little at his rough handling, but Lex ignored the brat’s complaining. He pulled off her veil and pushed her in front of Edgar Fabien.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded. When she didn’t immediately comply, Lex persuaded her with a rap of his knuckles against the back of her small blond head. “Open them, Mira.”
He knew she had because in the next moment, Edgar Fabien’s expression went from one of moderate inquisitiveness to outright wonder and amazement. He stared, transfixed, his jaw slack.
Then he smiled. A broad, awestruck grin. “My God,” he breathed, unable to tear his gaze away from Mira’s witchy eyes.
“What do you see?” Lex asked.
It took Fabien some time before he answered. “Is it… could this possibly be my future I am looking at? My destiny?”
Lex pulled Mira away from him now, not missing Fabien’s reflexive grab at the girl, as though he wasn’t quite ready to release her yet. “Mira’s eyes do indeed reflect future events,” he said, placing the short veil back over her head. “She is quite a remarkable child.”
“A minute ago you said she was nothing,” Fabien reminded him. Narrowed, assessing eyes traveled over the girl. “What would you be willing to take for her?”
Lex saw Mira’s head snap in his direction, but his attention was fixed solidly on the transaction suddenly laid out in front of him. “Two million,” he said, tossing the figure out casually, as if it were a trivial sum. “Two million dollars and she is yours.”
“Done,” Fabien said. “Phone my secretary with a bank account number and the funds will be there within the hour.”
Mira reached out and grabbed Lex’s arm. “But I don’t want to go anywhere with him. I don’t want to leave Rennie—”
“There, there, now, sweetheart,” Fabien cooed. He stroked his palm over the top of her head. “Go to sleep, child. No more fussing. Sleep now.”
Mira fell back, caught in the vampire’s trance. Fabien snatched her into his arms and cradled her like a baby. “A pleasure doing business with you, Alexei.”
Lex nodded. “And with you,” he replied, following the Darkhaven leader out of the lodge and waiting as he and the girl disappeared into a dark sedan that idled in the drive.
As the fleet of vehicles rolled out, Lex considered the evening’s surprising turn of events. His father was dead. Lex was free from blame and poised to take control of all that he had deserved for so long. He would soon be ushered into Edgar Fabien’s elite circle of power, and he was suddenly two million dollars wealthier.
Not bad for a night’s work.
Renata turned her head to the side on her pillow and cracked one eye open, a small test to see if the reverb had finally passed. Her skull felt like it had been hollowed out and stuffed with wet cotton, but that was a major improvement over the hammer-and-anvil agony that had been her companion for the past few hours.
A tiny pinprick of daylight shone in through a small weevil hole in the pine shutter. It was morning. Outside her room, the lodge was quiet. So quiet that for a second she wondered if she’d just woken up from a horrible dream.
But in her heart, she knew it was all real. Sergei Yakut was dead, killed in a bloody assault in his own bed. All the grisly, gore-soaked images playing through her mind had actually happened. And most disturbing of all, it was Nikolai who stood accused and was arrested for the murder.
Regret over that gnawed at Renata’s conscience. With the benefit of a clear head and being some hours removed from the blood and chaos of the moment, she had to wonder if she might have been too hasty to doubt him. Maybe they all had been too hasty to condemn him—Lex in particular.
Suspicion that Lex might have had some role in his father’s death—as Nikolai had insisted—put a knot of unease in her stomach.
And then there was poor Mira, far too young to be exposed to so much violence and danger. A mercenary part of her wondered if they both might be better off now. Yakut’s death had released Renata of his hold on her. Mira was free too. Maybe this was the chance they both needed—a chance to get somewhere far away from the lodge and its many horrors.
Oh, God. Dare she even wish it?
Renata sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed. Hope buoyed her, swelling large in her chest.
They could leave. Without Yakut to track her down, without him alive and able to use his link to her by blood, she was finally free. She could take Mira and leave this place, once and for all.
“Mother Mary,” she whispered, clasping her hands together in a desperate prayer. “Please, give us this chance. Let me have this chance—for the sake of that innocent child.”
Renata leaned up near the wall she shared with Mira’s bedroom. She rapped her knuckles lightly on the wood panels, waiting to hear the girl’s answering knock.
Only silence.
She knocked again. “Mira, are you awake, kiddo?”
No answer at all. Only a lengthening quiet that felt like a death knell.
Renata was still wearing her clothes from last night, a sleep-wrinkled long-sleeve black T-shirt and dark denim jeans. She threw on a pair of lug-sole ankle boots and hurried out into the hallway. Mira’s door was just a few steps down … and it stood ajar.
“Mira?” she called, walking inside and taking a quick look around.
The bed was unmade and rumpled from where the child had been at one point during the night, but there was no sign of her. Renata pivoted and raced to the bathroom they shared at the other end of the hall.
“Mira? Are you in there, mouse?” She opened the door and found the small room empty. Where could she have gone? Renata spun around and headed back up the paneled corridor toward the main living area of the lodge, a terrible panic beginning to rise up her throat. “Mira!”
Lex and a couple of guards were seated around the table in the great room as Renata ran in from the hallway. He spared her only the briefest glance then went back to talking with the other males.
“Where is she?” Renata demanded. “What have you done with Mira? I swear to God, Lex, if you’ve hurt her—”
He pinned her with a scathing look. “Where’s your respect, female? I have just come back in from releasing my father’s body to the sun. This is a day of mourning. I’ll not hear a word of your bleating until I’m damned good and ready.”
“To hell with you, and your false mourning,” Renata seethed, charging toward him. It was nearly impossible to keep from hitting him with a blast of her mind’s power, but the two guards who rose on either side of Lex, drawing their weapons on her, helped to keep her anger in check. “Tell me what you did, Lex. Where is she?”
“I sold her.” The reply was so casual, he might have been discussing an old pair of shoes.
“You… you did what?” Renata’s lungs squeezed, losing so much air she could hardly draw another breath. “You can’t be serious! Sold her to who—those men who came for Nikolai?”
Lex smiled, gave her a vague shrug of admission.
“You bastard! You disgusting pig!” The total, ugly reality of all that Lex had done crashed down on her. Not only what he’d done to Mira, but to his own father, and, as she saw with awful clarity now, what he’d done to Nikolai too. “My God. Everything he said about you was the truth, wasn’t it? You were the one responsible for Sergei’s death, not Nikolai. It was you who brought in the Rogue. You planned the whole thing—”
“Be careful with your accusations, female.” Lex’s voice was a brittle snarl. “I am the one in command here now. Make no mistake, your life belongs to me. Piss me off and I can have you erased from existence as easily as I sent that warrior to his death.”
Oh, God… no. Shock blew through her chest in a chill ache. “He is dead?”
“He will be soon enough,” Lex said. “Or wishing he was, once the good doctors in Terrabonne have their fun with him.”
“What are you talking about? What doctors? I thought you had him arrested.”
Lex chuckled. “The warrior is on his way to a containment facility run by the Enforcement Agency. Safe to say that no one will hear from him ever again.”
Contempt boiled up in Renata for all that she was hearing, and for her own role in seeing Nikolai wrongfully charged. Now both he and Mira were gone, and Lex stood there grinning with smug vanity for the deception he’d orchestrated. “You disgust me. You’re a fucking monster, Lex. You are a sickening coward.”
She took a step toward him and Lex gave the guards a jerk of his chin. They blocked her, two huge vampires glowering at her. Daring her to make a reckless move.
Renata eyed them, seeing in those hard gazes the years of animosity that this group of Breed males felt for her— animosity coming most intensely from Lex himself They hated her. Hated her strength, and it was clear that any one of them would welcome the opportunity to put a bullet in her head.
“Get her out of my sight,” Lex ordered. “Take the bitch to her room and lock her in for the rest of the day. She can provide our night’s entertainment.”
Renata didn’t let the guards within arm’s reach of her. As they moved to grab her, she swept them each with a sharp mental jolt. They shouted and leapt away, recoiling from the pain.
But no sooner had they dropped back did Lex spring on her, fully transformed and spitting with fury. Hard fingers curled into her shoulders. His body weight slammed her backward, up off her feet. He was furious, pushing her like she was nothing but feathers. His strength and speed propelled her with him across the floor and into the shuttered window on the far wall.
Solid, unmovable logs crashed against her spine and thighs. Renata’s head cracked back against the thick shutters with the impact. Her breath left her on a broken gasp. When she opened her eyes, Lex’s face loomed right up against hers, his thin pupils seething outrage from within the center of his fiery amber irises. He brought one hand up and caught her jaw in a bruising grasp. Forced her head to the side. His fangs were enormous, sharp as daggers and bared dangerously near her throat.
“That was a very stupid thing to do,” he growled, letting those pointed teeth graze her skin as he spoke. “I should bleed you out for that. In fact, I think I will—”
Renata summoned every ounce of power she had and turned it loose on him, blasting Lex’s mind in a long, ruthless wave of anguish.
“Aaagh!” His scream rang out like a banshee’s wail.
And still Renata kept blasting him. Pouring pain into his head until he released her and crumbled to the floor in a boneless sprawl.
“Se-seize her!” he sputtered to his guards, who were recovering now from the smaller strikes Renata had dealt them.
One of them raised his gun on her. She blasted him, then gave the second guard another dose as well.
Damn it, she had to get out of there. Couldn’t risk using any more of her power when she’d pay dearly for every strike once her reverb hit. And she wouldn’t have long before the crippling wave roared up on her.
Renata spun around, broken glass crunching under her boots from last night’s chaos. She felt a small breeze cutting through the locked shutters. Realization dawned: There was no window behind her, only freedom. She took hold of the sturdy wood panels and gave a hard yank. The hinges groaned but didn’t quite give way.
“Kill her, you fucking imbeciles!” Lex gasped from behind her. “Shoot the bitch!”
No, Renata thought, desperate as she pulled on the stubborn wood.
She couldn’t let him stop her. She had to get out of there. She had to find Mira, take her somewhere safe. She’d promised her, after all. She’d made a promise to that child and God help her, she would not fail.
With a cry, Renata put all her muscle and weight into tearing down the shutters. Finally they loosened. Adrenaline coursing through her, she ripped them free completely and threw the shutters aside.
Sunlight poured over her. Blinding, brilliant, it washed into the great room of the lodge. Lex and the other vampires shrieked, hissing as they scrambled to shield their sensitive eyes and move out of the scorching path of the light.
Renata climbed out and hit the ground running. Lex’s car sat on the gravel drive, doors unlocked, keys dangling from the ignition. She hopped in, turned over the engine, and gunned it into the certain—but temporary—safety of daylight.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
The most recent round of torture had ended a couple of hours ago, but Nikolai’s body tensed in reflex when he heard the soft click of the electronic lock on the door of his room. He didn’t have to guess where he was—the clinical white walls and the fleet of medical apparatus flanking his wheeled bed was clue enough to tell him that he’d been taken to one of the Enforcement Agency’s containment facilities.
The industrial-grade steel restraints clamped tight at his wrists, chest, and ankles told him that his current personal accommodations were courtesy of the Rogue treatment and rehabilitation wing of the facility. Which, in case there had been any question before, meant that he was as good as dead. Like the Breed equivalent of a Roach Motel, once you strolled through these doors, you never came back.
Not that his captors intended to let him enjoy his stay for any length of time. Nikolai got the distinct impression that their patience with him was near its end. They’d beaten him nearly unconscious after the tranqs wore off, working him over to get his confession to having killed Sergei Yakut. When that didn’t get them anywhere, they started in with tasers and other creative electronics, all the while keeping him drugged enough that he could feel every jolt and prod yet too sedated to fight back.
The worst of his tormentors was the Breed male coming into the room now. Niko had heard one of the Enforcement Agents call him Fabien, spoken with enough deference to indicate the vampire ranked fairly high up on the chain of command. Tall and lanky, with narrow features and small, darting eyes under his slicked-back fair hair, Fabien had a nasty sadistic streak barely hidden behind the veneer of his elegant suit and pleasant civilian demeanor. The fact that he had come in alone this time couldn’t be a good sign.
“How was your rest?” he asked Niko with a polite smile. “Perhaps you’re ready to chat with me now. Just the two of us this time, what do you say?”
“Fuck you,” Nikolai growled through his extended fangs. “I didn’t kill Yakut. I told you what happened. You arrested the wrong guy, asshole.”
Fabien chuckled as he walked to the side of the bed and stared down at him. “There was no mistake, warrior. And I personally could give a damn whether or not you were the one who blew that Gen One’s brains all over his walls. I have other, more important questions to ask you. Questions you will answer, if your life means anything to you at all.”
That this male evidently knew he was a member of the Order put a dangerous new spin on Nikolai’s incarceration. As did the evil glimmer in those shrewd raptorlike eyes.
“What exactly does the Order know about the other Gen One assassinations?”
Nikolai glared up at him, silent, jaw set tight.
“Do you really think you can do anything to stop them? Do you think the Order is so powerful that it can keep the wheel from turning when it’s been in motion secretly for years already?” The Breed male’s lips spread into a caricature of a smile. “We will exterminate you one by one, just as we are doing with the last remaining members of the first generation. Everything is in place, and has been for a long time. The revolution, you see, has already begun.”
Rage coiled in Nikolai’s gut as he realized just what he was hearing. “You son of a bitch. You’re with Dragos.”
“Ah… now you begin to understand,” Fabien said pleasantly.
“You’re a fucking traitor to your own race, that’s what I understand.”
The facade of civil behavior fell away like a mask. “I want you to tell me about the Order’s current missions. Who are your allies? What do you know about the assassinations? What are the Order’s plans where Dragos is concerned?”
Nikolai sneered. “Blow me. Tell your boss he can blow me too.”
Fabien’s cruel eyes narrowed. “You have tested my patience long enough.”
He got up and walked to the door. A curt wave of his hand brought the guard on duty inside. “Yes, sir?”
“It is time.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard nodded and disappeared, only to return a moment later. He and a facility attendant wheeled in a woman strapped to a narrow bed. She’d been sedated as well, and wore only a thin, sleeveless hospital gown. Lying beside her was a tourniquet, a package of thick needles, and a coiled IV tube.
What the hell was this about?
But he knew. He knew as soon as the attendant lifted the human’s limp arm and fixed the tourniquet around the area of her brachial artery. The needle and siphoning tube were next.
Nikolai tried to ignore the clinical process taking place beside him, but even the subtlest scent of blood made his senses fire up like holiday lights. Saliva surged into his mouth. His fangs stretched longer in anticipation of feeding.
He didn’t want to hunger—not like this, not when he was certain Fabien intended to use it against him now. He tried to ignore his thirst but it was already rising, responding to the visceral urge to feed.
Fabien and the other two vampires in the room were not immune either. The attendant worked expediently, the guard keeping his distance near the door while Fabien watched the blood Host being readied for the feeding. Once everything was in place, Fabien dismissed the attendant and sent the guard back to his post outside.
“Hungry, are we?” he asked Niko when the others had gone. He held the feeding tube in one hand, the fingers of his other hand poised on the valve that would begin the flow of blood from the woman’s arm. “You know, this is the only way to feed a Rogue vampire in containment. Blood intake must be closely monitored, controlled by trained attendants. Too little and he starves; too much and his addiction becomes stronger. Bloodlust is a terrible thing, don’t you agree?”
Niko snarled, wanting so badly to leap up off the bed and strangle Fabien. He struggled to do just that, but it was a futile effort. The combination of sedatives and steel restraints held him down. “I’ll kill you,” he muttered, breathless from exertion. “I promise you, I will fucking kill you.”
“No,” Fabien said. “It is you who’s going to die. Unless you start talking now, I’m going to put this tube down your throat and open the valve. I won’t shut it off until you indicate that you’re ready to cooperate.”
Jesus Christ. He was threatening to overdose him. No Breed vampire could handle that much blood at once. It would mean almost certain Bloodlust. He would turn Rogue, a one-way ticket to misery, madness, and death.
“Would you like to talk now, or shall we begin?”
He wasn’t idiot enough to think Fabien or his cronies would release him, even if he did cough up details about the Order’s tactics and current missions. Hell, he could have a rock-solid guarantee of walking away free, but he’d be damned if he’d betray his brethren just to save his own neck.
So, this was it, then. He’d often wondered how he would check out. Figured he’d go down in a blaze of glory, a hail of bullets and shrapnel, hopefully taking a dozen suckheads with him. He never guessed it would be something as pitiful as this. The only honor in it was the fact that he would die keeping the Order’s secrets.
“Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?” Fabien asked.
“Fuck off,” Niko ground out, more pissed than ever. “You and Dragos both can go straight to hell.”
Fabien’s gaze sparked with rage. He forced Nikolai’s mouth open and shoved the feeding tube deep into his throat. His esophagus constricted, but even his gag reflex was weak due to the sedatives coursing through his body.
There was a soft click as the valve on the human’s arm was opened.
Blood gushed into the back of Nikolai’s mouth. He choked on it, tried to close his throat and refuse it, but there was too much—an endless flow that pumped swiftly from the blood Host’s tapped artery.
Niko had no choice but to swallow.
He gulped down the first mouthful. Then another.
And still more.
Andreas Reichen was in his Darkhaven office reviewing accounts and downloading the morning’s e-mail when he noticed the message waiting in his in-box from Helene. The subject was a simple handful of words that made his pulse kick with interest: found a name for you.
He clicked open the e-mail and read her brief note.
After some determined investigative work, Helene had gotten the name of the vampire her missing club girl had been seeing recently.
Wilhelm Roth.
Reichen read it twice, every molecule in his bloodstream growing colder as the name sank into his brain.
Helene’s e-mail indicated that she was still digging for more information and would report back as soon as she had anything further.
Jesus.
She couldn’t know the true nature of the viper she’d uncovered, but Reichen knew plenty.
Wilhelm Roth, the leader of the Hamburg Darkhaven and one of the most powerful individuals in Breed society. Wilhelm Roth, a gangster of the first degree, and someone whom Reichen knew very well, or had at one time.
Wilhelm Roth, who was mated to a former lover of Reichen’s—the woman who’d taken a piece of Reichen’s heart when she left him to be with the wealthy, second-generation Breed male who could give her all the things Reichen could not.
If Helene’s vanished employee had been associated with Roth, it was certain the girl was dead by now. And Helene… good Christ. She was already too close to the bastard just by having learned his name. If she got any closer by continuing to look for information on him… ?
Reichen picked up the phone and dialed her cell. No answer. He tried her flat in the city, cursing when the call went into voicemail. It was much too early for her to be at the club, but he dialed it anyway, damning the daylight that kept him trapped in his Darkhaven and unable to drive over to speak with her in person.
When all his options failed, Reichen fired back a response via e-mail.
Do nothing more where Roth is concerned. He is dangerous. Contact me as soon as you receive this message. Helene, please …be careful.
A medical equipment truck came to a halt at the gated entrance of an unassuming, two-story brick building some forty-five minutes outside the heart of Montreal. The driver leaned out his window and typed a short sequence into an electronic keypad located on the security kiosk outside. After a moment or two, the gate opened and the truck rolled inside.
It must be delivery day; this was the second supply vehicle Renata had observed entering or leaving the nondescript location since she’d arrived a short time ago. She had spent most of the day in the city hiding out in Lex’s car while she recovered from the worst of her reverb from the morning. Now it was late afternoon. She wouldn’t have long—just a few short hours before dusk fell and the night grew thick with predators. Not long at all before she became the hunted.
She had to make the most of that time, which is why she found herself staked out down the road from the isolated, camera-monitored gate of a peculiar building in the town of Terrabonne. It had no windows, no signage out front. Although she couldn’t be certain, her gut instinct was telling her that the squat slab of concrete and brick at the end of a private access road was the place Lex had mentioned—the containment facility where Nikolai had been taken.
She prayed it was, because at the moment, the warrior was the only thing close to an ally she had, and if she wanted to find Mira—if she stood any chance of retrieving the child from the vampire who had her now—she knew that she couldn’t do it alone. But that meant finding Nikolai first, and praying she found him alive.
And if he was dead? Or if he was alive but refused to help her? Or decided to kill her outright for her role in his wrongful arrest?
Well, Renata didn’t want to consider where any of those potentials would leave her. Worse, where they would leave an innocent child who depended on Renata to keep her safe.
So, she waited and she watched, calculating a way past the security gate. Another supply truck rolled up to the entrance. It came to a stop and Renata seized the opportunity.
Jumping out of Lex’s car and running low to the ground, she raced up along the back of the vehicle. While the driver punched in his access code, she hopped up on the rear bumper. The trailer doors were locked, but she slipped her fingers around the handles and held on as the gate clattered open and the truck lurched through.
The driver swung around to the back of the building, following a stretch of asphalt that led to a pair of shipping and receiving bays. Renata climbed up to the roof of the trailer and hung on tight as the truck turned around and began to back into an empty dock. As it neared the building, a motion sensor clicked and the receiving door lifted. There was no one waiting as daylight filled the hangarlike opening, but then if the place was held by the Breed, anyone manning this area would be turning crispy after just a few minutes on the job.
Once the truck backed inside completely, the big door started to descend. There was a second of darkness between the closing of the bay and the electronic flutter of the overhead fluorescent lights coming on. Renata scrambled down and leapt off the rear bumper just as the driver got out of the truck. And now, coming out of a steel door on the other side of the space, was a muscular man in a dark military-style uniform.
The same kind of uniform as the ones worn by the Enforcement Agents Lex had called to arrest Nikolai last night. Complete with a semiautomatic pistol holstered at his hip.
“Hey, how’s it going?” the driver called out to the guard.
Renata crept around the side of the truck before the vampire or the human could spot her. She waited, listening to the jangle of the lock being freed. When the guard got closer, she sent him a little hello of her own, a mental jolt that made him rock back on his heels. Another small blast had him staggering. He clutched his temples in his hands and gasped a vivid curse.
The human driver turned to look after him. “Whoa. You okay there, buddy?”
The brief inattention was all the opportunity Renata needed. She dashed silently across the wide bay and slipped inside the access door the guard had left unsecured.
She ducked past an empty office containing a workstation with monitors displaying the gated entrance. Beyond that, a narrow hallway offered two possibilities: a bend that appeared to lead toward the front of the building or, farther down the hall, a stairwell to the second floor.
Renata opted for the stairs. She hurried toward them, past the spoke that branched off to the side. Another guard was in that stretch of hallway.
Damn it.
He saw her rush by. His boots thundered closer.
“Stop!” he shouted, coming around the corner of the corridor. “This is a restricted area—”
Renata pivoted and took him down with a hard mental blast. As he writhed on the floor, she gunned it into the stairwell and raced up the flight to the floor above.
For what wasn’t the first time, she berated herself for having left the lodge without any weapons. She couldn’t keep burning off her power before she even knew if Nikolai was here. She was only operating near half strength as it was; to fully recover from unloading on Lex that morning, she probably needed to shore up for the rest of the day. Unfortunately not an option.
She peered through the reinforced glass of the stairwell door, taking in the clinical layout of the place. A handful of Breed males in white lab coats strolled past on their way to one of the many rooms that branched off the main corridor. Too many for her to take on by herself, even if she was running on all cylinders.
And then there was the small matter of the armed Enforcement Agent posted at the far end of the hallway.
Renata leaned against the interior wall of the stairwell, tipping her head back and quietly exhaling a curse. She’d made it in this far, but what the hell made her think she could penetrate a secured facility like this and actually survive?
Desperation was the answer to that question. A determination that refused to accept that this might be as far as she could go. She had no choice but forward. Into the fire, if that’s what it took.
Fire, she thought, her gaze turning back to the corridor outside the stairwell. Mounted on the wall across from her was a red emergency alarm.
Maybe there was a chance, after all…
Renata crept out of the stairwell and pulled the lever down. A pulsing bell split the air, sending the place into instant chaos. She slipped into the nearest patient’s room and watched as attendants and clinicians raced around in confusion. When it seemed they were all occupied with the false emergency, Renata stepped out into the empty corridor to begin her room-to-room search for Nikolai.
It wasn’t difficult to decide where he might be. Only one room had an armed Enforcement Agent assigned to it. That guard was still there, manning his post despite the alarm that had sent the rest of the floor’s attendants scattering.
Renata glanced at the gun riding the guard’s hip and hoped like hell she wasn’t making a huge mistake.
“Hey,” she said, approaching him at an easy gait. She smiled brightly despite the fact that in that same instant he was scowling and reaching for his weapon. “Can’t you hear that alarm? Time for you to take a break.”
She hit him with a sudden, sizable blast. As the big male crumbled to the floor, she ran to peer inside the room behind him.
A blond vampire lay strapped to a bed, naked, convulsing and straining against the metal bonds that held him down. The Breed skin markings that swirled and arced over his chest and down his thick biceps and thighs were livid with pulsating color, seeming almost alive the way the saturations mutated from shades of crimson and deep purple to darkest black. His face was hardly human, completely transformed by the presence of his fangs and the glowing coals of his eyes.
Could it be Nikolai? At first, Renata wasn’t sure. But then he lifted his head and those feral amber eyes locked on to her. She saw a flash of recognition in them, and a misery that was palpable even from a distance.
Her heart twisted, burning with regret.
Good Lord, what had they done to him?
Renata grabbed the bulk of the unconscious guard and dragged him with her into the room. Nikolai bucked on the bed, snarling incomprehensibly, words that sounded close to madness.
“Nikolai,” she said, going to his bedside. “Can you hear me? It’s me, Renata. I’m going to take you out of here.”
If he understood, she couldn’t be certain. He growled and fought his bonds, fingers flexing and fisting, every muscle taut.
Renata bent down to strip a set of keys from the guard’s belt. She took his pistol too, and swore when she realized it was merely a tranq gun loaded with less than half a dozen rounds.
“I guess beggars can’t be choosy,” she muttered, stuffing the weapon into the waistband of her jeans.
She went back to Nikolai and started unlocking his restraints. When she freed his hand, she was stunned to feel it clamp down around her own.
“Leave,” he snarled viciously.
“Yeah, that’s what we’re working on here,” Renata replied. “Let go so I can unlock the rest of these damned things.”
He sucked in a breath, a low hiss that made the hairs at her nape prickle to attention. “You… leave … not me.”
“What?” Frowning, she pulled her hand free and leaned over him to loosen the other restraint. “Don’t try to talk. We don’t have much time.”
He gripped her so hard she thought her wrist would snap. “Leave. Me. Here.”
“I can’t do that. I need your help.”
Those wild amber eyes seemed to stare right through her, hot and deadly. But his punishing grasp eased. He fell back onto the bed as another convulsion racked him.
“Almost done,” Renata assured him, working quickly to unlock the last of his bonds. “Gome on. I’ll help you up.”
She had to pull him to his feet, and even then he didn’t seem steady enough to stay upright, let alone make the hard dash their escape was going to call for. Renata gave him her shoulder. “Lean, Nikolai,” she ordered him. “I’ll do most of the work. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
He growled something indecipherable as she wedged herself under his bulk and started walking. Renata rushed for the stairwell. The steps were difficult for Nikolai, but they managed to make it down them all with only a few falters.
“Stay here,” she told him when they reached the bottom.
She sat him down on the last step and dashed out to clear their path to the shipping and receiving bay. The office at the end of the hall was still empty. Beyond the access door, however, the driver was still talking with the guard on duty, both of them anxious due to the bleat of fire alarms pealing all around them.
Renata strolled out with the tranquilizer gun drawn. The vampire saw her coming. Faster than she could react, he had drawn his pistol and fired off a shot. Renata hit him with a mental blast, but not before she felt a ripping heat slam into her left shoulder. She smelled blood, felt the hot trickle of it leaking down her arm.
Damn it—she was hit.
Okay now she was really pissed off. Renata blasted the vampire again and he staggered to one knee, dropping his weapon. The human driver screamed and dove behind the truck for cover as Renata strode forward and shot the vampire with two tranq rounds. He went down with barely a whimper. Renata walked around to find the driver cowering by the wheel.
“Oh, Jesus!” he cried as she came to stand before him. He put his hands up, face slack with fear. “Oh, Jesus! Please don’t kill me!”
“I won’t,” Renata answered, then shot him in the thigh with the tranq.
With both males down, she ran back to get Nikolai. Ignoring the screaming pain in her shoulder, she hurried him into the receiving bay and shoved him into the back of the supply truck where he’d be safe from daylight outside.
“Find something to hold onto,” she told him. “Things are going to get bumpy now.”
She didn’t give him a chance to say anything. Working quickly, she slammed the doors and threw the latch, sealing him inside. Then she jumped into the idling cab and threw the vehicle into gear.
As she crashed the truck through the receiving bay’s door and sped up the drive toward escape, she had to wonder if she’d just saved Nikolai’s life or condemned them both.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
His head was beating like a drum. The constant, rhythmic pounding filled his ears, so deafening it dragged him toward consciousness after what seemed like an endless, fitful sleep. His body ached. Was he lying on the floor somewhere? He felt cold metal underneath his naked body, the heavy bulk of cardboard shipping crates jabbing into his spine and shoulder. A sheet of plastic covered him like a makeshift blanket.
He tried to lift his head but hardly had the strength. His skin felt livid, pulsating from head to toe. Every inch of him felt wrung out, stretched tight, hot with fever. His mouth was dry, his throat parched and raw.
He thirsted.
That need was all he could focus on, the only coherent thought swimming through his banging skull.
Blood.
Christ, he starved for it.
He could taste the hunger—the black, consuming madness—in every shallow breath that sifted through his teeth. His fangs filled his mouth. His gums throbbed where the huge canines descended, as though his fangs had been there for hours. Some distant, sober part of his logic noted the misfire on that calculation; a Breed vampire’s fangs normally displayed only in moments of heightened physical response, whether reacting to prey or passion or pure animal rage.
The drum still banging away in his head only made the throb of his fangs deepen. It was the pounding that woke him. The pounding that would not let him sleep now.
Something was wrong with him, he thought, even as he peeled his burning eyes open and took in the too-sharp, amber-washed details of his surroundings.
Small, confined space. Lightless. A box filled with more boxes.
And a woman.
All else faded once his gaze found her. Dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and dark jeans, she lay in a fetal ball across from him, arms and legs tucked hard into the curve of her torso. A lot of her chin-length inky hair had fallen over the side of her face, concealing her features.
He knew her… or felt that he should.
A less cognizant part of him knew only that she was warm and healthy defenseless. The air was tinged with the merest trace of sandalwood and rain. Her blood scent, some dim instinct roused to tell him. He knew it—and her—with a certainty that seemed etched in his own marrow. His dry mouth was suddenly wet in anticipation of feeding. Need coupled with opportunity lent him a strength he didn’t have a moment ago.
Quietly he levered himself up off the floor and moved into a low crouch. Sitting on his haunches, he cocked his head, watching the female sleep. He crept closer, a predatory crawl that brought him right on top of her. The amber glow of his irises bathed her in golden light as he let his starving gaze roam over her body.
And that ceaseless drumming was louder here, the vibration so clear he could feel it in the soles of his bare feet. It banged in his head, commanding all of his attention. Drawing him closer, then closer still.
It was her pulse. Staring down at her, he could see the soft tick of her heartbeat fluttering at the side of her neck. Steady, strong.
The very spot he meant to catch between his fangs.
A low rumble—a growl emanating from his own throat—rolled through the stillness of the place.
The female stirred under him.
Her eyelids flipped open, startled, then went wider. “Nikolai.”
At first the name hardly registered to him. The fog in his mind was so thick, his thirst so total, he knew nothing else but the urge to feed. It was more than an urge—it was insatiable compulsion. Certain damnation.
Bloodlust.
The word traveled through his hunger-swamped mind like a phantom. He heard it, knew instinctively to fear it. But before he could fully grasp what the word meant, it was ghosting away from him, back to the shadows.
“Nikolai,” the woman said again. “How long have you been awake?”
Her voice was familiar to him somehow, a peculiar comfort to him, but he couldn’t quite place her. Nothing seemed to make sense to him. All that made sense was that tempting thud of her carotid and the deep hunger that compelled him to reach out and take what he needed.
“You’re safe here,” she told him. “We’re in the back of the supply truck I took from the containment facility. I had to stop and rest for a while, but I’m good to go now. It’s going to be dark soon. We should keep moving before we’re spotted.”
As she spoke, images flashed through his memory. The containment facility. Pain. Torture. Questions. A Breed male called Fabien. A male he wanted to kill. And this brave woman… she was there too. Incredibly, she had helped him to escape.
Renata.
Yes. He knew her name after all. He didn’t know why she had come for him, or why she would try to save him. Didn’t matter.
She was too late.
“They forced me,” he croaked, his voice sounding detached from his body, rough as gravel. “Too much blood. They forced me to drink it…”
She stared at him. “What do you mean, they forced your
“Tried to… to push me into overdose. Addiction.”
“Blood addiction?”
He gave a vague nod and coughed, pain racking his chest. “Too much blood… it brings on Bloodlust. They asked me questions… wanted me to betray the Order. I refused, so they… punished me.”
“Lex said they would kill you,” she murmured. “Nikolai, I’m sorry.”
She lifted her hand as though she might touch him.
“Don’t,” he growled, snatching her by the wrist.
She gasped, tried to pull free. He didn’t let her go. Her warm skin seared his fingertips and palm, everywhere he touched her. He could feel the movement of her bones and lean muscles, the racing of her blood as it coursed through the veins of her arm.
It would be so easy to bring that tender wrist up to his mouth.
So tempting to pin her beneath him and drink himself straight into damnation.
He knew the precise moment that she went from surprise to apprehension. Her pulse kicked. Her skin tightened in his grasp.
“Let go of me, Nikolai.”
He held on, the beast in him wondering whether to start on her wrist or her neck. His mouth watered, fangs aching to pierce her tender flesh. And he hungered for her in another way too. There was no hiding his rigid need. He knew it was the Bloodlust driving him, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.
“Let go,” she said again, and when he finally released her, she scooted back, putting some distance between them. There wasn’t far for her to go. Stacked boxes hemmed her in from behind, beyond that the wall of the truck’s interior. The way she moved, halting and careful, made the predator in him sense weakness.
Was she in some kind of pain? If so, her eyes didn’t reflect it. Their pale color seemed steely as she stared at him, defiant.
He glanced down and his feral eyes lit on the gleaming barrel of a pistol.
“Do it,” he murmured.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt you. I need your help, Nikolai.”
Too late for that, he thought. She had pulled him out of purgatory at the hands of his captors, but he’d already gotten a taste of hell. The only way out was to starve the addiction, deny it from taking full hold. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to fight his thirst.
He wouldn’t be, so long as Renata was near him.
“Do it…please. Don’t know how much longer I can hold out…”
“Niko—”
The beast in him exploded. With a roar, he bared his fangs and lunged for her.
The shot rang out that next instant, a stunning clap of thunder that finally, gratefully, silenced his misery.
Renata sat back on her heels, the tranq gun still gripped in her hands. Her heart was racing, part of her stomach still lodged in her throat after Nikolai had sprung on her with his huge fangs bared. Now he lay in a sprawl on the floor, motionless except for his shallow, labored breathing. Aside from his churning skin markings, with his eyes shut and his fangs hidden behind his closed mouth, there was little way to tell that he was the same violent creature who might have torn out her jugular.
Shit.
What the hell was she doing here? What the hell was she thinking, allying herself with a vampire, imagining she might actually be able to trust one of their kind? She knew firsthand how treacherous they were—how lethal they could turn in just an instant. She might have been killed just now. There was a moment when she really thought she would be.
But Nikolai had tried to warn her. He didn’t want to harm her; she’d seen that torment in his eyes, heard it in his broken voice in that instant before he would have leapt on her. He was different from the others like him. He had honor, something she’d assumed was lacking in the Breed as a whole, given that her examples were limited to Sergei Yakut, Lex, and those who served them.
Nikolai couldn’t have known her weapon didn’t hold bullets, and yet he’d forced her to take him down. Begged her for it. She had been through some pretty rough things in her life, but Renata didn’t know that kind of torment and suffering She was quite sure she hoped she never would.
The wound in her shoulder burned like hell. It was bleeding again, worse, after this tense physical confrontation. At least the bullet had passed through cleanly. The nasty hole it left behind was going to need medical attention, although she didn’t see a hospital in her near future. She also didn’t think it wise to stay near Nikolai now, especially while she was bleeding and the only thing keeping him away from her carotid was that single dose of sedatives.
The tranq gun was empty.
Night was falling, she was nursing a bleeding gunshot wound and the added bonus of her lingering reverb. And staying in the stolen truck was like hiding out with a large bull’s-eye target on their backs.
She needed to ditch the vehicle. Then she needed to find someplace safe where she could patch herself up well enough for her to push on. Nikolai was an added problem. She wasn’t ready to give up on him, but he was no use to her in his current condition. If he could manage to shake the terrible aftereffects of his torture, then maybe. And if not… ?
If not, then she had just wasted more precious time than she cared to consider.
Moving gingerly, Renata climbed out the back of the trailer and latched the doors behind her. The sun had set, and dusk was coming fast. In the distance, the lights of Montreal glowed.
Mira was somewhere in that city.
Helpless, alone … afraid.
Renata climbed into the truck and started the engine. She drove back toward the city uncertain where she was heading until she eventually found herself on familiar ground. She never thought she’d be back. Certainly never like this.
The old city neighborhood hadn’t changed much in the two years she’d been gone. Cramped tenements and modest post-World War II bungalows lined the twilit street. A few of the youths coming out of the convenience store on the corner glanced at the medical supply truck as Renata drove past.
She didn’t recognize any of them, nor any of the shiftless, vacant-eyed adults who made this stretch of concrete their home. But Renata wasn’t looking for familiar faces out here. There was just one person she prayed was still around. One person who could be trusted to help her, with few questions asked.
As she rolled up on a squat yellow bungalow with its trellis of pink roses blooming out front, a queer tightness balled in her chest. Jack was still here; Anna’s beloved roses, well tended and thriving, were evidence enough of that. And so was the small ironwork sign that Jack had made himself to hang beside the front door, proclaiming the cheery house Anna’s Place.
Renata slowed the truck to a stop at the curb and cut the engine, staring at the youth halfway house she’d been to so many times but never actually entered. Lights were on inside, throwing off a welcoming, golden glow. It must have been near suppertime because through the large picture window in front she could see that two teenagers— Jack’s clients, though he preferred to call them his “kids”—were setting the table for the evening meal.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, closing her eyes and resting her forehead on the steering wheel.
This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be here. Not now, after all this time. Not with the problems she was facing. And definitely not with the problem she was currently carrying in the back of the truck.
No, she had to deal with this on her own. Start the engine, wheel the truck around, and take her chances on the street. Hell, she was no stranger to that. But Nikolai was in bad shape, and she wasn’t exactly at the top of her game either. She didn’t know how much longer she could drive before—
“Evenin’.” The friendly, unmistakable Texas drawl came from directly beside her at the open driver’s side window. She didn’t see him walk up, but now there was no avoiding him. “Can I help ya with … any… thing…”
Jack’s voice trailed off as Renata lifted her head and turned to face him. He was a little grayer than she remembered, his short, military-style buzzcut looking thinner, his cheeks and jowls a bit rounder than when she’d last seen him. But he was still a jovial bear of a man, more than six feet tall and built like a tank despite the fact that he was easily pushing seventy.
Renata hoped her smile seemed better than the wince it was. “Hi, Jack.”
He stared at her—gaped, actually. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “It’s been a long time, Renata. I hoped you’d found a good life somewhere … When you quit coming around a couple of years ago, I worried that maybe—” He stopped himself from completing the thought, gave her a big old grin instead. “Well, hell, it don’t matter what I worried about because here you are.”
“I can’t stay,” she blurted, her fingers gripping the key in the ignition, ready to give it a twist. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Jack frowned. “Two years after I see you last, you show up out of the blue just to tell me you can’t stay?”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I have to go.”
He put his hands on the open truck window, as if he meant to physically hold her there. She glanced at the tan, weathered hands that had helped so many kids out of trouble on Montreal’s streets—the same hands that had served his home country in war some four decades past, and which now nurtured and protected that trellis of pink roses as though they were more precious to him than gold.
“What’s going on, Renata? You know you can talk to me, you can trust me. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine, really. Just passing through.”
The look in his eyes said he didn’t buy that for a second. “Someone else in trouble?”
She shook her head. “Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s the only way you ever came around here before. Never for yourself, no matter how badly you personally might have needed a hand up.”
“This is different. This isn’t anything you should be involved in.” She started the truck. “Please, Jack…just forget you even saw me here tonight, okay? I’m sorry. I have to go.”
No sooner had she grabbed the shifter to put the truck into gear than Jack’s strong hand come to rest on her shoulder. It wasn’t a hard touch, but even the smallest pressure on her wound made her practically jump out of her skin. She sucked in her breath as the pain lanced through her.
“You’re injured,” he said, those wiry gray brows crashing together.
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing, my ass.” He opened the door and climbed up on the runningboard to get a better look at her. When he saw the blood, he muttered a ripe curse. “What happened? Were you stabbed? Some gangbanger try to roll you for your truck, or your cargo? You have a chance to call the cops yet? Jesus, this looks like a gunshot wound, and you’ve been bleeding for some time now—”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s not my truck, and none of this is what you think.”
“Then you can tell me all about it while I take you to the hospital.” He crowded her in the cab, gesturing for her to make room. “Move over. I’ll drive.”
‘Jack.” She put her hand on his thick, leathery forearm. “I can’t go to the hospital, or the police. And I’m not alone in here. There’s someone in the back of the truck and he’s in bad shape too. I can’t leave him.”
He stared at her, uncertain. “You do something against the law, Renata?”
Her exhaled laugh was weak, full of things she couldn’t say. Things he couldn’t know and sure as hell wouldn’t believe even if she told him. “I wish it was only the law I had to deal with. I’m in danger, Jack. I can’t tell you more than that. I don’t want to get you involved.”
“You need help. That’s all the info I need.” His face was serious now, and beyond the wrinkles and thinning, graying hair, she saw a glimpse of the unshakable Marine he’d been all those years ago. “Come inside and I’ll get you and your friend someplace to rest awhile. Get something for your shoulder too. Come on, there’s plenty of room in the house. Let me help you—for once, Renata, let someone help you.”
She wanted that so badly, in a place buried so deep within her it ached. But bringing Nikolai into someplace public was too great a risk, to him and to anyone who might see him. “Do you have somewhere other than the house? Somewhere quiet, with less traffic in and out. It doesn’t have to be much.”
“There’s a small apartment over the garage out back. I’ve been using it for storage mostly since Anna’s been gone, but you’re welcome to it.” Jack hopped out of the truck and offered his hand to help her climb down. “Let’s get you and your friend inside so I can have a look at that wound.”
Renata stepped down onto the pavement. What about moving Nikolai? She was certain he was still sleeping off the tranquilizer, which would help conceal what he truly was, but there was no way she could hope that Jack wouldn’t find the naked, bloodied and beaten, unconscious male just the slightest bit unusual. “My, urn, my friend is really sick. He’s in bad shape, and I don’t think he’ll be able to walk on his own.”
“I’ve carried more than one man out of the jungle on my back,” Jack said. “My shoulders may be a little bent now, but they’re broad enough. I’ll take care of him.”
As they walked together around to the back, Renata added, “There’s one more thing, Jack. The truck. It needs to disappear. Doesn’t matter where, but the sooner the better.”
He gave her a brief nod. “Consider it done.”
CHAPTER
Seventeen
As Nikolai came awake, he wondered why he wasn’t dead. He felt like hell, eyes slow to open in the dark, muscles sluggish as he took a mental inventory of his current condition. He remembered blood and agony, arrest and torture at the hands of a bastard called Fabien. He remembered running—or, rather, someone else running while he stumbled and struggled just to stay upright.
He remembered darkness all around him, cold metal beneath him, drums pounding relentlessly in his head. And he distinctly remembered a pistol being pointed in his direction. A pistol that went off by his own command.
Renata.
She been the one holding that gun. Aiming it at him to prevent him from attacking her like some kind of monster. Why hadn’t she killed him like he’d wanted? For that matter, why had she come looking for him at the containment facility in the first place? Didn’t she realize she might have been killed right along with him?
He wanted to be pissed off that she would do something that reckless, but a more reasonable part of him was just damned grateful to be breathing. Even if breathing was about all he was capable of doing at the moment.
He groaned and rolled over, expecting to feel the hard floor of the truck under his body. Instead he felt a soft mattress, a fluffy pillow cradling his head. A light cotton blanket covered his nakedness.
What the hell? Where was he now?
He vaulted up to a sitting position and was rewarded with a violent lurch of his gut. “Ah, fuck,” he murmured, sick and light-headed.
“Are you all right?” Renata was here with him. He didn’t see her at first, but now she was getting up from the tattered chair where she’d been sitting a moment ago. She padded over to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” he said, his tongue thick, mouth desert dry.
He winced as a small bedside lamp clicked on. “You look better. A lot better, actually. Your eyes are back to normal and your fangs have receded.”
“Where are we?”
“Someplace safe.”
He looked around at the eclectic jumble of the room: mismatched furniture, storage bins stacked against one of the walls, a small collection of artist’s canvases in various stages of completion leaning between two file cabinets, a small closet of a bathroom with floral-patterned towels and a quaint claw-footed tub. But it was the shutterless window arranged directly across the room from the bed that really clued him in. It was deep night on the other side of the glass right now, but by morning the room would be flooded with UV light.
“This is a human residence.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, especially when it was his own damned fault he was in this situation. “Where the hell are we, Renata? What’s going on here?”
“You were in bad shape. It wasn’t safe for us to keep traveling in the supply truck when the Enforcement Agency and possibly Lex as well would be looking for it as soon as the sun set—”
“Where are we?” he demanded.
“A halfway house for street kids—it’s called Anna’s Place. I know the man who runs it. Or I knew him, that is… from before.” Some flicker of emotion swept over her face. “Jack is a good man, trustworthy. We’re safe here.”
“He’s human.”
“Yes.”
Just fucking lovely. “And does he know what I am? Did he see me … like I was?”
“No. I kept you covered as best I could with the plastic tarp from the truck. Jack helped bring you up here, but you were still sleeping off the tranquilizer I shot you with. I told him you were out of it because you were sick.”
Tranqs. Well, at least that answered the question of why he wasn’t dead.
“He didn’t see your fangs or your eyes, and when he asked about your glyphs, I told him they were tattoos.” She gestured to a shirt and black warm-ups folded on the bedside table. “He brought you some clothes. After he gets back from ditching the truck for us, he’s going to look for a pair of shoes that might fit you. There’s a toiletries kit in the bathroom—part of his welcome wagon for new arrivals at the house. He only had one fresh toothbrush to spare, so I hope you don’t mind sharing.”
“Jesus,” Niko hissed. This was only getting worse. “I have to get out of here.”
He threw off the blanket and grabbed the clothing from the little table. He was none too steady on his feet as he tried to step into the nylon pants. He fell back, his bare ass planted on the bed. His head was spinning. “Damn it. I need to report in with the Order. Think your good buddy Jack has a computer or a cell phone I could borrow?”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” Renata pointed out. “Everyone in the house is sleeping. Besides, I’m not even sure you’re well enough to make it down the garage stairs. You need to rest a while longer.”
“Fuck that. What I need is to get back to Boston ASAP.” Still seated on the bed, he slipped on the warm-ups and hiked them over his hips, tugging the drawstring tight to cinch the extra-large waistband. “I’ve lost too much time already. Gonna need someone to come up here and haul my lame ass back in—”
Renata’s hand came down on his, surprising him with the contact. “Nikolai. Something’s happened to Mira.”
Her voice was as sober as he’d ever heard it. She was worried—bone-deep worried—and for the first time, he noticed the smallest fissure in the otherwise unbreakable, icy facade she presented to any and all around her.
“Mira is in danger,” she said. “They took her with them when they came to arrest you at the lodge. Lex sent her off with a vampire named Fabien. He … he sold her to him.”
“Fabien.” Niko shut his eyes, exhaled a curse. “Then she is probably already dead.”
He wasn’t expecting Renata’s choked cry. The raw sound of it made him feel like a callous jackass for speaking his grim thoughts aloud. For all of Renata’s strength and tough independence, she had a very tender spot reserved for that innocent, remarkable child.
“She can’t be dead.” Her voice took on a wooden edge, but her eyes were wild, desperate. “I promised her, do you understand? I told her I would never let anyone hurt her. I meant that. I would kill to keep her safe, Nikolai. I would die for her.”
He listened, and, God help him, he knew her pain better than she could ever guess. As a boy he had made a similar pact with his younger brother—Christ, so long ago—and it had nearly destroyed him to have failed.
“That’s why you came after me at the containment facility,” he said, understanding now. “You risked your neck to break me out of there because you think I can help you find her?”
She didn’t say anything, just held his gaze in a silence that seemed to stretch out forever. “I have to get her back, Nikolai. And I don’t think… I’m just not sure I can do it on my own.”
Part of him wanted to tell her that the fate of one lost little girl was not his problem. Not after what that bastard Fabien had just put him through at the containment facility. And not when the Order had its hands full with other, more critical missions. Life and death on a massive scale, true do-or-die, save-the-world kind of shit.
But when he opened his mouth to tell her so, he found he didn’t have the heart to say that out loud to Renata now.
“How’s your shoulder?” he asked her, indicating the wound that had been bleeding a few hours ago in the truck and driving his already weak control nearly to the edge. On the surface, it looked better now, bandaged in clean white gauze and smelling faintly of antiseptic.
‘Jack patched me up,” she said. “He was a medic for the Marines when he served in Vietnam.”
Niko saw the tenderness in her expression when she spoke of the human, and he wondered why he should feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy, particularly when that human male’s military service aged him well into his AARP years. “So, he’s a Marine, eh? How’d he end up working in a Montreal youth shelter?”
Renata smiled a bit sadly. “Jack fell in love with a local girl named Anna. They got married, bought this house together and lived here for more than forty years… until Anna died. She was killed in a robbery. The homeless kid who stabbed her for her purse did it while he was high on heroin. He was looking for money for his next fix, but he only got about five dollars in change.”
‘Jesus,” Niko exhaled. “I hope the piece of shit didn’t get away with it.”
Renata shook her head. “He was arrested and charged, but he hanged himself in jail while awaiting trial. Jack once told me when he heard that news, that’s when he decided to do something to help prevent another death like Anna’s, or another kid from being lost to the streets. He opened his house—Anna’s Place—to anyone who needed shelter, and gave the kids warm meals and a place to belong.”
“Sounds like Jack’s a generous man,” Niko said. “A hell of a lot more forgiving than I could be.”
He had the strongest urge to touch her, to just let his fingers come to rest on her skin. He wanted to know more about her, more about her life before she got mixed up with Sergei Yakut. He had the feeling things didn’t come easy for her. If Jack had helped to smooth her path, then Nikolai had nothing but respect for the man.
And if she could trust the human, so would he. He hoped like hell Jack was all Renata believed him to be. It would be a hell of a thing if he proved otherwise.
“Let me have a look at your shoulder,” he said, happy to change the subject.
When he moved toward her, Renata hesitated. “You sure you can handle that? Because I’m fresh out of tranq rounds, and it hardly seems sporting to mind blast a vampire in your feeble condition.”
A joke? He chuckled, caught off guard by her humor, especially when things were looking more than a little grim for both of them. “Gome here and let me see Jack’s handiwork.”
She leaned forward to give him better access to her shoulder. Niko moved aside the soft cotton blanket she was wrapped in, letting the edge of the fabric slide down her arm. As carefully as he lifted the bandage and inspected the cleaned, sutured wound beneath it, he still felt Renata flinch with discomfort. She held herself perfectly still as he gingerly checked both sides of her shoulder. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but even that thin rivulet of scarlet hit him hard. He was out of the woods as far as Bloodlust went, but he was still Breed, and Renata’s sweet sandalwood-and-rain blood scent was intoxicating, especially up close.
“Overall, it looks decent,” he murmured, forcing himself to pull away. He replaced the bandages and sat back on the edge of the bed. “The exit wound is still pretty livid.”
‘Jack says I’m lucky that the bullet went straight through and didn’t hit any bones.”
Niko grunted. She was lucky to have been blood-bonded to a Gen One male. Sergei Yakut may have been a vicious, good-for-nothing bastard, but the presence of his nearly pure Breed blood in her system should hasten her healing like nothing else. In fact, he was surprised to see her looking so tired. Then again, it had been quite a long night so far by any standards.
Based on the dark circles smudged under her eyes, she hadn’t slept at all. She hadn’t eaten either. A tray of food sat untouched on the metal card table nearby.
He wondered if it was grief over Yakut’s death that added to her fatigue. She was clearly concerned for Mira, but by all rights, and as hard as it was for him to accept the idea, she was also a female who’d recently lost her mate. And here she was, nursing a gunshot wound on top of all that simply because she’d decided to seek his help.
“Why don’t you rest for a while,” Nikolai suggested. “Take the bed. Get some sleep. It’s my turn to be on watch.”
She didn’t argue, much to his surprise. He got up and held the blanket for her as she climbed in and struggled to position herself around her shoulder wound.
“The window,” she murmured, pointing at it. “I was going to cover it for you.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
She fell asleep in less than a minute’s time. Niko watched her for a moment, and then, when he was certain she wouldn’t feel it, he gave in to his urge to touch her. Just a brief caress of her cheek, his fingers trailing into the black silk of her hair.
It was wrong to desire her, he knew that.
In his condition, at what was just about the worst of possible circumstances, it was probably stupid as hell for him to crave Renata the way he did—the way he had nearly from the instant he first laid eyes on her.
But in that moment, had she lifted her lids and found him there beside her, nothing would have kept him from pulling her into his arms.
A pair of halogen high-beams pierced the blanket of fog that spilled down onto the valley road from Vermont’s densely forested Green Mountains. In the backseat, the chauffeured vehicle’s passenger stared impatiently at the dark landscape, his Breed eyes throwing off amber reflections in the opaque glass. He was pissed off, and after speaking with Edgar Fabien, his contact in Montreal, he had ample reason to be upset. The only glimmer of promise had been the fact that amid all the recent fuckups and disasters narrowly averted, somehow, Sergei Yakut was dead and, in the process, Fabien had managed to net a member of the Order.
Unfortunately, that small victory had been short-lived. Just a few hours ago, Fabien had sheepishly reported that the Breed warrior had escaped the containment facility and was currently at large with the female who’d apparently aided him. If Fabien’s hands weren’t already full with the other important business he’d been assigned, the Montreal Darkhaven leader might be getting an unexpected visit tonight as well. He could deal with Fabien later.
Annoyed by this mandatory detour through cow country, what infuriated him the most by far was the recent malfunction of his best, most effective instrument.
Failure simply could not be tolerated. One mistake was one too many, and, like a watchdog that suddenly turns on its owner, there was only one viable solution for the problem awaiting him up this particular stretch of rural back-country road: termination.
The vehicle slowed and made a right off the asphalt, onto a bumpy dirt one-laner. A rambling Colonial-era stone fence and half a dozen tall oaks and maples lined the drive that led up to an old white farmhouse with a wide, wraparound porch. The car came to a stop in front of a big red barn around the back of the house. The driver—a Minion—got out, walked around to the rear passenger door, and opened it for his vampire Master.
“Sire,” the human mind slave said with a deferential bow of his head.
The Breed male inside the car climbed out, sniffing derisively at the taint of livestock in the so-called fresh night air. His senses were no less offended as he turned his head toward the house and saw the dim light of a table lamp glowing in one of the rooms, the inane yammering of a television game show drifting out of the open windows.
“Wait here,” he instructed his driver. “This won’t take long.”
Stones crunching under his polished leather loafers, he walked over the gravel to the covered porch steps leading to the farmhouse’s back door. It was locked, for all that it mattered. He willed the bolt open and strode inside the blue-and-white gingham-trimmed eyesore of a kitchen. As the door creaked closed behind him, a middle-aged human male holding a shotgun came in from the hallway.
“Master,” he gasped, setting the rifle down on the countertop. “Forgive me. I wasn’t aware that you, ah… that you w-were coming.” The Minion stammered, anxious, and evidently wise enough to know that this was no social call. “H-how may I serve you?”
“Where is the Hunter?”
“The cellar, sire.”
“Take me to him.”
“Of course.” The Minion scrambled past and opened the back door, holding it wide. When his master had exited, he dashed around to lead the way to the coffinlike entrance of the cellar along the side of the house. “I don’t know what could have gone wrong with him, Master. He’s never failed to carry out an assignment before.”
True enough, although that only made the current failure of such a perfect specimen all the more inexcusable. “I’m not interested in the past.”
“No, no. Of course not, sire. My apologies.”
There was a clumsy struggle with the key and lock, the latter having been installed in order to keep the curious out, rather than as a measure to keep the cellar’s deadly occupant inside. Locks were unnecessary when there was another, more effective method in place to ensure that he wasn’t tempted to stray.
“This way,” said the Minion, opening the steel doors to reveal a lightless pit that opened into the earth below the old house.
A flight of wooden stairs descended into the dank, musty darkness. The Minion moved ahead, tugging a string attached to a bare bulb to help light the way. The vampire behind him saw well enough without it, as did the one housed down here in the empty, windowless space.
The cellar contained no furniture. No diversions. No personal effects. By deliberate design, it contained no comforts whatsoever. It was filled with precisely nothing—a reminder to its occupant that he too was nothing beyond that which he was summoned from here to do. His very existence was merely to serve, to follow orders.
To act without mercy or mistake.
To give no quarter, nor expect any in return.
As they walked into the center of the cellar, the huge Breed male seated quietly on the bare earth floor looked up. He was naked, elbows resting on his updrawn knees, his head shaved bald. He had no name, no identity at all except the one that was given to him when he was born: Hunter. The fitted black electronic collar around his neck had also been with him all his life.
In truth, it was his life, for if he should ever resist instruction, or tamper with the monitoring device in any way, a digital sensor would trip and the UV weapon contained within the collar would detonate.
The big male stood up as his Minion handler gestured for him to rise. He was impressive, a Gen One standing six and a half feet, all lean muscle and formidable strength. His body was covered in a web of dermaglyphs from neck to ankle, skin markings inherited through blood, passed down from father to son within the Breed.
That he and this vampire shared similar patterns was to be expected; after all, they were born of the same Ancient paternal line. Both of them had the blood of the same alien warrior swimming in their veins—one of the original fathers of the vampire race on earth. They were kin, although only one of them knew that. The one who had been patiently biding his time, living behind countless masks and deceptions while carefully arranging his pieces on a massive and complex board. Manipulating fate until the time was right for him to finally, rightfully, rise to his place of power over both Breed and humankind alike.
That time was coming.
Coming soon, he could feel it in his bones.
And he would abide no missteps in the ascent to his throne.
Eyes as golden as a falcon’s met and held his gaze in the dim light of the cellar. He didn’t appreciate the pride he saw there—the trace of defiance in one who had been raised to serve.
“Explain to me why you failed to carry out your objective,” he demanded. “You were sent to Montreal with a clear mission. Why were you unable to execute it?”
“There was a witness” came the cool reply.
“That’s never stopped you before. Why now?”
Those unflinching golden eyes showed no emotion whatsoever, but there was challenge in the subtle lift of the Hunter’s square jaw. “It was a child, a young female.”
“A child, you say.” He shrugged, unmoved. “Even easier to eliminate, don’t you think?”
The Hunter said nothing, just stared at him as if awaiting judgment. As if he expected to be condemned and could give a damn.
“You were not trained to question your orders or to back away from obstacles. You were bred for one thing— as were the others like you.”
The stern chin came up another inch, questioning. Mistrusting. “What others?”
He chuckled low under his breath. “You didn’t actually think you were unique, did you? Far from it. Yes, there are others. An army of others—soldiers, assassins … expendable pawns I’ve created over a period of several decades, all of them born and raised to serve me. Others, like you, who live only because I will it.” He glanced pointedly at the collar that ringed the vampire’s neck. “You, like the others, live only so long as I will it.”
“Master,” interrupted the Minion handler. “I’m certain this was a one-time error. When you send him out next time, there will be no problems, I assure—”
“I’ve heard enough,” he snapped, slanting a look at the human who by association had also failed him. “There will be no next time. And you are of no use to me anymore.”
In a flash of motion, he wheeled on the Minion and sank his fangs into the side of the man’s throat. He didn’t drink, just punctured the carotid and released him, watching with complete disregard as he collapsed on the earthen floor of the cellar, bleeding profusely. The presence of so much pumping blood was almost too much to bear. It was hard to waste it, but he was more interested in proving a point.
He glanced at the Gen One vampire beside him—grinning as the male’s glyphs began to pulse with the deep colors of hunger, his golden eyes now fully amber. His fangs filled his mouth, and it was obvious that every instinct within him was screaming for him to lunge on the sputtering prey and feed before the blood and the human were both dead.
Except he didn’t move. He stood there, defiant still, refusing to give in to even that most natural, savage side of himself.
Killing him would be easy enough; just a code typed into his cell phone and that rigid, unentitled pride would be blown to bits. But it would be far more enjoyable to break him first. So much the better if breaking him could serve as an example to Fabien and anyone else who might be stupid enough to disappoint him.
“Outside,” he commanded the servant assassin. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Renata stood at the pedestal sink in the bathroom, spat the last of her toothpaste down the drain, then rinsed with several handfuls of cool water. She’d gotten up much later than she intended. Nikolai said she had looked like she needed the rest, so he’d let her sleep until almost ten in the morning. She could have slept another ten days and she’d probably still be tired.
She felt awful. Achy all over, weak-limbed. Unsteady on her feet. Her body’s internal thermostat couldn’t seem to decide between freezing cold and overheated, leaving her racked with alternating shivers and waves of perspiration beading on her brow and the back of her neck.
With her right hand braced on the sink, she put her other under the running faucet, thinking to clamp her cool, wet fingers around the furnace that burned at her nape. One slight shift of her left arm and she hissed in pain.
Her shoulder felt like it was on fire.
She winced as she carefully unbuttoned the top of a big oxford shirt she was borrowing from Jack. Slowly she shrugged out of the left sleeve so she could remove the bandage and inspect her wound. The tape stung as she peeled it away from her tender, aggravated skin. Coagulating blood and antiseptic ointment coated the thick pad of gauze, but the wound underneath was still swollen and seeping.
She didn’t need a doctor to tell her that this wasn’t good news. Blood and thick yellow fluid drained from the angry red circle surrounding the bullet’s open point of entry. Not good at all. Nor did she need a thermometer to confirm that she was probably spiking a fairly high fever due to the onset of infection.
“Shit,” she whispered at her haggard, sallow face in the mirror. “I don’t have time for this, damn it.”
An abrupt knock on the bathroom door made her jump.
“Hey.” Nikolai knocked again, two quick raps. “Everything okay in there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s all good.” Her voice scraped like sandpaper in her throat, little better than a hard rasp of sound. “I’m just brushing my teeth.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” Renata wadded up the soiled bandage and tossed it into the trash bin next to the sink. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
The answering pause didn’t give her the impression he was going anywhere. She cranked the water to a higher volume and waited, unmoving, her eyes on the closed door.
“Renata… your wound,” Nikolai said through the wood panel. There was a gravity to his tone. “It’s not healed yet? It should have stopped bleeding by now…”
Although she hadn’t wanted him to know what was going on, there was no use denying it now. All of his kind had impossibly acute senses, especially when it came to detecting spilled blood.
Renata cleared her throat. “It’s nothing, no big deal. Just needs new dressing and a fresh bandage.”
“I’m coming in,” he said, and gave the doorknob a twist. It held, locked from the push-button mechanism on the inside. “Renata. Let me in.”
“I said, I’m fine. I’ll be out in just a—”
She didn’t have a chance to finish. Using what could only have been the power of his Breed mind, Nikolai sprang the lock and opened the door wide.
Renata might have cursed him out for barging in like he owned the place, but she was too busy trying to yank the long, loose sleeve of the shirt up to cover herself. She didn’t care so much if he saw the inflamed state of her gunshot wound; it was the other marks that she wanted to make disappear.
The permanent ones that had been burned into the skin of her back.
She managed to get the soft cotton cloth around her, but all the shifting and tugging made her shoulder scream and her gut turn inside out as the pain brought on a hefty wave of nausea.
Panting now, awash in a cold sweat, she plopped herself down on the closed toilet lid and tried to act like she wasn’t about to lose her stomach all over the tiny black-and-white tiles under her feet.
“For crissake.” Nikolai, bare-chested, his borrowed warm-ups hanging low on his trim hips, took one look at her and dropped into a squat in front of her. “You’re far from okay in here.”
She flinched as he reached for the sagging open collar of the shirt. “Don’t.”
“I’m just going to check your wound. Something’s not right. It should be healing by now.” He moved the fabric away from her shoulder and scowled. “Shit. This doesn’t look good at all. How does the point of exit look?”
He stood up and leaned over her, his fingers careful as he slid more of the shirt out of his way. Even though she was burning up, she could feel the heat of his body as he hovered so near to her in the small space. “Ah, fuck… this side is worse than the front. Let’s get you out of this shirt so I can see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
Renata froze, her entire system seizing up. “No. I can’t.”
“Sure you can. I’ll help you.” When she didn’t budge, just sat there holding the front of the big shirt in her tight fist, Nikolai grinned. “If you think you have to be modest with me, you don’t. Hell, you’ve already seen me naked so it’s only fair, right?”
She didn’t laugh. She couldn’t. It was hard to hold his gaze, hard to believe the concern that was starting to darken his wintry blue eyes as he waited for her answer. She didn’t want to see revulsion there, nor, even worse, pity. “Will you just… go away now? Please? Let me take care of this myself.”
“Your wound is infected. You’re running a fever because of it.”
“I know.”
Nikolai’s face went sober with some emotion she couldn’t discern. “When was the last time you fed?”
She shrugged. “Jack brought me some food last night, but I wasn’t hungry.”
“Not food, Renata. I’m talking about blood. When was the last time you fed from Yakut?”
“You mean drink his blood?” She couldn’t mask her revulsion. “Never. Why would you ask that? Why would you think it?”
“He drank from you. I saw him feeding at your vein in his quarters at the lodge. I guess I assumed it was a mutual arrangement.”
Renata hated to think about that, let alone be reminded that Nikolai had witnessed her degradation. “Sergei used me for blood whenever he felt the need. Or whenever he wanted to make a point.”
“But he never gave you his blood in exchange?”
Renata shook her head.
“No wonder you’re not healing faster,” Nikolai murmured. He gave a slight shake of his head. “When I saw him drinking from you… I thought you were mated to him. I assumed you were blood-bonded to each other. I thought maybe you cared for him.”
“You thought I loved him,” Renata said, realizing where he was heading. “It wasn’t that. Not even close.”
She exhaled a sharp breath that grated in her throat. Nikolai wasn’t pushing her for answers, and maybe precisely because of that, she wanted him to understand that what she felt for the vampire she had served was anything but affection. “Two years ago, Sergei Yakut plucked me off a downtown street and brought me to his lodge along with several other kids he’d collected that night. We didn’t know who he was, or where we were going, or why. We didn’t know anything, because he put us all in some kind of trance that didn’t lift until we found ourselves locked up together inside a large, dark cage.”
“The one inside the barn on his property,” Nikolai said, his face grim. “Jesus Christ. He brought you in as live game for his blood club?”
“I don’t think any of us realized that monsters truly existed until Yakut, Lex, and a few others came out to open the cage. They showed us the woods, told us to run.” She swallowed past the bitterness rising in her throat. “The slaughter began as soon as the first of us broke for the forest.”
In her mind, Renata relived the horror in excruciating detail. She could still hear the screams of the victims as they fled, and the terrible howls of the predators who hunted them with such savage zeal. She could still smell the summery tang of pine and loamy moss, nature’s scents smothered all too soon by that of blood and death. She could still see the vast darkness surrounding her in the unfamiliar terrain, unseen branches that smacked her cheeks and tore at her clothes as she tried to navigate her escape.
“None of you stood a chance,” Nikolai murmured. “They told you to run only to toy with you. To give themselves the illusion that blood clubs have anything to do with sport.”
“I know that now.” Renata could still taste the futility of all that running. Terror had taken shape out of the black night in the form of glowing amber eyes and bared, bloodied fangs like nothing she’d ever dreamed in her worst nightmare. “One of them caught up to me. He came out of nowhere and began to circle me, readying for the attack. I’d never been more afraid. I was scared and angry and something inside me just… snapped. I felt a power coursing through me, something stronger than the adrenaline that was flooding my body.”
Nikolai nodded. “You didn’t know about the ability you possessed.”
“I didn’t know about a lot of things until that night. Everything had turned inside out. I just wanted to survive— the only thing I knew how to do. So when I felt that energy flowing through me, some visceral instinct told me to turn it loose on my attacker. I pushed it outward with my mind and the vampire staggered back as if I’d physically struck him. I threw more at him, and still more, until he was down on the ground screaming and his eyes were bleeding and his entire body was convulsing in pain.” Renata paused, wondering if the Breed warrior staring at her in silence was judging her for her total lack of remorse over what she’d done. She wasn’t about to apologize or make excuses. “I wanted him to suffer, Nikolai. I wanted to kill him, and I did.”
“What other choice did you have?” he said, reaching out and very tenderly brushing his fingertips along the line of her cheek. “What about Yakut? Where was he during all of this?”
“Not far behind. I had started running again when he stepped into my path and headed me off. I tried to take him down too, but he withstood it. I sent everything I had at him, to the point of exhaustion, but it wasn’t enough. He was too strong.”
“Because he was Gen One.”
Renata gave an acknowledging tilt of her head. “He explained it to me later, after that initial bout of reverb had knocked me unconscious for three full days and I woke to find myself pressed into service as a personal bodyguard to a vampire.”
“You never tried to leave?”
“In the beginning, I tried. More than once. It never took him long to locate me.” She tapped her index finger against the vein at the side of her neck. “Hard to get very far when your own blood is better than GPS for your pursuer. He used my blood as insurance of my loyalty. It was a shackle I couldn’t break. I was never going to be free of it.”
“You’re free now, Renata.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am,” she said, the answer sounding as hollow as it felt. “But what about Mira?”
Nikolai stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing. She didn’t want to see the doubt in his eyes, no more than she wanted empty assurances that there was anything either one of them could do for Mira now that she was in enemy hands. All the worse when she was currently weakened by her wound.
Nikolai pivoted to the claw-footed white tub and gave the twin handles a crank. As water rushed into the basin, he turned back to her where she sat. “A cool bath should bring your temperature down. Gome on, I’ll help you clean up.”
“No, I can manage on my own—”
He gave her a no-arguments lift of his brow. “The shirt, Renata. Let me help you out of it so I can have a better look at what’s going on with that wound.”
Obviously, he wasn’t about to give it up. Renata sat very still as Nikolai unfastened the last few buttons on the tent-sized oxford and gently eased it off her. The cotton fell in a soft crush on her lap and around her hips. Despite that she was wearing a bra, modesty ingrained in her from her early years in the church orphanage made her lift her hands up to shield her breasts from his eyes.
But he wasn’t looking at her in a sexual way just then. All his focus was on her shoulder right now. He was gentle, careful, his fingers probing lightly around the area. He followed the curve of her shoulder over and around to where the bullet had left her flesh. “Does it hurt when I touch you here?”
Even though his touch was barely a skimming contact, pain radiated through her. She winced, sucking in her breath.
“Sorry. There’s a lot of redness and swelling near the exit wound,” he said, his deep voice vibrating in her bones while his touch moved lightly on her. “It doesn’t look great, but I think if we flush it out and …”
As his voice trailed off, she knew what he was seeing now. Not the raw gunshot wound, but two other blemishes on the otherwise smooth skin of her back. She felt those marks sear as hotly as they had the night they’d been put there.
“Holy hell.” Nikolai’s breath left him in a slow sigh. “What happened to you? Are these burn marks? Jesus… are they brands?”
Renata closed her eyes. Part of her wanted nothing more than to shrink away and vanish into the tile, but she forced herself to remain still, her spine rigidly erect. “They are nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He stood before her and lifted her chin on the edge of his hand. She let her gaze drift up to meet his and found his pale eyes sharp with intensity. There was no pity in those eyes, only a cold outrage that took her aback. “Tell me. Who did this to you—was it Yakut?”
She shrugged. “Just one of his more creative ways of reminding me that it’s not a good idea to piss him off.”
“That son of a bitch,” Nikolai fumed. “He had his death coming. Just for this—for everything he did to you— the bastard damn well had it coming.”
Renata blinked, surprised to hear such fury, such fierce protectiveness, coming from him. Particularly when Nikolai was one of the Breed and she was, as was made clear to her often enough the past two years, merely human. Existing only because she was useful. “You’re not like him at all,” she murmured. “I thought you would be, but you’re nothing like him or Lex or the others. You’re… I don’t know… different.”
“Different?” Although the intensity hadn’t left his eyes, Nikolai’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Was that almost a compliment, or just your fever talking?”
She smiled despite her state of general misery. “Both, I think.”
“Well, different I can handle. Let’s cool you down before you start throwing around the n-word.”
“The n-word?” she asked, watching as he took the bottle of liquid hand soap from the sink and squirted some into the running bath.
“Nice,” he said, and tossed her a wry look over his thick shoulder.
“You’re not comfortable with nice?”
“It’s never been one of my specialties.”
His grin was crooked and more than a little charming as it made his lean cheeks dimple on both sides. Looking at him like this, it wasn’t hard to imagine he was a male of many specialties, not all of them the bullets-and-blades variety. She knew firsthand that he had a very nice, very skilled mouth. As much as she wanted to deny it, a part of her was still burning from their kiss back at the lodge, and the heat she felt had nothing to do with her fever.
“Get undressed,” Nikolai told her, and for one addled second she wondered if he’d been able to read her thoughts. He ran his hand back and forth through the sudsy water in the tub, then shook it out. “It feels about right. Go on, climb in.”
Renata watched him set the soap bottle back down on the sink, then start a search of the vanity cabinet below, taking out a folded washcloth and a large towel. While his back was to her and he was distracted searching the toiletries pack for soap and shampoo, Renata quickly slipped out of her bra and panties then stepped into the bathtub.
The cool water was bliss. She sank down with a sigh, her fatigued body instantly soothed. As she carefully settled in and submerged herself up to her breasts in the soapy bath, Nikolai ran a washcloth under cold water at the sink.
He folded it and pressed it gently against her brow. “That feel all right?”
She nodded, closing her eyes as he held the compress to her forehead. The urge to lean back against the tub was tempting, but when she tried to, that brief moment of pressure on her shoulder made her recoil, hissing in pain.
“Here,” Nikolai said, putting the palm of his free hand at the center of her back. “Just relax. I’ll hold you up.”
Renata slowly let her weight come to rest on his strong hand. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken care of her. Not like this. God, had there ever been a time? Her eyes drifted closed in silent gratitude. With Nikolai’s strong hands on her tired body a strange, utterly foreign sensation of safety spread over her, as comforting as a blanket.
“Better?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm. It’s nice,” she said, then opened one eye just a slit and glanced at up him. “N-word. Sorry.”
He grunted as he took the cold compress away from her brow. He was looking at her with a seriousness that made her heart kick a little in her chest. “You want to tell me about those marks on your back?”
“No.” Renata’s breath seized up at the thought of baring even more to him than she had already. She wasn’t ready for that. Not with him, not like this. It was a humiliation she could hardly stand to think about, let alone put into words.
He didn’t say anything to break the silence that stretched out between them. He dipped the washcloth into the water and brought some of the sudsy lather to her good shoulder. The coolness flowed over her, rivulets running over the swell of her breast and down her arm. Nikolai swabbed her neck and breastbone, then carefully made his way over to the wound on her left side.
“Is this all right?” he asked, his voice a low tremor.
Renata nodded her head, unable to speak when his touch felt so tender and welcome. She let him wash her, her gaze drifting to the beautiful pattern of color on his bare chest and arms. His dermaglyphs weren’t as numerous or as thickly tangled as Yakut’s had been. Nikolai’s Breed markings were an artful twining of swirls and flourishes and flamelike shapes that danced across his smooth golden skin.
Curious, and before she realized what she was doing, Renata reached out to trace one of the arching designs that tracked down his thick biceps. She heard his slight intake of breath, the sudden halt of his lungs as her fingers played lightly over his skin, the deep rumble of his growl.
When he looked at her, his brows were low over his eyes. His pupils thinned sharply, and the blue of his irises began to flicker with amber sparks. Renata pulled her hand back, an apology at the very tip of her tongue.
She didn’t get the chance to say a word.
Moving faster than she could track him, and with a predator’s smooth grace, Nikolai closed the scant few inches that separated them. In the next instant his mouth was brushing sweetly against hers. His lips were so soft, so warm and coaxing. All it took was one tempting slide of his tongue along the seam of her mouth and Renata eagerly, hungrily, let him in.
She felt a new heat kindling to life within her, something stronger than the pain of her wound, which faded to insignificance under the pleasure of Nikolai’s kiss. He brought his hand up out of the water behind her and cradled her in a careful embrace, his mouth never leaving hers.
Renata melted into him, too weary to consider all the reasons it would be a mistake to let this continue any further. She wanted it to continue—wanted it so badly she was shaking. She couldn’t feel anything but Nikolai’s strong hands caressing her, heard only the pound of her own heart and his, the heavy beats matched in tempo. She tasted only the heat of his seductive mouth claiming her… and knew only that she wanted more.
A knock sounded from outside the garage apartment.
Nikolai growled against her mouth and drew back. “Someone’s at the door.”
“That’ll be Jack,” Renata said, breathless, her pulse still throbbing. “I’ll go see what he wants.”
She tried to shift in the tub to get out and felt her shoulder light up with pain.
“The hell you will,” Nikolai told her, already standing up. “You’re staying put. I’ll handle Jack.”
Nikolai was a large male by any standards, but he seemed enormous now, his clear blue eyes crackling with burnished amber and the dermaglyph markings on his muscular arms and torso alive with color. He was apparently large elsewhere too, a fact that was hardly concealed by the loose-fitting nylon pants.
When the knock sounded again outside, he cursed, the tips of his fangs gleaming. “Does anyone besides Jack know we’re here?”
Renata shook her head. “I asked him not to say anything to anyone. We can trust him.”
“I guess it’s as good a time as any to find that out, eh?”
“Nikolai,” she said as he grabbed the shirt she’d been wearing and shrugged into the long sleeves. “About Jack… he’s a good man. A decent man. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
He smirked. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to be nice.”
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Nice,” Niko exhaled through a tight grimace. He was feeling anything but nice as he closed the bathroom door and walked into the main room of the apartment.
Being alone with Renata while she sat nude in the tub, touching her—kissing her, for crissake—had shifted all of his systems into overdrive. But as torqued as he was, his raging hard-on was the least of those concerns as he approached the door where Jack was knocking again from outside. It was one thing to pretend there wasn’t a tent pole erected in his pants, quite another to hope no one would notice that his eyes were burning as bright as hot coals and that his extended canines would put a rottweiler to shame.
At least the loose shirt covered his glyphs. Niko didn’t have to see his body to know that his skin markings were alive and pulsing with the deep colors of arousal. Awfully hard to try to explain them away as tattoos now.
Nikolai stared at the door and willed himself to chill out, cool down. He had to extinguish the fire in his irises, and that meant powering down the lust that Renata’s touch had stirred in him. He focused on slowing his pulse, a hell of a struggle when his cock was in command of his blood flow.
“Hello?” came the drawled greeting from outside. Jack knocked again, the dark shadow of his head bobbing on the other side of the curtained window of the door. He seemed conscious of keeping his voice at a discreet level. “Renata, that you, darlin’? You awake in there?”
Shit. No choice but to let him in. Nikolai growled low under his breath as he reached out to flip the dead bolt. He’d assured Renata that he would go easy on the old guy, but things could go south as soon as he opened the damned door. And if the human gave off so much as a whiff of suspicion, he was going to find himself on the short list for a mind scrub.
Niko freed the lock and twisted the doorknob. He backed off from the wedge of daylight that poured in through the opening and positioned himself behind the door as it swung open.
“Renata? All right if I come in for a minute?” A scuffed brown cowboy boot stepped over the threshold. “Thought I’d better look in on you this morning before I get busy around the house with the kids.”
As the human in worn-out Levi’s and a white cotton undershirt entered, Nikolai splayed his hand on the door and eased it shut to seal out the morning sunshine. He sized up the aged man in a glance, taking in the craggy face, shrewd eyes, and silvered, military-style buzzcut. He was a big man, a little soft around the middle, a little bowed around the knees, but his tattooed arms were tan and still firm with enough muscle to indicate that while he might be old, it didn’t mean he was afraid of hard work.
“You must be Jack,” Nikolai said, careful to speak in a way that kept his fangs under wraps behind his lip.
“That’s right.” A small nod as Niko was subjected to a similar measuring look. “And you’re Renata’s friend… She, ah, didn’t get around to telling me your name last night.”
Apparently the amber glow was gone from Niko’s blue irises, since he doubted Jack would be reaching out to shake his hand right now if the old guy was staring into a pair of otherworldly eyes that threw off sparks like a furnace.
“I’m Nick,” he said, sticking close enough to the truth for now. He gave the former soldier’s hand a brief shake. “Thanks for helping us out.”
Jack nodded. “You’re looking a lot better this morning, Nick. Glad to see you’re up and around. How’s Renata doing?”
“Okay. She’s in the bathroom washing up.”
He didn’t see any reason to bring up the infection. No sense getting well-meaning Jack so worried that he started talking about doctors or trips to the hospital. Although based on what Nikolai had seen of Renata’s wound, if her healing process didn’t get a serious boost—and get one soon—mere would be no alternative but a visit to the nearest ER.
“I’m not gonna ask how it is she ended up with a bullet hole in her shoulder,” Jack said, watching Nikolai closely. “From the shape the both of you were in last night, and the fact I had to adios an apparently stolen medical supply truck, I’d be tempted to guess whatever trouble’s chasing you is drug-related. But I know Renata’s smarter than that. I don’t believe for a minute she’d let herself get mixed up in something like drugs. She didn’t want to tell me about any of it, and I promised her I wouldn’t press. I’m a man of my word.”
Niko held the old man’s stare. “I’m sure she appreciates that. We both do.”
“Yeah,” Jack drawled, steely eyes narrowing. “But I am curious about something. She’s been MIA for the past couple of years … you got anything to do with that?”
It wasn’t phrased as an overt accusation, but it was obvious that the old man had been concerned about Renata and also had the sense that her long absence hadn’t necessarily been good for her. Man, if he only knew what she’d been through. The gunshot wound she was sporting now was just the icing on what had been a very nasty cake.
Nikolai shook his head. “I’ve only known Renata for a few days, but I can tell you that you’re right about her being too smart to fall into problems with drugs. That’s not what this is about, Jack. But she is in danger. The only reason I’m standing here is because she risked her neck to pull me out of a shitload of trouble yesterday.”
“That sounds like Renata,” Jack said, his expression lost somewhere between pride and concern.
“Unfortunately, because she stepped in to help me, now there’s a target on both our backs.”
Jack grunted as he listened, wiry brows knitting together. “She tell you how we know each other?”
“Some of it,” Niko said. “I know that she trusts and respects you. I assume you’ve been here to help her a time or two before now.”
“Tried, more like it. Renata never wanted help from me or from anyone else. Not for herself, anyway. But there were a lot of other kids she brought to my house for help. She couldn’t stand to see a child in pain. Hell, she wasn’t much more than a kid herself the first time she came around. Always kept to herself for the most part, a real loner. She doesn’t have any family, you know.”
Nikolai shook his head. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“The Sisters of Benevolent Mercy raised her the first twelve years of her life. Her mother gave her up to the church orphanage when Renata was just a baby. She never knew either of her parents. By the time Renata was fifteen, she was already on her own, having left the nuns to live on the streets.”
Jack walked over to a metal file cabinet that stood with some of the other stuff stored in the apartment. He fished a set of keys out of his jeans pocket and stuck one of them into the lock on the front of the piece. “Yessir, Renata was a tough little customer, even in the beginning. Skinny, wary, she looked like someone who would hardly stand up to a stiff breeze, but that girl had a spine of solid steel. Didn’t take bullshit from anyone.”
“Not much has changed there,” Nikolai said, watching the old man pop open the bottom drawer. “I’ve never met a woman like Renata.”
Jack looked over at him and smiled. “She’s special, all right. Stubborn too. A few months before the last time I saw her, she showed up with a face full of bruises. Apparently some drunk rolled out of a bar and got the idea that he wanted some company for the night. He saw Renata and tried to shove her into his car. She fought him, but he got a few hard punches in before she was able to get away.”
Nikolai cursed under his breath. “Son of a bitch should have been gutted for laying a hand on a defenseless female.”
“That was my thinking too,” Jack said, deadly serious, the protective soldier once more. He eased down into a squat and withdrew a polished wooden case from the file cabinet. “I taught her a few self-defense moves—basic stuff. Offered to send her to some classes on my dime, but of course she refused. A few weeks passed and she was back again, helping another kid with nowhere left to turn. I told her I had something for her—a gift I had made special for her. Swear to God, if you’d seen her face, you’d think she would rather have bolted into oncoming traffic than have to accept any kindness from someone.”
Nikolai didn’t have to work to imagine that look. He’d seen it once or twice himself since he’d met Renata. “What was your gift for her?”
The old man shrugged. “Nothing much, really. I had an old set of daggers I picked up in Nam. I took them to an artist fella I knew who worked with metals and had him customize the handles for me. He hand-tooled each of the four grips with a few of the strengths I saw in Renata. I told her they were the qualities that made her unique and would see her through any situation.”
“Faith, honor, courage, and sacrifice,” Nikolai said, recalling the words he’d seen on the blades Renata seemed to treasure so much.
“She told you about the blades?”
Niko shrugged. “I’ve seen her use them. They mean a lot to her, Jack.”
“I didn’t know,” he replied. “I was surprised that she accepted them in the first place, but I didn’t think she’d still keep them after all this time.” He blinked quickly, then busied himself with the box he’d pulled out of the file cabinet. He opened the lid and Niko caught the glint of dark metal resting inside the felt-lined case. Jack cleared his throat. “Listen, like I said before, I’m not going to press for details about what the two of you are involved in. It’s clear enough that you’re in some pretty big trouble. You can stay here as long as you need to, and when you’re ready to go, just know that you don’t have to leave here empty-handed.”
He set the open box down on the floor in front of him and gave it a little push in Nikolai’s direction. Inside were two pristine semiautomatic pistols and a box of rounds.
“They’re yours if you want them, no questions asked.”
Niko picked up one of the .45s and inspected it with an appreciative eye. It was a beautiful, well-tended Colt M1911. Probably military-issued weapons from his service time in Vietnam. “Thank you, Jack.”
The old human warrior gave him a brief nod. “Just take care of her. Keep her safe.”
Nikolai held that steady stare. “I will.”
“Okay,” Jack murmured. “Okay then.”
As he started to get up, someone shouted his name from outside in driveway. A second later, footsteps were pounding up the wooden stairs to the garage apartment.
Niko shot Jack a sharp look. “Does anyone know we’re in here?”
“Nope. Anyway, that’s just Curtis, one of my newer kids. He’s fixing my dinosaur of a computer. Damn virus attack again.” Jack went over to the door. “He thinks I’m looking for a boot disk in here. I’ll get rid of him. Meantime, if you think of anything else you two might need, you just ask.”
“How about a phone?” Niko asked, replacing the pistol next to its mate.
Jack reached into his front pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He tossed it to Nikolai. “It should have a few hours of battery time. It’s all yours.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll check in with you again later.” Jack grabbed the doorknob and Nikolai backed into the shadows, as much a reflex because of the daylight outside as it was an effort to stay out of sight from the unwanted visitor who’d arrived at the top of the stairs. “Well, I was mistaken, Curtis. I checked everywhere and there’s no disk in any of my boxes up here.”
Niko saw the other human’s head trying to peer around the edge of the door as Jack closed it firmly behind him. There was a clopping shuffle of feet on the steps as Jack escorted the other human away.
Once he was certain they were gone, Nikolai dialed a remote access number that was maintained by the Order’s Boston headquarters. He typed in Jack’s cell phone number and a code that would identify him to Gideon, then waited for the callback.
Midday in a compound that housed a bunch of vampires was generally a dead zone of inactivity, but none of the seven warriors gathered in the weapons room of the Order’s subterranean headquarters seemed to notice the time, not even the handful of them blessed enough to have loving Breedmates warming their beds. Since regrouping at the compound before daybreak, the warriors had kept themselves busy reviewing current mission statuses and laying out objectives for the night to come. Hashing out Order business for hours on end was nothing new, but this time there had been none of the usual good-natured smacktalk or joking squabbles over who was grabbing up the best assignments.
Now, a few yards away, at the area used for target practice, a quintet of pistols were being fired one after the other, paper bull’s-eyes at the other end shredded into minuscule confetti. The compound’s shooting range was used more for entertainment than necessity, since all of the warriors had dead-on aim. Even so, that never stopped any of them from testing one another and busting asses just to keep things lively.
There was none of that today. Only the steady hail of all that thundering noise. The racket was oddly comforting, if only because it helped mask the silence, and the fact that the entire compound was vibrating with a low-level current of unrest. For the past thirty-six hours, the mood there had been sober, draped in a collective, if unspoken, dread.
One of their own was missing.
Nikolai had always tended to be something of a maverick, but that didn’t mean the male was unreliable. If he said he was going to do something—or be somewhere— you could damn well count on him to follow through. Every time, no exceptions.
And now, when he should have been back from Montreal a full day and a half ago as planned, Niko was off-grid and out of contact.
Not good, Lucan thought, sensing he wasn’t alone in that sentiment as he looked at the other warriors who also waited for word of Nikolai and dreaded what it eventually might be.
As a Gen One Breed and the founder of the Order in the Middle Ages, Lucan was the de facto leader of this cadre of modern-day vampire knights. His word was law in this compound. In times of crisis—for better or worse— it was his response that set the tone for the other warriors. He was well conditioned not to show worry or doubt, a skill that came naturally to that part of him that was virtually immortal, a powerful predator who’d been walking this Earth for some nine hundred years.
But the part of him that was human—the part of him who had come to appreciate life all the more for having met his Breedmate, Gabrielle, just a summer ago—could not pretend that the potential loss of one more soldier in this private war within the vampire nation would be anything but catastrophic. To say nothing of the fact that the warriors of the Order, both the ones who had been with him from the start and the newer members who’d joined the fight in the past year, had become like family to him. So much had changed in that time. Now there were several females living in the compound too, and for one of the warriors and his mate—Dante and Tess—a baby several months on the way.
The stakes were higher than ever for the Order now, one evil defeated only to see another, even more powerful, rise in its place. In just a year’s time, the warriors’ primary mission had gone from hunting down Rogues in an effort to keep the peace, to pursuing a dangerous enemy who’d been hiding in plain sight for many long decades. An enemy who had been patiently constructing his strategy while concealing a deadly secret and waiting for the opportunity to unleash it. If he were to succeed, it wouldn’t be just the Breed populations in peril, but all of humankind as well.
It didn’t take much for Lucan to recall the savagery of the Old Times, when the night was ruled by a handful of bloodthirsty creatures from another world, creatures who dealt in wide-scale terror and death. They fed like locusts and wreaked destruction like the deadliest marauders. Lucan had made it his life’s mission to eradicate the beasts from existence, even though it had meant slaying the Ancient who was his own father.
The Order had declared war, had wielded swords and ridden into battle to take them all out… or so they’d believed. The idea that one had survived put a deep chill in Lucan’s immortal bones.
He looked at the warriors who served alongside him and couldn’t help feeling some of his age. He couldn’t help feeling that they had all been handed a test last year— perhaps their first true test since the Order’s formation— and the worst of it was still to come.
Lost in dark thoughts as he paced the back of the weapons room, Lucan didn’t realize the training area’s doors were sliding open until Gideon came rushing through them. The blond vampire’s vintage Chucks skidded to a squeaking halt on the white marble in front of Lucan.
“Niko’s back on grid,” he announced, visibly relieved. “His ID just came up on a cell phone with a Montreal exchange.”
“About fucking time,” Lucan said, the snarled reply betraying none of his concern. “You got him on the line?”
Gideon nodded. “He’s on hold back in the tech lab. I thought you’d want to talk to him personally.”
“Damn straight I do.”
The gunfire at the range came to an abrupt stop as one of the other warriors, the Order’s only other Gen One member, Tegan, jogged back and delivered the news of Niko’s contact to the five males shooting at targets. The warriors at the range—Dante and Rio, longtime members; Chase, who’d left the Enforcement Agency to join the Order last summer; and the two newest recruits, Kade and Brock, both brought in by Niko—put down their weapons and strode forward behind Tegan, all of them a knot of muscle and grim purpose.
Rio, one of the warriors who was tightest with Nikolai, was the first to speak. His scarred face was taut with concern. “What happened to him up there?”
“He’s only given me the Reader’s Digest version so far,” Gideon said. “But it’s all sorts of fucked up, starting with Sergei Yakut’s murder two nights ago.”
“Holy hell,” Brock muttered, raking his dark fingers over his skull-trimmed black hair. “This Gen One assassination shit is getting way out of hand.”
“Well,” Gideon added, “that’s not exactly the worst of it. Niko was arrested for the killing and taken into Enforcement Agency custody.”
“Ah, shit,” Kade replied, his pale silver eyes narrowing. “You don’t suppose he—”
“No way,” Dante said without a second’s hesitation. “I doubt he shed a tear for blood-clubbing scum like Yakut, but there’s no way Nikolai had a hand in his death.”
Gideon shook his head. “Nope. And it wasn’t the work of an assassin, either. Niko says Yakut’s own son brought in a Rogue to kill his father. Unfortunately for Nikolai, Yakut’s son has some kind of alliance with the Enforcement Agency. They hauled Niko in and threw him into a containment facility.”
“What the fuck?” This time it was Sterling Chase who spoke up. Being a former Agent himself, he was as aware as any of the warriors in the room how unpleasant a visit to one of those Agency-managed Rogue holding tanks could be. “Since he’s conscious enough to phone in, I assume he’s not still being held there.”
“He escaped somehow,” Gideon said, “but I don’t have all the details yet. I can tell you that there’s a female involved, a Breedmate who was a member of Yakut’s household. She’s with Niko now.”
Lucan didn’t comment on that troublesome newsflash, although his dark expression probably spoke plainly enough for him. “Where are they?”
“In the city somewhere,” Gideon replied. “Niko wasn’t sure of the exact location, but he says they’re secure for now. Are you ready for the real kicker?”
Lucan arched a brow. “For fuck’s sake. There’s more?”
“Afraid so. The guy who tossed Niko’s ass in the containment facility and personally oversaw his torture? Apparently during one of his chattier moments, the son of a bitch admitted a connection to Dragos.”
CHAPTER
Twenty
Nikolai was in the middle of a cell phone conversation when Renata carne out of the bathroom from her long, much-needed soak. She’d evidently fallen asleep in the tub at some point because the last thing she remembered was hearing Jack’s voice in the garage apartment after Nikolai had gone out to meet him, and there was no sign of him now. She stepped into the room, her hair damp at the ends and clinging to her neck, her body wrapped in the towel Nikolai had set out for her.
She was groggy and achy, still overly warm, but the cool-water bath had been just what she’d needed. Nikolai’s kiss hadn’t been half bad either.
Speaking in low, confidential tones, he glanced over at her from where he sat straddling a folding chair near the card table in the center of the room, his pale blue eyes doing a quick but thorough head-to-toe scan of her body. There was an unmistakable heat in that brief gaze, but he was all business on the phone with what she could only assume was the Order back in Boston. Renata listened as he provided an efficient run-through of the circumstances of Yakut’s murder, Lex and Fabien’s apparent alliance, Mira’s disappearance, and the containment facility escape that had brought Nikolai and Renata to Jack’s place for temporary shelter.
From the sound of it, the male on the other end of the line—Lucan, she’d heard Nikolai call him—was concerned for their safety and glad they were both in one piece, although not at all pleased to hear that they were holed up at the mercy of a human. Nor did Lucan seem enthused about the fact that Nikolai was talking about helping Renata locate Mira. She could hear the deep voice on the other end of the line growl something about “Breedmate’s problems” and “current mission objectives” as though the two were mutually exclusive.
The cursed response when Nikolai added that Renata was nursing a gunshot wound was audible all the way across the room.
“She’s tough,” he said, glancing her way now, “but she took a pretty hard hit in the shoulder and it’s not looking too healthy. It might be a good idea to arrange a pickup, take her into the Order’s protection until everything shakes down up here.”
Renata glared her disapproval and gave a shake of her head. Big mistake. Even that slight jostle made her vision swim, and it was all she could do to position her backside at the edge of the bed before her legs gave out beneath her. She dropped down onto the mattress, fighting off a vicious wave of cold sweats.
She tried to hide her misery from Nikolai, but the look he gave her said it was no use pretending she wasn’t in bad shape.
“Has Gideon turned up anything on Fabien yet?” he asked, getting up to pace the floor. He listened for a minute, then exhaled a low sigh. “Fuck. Can’t say I’m surprised about that. He had the arrogant stink of a politician all over him, so I had a feeling the bastard was well connected. What else do we have?”
Renata held her breath in the silence that stretched out. She could see that the news on the other end of the line wasn’t good.
Nikolai blew out a long sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “How long does Gideon think it will take him to dig into those restricted files and turn up an address? Shit, Lucan, I’m not sure we should wait that long, considering— yeah, I hear you. Maybe while Gideon’s hacking on that end I should go pay Alexei Yakut a visit. I’d bet my left nut that Lex knows where to find Fabien. Hell, I wouldn’t doubt it if Lex has been there a time or two himself. I’d be glad to squeeze the information out of him, then go deal with Fabien personally.”
Nikolai listened for a moment before grunting a low curse. “Yeah, sure, I know… much as I’d like a little payback from the son of a bitch, you’re right. We can’t afford the risk of scaring Fabien to ground before we’ve got a solid lead on his ties to Dragos.”
Renata glanced up in time to catch Nikolai’s grim look. She waited for him to add that nothing was more critical than ensuring Mira’s safety and tracking down the vampire who was holding her. She waited, but those words never left Nikolai’s lips.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Have him call when he finds something. I’m going to head out tonight and do some re-con on this end too. If I turn up anything useful, I’ll be in touch.”
He ended the call and set the cell phone down on the card table. Renata stared at him as he walked over to the bed and dropped into a crouch in front of her.
“How are you feeling?”
He reached up like he was going to check her shoulder— or maybe simply caress her—but Renata flinched away from him. She couldn’t sit there and act as if she wasn’t feeling more than a little bit confused and pissed off right now. Betrayed, even, as ridiculous as it was to think she could have counted on him in the first place.
“Did the cool water help your fever at all?” he asked, his brows furrowed. “You’re still looking kind of pale and wobbly. Here, let me have a look—”
“I don’t need your concern,” she bit out. “And I don’t need your help either. Forget that I asked you. Just… forget everything. I wouldn’t want my problems to interfere with any of your current mission objectives.”
His scowl deepened. “What are you talking about?”
“I have my priorities, and you clearly have yours. Sounded to me like your buddy Lucan is calling the shots for you now.”
“Lucan is one of my brothers-in-arms. He’s also the leader of the Order, so yeah, he’s earned the right to call the shots when it comes to Order business.” Nikolai stood up, crossing his arms over his chest. “Something big is going down, Renata. Yakut’s murder was only a small part of it, and he wasn’t the first. There’ve been several other Gen One assassinations that have taken place in the States and abroad. Someone’s been quietly taking out the oldest, most powerful members of the Breed.”
“What for?” She looked up at him, curious against her will.
“We’re not sure. But we believe it all ties back to one individual, a very dangerous second-generation Breed male named Dragos. The Order flushed him out of hiding a few weeks ago, but he managed to get away from us. Now he’s gone underground again. Son of a bitch has been lying real low. Any lead we can grab to get close to him is critical. He has to be stopped.”
“Sergei Yakut killed dozens of human beings—just for sport,” Renata pointed out. “Why didn’t you and the rest of the Order put a stop to him?”
“Until recently, we didn’t know where to find him, let alone know about his extracurricular activities. Even if we had, he was Gen One, and as much as we hated it, the Order wouldn’t have been able to move on him without a lot of bureaucratic bullshit standing in our way.”
Renata’s thoughts grew dark, spinning back across the time she’d spent under Yakut’s control. “There were times when Sergei drank from me … when he used me for blood, that I saw something monstrous in him. I mean, I know what he was—what all of your kind is—but once in while, I would look in his eyes and I swear there was no humanity in him. All I could see in his gaze was something truly evil.”
“He was Gen One,” Nikolai said as though that should explain it. “Only half of their genes are human. The other half are something… else.”
“Vampire,” she murmured.
“Otherworlder,” Nikolai corrected.
He stared at her as he said it and Renata had the abrupt impulse to laugh. But she couldn’t, not when his expression was so completely serious. “Lex loves to boast that he is grandson to a conquering king from another world. I always assumed he was full of shit. Are you telling me what he said is actually true?”
Nikolai scoffed. “A conqueror, yes, but not a king. The eight Ancients who arrived here thousands of years ago and fathered their young on human women were bloodthirsty savages, rapists… deadly creatures that decimated entire communities. Most of them were wiped out by the Order in the Middle Ages. Lucan led the charge against them after his mother was killed by the creature who fathered him.”
Renata just listened now, too astonished to ask all the questions churning in her head.
“As it turns out,” Nikolai added, “one of the Ancients survived the Order’s war on them. He’d been placed in hiding by one of his sons—a Gen One vampire named Dragos. We have good reason to believe the Ancient is still alive today and that Dragos’s last surviving son, his namesake and the bastard we intend to shut down, is just waiting for his chance to unleash him on the world.”
“Two years ago I was sure that vampires didn’t really exist. Sergei Yakut changed my mind. He proved to me that vampires not only existed, but they were scarier and more dangerous than anything I’d seen in books or movies. Now you’re saying there’s something even worse than him out there?”
“I’m not trying to scare you, Renata. I just think you should have the facts. All of them. I’m trusting you with that.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to understand,” he said, the words too gentle.
As if he were apologizing to her in some way.
Renata lifted her chin, a coldness settling in her chest. “You want me to understand… what? That the life of one missing child means nothing in light of all this?”
He cursed softly under his breath. “No, Renata—”
“It’s okay. I get it now, Nikolai.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, not even when she was still struggling to absorb all of the staggering things she’d just heard. “Hey no big deal. After all, you never actually agreed to anything with me and I’m used to being let down. Life’s a bitch, right? It’s just good to know where we both stand before we let this thing go any further.”
“What’s going on here, Renata?” He stared at her, his gaze too penetrating, as if he could see right through her. “Is this really about Mira? Or are you upset because of what’s been happening between us?”
Us. The word stuck in her brain like a foreign object. It felt so unfamiliar, so dangerous. Far too intimate. There had never been an “us” for Renata. She’d always depended only herself, asking nothing of anyone. It was safer that way. Safer now too.
She’d broken her own rule when she went after Nikolai to enlist his help in finding Mira. Look what it had gotten her: a festering gunshot wound, crucial time lost, and not a single step closer to locating Mira. In fact, now that word was certainly out about her abetting Nikolai in his escape from Fabien’s custody, she stood little hope of getting close to the vampire on her own. If Mira was in danger before, Renata might have just made things worse for the little girl.
“I have to get out of here,” she said woodenly “I’ve lost too much time already. I couldn’t bear it if anything happens to that child because of me.”
Worry and frustration made her push off from the bed. She stood up—too quickly.
Before she could take two steps away from Nikolai, her knees turned to jelly. Her vision went dark for a second and suddenly she was sinking, pitching forward. She felt strong arms cushion her, Nikolai’s voice quiet beside her ear as he scooped her up and lifted her onto the bed.
“Stop fighting, Renata,” he said as she came out of her faint and blinked up at him. Poised over her, he smoothed the backs of his fingers along the side of her face. So tender, so calming. “You don’t need to run. You don’t need to fight… not with me. You’re safe with me, Renata.”
She wanted to close her eyes and shut out his gentle words. She was so afraid to believe him, to trust. And she felt so guilty accepting his comfort knowing that a child could be suffering, probably crying for her in the dark and wondering why Renata had broken her promise.
“Mira’s all that matters to me,” she whispered. “I need to know that she’s safe, and that she always will be.”
Nikolai gave a solemn nod. “I know how much she means to you. And I know how hard it is for you to ask for help from someone. Jesus Christ, Renata… you willingly risked your life to break me out of that containment facility. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did.”
She turned her head on the pillow, unable to hold his piercing gaze. “Don’t worry, you’re under no obligation to me. You don’t owe me a thing, Nikolai.”
Warm fingers glided along her jaw. He cupped her chin in his palm and gently guided her face back to him. “I owe you my life. Where I come from, that’s no small thing.”
Renata’s breath stilled as he looked into her eyes. She hated herself for the hope that was kindling in her heart— hope that she truly wasn’t alone right now. Hope that this warrior would assure her that everything was going to work out, and that no matter what kind of monster had Mira, they would find her, and she was going to be all right.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to Mira,” he said, forcing her to hold his intense gaze. “You have my word on that. I’m not going to let anything happen to you either, which is why I’m going to get you medical care for your shoulder as soon as the sun sets tonight.”
“What?” She tried to raise up and winced from the sharp stab of pain. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need a doctor—”
“You’re not fine, Renata. You’re getting worse by the hour.” His expression was grave as he looked from the searing wound in her shoulder back to her eyes. “You can’t continue like this.”
“I’ll survive,” she insisted. “I’m not about to quit now, when Mira’s life is on the line.”
“Your life is on the line too. Do you understand?” He shook his head and muttered something dark and nasty under his breath. “You could die if this wound doesn’t get treated. I won’t let that happen, so that means you have a date with the nearest emergency room tonight.”
“What about blood?” She watched as every muscle in Nikolai’s body seemed to tense up the moment the words left her lips.
“What about it?” he asked, his voice wooden, unreadable.
“You asked me earlier if I’d ever taken Sergei’s blood. Would I be healed now if I had?”
He lifted his shoulder in a vague shrug, but the tension in his big body remained. When he lifted his gaze to hers, there were flashes of amber burning into the wintry blue of his irises. His pupils were thinning by fractions as he stared at her.
“Would I be healed now if you gave me your blood, Nikolai?”
“Are you asking me for it?”
“If I were, would you give it to me?”
He exhaled sharply, and when his lips parted to draw another breath, Renata saw the sharp points of his fangs. “It’s not as simple a question as you might think,” he replied, a rough edge to his voice. “You will be bonded to me. The same way Yakut was linked to you through your blood, you will be linked to me. You’ll feel me in your blood. You will be aware of me always, and it can’t be undone, Renata—not even if you drink from another Breed male down the line. Our bond will trump any others. It can’t be broken, not until one of us is dead.”
This was no small thing; she understood that. Hell, she could hardly believe she was considering it at all. But deep down, crazy as it might be, she trusted Nikolai. And she truly didn’t care about the cost to herself. “If we do this, will I be well enough to walk out of here tonight and search for Mira?”
His jaw was clamped tight enough to make a muscle jerk in his cheek. He stared at her, his features going more feral by the moment. Bit by bit, the blue of his eyes was engulfed by a fiery glow.
When it didn’t seem like he would answer her, Renata reached out and laid her hand firmly on his arm. “Will your blood heal me, Nikolai?”
“Yes,” he said, the word sounding strangled in his throat.
“Then I want to do this.”
As he held her gaze in an intense silence, she thought about all the times Sergei Yakut had fed from her veins, how degraded and used she’d felt… how revolted she’d been by the idea that her blood was nourishing such a cruel, monstrous being. She would never have considered taking any part of him into herself, not even if it had been a matter of her own survival. It would have killed a piece of her soul to willingly put her mouth on Yakut’s body. To drink from him? She wasn’t even sure that her love for Mira could have overcome something as vile as that.
But Nikolai wasn’t a monster. He was honorable and just. He was tender and protective, a male who was feeling more and more a partner to her the farther they traveled down this uncertain road. He was her best ally right now. Her brightest hope of retrieving Mira.
And deeper still, in a place that was all woman, with needs and wants she hardly dared to examine too closely, she craved a taste of Nikolai. She craved that more than she had a right to.
“Are you sure, Renata?”
“If you’ll give me your blood, then yes,” she said. “I want to take it.”
In the long silence that followed, Nikolai sat back from her on the bed. She watched as he unbuttoned the big oxford shirt, waiting for her uncertainty—her apprehension— to worsen. It didn’t happen. As Nikolai stripped off the shirt and sat before her bare-chested, his dermaglyphs pulsing, every arch and swirl saturated with variegating shades of wine-dark colors, she felt no misgivings at all. When he crawled up toward her and lifted his right arm up to his mouth, baring his huge fangs, then sinking them into his wrist, she felt nothing even close to fear.
And when, in that next moment, he placed the bleeding punctures next to her lips and told her to drink, Renata had no inclination whatsoever to refuse.
The first taste of Nikolai’s blood on her tongue was a shock.
She’d expected to be swamped by the bitter taste of copper, but instead she tasted warm, muted spices and a power that spread through her like liquid electricity. She could feel his blood coursing down her throat, into every fiber of her body. Light flowed into her limbs from within, and the ache in her wounded shoulder began to ease as she drew more of Nikolai’s healing strength inside her.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his fingers stroking her damp hair away from her cheek. “Ah, Christ, that’s it, Renata… drink until you feel you’ve had enough.”
She pulled long and hard from his wrist, with an instinct she never knew she had. It felt right to be drinking from Nikolai like this. It felt more than right… it felt incredible. The more she took from him, the more alive she felt. Every nerve ending blinked on as though a switch had been thrown in her core.
And as he continued to caress her, to nourish and heal her, Renata began to feel a new kind of heat building swiftly inside her. She moaned, swept up in the molten wave that washed through her. She writhed, and knew better than to mistake the feeling for anything but what it was… desire. A desire that she had been trying to deny since she first met Nikolai, and which now was rising up to consume her.
She couldn’t resist suckling at him deeper.
She needed more of him.
She needed all of him, and she needed him now.
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
Nikolai braced himself on the edge of the bed, knotting his free hand in the sheet and holding onto it like a tether line as Renata continued to feed. She drank from him like she did everything else: with fearless strength and ferocious conviction. No hedging anxiety in her jade-green eyes, no uncertainty in her firm grasp on his arm. And each pull of her mouth on his open vein, every sure, coaxing sweep of her tongue across his skin, ratcheted him tighter than anything he’d ever felt before.
In all things she set her mind to, Renata was a force to be reckoned with. She was unlike any female Niko had ever known—in many ways, as much a warrior as any of the Breed males who’d served alongside him in the Order. She had a warrior’s heart and a warrior’s honor, and an unshakable resolve that demanded his total respect. Renata had saved his life, and for that he owed her. But holy hell… what was happening between them here had nothing to do with duty or obligation.
He was starting to care for her—more than he was comfortable admitting, even to himself.
He wanted her too. Christ, did he ever. His need was made all the worse for the erotic suction of her mouth as it worked on his vein, her lithe body undulating in heated reaction to his otherworldly blood feeding her uninitiated cells.
Renata moaned, a throaty purr of arousal as she moved closer to him on the mattress, each grinding movement of her body loosening the towel that covered her. She didn’t seem to notice, or care at all that Nikolai’s amber gaze was traveling the entire nearly naked length of her. Her shoulder wound was looking better already. The swelling and redness was receding, and the too-sallow color of the rest of her skin was looking more healthy by the minute. Renata was getting stronger, more vibrant and demanding, one fever being replaced by another.
He probably should have told her that aside from its nourishment and healing properties, Breed blood was also a potent aphrodisiac. He figured he could handle whatever might happen, but damn … nothing would have prepared him for Renata’s molten response.
Crawling up against him now, still suckling at him, she reached over with one hand and freed his clenched fist from the tangled sheet. She guided his fingers under the folds of the bath towel to her breasts. He couldn’t resist running the pad of his thumb over the tight nipple of one, then the other. Her breath sped up as he caressed her warm, tender skin, the hard flutter of her heart beating against his hand as she impatiently guided him lower… over the soft plane of her abdomen to the silky juncture of her thighs.
She was drenched and hot, the cleft of her sex like warm, wet satin as he slid one finger along her core. She clenched her thighs around him, holding him there as if he had any thought at all to leave. She took another draw from his wrist, the pull so thorough he felt it all the way to his balls. Squeezing his eyes shut, he dropped his head back and hissed a slow, wordless groan, the tendons in his neck going as taut as cables. His cock was rock-solid and standing at full attention between his legs. Another minute of this torment and he was going to lose it right there in his borrowed pair of warm-ups.
“Ah, fuck,” he snarled, pulling his hand away from the sweet temptation of her aroused body. He slowly lowered his chin to look at her. When his eyelids lifted, the heat from his transformed irises bathed Renata in an ember-bright glow. She was gloriously naked, sitting there in front of him like a dark goddess, her lips fastened to his wrist, her pale eyes dusky as she stared up at him, unabashed.
“No more,” he muttered, his voice rough, the words thickened by the presence of his fangs. He was gasping for breath, every nerve ending electrified. “We have to stop … Jesus Christ… we’d better stop now.”
She moaned in protest but, very gently, Nikolai withdrew his wrist from Renata’s feeding grasp and brought the twin punctures to his lips. A sweep of his tongue over the wounds sealed them closed.
With hooded, hungry eyes, she watched him lick the place where her mouth had been, her own tongue darting out to wet her lips. “What’s happening to me?” she asked, running her hands across her breasts, her spine stretching and arching with feline grace. “What did you… do to me? My God… I’m burning up.”
“It’s the blood bond,” he said, hardly able to form a complete sentence for the way his senses were throbbing with awareness—and need—of this woman. “I should have warned you… I’m sorry.”
He started to move away but she grabbed his hand and held it. Gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head. Her chest rose and fell with each pump of her lungs, and the heavy-lidded gaze she fixed on him looked anything but offended. Knowing that he shouldn’t take advantage of the situation, Nikolai reached up and stroked the pink blush that filled her cheek.
Renata moaned as his touch lingered, turning her face into his palm. “Is it… is it always like this when you let a woman drink from you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re the first.”
She glanced up at him, a small frown creasing her brow. He could see the surprise register behind the blood-induced lust that filled her gaze. A quiet cry slipped past her lips and then she was moving toward him without any hesitation, her hands coming up to frame his face.
She kissed him, long and hard and deep.
“Touch me, Nikolai,” she murmured against his mouth.
It was as much a demand as the urgent press of her lips on his, her tongue pushing past his teeth. Niko ran his hands all over her naked skin, meeting her kiss thrust for thrust, his body as hungry as hers was, and he couldn’t blame his ferocious need on the natural response of a blood bond. His hunger for Renata was something else completely, although just as consuming.
Greedily, he reached back down to the haven of her sex. This time, he couldn’t play at touching her, not when her scent was intoxicating him as much as the heated silk of her core was driving him mad. He stroked her wet folds, cleaving them with his fingers and spreading her open to him like a flower. She arched up to meet him as he penetrated her with first one finger, then another. He filled her, reveling in the tight clench of her body, the subtle ripples of her tight inner muscles as he stroked and teased her toward climax.
He was so engrossed in her pleasure that he hardly noticed her hands were moving until he felt her tugging at the drawstring of his pants. He hissed when she slipped underneath the waistband and found his stiff cock. She palmed the head of him, slicking her fingers with the drop of fluid that beaded there, then torturing him with a slow, steady stroke of her hand down the length of his shaft.
“You want me too,” she said, not quite a question when the answer was overflowing her hand.
“Oh, yes,” Niko answered anyway. “Hell yes… I want you, Renata.”
She smiled hungrily and pushed him down onto his back on the bed. She inched his pants down off his hips, but they only made it as far as his knees. With his thick erection jutting up like a proud soldier, Nikolai watched enthralled as Renata climbed over and straddled him. He knew better than to expect any bit of coyness or hesitation. She was bold and unstoppable, and he’d never been more glad of anything in his life. Her eyes locked unflinchingly on his, Renata sank down onto his cock in a long, slow slide.
Good Christ, she felt incredible on him. So hot and tight, so damn wet.
He told himself it was only the aftershock of the blood bond making her this wanton, that she would be reacting this way to any Breed male who fed her. It was just a physical reaction, like tinder igniting when held too close to a flame. Her awareness of him right now was probably subconscious at best—she had an itch and he was the scratch she needed, plain and simple. Fine by him. It didn’t need to be anything more complicated, and he wasn’t idiot enough to want it to be. This sex between them right now wasn’t personal, and Niko told himself he was good with that.
He told himself a lot of bullshit things as he laid his head back with a groan and let Renata take all that she needed from him.
Renata had never felt more alive. Nikolai’s blood was a fire in her senses, every nuance of the moment buffeting her with vivid awareness. The wound in her shoulder gave her no pain now; her need for Nikolai was all she knew.
He held her hips as she impaled herself on his sex, her mind lost to all but the heat of him filling her, the masculine beauty of his big body moving in a shared rhythm beneath her. Through the swamping haze of her desire, she admired the corded muscles of his arms and chest, a symphony of strength, flexing and contracting, power made all the more stunning by the artful colors and patterns of his changeable dermaglyphs.
Even his fangs, which by rights should have terrified her, took on a lethal beauty now. The sharp tips of them gleamed with every sawing breath he dragged through his teeth. The blood she’d taken from him must have made her a little bit crazy, because some dim part of her wanted those lethal canines pressed up close against her neck, piercing her flesh as she rode him.
She could still taste his blood on her tongue, sweet and wild and dark, an electric tingle that spread all through her and lit her up from within.
She craved more of that power, more of him…
All of him.
Renata dug her fingers into his thick biceps and drove deeper, harder, chasing that dangerous need his blood had unleashed in her. He took every desperate thrust of her hips, holding her steady as a shattering orgasm slammed into her. She cried out as the pleasure washed over her, a scream of release that she couldn’t have contained even if her life depended on it. The intensity was far too much to bear. She trembled from it, awed by the force of her passion for him—a passion she had been afraid to feel for so long.
She didn’t fear Nikolai.
She wanted him.
Trusted him.
“Are you okay?” he asked her, little more than a growl as he continued to rock with her. “Are you in any pain now?”
She shook her head, unable to speak when every nerve ending in her body was still taut with need and vibrating with sensation.
“Good,” he murmured, and slipped his hand around the back of her neck to draw her down for a kiss. His mouth was hot on hers, his fangs grazing her lips and tongue. He felt so good… tasted so good.
The fire that had banked somewhat with her release kindled back to furious life. She moaned as the need rose up again, moving her hips in time with the hunger that pulsed in her core. Nikolai didn’t let her want for long. He pistoned along with her, increasing their tempo until she was breaking apart again, drifting on wave after wave of pleasure. Then he took over completely, filling her and withdrawing, every stroke seeming to touch someplace deeper within her, then deeper still. He came on a hoarse shout, his spine arching beneath her, his pelvis bucking her with the force of his release. Renata’s climax joined his a moment later, a prolonged disintegration that left her shaking and liquid in his arms.
And still she wanted more.
She wanted more, even after the next orgasm and the next. Even after she and Nikolai both were sweating and spent, she hungered for still more.
Edgar Fabien felt six pairs of shrewd, measuring eyes root on him as his secretary whispered an urgent message into his ear. An interruption at this hour—in the midst of such important company as these specially invited Breed dignitaries who’d come into Montreal from the United States and abroad—practically screamed bad news. And it was, though Fabien allowed no such outward indication.
The assembled males had been privately assessing one another as they’d arrived one by one this evening, all of them summoned to Edgar Fabien’s Darkhaven residence to await transport to an exclusive gathering to take place elsewhere. To preserve their anonymity, the group had been instructed to don black hooded masks at all times. They had been forbidden to ask personal questions of one another, or to discuss their individual dealings with the Breed male who had called this meeting and laid down the terms of its covert attendance. Dragos had made it clear that now more than ever he would be watching for weakness, or for the slightest reason to deem Fabien or his other lieutenants standing in this very room unworthy of the glorious future he was planning to unveil at the formal gathering.
As the secretary whispered the rest of his message, Fabien was glad for the dark hood that concealed his reaction from the others. He kept his stance relaxed, every muscle loose and at ease, as he was informed that one of his Minions from the city was waiting outside with unanticipated, but critical, news that could not be delayed. News about a Breed male and an injured woman in his company, who, from the description, could be none other than the pair who’d escaped the containment facility.
“Will you all excuse me?” Fabien said, his smile tight beneath his disguise. “I’ve a small matter to attend to outside. I won’t be a moment.”
A few dark heads inclined as Fabien pivoted to stroll out of the room.
Once the reception room door was closed and he and his secretary had walked several yards down the long hallway, Fabien tore off his hood. “Where is he?”
“Awaiting you in the front vestibule, sir.”
Fabien stormed off in that direction, wringing the black hood in his hands. As he reached the door, his secretary rushed up ahead to hold it open for him. The Minion was leaning against the wall, engrossed in chewing his fingernails down the quick, his unkempt, overlong bangs hanging into his eyes. When he looked up and saw his Master enter, the human’s disgusting sloth was replaced with a hound’s eagerness to please.
“I have brought you some news, Master.”
Fabien grunted. “So I’ve heard. Speak, Curtis. Tell me what you saw.”
The Minion explained how earlier in the day he’d gone to ask a question of his human employer—a homeless shelter operator who’d hired Curtis to work on his computers— and unexpectedly discovered that the vampire warrior was hiding in the shelter’s garage apartment. Curtis hadn’t been able to get a close look, but had gotten near enough to tell that the huge male was Breed. It wasn’t until just a short while ago that he confirmed his suspicions. Apparently the warrior and the female who was with him had become rather friendly. The pair were too busy in bed to notice when Curtis later sneaked back up to the garage and spied them together through the window.
The Minion had gotten an eyeful, and was able to provide a very detailed physical description of both the warrior Nikolai and the Breedmate Renata.
“You’re certain neither of them is aware that you were there?” Fabien asked.
The Minion chuckled. “No, Master. Trust me, they weren’t paying attention to anything but each other.”
Fabien nodded and glanced at his watch. It would be dusk within the hour. He’d already assigned a team of Enforcement Agents to head out on another cleanup task for him tonight. Perhaps he should send a second unit into the city with Curtis. Bad enough that the warrior had managed to escape him at the containment facility. The news hadn’t gone over well when Fabien had informed Dragos of the problem, but the bungle would be cushioned somewhat if he could assure him that the warrior had been dealt with—swiftly and permanently
Yes, Fabien thought, as he reached into his suit coat pocket for his cell phone and dialed the Enforcement Agency detail who reported to him.
Tonight he would clean the slate of a couple recent mistakes, and when he presented himself to Dragos at the gathering, he would do so bearing fortuitous news and a charming little gift that his new commander was certain to enjoy.
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
Do you think he’ll hurt her?”
Renata’s voice was quiet, breaking the prolonged silence in the humid apartment. She was seated across from Nikolai at the card table, wearing an extra-large gray T-shirt and her own jeans, laundered and returned earlier in the day, courtesy of Jack. Her shoulder wound was looking a hell of a lot better, and every time Niko had asked, she insisted she wasn’t feeling much pain. He figured his blood would carry her for a few hours at least. They’d been out of bed for a while now, both of them bathed and dressed, and carefully avoiding the subject of all that had happened between them today.
Instead, Nikolai kept himself busy cleaning and prepping Jack’s twin Colt .45s, while he and Renata put plans together for their trek out to Yakut’s lodge shortly. Although Niko doubted Lex would willingly cough up information on his alliance with Edgar Fabien, he had a feeling a few strategically placed rounds would loosen the bastard’s tongue.
He hoped so, because without a solid lead on the Darkhaven leader’s probable location, the odds of finding Mira unscathed by Fabien’s twisted proclivities were diminishing by the second.
“Do you think he will… do anything to her?”
Niko looked over and saw the dread in Renata’s eyes. “Fabien’s not a good man. I honestly don’t know what he intends for her.”
She glanced down at that, her slim dark brows drawn together. “You didn’t tell me everything your friends back in Boston learned about him.”
Shit. He should have known Renata would call him on this. He’d deliberately skimmed over the worst of what Gideon had told him, figuring the sordid details wouldn’t help them locate Mira any faster and would only make Renata worry more. But he respected her too much to lie to her.
“No, I didn’t tell you everything,” he admitted. “Do you really want to know all of it?”
“I think I need to know.” She met his gaze again, her pale green eyes sober, as steady as a warrior girded for battle. “What did the Order find out about him?”
“He’s second-generation Breed, easily several hundred years old,” Niko said, starting with the least of Fabien’s offenses. “He’s been the leader of the Montreal Darkhaven for the past century and a half, and he’s also got far-reaching ties into the upper tiers of the Enforcement Agency, which means he’s politically connected too.”
Renata scoffed quietly. “That’s a resume, Nikolai. You know what I’m asking. Give it to me straight.”
“All right.” He nodded, not bothering to hide his admiration. Or his concern. “Even though he’s got a lot of friends in high places, Edgar Fabien’s not what you’d call a model citizen. Apparently he’s got some fairly sick kinks that have caused him a bit of trouble over the years.”
“Kinks,” Renata said, all but spitting the word.
“His tastes tend to run on the sadistic side, and he… well, he’s been known to enjoy the company of children from time to time. Particularly young girls.”
‘Jesus Christ,” Renata exclaimed in a tight rush of her breath. She closed her eyes and turned her face aside, all of her going very still, as though it took some work to keep from breaking down. When she finally looked back at Niko, there was a murderous glint in her unblinking jade-green gaze. “I’ll kill him. I swear it, Nikolai. I will fucking kill him if he’s done anything to her.”
“We’re gonna get him,” he assured her. “We’re going to find him, and we’re going to get Mira back.”
“I can’t fail her, Nikolai.”
“Hey,” he said, reaching out to cover her hand with his. “We won’t fail her. Got it? I’m with you on this. We’re gonna get her back.”
She looked at him in silence for a long moment. Then, very slowly, she flipped her hand over and linked her fingers through his. “She’s going to be safe … right?”
A trace of uncertainty, one of the first times he’d heard it in her voice. He wanted to erase the doubt for her, and the worry, but all he could offer was his promise. “We’re going to get her back, Renata. You’ve got my word on that.”
“Okay,” she said. Then, more resolutely, “Okay Nikolai. Thank you.”
“You’re really something, you know that?” She started to shake her head in denial, but Niko gave her hand a gentle squeeze, keeping her centered. “You’re strong, Renata. Stronger than you know. Mira’s lucky to have you on her side. Hell, so am I.”
Her answering smile was faint and slightly sad. “I hope you’re right.”
“I’m hardly ever wrong,” he said, grinning at her and barely resisting the urge to lean across the little table and kiss her. But that would only lead to one thing—something that his libido was already imagining in explicit detail.
“So, how long are you going to fondle those Colts before you let me have a look at one?”
Niko leaned back in the metal folding chair and chuckled. “Take your pick. You sure you know how to handle—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish the thought. Renata reached out for the gun nearest to her and a full magazine of rounds. She had the weapon loaded, locked, and ready for action in three seconds flat. Niko had never seen anything sexier in his life.
“Impressive.”
She set the pistol down on the table and arched one slim dark brow at him. “You want help with yours now too?”
He started to laugh, but swallowed the sound before it left his mouth.
They weren’t alone.
Renata followed his gaze upward, to where Nikolai could swear he heard a muted thud. It came again, then a small creak of the garage roof.
“We’ve got company,” he whispered to her.
Renata gave him a nod, already getting up from her chair. She slid the loaded .45 to him across the table and moved in swift, efficient silence to begin loading the other.
No sooner had Nikolai picked up the gun than the garage apartment door burst inward, kicked off its hinges. A huge vampire in the black SWAT gear of the Enforcement Agency rushed inside, the laser sights of his silenced automatic rifle locked on Renata.
“Son of a bitch!” Niko shouted. “Renata, shoot him!”
For an awful second, she didn’t move. Nikolai thought she had frozen up in shock, but then the Agent let out a howl of pain and dropped his weapon to clutch at his temples. He went down on his knees, but there were two more armed males right behind him. They leapt over the shrieking obstacle and opened fire in the small space. Renata took cover behind one of the metal file cabinets, firing on the Agent in the lead. Niko targeted the second newcomer, but his shot went wild as the small window above the bed shattered and yet another Enforcement Agent dropped into the fray, armed to the gills.
“Nikolai—behind you!” Renata called.
She hit this latest arrival with a debilitating blast of her mind’s power, and the bastard crumpled to the floor, writhing and convulsing before Niko stilled him with a couple of rounds to the head.
Renata crippled one of the others with a shot to the knee, then took him out completely with a dead-aim bullet between the eyes. Nikolai killed another, and realized belatedly that he’d completely lost sight of the first male who’d come through the door. The son of a bitch was no longer whimpering where Renata had dropped him.
To Niko’s horror, the huge vampire had Renata in his hands, lifting her off the ground and throwing her into the nearest wall. The Breed male’s strength was immense, like all of their kind. Renata crashed against the solid surface, then fell hard to the floor. She lay there unmoving, obviously too dazed to retaliate.
Nikolai’s roar of fury rattled the feeble table and chairs. His vision went nuclear with the sudden flood of amber into his eyes, and his fangs punched hard from his gums, stretching long and sharp in his anger. He sprang on the other vampire from behind, grabbing the big head in his hands and twisting savagely. The crunch of splitting bone and shredding tendons wasn’t enough for him. As the lifeless Agent slumped over, Niko kicked his body away from Renata and pumped his skull full of lead.
“Renata,” he said, hunkering down in front of her and pulling her into his arms. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
She moaned, but managed a shaky nod. Her eyes opened, then went wide as she stared past him to the ruined doorway. Niko swung his head around and locked gazes with a human male he’d seen once before—the human who’d tried to get a look at Nikolai when Jack had come up to the apartment that morning. Jack had called him Curtis, said the kid was doing some work for him in the house.
As Niko looked into that emotionless face that showed no reaction whatsoever to Niko’s glowing eyes and bared fangs, he knew what he was seeing now …
“Minion,” he growled. He released Renata gently as he got back to his feet. “Stay put. I’ll handle him.”
The Minion knew he’d made a grave mistake showing his face after the melee he’d probably instigated. He pivoted toward the night outside and started running down the stairs two at a time.
Nikolai grunted, seeing red as he bolted out of the apartment in pursuit. He vaulted over the railing of the second-story staircase, going airborne as the Minion’s feet were just getting their taste of pavement. Nikolai landed right on top of him, tackling him down to the black asphalt of the driveway.
“Who made you?” he demanded, knocking the human’s face against the rough pavement. “Who’s your Master, goddamn you! Is it Fabien?”
The Minion didn’t answer, but Niko knew the truth anyway. He flipped him over and slammed his spine down hard. “Where is he? Tell me where to find Fabien. Talk, you son of a bitch, or I’ll gut you right here and now.”
Distantly, Nikolai heard the bang of a screen door. Footsteps running through the grass.
Then Renata’s voice rang out from above him in the wrecked doorway of the garage apartment. “Jack, no! Go back inside!”
Nikolai glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the old man’s horrified expression. Jack’s eyes held his in utter disbelief, his grizzled jaw going slack. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured, his feet slowing to a halt. “What the… hell…”
And then, beneath him, Niko felt the Minion squirm.
He registered the brief glint of a blade only a half-second before the human mind slave slashed open his own throat.
Renata flew down the wooden stairs in heartsick panic. “Jack, please! Go back in the house now!”
But he merely stood there, frozen in place as if he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see her. Couldn’t process anything that was happening around him in these past few minutes of complete and utter chaos. Jack was a mute, un-moving statue in the driveway.
And Nikolai…
Dear God, Nikolai looked like the stuff of anyone’s worst nightmare. Blood-soaked, immense, his face a terrifying mask of lethal fangs and fierce, glowing eyes. When he got up off the body of the dead Minion and wheeled around to face Jack, he couldn’t have seemed more predatory and inhuman, his breath sawing through his teeth, his massive chest and shoulders heaving from the combat.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Jack murmured, crossing himself as Nikolai took a couple of steps away from the Minion’s corpse. Belatedly he glanced over and saw Renata racing toward him across the driveway. “Renata, get out of here!”
Renata ran to put herself between the two males— Nikolai at her back, Jack gaping at her like she had just stepped into the middle of an active mine field.
“Oh, Jesus … Renata, honey… what are you doing?”
“It’s okay Jack,” she told him, calmly holding her hands up in front of her. “Everything’s okay I promise you. Nikolai won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt either one of us.”
The old man’s face scrunched in confusion. But then he stared past her to Nikolai and the dimmest spark of recognition flickered across his features. His pallor was ghostly white against the night all around him, and his legs looked like they might give out beneath him. “It is you… but how? Just what the hell are you?”
“It’s not safe for you to know that,” Renata interjected. “It would be too dangerous, for us as well—”
“It’s too late.” Nikolai’s voice was a low growl close behind her. “He’s already seen too much here. We need to contain this situation, and we don’t have a lot of time before more humans get curious and make things worse.”
Renata nodded. “I know.”
Nikolai’s hand came to rest gently on her good shoulder. “That means Jack too. I can’t let him walk away with his memory of this intact. Everything has to be scrubbed—starting with our arrival last night. He can’t remember that you and I were ever here.”
She winced, but she couldn’t argue. “Do I have a minute to say good-bye?”
“A minute,” Nikolai said. “But that’s about all we can risk.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” Jack mumbled, some of his shell shock dissipating and the retired warrior in him coming online. “Renata…just what the hell kind of trouble are you in, girl?”
She offered him a weak smile as she moved forward and pulled him into a hug. “Jack, I want to thank you—for helping us last night, but even more, for just being you.” She drew away from him to look into his kind old eyes. “You may not realize this, but you were my anchor so many times. Whenever I lost my faith in humanity, your kindness restored it. You’ve been a true friend, and I love you for that. I always will.”
“Renata, I need you to tell me what’s going on. This man you’re with… this creature. For crissake, am I losing my mind, or is he some kind of—”
“He’s my friend,” she said, meaning it so sincerely even she was taken aback by her conviction. “Nikolai is my friend. That’s all you need to know.”
“We have to go now, Renata.”
Nikolai’s voice was calm, all business. She nodded, and when she glanced over at him, she saw that he was back to his normal state now. Jack sputtered in confusion, but Nikolai merely reached out to take the human’s hand.
“Thank you for all you’ve done, Jack. You’re a good man.” Nikolai didn’t wait for a reply. With his free hand, he lifted his palm to Jack’s forehead and pressed it there for a long moment. “Go back into the house and go to bed. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll forget we were here at all. You will discover there was a break-in upstairs in the apartment—Curtis was mixed up with some bad people, the robbery got out of hand, and he was killed.”
Jack said nothing, but he nodded his agreement.
“You won’t see us when you open your eyes,” Nikolai told him. “You won’t see any of the blood or glass. You’re going to turn around, head back into your house, and climb into bed where you’ll stay for the rest of the night.”
Again Jack bobbed his head in compliance. Nikolai removed his hand from the old man’s brow. Jack’s eyes blinked open, calm and unfazed. He looked at Renata, but it was an empty stare that seemed to pass right through her. She stood there, watching in sadness as her old, dear friend pivoted around in silence and began a slow trek back to the house.
“You all right?” Nikolai asked her, placing his arm around her waist as they waited in the driveway for Jack to disappear.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said quietly, letting herself lean into his strong embrace. “Let’s clean up this mess and get out of here.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
About damn time he got here,” Alexei Yakut complained to himself as he watched a pair of headlight beams ricochet off the trees outside the main lodge. Irritated to have been kept waiting this past half hour, Lex moved away from the window in his father’s former quarters—quarters that now belonged to him, like everything else his dead father had left behind.
The black vehicle prowling up the drive was huge, obviously an SUV Lex rolled his eyes in disgust. He’d expected a male of Edgar Fabien’s status to travel in something more elegant than a Humvee loaner taken right out of the Enforcement Agency fleet. Lex’s own standards demanded much more than such a utilitarian mode of transport, especially for an event as important as the one he would be attending with Fabien. For fuck’s sake, they might as well be arriving at the gathering in a pickup truck for all the statement they would make in that inelegant Agency vehicle.
If he was in charge of things—when he was in charge, Lex mentally amended—he would arrive nowhere without a proper motorcade befitting his elite rank.
He strode out of his chambers in an impatient huff, adjusting the line of his suit coat as his polished alligator-hide loafers tapped softly across the wide plank beams of the floor. He knew he looked good—which was the point—but he was far more accustomed to his longtime service uniform of boots and leather. He was an adaptive individual; he didn’t think it would take much to get used to his new identity.
In the great room outside, the lodge’s two remaining guards sat at a table playing cards. One of them glanced up as Lex entered, the subtle lift of his hand not quite fast enough to hide his amused smirk.
“That necktie looks like it’s cutting off your air, Lex,” joked the other guard, chuckling at his own humor. “Better loosen that shit up before you pass out.”
Lex glared as he ran his finger along the rim of the too-tight collar of his five-hundred-dollar shirt. “Blow it out your ass, cretin. And open the fucking door. My ride is here.”
As the guard lumbered over to carry out the command, Lex wondered how long he should keep the two bone-heads around. Sure, they’d served beside him in his father’s employ every day for the better part of a decade, but a male like Lex deserved respect. Maybe he would teach both of them that lesson when he arrived back in a couple nights from the weekend gathering.
Lex forced a welcoming smile for Fabien as the guard opened the door… except it wasn’t Edgar Fabien standing there to greet him. It was a uniformed Enforcement Agent, with three more behind him.
“Where’s Fabien?” Lex demanded.
The tall Agent at the front gave Lex a slight bow of his head. “We’ll be rendezvousing with Mr. Fabien at a separate location, Mr. Yakut. Do you need assistance with anything before we escort you to the vehicle?”
Lex grunted, his ego soothed somewhat by the Agent’s deferential tone. “I have a couple of bags in the other room,” he said with a dismissive wave in the direction of his quarters. “One of your men can fetch them for me.”
Another nod of obeisance from the one in front. “I will see to your things personally. After you, sir.”
“This way,” Lex said, permitting the escort detail into the lodge as he strolled ahead of their leader to his quarters down the hall. Once inside, he paused near the bed to point out the things he wanted to take. “Grab the garment bag and that leather duffel on the floor over there.”
When the Agent didn’t move to pick up the bags, just stood there beside him, Lex turned an indignant glare on him. “Well? What the hell are you waiting for, idiot?”
The answering look he got was flat as a blade, and equally cold.
And then Lex understood the chill, because in that next instant, he heard the stacatto pop of several muted gunshots in the other room and his blood ran to ice in his veins.
The Enforcment Agent standing next to him smiled a pleasant smile.
“Mr. Fabien asked me to personally deliver a message from him, Mr. Yakut.”
Renata looked tired as Nikolai walked up to her from the field where they’d dumped the bodies of the dead Enforcement Agents. In a few hours, dawn would obliterate all traces of the vampires, not that anyone aside from the local wildlife would notice this far off the nearest road and this far out of the city.
“I threw their uniforms and gear in the back of the vehicle,” Renata told him as he approached. “The extra weapons are behind the front seats. Keys are in the ignition.”
Niko nodded. After cleaning up all evidence of the Breed assault on the garage apartment, he and Renata had commandeered the Agency’s SUV, which their attackers had been helpful enough to leave parked along a side street near Jack’s place.
“You hanging in there?” he asked, seeing the fatigue in her eyes. “We can wait here and rest awhile if you need to.”
She shook her head. “I want to keep moving. We’re only a few miles from the lodge.”
“Yeah,” Niko said. “And I’m not expecting Lex to roll out a red carpet for us when we get there. Things could get ugly real fast. It’s been a couple of hours since you mind-blasted those Agents. How long before your reverb sets in?”
“Probably not long,” she admitted, glancing down at the moonlit grass at their feet.
Niko lifted her chin and couldn’t keep from stroking the delicate line of her cheek. “All the more reason to hang out here for a while.”
She drew away from him, stubborn with determination. “All the more reason to keep going before the reverb hits. I’ll rest after we have Mira.” She pivoted around and started walking to the vehicle. “Who’s driving—you or me?
“Hey,” he said, catching her hand before she could get very far. He walked up to her and wrapped his arm around the small of her back, easing her into his embrace.
God, she was so beautiful. Any idiot could appreciate the fragile, feminine perfection of her face: the pale, almond-shaped eyes that glittered like moonstones beneath the inky fringe of her lashes; the impish nose and lush, sexy mouth; the milky skin that looked like flawless velvet against the ebony gloss of her hair. Renata’s physical beauty was stunning, but it was her courage—her unshakable honor—that really did Niko in.
Somehow, in the short time they’d been forced together, Renata had become a true partner to him. He valued her, trusted her, as much as he did any of his brethren in the Order.
“Hey,” he repeated, quieter now, staring into her brave, beautiful face and awed all over again by this extraordinary woman who was proving to be such a vital ally to him. “We made a pretty good team back there, didn’t we.”
“I was scared as hell, Nikolai,” she confessed softly. “They came at us so quickly. I should have reacted faster. I should have—”
“You were amazing.” He smoothed an errant wisp of hair from her face and hooked it behind her ear. “You are amazing, Renata, and I’m damned glad to know that I’ve got you at my back.”
She gave him a small, almost shy smile. “Same here.”
Maybe it wasn’t the ideal time for him to want to kiss her, standing in a godforsaken stretch of backcountry a trail of blood and death behind them and more of the same sure to be waiting down the line before this journey was over. But all Nikolai wanted to do right now—what he needed, here and now, this very moment—was to feel Renata’s lips pressed against his.
He gave in to the urge, leaning in and taking her mouth in a tender, unhurried kiss. Her arms went around him, tentatively at first, but her hands were warm and giving as she stroked his back and held him to her, even after their kiss had ended and she laid her cheek against his chest.
When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Are we going to find her, Nikolai?”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Yes, we are.”
“Do you think she’s okay?” His hesitation was brief, but long enough that it brought Renata out of his arms. She frowned, her eyes dimming with hurt. “Oh, my God… you don’t believe she is. I can feel your doubt, Nikolai. You think something’s happened to Mira.”
“It’s the blood bond you feel,” he said, not even close to a denial of what Renata had read so accurately in him.
She was backing away now, her feet shuffling in the dark grass as she moved toward the SUV Her face had taken on a stricken look. “We have to go now. We have to find Lex and force him to tell us where she is!”
“Renata, I still think you should wait here awhile and rest. If the reverb hits you—”
“Fuck the reverb!” she cried, tossing her head in mounting panic. “I’m going to Yakut’s place. You can either ride along or stay behind, but I’m leaving right fucking now.”
He could have stopped her.
If he’d wanted to, he could have been on her faster than she could track him, physically preventing her from taking another step toward the vehicle. He could have tranced her with a simple brush of his hand over her face and forced her to wait out the pain that would probably wipe her out completely not long after they reached the lodge.
He could have held her back in any number of ways, but instead he circled around to the driver’s side of the black Humvee before she got there and blocked her entry with his body.
“I’ll drive,” he said, giving her no chance to argue. “You’re shotgun.”
Renata stared at him for a second, then walked over and climbed into the passenger seat.
They found their way back to the road and drove the short distance to Yakut’s wooded property in silence. Niko cut the lights as they approached at a slow roll. He was about to suggest they bail out and move in on the lodge by foot when he noticed something was off about the place.
“Is it always this quiet?”
“Never,” Renata said, shooting him a grave look. She reached behind the seats to pick up some of the Agency weapons. She looped the strap of an automatic rifle over her head, then handed Nikolai one for himself. “Lex only had two guards left, but it doesn’t look like anyone is here at all.”
And even from this distance, Niko detected the scent of spilled blood. Breed blood, coming from more than one source.
“Wait here while I go check things out.”
She gave him an insubordinate scoff that he might have predicted was coming.
They both climbed out of the vehicle and moved in tandem toward the dark main house. The front door was wide open. Fresh tire tracks were laid out in the gravel drive, wide, deep-set tracks like the kind an oversized SUV would leave behind.
Niko had a feeling the Enforcement Agency had been here too.
The lodge was utterly silent, reeking with the stench of recent vampire deaths. He didn’t need to turn on the lights to see the carnage. His keen vision spotted the two dead males just inside, both shot point-blank in the head with several rounds.
He guided Renata around the corpses, following his nose to the back of the place, to Yakut’s private quarters. He knew what he was going to find in here as well. Even still, he stepped into the room and let out a furious curse.
Lex was dead.
And with him, so was their best hope of locating Edgar Fabien tonight.
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
Renata’s breath seized up at the sound of Nikolai’s muttered curse. She reached for the light switch near the open door of Yakut’s bedroom. Slowly flipped it on.
She couldn’t speak as she stared down at Lex’s lifeless body, his eyes vacant and clouded over with death, three large bullet holes bored into the front of his head. She wanted to scream. God in heaven, she wanted to drop to her knees, fist her hands in her hair, and howl to the rafters—not with grief or shock, but complete and thorough rage.
But her lungs were constricted in her breast.
Her limbs were weighted down, arms and legs too heavy to move.
What hope she’d been harboring—as small as it was— that they might come here and get a solid lead on Mira’s location seeped out of her, as surely as Lex’s blood had seeped into the floorboards of his father’s room.
“Renata, we’ll find another way,” Nikolai said from somewhere near her. He bent down over the body and removed a cell phone from the pocket of Lex’s suit coat, flipped it open and pressed some of the keys. “We’ve got Lex’s call history now. One of these numbers might be Fabien’s. I’ll contact Gideon and have him chase them down. We’re gonna have something on Fabien very soon. We’ll get him, Renata.”
She couldn’t answer; she had no words. Turning slowly, she walked out of the room, hardly conscious that her feet were moving. She drifted through the dark lodge, past the bodies lying in the great room and down a hallway… unsure where she was heading, yet unsurprised when she found herself standing in the center of the tiny room where Mira had slept.
The small bed was just as she’d left it, as if waiting for its occupant’s return. Over on the squat little nightstand was a wildflower Mira had picked earlier in the week, on one of the rare times Sergei Yakut had permitted the child to venture outside. Mira’s flower was wilted now, the fragile white petals drooping and lifeless, green stem as limp as a piece of string.
“Oh, my sweet mouse,” Renata whispered into the darkened, empty room. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry I’m not there for you right now …”
“Renata.” Nikolai stood in the hallway outside the room. “Renata, don’t do this to yourself. You are not to blame. And this isn’t over, not yet.”
His deep voice was soothing, a comfort just to hear him, and to know that he was there with her. She needed that comfort, but because she didn’t deserve it, Renata refused to run into his arms as she so desperately wanted to do. She stayed where she was, rigid and unmoving. Wishing she could reverse all her failings.
She couldn’t bear to remain in the lodge for another minute. There were too many dark memories here.
Too much death all around her.
Renata let the dead flower fall out of her fingers and onto the bed. She pivoted around toward the doorway. “I have to get out of this place,” she murmured, guilt and anguish twisting in her chest. “I can’t… I’m suffocating in here … can’t… breathe.”
She didn’t wait for him to reply—couldn’t wait in there, not one more second. Pushing past him, she ran out of Mira’s vacant room. She didn’t stop running until her feet had carried her out the back of the main house and into the surrounding forest. And still her lungs squeezed as though they were caught in a vise.
In the back of her skull, she could feel a headache blooming. Her skin wasn’t aching yet, but she was bone weary and she knew it wouldn’t be long before reverb took her down. At least her shoulder was feeling decent. The gunshot wound was still there, still a dull throb deep in her muscles, but Nikolai’s blood had worked some kind of magic on the infection.
Renata felt strong enough that when she glanced over and saw the locked barn—the outbuilding where she and so many others had been brought as bait for Yakut’s sick blood sport—she didn’t think twice about stalking over to it and pulling the Enforcement Agency rifle around from where it had shifted to her back. She shot the heavy lock until it broke off and fell to the ground. Then she flung open the door and let loose with more shots inside, peppering the large holding pen, the walls and rafters—all of it—with an obliterating hail of bullets.
She didn’t let up on the trigger until the magazine was empty and her throat was raw from her screams. Her shoulders heaved, chest sawing like a bellows.
“I should have been here,” she said, hearing Nikolai come up behind her outside. “When Lex turned her over to Fabien, I should have stopped him. I should have been there for Mira. Instead I was in bed, too weak with reverb…useless.”
He made a small noise, a wordless dismissal of her guilt. “You couldn’t have known she was in danger. You couldn’t have prevented any of what occurred, Renata.”
“I should never have left the lodge!” she cried, self-contempt searing her like acid. “I ran away, when I should have stayed here the whole time and worked on getting Lex to tell me where she was.”
“You didn’t run away. You went to look for help from me. If you hadn’t done that, I would be dead.” His footsteps moved closer, coming up gently behind her. “If you had stayed here all this time, Renata, then you would have been killed tonight along with Lex and the other guards. What happened here was a coldly planned execution, and it’s got Fabien’s name all over it.”
He was right. She knew he was right, on all points. But it didn’t make her hurt any less.
Renata stared, unseeing, into the gunpowder-choked chasm of the barn. “We have to go back to the city and start searching for her. Door to door, if we have to.”
“I know what you’re feeling,” Nikolai said. He touched her nape and she forced herself to step away from his tenderness. “Goddamn it, Renata, don’t you think that if I thought kicking down doors from here to Old Port was going to get us closer to Fabien, I’d be right on board with you? But that’s not gonna buy us a thing. Especially not with daybreak just a few hours away and riding hard on our heels.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to worry about daylight. I can go back into the city by myself—”
“Like hell you will.” His hands were gruff as he turned her around to face him. His eyes glittered with sparks of amber, and an emotion that looked remarkably like fear, even in the darkness. “You’re not going anywhere near Fabien without me.” He stroked her brow, his fierce eyes burning into her. “We’re in this together, Renata. You know that, right? You know that you can trust me?”
She stared into Nikolai’s face and felt a well of emotion begin to rise up within her, felt it rise over her like a swamping wave she couldn’t hold back if she tried. Tears stung her eyes, then filled them. Before she could stop the flood, she was weeping as though a dam had burst inside her and all the hurts she’d ever felt—all the pain and emptiness of her entire existence—came rushing out of her in great, heaving sobs.
Nikolai wrapped his strong arms around her and held her close. He didn’t try to make her tears stop. He didn’t feed her soft lies to make her feel better, or give her false promises to cushion her despair.
He just held her.
Held her, and let her feel that she was understood. That she was not alone, and that maybe, in some small way, she might be worthy of being loved.
He picked her up, lifting her into his arms, and began to carry her away from the bullet-riddled barn. “Let’s find you someplace to rest for a while,” he said, his soothing voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against her as she clung to him.
“I can’t go back into the lodge, Nikolai. I won’t stay in there.”
“I know,” he murmured, bringing her deeper into the woods. “I have another idea.”
He set her down in a leaf-strewn alcove between two towering pines. Renata didn’t know what to expect, but she never would have imagined what she witnessed in those next moments.
Nikolai knelt down near her and spread his arms wide, his chin lowered, his immense, muscled body held in a study of quiet concentration. Renata felt the energy around them crackle. She smelled rich, fertile earth, like the forest after a rainstorm. A warm breeze tickled her nape as Nikolai touched his fingertips to the ground on either side of him.
There was a quiet rustle of movement in the grass nearby—a whisper of life. Renata saw something snake up from beneath Nikolai’s hands and couldn’t keep from gasping in awestruck wonder when she realized what she was seeing.
Tiny vines, shooting through the soil, running toward the twin pines on either side of her.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured, rapt with amazement. “Nikolai… what’s happening here?”
“It’s all right,” he said, watching the vines—commanding them, hard as it was to believe.
The tendrils spiraled around the tree trunks and climbed higher, filling in with leaves that multiplied exponentially as she watched. Well over her head some eight feet, the vines leapt across the space between the pines. They twisted together, then sent off shooting lengths of vegetation, creating a living canopy that stretched all the way to the ground where Renata and Nikolai sat.
“You’re doing this?” she asked, incredulous.
He gave her a nod but kept his focus on his creation, more and more leaves unfolding on the vines. Thick walls of fragrant shelter formed a haven around them, the lush greenery interspersed with the same tiny white flowers that Renata had found in Mira’s room.
“Okay… how are you doing this?”
The rustle of growing plant life slowed and Nikolai turned a nonchalant look on her. “My mother’s gift, passed down to her two sons.”
“Who’s your mom, Mother Nature?” Renata said, laughing, delighted in spite of the knowledge that the beautiful flowers and vines were just a temporary veil. Outside, all of the ugliness and violence remained.
Nikolai smiled and shook his head. “My mother was a Breedmate, like you. Your talent is the power of your mind. This was her talent.”
“It’s incredible.” Renata ran her hand over the cool leaves and delicate petals. “God, Nikolai, your ability is… I want to say amazing, but that doesn’t even come close.”
He shrugged. “I’ve never had much use for it. Give me a clip full of hollowpoints or a few blocks of C-4 any day. Then I’ll show you amazing.”
He was making light of it, but she sensed that his glibness shielded something darker. “What about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“You said he can do this too?”
“He could, yes,” Nikolai said, the words sounding a bit hollow. “Dmitri was younger than me. He’s dead. It happened a long time ago, back in Russia.”
Renata winced. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded, plucked a leaf from the mass of vegetation, and tore it into pieces. “He was just a kid—a good kid. He was a couple of decades younger than me. Used to follow me around like a goddamn puppy, wanting to do everything I was doing. I didn’t have a lot of time for him. I liked to live on the edge—shit, I guess I still do. Anyway, Dmitri got it into his head that he needed to impress me.” He exhaled a raw, strangled curse. “Stupid fucking kid. He would have done anything to make me notice him, you know? To hear me say that I approved, that I was proud of him.”
Renata watched him in the dark, seeing in him the same guilt she felt when she thought about Mira. She saw the same dread in him, the same inward condemnation that a child was in grave peril—might even be dead already—all because someone they trusted had failed them.
Nikolai knew that torment. He had lived it himself.
“What happened to Dmitri?” Renata asked him gently. She didn’t want to tear open old hurts, but she needed to know. And she could see from the weight that had settled over him that Nikolai had carried his pain for too long. “You can tell me, Nikolai. What happened to your brother?”
“He wasn’t like me,” he said, the words contemplative, as if bogged down by their history. “Dmitri was smart, a crack student. He loved his books and philosophy, loved peeling the layers off things, figuring out how everything around him worked so he could put them back together again. He was brilliant, truly gifted, but he wanted to be like me.”
“And what were you like back then?”
“Wild,” he said, saying it more like an epithet than a boast. “I’m the first to admit it. I’ve always been a little reckless, not really caring where I ended up tomorrow so long as I was having a good time today. Dmitri liked contemplation; I like adrenaline. He enjoyed putting things together; I like blowing them up.”
“Is that why you joined the Order, for the adrenaline rush of fighting?”
“That’s partly why yeah.” He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the ground. “After Dmitri’s murder, I had to get away. I blamed myself for what happened. My parents blamed me too. I left the country and came to the States. Hooked up with Lucan and the others in Boston not long after that.”
She didn’t miss the fact that he’d said his brother was killed, not merely dead. “What happened, Nikolai?”
He blew out a long sigh. “I had an ongoing mutual hatred with a Darkhaven asshole out of the Ukraine. We got into pretty serious hand-to-hand with each other from time to time, out of boredom mostly. Except one night Dmitri hears this dickhead in a tavern talking shit about me and decides to call him on it. Dmitri drew a blade and cut the guy in front of his pals. It was a lucky hit—D sucked with weapons. Anyway, he pissed the bastard off and two minutes later, my brother is lying in a pool of his own blood, his head cleaved off his neck.”
“Oh, my God.” Renata sucked in a sharp breath, feeling sick in her heart. “I’m so sorry, Nikolai.”
“Me too.” He shrugged. “Afterward, I went out and tracked Dmitri’s killer down. I took his head and brought it to my parents as an apology. They turned me away, said it should have been me who was dead, not D. Couldn’t fault them for that. Hell, they were right, after all. So I split and never looked back.”
“I’m sorry, Nikolai.”
She didn’t know what else to say. She had little experience offering comfort, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure he would want it or need it. Like a man suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin, Nikolai grew quiet for a long moment.
He cleared his throat, then he ran a hand over his scalp and rose to his feet. “I should go out and have another look around the lodge. Will you be all right out here for a few minutes?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
He stared at her, searching her face. She didn’t know what she wanted him to say to her, but the look in his eyes seemed shuttered. “How are you doing? No sign of reverb yet?”
Renata shrugged. “A little, but not too bad.”
“And your shoulder?”
“Good,” she said, flexing her left arm to show him she wasn’t in any pain. “It feels a lot better now.”
A longer, more awkward silence stretched between them, as if neither one knew whether to bridge it or do the easier thing and let it lengthen. It wasn’t until Nikolai started to part some of the thick vines to leave that Renata reached out to touch him.
“Nikolai… I, urn … I’ve been meaning to thank you,” she said, conscious of the fact that although he had paused, she kept her hand on his arm. “I need to thank you… for giving me your blood earlier today.”
He turned toward her, gave a mild shake of his head. “Gratitude is nice, but I don’t need it. If our situations were reversed, I know you would have done the same thing for me.”
She would have; Renata could say that without the slightest doubt. This man who had been a stranger to her not quite a week ago—this warrior who also happened to be a vampire—was now her most trusted, intimate friend. If she was being honest with herself, she had to acknowledge that Nikolai was far more than that, and had been even before he shared his blood with her. Even before the sex that still made her toes curl just to think about it.
“I’m not sure how to do this…” Renata looked up at him, struggling with the words but needing to say them. “I’m not used to counting on anyone. I don’t know how to be with someone like this. It’s nothing I’ve ever had before, and I just… I feel like everything I thought I knew, all the things that once helped me survive, are deserting me. I’m adrift… I’m terrified.”
Nikolai stroked her cheek, then wrapped her in his embrace. “You’re safe,” he said tenderly beside her ear. “I’ve got you, and I’m going to keep you safe.”
She didn’t realize how badly she needed to hear those words until Nikolai spoke them to her. She didn’t know how badly she could want his arms around her or how deeply she could crave his kiss until Nikolai pulled her closer and brushed his mouth across hers. Renata kissed him with abandon, letting herself drift into the moment because Nikolai was with her, holding her, giving her safe harbor.
His kiss growing more passionate, he eased her down onto her back on the cushioned earth of their shelter. Renata reveled in the feel of his weight atop her, his warm, sure hands caressing her. He delved under her loose T-shirt, smoothing his fingers over her belly and up to her breasts.
He gave her lip a small, teasing stroke of his fangs as he drew back from kissing her. His eyes glowed like embers under the heavy fall of his lids. She didn’t need to see his transformed face to know that he wanted her. The very hard evidence of that pressed insistently against her hip. She ran her hands up his spine and he groaned, his pelvis kicking with a reflexive thrust.
Her name was a throaty moan as he trailed his mouth past her chin and down the length of her neck. He pushed her shirt up and Renata arched her back to greet his lips as he descended on her bare breasts and the smooth plane of her stomach. She was lost in the pleasure of his kiss. Aching for the feel of his skin against hers.
With deft fingers, he unfastened her jeans and slid them down her thighs. His mouth followed his progress, searing her from hip to ankle as he pulled her legs free and pushed her clothing aside. She cried out as he then bent between her thighs and suckled her, his tongue and fangs bringing on a rush of exquisite torment.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, hips rising up off the ground as he buried his mouth in her sex.
She didn’t know how he managed it so quickly, but a moment later he was naked too. He loomed over her, something more than human, more than simply male, and everything female in Renata trembled with desire. She opened her legs to him, greedy to feel him inside her, filling the emptiness with his strength and heat.
“Please,” she moaned, panting with need.
He didn’t make her ask him twice.
Moving to cover her, Nikolai wedged his knees between her legs and spread her wide beneath him. The head of his cock nudged into the slick cleft of her body, then plunged, long and slow and deep.
His growl as he sank down into her was fierce, a roll of thunder that echoed in her bones and in her blood. He pumped slowly, taking his time at first, even though it was clear that patience was torture. Renata could feel the intensity of his hunger for her, the depth of his pleasure as her body sheathed him, head to balls.
“You feel so good,” he murmured, sucking in a hiss as he withdrew then filled her again, deeper than before. He thrust hard, shuddering with the effort. “Jesus, Renata… you feel so fucking good.”
She linked her ankles around his backside as he fell into a more urgent tempo. “Harder,” she whispered, wanting to feel him pound away her fears, a hammer to smash through all her guilt and pain and emptiness. “Oh, God, Nikolai… fuck me harder.”
His answering snarl sounded as eager as it was wild. Slipping his arm beneath her, he tilted her to meet his strokes, driving into her with all the fury she so desperately needed. He swept down on her mouth for a fevered kiss, catching her cry as her climax roared up on her like a storm. Renata quaked and shuddered, clawing at him as he continued to pump, every muscle in his back and shoulders going as hard as granite.
“Ah, Christ,” he ground out between his teeth and fangs, his hips banging against her fast and furious, a reckless rhythm that felt so good. So right.
His coarse shout of release was echoed by her own as Renata came again, clinging to him as she lost herself to this delicious new sense of abandon.
She truly was adrift, but in this moment she felt no fear. She was safe with this wild, reckless man—she truly believed that. She trusted Nikolai with her body and with her life. As she lay there with him in an intimate tangle, it wasn’t so difficult to imagine that she could trust him with her heart as well.
That she might, in fact, be falling in love with him.
The knocking was insistent—a frantic beat on the solid oak door of Andreas Reichen’s Darkhaven in Berlin.
“Andreas, please! Are you there? It’s Helene. I must see you!”
At just after 4 A.M., only a short while before the sun would first peek over the horizon, only a few stragglers in the household remained awake. The rest of Reichen’s kin—nearly a dozen in all, young Breed males and mated couples with small children, some of them newborn infants—had already gone to bed for the day.
“Andreas? Anyone?” Another panicked series of knocks, followed by a terrified-sounding cry. “Hello! Someone, please… let me in!”
Inside the mansion, a young male came out of the kitchen where he’d been warming a cup of milk for his Breedmate who awaited him upstairs in the nursery, where she was tending their fussy baby son. He knew the human female who was at the door. Most of the Darkhaven knew her, and Andreas had made it clear that Helene was always welcome in his home. That she had come unannounced at such a late hour, and while Andreas was away on private business for two nights, was unusual.
Even more unusual was the fact that the typically in-control businesswoman was so obviously afraid.
Awash with concern for what may have happened to Andreas’s human companion, the Darkhaven male set down the cup of steaming milk and raced across the marble floor of the vestibule, his bathrobe flying behind him like a sail.
“I’m coming,” he called, raising his voice to be heard over Helene’s ceaseless knocking and tear-choked pleas for help on the other side of the door. His fingers flew over the keypad of the mansion’s security system. “One moment! I’ll be right there, Helene. Everything’s going to be fine.”
When the electronic light blinked to indicate the sensors were disabled, he threw the dead bolts and opened the door.
“Oh, thank God!” Helene rushed toward him, her makeup in ruins, wet black trails running down her cheeks. She was pale and trembling, her usually shrewd eyes seeming somehow vacant as she made a quick visual search of the foyer. “Andreas… where is he?”
“Gone to Hamburg on private business until tomorrow night. But you are welcome here.” He stepped back to give her space to enter the mansion. “Gome in, Helene. Andreas wouldn’t want me to turn you away.”
“No,” she said somewhat dully. “I know he would never turn me away.”
She came into the foyer and seemed instantly calmer.
“They knew he would never turn me away…”
It was at that moment the young Darkhaven male noticed that Helene was not alone. Behind her, rushing in now before he could do so much as cry out in alarm, was a team of heavily armed Enforcement Agents dressed from head to toe in black.
He swung his head around to look at Helene in disbelief. In abject horror.
“Why?” he asked, but the answer was there in her empty eyes.
Someone had gotten a hold of her. Someone very powerful.
Someone who had turned Helene into a Minion.
The thought no sooner registered before the first shot hit him. He heard more rounds being fired, heard the screams of his family as the Darkhaven awoke to terror.
But then another bullet slammed into his skull, and his world and everything in it went silent and black.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
Nikolai sat inside the shade of the vine shelter and watched a single nimbus of sunlight shine through the leaves and into Renata’s dark hair while she slept. Ultraviolet light was toxic to his kind—lethal after about half an hour’s sustained exposure—but he couldn’t work up the desire to patch the small hole in the vegetation and snuff out the errant ray. Instead, for the past several minutes, he’d been sitting next to Renata and watching, admittedly, much too intrigued, as the light soaked into her ebony hair, infusing the silky strands with a dozen different shades of copper, bronze, and burgundy.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He was sitting there staring at her hair, for crissake. Not just staring, but staring with total rapt fascination. To Niko, that seemed to indicate one of two equally disturbing facts: Either he should seriously consider looking into night courses with Vidal Sassoon, or he was a complete goner when it came to this female.
Goner as in gone for good, ruined for any other.
Somewhere, somehow, he had let himself fall in love with her.
Which explained why he couldn’t keep his hands—and other parts—off her. It also explained why he’d spent the entire night, with the exception of his quick trip into the lodge before daybreak—lying beside Renata, holding her in his arms.
And if he’d needed any explanation for why his chest had felt so constricted and heavy when she broke down crying last night, or why he’d felt compelled to share with her his guilt over the loss of Dmitri all those years ago, he supposed that being in love with her would do it.
As much as he had wanted to convince her that she was safe with him, Nikolai felt safe with her too. He trusted her wholeheartedly. Would kill to protect her, would die for her without a second’s doubt if it came down to it. She may not have been a part of his life for very long now, but he was hard-pressed to imagine not having her in it.
Ah, fuck.
He really had fallen in love with Renata.
‘Just fucking brilliant,” he muttered, then winced when she stirred at the sound of his voice.
She opened her eyes, smiled when she saw him sitting there. “Hi.”
“Morning,” he said, casually reaching above her head to knit the vines closed and seal out the last of the sunlight.
He found her slow, cadike stretch even more fascinating than her hair. She was wearing the cotton oxford he’d ruined last night, half the buttons scattered on the ground of the shelter. The big shirt was split open down the front, barely covering her nakedness. No complaints from him.
“How are you feeling?”
She seemed to consider it for a second, then glanced over at him with a frown. “I feel really good. I mean, last night was…” She actually blushed, a sweet pink color filling her cheeks. “Last night was incredible, but I thought for sure I’d be laid out flat with reverb by now. I don’t understand … it never hit me at all. I mean, I had a little bit of pain, but based on what happened during the attack at Jack’s place, I should have been in agony most of the night.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
She shook her head. “Never. Every time I use my ability, the reverb follows.”
“But not last night.”
“Not last night,” she said. “I’ve never felt better.”
Niko might have made a lame joke about the miraculous effects of his sexual prowess, but he knew it was a different kind of magic that had pulled Renata through her reverb. “You drank my blood yesterday. That’s what’s different.”
“You think your blood not only helped my shoulder but also helped with this? Is that even possible?”
“It’s definitely a possibility. A Breedmate who regularly drinks a vampire’s blood becomes much stronger than she would be without it. Aging slows to a snail’s pace. Her body’s cells, muscles, and entire metabolism reach peak fitness and health. And yeah, a lot of times a Breed male’s blood will impact her psychic ability too.”
“That’s why Sergei never had me drink from him,” Renata said, her mind already speeding ahead toward the same conclusion Niko had reached. “He made no secret that he liked the fact that my power was limited to small bursts. The couple of times I tried to hit him with it, I could never hold it on him long enough to take him down, and in the end the effort always cost me dearly once the reverb set in.”
“Sergei Yakut was Gen One,” Niko reminded her. “His blood in your system might have made you practically unstoppable.”
Renata scoffed quietly. “Just one more shackle he kept on me. He must have known I would have killed him if I had even the smallest hope that I might succeed.” She fell silent for a minute, idly plucked at a blade of grass on the floor of the makeshift shelter. “I did try to kill him… the day Mira and I fled the lodge together. That was the day he put the hot andiron to my back. He did other things to me that day too.”
Nikolai didn’t have to ask what more she had endured. The scars from the brands that had been seared onto her back were heinous enough, but to think Yakut’s punishment went even further… Niko’s blood roiled with outrage. He put his hand over hers. “Jesus, Renata. I’m sorry.”
She glanced up at him, a steady green gaze that wasn’t seeking sympathy. “His only mercy was that he didn’t force Mira to watch everything that was done to me. But Sergei told me that if she or I tried to escape again, or if I ever turned my mind’s power on him even a little, it would be Mira who’d pay in the same ways I had. He promised worse for her, and I knew he meant it… so I stayed. I stayed, and I obeyed him, and every hour of every day I hoped for some miracle that would erase Sergei Yakut from my life.” She paused, reaching up to caress his face. “Then you came and everything changed. I guess in many ways, you are my miracle.”
Nikolai captured her hand and placed a kiss in the heart of her palm. “We’re both fortunate.”
“I’m glad Sergei is dead,” she confessed softly.
“He should have suffered more,” Niko said, not even trying to curb the dark edge of his voice. “But he’s gone.”
Renata nodded. “And now Lex is dead too. Yakut’s guards. All of them.”
“By this hour of the morning, he and the others in the lodge are nothing but ash,” Niko said as he reached up to hook some of her glossy black hair behind her ear. “After you fell asleep last night I went back in and opened all the shutters for the sunlight to do its thing. I also called Boston to give them the numbers in Lex’s cell phone. Gideon’s going to call us with details once he’s run traces on them.”
Another nod, her voice soft with hope. “Okay.”
“While I was in there, I also brought you something I thought you might be missing.”
He leaned over to the stash of weapons and other assorted supplies he’d retrieved and picked up the silk-and-velvet package that belonged to Renata.
“My blades,” she gasped, joy brightening her face as she took the package from his hands. She untied the ribbons that secured it and unrolled the length of velvet that encased the four custom-engraved daggers. “Jack gave these to me…”
“I know. He told me that he had them made for you as a gift. He said he wasn’t sure you’d kept them.”
“I’ve cherished them,” she murmured, tracing the hand-tooled hilts with her fingertip.
“I told him that you still had them. He was glad to hear how much they mean to you.”
Her tender gaze bathed him in gratitude. “Nikolai… thank you. For doing that for Jack, and for giving these back to me. Thank you.”
She came toward him and kissed him. The brief press of her lips slowly melted into something deeper. Nikolai cupped her face in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over the softness of her jaw, the delicate angle of her cheekbones. She parted her lips as his tongue swept along their seam, then moaned sweetly as he delved inside.
His fangs stretched into sharp points as lust ran through him like fire. Between his legs, his sex was a column of granite, rising instantly to the thought of having Renata beneath him. When her hand trailed down past the waistband of his pants to touch him, his greedy cock leapt, surging even harder under the heat of her palm as she stroked him.
“What time is it?” she murmured against his fevered mouth.
He grunted, too engrossed in the torment of her petting to immediately process the question. Through the rough sawing of his breath, he managed to rasp, “It’s early. Probably sometime around nine.”
“Well, damn, I guess that is pretty early,” she murmured, moving her mouth away from his and kissing a trail of heat along his throat, playing over the knob of his Adam’s apple. “You can’t be out in the sunlight, right?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm.” Her moist lips descended, onto his bare chest. He leaned back onto his elbows as she followed one of his glyphs with the tip of her pink tongue, tracing the arcs and the tapering swirls around his nipple and across the plane of his stomach. When she spoke, her voice vibrated all the way into his bones. “So, I guess that means we’re stuck here for a while, huh?”
“Yeah.” The word was more gasp than sound. Her kiss traveled lower now, past his navel, still following the lines of his dermaglyphs, heading for the part of him that was straining, throbbing with the need to feel those moist hot lips clamped around him.
“Stuck here until nightfall, I suppose.”
“Uh-huh.” She took one end of the waistband’s drawstring ties between her teeth and gave it a hard tug. The knot fell loose, and she pulled the warm-ups down, just enough to bare the eager head of his cock. She licked him, watching his face as she swirled her devilish tongue around the fat plum of his flesh, suckling at the drop of slick fluid that beaded there.
“Ah, Christ….
“So,” she murmured, her breath skating across his wet skin, tormenting him even more. “What are we going to do in here all day while we wait for nightfall?”
Niko chuckled. “Baby I can think of a hundred things I’d like to do with you.”
She smiled up at him in challenge. “Only a hundred?”
Before he could fire back a smartass reply, she wrapped her lips around his cock and took him deep into her mouth. As Niko’s body went nuclear with pleasure, he found himself praying that the day and his time alone with this incredible woman—his woman—could stretch on forever.
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
Renata walked into the back door of the lodge and paused just over the threshold. She had left Nikolai in the shelter, deciding that her need for the bathroom, a hot shower, and a change of clothes that actually fit her was greater than her reluctance to step foot ever again in Sergei Yakut’s domain.
Now she hesitated. The early afternoon sun was a warm presence at her back, encouraging her along, but inside the lodge was dim and cold. Shadows played over the toppled furniture and stretched across the rough planks of the floor. She drifted in, and walked toward the place where Lex had fallen.
His body was gone, the blood too. Nothing but the smallest trace of ash left behind—just as Nikolai had promised. The shutters on the bedroom window were thrown wide open, but the sun had since moved past. A fresh breeze carried the scent of pine pitch and crisp forest air into the dank stillness of the place. Renata breathed it deeply into her lungs, letting the fragrance of the new day purge her memories of all the death and blood and violence that had cloaked the lodge last night.
Today, in this new light, so much seemed different to her.
She herself seemed different, and she knew the reason why.
She was in love.
For the first time in a very long time, perhaps in all her life, she knew a sense of true hope. It nestled in her heart—a belief that her future held something more than just bare survival, that she might at some point measure happiness in years, not rare, fleeting moments. Being with Nikolai, whether in his arms or standing by his side, made her believe so many things were possible.
Renata walked into the great room, bolstered by the fact that this would be the last time she’d need to look at the place.
This was good-bye.
When she and Nikolai left here to continue their search for Mira, this lodge, the terrible barn and holding pen out back, Sergei Yakut, Lex, and everything else that scarred the past two years of her life would be history. She would leave all of it here, the ugliness and pain banished from any part of her future.
This part of her life was over.
She strode into the small bathroom she’d shared with Mira, at peace with herself and her surroundings as she turned on the hot water for the shower. As a humid steam began to roll out from the curtain, she unfastened the few buttons left on Jack’s borrowed oxford shirt and stood there for a moment, naked, contemplating her future with new eyes. She didn’t know what awaited once night fell and a dangerous new leg of this journey began, but she was ready to face it head-on.
With Nikolai beside her—with hope and love burning as bright as a flame in her heart—she was prepared to take on anything.
Like a battle-bound knight seeking anointing and blessing, Renata stepped under the hot spray of the shower. She closed her eyes in a solemn prayer as the cleansing water poured over her.
Nikolai stayed in the shade of the vine shelter as Renata’s footsteps approached from outside.
“Knock, knock,” she called to him through the leaves. “Coming in now, so watch the daylight. Wouldn’t want you going crispy on me.”
She parted some of the thick greenery and slipped inside, mouthing a quick apology when she noticed he had Lex’s cell phone at his ear. Niko had called the Order soon after she’d gone out to the lodge to clean up. The news out of Boston was a mix of good and bad, along with an extra helping of seriously fucked up.
The good? One of the numbers on Lex’s phone was, in fact, Edgar Fabien’s. Using that bit of intel, Gideon had been able to hack into Fabien’s records in the International Identification Database. Now the Order had the addresses for the Darkhaven leader’s Montreal residence, his country house, as well as data on all his other property holdings, both business and personal. Gideon had access to Fabien’s cellphone numbers, license plate tags, computer files, even the son of a bitch’s electronic surveillance equipment at the Montreal Darkhaven.
And that’s where the bad had come in.
Edgar Fabien wasn’t home. Gideon’s hacking had turned up a video feed from early last night showing a group of seven Breed males—one of them presumably Fabien—leaving the Darkhaven in the company of Enforcement Agency armed escorts. It had been hard to tell who Fabien’s visitors were, as their tailored suits all looked alike and their faces had been completely obscured by dark hoods.
As for the seriously fucked up part, the group of vampires had left with a child in tow. A young girl who evidently hadn’t gone along peacefully. Gideon’s description of the petite blond female left no question whatsoever that it was Mira.
“You still with me?” Gideon asked on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, still here.”
“Lucan wants Fabien brought into Boston for questioning. That means we need him alive, my man.”
Niko exhaled a curse. “First we have to find the bastard.”
“Yeah, well, I’m all over that. I ran GPS tracers on all of Fabien’s cell phones. Got a lock on a location about an hour north of Yakut’s place—one of the properties on record for Edgar Fabien. It’s got to be him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure enough that we’ve already sent backup your way. Tegan, Rio, Brock, and Kade are heading north to rendezvous with you as we speak.”
“Backup on the way?” Niko asked, eyeing a sliver of UV light that was peeking through the leaves of the shelter. The Order had protective daylight gear for emergency situations, but not even a late-generation vampire wearing head-to-toe anti-UV clothing would be able to withstand the kind of sunlight that would hit him in the driver’s seat of a nearly seven-hour road trip. “Jesus, you can’t be serious. Who pulled the short straw for that mission?”
Gideon chuckled. “Headstrong females, my man. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been overrun with them as of late.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Niko couldn’t help glancing over at Renata, who was checking some of the weapons they’d collected from Lex and the others. “What’s the situation, then?”
“Dylan is driving the guys up in the Rover with Elise riding shotgun. Their ETA in your area is close to nine o’clock, just after sundown. Since Fabien has a number of unknown associates with him, we’re gonna need to get in and out of there gracefully, without unnecessary casualties.” Gideon paused. “Listen, I know you’re concerned about the kid. Her safety is important, no question, but this is big, Niko. If Fabien can lead us anywhere close to Dragos, we have to make sure we bag him tonight. That’s mission number one, straight from Lucan.”
“Yeah,” Nikolai said. He knew the mission. He also knew that he could not let Renata down, or Mira for that matter. “Shit… okay Gideon. I hear you.”
“I’ll call you if Fabien moves between now and sundown. Meantime, I’m working on a rendezvous point for you to meet up with the guys tonight to put an infiltration plan in motion. I should have something in an hour or two. Call you then.”
“Right. Later.”
Nikolai closed the phone and set it down beside him.
“Was Gideon able to get anything out of those phone numbers?” Renata asked, watching him carefully. “Do we have any leads on Fabien’s Darkhaven?”
Niko nodded. “We’ve got his address—”
“Thank God,” she breathed. Relief gave way swiftly to determination, as fierce as he’d ever seen it in her. “Where is he? Is his Darkhaven in the city proper, or on the outskirts somewhere? I can make a covert run over there right now to get the lay of the land. Hell, the way I’m feeling— no reverb, my shoulder on the mend—maybe I should walk straight up to his front door and hit him with a blast—”
“Renata.” Niko put his hand over hers and shook his head. “Fabien’s on the move. He’s not in the city anymore.”
“Then where?”
He could have told her about the GPS signal Gideon was tracking. He could have told her that Fabien had Mira in his custody and that the girl was likely only an hour north of where they were sitting right now. But he also knew that if he told Renata that—if he gave her anything close to certainty on the whereabouts of the child who meant so much to her—there would be no stopping her from taking off on her own right now to find her.
Niko’s pledge to the Order was his duty—his life-sworn honor—but Renata? This female was his heart. He couldn’t jeopardize his brethren’s mission any more than he could allow the woman he loved to walk headlong into danger without him there to see her through. Neanderthal thinking, maybe, especially given that Renata was one woman who knew how to handle herself in just about any situation. She was well trained and capable, definitely courageous, but damn it… she meant too much to him to take that kind of risk. Flat out, not an option.
“We’re waiting for solid intel on where Fabien has gone,” he said, the lie bitter on his tongue, regardless of his good intentions. “In the meantime, the Order is sending in reinforcements. We’ll be meeting up with them tonight.”
Renata listened, clearly trusting him at his word. “Does the Order have any idea whether Mira might be with Fabien wherever he is now?”
“We’re working on it.” Nikolai found it difficult to hold her unblinking pale green gaze. “When we find Fabien, we’ll find Mira. She’s going to be okay. I promised you that, remember?”
When he thought she might just nod her head or glance away, Renata instead reached out to cup his face in her palm. “Thank you… for standing by me through all of this. I don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you, Nikolai.”
He brought his hand up to hers and placed a tender kiss in her palm. He was going to say something glib, one of the usual empty quips he used so often whenever things around him got too real with emotion or too raw with honesty. He had his methods down pat: Deflect with humor. Disarm with nonchalance. Gut and run like hell at the first inkling of his own vulnerability.
But all those old, reliable weapons he’d honed to razor sharpness failed him now.
He stroked his thumb across the back of Renata’s hand and let himself get lost in the verdant haven of her eyes.
“I’m not very good at this,” he murmured. “I want to tell you something… shit, I’m gonna fuck it up probably, but I want you to know that I care about you. I do … a hell of a lot, Renata.”
She stared at him, going so still and silent he wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
“I care,” he blurted out, frustrated at himself for fumbling through the words that he wanted to be perfect for her. “I don’t know how it happened, or what it will even mean to you—if anything—but I need to say it anyway, because this is real. It’s real, and I’ve never felt this way before. Not about anyone.”
Her mouth softened into the smallest smile as he rambled clumsily, trying to find a way to tell her the depth of what was in his heart. Trying and failing miserably.
“What I’m trying to say is … “ He shook his head, feeling like a blithering ass, but Renata’s soft touch on his face soothed him. Her clear gaze brought him back, front and center, grounding him. “What I’m trying to tell you is, I’m falling for you … falling really hard. I wasn’t looking for this to happen. I didn’t think I’d ever truly want it, but… ah, Christ, Renata… when I look in your eyes, one word leaps into my mind every single time: Forever.”
She exhaled slowly and her little smile spread into beaming joy.
Niko ran his hands over her soft skin, into her damp hair. “I’m in love with you, Renata. I know I’m not a poet—shit, not even close. I don’t have all the fancy words I wish I could say to you… but I want you to know that what I’m feeling for you is real. I love you.”
She laughed softly. “What makes you think I’d want poetry or fancy words? You just said exactly what I want to hear, Nikolai.” She slid her hand around to the back of his neck and pulled him toward her for a long, passionate kiss. “I love you too,” she whispered against his mouth. “I’m scared as hell to admit that, but it’s true. I love you, Nikolai.”
He swept his lips over hers and held her close, wishing he didn’t ever have to let go. But dusk would be coming before long, and there was still one thing he needed to do. “You have to do something for me.”
Renata nestled against him. “Anything.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, but I need to know that you’ll be going into this as strong as you can be. I want you to take some more of my blood.”
She rose out of his embrace and playfully arched a brow at him. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to get into my pants again?”
Niko chuckled, a jolt of heat arrowing right into his groin at the very idea. “I wouldn’t turn it down. But I’m serious … I want you to drink from me again now. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes. Of course.”
He smoothed a dark tendril from her forehead. “There’s one more thing, Renata. When we move in on Fabien tonight, it would kill me if anything… well, I just can’t risk getting separated from you. I’m gonna need to know that you’re all right at all times, or my focus is going to be for shit. I need to have a link to you. I know how you felt about Yakut using your blood as a tether on you, and I promise you that’s not what I—”
“Yes, Nikolai,” she said, interrupting him with a gentle stroke of her fingers over his mouth. “Yes … you can drink from me.”
His answering curse was low with relief. “It’s forever,” he reminded her firmly. “You need to understand that. Like the blood bond you have to me now, if I drink from you, we can’t ever undo it.”
“I do understand,” she said, no hesitation at all. She moved closer to him and kissed him, long and deep. “I understand the bond would be forever … and I’m still saying yes.”
Niko groaned, fire lighting in his veins. His fangs stretched, and his sex rose to instant attention, all of him eager to claim Renata as his own. He kissed her, his heart slamming hard against his rib cage when she slipped her tongue past his lips to toy with the sharp points of his fangs.
“I want you naked for this,” he said, unable to curb the edge of command that was leaking into his voice. He was partly human, but there was another part of him—a wilder part—that knew less patience than he would like.
Niko watched with blazing amber eyes as Renata quickly obeyed him, stripping out of her clothes and lying back on the shaded grass floor of the shelter, thighs falling open, presenting herself to him without a speck of inhibition.
“Oh, yeah,” Niko growled. “That’s much better.”
He was rampant with need for her. Tearing off his own clothes and tossing them aside, he climbed up over her hips and straddled her. His cock thrust outward, kicking as she petted it with teasing, feather-light strokes. He held her smoldering gaze as he brought his wrist up to his mouth and bit into his flesh.
“Let me taste you again,” she said, rising up to meet his vein as he carried the bleeding punctures to her mouth. Crimson drops splashed down onto her breasts, so vivid against her creamy skin. She moaned, closing her eyes as she suckled him, savored him.
Niko watched her drink, watched her body begin to writhe with arousal. With his free hand, he caressed her, unable to resist running his ringers through the blood that had spilled on her. The sight of his blood marking her skin was as erotic as anything he’d ever seen. His touch ventured farther down, into the molten core of her that was so ready for him. Her thighs clamped around his wrist, holding him against her as the first orgasm rocketed through her.
Nikolai growled with pure male adoration as he fed his female from his body and felt hers clamoring to have him. He let her drink for several long minutes, until her body was on fire beneath him again.
He too was on fire.
Gently he took his wrist from her mouth and sealed the punctures closed with a sweep of his tongue. Renata was still arching and writhing, still moaning for him, as he braced himself over her and plunged home. She cried out as he filled her, her fingernails scoring his shoulders in delicious pain.
Nikolai made love to her as slowly as he could—as slowly as his fevered body would permit him. She came again, clenching around him and wringing a furious release from him as well. It hardly slowed him down. He was still hard inside her, still hungry for this woman… his woman.
With a trembling hand, Nikolai smoothed the stray ebony locks from the side of Renata’s beautiful throat. “Are you sure?” he asked her, his voice hardly recognizable to himself, it was so raw and desperate. “Renata… I want you to be certain.”
“Yes.” She arched up to greet his thrust, her steady gaze beseeching. “Yes.”
With a feral snarl curling up from his throat, Nikolai bared his fangs and descended on her.
The sweet taste of Renata’s blood surging into his mouth leveled him as totally as a roundhouse kick to the gut. Ah, Christ… now he knew. How many times had he busted the other warriors’ asses about being mated and finding one female who would make them blind to any other? Easily hundreds of times. Thousands, probably.
What a clueless ass he’d been.
Now he knew. Renata owned him, even before he’d given himself to her with his bite. He was on his knees before this female, and he’d gladly stay there for the rest of his life.
Niko drank deeper, drowning in the pleasure of the bond they were forging through their mingled blood and through the heated rhythm of their joined bodies. His teeth still holding her beneath him as he took his last taste of her, Nikolai came again, harder this time, a staggering release that slammed into him like a freight train. He held on to her, shuddering with intense satisfaction. Although he could have sipped from her vein all night, Nikolai forced himself to move away, sealing her wounds with a loving sweep of his tongue.
He stared down at her, his gaze bright on her skin. “I love you,” he rasped, needing her to hear it and to believe it. He wanted her to remember it later tonight, after they reached Fabien’s location up north and Nikolai explained to her why he’d felt the need to lie to her today. He kissed her chin, her cheek, her brow. “I love you, Renata.”
She smiled up at him drowsily. “Mmm… I really like the sound of that.”
“Then I’ll have to make sure you hear it a lot.”
“Okay,” she murmured, her fingers playing in the sweat-dampened hair at his nape. “That was incredible, by the way. Is it always going to be that good?”
He groaned. “I have a feeling it might only get better.”
She laughed, and the vibration made his sex rouse to life again. “If you keep this up, I’m going to have to go back inside and take another shower.”
He gave her a meaningful grind of his pelvis, driving his erection deeper. “Oh, I can keep it up. Don’t worry, that’s never going to be a problem when you’re around.”
“You’d better be careful, or I might hold you to that.”
Niko chuckled despite his heavy mood. “Sweetheart, you can hold me any way you like.”
He kissed her again, and growled with delight as she wrapped her legs around him and rolled him onto his back to begin a slow, torturous ride.
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
There had been a time in Andreas Reichen’s almost three hundred years of walking this Earth when death had rained down upon him like a deluge. Once, when a senseless, brutal wave of slaughter had visited his otherwise peaceful domain.
Back then, in the humid summer of 1809, it had been a pack of Rogue vampires that had forced their way inside this very Darkhaven to rape and kill several of his kin. The attack had been a random thing, the mansion and its residents merely unfortunate enough to be standing in the path of the blood-addicted gang of Rogues. They’d battered their way past the unprotected doors and windows, feeding and killing too many innocents… yet there had been survivors. The Rogues had wreaked their terror and moved on like the pestilence they were, eventually being hunted and destroyed by a member of the Order who’d come to Reichen’s aid.
The carnage back then had been unbearable, but it hadn’t been complete.
What faced Reichen upon his return home this evening had been a calculated attack. Not a brute-force entry, but treachery. An enemy welcomed inside like a friend. And the slaughter that had occurred here this time—probably in the small hours of morning, just before the sun rose— had been a total annihilation.
No one had been spared.
Not even the youngest souls in the residence.
With an awful silence permeating the air like a disease, Reichen walked through the blood and destruction as one of the dead himself. His footsteps tracked sticky scarlet stains across the marble of the vestibule and foyer, past his young nephew, who’d been so pleased to name Reichen godparent to his infant son just weeks ago. The ginger-haired new father sprawled by the door had been the first to die, Reichen guessed, unable to look at the lifeless face that stared unseeing to the bullet-riddled staircase leading to the Darkhaven’s sleeping quarters on the upper floors.
More death waited in the hallway outside the library, where another male had been cut down in midstep. Still more lives extinguished near the stairwell to the cellar, one of Reichen’s cousins and his Breedmate, both of them dead while trying to escape the gunfire.
He didn’t see the body of the boy until he almost stumbled over it—a tow-haired vampire child who’d evidently attempted to hide in one of the cabinets of the sideboard in the dining room. His assailants had dragged him out and shot him like a dog on the antique Persian rug.
“Good Christ,” Reichen choked, sagging to his knees and lifting the boy’s limp hand to his mouth to stifle his hoarse cry. “For the love of God… why? Why them and not me!”
“He said you would know why.”
Reichen closed his eyes at the wooden sound of Helene’s voice. She spoke too slowly, the syllables too flat… toneless.
Heartless.
He didn’t need to turn around to face her to know that her eyes would seem oddly dull to him now. Dull because all of her warmth—all of her humanity—had been recently bled out of her.
She was no longer his lover, nor his friend. She was Minion.
“Who turned you?” he asked, letting go of the dead boy’s hand. “Who do you belong to now?”
“You should know, Andreas. You sent me to him, after all.”
Son of a bitch.
Reichen’s jaw clenched, molars nearly cracking from the pressure. “Wilhelm Roth. He sent you here to do this to me. He used you to destroy me.”
That Helene said nothing only made the realization cut all the deeper. As wrenching as it would be to look into his former lover’s eyes and see a soulless shell of the woman he’d cared for, Reichen had to see for himself.
He stood up and slowly turned around. “Oh, Christ. Helene…”
Dried blood splattered her face and clothing—almost every square inch of her, covered in the blood of his dearest friends and relatives. She must have been right there in the center of the entire slaughter, an unfeeling, unaffected witness to it all.
She said nothing as she stared at him, her head cocked a bit to the side. Her once-bright and clever eyes were now as vacant and cold as a shark’s. Down at her side, she held a large butcher knife from the kitchen in her hand. The wide blade glittered in the lamplight of the dining room’s crystal chandelier.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his heart twisted in a vise. “I didn’t know… When you e-mailed and left me the message with Roth’s name, I tried to warn you. I tried to reach you…”
He let the words trail off, knowing that explanations didn’t matter. Not now.
“Helene, just know that I am sorry.” He swallowed the bile that rose in the back of his throat. “Just know that I truly did care for you. I loved y—”
With a banshee shriek, the Minion lunged for him.
Reichen felt the sharp edge of the blade cut across his chest and arm, a deep, punishing slice. Ignoring the pain, ignoring the sudden inhaled scent of his own blood, he grabbed the flailing arm of Roth’s mind slave and wrenched it behind her. She screamed, bucking and fighting as he brought his left arm down and locked both of her limbs tight at her sides. She cursed and shouted, calling him vile names, spitting in fury.
“Shh,” Reichen whispered beside her ear. “Shh now… be quiet.”
Like a feral animal, Helene kept squirming, kept shrieking for him to let her loose.
No, he corrected himself. Not Helene. This was no longer the woman he knew. She was gone, lost to him the moment she brought Wilhelm Roth’s death squad into this Darkhaven. In truth, for so many reasons, she was never his to claim. But God help her, she hadn’t deserved this end. None of the fallen here deserved such horror.
“It’s all right now,” he murmured, bringing his right hand up to stroke her cold, bloodstained cheek. “It’s all over now, darling.”
A scream tore out of her throat as she yanked her face out of his grasp. “Bastard! Let me go!”
“Yes,” he said. He wrested the butcher knife from her grasp. “It is finished now. I’m going to let you go.”
With sorrow choking him, Reichen turned the handle around in his fingers and held the point to her breast.
“Forgive me, Helene…”
Holding her tight against him, he plunged the blade deep into her chest. She made no sound as she died, just exhaled a long, slow sigh as she deflated in his arms and hung there, limp as a rag doll. As gently as he could, Reichen eased her body to the floor. The knife dropped out of his hand and fell beside her, coated with the bright crimson of their mingled blood.
Reichen took one long, unflinching look at the wreckage that had been his home. Now that it was over, he wanted to memorize every bloodstain, every life that had been cut short because of his inattention. His failure. He needed to remember, because in a short while none of this would exist.
He couldn’t let any of it remain, not like this.
Nor would he would let these deaths go unmet.
Reichen pivoted and strode away from the carnage. His boots echoed hollowly on the wood floor in the hall, his steps the only sound in what had become a grisly mass tomb. By the time he reached the front lawn of the estate, his chest was no longer tight but cold.
As cold as stone.
As cold as the vengeance he intended to visit on Wilhelm Roth and all those associated with him.
Reichen paused outside on the moonlit grass. He faced the mansion and, for a moment, simply watched it in its perfect, eerie quietude. Then he whispered a prayer, old words that felt rusty on his tongue for their neglect.
Not that prayers would do him any good now. He was forsaken, now more than ever. Truly alone.
Reichen dipped his head to his chest, summoning his terrible talent. It swelled within him, a heat that swiftly intensified, balling into a molten, churning orb in his gut.
He let it grow. He let it turn and gain strength until his insides felt seared by its fury.
And still he held it back.
He kept it inside him until the fireball banged against his rib cage, smoke and cinder drifting up to burn the back of his throat. Until the fireball consumed him, illuminating his entire body with a white-hot glow. He staggered on his heels, fighting to keep it building until he knew it would wreak total, instant destruction.
Finally, with a grief-filled roar, Reichen turned loose the power within him.
Heat shot out of his body, tumbling and spinning as it sped forward, a sphere of pure explosive energy. Like a missile deployed on a laser-sighted target, the orb rocketed into the open door of the Darkhaven mansion. A second later, it detonated, a thing of awesome, hellish beauty.
Reichen was knocked back with the sonic blast of the explosion.
He lay in the grass, watching with detached satisfaction as the flames and sparks and smoke devoured even the tiniest pieces of what had been his life.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
W e’re loaded up and ready to roll, Renata. Do you need more time before we head out?”
Standing in the gravel drive in front of the lodge, Renata turned as Nikolai approached her from behind. “No. I don’t need any more time here. I’m ready to leave this place.”
He wrapped his arms around her, cocooning her in his strength. “I just talked with Gideon. Tegan, Rio, and the others are making good progress. They should be at our rendezvous point within the hour.”
“Okay. Good.”
Renata leaned into his embrace, glad for his sheltering warmth… and his love. Nikolai had kept her near him in their vine haven until the sun had set, soothing her fears with his body, transporting her away from the ugly reality of what had originally brought them together—and what might lay in wait for them tonight, when they finally had the opportunity to confront Edgar Fabien.
The truth was, she was worried about what they might find. Bone-deep worried, and even though Nikolai hadn’t said anything to suggest that he had his doubts too, she could tell that his mind was heavy with thoughts he seemed determined to hide from her.
“You can tell me, you know.” She drew out of his arms and faced him. “If you have a bad feeling about tonight… you can tell me.”
Something flickered across his expression, but he didn’t speak it. He shook his head. Placed a chaste kiss to her brow. “I don’t know what we might be walking into with Fabien. But I can tell you that no matter what, I’m going to be right there with you, okay? We’re gonna get through this.”
“And once we have Fabien, we’re going to go get Mira,” she said, searching his eyes. “Right?”
“Yeah,” he said, his unflinching, steely gaze holding her steady. “Yes, I promise. I gave you my word on that. I’m not going to let you down.”
He brought her to him once more, catching her in a grasp that seemed unwilling to let go. Renata held him too, listening to the strong, rhythmic pound of his heartbeat beneath her ear… and wondering why her own pulse seemed to be clanging a warning in her veins like a death knell.
In a remote hundred-acre parcel of no-man’s land a couple hours north of Montreal, the woodland evening shuddered with the buzzsaw whine of an outboard motor speeding a boat across a mostly uninhabited lake. The land and lake, like the transportation provided for Dragos to reach this place, belonged to Edgar Fabien.
Although Fabien had been a disappointment recently, Dragos supposed the Darkhaven leader deserved some measure of credit for the two-prong approach to this important gathering. While the rest of the attendees arrived last night by car, this evening a speedboat had been dispatched to carry Dragos to the site’s small dock out back, after a seaplane had brought him from the city to another inland body of water also on Fabien’s property. Following the setback suffered a few weeks ago during Dragos’s run-in with the Order, he had become far more cautious about how he traveled in the open, among other things. He’d come too far to take chances. Risked too damned much to throw it away on carelessness or the incompetence of others.
He cast a contemptuous eye toward the other passenger seated in the boat with him. The Hunter’s face was impassive in the milky glow of the moon overhead, his huge body held perfectly still as the driver turned the wheel and the cigarette boat’s prow cut through the water to angle toward the lone dock up ahead on the shore.
The Hunter probably knew that he was heading toward his own death. He’d failed in his mission to kill the Gen One in Montreal, and that called for steep punishment. He would be dealt with tonight, and if Dragos could use that punishment as an additional display of his power before the lieutenants who were gathered to greet him now, so much the better.
The boat’s engine downshifted as they came up on the unlit, unassuming wooden dock where Edgar Fabien waited to greet them. Gas fumes rolled up off the water, nauseatingly sweet. Fabien’s deep bow and fawning welcome had a similar effect.
“Sire, it is the honor of a lifetime to welcome you to my domain.”
“Indeed,” Dragos drawled as he stepped off the craft onto the dark wood planks of the dock. He gestured for the Hunter to follow him, and did not miss Fabien’s reaction when he glimpsed the size and immensity of the Gen One serving at Dragos’s command. “Is everyone assembled inside?”
“Yes, sire.” Fabien came out of his bow and rushed to walk at Dragos’s side. “I have good news. The warrior who escaped containment has been eliminated. Both he and the female who aided him. One of my Minions rooted the pair out, and last night I sent a team of my best agents to clean up the problem.”
“You’re certain the warrior is dead?”
Fabien’s smug smile grated. “I would stake my own life on it. I sent trained professionals to the task. I trust their skill implicitly.”
Dragos grunted, unimpressed. “What a comfort it must be to know that kind of trust in your subordinates.”
Fabien’s confidence faltered at the jab, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sire … another moment, if you would.”
Dragos dismissed the Hunter from his presence with a curt wave. “Go up to the house and wait for me. Speak to no one.”
As the Gen One killer strode ahead, Dragos paused to turn an impatient look on Fabien.
“My lord, I’d hoped—that is, I thought a gift might be in order,” he stammered. “To celebrate this important event.”
“A gift?” Before he could ask what Fabien thought Dragos could possibly need from him, Fabien snapped his fingers and an Enforcement Agent emerged from the shadows of the surrounding trees, guiding a young child in front of him. The girl seemed lost in the dark, her blond hair glowing like cornsilk, her tiny face dipped down. “What is the meaning of this?”
“A young Breedmate, sire. My gift to you.”
Dragos stared at the waif, on the whole unimpressed. Breedmates were a rare enough occurrence among human populations, that much was true, but he preferred his stock to be of fertile, childbearing age. This girl would not be ripe for several more years, which no doubt was what intrigued Fabien the most about her.
“You can keep her,” Dragos said, resuming his trek toward the gathering. “Have your man drive the boat back across the lake while we’re meeting. I will radio him when he is needed again.”
“Go,” Fabien ordered in response, then he was right back at Dragos’s side, as eager as a hound begging for scraps. “Sire, about the child… really, you must see for yourself. She is gifted with an extraordinary talent that I am certain you will appreciate. She is an oracle, my lord. I’ve witnessed it for myself.”
Against his will, curiosity pricked to attention. His steps slowed, then stopped. “Bring her.”
When he pivoted around, Fabien’s eager grin spread even wider. “Yes, sire.”
The child was ushered to him once more, her footsteps resisting, stubborn heels digging into the old pine needles and sand that littered the small slope up from the dock. She tried to fight off the vampire guard who held her, but it was useless effort. He simply shoved her forward until she was standing directly in front of Dragos. She kept her chin wrenched down, her eyes cast to the ground at her feet.
“Lift your head,” Fabien commanded her, hardly waiting for her to comply before he took her skull in both his hands and forced her to look up. “Now, open your eyes. Do it!”
Dragos didn’t know quite what to expect. He wasn’t at all prepared for the startling paleness of her gaze. The girl’s irises were as clear as glass—flawless mirrors that instantly mesmerized him. He was vaguely aware of Fabien’s hissed excitement, but all of Dragos’s attention was rooted on the child and the incredible glimmer of her eyes.
And then he saw it… a flicker of movement in the placid reflection. He saw a form moving through thick shadows—a body he thought he recognized as his own. The image became clearer the longer he stared, rapt and eager to see more of the gift Fabien had described.
It was him.
It was his lair as well. Even veiled in dark mist, the images reflecting back at him were intimately familiar. He saw the subterranean laboratory, the holding cells… the UV light cage that contained his greatest weapon in the war he’d been preparing for all these many centuries. It was all there, shown to him through this Breedmate child’s eyes.
But then, a moment of stunning alarm.
His pristine lab, so rigidly secured and orderly, was in ruins. The holding cells had been thrown open. And the UV light cage … it was empty.
“Impossible,” he murmured, struck with a grim, furious awe.
He blinked hard, several times, wanting to dislodge the vision from his head. When he opened his eyes again, he saw something new in the child’s damnable eyes … something even more unfathomable.
He saw himself, begging for his life. Weeping, broken.
Pitiful.
Defeated.
“Is this some kind of fucking joke?” His voice shook— both with anger and with something too weak for him to acknowledge. He tore his gaze away from the girl and fixed it on Fabien. “What the hell is the meaning of this?”
“Your future, sire.” Fabien’s face had gone quite pale. His mouth worked for a moment without sound, then he finally sputtered, “The child… you see, she is an oracle. She showed me standing here, at this very gathering, presenting you with a vision of your future that pleased you immensely. When I saw that, I knew I had to save her for you, my lord. I had to offer her to you, no matter what it cost.”
Dragos’s blood was lava scorching his veins. He should kill the idiot here and now, just because of this insult. “You obviously misread what you saw.”
“No!” Fabien cried, grabbing hold of the girl and wheeling her around. He gave her a hard shake. “Show me again! Prove to him that I am not mistaken, damn you!”
Dragos watched as still as stone while Fabien peered into her eyes. The Darkhaven leader’s horrified gasp told him all he needed to know. He reeled back, as white as a sheet. As stricken as if he’d just witnessed his own murder.
“I don’t understand,” Fabien muttered. “It’s all changed. You have to believe me, sire! I don’t know how she’s changed the vision, but the little witch is lying now. She has to be!”
“Get her out of my sight,” Dragos growled to the Enforcement Agency guard who held her. “I’ll take her with me when I leave, but until then, I don’t want to see hide nor hair of her.”
The guard gave a nod and removed the child, practically dragging her up to the house.
“Sire, I beg you,” Fabien pleaded. “Forgive me for this … unfortunate mistake.”
“I will deal with you later,” Dragos said, not bothering to couch the threat that rode undercurrent of his words.
He resumed his progress toward the gathering, more determined than ever to make his authority—his unmatched power—understood to all.
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
It was fully dark when Niko and Renata arrived at the coordinates Gideon had supplied for Edgar Fabien’s property up north. The Darkhaven leader evidently owned a sizable chunk of wooded land, far enough out of Montreal that the surrounding area remained widely undeveloped: acre after acre of huge conifers and evergreens, not a living soul in sight except for the occasional deer or moose that bolted at the first scent of the heavily armed vampire creeping through their unspoiled sanctuary.
Nikolai had been running solo reconaissance on the area for the past few minutes. A two-story house made of logs and stone was tucked into a thick corner of the forest. A narrow, unpaved drive, barely wide enough for one vehicle, cut a meandering path through the trees to the front of the house. Niko skirted that driveway from the cover of the woods, taking note of the two SWAT-garbed Enforcement Agents posted near the halfway mark and the three large black Humvees parked in single-file formation just outside the front door of the place. Three more vampire guards, M16 rifles at the ready, covered the entrance. The east and west sides were each also under watch by an armed sentry.
Although he didn’t figure they’d leave the back of the place vulnerable to infiltration, Niko moved around that way to get the lay of the land. He heard the soft lap of water even before he saw the quiet lake and the empty dock at the shore some three hundred yards behind the house. Off the rear of the place another Enforcement Agency duo stood guard.
Damn it.
Getting into the site to nab Fabien wasn’t going to be easy. Unless he and the Order dropped in from above, if they wanted to pull Dragos’s associate out of there, they were going to have to mow down a few Agency guards in the process. And that wasn’t even factoring in the unknown group of Breed males who had accompanied the Montreal Darkhaven leader here last night. Yanking Fabien tonight without a lot of civilian casualties might be verging on the impossible. Double that estimate when the problem of rescuing Mira was added to the mix. So, basically the net of his recon was that shit was likely to get very messy in here, no two ways about it.
And then there was the situation with Renata.
One of the hardest things Nikolai had ever done was spend the entire day with her, knowing that he had deceived her. He wanted to tell her—after they’d made love, after she’d honored him with the gift of her blood and the completed bond that now joined them eternally. He’d wanted to tell her a dozen times over, in a dozen different moments, but selfishly, he held the truth back from her for her own protection. He still held on to the hope that she would understand his caution—that she might even be grateful that he made her wait to learn of Mira’s location until he and the other warriors had a chance to iron out a solid evac strategy.
Yeah, he was going to keep telling himself that, because he didn’t want to consider any other alternatives.
Shaking off the regret that dogged his steps and the dread that kept threatening to crawl up the back of his neck, Nikolai moved to a better vantage point in the cover of the woods. He peered through the brushy pine branches, watching several of the house’s occupants as they passed a window on the ground floor. He took a quick headcount of the hooded Breed males as they strode as a group toward another area of the place. Five, six, seven… and then another, this one without the black head covering.
Oh, Christ.
Nikolai knew him. He’d seen the son of a bitch up close and personal only a few weeks prior, when a mission for the Order had sent Niko to meet with one of the highest-ranking officials in the Enforcement Agency. At the time, the male was going by a long-standing alias—one of two false names the Order had uncovered not long afterward. Now they knew the bastard by his true name, the one his traitorous Gen One father before him had carried as well.
Dragos.
Holy… skit.
For weeks the Order had been searching exhaustively for even the most minute lead on Dragos, all without success. Now here he was, plunked down right in front of them like a fish in a barrel. Motherfucker was here. And goddamn it, he was going down—tonight.
Niko eased back into the thicket, then hauled ass in a southerly direction, where he’d left Renata with their purloined Agency SUV He couldn’t wait to call Tegan and Rio and give them this good news.
Edgar Fabien’s confusion and distress over the debacle of his botched gift for Dragos haunted him like a wraith as he and the others followed their newly arrived leader into the conference room of the northern retreat. He knew it was dangerous, generally deadly, to displease Dragos, something he’d avoided very well until recently. But he also knew—as he assumed the rest of the Breed males gathered here for this meeting did—that Dragos had brought them all together tonight for a specific purpose. This was to be a historic night. A reward, Dragos had promised, for their years of covert partnership and loyalty toward a common goal.
After so much time and effort spent currying Dragos’s favor these past decades, Fabien only prayed he hadn’t thrown it away in that one unfortunate instant down near the dock.
“Be seated,” Dragos instructed them as they filed in and he took his place at the front of the meeting room. He watched as Fabien and the six others, all still concealed behind their black hoods, filled the chairs that were gathered around the slab of polished granite that served as the conference table. “Each of us assembled here in this room shares a common interest—that being the current and future state of our race.”
Fabien nodded in agreement beneath his hood, as did several others at the table.
“We share a common resentment for the corruption of our bloodlines by the stain of humanity and for the craven way those in power within the Breed have chosen to govern us with regard to the inferior mankind. Since the first seeds of the race were sown on this planet, vampirekind has degenerated into a fat, complacent disgrace. With each new generation born, our bloodlines grow more and more diluted with humanity. Our leaders prefer us to skulk in hiding from the Homo sapiens world, all of them fearful of being found out, and masking that cowardice with laws and policies put in place supposedly to protect the secret of our very existence. We have been weakened by fear and secrecy. It is high time that changed, and a new, powerful leadership is required.”
Now the nods became more vigorous, the murmured agreements more fervent.
Dragos began a leisurely pace at the front of the room, his hands clasped loosely at his back. “Not everyone shares our desire to reverse the past failings and restore the Breed to a position of power. Not everyone sees the future that we do. Some would say the price is too steep, the risks too great. A thousand excuses for why the Breed should maintain its status quo and not take the bold steps required to seize the kind of future to which we are entitled.”
“Hear, hear,” Fabien interjected, greed for that future licking at him like a flame.
“I am pleased that those of you in this room understand the fact that bold steps must be taken,” Dragos said. “Each of you individually has played a part in advancing our vision to its next level. And you have done it all without question, without knowledge of one another… until now. Our own time of secrecy is over. Please,” he said, “remove your hoods, and let us begin the newest phase of our alliance.”
Fabien reached up for the black cloth that covered his head, uncertainty making his fingers hesitate. He paused until a couple of the other attendees had pulled their hoods off before he found the courage to remove his own.
For a moment, none of the Breed males said a word. Glances passed around the table, some smug with recognition of known peers, others wary of the strangers who had now, with this admission of willful treason, become their most intimate allies. Fabien knew several of the half dozen faces who stared back at him—all of them high-ranking Darkhaven or Enforcement Agency officials, some from the United States and others from abroad.
“We are a council of eight,” Dragos announced. “Just like the Ancients who arrived here so long ago. We are, all of us, second-generation sons to those powerful otherworlders. Soon, once the last Gen One vampire is eliminated, we will be among the eldest and most powerful of our race. Each of you has helped with that effort, either by providing the locations of the remaining members of our first generation or by supplying the cause with Breedmates to carry the seeds of our revolution.”
“What about the Order?” asked one of the European attendees, his German accent sharp as a razor blade. “There are two Gen One warriors we’ve yet to contend with.”
“And we will,” Dragos said smoothly. “I will be planning direct assaults on the Order very soon. After their recent strike against me, it will be my personal pleasure to bury their operation and see the warriors—and their mates—meet their demise.”
An Enforcement Agency director from the West Coast of the United States leaned back in his chair and arched his dark brows. “Lucan and his warriors have survived other attacks before. The Order has been in existence since the Middle Ages. They won’t go down without a fight—a very hard, bloody one.”
Dragos chuckled. “Oh, they will bleed. And if I have my way, they’ll beg for mercy and be given none. Not from the powerful army I’ll have at my command.”
“When will we begin building this army?” someone else in the group asked.
Dragos’s smile went broad with malice. “We began fifty years ago. In truth, this revolution began even longer ago than that. Much longer.”
All eyes were trained on him as he strode over to a laptop computer he’d instructed Fabien to have ready in the room. As he typed a command on the keyboard, the conference room’s large flat-panel monitor rose up from the floor. Dragos entered more instructions and soon that dark monitor blinked on, displaying what appeared to be a research laboratory.
“A satellite link to one of my strongholds,” he explained, using the touchpad to remote-control the camera on the other end of the connection. “It is here that I’ve been putting the pieces in place.” The camera’s eye roamed toward a wall of coded, cryogenic drums, then past a fleet of microscopes, computers, and DNA storage beakers lined up on rows of tables. In the midst of all this scientific equipment were several Minions dressed in masks and white lab coats.
“It looks like a genetics lab,” said the German.
“So it is,” Dragos replied.
“What kind of experiments are you conducting?”
“All kinds.” Dragos went back to the keyboard and typed in another string of commands. The laboratory camera went dark, only to be replaced with another view, this one a panoramic angle of a long corridor lined with prison cells. Although from the camera’s position it was difficult to make out anything but the most rudimentary shapes, it was obvious that the cells contained women, some of them heavy with child.
“Breedmates,” Fabien breathed. “There must be twenty or more of them in there.”
“They don’t always survive the procedures and testing, so the numbers tend to fluctuate,” Dragos said in a conversational tone. “But we have had our successes with the breeding process. These females and the ones who went before them are giving birth to the greatest army this world will ever know. An army of Gen One killers who are at my complete command.”
A hush as thick as a winter cloak fell over the gathering.
“Gen One?” asked the director from the West Coast. “That can’t be possible. You would need one of the Ancients in order to produce a first-generation Breed vampire. All of those otherworlders were exterminated by the Order some seven hundred years ago. Lucan himself declared war on all of the Ancients and saw to it that none survived.”
“Did he?” Dragos grinned, baring just the tips of his fangs. “I think… not.”
With a few more keystrokes, he brought up still another camera view on the satellite connection. This time the focus homed in on a large, heavily secured room, which had in its center a cylindrical cell constructed of light beams. The ultraviolet rays emitting from that cage of tight vertical bars was nearly blinding, even onscreen.
And contained inside that UV cell crouched a hairless, naked creature who would stand likely seven feet tall. His nude body was immense, every inch of him covered in dermaglyphs. He looked up as the camera lens zoomed in on him from somewhere across the room. Amber eyes, pupils all but devoured by the fire blazing out of the sockets, narrowed with lethal awareness. The creature came out of its crouch and lunged to attack, only to be thrown back by the searing heat of the UV bars that held it prisoner. It opened its mouth and let out a furious roar that didn’t need to be heard in order to be understood.
“My God,” more than one of the attendees gasped.
Dragos turned a deadly sober look on the group. “Behold… our revolution.”
Lex’s cell phone vibrated on the center console of the SUV Renata picked it up and glanced at the digital display: Unknown Caller.
Shit.
She couldn’t be sure if the call was actually for Lex or if it was for Nikolai, since he’d been using the phone to call back and forth with the Order. She didn’t know how long he’d be out running reconnaissance, and she was about to lose her mind cooling her heels waiting for him. She needed to be doing something. At least feeling that they would be making some good progress toward finding Mira soon…
The cell phone kept buzzing in her hand. She hit the Talk button but didn’t say anything. Just opened the line and let the caller reveal himself first.
“Hello? Niko—you there, amigo?” The deep voice rolled with a Spanish-tinged accent, as warm and smooth as caramel. “It’s Rio, my man—”
“He’s not here,” Renata said. “We’re in position at the site north of the city, waiting for you guys to arrive. Nikolai’s out on recon. He shouldn’t be long.”
“Good,” said the warrior. “We’re almost there, ETA about forty-five minutes on the outside. You must be Renata.”
“Yes.”
“Gotta thank you for saving our boy’s ass up there. What you did was … well, he’s lucky to have you working on his side. We all are.” She could hear the genuine concern and gratitude in the vampire’s voice, and she found herself very curious to meet the other warriors whom Nikolai called friends. “Everything okay on that end? How about you? You doing all right, hanging in there?”
“I’m good. Just anxious to get this done tonight.”
“Understood,” Rio replied. “Niko told us about the little girl—Mira. I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, knowing that a sick individual like Fabien is holding her. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you waiting around all day to rendezvous with us either.”
“No, it hasn’t been. I just feel so helpless,” she confessed. “I hate the feeling.”
“I am sorry about that. We’re not going to let anything happen to her tonight when we go in there, Renata. I’m sure Nikolai explained to you that getting our hands on Edgar Fabien is critical to the Order, but we’re going to do our best so that the child comes out of this situation just fine—”
A sudden chill permeated her chest as Rio’s words sank in. “What did you say?”
“She’s going to be fine.”
“No … that you wouldn’t let anything happen to her tonight… in there …”
On the other end of the line, a long beat of silence ticked by. “Ah, Gusto. Niko didn’t tell you about the video feed we have from Fabien’s Darkhaven last night?”
The chill in her got colder now, ice spreading from her chest to her limbs. “A video feed… from last night,” she replied numbly. “What was on it? Did you see Mira? Oh, God. Has Fabien done something with her? Tell me.”
“Madre de Dios,” he said on a long exhale. “If Niko did not… Fm not sure it’s my place to tell you now—”
“Tell me, goddamn it. “
She heard a rumble of rapid conversation in the background before Rio finally relented. “The child is with Fabien and several others we haven’t yet identified. We picked up the intel from a security surveillance feed at Fabien’s Darkhaven. They left last night and we tracked them to the property where you are now.”
“Last night,” Renata murmured. “Fabien’s been holding Mira here … since last night. And what about Nikolai… Are you telling me that he knew this? When did he hear about this? When!”
“I have to ask you to just hang in there for a little while longer,” Rio said. “Everything’s going to be all right… “
Renata knew the warrior was still talking, still issuing reassurances to her, but his voice faded away from her consciousness as bone-deep anger and fear—a hurt so profound she thought it might shred her into pieces—engulfed her. She closed the phone, cutting off the call and dropping the device onto the floor at her feet.
Mira was here since last night, with Fabien.
All this time.
And Nikolai knew that.
He knew it, and he kept it from her. She could have been here hours ago—in the daylight hours—doing something, anything, to see Mira to safety. Instead, Nikolai had deliberately withheld the truth from her, and, as a result, she had done nothing.
Not totally nothing, she admitted, stricken with guilt for the pleasure she’d enjoyed with him while Mira was only about an hour out of her reach.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, feeling sick at the thought.
She was vaguely aware of footsteps approaching the vehicle, her senses lighting up before her mind could process the sound. The blood bond she now shared with Nikolai told her it was him well before his dark form appeared at the window. He opened the SUV door and climbed inside like hell was on his heels.
“It’s Dragos,” he said, searching the console, dashboard, and seat for the cell phone. “Holy shit, I don’t fucking believe it, but it was him. I just saw the son of a bitch inside the house with Fabien and the others. Dragos is here— right in our grasp. Where the hell is that phone?”
Renata stared at him, seeing a stranger as he leaned forward and reached for the cell phone where it lay near her feet on the floor of the vehicle. She hardly heard what he was saying. Hardly cared now.
“You lied to me.”
He came back up, Lex’s phone gripped in his hand. The adrenaline crackle that had been lighting his eyes dimmed a bit when he met her gaze. “What?”
“I trusted you. You told me I could trust you—that I could count on you—and I did. I believed you, and you betrayed me.” She swallowed past the terrible lump in her throat and forced herself to spit the words out. “Mira is here. She’s been here with Fabien since last night. You knew that …you kept it from me.”
He went quiet, but he didn’t even attempt to deny what she was saying. He looked at the phone in his hand as if he just now realized how it was that she had discovered his deception.
“I could have been here, Nikolai. Hours ago, I could have been here, doing something to get Mira out of that monster’s hands!”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he said gently.
She scoffed, heartbroken. “You betrayed me.”
“I did it to protect you. Because I love—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head to keep from being played for a fool again. “No. Don’t say that to me. How can you say that when you used those very words to keep me distracted—to make me believe that you actually cared about me while you and your buddies in the Order made plans of your own around me?”
“It’s not like that at all. Nothing that happened between us today—nothing I said to you—had anything to do with the Order. Today was about you and me … it was about us.”
“Bullshit!” He reached for her and she drew back, out of his grasp. She opened the door and got out of the SUV He was out of the vehicle and around to her side, blocking her with his body, all of it happening so fast she couldn’t even begin to track his movements. “Get away from me, Nikolai.”
“Where are you going?” he asked gently.
“I can’t sit here any longer and do nothing.” She took a step around him but he was right there again. The gentleness in him was fading fast, replaced by a firmness that said he would keep her there in shackles if he thought he needed to.
“I can’t let you do this, Renata.”
“That’s not your choice to make,” she fired back, trembling with fear and outrage. “Damn it, that was never your choice to make for me!”
He growled a curse and lunged for her.
Renata hardly knew what she had done until he froze in midstep, clutching the sides of his head in his hands. He hissed, his eyes throwing off amber sparks as he pinned her in a shocked, furious gaze. “Renata. Do not—”
She blasted him again, all of her fear for Mira and her pain at his betrayal pouring out of her in a punishing stream of mental heat. Nikolai crashed down onto his knees, groaning and writhing from the jolt of pain she’d unleashed on him.
Renata bolted away from him, into the forest, before she allowed herself to be deterred by the regret already swelling up in her.
CHAPTER
Thirty
The house was under heavily armed, guarded watch on all sides. Impossible to breach without being noticed by at least one of the Enforcement Agents staked out like the vampire equivalent of an antiterrorist SWAT team. Every one of them carried a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude, from their dark-visored black helmets and combat gear, to the bone-shredding automatic rifles they held at the ready.
Thanks to the agents who’d raided Jack’s place the other night, Renata and Nikolai had come away with transportation, uniforms, and weapons. She didn’t think she would be lucky enough to fake her way into the building, but on first glance, garbed as they were, the agents on watch might think her one of their own.
She put on the helmet she’d taken with her from the SUV and dropped the tinted visor. Adopting as much of a soldier’s swagger as she could manage, Renata stepped out of the woods and approached the vampire guarding the west side of the house.
The agent spotted her immediately. “Henri? What the fuck are you doing out there?”
Renata shrugged, lifted her good arm in a hell if I know gesture. She couldn’t risk speaking to him—no more than she could risk using her gun to mow this obstacle down. If she let off a bunch of rounds, she would have the whole security detail on her ass. No, she had to keep her cool and just continue walking toward him with the hope that he wouldn’t open fire out of raised suspicion alone.
“What’s the matter with you, idiot?”
Renata shrugged again. Getting closer.
Her fingers itched to let her blades fly—he made an easy target standing as still as a stump—but the slightest whiff of spilled blood would call every vampire in the vicinity to attention. Renata knew she had to get close enough to reach him with her mind. Her only option was to hit him with a swift, solid blast.
“You fucking ingrate, Henri, get back to your post,” the agent growled. He reached for a small communication device clipped to his belt. “I’m calling Fabien to report you. If you want to piss him off, go ahead, but I don’t want any part of—”
Using all the power at her command, Renata unleashed a savage bolt of energy from her mind and sent it crashing into the vampire standing before her. His words choked off with a grunt and he went down like a stone. She kept blasting him until he was silent. When she was certain he was dead, she bent down and liberated him of both his weapon and his comm device.
Renata opened the side entrance door a bare sliver and did a quick glance of the area just inside. It was clear. She slipped inside, heart hammering in her chest, breath steaming against the closed visor of her helmet.
For all her fury at Nikolai for not telling her that Mira was here with Fabien, now she knew only gratitude that the Order had visual proof of the child’s location. It was too late to second-guess how she’d left things with Nikolai. Too late to worry that maybe she should have waited for him and his brothers-in-arms to be there to back her up. Part of her knew that she’d been unfair, but she’d gone too far to take it back.
She’d made an impulsive, emotional decision based on wounded feelings. It was a decision that might cost her the friendship she had with Nikolai—maybe even his love— but as much as she regretted that already, she couldn’t undo it now. Nikolai might never forgive her for jeopardizing his mission; she would understand if he couldn’t.
Now she could only pray that Mira didn’t end up paying the price.
Niko roused to the nagging buzz of a cell phone going off next to his head. He was on the ground next to the vehicle. No idea how long he’d been there. The cell phone vibrated again, jiggling in the grass and old leaves that littered the forest floor. It took nearly all his effort to move his hand up to grab the damned thing. Clumsily he flipped it open. Tried to say something, but only managed a dry croak. “Yeah,” he said once more, forcing his limbs to drag himself up off the ground into a seated slump against the front wheel of the SUV
“Niko?” Rio’s voice came through the receiver, heavy with concern. “You sound like shit, amigo. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Renata,” he said, holding his banging head in his hands. “Pissed off…”
Rio cursed. “Yeah, I gathered that. My fault, man. I didn’t realize she wasn’t clued in about the girl being moved last night—”
“She’s gone,” Niko said. When he thought of that, all his senses started coming back online like a switch on a backup generator had been thrown inside him. “Ah, fuck, Rio … I pissed her off and now she’s gone in after Mira on her own.”
“Madre de Dios.”
On the other end of the line, he heard Rio give Tegan and the others a quick rundown of the situation. “That’s not the worst, my man,” Nikolai added, ignoring the shooting pain in his head as he got up from the ground and made a staggering run for the back of the SUV “This gathering of Fabien’s? It’s bigger than we realized… Dragos is up here too.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I saw the bastard with my own eyes. He’s here.” Nikolai was grabbing automatic weapons out of the back as fast as his sluggish arms could move. He draped his body with the rifles, stuffed a pistol in the back of his stolen Enforcement Agency uniform and another one in an ankle holster. “The house is surrounded by guards, so when you get here, come in on foot and split up.”
“Niko, what are you doing?”
He didn’t reply to that; didn’t think his old friend was going to like his answer. Instead, he pulled extra magazines and clips from the vehicle and loaded up with as much ammo as he could carry. “You’ve got two men at the halfway point on the drive and three at the front of the place. Take them out first and you’ll have the cleanest way in.”
“Nikolai.” Rio’s voice was low with warning. “Amigo, whatever you’re thinking right now… don’t.”
“She’s in there, Rio. Inside with Dragos and Fabien, and God knows who else … and she’s alone. I’m going in after her.”
Rio bit out something nasty in Spanish. “Stay put. We’re not even ten minutes away from you and we’re hauling ass, my man.”
Niko closed up the back of the SUV “I’m gonna rig some kind of perimeter diversion—”
“Goddamn it, Nikolai, if this female wants to kill herself, it’s not your problem. We’ll help her however we can, but—”
“She’s my mate, Rio.” Nikolai blew out a ripe curse. “We’re blood-bonded… and I love her. I love her more than life itself.”
The warrior’s answering sigh sounded heavy with understanding, and defeat. “I suppose there’s no point in telling you that you’re defying Lucan’s direct orders if you go in there right now. If Dragos is on site, that makes this shit even more critical and you know it. We need you to stay put and wait for backup.”
“Can’t do that,” Nikolai replied.
He closed the phone and tossed it into the open driver’s-side window. Then he headed out to go find his woman.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Dragos permitted himself to revel in the awe of his underlings as they gaped at the Ancient trapped in its UV prison cell onscreen. From the wonder on their faces—the rapt incredulity—one would think he’d managed to catch lightning in a bottle. In truth, what he had achieved these past long decades was something even greater than that.
The seven Breed males gathered with him in the room now looked upon him like a god, and rightfully so. He was the architect of a revolution that would turn the entire planet on its head. Tonight they were witnessing history, and the start of a future he had personally designed.
“How can this be?” someone murmured. “If that truly is one of the Ancients who fathered our race, how did he survive the war with the Order?”
Dragos smiled as he walked closer to the screen. “My father was an original member of the Order … but he was, first and foremost, this creature’s son. During the bloodshed perpetrated by the Order when Lucan declared war on the Ancients, my father and his alien sire made a pact. In exchange for shared power in the future, my father would hide him away until the hysteria died down. Unfortunately, after making good on his promise, my father did not survive the war. But the Ancient did, as you can see.”
“So, you intend to carry on your father’s agreement with that… thing?” Fabien asked, his expression drooping like a lapdog who’d just lost his bone to a feral wolf.
“The Ancient is entirely under my control. He is a tool that I make use of whenever and however it suits me and our cause.”
“How so?” asked another of the group.
“Allow me to show you.” Dragos strolled to the door of the conference room. He snapped his fingers at the Hunter who waited outside, then pivoted back to his associates as the big Gen One obediently followed in on his heels. “Take off your shirt,” he ordered the Hunter.
The huge male complied in silence, baring massive shoulders and a hairless chest covered in a dense, tangled network of glyphs. More than one head snapped back to the monitor to compare those hereditary skin markings to the creature contained inside the UV cell.
“They bear similar dermaglyphs” Fabien gasped. “This male is the Ancient’s kin?”
“A Gen One son, bred for the sole purpose of serving the cause,” Dragos said. “All of the Hunters in my personal army are the strongest, most lethal weapons in the world. They have been specially raised and trained at my direction. They are flawless killers, and they are unfailingly loyal to me.”
“How can you be certain of that?” asked the Darkhaven leader from Hamburg, a shrewd male who would no doubt appreciate the realtime demonstration that Dragos had in mind.
“You notice this Hunter wears a collar. It is a GPS monitoring device, only this collar is also equipped with an ultraviolet laser. Every Hunter wears one, from the time he can walk. I can track his every move, locate him in an instant. And if he displeases me in any way,” Dragos said, casting a meaningful look at the Hunter standing so rigidly stoic beside him, “all it takes is one simple remote-controlled command and the laser activates, sending a UV light as thin as a razor around the Hunter’s neck, severing the head.”
One or two males at the table exchanged uncomfortable looks.
It was the German who spoke up first, his gaze glittering with interest. “What should happen if the collar is tampered with, or removed?”
Dragos grinned, not at the German, but at the Hunter himself. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
Although her every instinct screamed at her to creep in like a thief on the prowl, Renata strode through the west corridor of her enemies’ lair as if she had every right to be there. She heard the low rumble of male conversation coming from one of the large rooms out back. Elsewhere in the house, there was nothing but quiet, until…
A child’s soft sobs, drifting toward her from a stairwell leading to the second floor.
Mira.
Renata flew up the steps and followed the cries to the end of the hallway. A bedroom door had been locked from outside. She ran her hand along the top of the frame but didn’t find a key.
“Damn it,” she whispered, drawing one of her blades from the twin sheaths at her sides.
She wedged the point between the door and jamb just above the lock and gave it a hard lever. The wood cracked, loosening just a bit. Twice more and finally she had enough room to jimmy the thing free. With shaking, eager hands, Renata opened the door.
Mira was in there, thank God.
Her veil was gone, and as soon as she looked up and saw the black-clad figure coming into the room, she scuttled into the corner in absolute terror.
“Mira, it’s me,” Renata said, flipping open her dark visor. “It’s okay now, kiddo. I’m here to take you home.”
“Rennie!”
Kneeling down, Renata held out her arms. With a hitching little cry, Mira flew into her embrace.
“Oh, mouse,” Renata whispered, pressing relieved kisses to the top of her blond head. “I’ve been so worried about you. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. Are you all right, sweetheart?”
Mira nodded, her small arms wrapped tightly around Renata’s neck. “I was worried about you too, Rennie. I was afraid I’d never see you again.”
“Me too, kiddo. Me too.” She hated to let go, but they still had to get out of there before Fabien and his cronies caught up to them. Renata stood, lifting Mira up into her arms. “We have to run now. Hold on to me, okay?”
Renata hadn’t even taken two steps with the child before the rapid blasts of automatic gunfire erupted from all directions somewhere outside the house.
Dragos was eager to demonstrate the technological beauty of the Hunter’s UV collar when all hell broke loose outside the gathering. He shot a killing look at Edgar Fabien as the group leapt out of their seats in stunned alarm.
“What’s going on out there?” he demanded of their host. “Is this another of your fuckups?”
Fabien’s narrow face took on an unhealthy shade of pale. “I-I don’t know, sire. Whatever it is, I’m sure my agents will handle—”
“Fuck your agents!” Dragos roared. He scrabbled for the radio and barked an order for the driver to bring the boat around, then got right up into the face of the Hunter. “Outside, now. Handle this. Kill anyone in your path.”
The Hunter—his highly trained, flawlessly obedient soldier—just stood there, as immovable as a pillar of stone.
“Get out there. I command you!”
“No.”
“What?” Dragos could not believe his ears. He felt the gazes of his underlings root on him. He could taste their disbelief, their doubt. A silence bloomed, ripe with measured expectation. “I issued you a direct order, Hunter. Do it, or I will terminate you right here and now.”
With more gunfire ringing just outside the walls of the house, the Hunter had the audacity to look Dragos square in the eye and shake his head. “Either way, I am dead. If you want me to fight so you can live, disable my collar.”
“How dare you even so much as suggest—”
“You waste time,” he said, apparently unfazed by the chaos rising all around them. “Release me from this shackle, you arrogant son of a bitch.”
Just then, one of Fabien’s feeble watchmen came rushing to the open doorway. “Sir, we’ve got incoming shots arriving from the entire perimeter. We can’t be sure yet, but there must be a damned army closing in on us from the woods.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Fabien gasped. “Oh, sweet Christ! We’re all going to die!”
Dragos snarled in fury, not confident in the slightest that Fabien’s guards could find their own asses, let alone provide adequate cover for the group of high-ranking Breed males who were currently looking to Dragos as their leader to help them make their escape. Waiting for him to call the shots that would either spare them or take them and their budding revolution down in one fell swoop.
“We’re finished here,” he growled. “Everyone out the back door, to the boat. Follow me.”
As the group began to fall in around him, Dragos cast a glower from over his shoulder at the Hunter. Neither male said a word—mutual hatred easy enough to read in their gazes—as Dragos reached into his pocket and retrieved the device that controlled the Hunter’s collar and typed in the code that would disable it.
The instant the collar clicked into neutral, the Hunter reached up and tore it off his neck. Then, with a look that was part disbelief, part cold determination, he strode out the door and toward the heart of the disruption outside.
CHAPTER
Thirty-two
Nikolai smiled to himself as his diversion tactic created sudden mass confusion all over the place. The agents on watch were tearing around in utter panic, more than one taking a hit from the gunfire blasting in from all directions of the forest. Niko summoned a vine from the tangle of branches above his head in the forest and bade the snaking tendril to wrap itself around the trigger of his last absconded Ml 6.
As the vine did its thing as the previous ones had, holding the rifle aloft and applying more and more pressure to the trigger as the coiling green runner grew thicker and more strong, Niko ran for the side entrance of the house.
It wasn’t hard to find Renata. Their blood bond was a beacon for him, leading him through the back of the place to an upward flight of stairs. Renata was just coming down them, Mira held tight in her arms. She met his gaze and, for an endless instant, neither of them said a word. Nikolai wanted to tell her how sorry he was. How relieved he was that she had found the child unharmed.
He had a thousand things he wanted to say to Renata in that moment, not the least of which being that he loved her and that he always would.
“Hurry,” he heard himself murmur. “You need to get out of here now.”
“The gunfire is everywhere,” Renata said, worry etching her features. “What’s going on?”
‘Just a diversion. I had to create a window of opportunity to get both of you out of here.”
She looked relieved, but only for a second. “Fabien and the others … I heard men leaving out the back way a couple minutes ago.”
“I’m on it,” Niko said. “Now go. Don’t stop for anything. Take Mira back to the vehicle. The Order should be rolling in any minute.”
“Nikolai.” He paused, holding Renata’s steady gaze, hoping to hear forgiveness if not an affirmation that she might still love him after everything that had occurred. She held his gaze, a crease forming between her brows. “Just…be careful.”
He gave her a grim nod, feeling none of his usual high from the adrenaline rush of awaiting combat. Those days seemed ages behind him, back when nothing much mattered to him except the glory of battle and the triumph of winning, however meaningless the contest.
Now everything mattered—especially where Renata was concerned. Her safety and happiness were all that mattered, even if it meant he might not be in the picture.
“Take Mira back to the vehicle,” he told her again. “Keep your head down and keep yourself safe. We’re gonna get you both out of here.”
He waited until Renata ran out, then he bolted for the back door of the house where his enemies had fled.
The speedboat was just pulling up to the dock out back as Dragos and the others hurried down the slope to meet it. From all around them in the forest and up near the house, Fabien’s Enforcement Agents scrambled like ants that had just gotten their hill stomped. Gunfire lit up the night, so haphazard it was impossible to tell which rounds came from the friendlies and which from the apparent intruders.
All Dragos knew was that he was not sticking around to let the Order or anyone else take him down.
As he and his group began to pile onto the boat, Dragos put himself in the way of Edgar Fabien.
“There’s no room on board for you,” he told the Montreal Darkhaven leader. “You’ve jeopardized enough with your idiocy. You stay here.”
“But… sire, I—please, I can assure you that I will not disappoint you again.”
Dragos smiled, baring the tips of his fangs. “No, you won’t.”
With that, he raised a 9mm pistol and fired a killing shot right between Fabien’s beady eyes.
“Away!” he ordered the boat’s driver, Edgar Fabien dismissed from his mind completely as the motor roared and the sleek watercraft sped out to the waiting seaplane at the far end of the lake.
He was too fucking late.
Niko took out a couple of agents on his way down to the lake, but by the time he got there, the speedboat making a bat-out-of-hell exit was little more than churning wake on the water. Nikolai fired a few shots after them, but he was only wasting rounds. Edgar Fabien’s corpse lay on the wooden dock. Dragos and the others were more than halfway across the lake now.
“Goddamn it.”
Fury and determination powering him, Nikolai started running along the shore, calling on the preternatural speed that all of his kind possessed when they needed it. The boat was fast, but the water was landlocked. At some point Dragos and his cronies would have to disembark and pick up another means of escape. With any luck, he could catch up to them before they totally got away.
He didn’t know how far he’d run—easily a mile—when all of a sudden his chest went cold with dread.
Renata.
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He could feel her emotion course through him as if it were his own. She, his brave, unflappable Renata, was right now scared to death.
Ah, Christ.
If anything happened to her…
No. He couldn’t even think it.
All thoughts of Dragos pushed aside, Nikolai wheeled around and kicked his feet into high gear, praying like hell he could reach her in time.
She hadn’t seen the huge vampire coming at all.
One minute she was tearing through the dark woods with Mira held fast in her arms, and the next she found herself staring into the unforgiving face and merciless golden eyes of an immense Breed male whose naked torso, shoulders, and arms were camouflaged by a thick pattern of dermaglyphs.
He was Gen One; Renata knew it instinctively. Her instincts also told her that this male was more lethal than most, stone cold.
A killer.
Terror rose up on her like a black tide. She knew that if she blasted him, she’d better be certain she could kill him swiftly, or else she and Mira both would be dead in that same instant. She didn’t dare attempt it when Mira might be made to suffer if she failed.
Mother Mary, to have come this far—to finally have Mira ensconced in her arms, mere steps away from freedom…
“Please,” Renata murmured, desperate to appeal to even his slightest inkling of mercy. “Not the child. Let her go…please.”
His silence was unnerving. Mira tried to lift her head from Renata’s shoulder, but Renata gently eased her back down, not wishing her to be frightened by the messenger of death who’d no doubt been dispatched by Edgar Fabien or Dragos himself.
“I’m going to set her down now,” Renata told him, not even sure he comprehended, let alone would comply. “Just… let her go. I’m the one you want, not her. Just me.”
The hawklike golden eyes followed her every movement as Renata carefully extricated Mira from her grasp and slowly placed the girl’s feet on the ground. Renata put herself between the killer and the child, praying her death would be enough to satisfy him and his evil master.
“Rennie, what’s going on?” Mira asked from behind her legs, her small hands gripping the pantlegs of Renata’s Enforcement Agency fatigues as she peered around her. “Who is that man?”
The vampire let his stony gaze travel down to the source of that tiny voice. He stared. His shaved head cocked slowly to the side. Then he scowled.
“You,” he said, in a voice so deep it rumbled all the way down to Renata’s marrow. Something dark passed across his face. “Let me see her.”
“No,” Renata pleaded, holding Mira behind her and blocking him from her like a shield. “She’s just a child. She’s done nothing against you or anyone else. She’s innocent.”
He hit Renata with a look so fierce it nearly knocked her back on her heels. “Let. Me. See. Her. Eyes.”
Before she could refuse again, before she could think of some way to grab Mira up and flee as fast and as far as they could get, Renata felt Mira take a step out from behind her.
“Mira, no—”
Too late to stop what was going to occur, Renata could only stare in dread as Mira walked right out and looked up, way up, into the hard gaze of the deadly Gen One vampire.
“You,” he said again, peering hard into Mira’s sweet face.
Renata could tell the moment he began to witness Mira’s gift. His golden eyes went stormy, and he stared, rapt, as the child showed him events certain to come to pass. He stepped closer—too close, when his massive arms could lash out and break Mira without a hint of warning.
“Do not—” she blurted, but he was already reaching for Mira.
“It’s okay Rennie,” Mira whispered, standing before him as innocent as a babe who’d wandered into the lion’s den.
And that was when Renata realized something extraordinary was about to happen.
“You saved me,” he whispered, his huge hands dwarfing Mira’s tiny shoulders. The vampire sank down to his knees, bringing himself to her level. When he spoke, that deep, deadly voice was quiet with awe and confusion. “You saved my life. I saw it, just now in your eyes. I saw it that night too…”
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
Nikolai’s heart froze in his chest, a stricken, fear-filled lump of ice. With gunfire still erupting in the area, he had made it back through the woods, all the way to the place where his bonded blood had told him he’d find his terrified mate.
Renata was there. She stood in the moonlit darkness of the forest, as still as a statue and looking on as an immense Gen One vampire crouched before Mira, holding the child in his punishing hands.
Jesus Christ.
Niko moved in on soundless feet, creeping in closer and trying to find a position that he could shoot from that wouldn’t put either Renata or the girl in the crossfire.
Blast him away, Renata.
Take him the fuck down and get the hell out of there.
She didn’t open her mind’s power on him. She didn’t so much as twitch a finger toward any of her weapons, psychic or otherwise. No, to his horror, she didn’t even move. She just stood there, in the center of what could very quickly turn into a hellish storm of bloodshed and violence.
Niko’s own fear in that moment was fathomless. All he knew was the terror shredding him from within, his bones chilled, a desperation so savage and complete it set his heart banging like a drum in his chest.
He drew twin 9mm pistols from their holsters at his sides and stalked forward. Although he was moving at a pace only one of the Breed could manage, Renata glanced up. She felt him there, stirring the very air around her, even if her eyes couldn’t quite register his speed. Her blood told her that he was near, just as his would always find her.
He was too consumed with rage to fully notice that she was looking up at him in alarm—alarm directed more at him than the enemy vampire who faced her.
Nikolai charged forward as a flash of movement, totally prepared to kill. He drew to a halt just behind the big Gen One, both barrels held up tight against the glyphs that tracked up the back of the vampire’s shaved skull.
Everything happened in a blink of time, but it played out in maddening slow-motion frames in Nikolai’s consciousness.
He cocked the nines, his fingers on the triggers.
Renata’s eyes went wide. She shook her head. “Niko … wait… don’t!”
The Gen One let go of Mira, letting his big hands fall down at his sides. He didn’t even react to the guns trained on his head. His chest expanded as he took in a long breath, then let it out on a resigned sigh.
He wasn’t going to fight his death.
He didn’t care if he died.
And then Mira was screaming, her child’s voice pitched high with fear. “No! Don’t hurt him!”
Nikolai watched in stunned disbelief—in total amazement—as Mira lunged forward and threw her arms around the Gen One’s broad shoulders.
“Please, don’t hurt him!” she cried, staring up at Niko pleadingly as she attempted to protect the hulking vampire with her tiny body.
“Nikolai.” Renata caught his gaze as he looked up, disbelieving, two large pistols still cocked and ready, leveled at the Gen One’s head. “Nikolai…please, it’s okay. Just wait a second.”
He frowned in question, but his warrior stance relaxed somewhat. “Get up,” he ordered the vampire. “Stand up, and get away from the child.”
The Gen One complied without comment, slowly unfastening Mira’s arms from around his neck and setting her away from him as he rose to his feet.
Niko moved around to face him, weapons still held on him as he guided both Renata and Mira to stand behind him. “Who the hell are you?”
Sober, expressionless eyes stared at the ground. “I am called Hunter.”
“You’re not Enforcement Agency,” Nikolai said cautiously.
“No. I am a Hunter.”
Renata brought Mira close, holding her as the chaos of the ongoing disruption in the woods and at the house slowly died down around them. “His eyes, Nikolai,” she said, understanding now. “He is the golden-eyed assassin who tried to kill Sergei Yakut that night. He’s the one Mira witnessed at the lodge.”
Nikolai’s expression darkened. “Is this true? You are a hired killer?”
“I was.” The Hunter gave a grim nod and finally lifted his gaze. “The child saved me. Something… changed in me after I saw the vision in her eyes that night. I saw her saving my life, precisely as it happened a moment ago.”
In that next instant, the surrounding forest came alive with armed men moving in on them from all directions. Nikolai had his weapons at the ready, but he made no move to fire on the newcoming threat. Renata’s pulse spiked in panic. “Oh, shit. Niko—”
“It’s all right.” He calmed her with a reassuring look and a few gentle words. “These are the good guys, my friends from the Order.”
She watched in relief as four of Nikolai’s fellow warriors stepped into the area. All of them were formidable in size and attitude, a cadre of muscle and might that seemed to suck all of the air out of the woods by their presence alone.
“How you doing, amigo? Everything okay here?” asked the smooth caramel voice Renata now recognized as belonging to Rio.
Nikolai nodded, his eyes and weapons still trained on the Gen One in their midst. “I’ve got this under control, but the situation at the house is all fucked up. Edgar Fabien is dead, and Dragos and the others slipped out the back. They went by boat to the other side of the lake. I tried to track them, but…” He glanced at Renata. “I had to make sure everything was okay on this end first.”
“We heard a small-engine aircraft buzzing overhead as we arrived,” Rio said.
“Shit,” Nikolai hissed. “That’ll be them, no doubt. They’re gone. Goddamn it, Dragos was right here and we lost the bastard.”
“Let me help you find him.”
All eyes turned to the vampire still held in Nikolai’s crosshairs.
“Why should we trust you?” Nikolai asked, his gaze narrowing. “Why would you be willing to help us get Dragos?”
“Because he is the one who created me.” There was no warmth in the golden hue of the Gen One assassin’s eyes as he responded to the question, only cold hatred. “He made me what I am. Me, and all the other Hunters bred to kill for him.”
“Oh, my God,” Renata breathed. “You mean there are more of you?”
The shaved head nodded soberly. “I don’t know how many, or where they are all located, but Dragos told me himself that I am not the only one of my kind. There are others.”
“Why should we believe you?” asked another of the warriors, this one almost as dark as the night around them, his teeth and fangs gleaming like pearls against his brown skin.
Another warrior stepped in then, his eyes quick and shrewd, as cunning as a wolf’s under the ebony spikes of his cropped hair. “Let Tegan tell us if we can trust him.”
Renata watched in astonishment and not a little dread as the largest of the group—a warrior who’d held back from the rest like a ghost stalking the shadows—took a few steps forward. Immense, with tawny hair peeking out from under the black knit skullcap he wore, he was a broad, towering slab of muscle and dark energy. Easily as big as the Gen One who stood before him, waiting his judgment.
Saying nothing, the warrior called Tegan held out his large hand. The Hunter took it, his eyes as steady as his grasp.
After a long moment, Tegan gave a vague nod. “He comes with us. Let’s secure this site and get the hell out of here.”
Renata felt a heavy weight lift from her as the tension of the moment gave way to a new purpose. The group split up, most of the warriors heading off to take care of things at Fabien’s place while Rio and Nikolai walked Renata, Mira, and their unexpected companion back to the Order’s waiting vehicle.
Partway there, Nikolai caught Renata’s hand in his. “We’ll catch up to you, Rio.”
The warrior nodded. As they moved on, Renata watched in awestruck wonder as Mira slipped her tiny hand into the larger palm of the Hunter.
“My God,” she said to Nikolai. “What just happened?”
He shook his head, clearly just as much amazed as she was. “Gonna take me some time to figure it out, I think. But first I want to figure things out between us.”
“Nikolai, I’m sorry—”
He silenced her with a long, sweet kiss, pulling her into his warm arms. “I screwed up, Renata. I was so afraid of losing you that I drove you away from me with a stupid, reckless lie. I never would have forgiven myself if anything happened to you, or to Mira. You’re my heart, Renata. You are my life.” He stroked her cheek, his gaze engulfing her, drinking her in. “I love you so much … I don’t want to live a single moment without you at my side.”
She closed her eyes, overwhelmed with emotion. “I’ve never wanted anything more,” she whispered, her throat constricted with joy. “I love you too, Nikolai. But you have to understand, I’m a package deal. Mira’s not my child by blood, but she is the child of my heart. I love her like she is my own.”
“I know,” he said soberly. “You’ve proven that in spades.”
Renata glanced up at him, unable to contain the hope that was battering around in her breast. “Do you think you can find room in your life—in your heart—for both of us?”
“What makes you think I haven’t done that already?” He kissed her again, tenderly this time. When he looked into her eyes, his own gaze was so filled with love it swept her breath away. “Let’s get out of here now. I want to take my girls home.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-four
Boston. Three nights later.
The Order’s compound seemed vastly different to Nikolai as he walked the corridor that led from the tech lab where he’d been meeting with the other warriors. The mission to thwart Dragos had taken a significant hit a few nights ago, but they’d also come away with a very unexpected advantage in their quest to locate him and shut down his operation.
Unfortunately while Hunter was shaping up to be a valuable asset, the Order had also lost a crucial ally and trusted friend: Andreas Reichen had fallen off the grid completely, and the word out of Berlin was the worst kind of news. No one knew if the German Darkhaven leader had survived the attack on his residence. Based on the reported slaughter of all his kin and the blaze that consumed the entire property, the Order held out little hope for their friend.
Personally, Nikolai thought it would be a small mercy if Reichen had perished in the raid. He didn’t know how such a deep loss could ever be overcome. Certainly no man, Breed or otherwise, would be strong enough to walk away unscathed from such a brutal blow to the soul. As a warrior, Nikolai understood combat casualties. Every warrior walked into battle knowing that he or his brethren might not return to base.
But to lose one’s family…
He didn’t even want to consider what that would do to a man. Instead Nikolai focused on the blessings he had— one of which could be heard speaking softly as he neared the open doorway of his private quarters.
Renata was inside, seated on the sofa in the living room, reading to Mira.
For a moment, as Niko reached the entrance, he leaned against the jamb simply to listen and to feast his eyes on the beautiful woman who was now his mate. He loved that Renata was as comfortable curled up with a book as she was holding a weapon. She had a softness he admired, an intelligence that continually challenged him, and an inner strength that made him strive to be a male worthy of her devotion.
It didn’t hurt that she was also hotter than hell, especially when she was staring down the barrel of a big 9mm or training with her beloved blades. Kade and Brock had been almost permanent fixtures in the weapons room the past few days, if only for the chance to spar with Renata or watch her in action. Nikolai could hardly blame them. But if he was tempted to feel the slightest nip of jealousy, all it took was a sly glance from his woman to put him at ease. She loved him, and for that Nikolai counted himself the luckiest damned male on the planet.
“Hi,” she said now, glancing over as she turned the last page of a chapter and paused to greet him.
“Hi, Niko,” Mira chimed in from under the fall of her short veil. “You just missed a really good part in the story.”
“I did? Maybe I can talk Renata into reading it to me later,” he said, slanting a heated look at his mate as he stepped into the room. He walked over to the sofa and hunkered down in front of Mira. “I have something for you.”
“Really?” Her tiny face brightened with a smile. “What is it?”
“Something I asked Gideon to get for you. Take off your veil and I’ll show you.”
He didn’t miss Renata’s protective look as Mira tore the black fabric away from her face. “What’s this about?”
“It’s okay,” he said, taking a small plastic case out of the pocket of his jeans. “You can trust me. You both can trust me.”
Renata relaxed at the reminder, and watched as Nikolai unscrewed the cap from a contact lens container. “These are special lenses that Gideon thinks will help with your eyes. How would you like it if you never had to wear that veil again?”
Mira nodded enthusiastically. “Let me see them, Niko!”
“What kind of lenses are they?” Renata asked, cautiously hopeful.
“Opaque irises to shield the mirroring effect of Mira’s own eyes. She’ll be able to see through them, but no one looking at her will notice anything unusual about her eyes. Her irises will be covered, in the same way the veil covered them. I thought these would be better.”
Renata nodded, smiling warmly at him. “Much better. Thank you.”
“Can I try them on?” Mira asked, eagerly peering at the small case in Niko’s hand. “Look, Rennie, they’re purple!”
“That’s your favorite color,” she said, turning a questioning look on Nikolai.
He’d brought himself up to speed on a lot the past few days, taking on a role he never imagined himself in, let alone imagining it would fit so comfortably on him. He was a blood-bonded male with a Breedmate who loved him and a young child to bring up as their own. And he relished the idea of both.
He, the maverick, the reckless one, had a family of his own now. It was mind-boggling to him, not to mention to the rest of the compound. It was the last thing he ever dreamed he’d wanted or needed, and now, just a few days into it, he couldn’t picture life any other way.
His heart had never felt so full.
“Let me help you with those,” Renata said, taking the lenses from him and carefully assisting Mira into them. When they were in place for a few long seconds and the child’s talent didn’t stir, Renata caught a small laugh in her hand. “Oh, my God. It worked, Nikolai. Just look at her. The lenses work beautifully.”
He glanced into the wide violet pools of Mira’s altered eyes and saw… nothing. Only the happy, carefree gaze of a child.
Renata threw her arms around him and kissed him. Mira was right behind her, and Niko caught them both in a heartfelt embrace.
“There’s more,” he said, hoping they would enjoy the rest of his surprise. He stood up and took each of them by the hand. “Gome with me.”
He led them up the corridor to the elevator that climbed from the subterranean headquarters to the large mansion that sat topside. He could feel Renata’s apprehension in her loose grasp and in the spike of adrenaline that edged into her bloodstream.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered against her ear. “You’ll enjoy this, I promise.”
At least, he hoped she would. He’d been working on it for the past day and a half, trying to get everything just right. He guided Renata and Mira into the heart of the estate, toward the candlelit warmth of the formal dining room. The aromas of baked bread and roasted meat drifted out to greet them. Niko himself had no appreciation for human food, but the Breedmates living at the compound certainly did, and judging from the looks he was getting from the two females walking along at his side, they did too.
Renata’s astonishment shone in her eyes. “You cooked dinner?”
“Hell, no. Believe me, I’m the last person you’d want in charge of your meals. I pulled some favors from Savannah, Gabrielle, and the other women. Your stomach is in very good hands.”
“But I was just with all of them earlier today and no one said anything about this.”
“I wanted to surprise you. They wanted to surprise you, too.”
She didn’t say anything more, and he couldn’t help noticing that Renata’s steps had slowed the closer they got to the dining room. Mira, however, was crackling with excitement. As soon as they reached the arched entryway, she broke away from Niko’s loose hold and ran into the gathering, chattering a mile a minute as though she’d lived there all her life.
But not Renata.
She was silent, unmoving. She took one look inside at the table full of dishes and fine porcelain settings and drew in a shallow breath. She said nothing as she looked at the faces of the warriors and their Breedmates, every gaze lifted in welcome as she and Nikolai stood at the door.
“Oh, God,” she finally whispered, her voice broken and raw.
Niko followed her as she backed away, turning into the hallway like she wanted to bolt.
Damn it. He’d been so sure she would enjoy a nice dinner with everyone, but obviously he’d been wrong.
When she spoke to him, her voice was choked with emotion. “Everyone’s waiting in there … for us?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “I wanted to do something special for you, and I screwed it up. I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this—”
“Nikolai.” She looked up at him, her eyes glittering with tears. “I’ve never seen anything lovelier than that table in there, with everyone gathered around it.”
He frowned, baffled now. “Then what’s wrong?”
She shook her head, swallowed a strangled laugh. “Nothing’s wrong. That’s just it. Nothing is wrong at all. I’m just so happy. You have made me so completely happy. I’m afraid to hold on to this feeling. I’ve never known what it was like, and I’m scared to death that it’s only a dream.”
“Not a dream,” he said gently, caressing the stray tear from her cheek. “And you can hold on to me if you feel afraid. I’m going to be here beside you as long as you’ll have me.”
“Forever,” she said, beaming up at him.
Nikolai nodded. “Yes, love. Forever.”
Renata’s elated laugh bubbled out of her. She kissed him hard, then nestled up against his side and walked with him under the shelter of his arm, back to join the others. Back to join the rest of their family.
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author Lara Adrian lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Can’t get enough of the Midnight Breed?
Get ready to sink your teeth into the upcoming book
in Lara Adrian’s bestselling series
ASHES OF MIDNIGHT
Coming from Dell in May 2009
A WOMAN DRIVEN BY BLOOD. A MAN
THIRSTING FOR VENGEANCE.
A PLAGE WHERE DARKNESS AND DESIRE MEET…
As night falls, Claire Roth flees, driven from her home by a fiery threat that seems to come from hell itself. Then, from out of the flames and ash, a vampire warrior emerges. He is Andreas Reichen, her onetime lover, now a stranger consumed by vengeance. Caught in the cross fire, Claire cannot escape his savage fury—or the hunger that plunges her into his world of eternal darkness and unending pleasure.
Nothing will stop Andreas from destroying the vampire responsible for slaughtering his Breed brethren… even if he must use his former lover as a pawn in his deadly mission. Blood-bonded to his treacherous adversary, Claire can lead Andreas to the enemy he seeks, but it is a journey fraught with danger—and deep, unbidden desires. For Claire is the one woman Andreas should not crave, and the only one he’s ever loved. A dangerous seduction begins—one that blurs the lines between predator and prey, and stokes the flames of a white-hot passion that may consume all in its path….
For more on ASHES OF MIDNIGHT visit
PRAISE FOR LARA ADRIAN’S
MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
MIDNIGHT RISING
“Fans are in for a treat…. Ms. Adrian has a gift for
drawing her readers deeper and deeper into the
amazing world she creates…. I eagerly await the
next installment of this entertaining series!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Packed with danger and action, this book
also explores the tumultuous emotions of guilt,
anger, betrayal and forgiveness. Adrian has
hit on an unbeatable story mix.”
—Romantic Times
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
“This is one of the best paranormal series
around. Compelling characters and good
world-building make this a must-read series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“One of the Top 10 Best Romance Novels of 2007.”
—Selected by the Editors at Amazon.com
“Ms. Adrian’s series just gets better and
better…. Midnight Awakening was exactly what I hoped
it would be, then so much more…. I’m intrigued and
without a doubt completely hooked.”
—Romance Junkies
“Vengeance is the driving force behind this entry in the
intense Midnight Breed series. Things look bad for the
characters, but for the readers it’s nothing but net!”
—Romantic Times
KISS OF CRIMSON
“Vibrant writing heightens the suspense, and hidden
secrets provide many twists. This dark and steamy
tale … is a winner and will have readers eager for the
next Midnight Breed story.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Hot sensuality with emotional drama and high-stakes
danger … [Adrian] ensures that her latest is terrific
supernatural entertainment.”
—Romantic Times
“[Adrian] pens hot erotic scenes and vivid action
sequences.” —Romantic Reader
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
“Evocative, enticing, erotic. Enter Lara Adrian’s
vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
“Kiss of Midnight is dark, edgy and passionate, an
irresistible vampire romance.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Lara Adrian delivers a fast-paced, sexy
romantic suspense that… stands above the
rest. A gripping, sensual love story.”
—Romance Reader
“Gritty and dangerous, this terrific launch book
sets up an alternate reality filled with treachery
and loss. The Midnight Breed series is poised
to deliver outstanding supernatural thrills.”
—Romantic Times
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
MIDNIGHT RISING
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
Ashes of Midnight is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Dell Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2009 by Lara Adrian, LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELL is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33852-9
v3.0
Contents
Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Epilogue
To the phoenix that lives in all of us:
strong, glorious, indestructible.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With gratitude and appreciation to my editor, Shauna Summers, and everyone on the publishing team at Bantam Dell, and to my agent, Karen Solem. It truly is a joy working with you all!
Big hugs to Zazoo, Picky, Gem, Jules, Pebbles, Sly, Rangi, Mandy and the rest of the amazing crew at the Midnight Breed fan forum for all your friendship, love, and support (not to mention the gorgeous eye candy!). You blow me away with everything you do!
A debt of thanks to my writer friends Kayla Gray, Patricia Rasey, Elizabeth Boyle, Larissa Ione, Jaci Burton, and Stephanie Tyler for understanding when I need to unplug from the world for often weeks at a time, yet still stand by, ready to pick up right where we left off or jump in with a quick read. You are the best!
Last, but never least, thanks and all my love to my husband for giving me the kind of happily-ever-after that many would say could only exist in fiction. Here’s to the next twenty years!
CHAPTER
One
BERLIN, GERMANY
The vampire had no idea that death awaited him in the darkness.
His senses were overloaded with need, his hands and arms full of a half-dressed redhead who pawed at him with barely restrained lust. Too fevered to notice they weren’t alone in his Darkhaven bedchamber, he willed open the carved double doors and guided his eager, panting prey inside. The woman teetered on a pair of tall heels, laughing as she twisted away from him and wagged a finger in front of her face.
“Hans, you fed me too mush champagne,” she slurred, stumbling into the dark room. “My head’s all woozy.”
“It will pass.” The German vampire’s words were sluggish, too, though not from the alcohol that had inebriated his unsuspecting American companion. His fangs were no doubt filling his mouth, saliva flooding over his tongue in anticipation of feeding.
He tracked her with deliberate movements as he closed the doors behind him and prowled toward her. His eyes glowed like embers, transforming from their natural color to something otherworldly. Although the woman seemed oblivious to the change coming over him, the vampire held his head low as he approached her, careful to conceal the telling heat of his bloodthirsty gaze. Except for that shuttered amber glow and the dim twinkle of stars outside the tall windows overlooking the Darkhaven estate’s private grounds, there was no light in the room. Then again, being one of the Breed, he could see well enough without it.
So could the one who came to kill him.
Enveloped in shadows across the large chamber, a dark gaze watched as the vampire grabbed his blood Host from behind and got down to business. The first pungent copper whiff of the human’s pierced vein made the observer’s fangs erupt from his gums in reflexive response. He hungered, too, more urgently than he wanted to admit, but he had come here for a greater purpose than to serve his own base needs.
He had come for vengeance.
For justice.
It was that overriding mission that held Andreas Reichen’s feet firmly to the floor as the other vampire drank greedily, blindly, across the room. He waited, patient only because he knew this male’s death would bring him one step closer to fulfilling the vow he’d made some twelve weeks ago … the night his world had disintegrated into a pile of ash and rubble.
Reichen’s restraint was held on a threadbare leash. Inside he churned with the heat of his anger. His bones felt like hot iron rods beneath his skin. His blood raced through his body, liquid fire that seared him from scalp to heels. Every muscle and cell within him screamed for retribution—screamed it with a fury that bordered on nuclear meltdown.
Not here, he warned himself. Not that.
The price would be steep if he gave in to the full mea sure of his rage, and by God, this son of a bitch wasn’t worth it.
Reichen held that explosive part of himself at bay, but the effort came a fraction of a second too late. The fire in him was already swelling, burning through the fragile tethers of his self-control…
The other vampire suddenly lifted his head from where he’d been feeding at the woman’s neck. He drew in a sharp breath through his nose, then grunted, animalistic… alarmed. “Someone is here.”
“What’d you say?” she murmured, still drowsy from his bite as he sealed her wound with his tongue then shoved her away from him. She staggered forward, huffing a couple of choice curses under her breath. The instant her sluggish gaze lit on Reichen, a scream ripped from her throat. “Oh, my God!”
Feeling his eyes smoldering with the amber fire of his rage, his fangs tearing through his gums in readiness of the fight to come, Reichen took a single step out of the shadows.
The woman screamed again, hysteria rising in her wild, panicked eyes. She looked to her companion for protection, but the vampire had no further use of her. With a callous sweep of his hand, he knocked her out of his way and stalked forward. The blow sent her careening to the floor.
“Hans!” she cried. “Oh, God—what’s going on?”
Hissing, the vampire faced his unexpected intruder and crouched into an attack stance. Reichen had only a moment to cast a quick glance at the confused, terrified human.
“Get out of here.” He sent a mental command that unlocked the bedchamber’s doors and swung them open. “Leave, female. Now!”
As she scrambled up from the polished marble beneath her and escaped the room, the Darkhaven vampire leapt into the air in a single, fluid arc of motion. Before his feet could touch down, Reichen launched himself at the bastard.
Their bodies collided, the explosion of Reichen’s forward momentum propelling both of them across the width of the chamber. Fangs huge and gnashing, fierce amber eyes locked on each other in the deadliest kind of malice, together they crashed like a wrecking ball into the far wall.
Bones cracked with the impact, but it wasn’t enough for Reichen.
Not nearly enough.
He threw the struggling, furious Breed male to the floor and pinned him there, one knee crushing his throat.
“Ignorant fool!” roared the vampire, arrogant despite his pain. “Have you any idea who I am?”
“I know who you are—Enforcement Agent Hans Friedrich Waldemar.” Reichen bared his teeth and fangs in a profanity of a smile as he glared down at him. “Don’t tell me you have already forgotten who I am.”
No, he hadn’t forgotten. Recognition flickered behind the pain and fear in Waldemar’s slitted pupils. “Son of a bitch… Andreas Reichen.”
“That’s right.” Reichen held the bastard in a gaze so deadly furious it must have burned to hold it. “What’s the matter, Agent Waldemar? You seem surprised to see me.”
“I—I don’t understand. The attack on the Darkhaven this past summer…” The vampire sucked in a choked breath. “I’d heard no one survived.”
“Almost no one,” Reichen corrected tightly.
And now Waldemar knew why he’d been paid this unexpected visit. There was no mistaking the bleak awareness in the other male’s gaze. Or the stark fear. When he spoke now, his voice shook a bit. “I had nothing to do with it, Andreas. You must believe me—”
Reichen snorted. “That’s what the others said, too.”
Waldemar started to squirm, but Reichen pressed down harder with his knee planted heavily against the vampire’s throat. Waldemar wheezed, trying to raise his hands as the weight began to crush his air channel. “Please…just tell me what you want from me.”
“Justice.”
With neither satisfaction nor remorse, Reichen grabbed Waldemar’s head in his hands and gave a fierce yank. His neck snapped, then the Breed male’s head fell back to the floor with a heavy thunk.
Reichen exhaled a deep sigh that did little to purge his anguish, or the grief he felt at being alive and alone. The sole survivor. The last of his family line.
As he stood and prepared to leave this latest death behind him, a glint of polished glass on one of the room’s several mahogany bookcases caught his eye. He stalked over to it, his feet moving automatically, sharpened gaze fixed on the face of his enemy that stared out from within the silver-framed photograph. He grabbed the picture and stared down at it, his fingers hot where they pressed into the metal of the frame. Reichen’s eyes burned the longer he looked at that hated face, a growl curling low in his throat, raw with visceral, still-smoldering rage.
Wilhelm Roth stood among a small group of Breed males wearing ceremonial Enforcement Agency garb. All of them were decked out in black tuxedos and starched white shirts, their chests festooned with bright silk sashes and gleaming pendant medallions, gilded rapiers sheathed at their sides. Reichen snorted at the self-importance—the power-hungry arrogance—etched in those smug, smiling faces.
Now they were dead men…all but one.
He’d saved Roth for last, having meticulously worked his way up the chain of command. First the Agency death squad members who’d ambushed his Darkhaven home and opened fire on every living being inside—even the females, even the infants asleep in their cribs. Next he’d targeted the handful of Enforcement Agency cronies who had made no secret of their allegiance to the powerful Darkhaven leader responsible for ordering the slaughter.
One by one over the past several weeks, the guilty had met their end. The vampire lying dead and broken on the floor was the last known member of Wilhelm Roth’s corrupt inner circle in Germany.
Which left Roth himself.
The bastard was going to burn for what he’d done.
But first he would suffer.
Reichen’s gaze drifted back to the framed photograph in his hands and froze there. On first glance, he hadn’t noticed the woman. All of his focus—all his fury—had been centered solely on Roth. Now that he had found her, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
Claire.
She stood off to the side of the group of Breed males, petite yet regal in a sleeveless ghost-gray gown that made her light brown skin look as smooth and lush as satin. Her soft black hair was swept up in a careful chignon, not a single strand out of place.
Time had not aged her so much as a year from when he’d known her—not that it would, when she was kept youthful and strong by the blood bond she shared with her chosen mate these thirty-some years. She was looking at Wilhelm Roth and his criminal friends, smiling with a perfectly schooled, perfectly unreadable expression.
A perfectly proper mate to the vampire who had proven to be Reichen’s most treacherous adversary.
Claire.
After all this time.
My Claire, he thought grimly.
No, not his.
Once, perhaps. Long ago, and for merely a few months at that. A brief handful of time.
Ancient history.
Reichen stared at her image behind the silver-framed glass, surprised at how easily his fury for Wilhelm Roth could bleed over to the vampire’s Breedmate. Sweet, lovely Claire … in bed with his most hated enemy. Was she aware of Roth’s corruption? Did she condone it?
It hardly mattered.
He had a mission to fulfill. Justice to claim. A deadly, final vengeance to serve.
And nothing would stand in his way… not even her.
Reichen’s gaze bore down on the photograph, fury smoldering in the amber light that reflected back at him from the surface of the glass. His fingers burned where his skin met the metal of the frame. He tried to cool the acid tempest swirling in his gut, but it was too late to hope for even a small measure of calm. With a snarl, he tossed the photograph to the floor and turned away from it. He stalked to one of the tall windows and willed open the pane, knowing he couldn’t trust his touch now that his rage was so close to ruling him.
Reichen stepped onto the sill in a crouch, hearing the hot spit and sizzle of melting silver and cracking glass as the framed photograph burst into flames behind him.
Then he leapt into the thick autumn night to finish what Wilhelm Roth had started.
CHAPTER
Two
Claire Roth’s lips pursed in contemplation as she stared down at the architect’s model spread out on the table in her library. “What do you think about moving the bench away from the strolling path and closer to the koi pond, just on the other side of the cottage roses?”
“An excellent idea,” said a bright female voice over the speakerphone situated nearby. The young woman was calling from one of the region’s Darkhavens. Having seen some of her work elsewhere within the vampire community, Claire had been working with her for the past week, privately consulting on the design of a small garden park. “Have you decided about the material for the walkways, Frau Roth? I believe initially you’d mentioned cobblestones or crushed rock—”
“Would it be possible to keep the paths natural instead?” she asked as she moved along the side of the table, perusing the rest of the scale model. “I’m thinking soft earthen walkways trimmed with something simple yet inviting. Forget-me-nots, perhaps?”
“Of course. That sounds lovely.”
“Good,” Claire said, smiling as she considered the change. “Thank you, Martina. You’ve done a wonderful job. Really, I couldn’t be more pleased with how you’ve taken my jumble of rough ideas and turned them into something so much more than I imagined.”
The young Breedmate’s voice brightened on the other end of the line. “The park is going to be beautiful, Frau Roth. It’s obvious how much time and care you’ve put into your vision of what you’d like it to be.”
Claire quietly registered the compliment, feeling less pride than relief. She wanted this slice of empty land to be turned into something beautiful. She wanted it to be perfect. Every planting, every carefully placed sculpture, bench, and strolling path was intended to be a place of total peace and tranquillity. A sanctuary meant to inspire the mind, heart, and soul. She wasn’t one to pick up the torch for a cause—well, not in a very long time, at any rate—but she had to admit this project had become something close to an obsession for her.
“I just need it to be right,” she murmured, blinking past a sudden misting of her eyes. She’d been overly emotional lately, and was grateful that there was no one in the library to see her weakness.
“Don’t worry,” Martina’s cheerful voice soothed. “I’m certain he’s going to love it.”
Claire swallowed, caught off guard. “W-what?”
“Herr Roth,” the young Breedmate replied. An awkward silence stretched out for long moments. “I, um … I’m sorry if I’m prying. You’d asked me to keep the park and its design a secret, so I suppose I assumed that you meant it to be a gift for him.”
A gift for Wilhelm? Claire had to work to contain her bemused reaction to the idea. She hadn’t even seen her mate for half a year. He came to the country only because his blood compelled him to. Claire had grown to dread those visits, expected as his mate to feed him from her veins and to take his blood in exchange. Wilhelm hardly pretended to feel differently about their coolly obligatory arrangement. They had discreetly lived apart nearly all of the three decades of their pairing—he in his Darkhaven mansion in the city, she and a handful of security staff here in the country manor a couple of hours away.
No, the garden park was not a gift for her chronically absent mate. In fact, she was sure he’d be furious if he found out that she’d undertaken the project on her own. Fortunately for her, Wilhelm Roth hadn’t taken an interest in anything she thought or felt or did for quite some time now. He was more than content to leave her to pursue her assorted philanthropic and social activities; his business with the Enforcement Agency was all that mattered to him, particularly of late. That was his obsession, and in a quiet corner of her heart, Claire was glad for her solitude. Especially these past difficult weeks.
Martina let out a small sigh over the speaker. “Please, Frau Roth… forgive me if I’ve overstepped my bounds in any way.”
“Not at all,” Claire assured her. Before she had to offer Martina either a pleasant lie about her motivations for the park’s construction or explain her estrangement from the Breed male she saw infrequently at best, a hard rap sounded on the library door. “My thanks again for the lovely design, Martina. Let me know if you have any other questions before we proceed with the project.”
“Of course. Good night, Frau Roth.”
Claire ended the call, then stepped out of the room. She closed the door behind her, still feeling protective of her secret undertaking and seeing no reason to invite questions from Wilhelm’s loyal hounds. But now that she was standing alone with one of the half-dozen Enforcement Agents assigned to look out for her and the property she occupied, she realized that her little side project was the least of the security detail’s concern. The guard seemed agitated, uncharacteristically twitchy.
“Yes. What is it?”
“I need you to come with me, Frau Roth.”
“What for?” She could see now that the big male was visibly rattled. Considering he was Breed, in addition to being armed to his fangs with firearms and combat gear, rattling someone like him was no small thing. Something was terribly wrong.
The comm device clipped to his black bulletproof vest was crackling with intermittent static and snippets of urgent conversation among the other agents posted at the country house. “We’re evacuating the premises immediately. This way, if you would.”
“Evacuating? Why? What’s going on?”
“I’m afraid there is no time to waste.” More static sounded over his comm. More voices issuing clipped orders in the background. “We’re readying a vehicle for you now. Please. You must come with me.”
He started to reach for her arm, but Claire stepped out of his range. “I don’t understand. Why do I have to leave? I demand that you tell me what’s going on.”
“We had a situation at the Darkhaven in Hamburg a short while ago—”
“A situation?”
The guard didn’t elaborate, simply spoke right over her. “As a precaution, we’re clearing out of here and taking you to another location. A safe house in Mecklenburg.”
“Wait a minute—I have no idea what you’re talking about. What situation in Hamburg? Why do I need to be moved to a safe house? What exactly does any of this mean?”
The guard gave her an impatient look as he barked his position into his comm device. “Yes, I’m with her now. Bring the vehicles around to the front and prepare to roll out. We’re on the way to meet you.”
He made another grab for her and Claire’s patience snapped. “Goddamn it, talk to me! What the hell is going on? And where is Wilhelm? Get him on the phone. I want to talk to him before I let you haul me out of my own home with hardly an explanation.”
“Director Roth has been out of the country since July,” the agent told her, his schooled expression seeming to suggest that he didn’t notice her embarrassment over the fact that a basic security detail could know more about her mate’s whereabouts than she did. He cleared his throat. “We’re attempting to contact the director now to brief him on the attack—”
“Attack,” Claire replied, awkwardness forgotten as her skin went cold and tight. “Good lord. Was someone attacked at the Darkhaven? Has someone been injured?”
The guard stared at her for what seemed like endless minutes before he finally hissed a curse and blurted out the details in a toneless spill of words. “The Darkhaven in Hamburg was breached less than an hour ago. We just received the call from one of the guards who managed to escape. The only guard who escaped,” he amended. “It was a complete annihilation. Everyone present at the mansion tonight is dead.”
“Oh, God,” Claire whispered, leaning back against the closed library doors for support. “I don’t understand … Who could do something like that?”
The guard shook his head. “We don’t have a clear count of how many attackers were involved in the strike, but the surviving agent said the assault was like nothing he’d ever seen before—fire everywhere, as though hell itself had blown down the gates and swept through the place. There’s nothing left but cinders.”
Claire stood there, stricken and voiceless, trying to process everything she was hearing. It was impossible … unbelievable. It just didn’t make sense. God, so much of what had been happening lately made no good sense at all.
So much random violence.
So much senseless death.
So much pain and loss …
“We can’t delay,” the guard was saying now. “We have to get you evacuated before this location comes under attack, as well.”
“You really believe that whoever did this will come out here? Why?”
This time the guard didn’t pause to tell her anything more. His fingers clamped down hard around her arm and he started walking—quickly. The message in his brisk stride was plain enough: Claire could hurry to keep up with him, or he would drag her out of there. Either way, she was leaving the premises and doing so under heavily armed, grim-faced security.
There was no stopping for a coat or her purse. She fled with the guard, out of the house and into the chill of the late October evening. The cold autumn breeze bled through the fibers of her wine cashmere sweater and her gray wool pants as she ran alongside the guard to the paved drive, the soles of her suede loafers scuffing in her effort to keep up with the longer-legged gait of the agent dragging her along by the arm.
Claire was shown to the open back door of a Mercedes that idled in the center of a vanguard of four other vehicles.
“Get in,” the guard instructed her, and gently but urgently guided her inside ahead of him.
As he slid in next to her on the leather seat and closed the door, Claire tried to rub away the bone-deep chill that seemed to emanate from within her body rather than without. Everything was happening so fast. She was still trying to come to grips with the terrible news of the attack on the Darkhaven in Hamburg, let alone register the idea that not a few minutes ago her biggest worry was the proper placement of a garden bench or flower bed. Now the handful of Wilhelm’s relatives and personal guards who’d resided at the Darkhaven were dead and she was being removed from her home in the middle of the night, fleeing from an unknown, unfathomable evil.
Why?
The question wailed in her mind. It was the same thing she’d been asking herself some three months ago, when another Darkhaven had fallen to tragedy—a tragedy that also had left behind only ash and smoke in its wake. But that had been an accident, according to the investigating Enforcement Agents. A freak explosion so fierce and total that it likely killed all of the Darkhaven’s residents instantly.
And still the question haunted her, as painfully as it had when she first heard the awful news …
Why?
“We are in and rolling,” said the guard seated behind the wheel, radioing to the other vehicles. He stepped on the accelerator, and, like a fast-moving snake, the fleet of black sedans began to speed as one down the lengthy, forest-lined driveway.
Claire sat back, trying not to feel the anxiety that hung in the stale air of the car. The woods around them seemed darker than usual, so strangely quiet. Overhead, the thin moonlight was blotted out by the densely needled tops of the towering pines. The vanguard cleared the first bend in the nearly mile-long private drive. They sped up on the straightaway, all of the cars lurching into a higher gear as they gunned it for the main road.
There was no warning of the assault that hit the lead car in that next instant.
From out of the pitch-dark forest came a blinding ball of orange fire. It smashed into the first Mercedes in the line, exploding the car on impact. Claire screamed, feeling the sonic vibration of the blast all the way into the soles of her feet.
“What the fuck is that?” shouted the guard next to her in the backseat. “Jesus Christ, hit the damn brakes!”
Red taillights went bright in front of them, and it was all their driver could do to avoid crashing into the back of the other sedan as it skidded to a stop. Like a toy train suddenly gone off its track, the caravan of vehicles bunched up, their line skewed and broken.
And up ahead, the first car was engulfed in flames that shot high into the black sky.
Just then another fireball launched out of the cover of the forest. It flew in a speeding, comet-bright arc, projecting straight toward the halted cars. Yet another orb of flames came quickly in its wake, both of the airborne threats awesome in their terrible, burning beauty.
The guard seated beside Claire leaned forward, his fingers clawing into the headrest of the seat in front of him. “Back up—fast, damn it!” he yelled at the shell-shocked driver. “Throw this thing into reverse and get us the hell out of here!”
Tires squealing, the Mercedes jerked into a violent backward retreat. As the car spun around on the narrow track of pavement, its bumper crunching into the vehicle behind them in the driver’s panic, Claire watched the guards in the two remaining cars out front throw open their doors and try to make an escape on foot. One of them leapt to safety in the woods.
The other proved only seconds too slow. The first fireball crashed down into the hood of his car, obliterating man and metal both in a sickening roar of twisting, flying debris.
Claire screamed, turning her face away from the carnage just as the second fireball rained down onto the empty car ahead of them on the road. The thundering explosion shook the earth and chewed a deep, smoking crater into the ground.
The guard next to her made the sign of the cross on his chest, then punched the back of the driver’s seat with a nasty curse. “Go, you moron! Hit the fucking gas! Get us out of here!”
Too late.
From out of nowhere—from out of the sky itself, it seemed—came a rolling, fiery sphere of heat. The fireball soared down past the windshield of the vehicle, the glow of it so intense it filled the interior of the Mercedes with blinding white-hot light. Whatever it was, it felt charged with the power of ten suns, as electric as a bolt of lightning, concentrated into an orb the size of a bowling ball. All the hair on Claire’s arms and at the back of her neck rose up as the thing smashed into the ground mere feet from the hood of the car.
Another fireball hit behind them, knocking Claire and her two companions forward in their seats. The driver’s head hit the steering wheel with a sickening crack. The airbag detonated with the impact, setting off the car’s security system. Amid the bleating alarm and the puff of chemical smoke from the deployed airbag, Claire also smelled the trace scent of blood. She wiped her forehead and swallowed hard when her fingers came away stained crimson.
Shit.
It was never a good idea to bleed in front of vampires, even vampires disciplined by Enforcement Agency training and dedicated to the service of her very powerful, very unforgiving mate. Not that she really expected to live long enough tonight to worry about the potential blood thirsts of her guards. It didn’t seem likely that she or any of them would survive these next few moments.
“Run,” growled the one in back with her. He had a gun in each hand. His pupils were contracted to vertical slits in the center of their amber irises as he glared at the door handle beside her. The panel swung open with the force of his Breed mind. “Run as far as you can. It’s your only hope.”
Claire scrambled out and hit the ground in a clumsy stagger. Her legs were weak, shaking. Her head was ringing, her heart hammering in her chest. She heard the guard roar as he got out of the vehicle on the other side and stood to face whatever assault was coming.
Claire drifted toward the tall black shadows of the woods as the chaos continued all around her. A couple of guards raced past her, weapons drawn, as though any of them could stand against the hell that had arrived here tonight. She couldn’t imagine what kind of army had opened up such a brutal offensive strike. Claire shot a terrified look over her shoulder as she made her way to the edge of the forest.
Whoever the attacking forces were, they were coming closer now. The unearthly glow of the forest behind her was growing brighter, marking their progress. Her steps slowed as the orange light reached through the trees like rays of scorching sunshine in the midst of coldest darkness. She stared, transfixed, unable to look away from the approach of what was probably going to be her death.
A silhouette began to take shape.
Not an army, but a single man.
A man whose entire being was alive with flames.
For one instant—one jarring, delusional instant—Claire thought she recognized the broad cut of his shoulders, the fluid swagger of his stride. Impossible, of course. Still, a glimmer of familiarity kindled in the back of her mind. Could she know him somehow?
But this was no man—certainly none that she knew, now or ever. This creature was something out of a nightmare.
He was death incarnate.
The crack of a gun firing jolted Claire’s attention to the gathered group of Enforcement Agents nearby. Another bullet rang out, then another and another, until the air was filled with the sound. For all the good it did.
The man of flame kept walking, unfazed. The bullets popped like firecrackers as they neared him, exploding harmlessly the instant they met the wall of heat that surrounded his body.
When the last shell was finally spent, he paused.
He lifted his hands in front of him, though not in surrender. With little more than a second’s warning, he turned loose a volley of fire on the defending guards. Claire couldn’t bite back her scream of horror as the flames engulfed them, incinerating them on the spot.
She knew the instant the man noticed her. She felt the heat of his eyes pierce her from across the distance, every nerve ending in her body going taut with fear.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, stumbling backward a few paces.
The man of flames took a step in her direction, all of his terrible fury now rooted entirely on her.
Claire bolted, not daring to look back again as she plunged into the woods and ran for all she was worth.
CHAPTER
Three
He walked unfazed through the smoldering ash and ruin on the pavement. His boots crunched over broken glass and wrenched metal, past puddles of spilled, flaming oil and the smoking remains of the Breed males who’d fired on him with their paltry weapons.
Their bullets hadn’t stopped him.
Nothing could, not when he was like this.
The ground sizzled under the heavy soles of his boots—not from annihilated debris, but from the heat that was still running through his limbs, an electrical crackle that traveled every inch of his body in pulsing waves of lethal, pure living energy.
He’d let his fury get out of control tonight; he knew that. He’d understood well enough how important it was to contain the fire inside of him, but his hatred of Wilhelm Roth had made him careless—first in the city, then here. His thirst to complete his vengeance had pushed him over a steep ledge and now he was falling, falling …
Failing, when justice was so near his grasp.
Roth hadn’t been at his Hamburg Darkhaven. Nor had he been among the dead who’d tried to flee these grounds tonight. His vision flooded red with heat, Reichen cast a ruthless eye over the wreckage. He could see no sign of the bastard.
But Roth’s mate was here.
She would know where to find him. And if her lips refused to give him up, her blood would tell soon enough.
Claire.
Her name flickered like a shorting-out circuit in his mind, dimly, darkly, only to be devoured by the rage that owned him. Right now, to him, she wasn’t anyone he’d known, once or ever. She was no one he’d ever held in his arms. No one he’d ever loved.
Right now, like this, his fury knew only that she was the female who belonged to Wilhelm Roth.
And that made her as much Reichen’s enemy as Roth himself.
He stalked toward the edge of the woods where he’d watched the Breedmate run. Vaguely he registered the scent of melting pine pitch and singeing leaves as he passed into the thick stand of trees. Low-hanging branches curled out of his way, bent from his path by the heat rolling off him with each stride.
He knew precisely where the female had fled. He could hear the rapid panting of her breath as he walked deeper into the forest. She was afraid, the scent of her terror a crisp note that the drifting smoke didn’t quite conceal.
Up ahead now, her footsteps went silent. She’d found someplace to hide from him—or so she thought. Reichen’s boots chewed up an unerring path toward her. Bloodred, laser-sharp, his focus locked on a huge ball of crumbling earth and the exposed, twisted dead roots of a fallen tree. Roth’s Breedmate crouched behind it.
Reichen heard the pound of her heartbeat kick even faster as he neared and the current traveling his body began to cook the ancient root ball, steam rising from deep inside the dark clump. It would be just moments before the whole thing ignited. His heat was too strong now and roiling outward in pulsing waves. He wouldn’t be able to stop the coming explosion, even if he tried.
“Come out, female.” His voice sounded rusty and foreign to him. Tasted as dry as ashes in his throat. “You don’t have much time left. Come out of there while you still can.”
She didn’t obey him. Some distant part of him wasn’t exactly surprised by her stubborn resistance—he might even go so far as to say that he’d expected it. But another part of him, the part that was lit up with pyrokinetic fury and deadly short on patience, let loose with a ground-shuddering roar.
The warning, such as it was, proved effective.
He caught a flash of movement—heard the quick rush of footsteps flying over leaf-strewn ground—in the instant before the tree root detonated. Sparks shot out in all directions, sending streamers of orange light high overhead. Reichen saw Roth’s woman bolting deeper into the woods as smoldering debris rained down around the crater that now gouged the earth where she’d been hiding.
On a black curse, he went after her. She was running fast, but he was faster. There was nowhere for her to go. It didn’t take her long to figure that out for herself. Her steps slowed, then stopped altogether. Reichen paused where he stood, some ten paces away from her. Leaves crackled and withered above his head, all around him branches scorching from his heat.
Her hands flexed and fisted at her sides, her feet shifting as she seemed to weigh her chances of escape and quickly dismiss them. “If you’re going to kill me now, then do it.”
Her voice was quiet, but without the slightest falter. The velvet sound of it awakened scattered memories that shot through his mind in a barrage of images: He and this woman, naked in bed together, caught in a tangle of sheets, laughing, kissing. Her deep brown gaze dancing in golden candlelight as he fed her sugared raspberries on a midnight picnic by the lake. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek resting against his bare chest as she confessed that she had fallen in love with him.
Claire…
It took long moments for him to shake loose of that remembered past. He forced himself to think of a more recent one, the one that he could still taste in the bitter tang of the smoke that hung in the forest air. The one that was soaked in the blood of too many innocent lives.
“I haven’t come for your death, Claire Roth.”
She went very still at the mention of her name. Reichen stared at the rigidly held spine ahead of him, the delicate shoulders squared and unshaking, defiant, as his enemy’s mate slowly pivoted to face him. Her large, dark eyes held his gaze across the distance. He saw a note of recognition there, but it was swallowed up by disbelief. She mutely shook her head, staring at him as if he were a ghost or, rather, some kind of monster. He knew he was, especially after tonight, but seeing it in another’s eyes—in her eyes—made the anger in him surge a bit wilder.
“Tell me where he is,” Reichen demanded.
She didn’t seem to hear him. She stared for what seemed like forever, taking him in with that keen, inquisitive gaze. Finally, she gave a slow shake of her head.
“I don’t understand how this can be,” she murmured. She took a step forward, only to back off a second later as blackened leaves and pine needles fell from their branches around him and turned to white ash at his feet. “My God… Andreas. Is this a dream? I mean, I must be dreaming, right? This isn’t real. It can’t be …”
The words came haltingly, sounding weak, choked in her throat. Despite the intense heat pouring off him, she lifted her hand as if she meant to reach out for him. “I thought you were dead, Andreas. All these three months since the fire destroyed your Darkhaven… I believed that you were dead.”
Reichen snarled at the threat of her touch. On a startled gasp, Claire snatched her arm back. She rubbed the fingers that would have incinerated on contact with him, no doubt feeling some measure of that truth on her unprotected skin.
Her confusion was clear. As was her horror. “Good lord, what’s happened to you?”
Of course she wouldn’t know. He had been different when she knew him. Christ, everything had been different then. The heat that lived in him now had been cold and dormant, lurking deep beneath even his own awareness—until the hellish power of it had been beaten and tortured out of him for the first time some thirty years ago.
It had taken all he had and all that he was to snuff the accursed power and hold it down inside him. It had been so long since the heat had risen in him, he’d actually been fool enough to believe he’d driven the heat back for good. But it was still there, banked but smoldering. Waiting for the slightest chance to ignite while he strove to deny its very existence.
He had lived a lie for the past three decades, only to have it erupt in his face.
Now he would never be the same. Now Wilhelm Roth’s treachery had reawakened that monstrous side of him. Now grief and anger had invited the terrible ability back into his life, and the fires were always burning inside him.
They were beginning to rule him.
To destroy him.
And because of the ruthless actions of her mate, Claire was seeing that hideous truth with her own eyes.
No, he would never be the same again.
And he would not rest until he had his vengeance.
Through the flames, Claire’s eyes searched his, part in worry, part in pity. “I don’t understand what’s going on, Andre. Why are you like this? Tell me what’s happened to you.”
He hated the concern in her voice. He didn’t want to hear it, not from Roth’s mate.
“Please, talk to me, Andre.”
Andre. Only she had called him that. After her, he’d not permitted anyone to become that familiar—that intimate—with him. After her, there had been many things he’d not dared permit, of himself or others.
The sound of his name on her lips now was a pain he hadn’t anticipated. Reichen bared his teeth and fangs in a sneer meant to cower her, but she wouldn’t relent with her demand for answers.
“Who, Andre … who has done this to you?” He let the fire of his rage wash over him, his voice as rough as gravel in his throat. “The bastard who sent his death squad into my home to slaughter my kin in cold blood. Wilhelm Roth.”
“Impossible,” Claire heard herself say, although whether she meant the awful charge against Wilhelm or the fact that Andreas Reichen was very much alive—alive and unfathomably lethal—not even she was certain. “You need help, Andre. Whatever has happened to you to make you like this … no matter what you’ve done tonight… you need help.”
He scoffed, dark and dangerous. It was an animalistic sound, matched by the feral look in his eyes. His rage was obvious, a force so immense his body didn’t seem able to contain it. Claire’s gaze swept over him, over the pulsing currents of heat that ringed his limbs and torso and distorted his facial features to something monstrous and inhuman.
God in heaven.
This hellish heat was his rage.
“Oh, Andre,” she whispered, her heart tightening despite the confusion of emotions tumbling through her. “I know how you must be hurting. I hurt for you, too, when I learned what happened at your Darkhaven.”
“Fifteen lives,” he snarled. “All dead. Even the children.”
Pained to think of it, Claire closed her eyes. “I know, Andre. I heard, of course. Everyone in the region was stricken when the news of it reached us from Berlin. It was an awful, unimaginable tragedy—”
“It was a fucking bloodbath,” he barked, the sharp, raw scrape of his voice cutting her off. “Fifteen innocent lives wiped out at Wilhelm Roth’s command. All of them murdered, shot like dogs on his orders.”
“No, Andre.” Claire shook her head, confused. Appalled that he could think such a thing. “There was an explosion. The Enforcement Agency investigators concluded there had been a rupture in the estate’s gas main. They ruled it an accident, Andreas. I don’t know where you got the idea that Wilhelm—”
“Enough,” he growled. “You can’t protect your mate with lies. Nothing can protect him from the justice he deserves. I will avenge them.”
Claire swallowed hard. She wasn’t so naive that she believed Wilhelm Roth’s honor to be without a blemish or three. He was a cold male, distant but not cruel. He was a ruthless politician who’d never made a secret of his driving ambitions. But a murderer? Someone who could be capable of the kind of death Andreas accused him of? No, she couldn’t reconcile that.
As difficult as it was to consider, Claire wondered if it was Andreas, not Wilhelm, who was the true monster here. She need only look past his broad shoulders to see the smoke and fire still rising from the carnage he’d left on the road. And there was yet more death and destruction in Hamburg, at the Darkhaven where Wilhelm Roth and his smattering of kin and staff had lived.
Death and destruction not so unlike the kind that had visited Andreas’s own Darkhaven three months ago. The fire in Berlin had been immense. The annihilation had been merciless, complete. Nothing had been left of the mansion or its inhabitants when the smoke had finally cleared. The flames had consumed them all.
Oh, God…
Claire stared at Andreas, a sickness swelling to ugly life in her heart as the heat rolling off his body warped the air around him. Maybe there was an explanation for what had happened at his Darkhaven. Maybe he had snapped somehow. Had something occurred to send him over the edge, to bring out this terrifying side of him?
“Andre, listen to me.” She took a step closer to him, her hands held out before her in a gesture of peace, of calm. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I want to help you if I can.”
He growled a nasty curse. The heat coursing over him seemed to intensify, putting a sharp electrical tang in the air.
Claire went on, hoping she might be able to break through whatever madness it was that gripped him. “Talk to me, please. Tell me how to help you and let’s sort this out together. I’m willing if you are.”
Although she’d forced a fearlessness into her voice, she couldn’t help jumping a little as a crackle of illumination—as intense as white-hot lightning—began to arc off his body. He grunted through his teeth and fangs. His already thinned pupils narrowed to the barest vertical slits of black in the center of his fiery amber eyes. He was Breed, a predator by nature, but the vampire in him had never scared Claire. It was this other side of him—the side she’d never known he had, let alone seen firsthand—that made her blood run cold in her veins.
Uncertain now, horrified by all that had occurred tonight and wary of this stranger she no longer knew, Claire took another step toward him. “Please, you must know that you can trust me. Will you let me help you, Andre?”
“Goddamn it, stop calling me that!”
At his bellow, a tree to the immediate right of her burst into flames. Claire threw a nervous glance at the fire suddenly climbing the trunk of the tall pine. Heat blasted toward her from the instant conflagration, hitting her face as though she were caught in a furnace.
Had he intended that as a warning, or a threat?
Was he able to control this part of him at all?
She wasn’t certain he could. Claire inched away from the flames, keeping her eyes on Andreas, who followed her with a narrowed, searing gaze. She searched those eyes for reason—for some small thread of sanity—but all she saw staring back at her was rage. And pain. Dear God, so much pain in those eyes now.
“Tell me where he is, Claire.”
She gave a weak shake of her head. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
She shook her head again as her feet carried her a few more paces away from this creature who had once been her friend… her lover. At one time, she had thought Andreas Reichen to be her everything. Now she was certain she was looking at her death. Hers and Wilhelm’s both. “I haven’t seen Wilhelm in quite a while. He doesn’t inform me of his business or his travels. But he’s not here, and I don’t know where he is. It’s the truth, Andre.”
Another roar flew out of him as his name slipped past her lips. Nearby, another tree went up in flames like a Roman candle. Then another, and another. Heat exploded on either side of her, fire rolling high into the night sky. Claire couldn’t hold back her scream. Nor could she curb the survival instinct that kicked her legs into motion as the forest around her began to burn.
She ran in the only direction she could, away from Andreas. Her sense of bearings was lost in the chaos of her terror, not that she actually expected she would escape. She ran, waiting to feel the scorch of hellish fire on her skin, certain that Andreas’s fury would not permit her to live.
But still she ran.
She was breathless by the time she reached the edge of the woods. Breathless and shaking, her feet stumbling over the grass and rough ground. She lifted her head and nearly burst into relieved tears to see the manor house looming up ahead of her. Behind her was darkness and the glow of flames in the distance. A jolt of adrenaline surged into her bloodstream, and Claire raced across the open lawn to the front door of the fortresslike estate.
The place was unlocked, left open in the guards’ haste to evacuate earlier. Claire flew inside and slammed the door behind her, throwing all of the bolts and locks home. She ran for high ground, grabbing a cordless phone along the way and fleeing up the stairs to the third floor, praying that the sanctuary she’d just found wouldn’t turn out to be her tomb. She was halfway through dialing Wilhelm’s secretary before she realized the phone had no dial tone. It was dead, nothing but endless broken static on the line.
“Damn it!”
Claire threw the phone down as she drifted to the large, shuttered windows on the far wall. She had some inkling of what she’d see on the other side of the glass, but it still robbed her of breath when she opened the shutters and peered out over the estate’s expansive grounds.
Black smoke plumed from the long drive and from within the forest. Orange fire twisted up over the treetops, licking at the starlit sky. And in the center of the woods, a brighter light glowed—throbbing white heat, blindingly intense.
Andreas. He was the source of all that eerie light.
Would he come for her now? If he did, she had nowhere left to run.
But the light from his body didn’t move. Neither did Claire. Her feet stayed rooted to the floor near the window as she watched that unearthly pulse, unable to look away.
She watched, until hours passed and the fires on the road and in the forest began to die down.
She watched… as night crept steadily toward dawn and the glow of Andreas’s fury continued to burn.
CHAPTER
Four
She didn’t know what woke her.
With a start, Claire lifted her head from where her brow had been pressed against the cool glass of the window. She didn’t know how long she’d dozed—long enough that the faint pink blush of dawn had marched all the way over the horizon, bringing with it a drizzle-laden shroud of fog that blanketed the forest and the ground below.
Oh, God… morning.
Daylight growing brighter by the minute.
And no sign of Andreas’s light anywhere.
Claire’s breath misted the glass as she peered down from the window at the lifeless stretch of grass, pavement, and pines outside. Had he left while she’d slept? Was he gone now?
Was he dead?
After what she’d witnessed him do last night, she wasn’t sure why the thought should put such a knot of dread in her breast. But before Claire could tell herself that she should be damned grateful just to have survived the night herself, she was already on the stairs, descending swiftly through the heart of the manor house. She freed the locks on the front door and eased it open, pulling one of the guards’ coats off a stand in the foyer and wrapping it around her shoulders to ward off the wet chill as she stepped outside.
The striking quiet hit her first. No sound at all other than the intermittent patter of a light rain. It was so peaceful and still, she might have been tempted to think last night had just been a horrible dream. But then the pungent stink of extinguished fires carried across the grounds.
It had all been real, worse than the stuff of nightmares. Her nose burned with the acrid reminder of the violence she’d witnessed.
Claire drifted across the grass, bypassing the long drive to avoid the carnage of her vanguard. She didn’t want to see what the fires had done to the Breed males who’d been killed last night, nor did she want to know how quickly the rising sun would consume whatever might remain of them. It was that thought—the understanding of what prolonged ultraviolet exposure did to the hypersensitive skin of the Breed—that pushed Claire deeper into the forest.
Toward the place where she’d last known Andreas to be.
It was difficult to tell where the fog ended and the trailing smoke from burnt trees and scorched ground began. Everything seemed cloaked in heavy gray mist. Her skin dampening with each step she took, Claire watched her feet move through the low-lying fog, following a blackened trail that led some long distance into the woods. The quiet reached out to her as she moved past singed bramble that clawed at her like skeletal fingers of the dead. The stench of old smoke and burnt vegetation grew stronger here, catching in the back of her throat.
And yet another sharp odor—not that of cold, extinguished flames, or even the electrical tang that had been rolling off Andreas’s body last night. But there was something else in the air. Fresh, rising heat. The sickly sweet olfactory assault of burning flesh.
Oh, no.
She took a few anxious steps, faltering a bit as the earth dropped sharply, about a foot below her. The hole where the old tree root had been, she dimly registered. The hole that became a crater when Andreas blew her hiding place to bits in his rage.
It was at this spot in the woods that he’d lingered last night. He hadn’t followed her at all. And he hadn’t left before the sun began to rise.
He was still here.
Claire cautiously approached the large, dark shape huddled ahead of her on the fog-threaded ground. He wasn’t moving, hardly breathing. The fire that had been burning around him and within him was gone now. His clothes were scorched and torn. His skin sizzled under the hazy rays of the sun, already forming blisters everywhere that he was exposed.
He didn’t look so dangerous like this. He wasn’t the monster she’d met out here in the dark; he was just a man now. A man made deathly vulnerable by the part of him that was something more than human.
Like this, it wasn’t difficult at all to remember that she had once loved him like no other. It surprised her how easily the pain of their abrupt parting came back to her, as well.
Those days were long past, but no matter what she felt for him then or now, she could not let him suffer. She would not abandon him to the sun, no matter what he’d done or what he’d become in the long time since they had been together.
“Andre,” Claire whispered, her voice breaking the closer she got to him and saw the severity of his burns. “Oh, God, Andreas …can you hear me?”
He groaned something inaudible, but unpleasant. When she crouched down and put her hand out to touch his shoulder, he bared his fangs and snarled like an animal caught in a trap.
“You have to get up.” Claire took off the oversize trench coat and held it up for him to see. “I’m going to cover you with this to shield you from the sun. But you can’t stay out here or you’re going to die. You have to get up and come with me. Will you do that?”
He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t lash out at her when she gently placed the coat over his exposed skin.
“Can you stand up?”
He glared, his lip still curled back off his teeth. Something was very wrong with him, despite the fact that he was no longer livid with fire. His elliptical pupils hadn’t dilated back to normal yet, and his irises were still bright amber instead of the absorbing hazel color she knew them to be.
All of the Breed transformed in this manner when they hungered or in times of elevated emotional responses, but this seemed different somehow. More severe. Claire couldn’t see many of his dermaglyphs—the intricate skin markings present on every member of the Breed—but the ones that were visible on his arms and through the torn patches of his clothing didn’t look right. Their colors were pulsing rapidly changing and mutating, as though some part of him were short-circuiting from the inside.
“Stand up,” she said, more forcefully this time. “I need you to walk, Andreas.”
To her surprise, he began to obey her. Slowly he dragged himself up off the ground. Claire offered him her hand when his knees buckled at first, but then he was on his feet, towering over her even though his spine was bent and his head was dropped low on his chest. Claire tugged the collar of the trench coat up over the back of his neck and skull to protect his head from any more UV damage.
“This way,” she told him. “You can hold on to me if you need to.”
She noticed he didn’t even try to take her up on that. With a pained grunt, he lurched into motion beside her. They progressed at a snail’s pace, trudging in silence out of the woods and back across the lawn to the manor house. By the time they reached the front entrance, Andreas’s feet were dragging beneath him like lead weights.
Claire tried to assist him up the few steps to the door, but he brushed her off as though her touch would burn him even worse than the sun’s rays beating down through the dissipating haze. Instead she went ahead and opened the door, holding it for him as he climbed the steps and all but collapsed in the foyer. He went down on one knee, then staggered back up with a groan.
“Goddamn it,” he snarled, his breath sawing between his parched lips. He looked up at her, his face sweat-soaked and raw with UV burns. “Where to now?”
Claire pointed to the other end of the foyer. “You might be most comfortable downstairs in the cellar. Wilhelm had a private room installed down there when the house was originally built, but it’s never used …”
He started moving even before she finished speaking. Claire followed him, sticking close in case he had trouble on the old stone staircase that led beneath the main floor. She heard his relieved sigh as the cool darkness enveloped him. He didn’t need artificial light to see, but Claire’s eyes took longer to adjust to the pitch-black surroundings. She flicked the switch and watched as Andreas staggered off the last step and sank down onto the cold stone floor.
He didn’t move to Wilhelm’s plush personal suite, just peeled off the trench coat and flung it aside, then let himself crumple in a broken sprawl. Claire said nothing as she eased down to sit on the third step from the bottom. She watched him in silence for a while, unsure what to make of him.
“Why did you do it?” His rough voice scraped out of the shadows, but his gaze was fierce with unearthly amber light. “Why did you help me?”
Claire found it hard to hold that hot, scathing look. “Because you needed help.”
He scoffed, a coarse, mocking sound. “You were never stupid, Claire. Bad time to start.”
The slam stung, but she only shrugged. “And you were never someone who would think nothing of killing dozens of people in the space of a few hours.”
He blinked, those amber irises shuttered for a long while. Did he know what he had done last night? Had any of it registered with him when he was in that state?
He blew out a low curse, then turned his face away from her.
“Andre,” Claire murmured softly. “Whatever is wrong with you, I’m sure there are people who can help. But you don’t have to think about any of that right now. All you need to do is rest, let yourself heal. You’re safe here.”
“Nobody’s safe now,” he muttered under his breath. He rolled back to face her, pinning her with the twin lasers of his transformed eyes. “Especially not you, Claire.”
She stared at him for some long moments, unsure how to respond. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t afraid. Even battered by UV light, he was still very dangerous. Still a lethal predator, armed with a terrible power she’d had no idea he possessed.
It staggered her that she could have believed she’d known him so well in the four months they’d been inseparable, yet she had been oblivious to the side of him she saw last night. Then again, she’d also thought he loved her, only to be blindsided when he simply vanished from her life without a word of explanation.
Now he was back—finally, after three decades, she was looking at him once more—though nothing like she’d imagined it might be to reunite with him. Now she didn’t know who he was anymore…or what he was.
“Get some rest,” she finally managed to say.
Claire stood up and began the climb back up from the cellar, well aware that Andreas’s eyes followed her the whole time. She flicked the light switch, plunging the place back into darkness before she closed the cellar door and leaned her spine against it.
Her hands were trembling, her heart banging around in her rib cage.
Dear God. She hoped she hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.
One thing she knew for certain was that she had to find Wilhelm, and find him fast.
Wilhelm Roth was getting a blow job behind the wheel of a Jaguar XKR coupe doing 120 mph on an open stretch of highway when he noticed that his Breedmate had walked into the dream unannounced. She came up out of the median and paused on the side of the moonlit stretch of road about a quarter mile ahead of him.
For a second, Roth kept his foot heavy on the accelerator, thinking he would just fly past her like she wasn’t there—give her a reminder of how he detested her unique talent and had long ago forbade her to use it on him. But as the Jag roared up the fast lane and Claire’s face came into the light of his high beams, he realized she was upset about something. Visibly stricken. Not at all typical of the otherwise calm, cool, and collected female.
She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the headlights, and Roth took the opportunity to vanish his dreamtime plaything. The naked blonde he’d conjured from the cheap porno film that was running as he’d dozed off disappeared with just a thought; the fierce erection he was sporting from the fly of his unzipped Armani trousers wouldn’t go away quite that easily. Not that Claire would question him about it if she noticed. She’d learned her place years ago, and after all, it wasn’t as if he could be held accountable for where his mind went when he was sleeping.
Precisely the reason he’d given her for barring her from dreamwalking around him.
That and the fact that it simply pissed him off to have his privacy invaded in any form.
Annoyed, Roth tucked himself back into his pants as he brought the car to a smooth halt right in front of his anxious Breedmate. She didn’t wait for him to address her, didn’t apologize for the interruption.
“Wilhelm, something terrible has happened.” She gripped the edge of the driver’s side door, her dark eyes intense with worry. “There’s been an attack at the country house.”
Roth felt his jaw go tense with anger more than surprise. “An attack? When?”
“Last night. A few hours ago.”
And he was just hearing about this now? Through her, and not his guards?
Roth scowled. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was awful,” she said, closing her eyes as though the memory pained her. “There were fires everywhere … explosions in the woods near the house and on the road. So much smoke and ash. We tried to leave, but we were too late.”
His anger spiked. “Where are you now?”
“At home… well, at my home. I’m still at the country house.”
“All right.” Roth nodded vaguely. “What about the men on watch there? Why is it they’ve left you to tell me all of this when they’re the ones who owe me the explanation?”
“They’re dead, Wilhelm.” Her voice faltered, dropping to a whisper. “Everyone else who was here tonight is dead.”
Roth bit off a ripe curse. “Very well. Stay put. I’ll contact the Hamburg Darkhaven and arrange for an envoy to pick you up and bring you back into the city.”
Claire was shaking her head before he had a chance to complete the thought. “Wilhelm… haven’t you heard? The Hamburg Darkhaven. It’s gone.”
“What?”
“The Darkhaven came under attack first. There’s nothing left of it. No survivors, other than one Enforcement Agent who escaped the fires to warn us that we were likely in danger, as well.”
Roth absorbed this news in grim silence. He didn’t have a lot of kin—no sons of his own to want to oust him from power, no brothers of any generation who’d managed to live as long as he had. The Darkhaven community he shepherded in Hamburg consisted only of a few nephews, who’d never been good for much; various household staff; plus a small garrison of guards on loan from the Agency. He hardly knew any of them, in truth, and frankly, he had more important things to consider than wasting any time mourning the loss.
“I’m sorry, Wilhelm,” Claire was saying now, sentiment he dismissed with a curt wave of his hand.
He supposed he had to know something like this was going to happen. He did know, in fact. He’d known from the moment he’d been informed of the first Enforcement Agency death at the Berlin office several weeks past—the up-close-and-personal killing of an agent who reported directly to him on covert, often unofficial, operations. When the second violent murder within his private contingent occurred, then the third and fourth, it left little question that someone was out for blood.
The only trouble with that theory being the fact that the someone in question was dead. At least that had been the report coming out of the Agency. At the time, Roth hadn’t had the opportunity or the inclination to doubt the intel; more important business had already called him away to Montreal. That business was still his chief priority, but this assault on his personal holdings could not go unmet.
“I will take care of the matter,” he told Claire. “And you needn’t worry, I’ll call in a few favors to find you temporary shelter in the region until I am able to return.”
“Where exactly are you, Wilhelm? One of your guards told me you’re not in Germany.” She looked around at the dream landscape, her gaze clearly taking note of the jags of steep granite that flanked some of the stretch of rural highway his mind had manufactured. “Are you in New England?”
Too clever, his Yankee-born Breedmate. And far too inquisitive now for her own good. Roth neither confirmed nor denied his whereabouts. “Stay put, Claire. You’ll be fine.”
“Wilhelm,” she said slowly. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious about who attacked us last night? I would think you’d want to know who’s responsible … and why.”
Roth stared at her.
“Andreas Reichen,” she said, watching him much too closely for his reaction.
He was careful to give her nothing, not so much as a blink of his eyes or a kick of his pulse. He frowned after a moment, feigning confusion. “You speak of a ghost, Claire. Andreas Reichen perished with the rest of his kin this past summer when his Darkhaven burned to the ground.”
In fact, Roth thought with private disappointment, the arrogant son of a bitch should have been dead long before then.
Claire shook her head. “He’s alive. He’s… changed, Wilhelm. He has a terrible rage inside him—a power I can barely comprehend. The fires and explosions here and in Hamburg? He made them. They came out of him. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Roth listened, both incredulous and concerned.
“Wilhelm, he says he intends to kill you.”
He scoffed. “The bastard will never get close enough to try.”
“He’s here, Wilhelm.” Claire’s gaze was imploring. “He is here, in the house with me, passed out in the cellar. I don’t know what to do.”
Roth’s furious curse was punctuated by an electronic bleating that pierced the fabric of his dream. His surroundings warped and vibrated. The ribbon of dark pavement and the perfect starlit sky above trembled, the vision of Claire starting to fade out with the sound waves that were rousing him from sleep.
“My mobile is ringing,” he said, ready to be done with her anyway. As he spoke, the Jaguar he’d been sitting in vaporized, leaving him standing on the strip of moonlit pavement beside her. “I have to take this call now—”
Claire’s filmy image reached for him. “What about Andreas?”
He ground his molars together at the apparent easy familiarity she still seemed to feel toward the other male, even after decades of separation. “Keep the son of a bitch contained at the house while I make arrangements to deal with him.”
“You want me to stay here with him?” She stared, uncertain. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes. I’ll send another Agency detail to remove him at sunset.”
“Remove him into Agency custody, you mean? You won’t let your men hurt him, will you?”
Her apparent concern was thoroughly pissing him off. “My men are professionals, Claire. They know how to handle a situation like this. You needn’t worry about the details.”
The jangle of his ringing phone came again, pulling him further away from her, back to consciousness.
“What about me, Wilhelm?” Claire murmured. “How am I supposed to keep Andreas here until your men arrive?”
“Do whatever you must,” Roth replied flatly. “You know him better than most, after all. Intimately, if memory serves. I’m sure you’ll think of some way to detain him.”
He didn’t wait for her to say anything more. The phone rang again and Roth’s eyes snapped open, severing his thready connection to Claire.
He grabbed the mobile from the table next to his bed. “Yes.”
“Herr Roth,” said a nervous Breed male on the other end of the line. “This is Agent Krieger from the Berlin office, sir. There’s been a murder here last night—Agent Waldemar’s body was just discovered in his residence. His neck was broken. And… there’s more, sir. It seems there was an incident at your Darkhaven in Hamburg, as well.”
Roth scoffed, full of sarcasm. “You don’t say.”
“Sir?”
“Assemble a combat team and send them to my country house as soon as the sun sets. The unit on-site has been attacked and eliminated. Now my Breedmate is there without any cover. She’s alone, and she’s holding Andreas Reichen for you.”
“Reichen?” asked the agent. “I don’t understand, sir. Wasn’t he killed in that freak accident at his Darkhaven some time ago?”
Roth’s fingers tightened on the thin case of the mobile phone. “Apparently the bastard is very much alive … for the moment. Instruct the team that I want him taken out on sight. Make him dead, agent.”
“Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER
Five
Reichen stood over her in silence, his hands braced on the arms of a moss green wingback chair in one of the estate’s receiving rooms, where Claire had fallen asleep. For a moment, when he’d first come to alone in the pitch-dark cellar, he hadn’t the first clue where he was or how he’d gotten there. Nor could he immediately recall why it was that most of his body was recovering from UV burns. It was like that for him sometimes, after the pyrokinetic energy faded. Hard to remember details. Hard to make sense of his surroundings.
Hard to know anything except the fierce blood thirst that overtook him once his inner fire had a chance to cool.
He had been disoriented when he first regained consciousness in the cellar, but then he’d breathed in the softest trace scent of vanilla and warm spices.
Claire.
Her blood scent had drawn him out of the dark and up the flight of stone steps, into the room where she dozed now. He breathed her in as he loomed over her, tempted to close his eyes and savor the memory of what had been, but instead he barely blinked. He watched the quick, darting movement of her eyes beneath her closed lids.
She was dreaming.
Reichen wondered how long she’d been sleeping, or where her dreams had carried her that her pulse would be beating as rapidly as a skittish hare’s. His thirsting gaze drifted down from the delicate beauty of her face to the smooth golden brown skin of her throat. Ticking frantically at the right side of her neck, her artery beat beside a small scarlet-colored birthmark. Reichen’s fangs were already filling his mouth, but now they throbbed, his eyes rooted on that tender patch of flesh with its diminutive teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol riding so close to Claire’s pulse.
Jesus, he was parched.
His belly was tight and empty, his limbs heavy and fatigued. He licked his lips, hardly able to keep himself from leaning in a bit closer, until the light beat of her pulse was banging in his own veins as loud and demanding as a drum.
God, he thirsted… so deeply that the need was primal, animal, urging him to sweep in and take his fill like the predator he truly was.
That it was Claire beneath him was the only thing that made him pause. How long had he wondered what she would taste like? How many times had he come this close—hell, even closer than this—to pressing his fangs into her buttery soft skin and drinking from her vein? He’d wanted that more than anything at one time. But it was the one thing he’d never done, not even in their most fevered moments together.
As much as he’d hungered to taste her, to bond her to him through blood, he had never taken his need for Claire that far. She was a Breedmate. Unlike the larger percentage of Homo sapiens females walking the planet, she was one of a small number bearing unusual blood and DNA properties.
Claire and those like her, born with the crimson stamp somewhere on their bodies, were also uniquely gifted with extraordinary psychic abilities. And, unlike other human women, they had the ability to form an unbreakable bond with members of the Breed and bear their young. When a Breedmate offered her blood to one of Reichen’s kind, it was a precious gift—the most sacred of all. It forged a bond that could be severed only by death.
Reichen couldn’t lie to himself and pretend that he’d never been tempted. But he’d hardly been the kind to settle down, especially then. For all his libertine ways, and as laughable as it seemed to him now, his honor had prevented him from taking something from Claire that could never be called back. One sip of her blood meant she would live in him for as long as he drew breath. He would be bound to her always, drawn to her always, regardless of any vow she’d made to another male.
Even through the smoke and fog of his recovering mind, he could still recall how hard it had been to exercise control where his hunger for Claire was concerned. But he’d been careful. As hard as it was, he’d been a pillar of restraint, right to the end.
If he’d known then that she was going to waste so little time giving herself to Wilhelm Roth…?
Reichen growled just thinking on it.
His fury wasn’t so cooled that he didn’t entertain the idea of slaking his thirst on her right there and then. He leaned in, unable to tear his hungering eyes away from the rhythmic beat of her pulse. Her scent beckoned him as much as the rush of her blood beneath her skin.
She was even more beautiful than he remembered. This close, she robbed him of breath. Made him ache to touch her.
Jesus Christ, she made him burn far worse than sunlight or fury.
It stunned him to realize that he wanted her still, after all this time. After all her mate had done to destroy him. He wanted Claire for his own… still.
Reichen drew in a rough breath of air, his lips peeling back off his fangs. He wanted her, and, by God, he would take her.
“No,” he growled to himself. “Damn it, no.”
Claire’s eyes snapped open and went wide. She gasped, drawing back as far as she could get from him with the chair blocking her escape. Her dark brown eyes searched his face, too intelligent to misunderstand what had nearly happened.
Reichen mentally yanked himself to heel, despite the hunger that was still making his gums throb with the urge to feed. “Pleasant dreams, Frau Roth?”
“Not at all,” she answered, staring hard at him. “After what happened here last night, I’m sure I’ll be having nightmares for a long time to come.”
A pang of shame jabbed him, but he ignored it. He had to keep his eye on the ball. “You didn’t happen to pay a dreamtime visit to your mate just now, did you?”
Claire didn’t so much as blink. He could see the recollection in her steady gaze, the realization that although many years had passed since they last saw each other, Reichen had not forgotten her special psychic ability. Her cheeks darkened a bit, and he wondered if she was thinking of all the times she had dreamwalked into some of his most erotic REM fantasies during those intense, passionate few months in which they’d fallen in love.
He had not forgotten a single moment they’d shared, awake or joined in dreams, and he had damn sure tried.
“Wilhelm doesn’t like it when I intrude on his dreams,” she murmured.
“That’s not really a denial,” Reichen replied. He kept his hands braced on the arms of the chair, trapping her there while he continued his interrogation. “Where is he, Claire?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“But you do have some idea,” he said, trying not to be distracted by his hunger or his sudden, growing awareness of just how close their bodies were to each other. He could feel her heat mingling with his own, making his healing, irradiated skin feel as though it were being touched by flame. “Make no mistake, I will find him. The others weren’t able to run, nor will he.”
She looked wary, repelled. “What… others?”
“His faithful hounds, the ones who carried out his orders with no regard for innocent lives. I’ve put them all down, one by one. Not him, not yet. I’ve saved him for last because I wanted him to know that I was coming. I wanted him to understand that he was going to have to pay for what he did.”
Claire swallowed, gave a small shake of her head. “What you said last night—that Wilhelm is responsible for what happened to your Darkhaven… you are mistaken, Andreas. You have to be mistaken.”
“What I said is the truth.”
“It can’t be—”
“Why not?” he snapped. “Because that will mean you’re mated not only to a known thug but a cold-blooded murderer, as well?”
Her slender dark brows came together in an expression somewhere between pity and contempt. “This coming from someone whose own hands are stained with more than a dozen lives?”
Reichen reeled back, bristling at the reminder. He took a few steps away from her, then pivoted to begin a tense pace out of the room. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t damn well care. He knew he couldn’t leave the house while it was daylight outside, and right now it felt like a cage.
Claire drifted out behind him, her footsteps all but silent on the polished marble floor of the hall. “Andreas, I know you must be terribly hurt and confused after everything you’ve been through. We can try to sort all of this out later. Right now you need some peace and quiet while your body is healing from the UV burns. You need rest—”
“What I need right now is blood,” he snarled, swiveling a hard, amber-eyed look on her. “Since you’re so reluctant to surrender Roth to me, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me take my fill of you either.”
She blanched, appalled, just as he wanted her to be.
Reichen continued his impatient prowl of the hallway, noting the assorted photographs and framed art on the walls. With his anger stoked, he looked for images of Claire and Roth, the adoring couple, eager for more kindling for the fury that still burned in his gut. There were only a handful of photos of them together, often among a group of Darkhaven or Enforcement Agency members, or in front of ribbon-cutting ceremonies taking place at various evening events. Claire’s smile was perfect in each one: pleasant without being overly excited, polite without being overly cool.
Reichen didn’t know that smile. It seemed as polished and brittle as the glass that overlaid it.
“Where does Roth conduct his business here?” he asked her, turning away from frozen, perfect Claire to look at the woman who stood behind him now, well out of arm’s reach. “If he has computers here, or any type of files, I want to see them.”
“You won’t find anything like that here,” she said, simply stated fact. “Wilhelm does all of his personal business from the Hamburg Darkhaven and an office he keeps in the city… as far as I know. We’ve never discussed his business affairs.”
Reichen grunted, unsurprised. He was already moving past another room off the hallway, glancing in at the casually sophisticated furnishings of a living room, then passing by an intimate ballroom that seemed a cavern of mirrored walls, polished parquet flooring, and a creamy, elegantly carved ceiling. In back was an ebony grand piano, its multiple reflections gleaming in all the surrounding polished glass.
“Good to see some things haven’t changed,” he muttered. Claire glanced into the ballroom but looked confused. “The piano,” he said. “You have a gift for music, as I recall.”
Her frown faltered slightly as she stared at him. “Oh, I don’t… I haven’t played in a long time. I suppose I got busy with other, more important things. Music isn’t really a part of my life anymore.”
“No, I guess not,” he said, aware of how caustic it sounded. “Is there anything left of you that I would remember, Claire?”
A long silence spread between them. Reichen expected her to walk away, or maybe run away, out the front door and into the daylight where he couldn’t follow. But she stood her ground, pierced him with her deep brown eyes. Tenacious as ever. “How dare you. I didn’t ask you to storm into my life and tear it apart, but here you are. I don’t have to explain anything to you, or justify where life has taken me.”
No, she didn’t, and he knew he was being unfair here. Having those answers wasn’t going to bring him any closer to Wilhelm Roth, either. Not that any of those arguments meant a damn thing when Claire was just an arm’s length away from him and seething with an anger he’d seldom seen in her but rightly deserved.
“We both moved on, didn’t we, Andre?”
“You certainly did.”
“What did you expect me to do? You were the one who left, remember?”
He thought about the abrupt way he’d left things with her: unfinished, unexplained. He thought about his reasons, ironically none of which mattered anymore. Certainly not after what had happened last night. “I couldn’t stay.”
“You couldn’t even tell me why? One day we were together and the next you were gone without a word.”
“I had things to work out,” he said.
God, he hated that he was still able to feel the punch of uncontainable fear—of shock and overwhelming self-revulsion—that had forced him to run away from everything and everyone he knew and loved. After what happened to him the last time he saw Claire, he’d had no choice but to leave her. He hadn’t wanted to harm her, and he couldn’t trust himself to be near her, or near anyone, until he’d managed to control the horrific power that had been awakened in him for the first time all those years ago. By that time, he had already lost her to Roth.
He gave her a negligent shrug. “I did come back, Claire.”
“More than a year later,” she replied curtly “Or so I heard, after friends in the Darkhavens told me you had finally turned up, back in Berlin again.” She shook her head, regret shining in her gaze. “I didn’t think you would ever come back.”
“So you didn’t wait.”
“Did you give me any reason to?”
“No,” he said, letting the word slide slowly off his tongue.
There was more he wanted to say, things he probably owed her to say, but it was all pointless talk now. Claire was right. They’d both moved on. They’d both lived very separate lives, and despite the fact that those lives were converging now, in violence and bloodshed, nothing he could say would change a thing about the past or what might have been. He was here for one reason: to avenge the wrong that Wilhelm Roth had delivered on him.
Reichen started walking again.
Claire trailed him, hanging back now as though she didn’t want to get too close. “What are you doing?”
“I told you. Looking for any intel on your mate’s whereabouts.”
“And I told you—you won’t find anything of his here. This is my home, not his.”
Reichen heard the peculiar comment but he was already moving on. He saw a room filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and headed for that open door.
“Andreas,” Claire said from behind him. “Please, stop this. The library is my space. It’s private. You won’t find anything important in—”
“Then you won’t mind if I have a look,” he said, more intent than ever since she was practically insisting that he stay out.
What was she hiding in there? He strode past towering shelf after shelf packed with books, past the small sofa and the end table where a ginger-jar lamp still glowed from the night before. Farther into the room, he saw a dark walnut desk in a mild state of disarray, as if the work had been abandoned in haste.
And beyond the desk, spread out on a wide worktable, was some kind of architect’s scale model. Reichen guessed it to be some kind of Darkhaven project—something that would probably result in another photograph of Claire and her perfect smile, posing as the perfect mate next to Roth and a number of his cronies. But as he neared the model, the hairs at the back of his neck began to rise.
He knew this piece of land.
He knew the shape of it, the look of it… the feel of it.
It was his.
The lakefront wedge of property on the model was the site of his Darkhaven. Or, rather, it had been, before Roth’s treachery and Reichen’s own despair had left it in ruined rubble.
“What the hell is this?”
Claire came up beside him, her expression anxious. “Andreas, everyone thought you were dead. There were no heirs alive to claim the property. It was going to be auctioned among the rest of the Berlin vampire community—”
“This was my land.” His voice took on an odd shake. “This was my home.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know, and I couldn’t let it be sold. When some of us in the region held the memorial service for you and your family a few weeks ago and I learned no one had come forward to claim the land, I purchased the property myself. No one knew. I wanted to put something special on it. I hoped it could be a kind of sanctuary in remembrance of the lives that were lost.”
Reichen stared at the model of the tranquil park with its reflection pools and walking trails and meticulously plotted flower beds. The design was lovely. Perfect.
Claire had done this…for him.
He was astonished. Struck speechless.
“It probably wasn’t my place to do it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stand the thought of your home—and your kin’s lives—being forgotten or sold off to the highest bidder. It didn’t seem right. Then again, what I did probably doesn’t seem right to you, either.”
Reichen stood there, silent, unmoving To say he was shocked by Claire’s act of compassion was understatement in the extreme. He was moved—more deeply than he had been in more years than he cared to remember. He stared at the architect’s model, seeing all the detail, all the care and thought that had been put into the design.
For him, and for the memory of his kin.
He slowly turned to Claire, knowing his face must have been as rigid as stone by the way she took a step back.
Good, he thought. Good. Keep her away.
Because all he wanted to do in that moment was drag her hard into his arms and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe.
But she was Roth’s mate.
His enemy’s mate.
And he was still dangerous, still too near the razor’s edge of hunger. If he touched Claire now, he didn’t trust himself to stop there. If he’d been honorable at one time in his life, the fire that had been reawakened inside him three months ago had all but devoured that part of him. He was a threat to Claire, in far more ways than one.
“I need to be alone,” he muttered, a throaty snarl of sound.
He meant that; he couldn’t be around her right now. He didn’t want to think about the brief but indelible past he’d had with her, or how swiftly his body—his weak-willed heart, as well—still responded to the mere presence of her.
He didn’t want to look at her now, as she was moving closer to him, her expression tender and caring, her hand held out as if she wanted to touch him. Something he craved in that moment with every selfish fiber of his being.
His pulse hammered hard in his veins. His mouth was wet with hunger for her, his sex going tight and heavy with desire.
Only a single pace separated her from him now. He stopped breathing as she lifted her hand up and gently placed it against his chest. “Andreas, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm—”
“Get out, Claire.” He drew in a breath that hissed through his teeth and fangs. “Now, goddamn it!”
She startled at his thunderous bark of anger, jumping back from him as though he might strike her. She blinked up at him for a long moment, her lips parted but unspeaking Then she fled the room without a word. When he was certain she was gone, Reichen drifted over to the library doors and shut them tight. He told himself he was relieved that she was gone. If she valued her well-being at all, she’d leave the house and run as far away from him as she could get.
He only prayed he’d be strong enough to resist going after her between now and sundown, when he would have a chance to go out and slake his blood thirst on someone else … anyone else but her.
CHAPTER
Six
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Lucan Thorne pressed his mouth against the warm, soft skin just behind his Breedmate’s left ear. Standing with her in the living room of their private quarters within the subterranean compound that belonged to the Order, he found it hard to let Gabrielle out of his arms. Instead, he held her, willfully neglecting his duties as the leader of the band of Breed warriors for another moment to enjoy the pleasure of feeling her close. He let his tongue play over the little crimson birthmark that hid on the tender patch of creamy flesh behind her ear, the very spot his fangs had pierced a short while ago as he and Gabrielle had made love.
“If you keep it up,” she murmured, “we’re going to be in here all night.”
He grunted, smiling as he continued to nuzzle her neck. “Not a half-bad idea. And you should know that keeping it up is never a problem when I’m around you.”
“You’re terrible, you know that?”
He caught her earlobe between his teeth and gave it a little nip. “That’s not what you said twenty minutes ago under the shower with me. Or before then, in our bed, when you had your long, beautiful thighs wrapped around my bare, bucking ass. Then you didn’t think I was so terrible. You were too busy coming and screaming my name, telling me to never stop.” He didn’t even try to conceal his masculine pride. Not that he needed to, when his arousal was definitely obvious in both the emerging of his fangs and the hard rise in his dark jeans. Beneath his gray T-shirt, he could feel his dermaglyphs pulsing in response to his desire for her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, or did you say at one point that I was a god? An amazing fucking god, was, I believe, your exact opinion.”
“Arrogant bastard,” she scoffed, but he could hear the humor in her tone.
Her soft laughter melted into an inhaled, tremulous hiss as he grazed the tips of his sharp canines down along the curve of her shoulder. He splayed one hand into her thick auburn hair and she tilted her head to give him better access to her neck, her fingernails scoring into his shoulders as his free hand delved beneath her loose knit shirt and the waistband of her yoga pants. She shivered as he trailed his mouth and tongue along the delicate line of her throat, mewled a sweet little cry as his fingers dipped into the velvety cleft of her sex. She was still wet, still hot and gloriously responsive to his touch.
“Lucan,” she gasped. “Oh, my God…my God…”
“Yeah, that’s better,” he growled, catching her mouth in a deep kiss as he brought her to a swift, shuddering climax.
When she was recovered, Gabrielle lifted a wry but sated look at him. “Does your ego know any bounds, vampire?”
He smirked, cocking a dark brow. “Probably not.”
With a roll of her eyes, she grabbed his hand to lead him out of their quarters. He could have stayed there all night and not tired of loving her, of pleasuring her. But nightfall belonged to the Order, and to the crucial work that demanded all hands on deck—even the females of the compound, who were proving to be invaluable partners in a battle against an evil few could imagine. An evil that seemed intent on nothing less than all-out war.
At least the evil now had a name: Dragos. In the past several months, the Order had uncovered a lot about the second-generation vampire and the operation he’d been running for decades—centuries, in fact—while hiding behind multiple aliases and shadowy, covert alliances within the general population of the Breed. But there was much they didn’t know, as well. Suspicions too grim to leave unanswered. It was the Order’s current mission to uncover Dragos’s alliances, locate his base of operations, and cripple his efforts before he could gain any more critical ground.
They’d had some recent success there, the latest being the disruption of a gathering outside Montreal, where Dragos and a number of his associates had convened this past summer. The Order had not yet been able to discover the purpose of the gathering, but the unexpected arrival of several warriors to the place where the group had been meeting had forced Dragos and his coconspirators to scatter.
The disruption of that gathering had also netted the Order a very unexpected ally—two, if the Gen One assassin who’d been bred and raised to serve Dragos and had since come on board with the Order could be trusted. Lucan still wasn’t entirely sold on the vampire called Hunter. The male was as cold as a machine, secretive and aloof. Not that his unusual upbringing, denied any comforts and raised in total seclusion from another living soul except for the Minion assigned at birth as his handler, could hardly be expected to produce an easygoing team player. Hunter had given no outward cause to mistrust him, but he still seemed to Lucan a lone wolf of dubious origin, and one whose loyalty had not yet been tested.
But the other new ally to come out of the developments in Montreal was an unquestionable boon to the Order. Her name was Renata, and she had come to the Order as the Breedmate of Nikolai. As Lucan and Gabrielle walked past the weapons room on their way to the tech lab at the other end of the compound’s labyrinth of corridors, he saw Niko and Renata inside, competing to obliterate twin targets at the end of the range. Leave it to a gearhead like Niko to pair up with a female who knew her way around automatic weaponry. But the couple’s shared interests went much deeper than metal and explosives; they were also guardians to an orphaned young Breedmate named Mira, whom they’d rescued from a dangerous situation in Montreal and taken under their wing as their own child.
With Niko and Renata at the range was Tegan, one of the longest-standing members of the Order, and the warrior’s Breedmate, Elise. When Tegan saw Lucan and Gabrielle walking past, he said something close to Elise’s ear, kissed her, then came outside to the corridor.
He gave Gabrielle a nod of greeting, but when his gem-green gaze lit back on Lucan, he was all grim business. “You talk to Gideon yet tonight?”
Lucan shook his head. “We were just on our way to the tech lab now to see him. Why do I get the feeling this is not going to be a good night?”
“Bad news out of Germany” Tegan said, raking a hand through his tawny hair. “No doubt you recall the explosion that took out Andreas Reichen’s Darkhaven?”
“Yeah.” Lucan recalled, all right. The Order lost one of its best civilian allies—a true friend—the night that Reichen and his family were killed in the freak blast that leveled his estate. The loss had hit the warriors pretty hard, and not just for the fact that Reichen had been an instrumental partner in the Order’s current efforts to take out Dragos. He was a good man, an honorable male who should have lived to see the peace that his efforts with the Order were helping to ensure.
Tegan’s tone was as grave as his expression. “Gideon got a report out of Hamburg today. Seems another Darkhaven over there went up in flames last night. Complete annihilation.”
“Good lord,” Gabrielle whispered, clutching Lucan’s hand a bit tighter. “Were there any survivors?”
“Just one,” Tegan said. “An Enforcement Agent doing security detail there who managed to escape and report the attack. He died a few hours later.”
“You said ‘attack’?” Lucan frowned, not liking the sound of that at all. “What exactly do we know about this?”
“Not much right now. Gideon’s still gathering intel, but the Agency is keeping a lot of it close to their chest. The Darkhaven that went down last night belonged to one of their directors. Second-generation civilian named Wilhelm Roth. Apparently, the director and his Breedmate were both out of town at the time, lucky for them.”
Lucan didn’t know Roth, but then he and the rest of the Order weren’t exactly on friendly terms with most of the Enforcement Agency, either here in the States or abroad. The Order tended to think the Agency was a lot of pompous blowhards more interested in their own personal gain than public safety, and the Agency tended to think the Order was a gang of dangerous vigilantes with no regard for the law.
Partly true, Lucan had to acknowledge. Neither he nor any of his brethren had any use for the kind of circle-jerk politics and head-in-the-sand policies that were the Agency’s notion of the law. As a result, they generally disregarded them in favor of actually taking action and getting shit done. If that didn’t sit well with folks like Wilhelm Roth and the rest of the Enforcement Agency, they were more than welcome to kiss the Order’s ass and step out of the way.
“Let’s see what Gideon’s got,” Lucan said, already heading with Gabrielle toward the tech lab down the corridor.
Tegan fell in at an easy gait beside them, and Lucan couldn’t help thinking back to a time not that long ago when he and his fellow warrior—both of them Gen Ones with many centuries of life between them—had spent more time at each other’s throats than walking side by side as equals. Now, as the two of them strode into the tech lab with Gabrielle, the other warriors gathered in what served as the Order’s conference room all looked up from what they were doing, as if the air had somehow gotten thicker with the arrival of the two eldest, most powerful members of the group.
The three most recent additions to the Order’s ranks—Kade, Brock, and Chase—were dressed in basic black patrol gear, from their lug-soled Docs and dark denim, to their black shirts, leather jackets, and arsenal of semiautomatics and blades that rode at their hips. The trio of unmated males had taken on a lot of the grunt assignments, a night of hunting trouble on Boston’s back alleys topped off by hunting of a different sort at some of the city’s after-hours clubs.
As for the other, mated warriors, they did their share of heavy lifting for the Order, as well, but looking at them now—Rio seated beside his Breedmate, Dylan, and Dante, unable to keep from stroking the six-month swell of his Breedmate Tess’s pregnant belly while he casually shot the shit with Chase and the others—it was clear that things were changing here at the compound. Evolving, Lucan thought, as Gabrielle let go of his hand to walk over and sit on the floor beside little Mira and Savannah, who was mated to the resident genius, Gideon. Lucan’s heart went a bit tight as he watched his Breedmate smile and fall into an easy chatter with the child and Savannah, who’d been passing a squeaky rubber ball between them, playing a game of keep-away with an ugly little terrier mutt that belonged to Dante and Tess.
The whole scene was unnerving as hell.
Somehow, in the past year and a half, the compound had begun to feel less like a military stronghold and more like a home. That gave Lucan more than a little concern. Homes could be made vulnerable, especially in times of war. He thought about the two Darkhavens in Germany that had been standing strong one day and were rubble the next. It was hard to shake the coldness that settled in his gut when he considered how easily lives—and loved ones—could cease to exist.
“I can see by the look on your face that Tegan brought you up to speed on some of the news out of Hamburg,” Gideon said, spinning away from his fleet of computer workstations and regarding Lucan soberly over the rims of his pale blue glasses. “Do you want to hear the really fucked up part of all this?”
“Why not,” Lucan drawled.
“I’ve been doing a little remote digging in the Agency records in Germany. Turns out they’re having some problems keeping their guys alive over there.” At Lucan’s questioning look, Gideon went on. “Over the past several weeks, nine Enforcement Agents between the Berlin and Hamburg offices have been murdered.”
Tegan joined the conversation now, coming over to look at the data on Gideon’s monitors. “You talking assassinations?”
Lucan had been thinking the same thing, instantly wondering if the others like Hunter, trained Gen One killers who’d recently been ordered by Dragos to track down and assassinate the eldest members of the vampire race, had somehow now turned their sights on individuals within the Enforcement Agency.
“It’s not like any of the stuff we’ve been seeing among the civilian populations,” Gideon said. “Those killings are careful—shit, they’re practically works of art they’re so efficient.” He swung back around and typed something that brought up a morgue image of a bruised, bloodied Breed male who was missing part of his skull. “These Agency killings are brutal, very personal. One entire field unit was taken out man by man, and there’ve been some high-ranking agents—I’m talking director-level folks—who’ve been cut down, as well. Someone over there is trying to make a very loud statement. If you ask me, it reeks of payback.”
CHAPTER
Seven
Andreas hadn’t come out of the library all day.
Claire sat in the foyer outside the closed doors, having quietly taken up her post on a small upholstered bench a few minutes after he’d driven her from the room with his bellowed demand that she go. Her back ached from the uncomfortable seating and she was exhausted, having not dared to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
She didn’t know what he was doing in there. She didn’t even know if he was all right. There had been no answer when she knocked on the doors a couple of hours ago to check on him. Now she sat on the little bench with her feet drawn up on the cushion and her arms locked around her knees, staring at the silent room as if a wild, rabid animal waited inside.
It was nearly sundown. It wouldn’t be long before the Enforcement Agency detail that Wilhelm was going to arrange for showed up to remove Andreas.
Claire knew she’d done the right thing in going to Wilhelm for help. She’d done the only thing she could, not only for her own imminent safety and that of her mate, but also for Andreas. The stark fear she’d felt for him last night had since muted into a wary kind of sympathy. He was so broken now. So raw with fury.
She only hoped he would have the sense to go quietly with the Enforcement Agents when they arrived. If he put up a struggle… well, she couldn’t even let her mind go there.
The latch on the library doors gave a soft click. Claire looked up, let her legs unfold and her feet settle on the foyer floor as Andreas came out of the room. He seemed much improved physically and even though he sent a dark glower in her direction, he appeared calmer, more rested than when she’d left him in there. Maybe there was hope that he could be reasoned with after all.
“You’re still here,” he remarked, plainly displeased. “I’d have thought you’d be hours away by now.”
“No,” Claire murmured.
Andreas scoffed. “Roth must know of a number of Agency safe houses in the area where he could have sent you. I’m surprised you didn’t bolt for one of them the first chance you got.”
Claire didn’t tell him that Wilhelm had ordered her to stay at the country house. It had bothered her then, but now, being forced to hold Andreas’s piercing gaze, she felt more than an inkling of shame to think that her mate would willingly keep her in harm’s way. Of course, she had never presented herself as a hapless, helpless female, and Wilhelm wouldn’t have expected her to remain in Andreas’s company unless he trusted she could handle the situation.
That rationalization felt a bit hollow when she recalled the caustic way he’d told her to do whatever she must to detain Andreas for the long hours until the agents were able to get there. You know him better than most. I’m sure you’ll think of something.
“It must be near dusk.” Andreas’s deep voice ran up her skin like a charge. “How long do you suppose it will take Roth to get here?”
Claire blinked, then shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His answering smile was cold, unconvinced. “Are you really going to sit there and pretend that you didn’t seek him out for help and to warn him about me?” When she would have attempted to deny it, his mouth went a little tighter. “Just so you know, Claire, I hope you did go to him. I hope you told him to come as fast as he could, because I’m damned well ready to end this.”
Her blood chilled. “Are you really so eager to die, Andre?”
He scoffed. “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
Amber sparks lit up his irises, and she could see the points of his sharp white fangs as he spoke, potent reminders that although his anger seemed to have banked, it wouldn’t take much for it to ignite again. It might be safer to try to lie to him, but she felt she owed him some honesty regardless of the risks. “All right. I did go to Wilhelm. I dreamwalked to him while you were in the cellar, just as you guessed. But your misguided need for vengeance will have to wait because he’s not coming.”
“You told him I was here?”
“Yes.” Claire stood up as Andreas took a step closer to her on the bench. “He’s my mate. I had to warn him.”
“You told him about the fires? About his Darkhaven in Hamburg?” At her nod, his eyes narrowed on her. He inched nearer, crowding her between his big body and the upholstered bench pressed tightly against the back of her legs. “Does he know that you are left alone with me, at my mercy?”
Claire swallowed. “He knows all of that.”
And still he’s not coming.
Although Andreas didn’t speak the words, they were written clearly enough on his face. Claire glanced away from him because it was suddenly too hard to hold his knowing stare. To her utter shock, she felt his fingers light gently beneath her chin. When she followed that guiding touch, lifting her eyes back up to him, there was nothing the least bit gentle in his expression.
“Does he have any idea how dangerous it is for you to be alone with me like this, Claire?”
He searched her face, his warm breath skating across her brow. He stood so close to her, she could feel his heartbeat pounding, the strong, steady drum of it doing something crazy to her own pulse, as well.
An unbidden yearning kicked up inside her, hot and twisting. It took all her strength of will not to turn her cheek into his palm and nuzzle against the warm curve of his fingers against her skin.
This was wrong.
This was insane.
Oh, God… this was something she hadn’t known for such a long time.
Which only proved that Andreas was right. Being alone with him like this was very, very dangerous.
“If you were mine,” he murmured low under his breath, “I would walk through the fires of hell itself to keep you away from a man like me.”
Claire stared into his amber-flecked eyes, unsure what to say to him. Unsure what to think. All she knew was the feeling that was suddenly ablaze inside her—a kindling sense of longing and regret that shook her to her core.
It was regret that won out.
Scowling suddenly, Andreas broke her gaze. He glanced over his shoulder, head cocked slightly to the side, listening. Claire heard nothing, but then she didn’t possess the preternaturally keen hearing of the Breed. Nor did she have to hear in order to understand what was going on outside the manor house.
“Enforcement Agents,” she whispered. “Wilhelm said he would arrange for a unit to come in at sundown to work everything out with you.”
Andreas backed off her with a dark chuckle. “A death squad.”
“No,” she said. Dear God, she hoped not. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let it. Andre—”
He wasn’t listening to her now. In fluid motion, he loped to the stairwell and started climbing the steps two at a time. “Get out of the house, Claire. Do it now.”
Like hell she would. She hissed a curse and ran after him instead.
He ducked into a second-floor bedroom at the front of the house, heading straight for the window. He tore off the UV-blocking shutters and peered through the mangled metal at the grounds below, swearing something nasty. Claire came up behind him just in time to see the black shapes of several armed agents scrambling in stealth formation toward the house.
Andreas wheeled around, the tips of his fangs gleaming behind his upper lip. Accusation glinted hard in his eyes. “Do they look like they’ve come to negotiate with me?”
Claire didn’t have a chance to answer.
Downstairs, there was a crash of breaking glass, followed by the heavy pound of boots hitting polished marble. The agents were pouring inside.
“What will you do?” she asked him in a tight whisper, feeling the energy in the room begin to heat up already. It was Andreas generating the strange crackle in the air. His fury was growing, bringing with it the terrible power of his pyrokinesis. “Andre, listen to me … you can’t continue like this. Please. I’m begging you—”
His face was fierce, eyes blazing. “Wilhelm Roth is the one who should be begging me. Not you.”
The thunder of footsteps continued on the first floor as the agents split up to search the house. Someone called for Claire, advising her to make her position known to the invading unit.
“Go on,” Andreas said. “Let them take you to safety outside.”
She knew she should. God help her, she knew with every scrap of logic in her mind that the smartest, most reasonable thing for her to do would be to let Wilhelm’s men escort her out of the house while they tried to convince Andreas to give himself up peacefully.
Her mind knew all of that.
It was her heart that hesitated.
“Goddamn it, Claire.” Andreas stalked over to her and seized her arms in a bruising grasp. He gave her a brisk shake. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
A shattering clap of sound exploded from behind her. Heat arrowed past her right ear, blowing strands of her loose hair into her face. She felt the sudden impact of the bullet as it missed her by a scant inch and slammed into the upper left side of Andreas’s chest.
“Nooo!” she screamed, horrified.
He staggered back on his heels, but the shot didn’t take him down. The mingled scents of gunpowder and blood filled Claire’s head.
They’d shot him.
Oh, Christ…no.
Blocking Andreas with her own body, she spun around to face the Enforcement Agent who stood in the open doorway of the bedroom. His huge black rifle was still aimed at Andreas, his finger hovering dangerously at the trigger.
“Are you all right, Frau Roth?”
For a long moment, she had no breath to speak. Her heart was jackhammering in her chest, her knees almost jelly beneath her. The agent spoke to her, but his focus was centered wholly on Andreas, who loomed behind her, throwing off heat like a furnace.
“It’s okay,” said the agent. “I’ve got him covered. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
The agent stepped farther into the room, cautious progress that brought him to within arm’s length of Claire. His weapon remained locked on target. As he neared, Andreas let loose with a feral-sounding growl. The heat that Claire felt coming off him before was getting stronger now, making the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.
“Please,” she finally managed to croak. “You don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Put down your weapon.”
The agent’s eyes darted to her for only a fraction of a second, as though to gauge her sanity—or lack thereof. “You need to step aside, Frau Roth. I have specific orders here. I mean to carry them out.”
Specific orders to kill Andreas on the spot.
The realization sank into her consciousness like poison. They were a death squad, just as Andreas knew they would be. Wilhelm had called for his death. Not only that, but he would have his men kill Andre in cold blood, right in front of her.
The agent’s voice was lethally cold now, and in the narrowing distance outside the bedroom, more agents were making a swift climb up the stairs.
“Step aside, Frau Roth. I’m afraid I can’t ask you again.”
The rifle came closer, a very convincing threat. She had no intention of cooperating with the agent, but in that next instant she sensed, rather than saw, Andreas’s arm come up and around her to reach for the weapon with blinding speed. Heat traveled all along her side with the movement, sending out an electrical current that vibrated deep in her bones.
Andreas locked his fist around the gun’s barrel. His arm was glowing with heat that radiated down to his fingers in rings of pulsing white-hot light. The energy leapt from him and onto the rifle in bright undulations.
Instantly, the agent’s eyes went wide. His head lolled back on his shoulders and his body went into a violent spasm that made his teeth clatter. Claire smelled burning skin and hair. Sickened, she looked away as the Breed male dropped to the floor and convulsed from the sudden dose of lethal power. Before he was dead, another agent came racing into the room, his weapon at the ready.
“Claire, stay back!” Andreas roared at her.
At that same instant, he threw off more heat and light, expelling it like a cannonball that materialized out of the palm of his hand. He threw the orb of fire at the newly arrived agent, killing him on the spot. Flames erupted all around. Fire crept up the far wall and onto the ceiling.
Andreas shot a fierce look over his bleeding shoulder to where Claire stood behind him, awestruck by the terrible power he possessed. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”
She followed him out of the burning room and onto the second-floor landing. Two more agents were scrambling up the stairs to head them off. He stopped them halfway there, unleashing twin fireballs that exploded like bombs, tearing a hole in the silk-papered wall and taking a large bite out of the curving wooden staircase.
As they navigated to the ground level, Claire stayed close to him—but not too close, mindful of the searing energy that rode every inch of his body. When she got so much as a foot away from Andreas, his heat was overwhelming. The incinerating glow that had covered him in the woods last night was back again. If she touched him now, even accidentally, she knew it would kill her.
But as an inferno of his making surged hotter upstairs and in the foyer, and as Andreas dispatched the rest of the death squad that had come to kill him on what could only have been Wilhelm’s explicit orders, Claire knew that this lethal being—this man she had possibly never fully understood—was her best chance of surviving the next few minutes.
So she ran when he told her to run. She stuck as close as she dared. It wasn’t until they both were out of the manor house, feet flying over the cool, moonlit autumn grass outside, that Claire allowed herself to drop to her knees and let the tears fall.
She pivoted around, choking on the crisp night air and her own strangling confusion of emotions. Her house was ablaze. More lives were lost. She wanted to scream, but in the deepest corner of her heart, all she knew was a selfish, swamping relief that Andreas was still breathing.
She swiveled her head to look at him. The large, bright shape of him wobbled through her welling tears. How many times in the past few months had she wished that he were still alive? How many tears had she secretly shed for him and his perished kin?
No matter what Andreas said, she could not allow herself to believe for one second that Wilhelm had had anything to do with the destruction of Andreas’s Darkhaven. She hoped with every shred of her being that his accusations were wrong.
But now, after what happened here tonight, she couldn’t dislodge the sharp pebble of doubt that had embedded itself under her skin. And she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew of Wilhelm’s guilt or innocence for a fact.
She needed answers. Now more than ever, she needed to understand just what kind of man Wilhelm Roth truly was.
“Are you all right?” Andreas asked as she wiped her wet eyes and got to her feet.
Claire nodded, but inside she felt numb, a growing sense of sickness roiling in the pit of her stomach. “He would have had you killed tonight,” she murmured. “I didn’t know, Andreas. I swear to you, I didn’t know.”
He stared at her in silence, watching her through the pulsating glow of fire that still traveled his body. He was bleeding and wounded, monstrous with heat, all because of Wilhelm. And because of her. She regretted contacting Wilhelm now, regardless of any obligation she might have to him as his Breedmate. She had practically signed Andreas’s death warrant herself.
“They will send more agents before long,” she said. “When this unit doesn’t report in to Wilhelm, he will only send in more to find you.”
“Yes,” Andreas said, his tone flat and grimly accepting. “He will send in more men and I will kill them, too, until I take out so many that Roth has no choice but to face me himself. I welcome that moment. I don’t care what it takes to get there.”
Claire shuddered internally at the thought of so much violence and death. She was desperate for answers of her own from Wilhelm, and she wasn’t about to stand around and wait to witness more bloodshed and flames. She walked past Andreas and headed toward the road that led off the estate.
“Claire,” he called from behind her, but she kept walking, moving with a new kind of resolve. Andreas’s deep voice reached out to her from the stretch of darkness in her wake. “Claire… where the hell do you think you’re going?”
She paused, turned a weary look on him. “You say you mean to locate Wilhelm and take your revenge on him. Now I need the truth from him. Most of his business is conducted from a private office in the city. Maybe if we go there, we’ll both find the answers we need.”
CHAPTER
Eight
Reichen wasn’t sure which was worse: the persistent pain of his gunshot wound, or the way his gut twisted with the urgency to feed. One thing would take care of both problems.
Blood.
He felt a snarl work its way up his parched throat as his nostrils filled with the mingled odors of dozens of humans in close proximity to him, all of them trapped together in the tight compartment of the train into Hamburg. The temptation to glance up and single out viable prey—the need to quench his burning thirst—was almost overwhelming.
“Keep your head down,” Claire whispered to him, her breath skating warmly against his ear. “Your eyes, too, Andre.”
Bad enough he was injured and bleeding, and that both he and Claire smelled like a pair of chimney sweeps. It wouldn’t be a good idea to let any of the passengers seated around them get a look at his transformed eyes or his rather unusual dental situation.
At least his fury had cooled.
He and Claire had walked for about an hour before the glow of his pyrokinesis had ebbed. They’d had no choice but to travel on foot. Until his metabolism leveled out, anything he touched, anything that got too near him, would incinerate to ashes. Claire seemed to pick up on that fact, and she’d kept a careful distance from him while he struggled to get his internal systems back in line.
Being Breed, and despite being shot, Reichen could have easily walked the entire two-hour distance from Roth’s country house to his private office in Hamburg. He could have crossed the miles at a speed human eyes couldn’t possibly track, but no way would he have abandoned Claire to the night by herself. Not after everything she’d been through. Or, rather, everything that he had put her through.
She was weary and fatigued, even now, seated next to him on the inbound train. She hadn’t put up much of an argument at all when he led her to the rural village station and asked her which line they needed to take. They’d had no money on them, so Reichen had procured their passage with a little Breed-born sleight of hand. At his suggestion, the man collecting tickets fell into a quick but brief trance, giving them the opportunity to slip past the turnstiles and board the train with no one the wiser.
The trick had sapped just about all of his strength, but at least Claire was out of the cold and able to relax. He, on the other hand, was as twitchy and tense as he could be. Reichen tucked his chin down to his chest and hunched his shoulders to help conceal his assorted visible problems from any curious human eyes.
His thirst was another thing.
It gnawed at him, always at its most fevered after the fire. Under ordinary circumstances, he and his kind could go a week or more without feeding, but since the attack on his Darkhaven and the reawakening of the deadly power inside him, his thirst was persistent.
Almost constant.
He’d seen others among his kind fall into blood addiction. It didn’t happen often, mostly among those of weaker minds and lesser years, or, on the other end of the spectrum, the earliest generations of the Breed whose bloodlines were less diluted with human genes and closer to the Ancients—the alien fathers of the vampire race on Earth.
Reichen’s pyrokinetic curse was bad enough, but the thirst that rose in its wake horrified him every bit as much as the fires he could summon at will. And if he was being honest, with himself at least, he could hardly deny that the fires were becoming less of a response to his fury and more of a ruling part of who he was.
Since he’d begun his mission of vengeance on Roth a few weeks ago, the fires were strengthening. Now they sprang to life with barely a thought, burning deeper and longer, more explosive every time. And once they faded, he was gripped with a blood thirst that could hardly be contained or sated.
He was losing himself to both, and he knew it. If he stayed in Claire’s company much longer, she would know it, too.
Even as the gravity of that thought coiled around him, Reichen couldn’t help watching in his periphery as a young hipster got up from his seat across the compartment from him and moved to a place that had been vacated at the last stop. Reichen followed the human male with a predator’s gaze, noting the young man’s lack of awareness of his surroundings as he flopped down onto the seat. White earbuds emitted tinny echoes of the music that was blaring into the human’s head. Downcast, sullen eyes peeked out from under a sweep of jagged black bangs, all of the hipster’s focus rooted on the touch screen of his iPhone as he busied himself with an intense round of text messaging.
Reichen watched with the same keen interest as a lion observing wildebeests at the watering hole, his hunting instincts prickling to attention, already separating the easiest prey from the pack of other commuters. The train slowed. As it pulled into a station, the human got up. Reichen’s muscles tensed in reflex. He started to follow, hunger ruling him, but Claire’s hand came down gently on his forearm.
“Not this one. We get off at the next station.”
He sat back down and tried not to let the irritated growl escape him as the train’s doors slid shut and his erstwhile meal ambled obliviously into the crowd newly poured onto the platform.
A few minutes later, he and Claire reached their stop. They got off the train and walked the rest of the way to the Speicherstadt, Hamburg’s warehouse district. Rows of tall redbrick buildings divided by canal waterways glowed with incandescent light against the night sky. The mingled aromas of coffee beans and spices rode on the crisp breeze as Claire led him over a sweeping arched bridge, then deeper into the historic district. As the scents would indicate, some of the gothic buildings appeared to still be in use as commodities warehouses; others had been converted to stores housing fine Oriental rugs.
Claire continued on for another couple of blocks before she paused in front of a brick-and-limestone building that looked like any of its neighbors. A trio of concrete steps flanked by delicate wrought-iron railings led up to an unmarked, unnumbered door.
“This place belongs to Roth?” Reichen asked as they reached the top step.
She nodded. “One of several private offices he keeps in the city. Will you be able to open the locks?”
“If not by will, then by brute force,” he said, moving in front of her to direct a mental command at the double dead bolts on the door. He hit them hard with his mind, careful not to wake the fire that still lurked at the edge of his control, waiting for the excuse to burn again. With a series of metallic clicks, the dead bolts twisted free and the door inched open. When Claire started to pass him and walk inside, Reichen held her back with a look. “Wait here while I look around. It might not be safe.”
He recognized the irony in his protectiveness as he stepped into the dark building and searched for any signs of trouble. Running into more Enforcement Agents would be a definite problem, but he was by far the worst threat to Claire’s safety. Especially in his current hungered state.
“All right,” he told her when he was certain the quiet building was empty. He flicked on a light switch for her as she entered.
Roth’s tastes in this place were an incongruous mix of Old World and modern minimalist. Slick chrome-and-glass pieces competed with exquisite antiques. The art on the walls were beautiful masterworks, yet every painting depicted a scene of horrific brutality. Death scenes appeared to be a favorite, whether the subject was men, women, or animals. Apparently Roth didn’t discriminate when it came to his appreciation for violence.
“How often does he stay here?” Reichen asked, not missing the fact that there was a bedroom loft occupying the entire upper floor.
“Often. At least, from what I understand,” Claire said quietly but without any bitterness as she walked over to a computer workstation and turned on the machine. As it fired up, she opened one of the desk drawers and began sifting through its contents. “I do know that his work for the Agency has also taken him to Berlin from time to time.”
Reichen looked up at her, seeing the doubt in her soft brown gaze. She may not want to believe his accusations against her mate, but Claire was wrestling with at least some measure of uncertainty about Wilhelm Roth.
“How is your wound?” she asked, looking remorseful where she had no reason to be.
Reichen shrugged his good shoulder. The bullet had passed through cleanly; once he fed, the healing would speed even faster. “I’ll live,” he said. “Long enough to do what must be done.”
He could see her throat work as she swallowed. “When will you stop all of this, Andre? How many more people have to die?”
His answer was grim and resolute. “Just one.”
She held his hard stare. “What will you do if your accusations against him turn out to be false?”
“What will you do if they turn out to be true?”
She didn’t say anything as he came over to where she stood, just backed away a few paces and gave him access to the computer and the handful of business cards and receipts that she had emptied onto the desk. Reichen brought up Roth’s e-mail and started searching his records—looking for precisely what, he wasn’t certain. Clues of Roth’s activities, his contacts. Leads on his current whereabouts. Anything.
What he needed to do was focus on his reasons for being there in the first place, not the inescapable awareness of Claire standing so near him, a warmth and presence that he felt straight into his marrow. He was working so hard to ignore his visceral response to her that he looked at the mess of business cards on Roth’s desk three times before his eye lit on the one made of silver vellum with elegantly simple black type.
He plucked the card out of the collection and read it, despite that he knew the name and address listed on it by heart. Even though it truly came as no surprise that he should find the card among Roth’s possessions, he still felt his blood run cold in his veins.
“What did you find?” Claire asked, no doubt sensing his sudden tension. She came closer, peered around him at the scrap of translucent paper in his hand. “Aphrodite. What is that?”
“A club in Berlin,” Reichen replied. “It’s an exclusive, very expensive brothel.”
He glanced at Claire in time to see her curiosity change to a look of quiet discomfort. “Wilhelm’s never had a shortage of willing female company. He would consider it beneath him to have to pay for it. The fact that he has that card means nothing.”
“It means he was there,” Reichen said. “I don’t need this scrap of paper to prove it. The owner of Aphrodite and I were… close. I trusted Helene implicitly.”
Claire glanced away from him for a moment. “I’d heard a while ago that you’d taken up with a mortal woman. One of many from what I understand.”
He let the comment go uncountered, but he was surprised to hear that she’d been aware of his personal affairs. And yes, there had been many women in his life over the years, a string of forgettable liaisons he’d taken little pride in, even now. Especially now.
But he had respected Helene more than the other human females he’d taken into his bed or under his fangs. She had become a close confidante, a true friend, though even she had been oblivious to the darker, deadly side of him he’d worked so hard to suppress.
“Helene was a good woman. She knew I was Breed and she kept the secret. She also kept me informed about things going on at the club. Recently I learned that one of her employees had begun dating a wealthy, very important man on the side. This employee had shown up for work more than once with bite marks on her neck. Not long afterward, she vanished without a trace. I asked Helene to look into it, and she came back with a name: Wilhelm Roth.”
Claire’s brow creased with her frown. “Just because this girl might have spent time with him doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“He didn’t stop there,” Reichen said, his voice tight. “While I was away on another matter, Helene showed up at my Darkhaven. Someone let her in, not realizing it was an ambush. Helene had been made a Minion since I’d last seen her. Her master sent her to my home with a unit of armed assassins—an Enforcement Agency death squad. They killed everyone inside. They shot all of them in cold blood, Claire. Even the children.”
She gaped up at him aghast, slowly shaking her head. “No, there was an explosion. A terrible fire—”
“Yes, there was,” Reichen admitted, taking her by the arms as his anger began to roil in remembrance. “I set the house ablaze, but not until after I arrived and saw the slaughter inside. And not until after I found Helene waiting for me, covered in my family’s blood. She told me who made her, Claire…just before I ended her misery then burned my home and all the souls in it to the ground.”
Claire’s tender brown eyes swam with a sudden rise of tears, but she said nothing. Not a word of denial or disbelief. Not a single syllable in defense of her mate.
“Andre…”
She shouldn’t have touched him. The warm feel of her palm coming up to rest gently on his cheek sent him over an edge he’d been teetering on since the moment he laid eyes on her again. A hell of a lot longer than that, if he was being honest.
Reichen brought his hand around to the soft arch of her nape and pulled her close. He bent his head and pressed his mouth to hers. There was no tentativeness, no meek beginnings, as their lips came together and meshed in a fevered kiss that was as familiar and righteous as it was forbidden.
Claire.
Ah, Christ.
He’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to hold her, to kiss her. To want her with a need that scorched as hot as lava in his belly. His body remembered all the ways she’d once made him burn. Arousal surged through him, turning his blood to fire and his cock to hard-forged steel. In that instant, he didn’t care that he was injured and bleeding and hellbent on vengeance.
He didn’t care that she belonged to another—his most treacherous enemy. All he knew was the heat of Claire’s mouth on his. The warm press of her curves against him.
He wanted more.
He wanted all of her, and now the hunger that had been clinging to him so relentlessly was wrapping its tendrils around him even tighter. His stomach twisted, burning. His fangs ripped farther out of his gums, the sharp points throbbing with every moist brush of her lips against his.
He wanted to taste her. God help him, he wanted to drown in her, right here and now.
She should be his. This kiss told him she was his, still, even if Breed law and the blood bond she’d given to another male forbade it.
She would always be his …
No.
Reichen growled as he tore his mouth away from hers and set her away from him with rough, unsteady hands. His chest was heaving, breath sawing through his teeth and fangs. The bullet wound in his upper chest screamed with renewed pain, all the worse for the way his veins were pounding with hunger. The room felt too hot, stifling. He needed to cool down before his threadbare restraint got any thinner.
Claire was staring at him with her fingers pressed to her kiss-swollen mouth, as if she didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
“I need some air,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ, this was a fucking mistake coming here with you. I need to get the hell out of here.”
“Andreas.” He pivoted to head for the door, but before he could take more than a couple of steps, Claire was right behind him. “Where are you going? Talk to me, please.”
He kept walking, hoping like hell she would just let him go. He wanted Roth to pay for what he’d done, but did he really have a right to take Claire down in the process? Some selfish part of him reasoned that it would only be fair if Roth’s mate was part of his price. What better vengeance than to ruin the corrupt son of a bitch and claim his woman for his own?
Jesus.
He didn’t want to go there.
As tempting as it was, that wasn’t what this was about. He’d gone to great lengths decades ago to shield Claire from the deadly monster he had become. He hadn’t done that only to come back and destroy her now… had he?
“Andreas, please don’t walk away from me.” Her voice trailed him as he reached to open the door. She let out a choked, humorless laugh, full of pain and raw contempt. When she finally found her voice again, it was soft with condemnation. “Goddamn you. How can you still make me feel this way after all these years? Damn you for leaving me! And damn you for coming back like this, just when I thought you were gone forever and I might finally be able to forget you.”
In spite of every instinct that shouted for him to put one foot in front of the other and take his deadly business with Roth far away from Claire, Reichen paused. She didn’t know how dangerous he was right now. Or maybe she did, but was too confused and pissed off to care.
She drew in an audible breath, then blew it out on a defeated-sounding sigh. “Goddamn you, Andre, for standing here and making me doubt every choice I’ve ever made.”
He turned to face her justifiable outrage. Blood thirst swamped him as he looked at her, his physical need for sustenance warring with the carnal desire that no amount of chill night air would be able to cool. She was so beautiful and strong. So good and honest. And she was furious with him now; the frantic ticking of her pulse at the base of her buttery light brown throat was testament to that.
Reichen couldn’t look away from the steady pound of her heartbeat.
The fire had taken its toll on him as much as the hit he took to the chest earlier tonight. He was no longer in control of his thirst; it had overthrown his will now. It was all he knew as he moved toward Claire, everything about him that was Breed and male trained wholly on this woman.
“Why did you leave me?” she asked as he neared her.
He grunted, savoring the vanilla sweet scent of her blood as it raced beneath the surface of her delicate skin. “To protect you.”
She frowned, dubious. “From what?”
“From the worst of me.”
She gave a slow shake of her head. “I was never afraid of you, Andre. I’m still not afraid.”
“You damn well should be … Frau Roth.”
He bared his fangs and pinned her in the amber glow of his transformed eyes—one brief moment’s warning, enough for her to back away from him or hit him or scream. She couldn’t know how hard it was for him to give her even that much. He moved closer to her, crowding her with his body, even as he told himself he still had honor, that the fire living inside him hadn’t yet burned away all of his humanity.
But that was a lie.
He felt the bleak hollowness of that hope crumble the instant his fangs bit into the tender flesh of Claire’s throat.
She gasped. Her hands came up between the hard press of his body against hers, her palms flattened across his sternum. He felt her sudden tension, her jolt of shock and adrenaline as he caged her in his arms and drew the first taste of her warm, rich blood into his mouth.
At first, he fed with mindless hunger. Gulp after gulp, driven by the primal need for nourishment. But through the haze of his blood-fevered mind, as he drank from Claire’s vein, he began to feel something… else.
Her blood scent swamped him, filling his head like the sweetest intoxication. The rapid beat of her pulse against his tongue now blossomed into a visceral pound that echoed in his own blood. Possession rose within him, dark and dangerous. He held her fast in his bite, savoring the taste of her as his body went rigid with the need to claim her in a more carnal way, as well.
He felt her fingers digging into his back as he drank from her, breath rasping in soft, shallow pants against his ear. His senses filled with her. A low, humming power flowed into him, power he felt roaring through his cells and into every fiber of his body. Deeper still, into the fabric of his soul, the core of his entire being.
Claire was the first, the only Breedmate he’d ever drunk from, and now there could be no other for him so long as she lived. All that was Breed in him came alive as though he’d been asleep all his life and now overflowed with a profound awareness of this female—now and forever. An eternal stamp, a bond of blood.
A connection to her that he could not undo except by death, hers or his own.
“Andreas.”
Claire’s soft cry of distress tore through him like a knife.
Horrified at what he’d just done to her—to both of them—he sealed her wound with a quick sweep of his tongue and reeled back on his heels. Her cheeks were flushed dark rose, her breath sawing through her parted lips as she stared at him in abject shock. Reichen felt her dread like his own. Every intense emotion she felt from now on would be his, as well.
“Andre,” she whispered, lifting her hand up to touch his healing bite. Her face was twisted with a miserable sort of confusion. “Oh, my God…What have you done?”
He took a step backward, leveled by shame.
Claire belonged to another male. Not him. She had given herself to Roth, whether Reichen liked it or not. She was already blood bonded, as Roth was blood bonded to her. Now, with this unconscionable breach of that sacrament, Reichen had imposed himself on that bond.
In drinking from Claire, he had irrevocably linked himself to her.
He would be drawn to her always. Aware of her always. It was the most sacred gift a Breedmate could give one of his kind, and he had taken it from her—stolen it—in an act of pure selfish need.
“Forgive me, Claire,” he murmured. Sick with himself for how deeply he wanted her, with or without the drumming intensity of a blood bond, he drew farther away from her. He drifted backward, inching toward the door. “Ah, Christ… Please, forgive me.”
CHAPTER
Nine
Andreas, wait.”
He didn’t wait. No, he wouldn’t even look at her. Spinning around, he was at the door faster than her human eyes could follow the motion. He threw the door open to the cold night. Stepped onto the concrete stoop outside.
“Andre…”
The brief glance he cast at her over his shoulder was feral and hot. His fangs gleamed stark white, frighteningly large. Claire could still feel their sharp points at the tender spot on her neck. If she lived a hundred more years, she didn’t think she would ever forget the shocking, sensual pain of his bite. Or the pleasure.
God, the searing, wondrous rush of pleasure to feel Andreas suckling from her vein.
It had damned them both in an instant. She knew it, and so did he; the truth of it had been written across the taut lines of his face, and was now, in the tormented glow of his gaze as he paused to stare at her under the light of the streetlamps.
She was not his to claim. Claire had to remind herself of that fact when her legs started to move instinctively toward him. She belonged to another by blood and vow, if not by love.
Another who would have felt the emotional spike in Claire’s body as if it were his own. According to Breed law, there was no greater sin than to betray the sacrament of the blood bond.
But as Andreas wheeled around and leapt off the stoop, and Claire ran to the door only in time to see him disappear into the night, she knew a far worse sin. The sin of having given herself to someone as his blood-bonded mate while her heart still yearned for another.
Thirty years ago, she had been a young woman barely into her twenties—naive about so many things, not the least of which was the existence of another race of beings that thrived on blood and darkness, incredible beings that were somehow human … yet far from it.
She had been a student abroad on her own for the first time when she was assaulted by a vampire in this very district of Hamburg. She’d been spared from the bite by another like him, not a crude beast who lunged at her from the shadows but a tall, golden, sophisticated gentleman named Wilhelm Roth.
He took her into his home—his Darkhaven, as she would learn it was called—and offered her his protection while she was in the city. Claire had liked Wilhelm Roth and his mate, a timid young woman named Ilsa who bore the same odd birthmark on her ankle as Claire had on the side of her neck. Claire learned a lot in those first few weeks of living among the Breed as Wilhelm Roth’s ward, including the fact that it was entirely possible for her to fall in love with one of their kind, which is exactly what happened once she met Andreas Reichen.
After four months together, she’d been devastated when Andreas had abruptly vanished from her life. Wilhelm Roth had given her a strong shoulder to lean on. Not long afterward it had been Claire’s turn to offer him support, when he lost Ilsa to a Rogue vampire attack. Claire had known even then that compassion and sympathy were hardly the same thing as love. Wilhelm hadn’t seemed to mind that her heart was still broken and bleeding for Andreas when he pressed her to be his mate later that year. Then again, it wasn’t even a week after they were blood bonded and mated that Wilhelm moved her out to the country while he remained in Hamburg.
What a terrible, foolish mistake she’d made. She knew that now—a bitter lesson when her head was filled with doubts about Wilhelm and her heart was breaking all over again for Andreas.
Claire was still reeling from that understanding as a black SUV screeched to a halt at the curb below her. Two heavily armed Enforcement Agents climbed out of the vehicle and caught her in the blinding beam of a flashlight.
“Frau Roth?” one of them asked, clearly surprised to find her there. “We were alerted by silent alarm to a break-in at the office. Are you all right?”
She didn’t know if she responded or not. She felt numb, adrift… bereft.
“Is anyone else in the building?” the other guard asked her.
“Are you alone here, Frau Roth? How did you manage to escape the madman who’s been wreaking bloody havoc the past couple of nights?”
Claire had no answers for them. All she wanted to do was run after Andreas, but the two big, well-armed agents kept her close as they ushered her back inside and began a search of the place.
“Don’t worry,” one of them assured her. “This nightmare is all over now. We, along with Director Roth, are going to get the bastard who attacked your home and put him down like the rabid dog he is.”
“That’s right,” agreed the second man, smiling as if to reassure her. “You’ll see. Soon you’ll be someplace safe, as if none of the past two nights ever happened.”
Claire excused herself to the bathroom and sat in the darkness, trying not to scream.
In an underground facility hidden below an unspoiled forest in southern New England, a creature that did not belong to this age—or, in fact, this Earth—bared its enormous fangs and let out a bone-jarring roar. Seven feet tall, hairless and naked except for the thick tangle of undulating skin markings that covered it from head to toe, the Ancient was an awesome, terrible sight to behold. All the more so as it paced the cylindrical UV prison that confined it, murder blazing from the thin pupils nestled in pits of fiery amber.
Watching from a safe distance above in the observation room of the high-tech laboratory wing, Wilhelm Roth was distracted by a sudden, simple truth: His Breedmate was betraying him with Andreas Reichen. Roth’s senses told him the instant she’d bled for Reichen. The taste of it was acid on his tongue. Like the captive Ancient in the other room, Roth shook with the sudden urge to bellow in wild rage, but he clamped his molars together and bit back his fury.
Even now he could feel Claire’s torment, the spike of her emotions—her confusion and despair—reverberating in his own veins. That she still pined for Reichen came as no surprise to him. She’d tried very hard to banish her feelings for him all these years, but her will was weak and her blood had easily given her away. Not that Roth had ever particularly cared about Claire’s faithless heart. Love was a fleeting, fickle emotion that he’d never had much use for. Ambition and drive, possessions and winning… these were the things he valued.
And he was a damned sore loser.
“The Ancient has been denied feeding for twenty-one days,” said the Breed male who watched with Roth from the windowed observation room above.
His name was Dragos, although he’d gone by another name, one of several aliases, when he first approached Roth about joining his revolution. Or, rather, his evolution, as Dragos’s plan was intended to elevate the Breed from the shadowy underworld they were forced to inhabit now, to a place of supreme power over mankind. One that would see Dragos and a few of his hand-picked associates at the helm.
“The prolonged lack of sustenance is painful, of course,” Dragos continued, “but in another few days, his bodily functions will begin to slow to a suitable level. We’ve been administering regular doses of sedatives to speed the process along, but unfortunately with this type of operation, time is the only proven, most certain method… do tell me if I’m boring you, Herr Roth.”
Roth snapped himself out of his distraction. He inclined his head in a nod that was full of careful respect. “Not at all, sire.”
It was suicide to piss Dragos off, and based on the Breed male’s outwardly pleasant tone, he was positively seething.
“You’re beginning to concern me, Roth. Is the trouble you’ve been having lately with that pest back home in Germany diverting your attention away from more important matters?”
Although it grated, he lowered his head even farther. “No, sire. Not in the least.”
Dragos knew about the destruction of Roth’s Darkhaven in Hamburg and the country house. He knew Roth’s mate had been caught up in the violence, but he knew nothing of the fact that she and the one perpetrating the assaults had a history together.
Roth had his own history with Reichen, too. A hatred that began months before Claire entered the picture, though he often wondered if Reichen understood the depth of his enmity, or the lengths to which Roth had been willing to go in order to see Reichen suffer for it.
He had to rein in the current situation back home in Hamburg, and that meant making sure that Andreas Reichen met a swift, certain, and preferably painful, demise.
Roth lifted his head to meet the hard stare of his commander. “You’ve no cause for concern whatsoever, sire. Our mission is my only priority.”
“Good.” Dragos’s shrewd gaze drilled into him. “See that it is, Herr Roth.”
On the other side of the viewing window, the Ancient let loose with another agonized howl. Dragos watched, unflinching, as the creature who was his father’s father clawed at himself and shrieked in pain.
“I’ve no further need of you at this time,” Dragos murmured without looking at Roth. “I will look for a report of your current status later this evening.”
“Yes, sire,” Roth hissed through a tightly held smile.
That smile turned to a sneer as he exited the lab and headed out to attend his business for Dragos. When his cell phone rang in his pocket, it was all he could do not to crush the thing in his fist as he stormed through the bunker.
“What is it,” he snapped into the receiver.
He listened, blood boiling in his veins, as an Enforcement Agent from Hamburg informed him that they had his Breedmate safely in custody.
“Is she alone?”
“Yes, Director Roth. And by some miracle, she appears to be unharmed. We have her with us here at your office in the Speicherstadt.”
“Excellent.” Roth turned into an unoccupied supply room and closed the door behind him. “Put her on the line. I would have a word with her.”
Claire wanted to ignore the Enforcement Agent knocking on the bathroom door, but she couldn’t hide in there forever. No more than she could avoid talking to Wilhelm, who was apparently on the phone right now, waiting to speak with her.
“Frau Roth,” called the agent. “Is everything all right in there?”
She got up from the floor where she’d been sitting and went over to open the door. As she came out of the dark room, the agent thrust his cell phone toward her. She took it. Slowly brought it up to her ear.
As soon as she heard Wilhelm’s breath blowing hotly across the receiver, she knew that he was furious with her. Her veins jangled a warning that she had no patience to acknowledge.
“You lied to me,” she said by way of greeting. “But then, you’ve lied about many things, haven’t you?”
His answering scoff was as sharp as a blade. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The men you sent to the house earlier tonight. They had no intention of taking Andreas out of there peacefully. You sent a death squad to kill him.”
“Andreas Reichen is a very dangerous individual,” came the icy reply. “I was only thinking of your safety, Claire.”
“Really?” Her voice climbed up slightly, enough to draw anxious looks from her Enforcement Agency watchdogs. “If my safety was anything of an issue to you, then why did you insist that I stay there with him? You practically thrust me at him.”
A low-toned, amused chuckle grated across her nerves. “Truthfully, I don’t see the point of your distress, darling. You did manage to come out of the situation with your pretty neck unscathed, I assume.”
Claire dismissed the obviously weighted comment with a tight shake of her head. She wasn’t going to let him shame her when he made her sick with anger and revulsion and not a little fear. “What about the girl from Aphrodite, Wilhelm? Did she walk away from you unscathed?”
Silence stretched on the other end of the line and it gave Claire the courage to keep going, to lay everything out in one rush of breath.
“What do you know about the attack on Andreas’s Darkhaven, Wilhelm? Did you have something to do with that?” She practically choked on the awful words. “Did you send a Minion into his home with a death squad on orders to kill everyone inside? Are you the cold-blooded murderer he says you are?”
“For Christ’s sake, Claire. Listen to yourself. You are spewing a lot of paranoid nonsense.”
“Am I?” She heard the hesitancy in his voice. She could practically hear the wheels in his shrewd mind turning, calculating his errors and how to smooth them over. “What is this thing between you and Andreas? Has he threatened to expose you in some way, or is this personal … because of the past?”
“I could care less about the past,” he replied, utterly devoid of emotion. “And unless I miss my guess, Claire, this thing between Reichen and me became about as personal as it could get just a short time ago. What kind of mate would I be to you if I let him defile the sanctity of our bond and simply walk away uncontested? There’s not a male alive in the entire Breed nation who would deny me the right to defend your honor.”
Oh, God. He was right.
If the violence Andreas had orchestrated the past few weeks was not reason enough, in drinking from her, a blood-bonded Breedmate, he had just written his own death warrant.
Claire swallowed the lump of dread that crawled into her throat. “You’ve never loved me, Wilhelm. Have you? Why did you want me for your mate? Why do you care what I do now, when I have never truly been a part of your life? Our bond has never been anything but a farce—”
“If you are looking for a way to justify your actions, Claire, you are sorely mistaken. The fact is, you are my mate. If and when I get my hands on Andreas Reichen, I will demand the full rights due me. You may count on that.”
She could hear the danger in his tone and knew from the sharp way he’d cut her off that she would find no mercy in him whatsoever. She had never been one to cower, but the thought of him sending more of his death dealers into the city after Andre made her heart squeeze like it was in a vise. “Wilhelm, please …”
“Don’t beg me, Claire. Not for him,” he snapped, full of venom. “Put the agent back on the phone now. You’re going to go with the Enforcement Agents to their headquarters and help them in their pursuit of this … animal.”
“Wilhelm, no—”
“Put the agent on the phone, goddamn you!”
She didn’t have to get the armed guards’ attention. Both of them gaped at her as Wilhelm’s furious outburst ricocheted across the room. One of the agents came over to her and extracted the phone from her reluctant grasp. He listened for only a moment before he motioned the other guard over to Claire and instructed him not to let her leave their custody.
Claire’s heart banged in her chest as the agent wrapped up the private conversation. She could see the confusion and sympathy in the Breed male’s eyes as he hung up and came toward her with the steady calm of a soldier accustomed to handling difficult situations.
“You need to come with us now,” he told her gently but firmly “We have orders, Frau Roth. I’m sorry.”
“No.” He reached for her and Claire’s panic spiked. “I won’t go with you. Take your hands off me!”
The second agent moved in, his expression grave. “Let’s not make this difficult, all right?”
Claire wrenched her arm out of the bruising grasp. She took two lunging steps away from them, fully prepared to bolt if she could just reach the door. She didn’t even come close. One guard was there before she had a chance to blink. The other came up behind her and shoved something hard and cold against the small of her back.
She felt the searing bite of the taser for only an instant before the shock took her legs out from under her. She crashed to the floor on a broken scream, pain rippling through her.
“Pick her up,” she heard one of them say from above her. “I’ll go open the vehicle.”
Claire felt large, hard hands hoist her to her feet. She heard the apartment door open, felt the incoming chill of night air skate across the floor from outside. Then a low grunt and a sick, sodden sound of someone choking, gasping, sputtering for breath.
The agent holding on to Claire let go as he faced whatever it was that now stood on the threshold of the open door. “What the fuck!”
Claire lifted her head and couldn’t hold back her cry of stunned relief.
Andreas.
Oh, God… he came back for her.
His big body blocked the doorway, his eyes blazing, fangs glistening white with menace. At his feet lay the bleeding corpse of the agent who’d tasered her, his throat brutally skewered and all but severed by a length of twisted black wrought iron. As the second agent drew his weapon and prepared to fire, Andreas stalked inside and fired on him with his companion’s gun, killing him with the swift, deadly aim of a sniper.
Then he was at her side as if nothing else existed.
“Claire…Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice gruff, his expression as grave as she’d ever seen it. He smoothed his hands over her face, touching every inch of her as if he feared she was broken. His strong fingers trembled against her skin. For one moment she thought—desperately hoped—he might kiss her again. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, feeling wobbly and unstable until Andreas wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her away from the blood and death on the floor. “We’re not safe in the city now,” she told him. “I just talked to Wilhelm. He knows that I’m with you. He knows that you drank from me tonight.”
Andreas’s mouth compressed tightly. Something dark flashed in his eyes. Remorse, perhaps? Was it regret?
“I don’t think either one of us is safe from him now,” she said.
He stared at her for a long moment, an intense, searching look. Then he gave her a curt nod. “You’re coming with me, Claire. No matter what happens, I will keep you safe.”
CHAPTER
Ten
Stripped of their weapons, keys, cell phones, and cash, Reichen left the dead Enforcement Agents where they lay, then motioned for Claire to follow him to the SUV parked on the street outside.
“Where will we go?” she asked him as they leapt into the vehicle and Reichen hauled ass away from the curb. “It won’t take Wilhelm long to have half the Agency on our heels.”
Reichen acknowledged that fact with a grim nod. “We can’t stay in Hamburg. It would probably be wise if we left Germany altogether.”
“And go where? He has contacts all over Europe. We can’t trust anyone in the Darkhavens or the Enforcement Agency not to turn us in to him the first chance they get.”
“We can trust the Order.”
In his periphery, Reichen saw Claire’s doubtful reaction. “The Order? From what I’ve heard about them, they don’t exactly have an open-door policy. Why would a dangerous group of vigilantes from the States be willing to help us?”
Reichen resisted the urge to correct her opinion of the Order, one that had been unfairly yet widely accepted among the general Breed population for generations. He slid a glance at her. “I’ve been working with Lucan, Tegan, and the other warriors for close to a year now. The night my Darkhaven was attacked, I was away from Berlin, following up on a mission for the Order. We’d been gathering intel concerning a spate of Gen One assassinations and looking into possible links to blood clubs around Europe.”
“You and the Order… working together?” She got quiet then, considering him in studied silence as he turned the SUV onto a busy boulevard that led out of Hamburg. “There’s so much I don’t know about you anymore, Andre. Everything about you seems so different now.”
Not everything, he thought, recalling all too easily how familiar she’d felt pressed against him, her mouth on his in a heated kiss. He felt possessive around her. Fiercely protective. All the things he’d felt with her in the beginning. Time had diffused none of it, though that hardly gave him cause to celebrate.
The need to hold her close right here and now was nearly overwhelming. He knew she was basically all right, but just the idea of her being shoved around by the agents—tasered by them, for God’s sake—made his blood boil with fury. The taste of her fear, her pain, still echoed in his veins.
Here was one thing that was different about him now: the bond he’d stolen from her with his uninvited bite. Even though Claire had yet to condemn him for it, he would carry the guilt of his actions forever. Especially once he left her widowed and alone, after he crushed the life out of Wilhelm Roth.
Some mercenary part of him found the prospect of Roth’s imminent death even more attractive when it would free Claire to take another mate. Particularly if that new mate might be him. But regardless of the fact that he had already bound himself to her by blood, Claire deserved something more than what he could ever give her. She always had.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her, eager to turn his mind away from all the things he’d done wrong by her, now and before. “You haven’t eaten all day. You must be starving.”
She gave him a noncommittal shrug. “If it’s not a good idea to stop anywhere yet, I’ll understand—”
“You need food,” he said, more sharply than intended. “We’ll stop.”
As a Breedmate, Claire’s perfect health and ageless longevity depended on the regular intake of a Breed male’s blood, but her body still required food to function. It was a hell of a lot more palatable for Reichen to risk the time it would take to get her a sandwich than it was for him to think about Wilhelm Roth nourishing Claire as only her true mate could do. He wondered how long it had been since she’d fed from Roth’s vein. Not long, he was guessing, based on how youthful and strong she looked. He wondered how long it had been since she’d lain with Roth. Had she ever loved him?
The questions were bitter on his tongue, but he choked them back. He didn’t want to know all of the ways that Wilhelm Roth had been with Claire, or how recently. She wasn’t his, and he had better put all thoughts of her aside to maintain his focus on the thing that truly mattered to him now—upholding his promise to avenge the innocent souls whom Roth destroyed. If he couldn’t do that, then he was no good to himself or anyone else.
Reichen drove for a while without speaking, working hard to ignore the fact that only a small space of leather and plastic separated him from Claire. At least he hadn’t gone pyro back at Roth’s office. Claire’s blood was likely to thank for that small blessing. He’d felt the fires leap to life inside him when he sensed her distress a few blocks away from the place, but somehow, by the time he’d returned to face the agents who were hurting her, he’d managed to keep the flames from erupting.
Barely.
For all his reassurances that he would keep her safe, he knew that his destructive power posed a very real danger to her. The more he used it, the more slippery his hold on it became. He didn’t know how long it might be before the fire trapped within him burned out of his control completely.
He couldn’t care less what happened to him, but if the heat should snap its tether while Claire was nearby…
Reichen looked at her pretty profile in the milky light of the dashboard. Her head was tipped down as she tried to smooth a nasty snag in her sweater. She concentrated on the imperfection, worrying the loose thread between her graceful, pianist’s fingers, her loose ebony hair stirring in the low draft of the heat blowing out of the vent.
“What is he afraid of?” she murmured. She glanced over, frowning now. “What is it that Wilhelm feels he needs to protect from you?”
Reichen shook his head. “I don’t know, and frankly, I can’t say that it matters to me now. I don’t care why he did what he did. All that’s left is the fact that he must pay.”
She pivoted in her seat, her dark eyes shining, stubbornly suspicious. “He’s threatened by you, Andreas. Not because of anything that happened these past two nights, but before that. Why else would he take such a drastic step and order an attack on your Darkhaven?”
“I suppose he didn’t appreciate me digging around in his affairs. He felt he needed to send a strong message to me.”
Claire nodded grimly. “And just what did he think you might find? I can’t believe it had anything to do with that missing girl from the club. Not to warrant the kind of retaliation you described.”
“So, you believe me now?” he asked.
She gave him a frank, unflinching look. “I don’t want to, but after talking with Wilhelm tonight… it’s harder for me to doubt you than it is to trust anything he says. You scared him, Andre. He’s still afraid of what you might know or what you could do to him. The question is, why? What is he protecting… or whom?”
A knot of coldness formed in Reichen’s gut as Claire spoke. He’d never asked himself why Roth came after him. He’d assumed it was due to a mix of old animosity and new opportunity when Reichen had unwittingly sent Helene into Roth’s crosshairs. The why of it really hadn’t seemed important. Not when rage and grief had been the only things Reichen had known in the aftermath of the slaughter.
He’d been blinded by his fury. By the need for vengeance. He’d never stopped to consider the simple truth that Claire had just laid out for him so plainly.
Roth had something very significant to hide. Something that went much deeper than his whispered gangster alliances with the crooks and politicians who tended to gravitate toward the Enforcement Agency. He was protecting a monumental secret. Something worth spilling the lives of more than a dozen people without a moment’s hesitation. Worth even more than that, Reichen was certain now.
As he stared ahead at the dark ribbon of road, a name crept into his mind like a serpent: Dragos.
Good Christ. Could the two of them be connected in some way? Had he gotten too close to uncovering some kind of alliance between Dragos and Roth?
If he’d had cause to contact the Order in Boston before, now he couldn’t reach them fast enough. Reichen leaned on the accelerator, his thoughts flying as black as the night landscape zooming past the windows of the SUV
A few minutes out of the city, he spotted an Internet café. He turned off the road and headed for the place, praying like hell that his instincts were wrong about Roth and Dragos being in league together.
If his instincts were right?
Ah, fuck.
If they were right, then he had just nailed the lid shut on not only his coffin, but Claire’s, as well.
He brought her inside the café, to an empty workstation and table as far away from the rest of the patrons as he could find. Using some of the euros he’d lifted off the dead agents, Reichen bought Claire a bowl of soup and a sandwich, and purchased himself an hour’s time on the computer.
While she went to work on her meal, he opened an Internet browser on his rented workstation and brought up the secured emergency access site address that belonged to the Order. It was a generic-looking page, basic black, with an unlabeled prompt blinking on the screen as it waited for input. Reichen typed in an access code and password that Gideon back in Boston had given him some months ago, when he’d first begun his remote work for the Order. He hit the enter key and waited, uncertain if the unique ID he’d been assigned was still valid, as the prompt disappeared and he was left staring at the empty black screen.
“What’s it doing?” Claire asked, leaning close to him.
Reichen shook his head, guessing that the warriors might have written him off as dead in the three months he’d been out of contact since the destruction of his Darkhaven. “This site links up to the Boston compound. It’s fully encrypted and continuously monitored by the Order. Once I’m verified, we should get a response from Gideon.”
No sooner had he said it than the prompt reappeared, asking for method of contact. Reichen typed in one of the numbers from the Agency cell phones, advising that the line was stolen, most likely compromised, and far from secure.
Gideon’s response was instantaneous: Acknowledged, and not a problem. Calling on a scramble right now.
The cell phone started ringing.
Reichen answered, speaking his name and a string of security words at the computerized request that stated simply: Identify.
“Guess it’s a damn good thing I got lazy and kept your access data in the system,” Gideon said as the call connected. “Jesus. Good to hear your voice, Reichen. Word out of Germany was we’d lost you. I see you’re calling in from Hamburg. What the hell’s been going on over there?”
Reichen tried to condense the past several weeks into a succinct explanation of events, laying it all out, from the attack on his home by Wilhelm Roth to the systematic, often fiery payback he’d been delivering on the vampire and his known associates ever since.
He told him that Roth and his Enforcement Agency cronies were on his tail and that the situation had just gotten even more complicated now that Claire was on the run with him. And he couldn’t leave the subject of Claire without confessing to what he’d done to her in Roth’s office.
“For crissake, Reichen,” the warrior hissed on the other end of the line. “She’s his blood-bonded mate. You know he’d be within his rights to kill you for that. Hell, he could take your head in front of every Darkhaven leader in the whole vampire nation and no one would condemn him for it.”
“Yes, I know.” He couldn’t keep from looking over at Claire and thinking how far south her life had gone in the couple of days since she’d been in his company. “I don’t care what Roth might try to do to me. It’s Claire who needs protection right now. Roth is more than upset, and I wouldn’t put it past him to take his anger out on her. Just tonight his agents tried to haul her into custody on his orders. One of them hit her with a taser before I had a chance to disable him.”
Gideon blew out a sharp sigh. “Jesus. This Roth is a real prince, eh?”
“He’s about as dirty as they come,” Reichen said. “And there’s more. I’m beginning to suspect he might be involved in something much bigger than his usual shady dealings. There’s a possibility he could be mixed up with Dragos.”
“Ah, fuck… you got proof, or are you going on your gut?”
“Gut for now, but it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Okay,” Gideon said. There was a sudden clack of fingers flying over a keyboard as the warrior in Boston spoke. “First things first, we have to get both of you out of Hamburg. I’m arranging for your pickup right now, but unfortunately we won’t be able to get wings on the ground over there until tomorrow night. You got somewhere you can hole up in the next few hours before sunrise to wait for your ride?”
Reichen considered his options, which were few to nonexistent. “Nothing solid over here right now, I’m afraid. Roth’s got his fingers in the pockets of too many people. Any one of them could turn us in to him.”
“Understood. All right, listen. You’re only about three hours by train away from Denmark. If we arrange safe haven for you there with a friend of the Order, do you think you can handle making the trip on your own?”
“We’ll make it,” Reichen said, determined that they would. His gunshot wound was mending rapidly now, and his strength was on full power. If he had to make the trip to Denmark on foot, carrying Claire in his arms, by God, he’d do it.
More typing clatter sounded in the background. “I’m sending the message out to our contact as we speak,” Gideon said. “Should only take a minute or two to hear back.”
“Gideon,” Reichen broke in. “I cannot thank you enough.”
“No thanks necessary. You’ve had our back more than once. We’ve got yours now.” There was a slight pause on Gideon’s end, then a low chuckle. “Okay, we just got confirmation out of Denmark. Your contact will meet you at the train station in Varde. She knows to watch for you. Look for a statuesque blonde with a toddler son on her hip. Her name is Danika.”
Reichen listened, then gave Claire a reassuring nod. “All right. We’re on our way there now.”
Dragos jolted awake from a nightmare, cold sweat beading on his brow. He sat up in his bed and blinked at his surroundings, relieved to find that he was still in his lavish headquarters. Still lord and master of the hidden, underground domain he’d had carved out of a large tract of Connecticut granite and bedrock more than a century ago. It was all still here.
The nightmare wasn’t real.
Not yet, anyway.
And never would be, if he had anything to say about it.
In the several weeks since he’d first glimpsed the vision of his humiliating defeat—a vision that had been revealed to him in the witchy eyes of a young girl presumably now ensconced with the Order—Dragos had been plagued by nightmares. He couldn’t shake the sight of his lab lying in smoke-filled shambles, all of his precious equipment shattered and destroyed… and the UV light cage empty, its monstrous occupant—Dragos’s secret weapon—no longer held inside.
Worst of all was the pitiful vision he’d seen of himself: beaten, begging, on his knees pleading for mercy.
“Never,” he bit off sharply, as though he could banish the child seer’s revelation with his fury alone.
He got out of bed and threw a silk charmeuse robe over his naked body as he stalked out of his bedroom to the adjacent study. A large touch-screen computer monitor sat on an antique, ornate desk that had once belonged to a human emperor. Dragos ran his finger over the smooth surface of the screen, bringing up a video feed from his laboratory.
Ah, yes, he thought, disturbed by the depth of his relief Everything is still there.
The glow from the tightly spaced vertical UV bars stung his hypersensitive eyes, but he didn’t care. He zoomed in on the lethargic, half-starved creature contained inside the cell—the creature who shared the same bloodline as he. The lethal otherworlder who was, in fact, his grandfather. Not that bloodlines mattered to him personally. The Ancient’s powerful blood cells and DNA, on the other hand, had proven instrumental to Dragos’s goals.
After decades of work, after centuries of patience spent in hiding, arranging his pieces just so as he waited for the right time to make his move, Dragos’s crowning hour was almost at hand.
He’d be damned if he was going to let the Order snatch it out of his grasp before he had a chance to seize the glory that was meant to be his.
Steps were already under way to prevent the vision he’d witnessed from coming true. He was making a few changes to his operation. Taking expensive and somewhat drastic measures to protect his assets.
And he wasn’t at all content to sit by and let the warriors in Boston continue to disrupt his work. The Order was a problem he did not need—one he could not afford to risk when he was so close to knowing victory. They’d invited war when they raided his gathering outside Montreal this past summer, sending him and his private inner circle of high-ranking Breed associates fleeing into the woods like rats off a sinking ship. It had been a public sucker-punch that undermined his authority, not to mention cost him precious time. He would see the warriors pay for that.
But Dragos had another problem, too.
He brought up the teleconferencing program on his computer and dialed Wilhelm Roth’s quarters at the other end of the stronghold. The German vampire, a hard-edged director of the Hamburg Enforcement Agency, was doubtless unaccustomed to playing the subordinate, and Dragos took some amusement in the notion that the midmorning wakeup call would grate the male. To his credit, he picked up the call before the second ring, efficient as always. It was one of his saving graces as far as Dragos was concerned. That, and the fact that Roth was ruthless in his ambitions.
“Sire,” he said, his face moving in front of the monitor in his chambers. “How can I serve?”
“Status,” Dragos demanded, staring hard at his lieutenant.
Roth cleared his throat. “Everything is arranged. The operation’s first strike began last evening. It should not be long before we have engagement.”
Dragos grunted his approval. “And the other matter?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, but that was all. Dragos wondered if Roth knew that his honesty right now was the only thing keeping him alive. Roth cleared his throat. “I am dealing with something of a… a personal situation in Hamburg, sire.”
“Yes,” Dragos said, no need for coyness. He’d heard all about the devastating assault on two of the German’s residences from other contacts overseas. He’d also heard that Roth’s Breedmate was missing. After a confrontation with Enforcement Agents at Roth’s private office in Hamburg, she was presumed to have been abducted by the vampire who evidently had something of a bone to pick with Roth.
A vampire with rumored ties to the Order.
Dragos’s jaw went tight with anger as he considered the many ways a scenario like that could land a lot of troubles on his doorstep.
“What do you intend to do, Herr Roth?”
“It will be handled, sire.”
“See that it is,” Dragos hissed. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the female is a liability now. If she’s in enemy hands, then she is nothing more than a weapon to be used against you. And against me.”
Roth stared, his shrewd eyes narrowed. “She has no idea where I am. I’ve never confided in her about anything of importance. Besides, she knows her place when it comes to my affairs.”
“And how long do you think it will take her captor to find you through your blood bond with her?” Dragos asked. “If they use her to find you, they find me, as well.”
“That won’t happen, sire.”
“I require a permanent solution to this,” Dragos said, knowing what he asked of the male. “Are you prepared to carry that out, Herr Roth?”
The German smiled coldly. “Consider it done, sire.”
Dragos nodded. “Good. Obviously, so long as the female is breathing, your presence is poison to this operation. Remove yourself to Boston until you can assure me that you’ve eliminated this problem. Be gone by sundown, Herr Roth.”
The vampire inclined his head in a deferential nod. “Of course, sire. As you wish.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
Afew hours after they left the Internet café in Hamburg to board a train to Denmark, Claire and Andreas were being escorted to a rural village Darkhaven, courtesy of the Order. Their contact, a beautiful blond Breedmate named Danika, had taken them into her living quarters like family of her own—all warmth and hospitality, no questions asked.
“I hope you don’t mind cozy,” she said as she walked them into a cheery kitchen located off the back door. “We’ve only got one spare bedroom and bath, but you’re welcome to it.”
The farmhouse where Danika lived with her baby boy, Connor, and one other mated couple was small by Darkhaven standards. Usually members of the Breed population lived in mansions or large brownstones, sometimes the occasional high-rise apartment building. Darkhavens generally comprised tight-knit communities of a dozen or so individuals, everyone looking out for one another like kin, even if they were unrelated by blood.
But Danika’s living arrangements weren’t the only unusual thing about her. She was mother to a very young child, a sweet baby boy with her fair coloring and the unmistakably strong genes of a father who was Breed. She hadn’t mentioned a mate, and there seemed to be an air of wistfulness about the woman, especially when she was looking at her son.
Like now, when little Connor was leaning out of Danika’s arms to point emphatically at Andreas. The boy’s big blue eyes were wide and eager, while Andreas’s gaze was shadowed by the furrow of his brow.
“I’m sorry,” Danika said to him. “It’s the dermaglyph peeking over the top of your collar. Connor has become fascinated by them in the past couple of weeks.”
Andreas grunted and gave a nod to the Breed youngster. “He recognizes his own kind already. Smart boy.”
Danika beamed. “Yes, he is.”
Claire watched in quiet surprise as Andreas pushed up his sleeve to reveal more of his Breed skin markings, to Connor’s obvious delight. The vampire toddler reached out with his pudgy little hand and patted the beautiful swirls and arcs that ran along Andreas’s muscled forearm.
“Da,” he exclaimed. “Da! Da!”
“Oh!” Danika’s milky complected cheeks went instantly bright pink. “No, sweetheart, this isn’t your father. Oh, God… I’m sorry. How embarrassing.”
Claire laughed and Andreas chuckled, too. “It’s all right,” he said. “I assure you, I’ve been called much worse.”
Danika smiled, but that trace of sorrow was back in her eyes. “Connor’s father, Conlan, was a warrior with the Order. He was killed on a mission in Boston before Connor was born.”
“I’m so sorry,” Claire murmured, realizing how fresh the loss still was, since Danika’s son was probably not even two years old.
Danika gave a mild shrug, cleared her throat. “After I lost Conlan, I went to Scotland—his homeland—to have Connor. I thought I might stay there permanently and raise our son in the highlands Conlan loved so much, but being in his country without him only made me miss him more. I came back home to Denmark last year.”
Andreas smoothed his broad palm over the top of Connor’s pale blond head. “He would be proud of you, Danika, no matter where you choose to raise his son.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
She smiled shyly, charmed, Claire was guessing by the soft look she gave him. And Andreas was charming, particularly as he took the little boy into his big arms to let him closer explore the glyphs that so intrigued him. Claire saw a glimmer of the man she remembered from before—the carefree, charismatic man she’d fallen helplessly in love with all those years ago.
Since he’d come storming back into her life two nights ago, Claire thought that man she’d known and adored was long gone. She thought that part of him had been consumed by the flames that had taken his kin and left him the sole survivor, hellbent on revenge.
To think she had actually condemned him once for not being serious enough about life … about her. She’d grown to fear his elusive, devil-may-care ways. She’d worried that he might never be content with just one woman, and maybe he hadn’t been after all. She’d certainly heard of his numerous female companions over the years, mortal women, all of them.
She knew he had never taken a Breedmate of his own and settled down to have his sons with her, and Claire had long nurtured a secret gladness that he had remained un-bonded all this time. As for her own ill-chosen mate, her loveless match with Wilhelm Roth had produced no offspring either—a blessing, now that she was coming to understand more about Wilhelm’s treachery.
Despite Andreas’s outward recklessness and rakish leanings back when Claire had known him best, he would have made some woman a wonderful mate. She saw that now, in the way he spoke so kindly to Danika and how he took to her son with such ease.
Claire looked at him now and wondered how they’d let so much time—so many mistakes and missteps—get in their way.
She wondered how long it would take for her to forget this vibrant, magnetic side of him again, once the dust and ash settled on the perilous journey they found themselves on together.
How could her life ever go on in light of all she was learning about Wilhelm and all she yearned to have once more with Andreas?
“My goodness, I can’t believe it’s nearly dawn already,” Danika said, her melodic voice breaking through the heavy weight of Claire’s thoughts. “You must be exhausted. Would you like to see where you’ll be sleeping?”
Claire nodded, afraid her feelings had shown all over her face, for the way the other Breedmate was looking at her with such tenderness and sympathy. She schooled her features into a placid, unreadable mask—a skill she’d perfected during her years as Wilhelm Roth’s mate. “What I could really use is a nice hot bath,” she said, feeling Andreas’s gaze fix on her, even though it had seemed a perfectly reasonable request.
“Of course,” Danika replied. She glanced to Andreas, who was still holding the delighted Connor. “Would you mind watching him while I show Claire upstairs?”
“No problem,” he said, his eyes pinning Claire with an intensity that made her blood sizzle in her veins. “Take whatever time you need. The little guy and I will be fine on our own.”
Claire felt his hot stare following her, as palpable as a lingering caress, as Danika led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the second floor of the house.
“The bathroom is here,” the tall blond female said, gesturing to the open door of a full bath at the top of the stairs. “No one uses this part of the house, so please consider it yours. Here is the bedroom at the end of the hallway.”
Claire could hardly contain her contented sigh as she walked into the inviting chamber with its golden hardwood floors, dark cherry furnishings, and king-size, quilt-covered bed. It had been a long time since she’d been in a room that exuded such homespun, simple warmth.
“I set out a sleep shirt for you, and you’ll find plenty of towels in the bathroom. I don’t know what you might be used to at home, but I hope you’ll be comfortable enough here.”
“It’s lovely,” Claire replied. She drifted over to the massive bed and trailed her fingers across the careful needlework on the quilt’s beautiful teal, gray, and cream Nordic design. “This room reminds me of my family’s home in Rhode Island.”
Danika smiled. “Oh, then you’re American?” She walked over to a tall, footed armoire and opened the cabinet’s burnished-brass-handled doors. “I didn’t think you sounded like a German native. No accent at all.”
“No. I came to Europe many years ago, to study music, actually.” Claire walked over to help the other woman retrieve a couple of extra pillows and a folded wool blanket. “I suppose I was very idealistic then, like many young people. As for me, I was torn between my love of the piano and my personal need to do something important with my life, like saving the world.”
“I’m not sure the world can be saved,” Danika said, turning a solemn blue gaze on her. “There’s so much corruption and tragedy everywhere you look. Good people die all the time, even the ones whose only faults are striving to do good work and make things better for others.”
Claire nodded. “My parents were those kind of people. My mother left a very comfortable life in New England to help bring clean water and medical supplies to a small country in Africa. She met my father, a young doctor from Zimbabwe, while she was working overseas. They fell in love almost instantly, but at that time, marriage wasn’t an easy thing to obtain for a white American woman and a black man from Africa. When my mother became pregnant with me, she returned to the States until I was born. My father stayed behind to continue his work and wait for us to come back to be a family. A few months later, conflict broke out in the region. My mother couldn’t bear to be away from him while the village they’d worked so hard to build up was being threatened by war. She went back to Africa, and within a month of her arrival they were both killed when rebel forces shot up their camp.”
“Oh, Claire.” Danika pulled her into a caring embrace. “How awful for you and the rest of your family. I’m so sorry.”
It had been a long time since she’d thought about losing her parents—a couple known to her only by pictures and stories her grandmother in Rhode Island had shared with her as she was growing up, parentless and different, yet a child of privilege in Newport’s high society. Now all her relatives in the States were gone. The house in Newport was still held in trust for her, cared for by a private staff who looked after the grounds and the basic maintenance of the place, but it had been nearly two decades since Claire had been back. She missed it suddenly, missed the feeling of truly being home.
Danika released her after a moment and attempted a lighter topic. “So, which of your goals did you end up pursuing?”
“Neither, in fact,” Claire admitted. “Not long after I arrived in Germany, I had my first run-in with one of the Breed. He was very young—a teenager at most. It was late at night, I was walking home from a concert by myself. I thought he wanted to steal my purse, but he was actually after something else. He was about to bite me when another Breed male stopped him.”
“Andreas?” Danika guessed, smiling.
Claire shook her head. “No, not him. It was someone … else. Someone very important in Hamburg, although I didn’t know it at the time. He caught the scent of my blood when the other male knocked me to the ground and I skinned my knees. He realized right away that I was a Breedmate, so he drove the other vampire off and took me in as his ward. I didn’t meet Andreas until later.”
And, like her parents’ doomed relationship, she and Andre also fell instantly, impossibly, in love. She’d spent the past thirty years trying to forget him. Trying to convince herself that she wasn’t still in love with him after all this time.
“Such a long time to be kept apart. I know how difficult it is, being denied of the thing your heart craves the most,” Danika murmured somewhat absently
Claire swung an astonished look at her. “What… how did you know—”
The other Breedmate sucked in her breath. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to intrude on your thoughts.” She brought her index finger up to her temple. “My talent, I’m afraid. I don’t like to read thoughts, and to tell you the truth, most of the time I hate that I can. Unfortunately, since Conlan has been gone my talent is becoming unmanageable. I haven’t taken another mate, nor do I intend to, and without the regular intake of Conlan’s blood, my ability seems to turn on and off at its own whim. I’m sorry, Claire. It was very rude of me.”
“It’s all right.”
“I don’t know that it will bring you any comfort, but you are not suffering alone. Andreas feels it, as well, you know. He feels the same regret that you carry inside.” Danika smiled gently. “His thoughts were just as plain to me in the other room as yours are now. He is torn and broken from rage, but he’s hurting in another way, too.”
Claire stared at her, unable to speak. Barely able to breathe.
“Life is precious,” Danika continued. “And it is so very short, even for those like us. Four hundred and two years with Conlan wasn’t nearly enough time. We don’t often get second chances, not in life or in love. If I had just one more minute with my Conlan, I wouldn’t waste a second of it on regret. Let Andreas know how you truly feel.”
“But he isn’t mine,” Claire murmured softly. “Not anymore.”
“Try to tell that to your heart.” Danika gave Claire’s hand a light squeeze. “Try to tell that to his.”
Reichen avoided going upstairs for hours after Danika had returned to collect her son. She and Connor had gone to find their own rest for the day, leaving Reichen to prowl the quiet farmhouse, killing time and trying not to think about the fact that Claire was in bed somewhere above him.
In bed all alone, her sweet body relaxed and languid. Her buttery light brown skin like velvet to the touch, every exquisite inch of her clean and soft and warm …
Good Christ.
Since the moment she asked about taking a bath, she’d doomed him to imagining her undressed and fragrant from a long, hot soak. He’d been tempted almost beyond reason to vault up the stairs behind her when she left with Danika, a feeling that had yet to pass. There was nothing he wanted more than to be with her right now, to comfort her and let her know that she was protected from Roth and his cronies. To assure her that no matter what evil was at work around them, he would keep her safe at any cost.
Things he’d failed to provide his kin or Helene.
Spending time around Danika and her young son had brought his attention back to that reality with scathing focus. He wasn’t here to smooth over Claire’s fears, any more than he was here to slake his own longings for her or to answer the primal call of the blood bond that would draw him to her always. A blood bond he’d imposed on her, he was quick to remind himself.
No. He was here now for one purpose: vengeance.
Everything else—his wants and desires, his future, his right to claim even the thinnest moment of selfish joy—had burned away in the fire that devoured his Darkhaven home.
Longer ago than that, he thought grimly, reflecting back on the night he’d last seen Claire. It had been a night of stupidity and violence that had left him beaten and bloodied, baking in an open field under a harsh morning sun. Until that moment, he’d known nothing of the power he’d been cursed with at birth—a power passed down to him by a Breedmate mother he’d never met, who hadn’t lived long enough to warn him of what his fury could do.
He’d learned that lesson in a brutally vivid moment that awful morning outside Hamburg, and the horror of what he’d done had never left him.
So many innocent lives had crumbled to ash around him. His own life was heading swiftly in that same direction, but he still had time to see justice met, at least for those lives that had been lost at Wilhelm Roth’s command. He had no doubt that his anger and hatred were only strengthening the fire living inside him. It would destroy him sooner than later, but he’d be damned if he went down without taking Roth with him.
He only prayed that his resolve was firm enough to keep Claire far away from him as he moved ever closer to that inevitable end.
It was the depth of that conviction that finally gave him the strength to climb the stairs and find the room that Danika had given them. He also didn’t know if the couple who shared the farmhouse was aware of him and Claire, and he wasn’t about to put Danika in the position of having to lie to cover for him should the other residents happen to come down and find a stranger in their midst.
Reichen paused in front of the closed bedroom at the far end of hallway. His pulse kicked with a visceral awareness of Claire on the other side of that painted white door. He prayed she was asleep, figured she had to be after the hours he’d stalled downstairs. As quietly as he could, he turned the worn porcelain knob and peered inside.
“Hello,” she said, barely above a whisper. She was sitting up on one side of the king-size bed, wearing a thin baby blue T-shirt that didn’t quite conceal the dark buds of her nipples or the shapely swell of her breasts. A small lamp glowed on the nightstand beside her, golden light playing in her ebony hair and across her lovely face.
He scowled and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him without a sound. “You should be sleeping.”
She lifted her shoulder. “I thought the bath would relax me, but I can’t seem to close my eyes.”
He had to work damn hard to ignore the bolt of lust that shot through him with the renewed image of Claire sitting naked in a tub full of steaming water and silky white bubbles.
“Nightfall will come early,” he grumbled. “We’ve got to be ready to catch our ride back to the States at sundown. You’d better douse that lamp and try to get some rest.”
She moved on the bed, but only to reach over and gesture to the empty side. “I took one of the softer pillows, but if you’d rather have it you can.”
He glowered at her, more from the discomfort of his growing erection than her offer of his choice of pillow. Her shift on the mattress had stretched her T-shirt into a second skin. And with the dislodging of the quilt coverlet as she moved, his burning gaze fixated on the tiny scrap of her panties.
Crimson red panties, for the love of God.
He froze where he stood, every nerve ending in his body going nuclear with arousal.
“You might remember that I’m a very sound sleeper,” she said, but he was hardly hearing what she was saying. “Don’t worry about waking me up if you still toss and turn and hog the covers over there. I probably won’t even notice.”
He shook himself back to consciousness when he realized she expected him to sleep in the bed with her. Right beside her, when the only thing preventing him from acting on his unholy desire for her was a paltry slip of cotton and a minuscule triangle of red satin.
“The bed is yours,” he said, his voice a rough scrape in his throat. “This isn’t a slumber party, for fuck’s sake. You can’t actually expect me to sleep with you, Claire.”
Her expression faltered. “I didn’t mean…”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. His skin prickled with a sudden wash of heat and hunger that made his desire stoke even hotter. “Getting in bed with you is the bloody last thing I need to do right now.”
He must have sounded even more harsh than he realized, based on how quickly she glanced away from him. She shook her head, then exhaled a sigh. “The bed is big enough for both of us. That’s all I was trying to say.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his muscles twitching with the urge to move, to propel him over to where she was on the mattress and ease her down beneath him.
He wanted that so badly it was all he could see. All he could taste as the points of his emerging fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue.
“Get some sleep, Claire.”
He tore himself away from the sight of her and took his own place on the floor nearby. The hand-loomed rug that covered the old wood planks was lumpy and smelled vaguely of lemon wax. He tossed onto his side on the hard floor, the only position that didn’t make him painfully aware of the hard-on that was jutting between his thighs like a column of stone.
Had he actually tried to caution her a few minutes ago that nightfall would come early?
Like hell.
It was going to be a long fucking wait till sundown.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Claire lay on the huge bed, wide awake, staring into the shuttered darkness of the room. She hadn’t moved since Andreas took himself to the floor. Time dragged, and for quite a while she was certain he’d been just as awake and alert as she was—and just as determined to lie there in silence and pretend he didn’t notice.
But somewhere around an hour ago, his breathing had changed from the controlled inhaling and exhaling she could barely discern, to the deep, rhythmic soughing of sleep.
Claire listened to the slow sounds of his slumber, while Danika’s words about the rarity of second chances and not wasting precious time on regrets were playing over and over in her mind like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. There was so much she wanted to say to Andreas. Things she needed him to hear.
Not that he would listen. He didn’t seem inclined to let her get close enough to reach him at all. And she needed to be close to him now, if only to feel his strength beside her when everything she thought she knew about her world was crumbling at her feet.
She’d felt a wall come up between them tonight. It seemed to grow taller and less scalable the longer they were at the farmhouse Darkhaven. Claire wasn’t sure what she’d done to upset him, or maybe it was simply the fact that he’d been forced to look after her now that Wilhelm was likely gunning for them both.
For a moment she wished she’d been gifted with Danika’s talent so that Andreas’s mind, and his cryptic emotions, wouldn’t be such a mystery to her right now.
Her own ability could help her there, too. Everyone was more accessible in the dream realm. Not everything said or seen was truth, of course, but the surreal nature of dreams had a way of peeling back inhibitions.
Claire ventured a look over the expanse of the wide bed to the large bulk of Andreas’s body where he slept on the floor. She tucked her arm under her head and curled up on her side, watching him. Wondering where his dreams had taken him. She closed her eyes and thought about him as she let her body relax, willing her mind to calm and prepare for sleep.
She let her talent stretch, tendrils of awareness reaching… searching.
It usually took incredible focus to find the dreamer, but with Andreas, she’d no sooner slipped under the veil of consciousness and slumber than there he was. It had always been like that with him, as if their connection had been there from the instant they first met and had never weakened.
There had been times, long after Andreas was gone from her life, that Claire had been tempted to seek him out, if only in the dream realm. But she’d been too afraid of facing more of his rejection, and too ashamed of herself that, try as she might, she could not find for Wilhelm anything close to the love she had been unable to purge for Andreas.
After all that had happened the past couple of nights, what she felt now for Wilhelm and the blood bond that shackled her to him was a cold and biting mistrust. Contempt, if everything she was learning about him was true.
After all she’d been through with Andreas in these harrowing, intense long hours together, she had to admit to some measure of fear for the lethal individual he was now. But along with that fear had come a rush of emotion that terrified her even more for how strongly she still felt for him.
For how deeply she still wanted him, needed him.
How easily she could see herself falling back in love with him … if she’d ever truly stopped.
As she walked into his dream now, her breath caught to find him under the starlight of a clear evening, seated shirtless and barefoot in the crisp, cool grass of the parkland sanctuary she had designed for his vacant Darkhaven property. All the details were just as she had them on the architect’s model, down to the very last bench and flower bed.
Good lord. He had memorized the entire plan.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, his deep voice a vibration she felt all the way into her bones. “You knew exactly what needed to be here. Somehow, you knew.”
He didn’t turn to face her as she cautiously approached him at the edge of his dream, where the land he was imagining in his sleep hugged the glittering lake beyond. Andreas’s golden skin was luminescent in the moonlight, made all the more striking by the flourish of twisting, twining glyphs that rode his muscular back like the masterwork of an artist’s paintbrush. Claire remembered tracing those beautiful marks with her tongue; if she closed her eyes, she could still picture every unique arc and flourish that tracked over his smooth, firm skin.
“You know you shouldn’t be here,” he said once her feet stopped moving and she was standing beside him. Now he did look at her, and his expression wasn’t what she considered friendly. His irises were throwing off piercing amber light. When he curled his lip back to speak, the tips of his fangs gleamed stark white and razor sharp. “You don’t belong here, Claire. Not with me. Not like this. You shouldn’t have come in here when you weren’t invited.”
“I had to find you.”
“What for?”
“I needed to see you. I wanted… to talk…”
“Talk.” He spat the word on a huffed exhalation. Before Claire knew what he was doing, he was up on his feet, towering over her. His eyes were blazing, so hot it was a wonder her T-shirt and panties didn’t melt away as his intense gaze roamed over her from the top of her head to her bare toes. “What do you want to talk about, Frau Roth?”
“Don’t do that,” she said, wincing at his biting tone. “Don’t use him to drive a wedge between us.”
“He is the wedge between us, Claire. We both put him there, didn’t we? If you’re only regretting it now, that’s not my problem.”
She frowned at him, not wanting to feel the scrape of his words when she came there out of affection for him, as his friend. “Why are you doing this, Andre?”
“What am I doing?”
“Pushing me away. Treating me like Wilhelm and I are one and the same, both of us your enemies.”
“What would you have me do instead? Tell you that everything will work out between us in the end? Pretend that Roth doesn’t exist so that you and I can pick up where we left off all those years ago?”
Claire glanced down, feeling foolish for having wanted him to say those very things—and more. Words he might never offer her again, even in the flimsy haven of a dream.
He lifted her chin on the tips of his strong fingers. “We can’t change anything that’s happened, Claire. I won’t stand here and give you lies to make either one of us feel better. And I’m not going to give you promises that I know I can’t keep.”
“No,” she said. “You’d rather run away.”
His mouth flattened and he shook his head, his eyes glittering darkly. “You think I wanted to leave you.”
Not a question, but a quiet accusation.
“Would it matter if I did?” she tossed back at him. She scoffed, still stinging from the wound he’d inflicted on her thirty years ago. “Never mind, don’t answer that. I wouldn’t want to press you into saying something only to make me feel better.”
Realizing she’d made a mistake in coming there, she pivoted, about to walk off and leave him to sulk alone in his dream. But before she could take a single step away, his fingers wrapped around her arm and he held her in place. He moved in front of her, his face taut and deadly serious.
“Leaving you was the last thing I ever wanted to do.” He scowled, his grip holding her tighter, moving her farther into the heated wall of his body. “It was the hardest goddamn thing I’ve ever done. Ever, Claire.”
She stared up at him speechless, lost in the dark glimmer of his eyes. In the next moment, he bent his head down and kissed her, their mouths fusing together in a long, breathless joining.
She never wanted to stop. She didn’t think she could let go of him now that he was in her arms again, even if only in her dreams.
“God, I want you, Claire,” he moaned against her mouth, the sharp prick of his fangs grazing her lips. “I want to be with you now… Ah, Christ, I have needed to be with you for so long.”
Because it was a dream, wishes often need only be whispered to make them so. In an instant, Claire found herself pressed down on the soft, cool grass, Andreas’s magnificent body poised above her.
They were naked now, clothing having fallen away as if it were made of mist. But even in dreams, Andreas’s skin was warm and firm to the touch. His broad shoulders and thick arms, his muscular chest and ridged abdomen … all of him was real and strong and perfect in its masculinity. Claire couldn’t keep her eyes from traveling the length of him. She remembered all too vividly that Andreas’s perfection extended farther down, as well.
Because it was a dream, she cast aside the knowledge of all the reasons they should not be together. She knew only the calling of her heart, and as her palm came to rest on the center of his chest, she knew the calling of his heart, too. His pulse hammered against her fingers. His breath was coming fast, heavy, hot with need. Claire looked up into eyes that burned as bright as any flame, his face a tight, tormented mask.
“Yes,” she hissed, almost incapable of words.
She sucked in her breath as the broad head of his cock nudged her, cleaved her. With a slow push of his hips he was sliding inside her, burying himself in a long, gloriously deep thrust. Claire cried out, arching up to take all of him within her, needing him to fill her. He stretched her tight, his length touching her very core.
“Oh, yes,” she panted as they found a familiar rhythm, fitting together as though they’d never been apart.
He was a ferocious lover; she knew that about him already and reveled in his animalistic intensity. Every hard stroke made her shatter just a little, every low moan and growl sent a shiver coursing through her veins.
He knew just how to move with her, just the right tempo to wring every ounce of pleasure from her body. Claire felt the first tremors of release streak through her like tiny bolts of lightning in her blood. She couldn’t contain it, had no strength to resist Andreas’s mastery of her senses.
She could only dig her fingers into the thick muscle of his shoulders and hold on as he steered her toward a splintering climax. She didn’t know if he followed her there. All she knew was the incredible wave of pleasure that rushed over her… then the sudden hollow grief of realizing Andreas was gone.
Claire called out to him in the dream, but he was nowhere to be seen.
And now the garden sanctuary where they’d lain together was gone, as well. She was sitting in the middle of a sun-baked field, daylight blinding her eyes.
“Andre?”
She got up and started walking, holding her arm up to her brow like a visor as she struggled to get her bearings. She didn’t know this place. She couldn’t make sense of the golden light, or the pungent stink of smoke and something worse, something unidentifiable that filled her nostrils and choked her throat. Coughing, Claire stepped over the scorched vegetation.
She stumbled, her foot catching on a charred black lump that lay on the ground.
Horror washed over her even before her senses processed what she was seeing.
It was a child.
A dead child, burned beyond recognition.
“Oh, my God.” Claire backed away, repulsed. Stricken. “Andreas!”
She swiveled her head and cried out with relief to see the broad green lawn and the stone-and-timber mansion that had been Andreas’s Darkhaven estate seated at the top of a gently sloping incline. Claire ran toward the house. She was naked and cold, terrified and confused by what she’d just seen outside.
“Andre?” she called frantically as she walked along the back of the mansion, seeing no light or movement inside. “Andreas … are you in there?”
She went around to the front, her arms wrapped around her nudity as she climbed the steps to the elegant entry. She knocked on the door. It eased open on silent hinges, but no one waited for her inside.
Claire stepped over the threshold and into a strange mausoleum of white. Everywhere she looked—the floors, the walls, the furnishings—all of it was pristine, snowy white. And quiet as a tomb.
“Andreas, please. I’m frightened. Where are—”
He emerged from one of the rooms off the ghostly foyer. He was naked like she was, his eyes still burning amber, his fangs still filling his mouth. He stalked forward without a word and hauled her into a bruising, unyielding grasp. Kissed her with so much heat and desire, her knees almost buckled beneath her.
Then, just as she was beginning to feel safe again, he drew back from her. He let go so forcefully, thrusting her out of his reach, that she stumbled a bit before catching herself. Something wet and slippery was under her feet. She slid in it… an instant before the coppery tang of spilled blood registered in her nose.
“Oh, my God.”
Claire looked down at the floor, which was no longer white but veined marble. Marble that was bloodstained and awful with gore. The walls and furnishings were no longer pristine and colorless either. Now everything was ruined, bullet-riddled, bloodied. Furniture and wall art toppled, broken, all of it in shambles.
“Oh, no… Oh, God… no.”
She didn’t know what to make of the burnt field or the tragic child outside, but there could be no mistaking what she was seeing here. Claire looked at him in abject horror and heartsick misery, realizing that he was showing her the destruction of his home. Destruction called for by Wilhelm Roth, just as he’d told her that first night at the country house. She put her hand out to Andreas in support, but he didn’t take it. His expression was hard, condemning. When she glanced down, she saw why.
Blood coated her fingers and palms. She was splattered with it all over her front, even her hair was sticky with it. And there, at her feet, was the lifeless body of a little boy—one of Reichen’s nephews’ sons, murdered by gunfire. Still more bodies lay elsewhere in the mansion, on the first floor, halfway up the staircase, near the door to the cellar down the hall. She was standing in the center of a massacre she wouldn’t have been able to imagine in the worst of her nightmares.
When she looked to Andreas again, he was engulfed in white-hot, deadly heat. Flames leapt off his body to ignite the walls and furniture. In mere seconds, all Claire could see was fire.
The scream ripped out of her throat, raw and despairing.
She jolted herself out of the dream, unable to bear another moment of the ugliness of it.
Sickened and trembling, she sat up in the bed and threw aside the quilt and sheets. No blood on her now. No cinders. Just the cold sweat of true terror and the anguish of having witnessed Andreas’s horrific nightmare for herself.
Claire expected him to wake up and offer her some kind of explanation or comfort. He had to know how shaken up she was now. But he kept on sleeping, lying still and breathing unruffled on the floor next to the bed. He let her weather her deep distress alone, as if he’d wanted her to be disturbed—horrified—by what he’d shown her.
Perhaps he’d wanted her to be horrified by him in some way as well.
Claire waited until her pulse leveled out and her body stopped trembling, then she inched down under the covers and counted the hours until dusk.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
Fucking place is dead tonight,” Chase muttered as he scanned the crowded dance club and apparently found little to his liking. “Should have hit the north side of the city like I told you, instead of wasting our time in Dorchester.”
Kade shrugged, slanting a grin at Brock, the third member of their patrol. “You wanna see dead clubs, let me take you to Alaska. It’s pathetic, man. We’ve got more moose per square mile than women.”
“Is that right?” Chase grunted. “No wonder you jumped at the chance to get out of there and come to Boston last year. How many months of freezing your nuts off before all those moose start looking like prime pieces of ass?”
At Brock’s low chuckle, Kade curled his lip back off the points of his fangs and saluted both of the Breed males with double-barreled middle fingers.
“Well, this has been fun, but I’m outta here,” Chase announced. He scrubbed his hand over his stubbled jaw, his blue eyes looking a bit dodgy and unfocused under the edge of his black knit skullcap. “Got an itch that won’t get scratched hanging out in this dive. Good luck with the moose-hunting.”
Kade gave the ex–Enforcement Agent a nod. “See you back at the compound.”
“Eventually,” Chase replied, already heading for the club’s exit.
When he was gone, Brock blew out a low sigh and shook his dark head. “That son of a bitch has got a serious problem.”
“You mean, other than walking around all the time with that Agency-installed stick shoved up his ass?” Kade drawled, looking at the big warrior who’d been recruited into the Order out of Detroit around the same time he’d come in from Alaska.
It wasn’t that Kade didn’t like Sterling Chase—or Harvard, as he was sometimes referred to, on account of his fancy Ivy League pedigree. Chase was a competent enough warrior, one of the best, in fact. He was a crack shot and one hell of a man to have at your back in combat, but on the personal side, he was as cold as a glacier.
“I don’t know what his deal is,” Brock said. “But he’d better watch his step, is all I’m saying. He strikes me as the kind who’s got one foot in the grave and the other one eager to follow. He just doesn’t give a shit about anything, and that is dangerous. Not only to himself, but to anyone who needs to count on him.”
Kade considered that as he glanced out across the bar and dance floor.
A couple of young females were heading over from a table nearby. Brock gave them his knockout grin, the one that never failed to net him the hottest woman in any gathering. The guy had moves, no doubt about it. Not that Kade was any kind of slouch. He eyed the pair of lovelies as they sauntered through the crowd, locked on to the two vampires like laser-guided missiles.
“You can have the blonde,” he murmured, setting his own sights on the brunette with the legs that went on forever under her short red leather miniskirt.
It took all of three seconds for Brock and him to talk the ladies into stepping outside with them. Unfortunately, once they were out in the parking lot, it only took another three for Kade’s nose to twitch with the prickling of his Breed senses coming online with a vengeance.
He smelled blood.
Fresh blood, and a lot of it, coming from somewhere around the rear of the club.
A glance to Brock told him that the other vampire hadn’t missed the coppery tang of spilled human red cells, either. They broke into a tandem jog, leaving the women complaining in their wake as the two of them hauled ass to the back of the building.
Nothing there.
The lone working security light mounted to the roof of the place shone down on empty concrete and sparse, weed-choked grass. But the scent of blood permeated the air, particularly strong for Kade and any of his kind.
“There,” he said, spotting the dark stain in the dirt a few feet away from him.
Spatters in close proximity to each other soaked the dry earth near a leaning stretch of ragged chain-link fence. The bleeding human took the worst of his damage over there, and the trail of hemoglobin on the ground made it clear that whatever had happened, the victim wasn’t going to get too far before he or she bled out completely.
“This isn’t only human blood,” Brock said, his deep bass voice grim. “The attacker was Breed. He spilled some of his own blood in the process.”
Now that the warrior mentioned it, Kade’s nose also picked up on something other than basic Homo sapiens cells. “Not a Rogue,” he guessed, detecting none of the foul odor left behind by the addicts of their race. “Who else would be idiot enough to feed this carelessly and let his Host stagger off like a stuck pig?”
Brock shook his head, but suspicion darkened his steady, obsidian gaze. Although he didn’t say it, Kade read the quiet doubt in the big male’s eyes.
“Chase?” Kade scoffed. “No fucking way.”
“Something’s not right with him, man.”
“Not this,” Kade said. The ex-agent was no Mr. Rogers, but to bleed out a human and break one of the Breed’s most essential laws? When he said he had an itch that needed scratching, he sure as hell couldn’t have meant something like this …
Brock nodded gravely. “Maybe we’d better go have a look, just to be sure.”
They took off, following the blood trail across a vacant lot and down a narrow alley. The deeper they went, the more serious the blood spill became. Spatters turned to pools, some of them spread wide and smeared from where the victim had apparently fallen then somehow managed to get up and run some more.
The trail led them to the entrance of a junkyard at the end of an industrial area. The place was gated, but the padlock and heavy chain that secured it had been loosened. There was just enough room for someone to squeeze inside. And someone had; the wet crimson stains on the latch and edge of the gate left no question about that.
“Come on,” Kade said, wrenching the thing open wide enough for Brock and him to slip through.
He heard the rush of movement the instant before the big black dogs came barreling around a pile of scrap and rubbish. Two rottweilers, big as tanks and mean as hell.
“Holy shit!”
Brock’s shout was all but drowned out by the savage barks and growls of the oncoming dogs. No animal alive could take a vampire, but that didn’t mean the sight of a combined three hundred pounds of seething, furious canine wasn’t cause for a little alarm. Kade stood firm, his legs braced wide as the pair of rotties swiftly closed the distance on him.
He stared them down, eye to eye.
They slowed… then stopped, both of them dropping into a cower at his feet. The hounds whimpered, shifting on their bellies and keeping their big heads low as their dark eyes searched out his favor.
“Get out of here.”
They loped off, as docile as puppies.
Brock gaped. “What the hell was that?”
“This way,” Kade said, ignoring the question and the astonished stare that followed him as he stalked deeper into the junkyard. They had bigger things to deal with right now.
It wasn’t hard to find the bloodied victim. The young man had collapsed against a rusted metal crate, one jeans-clad leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee. He looked boneless and weary, like a puppet whose strings had been severed. He held his hand up against his throat where the bleeding was the worst. He couldn’t stanch the flow. In just a few more minutes, he would be dead.
“Jesus Christ,” Brock hissed.
The warrior’s voice was thick and strained, but whether from revulsion or the simple fact that the sight and smell of so much fresh blood made even the most controlled vampire thirst like he was starving, there was no way to tell.
Kade’s own fangs tore farther out of his gums as he looked at the bleeding human. He tried his best to mask the sharp tips as he edged closer. “What happened to you?” he asked, despite the obvious injuries that could only have come from one of his kind.
“Jumped… me,” the human wheezed. “My neck… fucker… bit me.”
When the man removed his hand to show him the injury, the copper punch of his blood hit Kade like a fist to the gut. He’d fed only yesterday, but the urge to drink again pulled at him. His vision sharpened, bathing everything in amber.
“Who bit you?” Brock asked the human, smoothly stepping in when Kade had to glance away. “Can you describe who did this to you?”
The man exhaled a slow, shuddering sigh. He didn’t have long now. He looked up, eyes listless and glassy in the dark. He lifted his arm, slowly extending his finger to point somewhere past Brock’s thick shoulder. “Him,” he gasped, the voice thready and airless. “Behind you … that’s him …”
Kade and Brock swung their heads around in unison—just in time to see a huge Breed male running for the back acre of the junkyard. The vampire wore black fatigues and a long-sleeved black knit shirt. His head was shaved bald, the back of his naked skull covered in an unmistakable pattern of dermaglyphs
“Holy hell,” Kade muttered.
He broke into a run with Brock thundering at his heels. They bolted for the rear of the littered yard, but the Gen One male in front of them was ten times faster. He vaulted up onto a mountain of crushed cars in one swift leap, then he was gone.
It wasn’t Chase who’d brutalized the human and left him for dead, but another Breed male who was recently familiar to all of the Order. A Gen One who’d joined them only a few weeks ago.
“Hunter,” Brock growled. “Son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Claire felt a bit queasy from the flight as she and Andreas stepped off the Order’s private jet in Boston later that night. It had been a long trip, mostly because of the chasm of uncomfortable silence that seemed to have opened up between Andreas and her. Fortunately her lack of sleep after the dreamwalking disaster with him had made her plenty tired on the flight from Denmark to the States. She slept most of the way but he had seemed much too edgy for rest.
Even now, as he guided her across the private hangar toward a sleek black Land Rover that pulled up to greet them, Andreas practically vibrated with broody, dangerous energy.
“Tegan and Elise,” he told her as a big tawny-haired Breed male and his petite blond mate climbed out of the vehicle. At the sight of them, Andreas’s demeanor changed from the maddening aloofness he’d been subjecting her to on the flight, to one of warm familiarity. “My friends,” he said, stepping forward to greet the golden, beautiful couple.
In one of his brief moments of conversation on the flight, Andreas had mentioned that Elise had been mated to a director of the Enforcement Agency here in Boston. She’d lost him a few years past to an altercation with a Rogue while on the job, and had lost her only son more recently than that. Claire wasn’t privy to the details of how Elise had found happiness again with Tegan, but it was obvious from the glow of peace they both radiated as they approached that the two of them were deeply in love.
Claire hung back as Andreas took the female’s hand to his lips and brushed her fingers with a chaste but friendly kiss. She had no right to feel the least bit possessive of him, but the pang stabbed her a little as the pretty Breedmate took Andreas into a welcoming hug.
Elise’s mate looked nearly as affected as Claire felt. The tall, muscular Breed warrior had a hard-edged look about him, from the wild tousle of his golden hair, to the glittering gem-green eyes that watched over his woman with a combination of pride and purely masculine protectiveness. Andreas had said Tegan was Gen One Breed, and seeing him up close, Claire would have guessed it on her own. His studied stillness called to mind the mien of a big cat; all those muscles might seem coiled and at ease, but it would take only a fraction of a second for him to spring into deadly action if he felt his world or the mate he openly adored were threatened in any way.
“Hello, Claire. I’m Elise,” Tegan’s Breedmate said, releasing Andreas to come over and greet her with equal kindness. While the two males shook hands, Claire found herself engulfed in a quick, welcoming hug. Elise stepped back, her pale lavender eyes bright with intellect and warmth, her chin-length light blond bob framing her delicate face. “It’s very nice to meet you. Even though our paths never crossed in the Agency, I am familiar with some of your philanthropic work in Hamburg. You’ve really done a lot for the Darkhaven communities over there.”
Claire shrugged faintly uncomfortable with the praise, given the purpose of her emergency arrival in the States with Andreas. And although the two males spoke in low voices, she heard Tegan’s murmured condolences on the deaths of Andreas’s kin and the destruction of his Darkhaven.
“I recall one of your young nephews and his shy Breedmate who’d been with child when I last saw you in Berlin a year ago,” Tegan added, his brows furrowed over those fierce green eyes.
Andreas gave him a sober nod. “They asked me to be godfather while you were there, I believe.”
“Yes,” the warrior replied, a faint smile in remembrance before his expression darkened with sympathy. “We were all stunned to hear what happened. The attack won’t go unmet, not if the Order has anything to say about it.”
Tegan sent the briefest look in Claire’s direction, unspoken acknowledgment of her mate’s hand in the tragedy that Andreas alone had managed to survive. Her sense of guilt and awkwardness increased, as did the tense knot in her belly. Her nerves were stretched peculiarly taut, putting an anxious flutter in her chest.
Andreas put his hand on Tegan’s shoulder as they continued their quiet conversation. “I want your word on something, my friend. If it turns out that Dragos is even remotely connected to what happened to my Darkhaven, I’ll do whatever I can to help you get the bastard and shut him down. But Roth is mine alone. Can you give me that much?”
The warrior inclined his head in a slow nod. “I know the kind of hatred you’re feeling. I’ve been there myself. I’m the last one to tell you how to deal with your own demons, but just be careful, yeah? Plenty of bastards out there deserve a good killing, but vengeance will consume you if you don’t control it.”
It may be too late for that advice, Claire thought, watching Andreas’s rigid stance and haunted, hardened gaze as the four of them made their way toward the waiting SUV His need to avenge his family and his human lover only seemed to be growing stronger, more volatile, for the fact that the justice he craved had yet to be realized.
After the horrors he showed her in his dream, there was a part of her that understood his rage, even shared it. But from what she’d seen of him these past couple of days, she worried that his own life might mean nothing to him. Would he hold anything sacred if he finally got his chance to destroy the one who’d hurt him?
Wilhelm.
Just thinking about him turned her stomach with contempt. Claire couldn’t cling to any reasonable hope that Andreas’s accusations against Wilhelm had no basis. But what terrified her the most was that her involvement with Andreas now could bring no good—not to either of them. Her affection for him was something he didn’t seem to want or need. He had a single purpose in living now, and she knew him well enough to understand that if it came down to a choice between his own life and getting the justice he felt he needed, he would spend his last breath seeing that purpose through to the end.
The idea of Andreas dying—again, after the miracle of his resurrection and return to her life—was something Claire would be unable to bear. The thought nearly staggered her as she neared the vehicle and felt the cool night air coming in from the city beyond.
The feeling of unease dogged her now, and there was a mounting jangle swelling in her veins. A waking sense of a presence she hadn’t quite recognized until now, when it was clanging in her cells like an alarm.
Wilhelm was near.
Oh, God. How had she missed that? She’d been so wrapped up in Andreas and his friends, in her own confusion of emotions, that she hadn’t picked up on her body’s signals that her blood-bonded mate was somewhere in the area.
Somewhere in the city of Boston, she was certain of it.
What was he doing here?
“Claire, are you okay?” Elise placed her hand on her arm in concern. “What is it?”
She shook her head, more fervently when Andreas paused with Tegan and turned a questioning, suspicious look on her.
“I feel a little light-headed,” she said, casting for a reasonable excuse that didn’t involve telling Andreas that the enemy he intended to kill—who would be equally determined to kill him, as well—was probably only a few miles away from where he stood. Andreas couldn’t know that Wilhelm was so close now. She couldn’t let him know that, she thought, a sudden dread crawling into her throat.
“What’s wrong?” Andreas’s deep voice soaked into her, but it wasn’t enough to calm the alarm that was rising inside her now.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, lying only because the truth would send him storming straight into death’s hands. “I’m fine. I haven’t flown in a while, so it’s probably just a bit of air sickness. I’ll be okay. I need a moment to let it pass, that’s all. Is there a restroom somewhere?”
“Over there,” Elise said, gesturing toward the annex terminal nearby. “I’ll take you—”
“No,” Claire blurted. “I can find it on my own. Please … wait here. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
All that kept her from running was Andreas’s dubious look. He knew she was distressed; the blood bond that linked him to her now would tell him that easily enough. But it was her other bond—the one that would shackle her to Wilhelm Roth for as long as he lived—that sent her fleeing in a state of near panic.
She flew into the restroom, breathless and trembling. If she felt in her blood that Wilhelm was near, then he had to know that she was in the city now, too. The odds of him coming to look for her were too awful to consider. Conversely if Andreas were to force her to help him find Wilhelm through her blood bond? She would never forgive herself, or him.
And there was a larger, more troubling question, as well. What if Wilhelm Roth truly was involved in something bigger than she’d ever guessed—something related to Dragos? How could Andreas stand up to Wilhelm’s death squads and the greater evil of someone not even the Order had been able to defeat thus far?
Oh, God. She couldn’t let Andreas know that Wilhelm was in the area.
As much as he wanted his revenge, Claire wanted him alive even more. She could not be a party to his destruction, which was exactly what she was right now, so long as she remained in his company.
She had to get out of Boston.
She had to get far away from Andreas… before the bond she shared with Wilhelm Roth betrayed her and led him directly to his death.
“You sure that’s what you saw? Because this is some serious shit, and I need to be absolutely clear.” Lucan stopped his pacing of the tech lab to look at Kade and Brock, who’d just come in from patrol with one hell of a report. “There’s no doubt in either of your minds that it was Hunter.”
“Yeah,” Kade said, raking his fingers through the thicket of his spiky black hair. His dark-lashed, quicksilver eyes held Lucan’s gaze. “It was him. Hard to mistake those glyphs, and it’s not as if we run into Gen Ones every night on patrol.”
Lucan grunted. “And he saw you both—he recognized you, too?”
“Son of a bitch looked right at us before he disappeared into the city,” Brock replied. The black warrior bared his teeth in a scarcely contained snarl. “It was like he wanted us to see him. Like he wanted us to see what he had done.”
While Lucan absorbed that bit of happy news, the tech lab’s doors whisked open and Chase came stalking into the room. He smelled of gunpowder, adrenaline, and the metallic odor of coagulating human blood.
At the interruption, Gideon turned away from his computers as a screen full of hacked data scrolled behind him. “Jesus, Harvard. What the hell happened to you?”
The ex-agent dropped into a slouch in the nearest chair and swept off his black knit skullcap to toss it on the conference table in front of him. “I just spent the last hour disposing of a dead gangbanger over on the north side of town. Someone tore the bastard’s throat out and practically drained him. Left him lying where he dropped, right out in the open for anyone to find the body.”
Lucan caught Kade’s sidelong glance. The description of the injuries and the brazen manner of the attack was too damned similar to be coincidence. “You see any trace of the vampire who did it?”
Chase looked up and hesitated, as though he wasn’t sure he ought to speak his suspicions aloud. “I saw someone in the area, but he took off before I got a close enough look to positively ID him.”
“Yeah, well, we sure as shit got close enough,” Kade interjected.
Chase’s steely blue eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“After you left the club tonight, Brock and I ran across the same kind of thing in Dorchester. Human with a serious case of shredded larynx, trailing blood for about two blocks and left for dead in a public area. When we tracked the victim, his killer was still hanging close. Big bastard with Gen One glyphs and a shaved head.”
“Ah, fuck,” Chase said on a slow exhale. “So, it really was Hunter. I saw him, too, but my gut was telling me not to condemn him until I got a better look. Damn, I know the guy doesn’t have a lot of social skills, given his background, but this shit is psychotic.”
“Guess we don’t have to ask him what he likes to do in his spare time,” Gideon put in dryly.
Lucan shot his fellow warriors a dark look. “If anyone sees him or hears from him, I wanna know ASAP. And if any of you witness another human slaying like the ones tonight and our boy is in the vicinity and refuses to come in peacefully you’ve got my permission to take the bastard out.”
“Shit, Lucan. You serious?” Gideon gave a shake of his head. “There’s a little girl living here at the compound who’s going to have her heart torn up if anything happens to Hunter. He might not be winning any personality contests, but Mira adores him. Odd as this is going to sound, I think the feeling is mutual. You’ve seen how careful he is with that kid. He knows that if it wasn’t for Mira pleading for his life after the raid on Dragos’s gathering, Niko would have put a bullet in his skull. Hunter would do anything for that kid.”
“That doesn’t diminish the fact of what he is,” Lucan reminded Gideon and the others. “I want to believe he’s on our side as much as anyone else—hell, the way things are going lately, we need him on our side. But let’s not forget that until three months ago he was just another weapon in Dragos’s arsenal. A stone-cold, deadly weapon.”
Gideon gave an accepting nod. “Maybe Tegan ought to have a talk with him, see what kind of a reading he gets off soldier-boy now,” he said, referring to Tegan’s ability to discern someone’s emotions with a touch. An ability that had given Hunter a green light when he’d pledged his arm in service to the Order the past summer in Montreal.
“Tegan’s running a pickup at the airport,” Lucan said. “Anyone know when Hunter was due back from his patrols tonight?”
At the round of shrugs that circled the room, Lucan blew out a sigh. “We’ve got enough on our plates right now without dealing with shit like this. I want it contained, and I want Hunter pulled in ASAP so we can get some fucking answers.”
Kade, Brock, and Chase all murmured their agreement, then headed out of the tech lab together. When they were gone, Lucan turned his attention back to Gideon.
“If you’ve got any good news out of those missing persons’ reports that Dylan and Savannah have been working on with the area Darkhavens, I’ll be glad to hear it.”
From the look that Gideon gave him, Lucan got the feeling his night was going to go from grim to worse.
Reichen sat in the Rover with Tegan and Elise, growing more anxious by the minute. Claire had been gone for a while now. Seventeen minutes and counting.
She’d all but run away immediately after he and Tegan had been discussing what to do about Wilhelm Roth. It had been callous of him to speak so insensitively while she was present; he realized that now. Regardless of the hatred he felt for Roth, the male was still Claire’s mate of many years, and that did count for something. He owed her an apology, which he would give her as soon as she came back to the vehicle.
He’d sensed Claire’s quiet discomfiture during the flight, too, and knew he was also to blame for that. He felt like an ass after what happened when she’d walked into his dream at Danika’s place. The sex, while incredible, hadn’t been planned. He had wanted her so badly, and once she was standing there in front of him—her dream self or not—he’d been incapable of pushing her away.
It was the other part of the dream that he regretted.
Equally impossible to curb, he’d had no intention of bringing Claire into the center of the carnage at his Darkhaven. Nor had he meant to expose her to the other bit of nightmarish truth that had haunted him for a long time, and always would.
No one needed to witness that kind of horror, least of all her. She wasn’t to blame for any of it, but that hadn’t stopped his mind from projecting her into the carnage and, worse, into the role of Helene. His guilt over everything that had happened to his kin and to Helene was still a raw ache in his soul.
And yes, perhaps in some paranoid corner of his heart he worried that, like Helene, Claire could be used against him—that her blood bond might betray him in some way to Roth. There was little more Roth could do to hurt him; he’d already taken everything Reichen had.
But he could hurt Claire.
Reichen had endured and survived more than he’d thought himself capable of. If any harm were to come to Claire, especially because of her unwilling involvement in his search for vengeance, he knew without a doubt that it would send him over the edge. It would kill him, no question.
“She’s been gone too long,” he murmured, an odd sense of emptiness beginning to expand in his chest. “Something’s not right.”
Elise pivoted to face him from the front passenger seat. “It has been a while. I’ll go make sure she’s okay.”
Tegan’s Breedmate got out of the SUV and headed for the terminal where Claire had gone. She came back out not even a minute later, a look of concern tightening her mouth as she hurried back to the car. “She’s not in the bathroom. I checked all the stalls and the area just outside in the terminal. She’s not there.”
“Damn. Get in, babe,” Tegan told Elise. “She can’t be far. We’ll drive until we find her.”
“No.” Reichen opened the back door and climbed out. “I’ll take care of this. I think I know where she might have gone.”
He grasped for the blood bond that had told him she was moving farther away from him, focusing his senses on her like a beacon. The bond would lead him to her, but even without it, he had a feeling he knew where Claire would run to if she was feeling overwhelmed and confused.
Tegan put his window down and fixed his intense emerald stare on him. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”
Reichen shook his head. “Go on without me. I have to go after her.”
Tegan gave him a nod, then reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a cell phone. “Take this. The last two speed dials will connect you to the compound.”
“Thanks,” Reichen said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Claire’s footsteps echoed hollowly off the bare floors of her grandmother’s house. It had been a long time since she’d last been in the grand old Victorian that stood on the rough shore of Narragansett Bay, but it still felt the same. It still smelled the same, like old wood and furniture polish and crisp salt air. Of course, in the time since she was last here, before she’d left as a young woman to begin her studies abroad in Germany, much had changed. Her grandmother had since passed away, and now the estate was held in trust in Claire’s name, as she was the sole heir and last of her mother’s line. Not even Wilhelm knew about this place. She had kept its existence all to herself, a secret she was glad to have from him now.
The caretakers who’d been hired out of the trust had done a superb job looking after the house and the extensive grounds after her grandmother’s passing. As stipulated in the agreement, a spare key was kept behind a loose foundation brick next to the veranda—the same spot that had been used since the time when Claire’s mother was a little girl growing up in the grand old house. Claire had been counting on that key’s safekeeping when she’d fled the airport in Boston and hopped on the bus that took her down to Newport.
Finding it where it had always been had given her hope that maybe everything would be all right again. Maybe she would still find some peace—find her true home—when all of the dust settled from the upheaval of her life right now.
The trouble with that hope was that she kept picturing Andreas in her future, and that was only setting herself up for disappointment.
She tried to put him out of her mind as she drifted through the ground floor of the house, reacquainting herself with the memories of her distant past. Family portraits and framed art had been taken down and crated to preserve them. The elegant furniture her grandmother had taken such meticulous care of was shrouded in long white dust covers, giving everything a ghostly, forgotten appearance even with all the lights burning. The curtains and blinds were drawn over the windows and the wall of French doors that let out onto the patio that overlooked the ocean.
It was toward those tall French doors that Claire strode now. She pulled them open, all four pairs, and let the briny autumn wind blow in from off the Atlantic. Its call was too strong for her to resist. She stepped outside and crossed the wide bricks of the patio terrace, then walked down onto the grass, breathing deeply of the ocean scent that had always meant home to her.
Farther out was a jut of rocks that had been one of her favorite thinking spots. She went there now, navigating carefully over the bulky black stone in the dark. She found the flat ledge that formed the perfect seat on the rough edge of the outcropping and eased herself down onto it.
For a long while, she simply stared out at the water, watching the waves shimmer under the pale glow of the moon and stars.
She could have stayed in that tranquil spot for hours more, but the incoming tide was creeping ever higher on the rocks and soon the water would drive her away. Regretfully, she turned around and crawled back from the edge. When she stood up, she was startled to find she wasn’t alone.
“Andreas,” she said, astonished to see him.
His chest was rising and falling visibly, concern spread across the taut lines of his face.
Claire had to force her feet to remain grounded and not move toward him in reflex. She didn’t want him here, despite what her heart seemed to think. “How did you find me?”
Even as she asked the question she knew the answer. Breed senses were superhumanly acute. As if the blood bond he now had with her wasn’t beacon enough, he could have easily tracked her by scent. Not that he seemed inclined to explain himself. He was pissed off and worried, and the fact that he’d come all this way to find her should have been reassuring, even flattering.
It might have been, if not for the fact that with Wilhelm Roth less than a hundred miles away, she needed Andreas gone as far as possible from her. And the sooner, the better.
“You left without a word, Claire.”
She tried not to scoff at the irony in that. “I would have expected you’d be a bit more accepting, considering your history with good-byes.”
He stared at her, eyes narrowed. “What’s going on with you?”
She shrugged with a casualness she didn’t feel. “Nothing.”
“Why did you leave like that? You didn’t think for one minute that I would be concerned if you just vanished without any explanation?” He exhaled a low curse and shook his head, contrite, even though his eyes were still hot with anger. “I damn well deserved it, I know. But you scared the hell out of me back there. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
She couldn’t tell him. Fear for what he would do if he knew Roth was close by froze that part of the truth in her throat. She glanced away from his intense, probing stare. “I’m afraid, Andreas. I just wanted to be somewhere familiar, somewhere that I belong. After everything that’s happened, I suppose I just wanted to be home. I wanted a little peace.”
“Home and peace,” he said, doubt bracketing his mouth in tense lines. “No, I don’t think so. You bolted out of there like it was me you couldn’t get away from fast enough. I want to know why. Was it because of what happened … in the dream? Because I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want you to know that.”
When she only stared at him in mute torment, his hand came up to gently stroke her cheek. “God, Claire… all I have ever wanted was to keep you safe.”
A sob worked its way up her throat. “Why?” she murmured. “Why are you showing me all of this tenderness now, Andre? Why not then?”
He swore softly. “To keep you safe, I had to let you go.”
She shook her head, unwilling to accept that excuse, but he softly caught her chin. The pad of his thumb was a whisper of contact as he brushed it across her lips. “I left because of what I had become. You’ve seen it now—the fire that lives inside me. I was horrified when I thought of what it could do to those I loved. Like you, Claire. Christ… especially you.”
She swallowed with a dry throat. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this at the time? We could have worked through it—”
“No,” he said. “There was no working through it, not then. It exploded out of me without any warning. I lived most of my life never knowing what my fury could do. Once it got loose the first time, it owned me. I left Germany because it was the only thing I could do. It took the better part of a year for me to finally bring the fires to heel. By the time I returned, you were already with Roth.”
Claire listened, struggling to put all the pieces in place in her mind. “So, all your life, you never knew anything about your pyrokinetic ability?”
“Not until the last night I saw you.”
“We argued,” she said, remembering their parting words.
They’d been out most of the evening in Hamburg, enjoying each other’s company as they had for the handful of months they’d been together. But then she’d become jealous when another woman started flirting with him. Andreas had always been a magnet for female company, with his good looks and easy charisma, but he swore to her that he was interested only in her. Claire hadn’t believed him. She told him she wanted proof—a commitment that his love was true. When he hesitated, she had become upset and scared that he didn’t really love her. She called him selfish, irresponsible. Unkind things. She’d been unreasonable and she knew it, even then.
“I regretted my words the minute I said them,” she told him now, an apology some decades too late. “I was young and stupid, and I was unfairly harsh with you, Andreas.”
He shrugged. “And I was a pigheaded fool who should have known better. Instead, I had been all too eager to prove you right. After I left you at Roth’s Darkhaven, I went into the city looking for a fight. I found a few, actually, and after I had sufficiently bloodied my knuckles and used my face to crack a few others, I found myself in a rundown hotel in the company of two intoxicated women I brought with me from a bar along the way.”
Claire’s disappointment to hear this now was couched by her concern for what had apparently happened to him next.
“At some point, there was a knock on the door. Another woman. I let her in, and because I was … distracted by my own idiocy, I didn’t realize she had a knife in her hand until she’d sliced it across my throat.”
Claire winced, her heart twisting at the thought. “What did you do?”
“I bled,” he answered simply. “I bled so much, I thought I would die from it. I nearly did, in fact. I was too weak to struggle when a group of Breed males came into the room and carried me to a truck in the alley outside. They chained me and dumped me in a remote farmer’s field to bleed out and then fry to dust with the sunrise.”
“Oh, my God. Andre… I saw that field, didn’t I? You showed it to me in your dream yesterday.”
His answering look was a grim confirmation. “Sometime between that awful hour and daybreak, I felt an unnatural heat beginning to burn inside me. It kept growing, until my entire body was bathed in blistering energy. And then it exploded out of me. I don’t recall everything—that’s one of the least unpleasant aftereffects, as I would learn. The fires burned from within me, but my skin didn’t ignite. By the time dawn started to rise, the chains had melted away. I tried to scramble for some shade, but I was weak from blood loss. I didn’t see the young girl until she was standing right next to me.”
A knot of dread tightened behind Claire’s breastbone. “A girl?”
He nodded, only the slightest movement of his head. His mouth was drawn tight, his face rigid with regret. “She only could have been about ten or twelve years old, out in the field that morning calling for a missing cat. She came upon me struggling in the dirt and asked what she could do to help me. Because of the injury to my throat, I had no voice. I couldn’t have warned her away, even if I had any idea of what would happen to her if she got too close to me while my body was still deadly with heat.”
Claire closed her eyes, understanding now. She placed her hand against his cheek, having no words to express the pain she knew he must have felt for what he’d done to the child. Pain it was clear that he felt even now, all this time later.
“I crawled away from the field like an animal, which is what I felt I was. Worse than an animal, to have destroyed someone so innocent and pure. I found shelter in a cave so I could heal. Once I was recovered, I fled. I couldn’t stay… not after what I’d done. And in the time since, even though many years passed without the fires returning, I still lived with the fear that I might hurt the people I cared about the most.” His fingers were light in her hair, tender as they brushed her brow. “Leaving you had never been in my plans. After I came back and heard you’d been mated to Roth, I stayed in Berlin and told myself you were better off with him. That way I could be sure you would always be safe from the death inside me.”
“I’ve seen your power, Andre. I’ve seen what it can do. But it hasn’t hurt me—-you haven’t hurt me.”
“Not yet,” he replied, his tone dark. “But now it’s stronger than it ever was before. It was reckless of me to summon the fires the night my Darkhaven was attacked. It’s more deadly than before, and each time the fury comes alive in me, it burns hotter than the last time.”
Claire saw his torment, but instead of rousing her sympathy, it stirred a biting anger. “Is your vengeance worth all of that? Is anything worth killing yourself in order to have it? That’s what you’re doing, Andre. You’re killing yourself with this awful power of yours, and you know it.”
He scoffed sharply, a wordless denial. “I’m doing what needs to be done. I don’t care what happens to me in the end.”
“I do,” she said. “Damn it, I care what happens to you. I’m looking at you now and I see a man who is destroying himself with fury. How many more times can you come out of the flames without losing yourself to them? How long before the fire consumes your humanity?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his square jaw held tight. He shook his head. “What would you have me do?”
“Stop,” she said. “Stop all of this, before you no longer have the ability to end it.”
The logic was so clear to her. He had an obvious choice here: Let go of his rage and live, or continue his pursuit of vengeance and perish—either by the power that she could see was destroying him, or by the war he was purposely stoking with Wilhelm Roth.
“There is no stopping it, Claire. I’ve come too far to turn back now and you know it. I’ve pushed Roth too far these past few nights and weeks that I’ve been hunting him down.” He exhaled a clipped sigh and his mouth curved into a humorless smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? That what drove me away from you then is now the thing that’s brought us back together, such as it is. But what you said earlier is right. You do deserve peace now… and I should leave you to it.”
He moved close and pressed his lips against her forehead, then dropped a tender kiss on her mouth. He drew back, then turned and started to walk away.
Claire watched him start up the lawn. Her heart broke a little with every step he took. She couldn’t let him go—not like this. Not when every fiber of her being was crying out for him to stay.
“Andreas, wait.”
He kept going, long strides carrying him farther and farther away from her.
She couldn’t have held back from him if she herself were chained and dumped and forgotten behind him. Claire ran up the grass and caught his hand. She turned him around to face her, so many words and regrets clogging her throat.
“Don’t go” was all she managed to say. It was threadbare, a plea.
His dark eyes glittered with sparks of amber. His golden skin seemed tighter in the moonlight, his mouth a stern, determined line that didn’t quite conceal the swell of fangs behind his lips.
“Andre, please … don’t go.”
Claire lifted up onto her toes and curved her fingers around his strong nape, dragging him down to meet her lips. She kissed him with all the passion she’d always held for him—all the desperate, impossible yearnings that had lived in her heart all these long years.
He kissed her back with even greater ardor. His arms went around her, crushing her to him so that she could feel the hard heat of his chest and thighs against her and the harder, hotter part of him that pressed like a length of thick steel at her hip. Claire reveled in his arousal, in the warm, rough moan that vibrated in her bones as he broke their kiss to bury his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. He wanted her, as much or more than she wanted—needed—him.
This was no dream now. This was real and raw and so, so right.
“God, Claire,” he rasped, the tips of his fangs abrading the tender skin of her collarbone. “Why couldn’t you have just let me go?”
She shook her head, too lost for words or reason. All she knew was the desire she had for this man, this incredible, honorable Breed male who should have been hers. Who might never be hers again, once his search for the justice that consumed him finally did take him away from her.
Claire stroked her hands over the muscled ridges of his body, tipping her head back to let his mouth roam wherever it wanted on her skin. She was panting with hunger, her legs melting beneath her from the heat that was detonating in her core.
Andreas drew back to gaze down into her face. He looked so beautiful, so wild and powerful, it made her heart ache. She saw the naked passion in his crackling amber eyes and knew that he saw the same need in her. She couldn’t deny it. She wasn’t nearly strong enough to try.
Too much time had kept them apart. Too many obstacles that now seemed impossible to surpass. But they had desire. Claire trembled with it, and felt a similar vibration coursing through Andreas as she clung to him.
“Please,” she whispered, needing to feel his weight against her.
She needed to feel his body merged with hers, not in a dream or memory, but flesh to flesh. Naked and carnal.
“Oh, God, Andre … please be with me again now.”
He growled against her throat, a rough profanity that only made her pulse throb harder.
With a sure, fluid grace of movement, he swept her up, lifting her feet off the ground and cradling her in the muscled strength of his arms. He carried her across the lawn, to the open French doors of the house. Inside, he slowly set her down amid the shrouded, ghostly furniture. He kissed her tenderly, sweetly, as he grabbed the edge of a white sheet that draped an antique, cushioned chaise and cast it aside.
Claire let him guide her down onto the elegant seat, lying back as he loomed over her like some kind of immense, otherworldly god. He kissed her some more, while his fingers began unfastening the buttons of her prim sweater.
Unlike their encounter in his dream, this time clothing did not simply dissolve away. Andreas took his time undressing her, his mouth skimming worshipfully over every inch of her skin as he unveiled her. He suckled her breasts and teased the curve of her belly and hip. When he painstakingly peeled away her slacks and panties, he dipped his head into the juncture of her thighs and nipped maddeningly at the tender skin, his tongue cleaving the wet petals of her core.
Claire threw her head back and moaned in pleasure as he loved her with his mouth and teased her with the sharp white points of his fangs.
Her first orgasm took her by total surprise. It rushed up on her and swept her high, pleasure she could not contain any more than the broken cry she sent up to the ceiling as her climax overcame her. Andreas lapped at her lovingly, patiently, even though his hands trembled as they skated over her bare flesh, kneading and caressing her heated skin.
“You taste so good,” he murmured against her wetness. “Even sweeter than I remembered. Better than any dream.”
Claire put her palms on his shoulders, pushing him back as she drew herself up. She eased him down, then crawled up over him, straddling his legs with her bare thighs. She ran her hands under his loose shirt, baring him for her mouth to explore.
When she had worked her way up to his throat, she stripped the shirt off completely and let her eyes take in the unique beauty of his dermaglyph patterns. Right now, with desire etched in Andreas’s every taut muscle and expression, his glyphs were flooded with indigo, burgundy, and darkest autumn gold. Claire traced them with her fingertip, then bent her head and followed the intricate swirls and flourishes with her tongue as she’d been dying to do since she saw him sitting on the moonlit lakeshore of his dream.
Some of those glyphs tracked farther down his body, as she vividly recalled. Not wanting to neglect any part of him, Claire unfastened the button of his pants and loosened the zipper. He sucked in his breath as she nuzzled the soft skin of his groin and nipped at his tender flesh. When she tugged his pants down lower, past the smooth, jutting head of his penis, then lower still, he exhaled a pleading oath.
Claire kissed her way around his thick cock, admiring the breadth and length and power of him before she dipped her head and caught the blunt tip of him in her mouth. She only teased for now, loving the silky, salty taste of him. She didn’t want to rush. She wanted to prolong this moment, this stolen night that she’d dreamed of for so long.
When she spoke, her voice was husky from passion and a fresh, kindling need. “Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to seek you out when I was sleeping? There were days, sometimes weeks at a time, when it was all I thought of… all I wanted to do was run away to find you. To know this pleasure again with you. You were the only one, Andre. It’s always been you.”
He growled, a sound of total, unabashed possessiveness. His hands were rough in her hair, hard against the back of her skull as she bent over him once more and took him fully into her mouth. He arched up, hissing a wordless cry as she sucked him deeper.
“Ah, God,” he gasped. “That feels so damn good. Claire, if you don’t stop …”
She didn’t stop. She couldn’t get enough of him, not even when his body gave a hard shudder and his release roared out of him. She stroked him with her tongue and throat, greedy for everything he would give her after so many years of wanting him.
Of loving him.
She couldn’t deny that it was love she felt for him as he drew out of her grasp and plundered her mouth with a fevered, demanding kiss. It was love that filled her heart as he filled her body with his own.
Love that made her scream his name as he brought her to the height of another devastating climax, before he began to seduce her all over again.
The bitch was sorely trying his patience.
Wilhelm Roth fisted his hand and drove it through the clouded window of the Boston warehouse he’d been forced to relocate to recently. Pain ripped through him as he brought his hand out of the shattered glass, the flesh over his knuckles shredded and bloodied. He knew Claire would feel it, too, if distantly, just as he was feeling the proof of her current infidelity with Andreas Reichen.
Her pleasure made acid boil in his gut.
That it was pleasure shared with Reichen made him want to kill them both.
Savagely.
He’d been more than a little surprised to detect Claire’s presence near Boston earlier tonight. The awareness of her had since faded, but he was certain she was in New England somewhere. She and Reichen both, apparently
The only thing keeping him from hunting the pair down was the fact that his hands were full with the current mission for Dragos in the city. His priorities had been made crystal clear by Dragos when he’d exiled him to Boston, and Roth wasn’t about to let him down.
He would have his chance to make Claire and her damnable lover pay. He was certain he’d have ample opportunity to inflict great pain on both of them soon enough.
And he could hardly wait.
He’d been chewing on the fact that Dragos had intimated that Reichen was involved with the Order. It wouldn’t be surprising if it were true. Despite the male’s arrogance and insubordination, there had long been an air of self-righteousness about him.
Roth supposed the male had subscribed to a certain code of honor, even then, in the past, when he had come sniffing around Claire’s skirts after Roth had already decided she would belong to him alone. Never mind that he already had a mate; he and Ilsa had been a poor match, one he’d made hastily in a moment of passion and grown bored of not long afterward. He should have gotten rid of her sooner than he had, but then Claire came along and gave him all the excuse he needed.
Or, rather, Andreas Reichen had provided the excuse, just a short time before either man had even met the beautiful Claire Samuels.
Roth had often wondered if Reichen realized the seething contempt he’d inspired when he’d shown weak little Ilsa a gesture of kindness at a Darkhaven reception. It had been a small thing, really, a dry jacket to cover her after Roth had sent her weeping to a rain-drenched balcony when she dared to contradict him in front of his peers. He’d meant to punish her privately, but Reichen had strolled by and discovered her sitting outside by herself in the cold. Incredibly, he’d had the gall to insist she take his coat and then arranged for his driver to send her home without Roth’s permission.
Roth fumed even now just to think on it.
He’d fumed then, too, and waited for a chance to put Reichen firmly in his place. He found that chance once Claire arrived in Hamburg and caught the eye of nearly every available Breed male in the region. Reichen included. So Roth had waited and watched, and when the time was right, he’d had his men deal with Reichen. Then he threw himself into the task of helping poor, devastated Claire pick up the pieces of her shattered heart. Taking her as his mate was merely icing on an already delectable cake.
Oh, he’d had to kill Ilsa to clear the way, but it was a small inconvenience to have the satisfaction of knowing he’d made his point with Reichen and stolen the female he loved.
He couldn’t have been more stunned to learn that Reichen had reappeared in Berlin later that year. To the younger male’s credit, after what was likely a very bitter lesson learned, he stayed well away from Hamburg, and from Claire. Until the past summer, when the human whore who’d been Reichen’s latest lover began snooping around in Roth’s affairs.
He’d had no patience to deal with Reichen again, and so he’d sent a very swift, clear message to the Berlin Darkhaven where Reichen and his kin lived. Swift and clear, but not quite thorough enough, as the attack had left Reichen alive.
Not again, Roth vowed.
When he next got Andreas Reichen in his sights, the son of a bitch was going down. So much the better if he could send Claire to her death alongside him.
Pleasantly sadistic musings of just how he might accomplish those two goals were swirling in his head when the cell phone in his coat pocket went off.
“Yes, sire.”
“I trust your operation is proceeding as planned,” Dragos said, his tone practically daring Roth to disappoint him.
“The diversion is perfectly under control, sire. As I promised you it would be.”
Dragos grunted. “Keep it that way. I am nearly finished with the preparations here. Soon the new objective will be under way.”
“Very good, sire,” Roth said. “I will continue with the plan we discussed and await your further command.”
CHAPTER
Sixteen
The next morning, while Reichen stayed behind and tried not to be paranoid about danger lurking on every street corner or alleyway Claire left the house with their remaining euros and drove into town to exchange the money and pick up some food for herself and fresh clothing for both of them. Reichen had attempted to persuade her into waiting until evening when he could go with her—just in case she ran into trouble—but she brushed him off with a look and left him sitting in the big empty house by himself. He had forgotten how independent she was, and a part of him admired the fact that several decades under Roth’s thumb hadn’t stolen any of her spirit.
Still, he worried.
He knew she was safe from Roth or Dragos or any other members of the Breed so long as it was daytime and the sun would keep all of his kind locked indoors. But the protective part of him—the part of him that had yet to accept that he wasn’t still the leader of a Darkhaven, responsible for keeping his home and family safe from harm—balked at the idea of Claire walking around out there without him looking out for her. She was too precious, too vulnerable in a world filled with hidden dangers. She was a treasure worth preserving at any cost.
And she was… not his.
Damn, but it took some effort to remember that, especially after last night. They’d spent an incredible evening together, making love in the living room overlooking the Atlantic, then again upstairs, on the four-poster bed in the palatial room that had been Claire’s when she was a young woman living in her grandmother’s house. And yet another time before daybreak this morning, after she’d gotten up to ensure that all the blinds and curtains were drawn tight to protect him from the sun.
He’d have liked to have followed her into the shower before she left to run her errands, but she’d gently chided him to pace himself, that they would have plenty of time together. But they didn’t have that luxury, and he knew it. It was easy to imagine that their reunion—this respite in an idyllic setting, without the constant reminders of the darkness they’d left behind in Germany—could go on forever.
It couldn’t.
As good as it felt to be with Claire again, they couldn’t stay in Newport together for long. Until Roth was found and eliminated, she needed to be somewhere protected and well out of his reach. She wasn’t going to like it, but so long as Roth was alive and able to get his hands on her, she needed to be placed under the guard of the Order. The sooner the better.
As for Reichen, each minute he wasn’t looking for Roth was an opportunity for the bastard to dig in deeper wherever he was and continue his presumed machinations alongside Dragos. Reichen knew he should be spending every breathing moment and exhausting every effort to hunt Roth down. Vengeance still burned in his belly and his issue with Wilhelm Roth would not be forgiven simply because he had Claire to warm his heart and his bed.
Roth could not be permitted to continue breathing when he was evil to his core. Nor so long as he might decide to punish Claire for letting herself be pulled back into Reichen’s life again.
With that grave thought fueling him, he took out the cell phone Tegan had given him and pressed the last number in the speed dial queue. The number rang twice before Gideon’s British-tinged accent came on the line.
“Talk to me,” he said, chipper despite the intrusion on his morning.
“It’s Reichen. I apologize for not phoning last night.”
“No worries. Where are you?”
Naked from his recent shower, he leaned back on a shrouded chair. “Newport, Rhode Island.”
“You find your female?”
“Yes,” Reichen answered, not bothering to clarify that she wasn’t, in fact, his at all. “Everything is fine. Claire is safe, and so am I. Have you found anything yet on Roth?”
“Nothing yet, but we’re working on it. I’m running down a couple of international leads right now. Trust me, we want to get this bastard as badly as you do. He may be our most solid link to Dragos at the moment, so we’re hitting hard on every bit of intel we can gather on him.”
As Gideon spoke, Reichen considered the fact that he should be there with the warriors, digging into every clue on Roth’s whereabouts and helping them flush the son of a bitch out. He was eager to do just that, his palms itching with the need to choke the life out of Roth for all he’d done.
“So, what’s the story over there in Newport?” Gideon asked. “You gonna be delayed there for a while yet?”
“No,” he said, even though he’d been torn between what his heart wanted him to say and what his duty demanded. “No more delaying. I need to smooth a few things out on this end, but Claire and I can be ready for pickup later tonight if that can be arranged.”
“No problem. I can have one of the guys there about an hour after sundown.”
Reichen scowled, calculating the short span of hours that would leave him for breaking the news to Claire that he was going to be yanking her out of her home. Again. “I may need a bit more time than that, Gideon. Claire doesn’t know I’ve called you, or that she’s going to be leaving Newport tonight. She’s just left one gilded cage; I have a feeling she won’t be eager to be put into another one.”
“Ah.” The warrior blew out a shallow sigh. “Hence the smoothing out of a few things, eh? Well, good luck with that.”
“Right,” Reichen replied, knowing it was a conversation he had to have with Claire eventually, but dreading it all the same. “I’ll be in touch later about scheduling that pickup.”
As he disconnected the call, the front door lock slid open. Claire came in, cautiously peering inside the house to make sure he wouldn’t be in the path of the light that spilled in around her.
“Hi,” she said, smiling as she closed the door and he stood to greet her. “You’re naked.”
“And you should be,” he said, struck by how rapidly his body responded to just the sight of her. “How was the shopping?”
“Successful.” She lifted two filled grocery bags in one hand and an armful of department store bags in the other. “One of these bags is for you,” she said, holding up the one bearing a men’s clothing store logo. “One is a set of sheets and pillows, and the rest is for me. I can’t wait to put on something fresher than these stale old things from home.”
Reichen walked toward her, his intentions blatantly clear. “I think I should help you.”
Her answering smile was quicksilver and playful. It killed him that he was going to have to take that away from her. “You’ll have to catch me first.”
She dropped the groceries in the foyer and bolted for the stairs with the clothing bags rustling at her side. Reichen lunged after her, taking one step to every three of hers. He caught her halfway up to the second floor. Her startled shriek dissolved into laughter… then, before long, the breathless moans and sighs of a woman well pleasured and fully sated.
That evening, as Claire toweled off from a long, hot shower, her body was still humming from the hours of lovemaking she’d spent with Andreas. She walked out of the en suite bathroom and found him lounging like a negligent king on the bed. One long, muscular leg was stretched out to the end of the mattress, the other bent casually at the knee. He was propped up on the pillows, his right arm tucked behind his head. The glyphs on his torso, arms, and thighs were still alive with color, but slowly muting toward the golden hue of his skin.
And even at rest, his sex was impressive.
She couldn’t get used to seeing him naked; it always stopped her dead in her tracks so she could pause to admire him. The slow curve of his lips said he knew precisely what the sight of him did to her, and his male ego—not to mention other parts—were proud to be noticed so regularly and appreciatively.
Claire broke the spell his naked body seemed to cast over her and walked to pick up the fresh clothes she’d set out for herself. She slanted him a wry look as she pulled the tags off the pair of jeans and the pale gray sweater. “You’re bad for me, you know that?”
“Undoubtedly,” he replied, but while she was joking, he seemed grimly sober. He seemed preoccupied somehow, as though dark thoughts weighed him down. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he got up off the bed and walked toward her, bringing a clingy black wool skirt with him. “Wear this tonight instead of the jeans. The tall boots with the heels, too.”
She looked up at him, uncertain.
“I want to take you out. You can show me around your old hometown.”
“A date?” she asked, undeniably thrilled by the idea.
Part of her wondered about the fact that the whole day had passed without Andreas mentioning Wilhelm Roth or the business with the Order that still awaited him in Boston. Not that Claire wanted any of those things to intrude on their time together, but she wasn’t naive enough to think that a few hours of sex—really amazing sex—would make him forget the vengeance that was driving him.
As she looked at him, she knew a moment of worry that this was perhaps a pleasant lull before a storm. That she might wake up and find this brief escape with Andreas had just been a dream. She waited for this perfect slice of time to shatter and fall to pieces around her feet.
But Andreas’s smile now was just as charming as ever, even more so, when her body was still warm and buzzing in the afterglow of his lovemaking. “It’s been a long time since I asked you out on a proper date, Claire. Will you accept?”
“Yes.” She nodded enthusiastically. “I’d love to.”
“Get dressed,” he said. “I’ll shower and meet you downstairs.”
Giddy as a schoolgirl with a new crush, she put on the skirt and sweater, then zipped into the sexy black boots and floated down to the living room to wait for him. When he came down a few minutes later, freshly showered, shaved, and dressed, his brown hair damp and tousled around his face, Claire’s heart did a little flip in her chest. He looked amazing in the charcoal gray trousers and black silk shirt she bought him. So amazing, all she wanted to do was strip him naked and have her wicked way with him all over again.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded and took his outstretched hand. It was a pleasant night outside, crisp but clear as they walked the short distance into Newport’s historic downtown. Much had changed since the last time Claire had been home some twenty years ago. Quaint boutiques, mom-and-pop stores, and greasy-spoon restaurants had been crowded out by hotels and timeshares, retail clothing chains, and swanky fine dining.
But pockets of the old hometown still remained, even down by the wharfs, Claire’s favorite part of Newport. The town docks were a magical place, especially at night. Bobbing gently on the dark, incoming tide was an eclectic mix of millionaire yachts and sailboats tied alongside weathered commercial fishers and the ubiquitous harbor tour boats. Galleries, shops, and restaurants lined the bricked pedestrian alleys that led to the wharfs, everything aglow with soft yellow lights and vibrant with the sounds of laughter and conversation as crowds of late-autumn tourists strolled and perused, just as Claire and Andreas were doing.
Out there, among this vast, anonymous humanity and so very far away from the trauma and violence of the life she’d left behind just a couple nights past, Claire could almost close her eyes and imagine a peaceful future. So much the better with her hand caught gently in Andreas’s strong grasp. With him beside her like this, she could almost pretend that they were still a couple, still in love as they had been before, with nothing but adventure and happiness ahead of them.
Claire tried not to think about Wilhelm Roth. She could no longer think of him as her mate, if he’d ever truly filled that role. She knew he was dangerous—all the more so now that he was aware she’d lain with Andreas. He’d made his displeasure known last night, when he sent her a stab of physical pain through the blood connection she shared with him. His message couldn’t have been more clear if he’d carved it into her flesh. Mate or not, Wilhelm Roth was now her enemy as much as he was Andreas’s.
That troubling thought clung to her as she and Andreas stepped into a gourmet chocolate shop adjacent to the wharf.
“Come here,” he said, leading her to the gleaming glass cases that contained a mouthwatering assortment of confections.
Claire looked at him quizzically, knowing the Breed’s digestive systems could not process human foods except in the most minuscule quantities and generally only to effect the appearance of being human themselves. Which was a terrible pity, she thought, looking at the collection of chocolates that dazzled the eye and tempted the tastebuds.
“Which one would you like to try first?”
She bit her lip, hard-pressed to decide. “The glossy one with the red stripes looks good. Ooh, so does the little square with the flecks of gold on it. And the one with the coconut on top.”
While she was vascillating between her choices, a balding, middle-aged man came out of the back of the store carrying a supply of empty gift boxes. He gave them a polite smile and a nod of greeting as he set down his things behind the counter.
“Another fine Indian summer evening,” he said. “Could I help you folks with something?”
“The lady would like to try some of your chocolates,” Andreas said.
“Of course. Which ones are you interested in, my dear?”
Claire glanced up and met the kindly gaze of the shopkeeper. “May I try the little chocolate square?”
He nodded and reached into the case to retrieve one for her. “An excellent choice. It’s our signature piece.”
Claire took a small bite and savored the sweet-tart taste of dark, high-percentage cocoa. It melted like butter on her tongue. “Oh, my God,” she murmured around the bliss exploding in her mouth. “It’s wonderful.”
The shopkeeper smiled at her, his eyes seeming to linger on her face for a long moment before he glanced to Andreas. “For you, sir?”
“No, thank you. But please give her whatever she likes.”
The man chuckled. “A wise philosophy.”
Claire pointed to the puffy chocolate painted with dark red stripes. “What’s this one?”
“Dark chocolate with raspberry puree. Would you like one?” There was that studying glance again. And as Claire looked at him now, she felt the tiniest flicker of recognition. “I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “Have we met?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He chuckled, scratching his grizzled chin. “You just look like someone I knew a long time ago. The spitting image, in fact.”
“Is that right?” Claire asked, her attention drifting down to the brass-plated name tag that bore the store’s logo and the shopkeeper’s name: Robert Vincent. “I don’t believe I know you.”
“It’s the darnedest thing. You look exactly like a classmate of mine from high school. Does the name Claire Samuels mean anything to you?”
Beside her now, Andreas had gone stock still and deadly silent. Claire blinked, startled to hear her maiden name come out of the man’s mouth. Of course she could have been classmates with him. She’d left the States to study abroad when she was twenty. If not for Wilhelm Roth’s blood and the unusual chemical makeup of her own body, she would show similar outward signs of middle age. Instead, she looked essentially the same as she had thirty years ago.
“M-my mother,” she stammered. “You must be thinking of my mother.”
“Ah!” His smile went even wider now. “Your mother, of course. Good Lord, you could be her twin.”
Claire smiled. “I hear that from time to time.”
“We should be on our way,” Andreas interjected, a dark tone in his voice.
“How is your mother?” the shopkeeper asked.
“Good,” Claire replied. “She’s been living overseas for many years.”
“I used to have such a thing for her back in school. She was the prettiest girl in our class—one of the kindest, too. And brother, did she know how to play the piano. That’s where I first met her, you see. I was the conductor’s assistant in our high school symphony.”
“Buddy Vincent,” Claire blurted, remembering the endearing but awkward boy as she stared into the time-worn face of an aging, mortal man.
“She’s mentioned me to you, then?” He beamed.
Andreas cleared his throat impatiently, but Claire ignored it.
“You were always very sweet,” she told Buddy, recalling how he’d often tried to make her feel welcome and special at a time when being different wasn’t always the easiest thing. “It meant a lot to her that you were her friend.”
“Well,” he said, his thin chest puffing out a bit now. He walked over to pick up one of the small gift boxes and began filling it with several pieces of the two chocolates that had caught Claire’s eye. “It was never a chore being nice to a beautiful young lady. When you speak to her next, please tell your mother I send my best.”
“I will,” Claire said.
He came back and handed her the filled box. “Enjoy these, with my compliments.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ll pay for them,” Andreas said at the same time. “How much are they?”
Buddy only shook his head. “I wouldn’t dream of taking your money. Please. They’re a gift.”
Claire reached out and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Thank you, Buddy. It was a pleasure seeing you.”
“You take care now. You and your beautiful mother both.”
Claire said a polite good-bye to her former classmate, and Andreas ushered her outside in an oddly brooding silence. More than that, he seemed downright irritated about something.
“Are you…jealous?”
He snorted. “Please.”
“You are!” Claire threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, I don’t believe this. You walk through a crowd and every head turns, female and male alike. I happen to catch the eye of a harmless old man—”
“No man is harmless, Claire.”
“Buddy Vincent is easily fifty years old and as sweet as a kitten,” she pointed out, still smiling and thoroughly amused.
“He’s still male,” Andreas all but growled. “And he is still watching us.”
“Yeah?” Claire grabbed the front of his shirt to get his attention. “Then why don’t you stop looking at him and kiss me instead.”
With a dark gaze that promised more than kisses, Andreas did exactly what she asked.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
Kade caught the scent of freshly spilled human blood only a couple hours into the night’s patrol.
“Down that alley” he said to Brock and Chase, who both nodded their agreement in silence.
The three warriors headed off together, stealthy, weapons drawn and ready to fire, as they started down the lightless stretch of asphalt that separated two old brick buildings in the seedier part of town. The narrow strip of pavement was foul with the stench of human waste and rotting garbage. But none of that could disguise the coppery tang that emanated from the other side of a dilapidated Dumpster.
Kade reached the dead human first. It was a young female this time, savaged just as brutally as the male he and Brock had found last night. Unfortunately for her, the vampire who’d butchered her throat had also had a taste for something else. Her short skirt was shredded down the front and gory with blood. Her bright pink painted fingernails were broken, her knees scraped, as if she had tried unsuccessfully to get away from her killer.
“Jesus,” Brock muttered under his breath. “This girl is somebody’s daughter. Maybe somebody’s sister. What kind of fucking animal would do—”
Chase’s fist went up in a signal to cut the chatter. He pointed to the rooftops above their heads. Someone was up there. The crunch of a footstep traveled down to the alley on the quiet of the clear autumn night.
Was it Hunter?
This new corpse sure seemed to fit his apparent pastime.
“I’m going up,” Chase mouthed.
“Not without backup,” Kade replied, but the ex-agent was already in motion. He holstered his weapon and leapt up onto the Dumpster in silence before jumping from there to grab the bottom of a black fire escape on the building. With hardly a sound, he scaled the rickety iron steps, then vaulted up and onto the roof.
Gunfire erupted the instant Chase disappeared from view.
“Ah, shit,” Brock hissed. “That crazy motherfucker. You take the stairwell inside; I’m going up the escape after him.”
They took off via separate routes to the roof, both of them arriving within seconds to find Chase lying in a pool of his own blood, bleeding from a ferocious chest wound. He was badly hit, but breathing.
“Son of a bitch,” Kade said as he raced to the fallen warrior’s side.
“Not… him,” Chase groaned, grimacing with the effort. “Wasn’t Hunter…”
“What do you mean, it’s not Hunter?” Kade said. “Then who the hell—”
Another hail of incoming rounds ripped through the darkness from a point unseen. Metal pinged. Aged brick shattered.
Kade and Brock returned fire, shooting toward the source of the assault but seeing nothing solid to aim for. More bullets flew at them.
Brock shouted in sudden pain. “Fuck! I’m hit.”
“Goddamn it,” Kade snarled, glancing over in time to see that the big black warrior had taken a bullet to the upper biceps. It was an impairing wound, but nothing fatal. Chase, on the other hand… shit, the guy was in real bad shape.
Fury over his wounded brethren roared through Kade’s veins as he squeezed off a hellish volley of rounds. He caught a flash of movement—dark against the darkness—and saw their assailant leap to the rooftop of the adjacent building.
“Fucker’s on the move. I’m going after him.”
He left Brock to cover Chase and hauled ass after the huge vampire who was jumping from building to building like a cat. Not being Gen One, as his quarry obviously was, Kade didn’t have that kind of speed, but he had determination. He kept up, navigating the assorted clutter of ventilation systems, access doors, loose pipes and tools, and other items that had somehow found their way up to the rooftops above Boston.
Just as he was gaining ground on the son of a bitch, he got a glimpse of more trouble heading his way. On a distant rooftop, another Gen One dressed in black emerged. This one had an automatic weapon, too. If both of the vampires came after him with guns blazing, he was more than screwed.
But the second Gen One didn’t open fire on him. He opened fire on Kade’s fleeing quarry.
There was an awful racket as both guns lit up the night. Kade stood on the nearest rooftop and watched in amazement as the fight across the way turned from firearms to hand to hand.
The struggle was savage. Bones were cracked, flesh was torn, and sounds that were nothing close to human split the air as the battle intensified.
Kade held his own weapon aimed and prepared to open fire, but amid the scuffle he couldn’t be sure which of the vampires to take out. Finally one gained control over the other. He slammed his opponent’s head down into the concrete of the roof, then grabbed what looked to be a length of pipe and raised it high over his head. The Gen One who held it let out a furious roar, then brought the pipe crashing down like hell’s own hammer.
A sharp, metallic clank sounded in the instant before a blinding flash of pure white light shot out against the darkness.
Kade hit the deck. Instinct took him down on his belly and kept him there until the piercing ray went out a moment later. When it was dark again, he sat up on his haunches. On the other rooftop, the victorious Gen One was also starting to get up. Despite most of his muscles and nearly all of his good sense telling him to keep his ass planted, Kade grabbed his weapon and leapt across the distance to confront him.
He cautiously approached, finger poised to load the bastard with a lot of lead. As he moved closer, he got a look at the dead Gen One. His head was separated from his body, burns still sizzling in a perfect circle around his neck and those familiar dermaglyphs Kade had spotted on the vampire he’d run into last night.
On the ground next to the smoking corpse lay a black, dented collar rigged with some kind of electronic device. A small LED was blinking red, then faded out.
Kade peered down at the face of the dead vampire and cursed under his breath. Chase was right. It wasn’t Hunter. It looked close enough to be blood related—brothers, even—but it wasn’t the Gen One assassin who’d come on board with the Order a few weeks ago.
No, Hunter stood and walked up beside Kade now. He cast a dispassionate eye on the grisly death he’d just dealt to someone obviously very close to him genetically. He moved forward, then bent to retrieve the strange collar from its nest of gore.
“The last time I saw Dragos, he said there were others like me,” Hunter said flatly. “I’ve been tracking this one in the city for the past three nights. He is not alone. And more will be coming. Soon.”
Kade raked a hand over his scalp. “Well, aren’t you just a lovely ray of sunshine.”
Hunter pivoted his head and stared at him without replying.
“Come on,” Kade said. “Let’s go take care of the others and report back to the compound.”
He didn’t want their evening together to end. The stroll around Newport had been pleasant enough, if only for watching the way Claire lit up as she showed him all the places she recalled as a young woman, the places that still seemed to matter to her. This was her home, not Germany. She belonged here, with the salty breezes and the crisp New England autumn flushing her cheeks a deep, ruddy red.
Reichen couldn’t see her returning to Germany. He didn’t know what was to transpire in the coming days or weeks, however long it took him to find Wilhelm Roth and remove him from existence. He didn’t even know if he himself would be alive once all of the smoke cleared. But he knew this: The time he had with Claire, right now, this unlikely—and far too brief—reunion they were experiencing would prove to be the most precious hours of his life.
In truth, if he did not survive his confrontation with Roth, his death would be worth it, just to have known Claire again like this and to have the certainty that Roth could never do anything to harm her.
“It’s really too bad you can’t share any of this chocolate with me,” she said, biting into a piece as she sailed past him into the house. Closing the door behind them, he flicked on the lights for her and watched the fluid sway of her hips in the form-hugging black skirt. That view had been tempting him most of the night. “You sure I can’t convince you to try even just a little taste?”
He closed the space between them in about the time it took for her to blink. He kissed her, sweeping his tongue past her soft lips and into the delectable warmth of her mouth. The chocolate was bittersweet on her tongue, but nowhere near as tempting as the feel of her in his arms. “Delicious,” he murmured against her mouth. “I think I might just have to eat you.”
She laughed and gave him a teasing push, but her eyes were bright with interest as she looked up at him. “Let’s go take a short walk along the shore.”
He shook his head. “I have a better idea.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll just bet you do.”
He smiled, gave her flushed cheek a gentle stroke. “Will you do something for me instead?” At her quizzical look, he took her hand and walked her over to the grand piano that was shrouded with a drape of fabric. “Play for me, Claire.”
“Oh, I don’t know…” she hedged, frowning as he removed the large square of cloth and unveiled the gleaming black Steinway. “It’s been so long since I’ve played anything. I’m sure I’ll be terrible. Besides, it’s probably been years since this piano has been tuned.”
“Please,” he said, refusing to be deterred. They would be leaving Newport in a matter of a couple of hours—as soon as he broke the news to her and called the Order to send a car—and he didn’t know if this might be one of their last times together. Selfish or not, he wanted to wring out every last moment of this special night together. “Play whatever you wish. I’m not interested in perfection. I just want to hear your music again. For me.”
“For you,” she replied, giving him a slow smile as she pulled out the little bench and sat down. “All right, but don’t blame me when your ears start to bleed.”
He chuckled. “I have no concern whatsoever. Play, Claire.”
She lifted the lid that protected the keys, then sighed thoughtfully as she brought her hands up to hover over them.
From the very first notes, she mesmerized him. He didn’t know the piece she played, but it was beautiful—haunting and sad, powerful. There was a heart breaking in every note, lyrical movement so deep and emotional, he could only stand there and let the music wash over him … through him.
As he watched her play the piece from memory, he felt the profundity of her own reaction to the music. She was living it as she played it, every stanza full of meaning. It was her own creation, he realized.
The beautiful composition had come from Claire’s own heart… her own soul.
“You wrote that,” he said softly as the final note trailed off.
She looked up at him with shining eyes. “After you left, music was all I had for a while. I wrote several pieces, including this one. It just seemed to… I don’t know… pour out of me in the first few weeks after you were gone.”
Reichen drifted closer to her, moved by the power of everything he was hearing and feeling when he was in this woman’s presence. “It’s incredible, Claire. You are incredible.”
He sat down beside her on the little bench. He gazed into her dark eyes, his fingers softly caressing the smooth perfection of her beautiful dusky brown skin.
When he kissed her this time, it was not with searing hunger but with infinite care and reverence. He held her as if she were made of glass, worshipped her mouth as though it were the rarest delicacy.
He loved her.
If he had longed to deny it—even to himself—the truth was staring him full in the face now. He loved this woman, even though she wasn’t his. Even though he was not good enough for her, and never had been. If nothing else, Roth had been right about that all those years ago.
“He knows about us,” Claire blurted quietly as Reichen held her in his arms. “He knows we’ve been together—that I am with you now.”
It didn’t shock him to hear it. Roth’s blood bond with Claire would have betrayed her to him. But the little tremor of fear in her voice made Reichen’s own blood seethe. “What happened? Did he do something to you?”
“Last night, while we were making love, he let me know that he was aware of my infidelity to him. I don’t know what he might have done, but his message of pain came through loud and clear to me.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Reichen drew her away from him and stared hard into her eyes. “Why did you keep that from me?”
“Because there is nothing to be done about it, Andre.”
“Like hell there isn’t,” he gritted. “As soon as I know where that bastard is hiding, I will damned well do something about him.”
Claire winced, slowly shook her head. “I’m afraid of what he will do to you. He will kill you if he can. You have to know that. It’s no stretch to assume that it was him who tried to kill you back in Hamburg all those years ago. He was there at the Darkhaven after you and I argued. I was crying when I went inside. I told him what happened, how I wished more than anything that you wanted me for your mate. I told him everything, Andre. And the next thing I knew, you had disappeared. I didn’t think about the fact that I went to him about you then, but now…”
Reichen pulled her close and placed a kiss to the top of her head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve felt all along that the assault on me was too personal and violent to be random. It might not even be centered entirely on us being together. But whether or not Roth had a hand in it doesn’t matter, because the end result—the change that came over me in that field—is the thing that drove me away from you. It’s the only thing that could have kept me away.”
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything he’s done to you. Your family your female friend in Berlin that he turned Minion… Oh, God, Andre. I’m so very sorry for all the pain you’ve endured.”
Reichen hushed her, holding her close. “This is between Roth and me. None of the blame rests with you. What happened to me is insignificant. But my family deserves justice. So does Helene.”
Claire was silent for a long moment, then she asked gently, “Did you love her very much?”
He thought about Helene and the strong bond of trust and understanding they’d shared. She was a remarkable woman who had been something more than just another of his long line of casual, noncommittal dalliances. It had nearly killed him to see her drained of her humanity, but no more than it had devastated him to have to be the one to finish her after Roth had left her an empty shell, her mind enslaved to carry out his evil bidding.
“I cared for Helene deeply,” he admitted. “I loved her as best as I was capable. But I wasn’t able to give her my heart, because it was already lost to another.”
Claire drew out of his arms then and gazed up at him.
“It’s always been you, you know.” He cupped her face in his palms. “I have been in love with you all along.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, they were welling with tears. “Oh, Andreas. I still love you. I never stopped.”
With a growl he could not contain, Reichen captured her mouth in a possessive kiss. When they were both panting with desire, he pushed the piano bench back and stood her up in front of him. The keys let out a burst of discordant noise as Claire leaned against them. He threw her long skirt up over her thighs.
“Ah, Jesus,” he hissed through his huge fangs. “You’re not wearing panties.”
She gave him a saucy smile. “Surprise.”
If he’d known that, they never would have made it out of the house in the first place. Ravenous for the taste of her, he buried his head between her legs and plundered her sweetness. She held on to him, fingers twisting in his hair. He kissed her ruthlessly, needing to feel her come apart against his mouth. When she was writhing, moaning and sighing with the rush of a ferocious orgasm, he reached down to unzip his trousers and free his raging erection.
He rose from the bench and wedged himself between her gorgeous thighs. All he wanted to do was drive his cock home, but she looked too enticing to rush, her sex flushed deep red and juicy, her dark curls like wet silk. He took himself in hand and played the head of his penis along the slick cleft of her body, delighting in her breathless mewls of pleasure.
It was a torture that broke him before it did her.
On the knife’s edge of coming just from the feel of her, he shifted his hips and pushed inside. She was molten heat around him, her plush sheath swallowing him from tip to balls. He began to pump, slowly at first, still delusioned enough to think that he had any patience where loving Claire was concerned. Her body milked him, the hot, wet friction driving him toward a more urgent tempo. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t hold it, not for another second.
He gritted his teeth and let out a sharp roar as his seed exploded out of him and deep into her. She climaxed with him, her fingernails scoring his shoulders as she cried out with her own release. He murmured her name over and over, his cock as hard as marble even as the last tremors of his orgasm racked him.
He stared down at her, moved as always by her exquisite, delicate beauty. He loved the way they looked together, the contrast of their skin, the perfect fit of them when they were joined. And he loved her spicy warm blood scent, especially when it mixed with the musky perfume of her arousal.
“I don’t want to let go of this night,” he murmured, gazing into the absorbing color of her eyes. “I don’t want to let go of you.”
“Then don’t let go.” She wrapped her arms around him a bit tighter. “This time, I won’t let you go.”
He smiled, regret and duty tearing at him from inside. He had intended to explain to her at least half a dozen times already this evening that their time in Newport was over. He had intended to explain it now, too, but instead he found himself lost in her eyes. Lost in the intoxicating pleasure of her body.
“For now,” he said, kissing her as he spoke, “let’s neither one of us let go.”
“Yes,” she said, moving her hips in a provocative way against him. She stared up at him then, her eyes intense and imploring. “Will you do something else for me tonight, Andre?”
He grunted, bending his head to taste the soft skin below her ear. “Anything.”
“Make love to me again, the way you would if we were truly mated.”
He came up to regard her with a frown.
“Drink from me,” she said, stroking his face with a lovingly tender touch. “Let me pretend that we’re together as blood-bonded mates. Just for tonight.”
God, the very notion lit through his veins like a flash fire. He could feel his glyphs surging with hungered colors, and his fangs stretched even longer in his mouth.
“I want you to do it,” she said, a soft demand. “Drink from me as though I were really yours.”
The sound that left his lips was raw, profane. He reared back, fighting the need that shot through him. But then Claire tilted her head to the side and moved her hair away from her neck, and he was lost.
He bore down on her in a primal surge of motion, fangs seeking out her vein as he plunged deep into her welcoming heat once more.
The taste of her sweet, warm blood slammed into his senses in a flood of roaring power. He couldn’t curb his possessive growl as he suckled hard at her throat. Nor could he get close enough as he held Claire tight against him and buried himself to the hilt. He pumped hard and fast, unable to be gentle when her blood was spurring him like the most potent, intoxicating drug.
He had never known this kind of primal, visceral union.
It staggered him.
It humbled him.
It shamed him too, when he wanted more than anything to give himself to Claire in the same way, but could not because she was already bonded to another male. Reichen could offer her his vein, but no matter how much of him she drank, her bond would remain to Wilhelm Roth.
A flicker of aggression and fury began to twist and kindle in Reichen’s gut when he thought of any male having a claim on Claire. That it was Roth only gave more fuel to the anger threatening to ignite inside him.
No, he thought fiercely, denying the heat that was so eager to leap to life, just waiting for his summons.
Reichen centered all of his focus on Claire, ignoring everything but the strong beat of her pulse against his tongue, and the gentle squeeze of her sex around his. He reveled in her soft cries as she came, memorizing every flush and quiver that traveled her body as he pleasured her time and again, loath to let the night—and their fleeting time together—come to its end.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
How’s Harvard doing?” Lucan asked as Gideon came out of the compound’s infirmary.
“Still unconscious, which is probably for the best right now. Fortunately the bullet passed clean through, but the holes it left behind in his chest and back are going to need some time to heal. He’s going to be okay, but he’ll be hurting for a while, and he’s down for a week, minimum.”
“Shit,” Lucan muttered. “The last thing we need is to lose any of our numbers while Dragos is apparently ramping up his operation.”
The altercation earlier that night in the city had proven to be one hell of a revelation. The Order had been aware of the fact that Dragos had other highly skilled assassins like Hunter at his beck and call, all of them presumably kept loyal by unremovable UV collars, programmed to detonate and sever the head of any who tampered with the device or disobeyed his command. But what Lucan and the Order hadn’t known for a fact—and, frankly, had dreaded to imagine—was that one or more of those assassins might be first-generation Breed, like Hunter.
And to take that disturbing thought one step further, it was easily feasible to assume that if Dragos had other Gen One assassins in his service, Gen Ones who looked remarkably like Hunter himself and with similar glyphs, then the son of a bitch had to be breeding them from scratch off one of the original, otherworldly fathers of the vampire race on this planet.
An Ancient.
Like the one that the Order recently discovered had been kept in hibernation deep within the rock of the Bohemian mountains for probably centuries. The one that Dragos had awakened and removed God only knew how long ago.
If that creature was in fact alive, being used to produce new sons with first-generation strength and abilities—if a breeding process like that had been going on for decades or longer—then it wasn’t only the Order and the vampire nation that had cause for concern, but all of humankind. Bred in great numbers, a force that brutal, that bloodthirsty and powerful, would be virtually unstoppable.
The dark thoughts followed Lucan as he and Gideon left the infirmary wing and walked the twisting corridors to the tech lab. The entire compound was gathered there, the warriors in from patrol, and all of the Breedmates. Hunter was also in attendance, the big Gen One looming at the back of the room, while the rest of the group had taken seats around the large table in the center.
Lucan gave the male a brief nod of greeting, silent acknowledgment of Hunter’s assistance tonight—assistance that had probably saved more than one warrior’s ass and also netted the Order an up-close look at the technological wonder of the dead assassin’s UV collar. Although it was smashed and detonated, Gideon had been playing with the device ever since it arrived, trying to get a handle on how the thing worked and how it could potentially be used against its wearer.
“How’s the arm?” Lucan asked, turning his attention to Brock, who sat between Kade and Nikolai at the table.
The bulky black warrior shrugged his wounded shoulder and cracked a broad grin. “It’ll feel a helluva lot better when I get a chance to smoke one of these Gen One freaks of nature.” He glanced over at Hunter. “No offense.”
The vampire’s golden gaze was as flat as slate. “None taken.”
Lucan took his place next to Gabrielle at the head of the table and addressed the assembled team. “Obviously, after what we learned a few hours ago, our mission to disable Dragos and his operation has acquired a new, immediate objective. I don’t need to tell any of you that the last thing we need is a Gen One killer loose in the city, slaughtering humans at will and wreaking general havoc. Now, we can hope that it was just the one individual, an isolated incident, but I’m not the kind to rely on hope. I need answers. Solid intel on just what we might be dealing with here—before Dragos sends it to our doorstep.”
There were a few nods around the table, and more than one of the mated warriors shot Lucan a look that communicated the same dread he felt whenever he thought of the potential of their war with Dragos coming home to the compound.
“Tomorrow night I want a sweep of the entire city,” he said. “We’ll divide up: Tegan, Hunter, and myself each accompanying one group in case we run into more Gen Ones. This is an extermination mission. If one of Dragos’s assassins is spotted, we take him out. I want to send a very clear message to that son of a bitch and drive him back. Hard.”
“That could be exactly what he wants us to do,” Tegan replied. “Have you considered that what happened these past two nights might have been Dragos’s way of baiting us? Trying to pull us into street combat with his underlings so we’re not going after him?”
Lucan nodded. “It could be. But if he’s sent assassins into the city, can we really afford to take that chance and not confront the threat head-on?”
Very subtly, tenderly, Tegan slid his hand over to cover Elise’s. “No, we can’t.”
“Okay,” Lucan said. “Let’s go over the map and divvy up territories for tonight’s patrol.”
Reichen closed the cell phone and raked his hand over the top of his head. “Jesus Christ.”
“Is it bad news?” Claire came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her body still glistening with droplets of water from her shower.
“It’s not good,” he said, glancing up from where he sat on the edge of the bed. It was close to midnight, and he’d been waiting for Claire to get cleaned up and dressed before he broached the subject of leaving Newport, when the disturbing call came in from the Order. “Two of the warriors were shot earlier tonight in a confrontation with one of Dragos’s henchmen.”
“Good lord,” she whispered. “I’m sorry to hear that, Andre. How terrible.”
Reichen nodded gravely. “They’re down one man now, and planning to run intensive sweeps of the city tomorrow night to rout out any other potential threats.”
Claire inched over to join him where he sat, but instead of touching him, she wrapped her arms around herself. He could feel her unease in both the tentative way she moved and the sudden spike of her adrenaline, which echoed in his own veins. “Do they believe Dragos is in Boston, then?”
“I don’t know. Bad enough he’s sent his Gen One assassins in to stir up problems.”
“He has assassins who are also first-generation Breed?” Claire’s expression fell a little more. “I had no idea. Dragos must be a very dangerous enemy to have.”
“Yes,” Reichen agreed. “But Gen One assassins are only part of what makes him so dangerous. He has other things, too… the Order believes he controls one of the Ancients, hidden somewhere in a location we’ve yet to uncover.”
Claire frowned. “But all of the Ancients were killed during the Middle Ages. It was the Order that declared war on them and carried out the slayings. Even I know that part of Breed history.”
Reichen slowly shook his head. “One escaped the war with the Order. He was secreted away in a crypt in Bohemia for a very long time—until Dragos had him removed. I saw the empty crypt myself, last year, when I climbed the mountain outside Prague with some of the warriors. We’d been hoping the Ancient was dead and dust by now, but he’s not. Apparently Dragos has been keeping the creature alive for centuries, using him to create a new generation of the most powerful vampires in existence. With enough time and resources, Dragos could craft his own personal army of Gen One assassins bred to do his bidding.”
“Not if the Order can stop him,” Claire said hopefully.
“We have to stop him,” Reichen corrected. “We have to strike at him wherever and however we can.”
Claire watched him with cautious eyes. “We? But you aren’t—”
“I owe them,” he said solemnly. “The Order has been there for me when I needed them in the past, and I have pledged to them that I am here when they need me. I meant that. I can’t go back on it.”
“What are you saying?”
“They’re down one man in Boston now. I need to step in and help them.”
“You’re going to Boston?” He didn’t know why that should make her pulse lurch the way it did, but he felt her alarm echo in his own veins. “But you’re not one of them, Andreas. You’re not a warrior, so how could they ask that of you?”
“They’ve asked nothing of me. I’ve offered them my assistance because they are my friends.”
She glanced away from him, seeming to struggle with her words. “But I thought we were … I thought, after last night, after everything we said to each other…”
He laid his hand gently on the side of her face. “It doesn’t change a thing about what we’ve shared here, or how I feel about you. I love you, Claire. But this isn’t a choice between you and them. It’s simply my duty. My honor. And if teaming with the Order to move against Dragos brings me closer to finding Roth, so much the better.”
Claire got up and paced away from him, across the room. Her shoulders were held in a tense line. Even if he hadn’t been linked to her by blood, he would have known without question that she was troubled by something deeper than anything she had said so far. “I don’t want you to go, Andre. You can’t go to Boston. Not now.”
“You had to know that neither one of us could stay here like this for long.” He moved toward her, gently turned her around to face him. “The Order is sending a vehicle. It will be here within the hour.”
“You’ll be killed,” she said, her voice cracking. “Andreas, you will die if you go to Boston. I can feel it in my heart. If this vengeance of yours doesn’t kill you, then your fury surely will.”
He lifted her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes. “I have more reason to live than ever. I’m not looking for death, but I can’t pretend I’ll have a moment’s peace until Roth and his ilk are wiped from existence. Neither will you.”
“You can’t go,” she murmured, stubbornly refusing to hear him. When he started to shake his head in denial, she spoke with even more determination. “What if I asked you to let go of your hatred of Wilhelm Roth? What if I were to ask you to choose—”
“Don’t,” he whispered. “There is no choice for me to make here.” He smoothed her hair out of her face, feeling as though something precious were slipping through his fingers. “If I stayed now—even if I set aside my hatred of Roth—what will we do when he comes looking for us? Because he will, Claire. You know that as well as I do.”
“Then we will face him together. When and if that time comes, we’ll defeat him together.”
Reichen shook his head slowly. “This is my battle, not yours. I wouldn’t want you anywhere near when I finally get my hands on Roth. It’s far too great a risk. What do you think would happen to you if the fires inside me ignite and won’t ebb?”
God, he’d thought about that awful scenario a hundred times, beginning on that day in the farmer’s field outside Hamburg. He’d been thinking about it as recently as last night, and today, as well, when he could still feel the heated embers glowing in his belly.
How would he ever forgive himself if he brought any harm to Claire?
“I can’t risk it,” he said again, more forcefully now. “And I won’t let you risk it, either. I want you to come with me tonight to the Order’s headquarters. You’ll be protected in their compound, and you can stay there until—”
“Until when?” She closed her eyes for a long moment, as if absorbing the weight of his words. “Until you are either dead or very near to it? You want me to stand by and watch you pursue your own destruction, Andre? Now you are the one asking too much.”
He wanted to tell her that her fears were unfounded. More than anything, he wanted to promise her that he had no doubts about how this thing with Roth was going to work out. He wished he could assure her that somehow they would come through all of this in the end, that they could have a future together—the future Wilhelm Roth had denied them so many years ago.
But he couldn’t deceive her.
Taking down Roth might demand the last of his thin control. If he had to unleash his power to its hellish maximum in order to destroy the bastard, he would. And if the situation called for that, he knew the odds of him emerging from it with any shred of his humanity intact was virtually nil.
He gazed down at her lovely face and tenderly smoothed a damp tendril from her brow. “Get dressed now, all right? We can talk more, but it won’t be long before our ride arrives to pick us up. And you are going with me, Claire. That much is not open to debate.”
She looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she pressed her lips together and gave a faint shake of her head. “I know where Roth is, Andre.”
Reichen couldn’t speak as those words spilled out of her mouth. He stood there, dumbstruck and confused, a building sense of rage forming swiftly from deep inside him.
“I felt his presence through my blood bond to him last night, when we first arrived in Boston.”
Her admission was calmly voiced and steady, filled with certainty. It made him pause, even while his pulse slammed into a violent tempo. “He’s here in the United States?”
She nodded faintly. “In Boston.”
Reichen’s blood began to sizzle. “You knew this? You knew this, but you didn’t tell me.”
He didn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation, but the heat flickering to life within him made it hard to form words. His head was buzzing, and it was hard to do anything but fight to keep control of the kindling fire that was already starting to spread through his body.
Roth was a mere hour away.
All this time, so close to his grasp.
“I couldn’t tell you, Andre. I didn’t want to give you information that might only get you killed. That’s why I left the airport without telling you. But then you followed me here, and I thought maybe if we spent some time together, the way we used to, then I could convince you to give up your need for vengeance.”
Reichen could barely breathe. His nostrils filled with the acrid tang of smoke and heat. All along his limbs, electricity crackled, growing hotter by the second. “For fuck’s sake, Claire. You should have told me about this. I needed to know. Goddamn it, the Order needed to know also.”
“I didn’t want my blood bond to Roth putting you or anyone else in danger.”
His vision beginning to bleed red with rage, he stalked away from her, fuming.
“Claire, you have been the one in danger all this time. With Roth so close, he had to know you were here, too. He could have shown up on this doorstep at any time.”
“But he didn’t,” she said quietly from behind him. “I couldn’t tell you that I knew where he was, or you would have gone after him. You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t have insisted I help you locate him, Andreas. You’re so determined to claim your justice, how long would it have taken you before you asked me to use my blood bond to lead you to him?”
“Never,” he said, appalled. He spun around to face her then, his body teeming with heat. “I never would have used you. Never. God, don’t you know that?”
“I suppose I wasn’t willing to find out,” she replied. “Andreas, please, don’t be angry with me—”
“I’m fucking furious with you!” he roared, unable to bite back the fear that had such a firm hold on his heart. His chest heaved with every breath he pulled into his lungs. He shook from a place deep within, a pit of dread so black and endless, it might have swallowed him whole. And the heat of his destructive power continued to rise, burning through his reason and self-control. “I can’t be near you right now. I have to get the hell out of here.”
When he moved to walk past her, Claire’s hand shot out to him.
Too late to warn her away, he felt her fingers close around his hand. She yelped in sudden pain and pulled back, cradling her palm to her chest.
Oh, God. He’d burned her.
He had stomped on her heart and now he was hurting her in still another way. Just as he feared he would do eventually.
He stepped past her and, with a few brisk strides, chewed up the distance to the door.
“Andreas,” she called out behind him.
He didn’t look back.
His body lethal with the heat of his fury, he stormed out of the room and leapt off the second-floor balcony to the foyer below. He heard her cry his name again, but he didn’t so much as pause for a second.
Glowing now, his pyrokinetic curse screaming through his veins and limbs, mind and soul, he threw open the front door with a sharp mental command. Then he stalked out into the crisp, cool night air without looking back.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
It took him the better part of an hour before he was able to rein in the worst of his pyrokinetic heat. He was still angry with Claire by the time he returned to the house, but at least he couldn’t hurt her further. Not that she wasn’t still feeling some pain, he acknowledged as he walked up the driveway and found her standing outside with the warrior who’d been sent from Boston to pick them up.
“Ah, you see?” Rio said when he spotted Reichen. “I told you he would come back.”
The Breed male’s rich voice rolled with his Spanish accent, and when he flashed a welcoming grin and thrust out his hand to Reichen in greeting, the scars that marred the left side of his face practically vanished. “Good to see you, my friend.”
“And you, as well,” Reichen said as he briefly clasped the warrior’s hand.
Rio’s pretty auburn-haired Breedmate, Dylan, was with him tonight. She strode up and gave Reichen a casual kiss on the cheek. “You had us all a bit worried here.”
“My apologies,” he murmured, slanting a look at Claire.
She would hardly look at him, and he could see that she was cradling her singed fingers close to her chest. Reichen felt sick that his curse had wounded her, even a little. He wanted to tell her as much, but it was a conversation best done privately.
She didn’t seem eager to talk to him anyway.
Nor did she seem inclined to argue anymore about going with him to the Order’s headquarters. She followed Dylan to the vehicle and started to climb into the backseat.
“Everything good?” Rio asked when the females were out of earshot. “You don’t look so well, amigo.”
“I’ll feel better once she’s safe in the compound,” he said.
In truth, he’d feel better once he had a chance to hunt and slake the thirst that was still riding him from the pyro. The last thing he needed was to be cooped up with Claire for the next hour or more on the drive back to Boston. Bad enough he craved blood to cool the final few embers that still burned inside him. It would be pure torture having to curb his need if he was seated mere inches away from the woman he thirsted for above all others.
Rio seemed to clue in on that as they walked together toward the SUV “Dylan won’t mind if you ride shotgun,” he said. “She and Claire can ride together in back and get acquainted. Dylan’s far better company than either one of us.”
Reichen wasn’t about to argue. He took the front passenger side and sat back as Rio wheeled the Rover down the driveway and headed for the road that would take them to the interstate.
He was right about the trip being one long exercise in patience and control. While Claire and Dylan chatted softly behind him about the things they loved most about New England, and where they’d each grown up, and a hundred other harmless pleasantries, Reichen stared out the dark-tinted glass of the window and tried not to think about his hunger.
It was a losing battle.
By the time they exited the tollway and reached the inner city limits of Boston, his feverish hunger was demanding to be fed.
“I need to walk for a while,” he told Rio as the warrior came to a stop at a traffic light. He didn’t wait for permission, just opened the door and jumped out. “I’ll meet up with you at the compound shortly I know how to find you.”
From the backseat, he caught Claire’s look of concern. He felt her worry rattle in his own blood, too. She thought he might be going after Roth on his own.
He might have been tempted, if not for the clamoring of his thirst. Instead, once the SUV rolled away into the darkness, Reichen skulked through the thickly settled, working-class neighborhoods. He was careful to keep to the back-alley shadows, where it was easier to conceal his presence and his dark intentions. It was a blustery, rainy night in Boston, which meant far fewer loiterers on the sidewalks or standing outside the pubs sucking on cigarettes. Only a handful of the roughest and most desperate individuals had any reason to be outdoors tonight—Reichen among them.
He searched the city’s offerings with a cool eye, knowing that when he was like this, riding the far outer edge of his power, he was a predator in the meanest sense of the word. His mouth was parched, his fangs digging into his tongue. Like this, he was as deadly as the Ancient in Dragos’s hidden lair. A thirsting, savage monster.
As Reichen prowled the back of a narrow neighborhood street, the bang of a storm door drew his head sharply up. A human male in a ball cap and baggy sweats stomped down a rickety wooden porch, screaming obscenities at the older woman who appeared backlit by lights from inside the house.
“Getcha ass back here, Daniel! Do you hear me?” she shouted, loud enough for the surrounding four blocks to hear.
The young male flipped her off and kept walking while he hollered back at her. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you too, Ma! Go back to ya bottle and stay the hell outta my weed, why don’t ya! You owe me twenty bucks for the shit you stole from me!”
Reichen cocked his head, watching the human cut down a dark side road. With his head down and his mouth working absently on all the things he still wanted to say to the drunk who spawned him, the kid didn’t even notice that he wasn’t alone in the narrow alley.
He didn’t see Reichen moving in from behind; probably only sensed him as a rush of cold air at the back of his tattooed neck. Before the human had a chance to utter a single startled gasp, Reichen sprang on him.
He swiftly took him down to the cracked asphalt. Pushed the human’s chin up and to the side, baring the hammering pulse at the side of his neck. He bit in deep, and sucked in a mouthful of warm, nourishing blood. He fed hungrily, greedily, ignoring the feeble struggles of his Host. Every gulp was bitter on his tongue, and did little to quench the desert dryness of his throat.
His hunger persisted, even when the human’s resistance had ended. Reichen kept feeding. He couldn’t stop. He wasn’t even sure he knew how—one of the terrible consequences of summoning his talent.
He might have killed the man if not for the sudden awareness of cold hard steel pressing tight against the side of his head.
“The buffet is closed, asshole.”
Reichen grunted, only the dimmest flicker of recognition burning into his brain. He kept drinking, starving for more.
The hammer on the large pistol cocked with a loud metallic warning. “Back the fuck off, or you’re gonna be eating lead.”
He growled now, pissed off by the interruption and still too fevered to let up on his Host. Blood gushed over his tongue and down his throat, but the fire in his gut still burned, impossible to extinguish. He slid a feral gaze to the side to gauge the Breed male with the gun locked and loaded at his head.
“Holy hell,” the huge vampire muttered. The icy nose of the pistol fell away from his temple. “Reichen? What the fuck.”
Reichen knew this immense male with the wild tawny hair and stark green eyes. Instinct called him warrior—friend, even though his stance and tone a moment ago had conveyed deadly serious murder. It was that instinctive awareness that kept Reichen from turning on the vampire as a strong hand came down on his shoulder and physically peeled him off his prey. He was shoved back hard, and the other male grabbed the human to seal the punctures with an efficient sweep of his tongue.
Reichen watched, ass planted on the concrete, as the big Breed male palmed the human’s forehead and erased his memory of the attack. “Now get the hell out of here.”
The stunned man stood up and wandered dazedly toward the other end of the alley.
“Tegan,” Reichen murmured thickly, voicing the name that finally sprang into his consciousness.
The warrior stalked over to him. “What are you doing down here? Last I heard, Lucan had sent Rio out to Newport to chauffeur your sorry ass into the compound.”
Reichen shrugged. “I had the sudden urge for takeout along the way.”
Tegan didn’t laugh. He kept that fierce gaze trained on Reichen, watching him as he might an armed grenade. “You look like shit.”
“I’m better now,” Reichen replied, feeling the new blood quenching his organs and cells. But it hadn’t been enough. His thirst was still gnawing at him, greedy for more. “I am fine.”
Tegan scoffed. “You’ve got the shakes and you can’t keep your eyes focused on a damn thing.”
“It will pass.”
This time a raw curse. “Give me your hand. Doesn’t look like you can get up on your own motor.”
Reichen took the offered help, clasping Tegan’s hand and letting himself be pulled to his feet. No sooner had he risen than Tegan drew in a sharp hiss. His fangs punched into view behind his lip, and the green of his eyes was suddenly shot with flecks of glowing amber. Reichen recalled the warrior’s ability to read emotion with a touch, and he could only guess at the torrent of disturbing things he’d just picked up from that brief contact.
“What the fuck is going on with you, man?” he demanded.
“It’s the pyro… does this to me afterward. No big deal.” Even as he said it, Reichen wondered if it was true. Summoning his power was getting easier all the time; coming out of its wake was another thing.
Maybe Claire was right when she challenged him about his fury. How many more times could he do this and hope to emerge from it in one piece? How soon before he reached the tipping point and the fires ate away the very last scrap of his humanity?
And if the fires didn’t do it, he had the sickening feeling that the nearly insatiable thirst left in their wake surely would.
“Shit,” Tegan exhaled, holding him in a narrowed, assessing look. He pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and pressed a key. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m down in Jamaica Plain. I’ve got Reichen here with me, I’m bringing him in to the compound.”
The women of the Order made Claire feel as welcome as she ever had by her contemporaries in the Darkhavens. Three of the warriors’ Breedmates, Savannah, Gabrielle, and Elise, had prepared her a lovely dinner of creamy soup and homemade biscuits, and Dylan had shown her to a private apartment down the maze of marbled corridors that Claire was offered for her own while she was at the compound.
They had told her to make herself at home, and she couldn’t resist spending a few minutes nosing around the massive headquarters that spread out seemingly endlessly. It was fascinating—and a bit unsettling—to realize that an organization like the Order not only existed but needed to exist. She felt so naive, reflecting on how Wilhelm Roth and his Enforcement Agency cronies strutted around, professing to be the protectors of the Breed, when they had been as corrupt as a cancer, slowly chewing away at the foundation of what was truly good and just. Wilhelm Roth had been a villain all along, and Claire had been too blind to see it.
But what hurt much worse than that was the fact that she’d been in love with Andreas Reichen for most of her life, and now that she had been given a miraculous second chance with him, it might be Wilhelm Roth who tore them apart once more. She could only hope that good would win out over evil like him and Dragos. She could only pray that once the worst was over, she and Andreas could begin to smooth over the fear and anger that stood between them now.
The drive from Newport to Boston seemed to take years instead of an hour. She’d hated that she and Andreas hadn’t been able to talk before Rio and Dylan had arrived to bring them to the compound. And she still weathered the knot of cold anxiety that had settled in her heart in that instant when he’d leapt out of the vehicle once they reached the city.
She didn’t know where he’d gone, but she’d taken some small comfort in the fact that Elise had informed her that he was with Tegan now, both of them presumably on their way back to the compound.
At least he was safe.
At least she would still have the opportunity to try to make things right between them.
Claire turned down one of the winding white hallways and followed the pattern of black glyphs inlaid in the floor. The marks were mesmerizing, especially when she was already lost in her thoughts. She caught a faint whiff of chlorine an instant before a door swung open in front of her in the corridor.
A young girl with wet blond hair came to an abrupt stop directly in her path. She had a towel wrapped around her tiny frame, the straps of a pink swimsuit tank peeking over the top of the white terry cloth.
“Oh!” Claire exclaimed, startled and surprised to see the child in the compound. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming out of…”
Her voice trailed off as she found herself staring into a pair of wide, luminescent eyes the color of polished silver. They were the oddest color—not really a color at all, but nearly white. Smooth as glass … hypnotic.
“I was just…” Claire murmured, uncertain what she meant to say next because in that instant the girl’s eyes began to change.
The surface of her irises warbled, like a pond suddenly sent quaking by the drop of a pebble into the water. Her pupils began to shrink to tiny pinpoints, drawing Claire deeper into the peculiar spell of the girl’s eyes. Then she saw something move within the mirrorlike depths.
It was an image taking shape swiftly, coming into focus as Claire peered in total rapt fascination. It was a woman, running in darkness. Screaming, grief-stricken.
It was herself.
Claire watched as the vision played out like a clip from a movie. But this was no movie; it was her life. Her personal anguish. She knew it instinctively, as she watched herself tearing through a thicket of trees and bramble, desperate to reach something—or someone—yet knowing from the ache in her soul that what she sought was lost to her already. There was a blinding glow of fire ahead of her, a deep pit of rubble that roared with flames and smoke, throwing off heat so intense it seared her like she was walking into a furnace.
Someone shouted for her to get back.
Still, she ran toward it.
She couldn’t turn away from it.
Even though she knew in her heart that he was gone, she couldn’t turn away from him.
“Andre,” she murmured aloud.
The door swung open again and a woman came out this time. “Oh, God… Mira,” she exclaimed, and hastily turned the little girl away from Claire, burying the child’s face in the generous swell of her pregnant belly.
Claire came out of her daze as if she’d been slapped. “What just happened?”
The other woman was kneeling down in front of the child now, smoothing a gentle palm over her cheeks and murmuring reassuring words to her. She offered Claire an apologetic look. “Hi, I’m Tess. You must be Claire. This is Mira. We were just having a swim. Are you all right?”
Claire nodded. “Her eyes…”
“Yes,” Tess said. “Mira is a seer. She usually wears special contact lenses to mute her talent, but she took them out because she was afraid to lose them in the pool.”
“Hi, Claire,” Mira said, careful to keep her gaze down now. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay.” Claire smiled and ran her hand over the top of the girl’s damp head, even though she was still very rattled by what she’d witnessed.
Tess seemed to pick up on her unease. The pregnant Breedmate’s aquamarine eyes were tender, compassionate. “Mira, why don’t you run along now. I’ll be right there to read you a story while we wait for Renata and Niko to come in from their patrol.”
“Okay.” The little girl pivoted toward Claire and murmured to her feet, “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too, Mira.”
After she was gone, Tess gave Claire a sympathetic smile. “Was it awful, the thing she showed you?”
“Yes,” she answered, too stricken to explain what she saw.
Tess winced. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you that Mira’s visions don’t always come true. Her gift is mercilessly honest. She can’t help it. She can’t even control it, which is why she has the special lenses now. Each time she uses her talent, she loses some of her own sight.”
“How awful.” And now Claire felt worse for having inadvertently taken something away from her. “I had no idea—”
“You couldn’t have, so please don’t feel bad,” Tess said, kindly absolving her of her guilt. “The vampire who had Mira before she came here to the compound used her talent constantly. Niko and Renata took her out of that bad situation just a few weeks ago. It’s our hope that her sight can be restored in time.”
“I hope so, too,” Claire murmured, feeling sorry for the girl, but her own thoughts were miles away.
She had to tell Andreas what she’d seen.
She didn’t kid herself that he would listen to anything more she had to say, or even that he would want to see her after the way they’d left things between them in Newport. But she had to try to get through to him, if only so that he had the knowledge and could decide on his own what to do about it.
Claire felt the other Breedmate watching her closely as if she understood the weight of her thoughts. “When I walked past the weapons room a short while ago, he was in there with Tegan and Rio. I believe they’d just come in. Would you like me to walk you down there?”
“Thank you,” Claire said, then fell in step beside Tess, her heart squeezed tightly in her chest.
CHAPTER
Twenty
In the few short minutes it took Claire and Tess to reach the Order’s weapons room, Andreas was no longer there. Tegan and Rio were standing near the firing range with Gideon, reviewing a cache of ammunition and firearms laid out on a table near a large cabinet filled with more of the same. Tegan looked up as Tess led Claire into the room.
“Have you seen Andreas?” Claire asked the formidable Gen One male.
He nodded gravely. “I’ve seen him. And I sure as hell wouldn’t recommend it. At least not for a few more hours. He’s not exactly fit for company.”
“I need to talk to him, Tegan. It’s important.”
When the warrior looked like he was going to shut her down flat, Tess chimed in. “I was swimming with Mira at the pool. She didn’t have her lenses in, and… Claire saw something.”
“Ah, fuck.” Tegan wasn’t the only vampire in the room to mutter a dark curse. He ran a hand over his jaw, then followed it through with a gesture toward the corridor outside. “His quarters are up that hallway. Fifth door after the first turn.”
Claire nodded her thanks to both Tess and Tegan, then pivoted around and hurried out to the corridor. She found the curve in the marbled walkway and glanced ahead to count the closed doors as she walked quickly toward the fifth one.
Before she even reached the halfway point, she felt the fine hairs at the back of her neck begin to stir. The sensation traveled her skin like a low-current electrical charge. She would know the feeling anywhere.
Andreas.
She paused in front of an arched open entryway on her right. The chamber was dark, lit only by the flicker of a single pillar candle deep inside the room. It was a sanctuary of some sort. A chapel, with carved stone walls and twin rows of benches that faced a simple, unadorned pedestal altar.
Andreas was on his knees before that altar, his dark head bowed low.
Tiny pulses of light skated all over his body. It wasn’t the full-scale heat and fire that she’d witnessed before, but a smaller kind of energy. Less volatile by far, but yet strong enough to make her limbs and neck prickle in reaction. As she watched, the pulses began to slow and lessen in strength. Before long, they had faded completely.
Andreas was so still and meditative, Claire was loath to disturb him.
Too late, however. He swiveled his head and opened his eyes, piercing her with a blast of amber that swamped his irises.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice deadly low and thickened by the presence of his fangs. “Go, Claire. I don’t want you to see me like this.”
She didn’t have to ask him what he meant by that because even though his body was released from the hold of his pyrokinesis, misery was pouring off him in palpable waves. He was caught in the grip of a deep blood thirst. His extended fangs and transformed eyes were evidence enough of that, but it was his dermaglyphs that truly gave him away. The skin markings that were visible from within the open front of his shirt were livid with the colors of hunger.
Claire drifted farther into the chapel sanctuary. “Are you all right?”
He growled, animalistic and threatening, as she neared him. Claire thought he might stand up and draw away from her, but he remained on his knees as she moved to the bench nearest him and slowly sat down.
The vision she’d seen in Mira’s eyes was still very much on her mind, but as she looked at Andreas, her worry for him was more immediate. She wanted to reach out to him, to brush the tangle of his rain-tousled hair out of his face, but she held her hands close, uncertain whether he would welcome her kindness after the way things had been left between them in Newport.
“Where did you go tonight, Andre?”
“You mean Tegan didn’t tell you how he had to peel me off a human before I drained the poor bastard? He didn’t tell you that it took the press of cold steel against my temple and the threat of a bullet in my skull to bring me to my senses?”
Claire swallowed. “No. I didn’t know any of that.”
At her denial, he glanced away from her, shaking his head as he stared into the wobbling flame of the crimson altar candle. “Unless you have a pistol concealed on your person somewhere, I’d advise you to turn around and get the hell away from me while you can.”
She heard the danger in his oddly restrained tone, but she stayed right where she was. “I’m here because I was concerned about you tonight. And because something happened a short while ago that terrified me.”
He swung a hard look at her, his brows lowered over the bright amber intensity of his gaze. “What happened? Does it have something to do with Roth? Did he do something to hurt you again?”
“Nothing like that, no. But I saw something that I’m certain pertains to him.” At his questioning scowl, she went on. “There is a child here in the compound with the gift of premonition—”
“Mira,” he said, having been told of the girl by the warriors.
“Yes, Mira. I saw something terrible in her eyes just a few minutes ago. I saw your death, Andreas.” Claire exhaled softly and closed her eyes for a moment, pained just to say the words. “I saw a pit of fire and rubble, and you were inside it. I tried to save you, but I couldn’t reach you in time. And the fire was so hot…”
He cursed softly and stood up. His dark expression said he was ready to deny what he was hearing, but Claire cut him off before he had a chance to speak.
“I felt your death, Andre. I was there, in the vision. It was real. If you don’t let go of this need to destroy Wilhelm Roth, I believe you’re going to die.”
He listened, his jaw set in what seemed to be a grim acceptance. As if he’d known for a while that his death would come amid flames and ruin, but saw no need to run from it.
“My God,” she said, furious that she was only just understanding now. “Every time you let the fires rise within you, you’re staring your own death full in the face. You know that, don’t you? You’ve known it all along, and yet you continue to use the very power that can only destroy you in the end.”
He listened unfazed, his expression unreadable and infuriatingly unemotional. “I’m not afraid to die, Claire.”
“No,” she said, forcing the word past her tongue on a miserable laugh. “You’re not afraid of it, Andre. I see that now, finally. You’re running toward it as fast as you can. Am I that easy to walk away from? I must be, since you keep doing it.”
“What would you have me do?” he murmured.
“Give up your revenge on Wilhelm Roth, here and now. Let the Order take him down when they go after Dragos, but not you. I want you to stay away from him. Can’t you do that… for me?”
His hand came up tenderly, his fingers curving around the quivering line of her jaw. “You’re asking me to turn my back on those who’ve been willing to risk their lives for me in the past. You’re asking me to forget everything Roth has done to me and my kin—what he has done to numerous innocent lives. You’re asking me to look the other way on a criminal who would not hesitate to take his fury out on you, Claire.”
She looked into his amber-soaked eyes—a vampire’s hungering eyes—and saw a flood of raw emotion swelling up inside him. “There are a thousand things I want to say to you, Claire. Promises I wish I could make you. But I’ve taken this too far with Roth now. I’ve ignited a war with him that’s not going to be extinguished until one or the other of us goes down in flames. I don’t want it to be me, but I’m not about to shrink away from any conflagration still to come.”
God help her, she didn’t want to forgive him right now—not for coming back into her life, not for reminding her so vividly that she’d never stopped loving him, and most certainly not for the prospect of losing him again after having been given such an extraordinary taste of happiness.
But when he carried her fingers to his lips with tender care and total reverence, Claire’s anger and fear melted beneath his touch.
And when he kissed the heart of her palm, then lavished the same soft worship on her mouth, she was lost to him completely.
She didn’t even try to resist as he drew back, panting and wild, before stripping them both of their clothing in the middle of the compound’s sacred chapel. His kisses grew more demanding, more savage. She reveled in his passion, her breath catching as he lifted her legs around his waist and kissed her ever deeper. He impaled her on him in a long, hard thrust, capturing her sharp gasp of pleasure with his mouth.
Then he was moving with her, flesh on flesh, as he carried her with the swift speed and strength that marked him as something more than human. Claire felt the chill of firm, carved stone come up against her naked back. And riding at the spread juncture of her thighs, she felt the warmth of rigid, hot flesh filling her so deeply, so deliciously.
Andreas held her in a tight grasp as he drove into her, his tempo aggressive and unapologetic. Claire understood his need. She felt it, too. She welcomed every crushing thrust, every furious pound and cruel withdrawal.
She wanted to hear him shout his release, even if it betrayed their passion to the entire compound. She didn’t care about anything else but him, and the shattering plea sure of their bodies joined together for what she prayed would not be the last time.
“Fuck me,” she whispered against his ear as he rocked his hips against her in a more urgent rhythm. “Oh, God, Andre … I need to feel this. Please, don’t stop.”
With a snarl, he rode her harder, taking her to a level of climax she didn’t know existed. Claire broke apart with a muffled cry, burying her face in his shoulder as her body contracted around him in a great, shuddering rush of sensation. He came along with her, huffing a dark curse as he bucked his pelvis tight against her and held her close, swamping her core with the hot, exploding rush of his release.
Reichen released Claire’s thighs and gently placed her feet back down on solid ground. He was shaking with the aftershocks of his release, but even more so from the pounding need to bury his fangs in her tender neck.
He’d never felt more alive than when he was with Claire. Being with her only amplified what a farce he’d been living all the years they’d been apart. After the curse of his pyrokinesis made itself known to him, he had been so careful to hold everyone at a distance. He’d bricked up his heart behind fortress-thick walls.
But not with Claire. She had somehow worked her way into the fiber of who he was and who he one day hoped he could be. He was her mate in all the ways that mattered.
But not in the one way that she needed.
He shouldn’t have done this with her—for a dozen reasons and then some.
Not the least of which being that it wasn’t going to change his mind about going after Roth.
She knew that, too.
He could see it in her eyes, as she stood before him with flushed cheeks and dark brown eyes gone even duskier for the velvety blackness of her passion-drenched pupils. “Have you already spoken with them about how you mean to help the Order?”
No sense in trying to shield her from the truth when it was plain that she still knew him better than anyone else ever had. Or ever would. “Tegan and I discussed a few things on the way back in tonight. Starting tomorrow evening, I’ll be joining the patrols in place of the warrior that was injured. Since we now know Roth is in Boston, we’ll be sweeping the city with an eye on locating him, as well.”
She nodded briefly, then moved past him to collect her clothes. She dressed expediently, hastily, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough now.
Reichen gave a feeble shake of his head, lost for the right words. “I’m sorry, Claire.”
“I know,” she replied quietly. “I’m sorry, too.”
He didn’t try to stop her as she walked out of the chapel and disappeared down the winding corridor. As hard as it was to keep his feet rooted to the floor, he stood there as still as a statue, until he was certain she was gone.
Then he dropped back down onto his knees and continued to pray for the strength he would need to see his vengeance through to its necessary end.
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
It was sometime after daybreak when Claire stood outside the shower in her compound quarters and reached in to turn on the water. She stared, unseeing, into the warm mist that began to rise on the other side of the glass.
She was losing him again.
Again, because of Wilhelm Roth.
Cold all over when she thought of everything Roth had already taken from Andreas, and from her, she stepped under the steaming spray and stood there, trembling from the chill that permeated down into her bones. In just a few hours, the sun would be setting again and Andreas would be joining the Order on their combat patrols—heading right into the very city where Roth was now. Heading potentially into death.
He’d made it very clear that nothing she said would keep him from lending his help to the Order. Just as nothing would stop him from pursuing the justice he felt he needed, no matter the cost to him. Or the cost to the love they were rediscovering after being kept so long apart.
At least this time he wasn’t walking away without any explanation at all. He had his reasons. Good, noble reasons. None of which made the truth any easier to accept.
Some desperate, selfish part of her had wanted to run back immediately to the Order’s chapel and beg him to reconsider. She would offer him anything. Say anything.
But she knew he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change his mind.
He was too honorable a man.
And she loved him too much to try to make him bend his integrity just to satisfy her breaking heart. But God, it hurt to think of letting him go. Of possibly losing him forever.
Grief and anger swamped her.
She felt so confused and afraid… so alone already.
Claire sank down onto the tile floor of the shower and let the hot water and steam engulf her. She closed her eyes and thought about how difficult it was going to be when he left with the warriors that night. Being at the compound to await his return would assuage some of the ache in her heart, but only until she considered that he would also be out there looking to have his battle with Roth. And if she added Dragos to that equation, too?
She could hardly bear to imagine the outcome of a confrontation of that magnitude.
But what could she do to prevent it?
A small, desperate voice in the corner of her mind whispered that there was something. Something she hadn’t yet considered. Something so distasteful that it caused bile to rise in the back of her throat.
She could go directly to Roth himself.
Not for mercy because she knew he had none, particularly not now. Not where she or Andreas were concerned. But as certain as she was of that fact, she was also certain of just how deeply Wilhelm Roth despised losing.
He had always been consumed with winning, even the most trivial of contests.
Would he be willing to accept the only thing she had left to offer him?
Claire couldn’t be sure unless she tried.
Repulsed by what she was about to do, but feeling it was her last hope where Andreas was concerned, she leaned her head back and slowed her breathing. She was adept at putting herself into a swift sleep, but finding Roth—hoping that he might be sleeping too—was not quite as easy. She rode the tide away from consciousness and drifted toward the dream realm, searching, praying she would find Roth there.
It took her several long minutes before she felt the edge of his dreaming mind through the veil of slumber. Ice formed in her stomach as she moved toward him, ignoring every instinct inside her that screamed for her to flee in the other direction as fast as she could.
She saw him in front of her now. He had his back to her, hastily making his way through what appeared to be some kind of earthen vault. Claire followed him in silence, formulating her desperate appeal. Ahead of him, a heavy door opened to let him pass. Claire slipped in behind him just as the thick stone panel swung closed.
Roth was grumbling to himself low under his breath, unintelligible words filled with venom and frustration. Inside another room, this one more clinical than the primitive-looking anterior chamber, he stormed past a counter lined with microscopes, dishes, and beakers. As he neared the end of the long surface, he shot his hand out and swept a bunch of the equipment to the floor. Claire gasped as glass crashed and shattered in front of her.
“What the fuck—” Roth wheeled around. When he saw her there, his cruel eyes narrowed and he laughed, a brittle, dangerous rumble in the back of his throat. “Well, well. If it isn’t my faithless bitch of a Breedmate.”
She didn’t let his verbal slap hurt her. “We need to talk, Wilhelm. You and I need to come to some kind of agreement before things go any further between you and Andreas.”
Now he chortled in true amusement. “Let me guess. He sent you here to appeal to my mercy? My sense of honor?”
“He didn’t send me, no. He doesn’t even know I’m here.” When his brow quirked with curiosity, she forged on. “I’ve come to ask you to stay away from Andreas. Drop your animosity for him—and for me—and let Andreas move on with his life.”
Roth scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” Claire said. “And I’m willing to offer you everything I have to secure your word right here and now. I will come back to you, Wilhelm. Do whatever you want to me—take your hatred for him out on me, I don’t care anymore. Just leave him alone. Please.”
His eyes went narrow as blades, cutting her with their malice. “Are you truly so naive, Claire? I could care less about him,” he said, utterly devoid of emotion. “You either, for that matter.”
Hope kindled, dim but promising. But then Wilhelm Roth let loose with a terrible laugh that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
“It’s never been about you, Claire. Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you ever suspect? You were just a prize I wanted because it would mean taking something precious away from him. Destroying his Darkhaven and the people closest to him was a pleasure I hadn’t anticipated. One I relished, nevertheless.”
“You’re sick, Wilhelm.” Her stomach twisted with contempt. “My God. You really are a monster.”
“And you, Claire, are already dead to me,” he whispered, his voice an airless growl that chilled her to the bone. “You and Andreas are both already dead. You just don’t know it yet. You are obstacles standing in the way of greatness, and you will be removed. You and the Order, as well.”
“Is that your promise to Dragos?” she asked woodenly “How long have you been doing his evil for him?”
Roth smiled maliciously at her disgust. “Our revolution began even before I made the misjudgment of taking you as my mate. I should never have bothered wasting time on you, no matter how much it pleased me to know what I had taken from you and Reichen both. It might have been just as gratifying to me had I farmed you off to Dragos with the other females I sent to him over the years.”
Claire struggled to make sense of what he was saying. Other females. Roth was sending females—did he mean Breedmate females?—to Dragos. For what purpose, she wondered, but only needed to guess for another moment.
From out of the ether of the dream, a wall of barred cells appeared. Dank, lightless, terrible prisons. And within them were captive women. Breedmates. Claire could see the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark on a few of them even from where she stood.
The same birthmark she bore. The same birthmark that denoted a human female capable of bonding with a Breed male and bearing his young.
Good lord, there were upward of twenty women caged in those cells. Her stomach roiled even more miserably to see that some of them were pregnant.
“What’s going on here?” she asked, appalled and sickened. “What the hell are you and Dragos doing?”
As she said it, her voice rising in outrage, she caught the low howl of an animal emanating from somewhere deep within the place where she and Roth stood. The howl rose to a roar—a pained, keening cry that vibrated through the soles of her feet and straight into her marrow.
It was unlike anything she’d ever heard before … an utterly alien noise that put a knot of terror in her lungs.
God, what was this place? What horrors were Dragos and Roth conducting in here?
The terrible cry kept going, so loud it rattled the floor beneath her feet. Roth threw his head back and howled along with the unseen creature, mocking and sadistic.
Then he smiled a murderous smile. “You’re dead, Claire. Just like those Breedmates over there. He’s going to tear you limb from tender limb. Unless I have the pleasure first. You think about that the next time you let Reichen touch you. The next time you let him fuck you, know that this is waiting for you. I’m going to kill you both and relish doing it.”
Then just like that, Roth and the chamber of horrors were gone. He severed the web that connected them in sleep, and Claire woke up shaking, panting under the warm spray of the shower.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, putting her face into her wet palms. Bile rose in her throat. “Oh, God… what have I done?”
It wasn’t until a few minutes after he woke that Wilhelm Roth realized the depth of the mistake he’d just made with Claire.
At first he’d been shocked to see her in his dream—he hadn’t expected the female to have that kind of guts, putting herself in close proximity to him, even in the realm of sleep, after having knowingly stoked his anger with her whoring for Andreas Reichen. After the surprise of her sneaking up on him had worn off, Roth had let himself indulge in provoking her, baiting her fear with a good hard look at what he and Dragos were capable of.
He’d delighted in letting her hear the savage roars of the Ancient in his cage. Her horror over seeing the captive Breedmates that Dragos had been using in all manner of experiments had given him a deliciously sadistic thrill.
Now that he was awake, he had time to consider the price of his little game.
He had shown her the laboratory and underground bunker where Dragos kept all of his secrets.
Would she understand what she’d seen? He hoped not.
Claire had an inquisitive mind, but what could she do with this knowledge? Tell the Order, of course, but the saving grace there was that Dragos was already anticipating a move by the warriors in Boston. He’d been banking on the Order eventually finding him out, ever since the gathering they had disrupted near Montreal. Dragos had been making plans, moving pieces on the chessboard of his master design.
Still, Roth knew he could not let this slip go untold. If he did, he knew without question that Dragos would somehow unearth the truth in no time. He had to own up to the error and let the chips fall where they may. With luck, his head would not be made to fall along with them.
Formulating his excuses, Roth called Dragos’s private line.
“Sire,” he said as the other vampire picked up with a snarled greeting. “Forgive the interruption, but I have news that, unfortunately, could not wait.”
“Speak.”
Roth told him about the encounter with Claire in his dream. He was careful to gloss over most of his self-blame for the slip, pinning the fault on the weasly stealth of his Breedmate’s talent. “She spied on me without my knowledge, sire. When I discovered her there in the dream with me, it was too late to prevent her from seeing the lab.”
“Hmm,” Dragos grunted, listening in a maddening silence. “I’m growing very tired of knowing that this female and her companion are still breathing, Herr Roth. Now that you have things under way in Boston, perhaps it’s time you dealt with her as we discussed.”
“Yes, sire. And I will.” He cleared his throat, feeling the aggression pouring over the phone line despite Dragos’s outward calm. “It will be my personal pleasure to choke the life out of the bitch—after I let her watch me kill Andreas Reichen.”
“I have a better idea,” Dragos said, his voice soft and venomous. “I want you to come to the headquarters at sundown.”
“Sire?” Roth was confused. “What about the blood bond?”
“What about it?”
“If she tells the Order what she saw today, what’s to say that the warriors won’t use her blood bond to find me and the lab?”
There was only the briefest hesitation on the other end. “Be here at sundown, Herr Roth. Your instructions will be waiting for you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
The Order’s compound in Boston was an architectural and technological marvel. Even in spite of the gravity of Claire’s reasons for being there, she couldn’t help but be impressed by the subterranean network of sprawling corridors and chambers hidden beneath the grand limestone mansion at street level.
The Order lived in unquestionable comfort, but it was clear that this was a tactical location. Their headquarters’ primary function—the neurological center of the entire location—was the tech lab, with its banks of computers, surveillance equipment, wall charts, and strategical maps of key cities in the United States and abroad. She had entered a war room, and even though she had been welcomed there as a guest by everyone she’d met so far, as she sat at the large conference table, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was still Wilhelm Roth’s mate and the closest link to an individual in alliance with the Order’s most treacherous enemy.
“Everyone’s on the way,” Gideon said as he ended a call to summon the rest of the warriors and their mates to hear what Claire had to tell them.
One of the compound’s female residents, a regal-looking, auburn-haired young woman, placed her hand over Claire’s in a show of feminine support. Her name was Gabrielle, and she was the Breedmate of the Order’s leader, Lucan, who had been the first to learn of the disturbing news Claire had reported after her dreamwalk to Wilhelm Roth earlier today. The big Gen One vampire began a pace of the room, his long legs carrying him across the width of the place in no more than half a dozen strides while Rio and Dylan watched from the other side of the table.
Claire hadn’t known what to expect of the Order, and frankly had been more than a little apprehensive when she’d first arrived at their Boston headquarters last night. It surprised her to see that they were not the crude lot their reputation among the general Breed population painted them to be, but rather a professional, close-knit cadre of brothers in arms.
With their Breedmates, who lived in the compound with them, the Order was a community not unlike any of the Darkhavens Claire had known. The warriors and their mates obviously looked out for one another, cared for one another.
They were a family.
Claire registered a small pang of envy for that, but even more guilt when she considered the fact that Wilhelm Roth might have anything to do with the danger threatening the warriors now. After the horror of what she’d seen in her dream a short time ago, she was suddenly, unwaveringly, committed to the Order’s cause. Whatever she could do to prevent Roth—or Dragos—from inflicting more harm, she would.
Unfortunately, since sundown today, her blood-bond link to Roth seemed to be progressively diminishing. He was on the move; she was certain of it. He might have been in Boston a couple of nights ago when she’d first arrived with Reichen from Europe, and even as recently as last night, when they’d been driving up from Newport, but her senses told her that he wasn’t in the city anymore. She’d been explaining that very fact to Gideon and the others who were gathered in the tech lab before the start of the night’s patrols.
“Do you have any idea where Roth might go?” Savannah, Gideon’s mate, sat beside him near the computer workstations. The tall black female was a calming presence in the room, a source of serene strength that seemed a good counterpoint to Gideon’s frenetic energy. “Were there any recognizable landmarks in the dream?”
Claire shook her head. “Nothing that I could point to, unfortunately. I wish there were.”
“Do you think he’s aware that you knew he was in Boston?” Rio asked, his voice rolling with a rich Spanish accent, his dark brows lowered over smoky topaz eyes.
“It’s possible that he might have suspected I was,” Claire guessed. “And if I sensed him, I have to assume he sensed my presence in the city as well.”
Gideon nodded. “That could be reason enough for him to leave town, if he also thinks you might be persuaded to turn over that information to us.”
“And if he’s carrying out orders for Dragos,” Dylan piped in from next to Rio, “then it could be that he’s moved himself somewhere near Dragos’s lair. Maybe if we find out where he is now, we’ll find Dragos, too.”
Gideon scowled pensively, then glanced to Claire. “Let’s go over again what you saw in your dream. Maybe Roth left us some further clues to help us find him.”
Claire started to rehash her dreamwalk from the beginning. As she recounted the details of her confrontation with Roth, the glass doors of the tech lab slid open and in walked Tegan with a few other warriors, all of them dressed for combat in head-to-toe black. And behind them was Andreas, dressed similarly and looking every bit as lethal as his heavily armed companions.
Claire’s heart stuttered at the sight of him. She’d considered going to him directly after her dreamwalk with Roth, but she didn’t think she could bear to be near him after the way they’d parted in the chapel. And a more cowardly part of her knew that he would be furious to find out what she’d done. The look he gave her as he entered the room with Tegan could hardly be described as friendly. Evidently he’d already been informed of the purpose behind this impromptu meeting of the Order.
“What else do you recall, Claire?” Gideon asked her now. “You said you saw chemistry equipment and tables lined with laboratory supplies.”
She nodded. “Yes, there were microscopes, computers and beakers, and lots of chemical vials. It all seemed very state of the art, but I couldn’t tell you what kind of experiments were being conducted there.”
“And past the lab there were the barred cells,” Gideon prompted.
“Yes. Rows of cells containing captive women. Breedmates. Some of them were pregnant.” Claire felt Andreas’s gaze fixed on her as she spoke. It burned, the way he stared at her in simmering silence from across the room. “To hear Roth speak, I got the distinct impression that the Breedmates were being given to the creature.”
“For mating purposes,” Gideon said, sending a grim look in Tegan’s direction. “A new generation of Breed males, spawned off an Ancient.”
Claire relived the sick feeling she’d had after seeing them and hearing what Roth had told her. “He said he’d been supplying Dragos with Breedmates since well before I met him, which was thirty years ago.”
“Jesus,” Tegan hissed. “How many Gen Ones could he create over the course of a few decades?”
“If he had a continuous supply of Breedmates?” Gideon replied. “I shudder to imagine.”
“And who’s to say Roth was the only one supplying him?” Rio added gravely. He glanced over to Dylan. “How many missing persons’ reports on Breedmates have you collected from the Darkhavens’ records, babe?”
“Going how far back?” she replied, her expression sober. “Although the numbers have increased significantly in recent times, we’ve found reports stretching back to the turn of the last century. That doesn’t even count the number of women who vanish out of the human populations every year who might be Breedmates, as well.”
She turned to Claire to explain. “A few months ago, when Rio and I met, I discovered that my special talent is seeing dead people. Well, dead people who happen to be Breedmates, that is. I saw several at the shelter where my mom used to work. They asked me to help their captive sisters—to save them before he killed them all. They told me there were more, still alive, being kept underground, in darkness. They gave me the name of their captor, too: Dragos.”
“Oh, my God,” Claire whispered, astonished.
“Finding them has become a bit of an obsession for me. Ever since then, we’ve been searching missing persons’ records, trying to follow up on leads to see where some of these women might have last been seen, where they might have gone. Maybe we can find them. If we can save just one life, it will be worth it.”
“I will help you however I can,” Claire said. “If I have to cover the entire length and breadth of the United States and Germany combined to find Wilhelm Roth and force him to give up Dragos, then I’ll do it.”
Dylan smiled. “I like you already.”
“That’s not a bad idea, you know.” Gideon launched out of his swivel chair and jogged over to one of the large New England maps that hung on the wall. He pointed to a red pin stuck into a location near the New York and Connecticut border. “We know where Dragos has been seen recently. We know that he once had a residence in New York under one of his aliases. If we start searching in this region and sweep out toward the coast, maybe we’ll find something.” He looked at Claire. “It’s too close to dawn to do anything tonight yet, but would you be willing to come along on a recon sweep and use your blood bond to see if you can get a reading on Roth’s whereabouts?”
“Of course.” She pretended she couldn’t hear the low, barely audible growl that emanated from Andreas’s direction. He could try to dissuade her, but her mind was made up. She was in this battle now, too, no matter if he liked it or not. “I can be ready anytime.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
Reichen caught up to Claire as the meeting in the tech lab dispersed. He hung back while the rest of the warriors filed out of the room to prepare for the night’s last mission in the city, his gaze locked on to Claire in a volatile mix of outrage and absolute fear.
“What the hell was that all about?” he demanded as she and Gabrielle and Savannah exited the lab together. “When Tegan told me a few minutes ago that you had made contact with Roth, I didn’t believe him. What the fuck were you thinking, Claire? More to the point, were you thinking at all?”
She swallowed hard under the verbal assault, but she didn’t flinch. “It’s all right,” she told the two Breedmates accompanying her. “Andreas and I should talk alone.”
Reichen’s fury simmered as Lucan and Gideon’s mates departed and left him standing in the corridor with a very defiant, very unfazed Claire.
“My God,” he said, feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of him. The same feeling he’d had when Tegan broke the news of Claire’s dreamwalk visit to her mate after the encounter that had ended so clumsily in the compound’s chapel. “What did you think to accomplish by approaching Roth like you did?”
“I had my reasons,” she answered evenly.
“Such as?”
“It doesn’t matter. He wasn’t interested in negotiating. I’m sure that comes as little surprise to you.”
Reichen scoffed. “Roth never negotiates. He takes. And where he can’t simply take, he steals. He kills, Claire. What the hell did you possibly think you could gain by seeking him out, even in a dream?”
She started to move past him, as if she intended to leave him standing in the hallway without an answer. Before she could take two steps, he grabbed her by the arm and drew her back to him.
“What did you ask him for, Claire? Your freedom? His mercy?” He scowled, as furious at her recklessness as he was relieved that she was alive and warm in his tightly gripped hand. “Did you think he would simply release you if you asked him to let you go?”
“No,” she said, her proud chin hiking up with her reply. “I didn’t ask him to let me go, Andre. I asked him to take me back… but only on the condition that he would agree to let you live.”
She might as well have punched him in the sternum with a lead fist. “You what?”
Good Christ, the thought of her going back to Roth—under any conditions—was enough to make his blood boil. That she would offer herself up to Roth in exchange for him? He wanted to roar his outrage to the rafters.
“He doesn’t want me. He never did.” She shook her head as she extricated herself from his grasp. “He said he only took me as his mate because he knew it would hurt you. He has been trying to hurt you for a long time, Andreas.”
That Roth’s hatred spanned many years was no shock to him, but he could hardly process any of that when the gravity of what Claire had done—what she’d been willing to subject herself to, for him—was still settling like hot oil in his heart. “Do you have any idea how it would have hurt me if he’d agreed to your offer?”
“Probably not as much as it will hurt me when you go to your death trying to destroy him.”
Reichen deserved that; he knew he did. But it didn’t prevent him from blocking her path as she tried to dodge around him again. “You’re not going anywhere near him, Claire. Not with the Order, not with an entire goddamn army at your side. I heard what you said in there, and I know you want to help take him down, but you’re not leaving the compound so long as Roth is out there somewhere. I forbid it.”
She gaped at him. “You what? You forbid—”
“I won’t let you do it.”
“And I don’t recall asking for your permission,” she said, anger spiking in her pulse now, so sharp he could feel it echo in his own. “After what I saw in Roth’s dream today, I have to help the Order take him down. By whatever means I can. I would think you of all people could understand that.”
Reichen shook his head, refusing to so much as consider the idea. “You’re not doing it, Claire. I can’t let you.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then something caught her eye past his shoulder, at the other end of the corridor. “Your comrades are waiting for you.”
He turned to look and found Tegan, Rio, and a couple of the other warriors standing near the elevator that would take them topside. He nodded to them, indicating that he needed another minute. When he looked back to Claire, she was no longer standing in front of him but walking at a determined pace down the corridor.
“Damn it,” he whispered low under his breath.
Then he pivoted back to the warriors and fell into a jog to join up with them for the night’s patrols.
Wilhelm Roth felt the cold, emotionless eyes of five Gen One assassins staring at him as he performed yet another systems check of Dragos’s underground laboratory. Everything was in place precisely as he’d been instructed, and now all he could do was wait. Wait and hope that Claire was with the Order right now, wailing over his mistreatment of her and Andreas Reichen, and telling the warriors everything she saw in her damnable dreamwalk.
As difficult as it may be to find the hidden location of Dragos’s lair, the Order was resourceful and determined. Those were the very qualities Dragos was counting on to get them halfway into the trap that he and Roth had set for them.
Claire’s blood bond to Roth and her ridiculous sense of honor would do the rest.
Roth had no misconceptions that his future was riding on the success of this pending offensive strike against the warriors. If none of the assassins charged with aiding him didn’t finish him off should he fail, then Dragos certainly would. As he made his final inspection of the detonators and pounds of explosives, he wondered if he hadn’t been handed a suicide mission.
But he had no intention of dying here.
The warriors, however …
Once they were led into his trap, there would be no chance of any one of them getting out alive. He could only hope that the Order sent their entire membership after him. It would be such a pleasure to watch the group of them perish in one fell swoop.
So much the better if that number included Claire and her reunited lover.
Satisfied that all was in readiness in the lab, Roth headed into the UV-light prison area to check the settings one final time. He wanted everything to be perfect for the Order’s imminent arrival… and their resulting demise.
It was too damned quiet.
Lucan and the rest of the Order had spent the better part of the night combing the city, looking for any signs of Dragos or the Gen One assassins he’d apparently loosed on the streets to bring the Order out. Several hours of searching every deserted lot, warehouse, back alley, and rooftop, and Lucan was coming up empty.
So were the rest of the teams on patrol tonight. He’d just hung up with Niko and Renata, who’d been jointly sweeping the area down by the Mystic River with Dante and Hunter. Not a trace of trouble, other than the usual bullshit perpetrated by mankind against its brothers.
Frankly, the relative peace he was finding tonight didn’t sit well with him.
Something seemed… off.
Lucan could still feel it in his marrow that some serious trouble had been ramping up in the city the other night. Those human killings were significant in their brutality and their brazenness. The Order was being lured out to play in a very blatant manner, so why would Dragos pull back his strikes now that he had their attention?
As Lucan made one more visual sweep of his area in the final hour before dawn, he couldn’t help feeling that he and the rest of the Order were standing in the way of a pending tsunami. The tide and wind had sucked back hard, leaving an eerie, false state of calm.
It was quiet now, but at any minute that mother of a wave was going to come pouring over them and consume everything in its path.
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
I still say we’re wasting precious time and opportunity if we don’t at least consider a daytime reconnaissance.” Nikolai’s mate, Renata, hopped down off the counter in the weapons room and started pacing in her combat boots and black fatigues. Her chin-length black hair was loosened from the band that had held it back during her patrols and now swung freely around her face as she argued her point for the second time. “I mean, come on, you guys. If the he-man resistance being thrown around here right now is only about keeping us safe, it’s a nonissue. The worst we can run into during daylight hours are Minions, and I dare any one of you to tell me I can’t take out a human mind slave in my sleep. With one hand tied behind my back.”
Niko grinned at his woman. “She’s got a good point, Lucan. We’re not talking about a combat situation, just sending them in to gather intel and report back so we can move in.”
Lucan grunted, looking up from beneath his dark brows. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Rio put in. “But I know Dylan will be safe with Renata. If the women are open to doing this, then maybe we should let them help. You’ve said it yourself, Lucan: Right now we need all hands on deck.”
Reichen sat off to the side and listened in silence, biting back his own opinion, which was basically that whatever the Order decided was fine with him so long as they left Claire out of the picture entirely.
Unfortunately for him and his opinions, Claire seemed to have other plans.
He felt her in the doorway of the room before he actually saw her, the pull of his bond to her turning his head in her direction as if the core of him were connected to her by a wire. She came in with Dante’s mate, both of them moving to the back of the room as the debate continued between Lucan and Renata.
“Think about it, Lucan. If we work the daylight, that gives us an eight-to ten-hour advantage,” she said. “Eight to ten more hours closer to Roth could be a crucial advantage to actually getting close to Dragos. If the pullback we saw tonight in Boston is an indicator that they’re scared and running, then we don’t have any time to waste.”
Several heads nodded in agreement with Renata.
“And if the pullback is an indicator of something else?” Lucan asked grimly. “If they’ve abruptly pulled out of Boston not because they’re worried about being found, but because they’re working on something bigger?”
“Actually, I think we need to assume that it’s not fear so much as strategy.” Claire’s voice drew everyone’s attention to the back of the weapons room. She glanced around at the group, lingering the longest on Reichen. Her gaze was troubled, and he could feel the distress that had her heart pounding uncomfortably in her breast. “I don’t know Dragos, but I know Wilhelm Roth well enough. He never operates from a position of fear. He believes himself invincible, smarter than everyone else. Wherever he is, he’s got an alternative plan to strike even harder than he has before.”
“All the better reason to use any advantage we can to find him,” Rio added.
Lucan’s gaze traveled from Claire to Renata to Dylan, the trio of Breedmates who would be carrying out the daytime mission. “You’re all in agreement, then? You want to do this?”
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
He considered it for a long moment, then gave a solemn nod. “All right, then. Gideon will grid the best area for you to start searching. Let’s plan on meeting for one final review in the tech lab before you roll out.”
With a round of assenting comments, the meeting began to disperse. Reichen started to move toward Claire, but before he could reach her and offer the dozen different apologies he’d been rehearsing in his mind since they’d last parted, Renata and Dylan swept her along in a rush of conversation.
She gave him only the briefest look as she passed, the message in her gaze unmistakably clear. He had nothing to say about what she was doing. He had refused to give her promises he couldn’t keep, and now she was dealing it back to him in spades. The taste of his comeuppance was bitter as hell.
Claire turned away from him, then continued on with her two female companions to discuss the daytime mission that had put a lump of icy dread in Reichen’s gut.
By the time the sun rose, Claire’s frustration with Andreas had long dried up. She understood his concern, and his anger. She had been foolish to think she could negotiate with Roth. Even more foolish to think that she could ever endure a return as his mate. She would have done it, though. She would have done anything to ensure Andreas’s well-being. Especially after the vision she’d seen of his fiery demise.
All she’d known was the need to hold on tightly to him. That was why she’d asked him to give up his quest to avenge his family and all but begged him to let the Order fight the battle with Roth and Dragos on the front lines. It had been a moment of keen and selfish desperation, one that had made her blind to anything else but her love for him. All she had known was her need to keep him near so that nothing and no one could take him away from her again.
But as Claire prepared to leave the compound with Dylan and Renata that morning, she had come to realize that she had been asking too much of him. In the compound’s tech lab with the others, she watched from the periphery as the two females’ mates, Rio and Nikolai, spent a last few quiet moments murmuring tender words to them and holding them close.
Witnessing the soft good-byes and lingering embraces of the two couples parting for the day, Claire felt a sting of shame for what she’d expected of Andreas. Their love was no more sacred than what she was seeing here. The safety of either of them was no more important than that of any of the warriors or their Breedmates.
Andreas had been right to reject what she had asked of him.
Claire might have told him as much, but he hadn’t come to see her off with the rest of the Order. Instead it was Tess and Savannah who pulled her into quick, warm hugs as she and Dylan and Renata began gathering their gear for the day’s mission. Lucan and Gabrielle came over a moment later, the Order’s leader giving her a somber nod as his Breedmate briefly embraced Claire.
“My thanks for your willingness in helping us try to track Roth,” he said in his deep, commanding voice. “I don’t expect it’s easy for you. There is still time for you to change your mind, if you’d rather not—”
“No,” Claire interrupted. She gave a mild shake of her head. “I want to do this. After all I know about him now, I need to do this.”
A grim nod was Lucan’s only reply as Gideon summoned everyone’s attention for a final run-through of the grid he’d mapped out for the females to follow. Claire listened to the instructions that would take them south of Boston and into Connecticut, beginning a sweep of the area near the New York State line, where she’d learned that Dragos had once been confronted by Dylan’s mate, Rio, but managed to escape. From there, the recon mission would cover as much ground as possible during daylight hours, hoping that somewhere along the way, Claire’s blood bond to Roth would pick up a solid trail that the Order could follow up on after dark.
“I’m giving you each a phone equipped with GPS,” Gideon was saying now, walking away from the map he’d charted on the wall to retrieve three cell phones from the table. He handed them out to Claire, Dylan, and Renata. “Keep them turned on and secured on your person at all times. We’re going to be monitoring your location and progress from here, but we want hourly check-ins, minimum. You get a beat on Roth, you phone in ASAP. Anything looks or feels off to any of you while you’re on this mission, you phone in. If you have any reason to stop the vehicle, even for a two minute bathroom run, you phone in. Understood?”
The three of them nodded their agreement, although Renata did so while rolling her eyes at Claire and Dylan. Underneath her calf-length black trench coat, the ebony-haired Breedmate wore lug-soled boots, dark denim jeans, and a black turtleneck—passable enough as street clothes, if one didn’t look too closely at the lumpiness that ringed her slender hips. A small arsenal of blades and pistols were sheathed and holstered on the leather belts that wrapped her waist.
To this impressive collection of weaponry, Nikolai added one more: a nasty-looking, long-barreled gun roughly the length of Claire’s arm. He handed it to Renata, then placed a clip of ammunition in her open palm.
“Your special titanium hollowpoints?” she murmured, then beamed up at him as if he’d given her a bouquet of prize-winning roses.
Niko grinned, twin dimples framing his broad smile. “Nothing says I love you like custom-made rounds.”
Renata kissed him and laughed, pocketing the clip and carefully slinging the gun’s strap over her shoulder. “Unnecessary, but sweet. Thanks, babe.”
“Those Rogue-smoking rounds aren’t just for killing vampires,” Lucan said. “They’ll take down a Minion just as well. Don’t hesitate to shoot if you feel the situation warrants it at any time.”
Renata nodded. “Trust me, no worries there.” She sent a look at Claire and Dylan. “Ready to hit the road, girls? Let’s rock and roll.”
Claire slipped the cell phone into the pocket of her loose jeans, then moved along with the other two women as they made their way to the automatic glass door of the tech lab. She couldn’t keep her eyes from searching the corridor outside, looking for Andreas. But he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t coming either. She didn’t know if she had driven him away or if she had already lost him before their fruitless confrontation a few hours earlier.
Not that it mattered.
He wasn’t there.
He wasn’t hers, and possibly never would be.
Claire supposed that now was as good a time as any to start getting used to that fact all over again.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
Reichen had been prowling the compound’s corridors for the better part of the morning, trying unsuccessfully to walk off the spasms and tremors that were racking his body. He padded barefoot down one of the long, twisting spokes of white marble hallway, forced to pause every twenty paces or so when the shakes and dry heaves got too bad for him to keep moving.
His chest was clammy, the cool air of the compound hitting his skin like an arctic gust. The jeans he wore felt like heavy weights on his legs, the fabric damp with sweat. He shuddered and reached for the wall to stabilize himself as his head started buzzing and another wave of nausea gripped him. When he opened his eyes, his vision bled amber-bright through the slits of his lids. He tasted blood on his tongue and realized with some alarm that his fangs were fully extended, sharp points digging into the flesh of his lower lip. His dermaglyphs pulsed all over his body, the skin markings flooded dark with the colors of intense hunger.
“Shit,” he hissed tightly, as fresh pain slammed his gut and he dropped to his knees on the hard, polished floor.
Doubled over and panting, he crossed his arms over his shredding stomach and bit back the groan that curled deep in his throat. His ears rang with the sound of his own blood racing through his veins, the pound of it practically driving him mad. He leaned forward to plant his cheek and brow against the cold stone beneath him until the agony passed, simply concentrating on breathing in and out, in and out…
God help him, but his blood thirst was back again, worse than ever. It had been pecking at him like a raven on carrion for the better part of the morning, the only thing that had kept him away from Claire when she and the other two Breedmates had been leaving to begin their daytime intel-gathering trip for the Order.
Fortunately for him, most of the warriors and their mates were in the tech lab now or in their private quarters—a small mercy, as it would have only added insult to an already unbearable injury should anyone happen to see him in such pitiful condition.
Summoning every ounce of his will, Reichen forced himself to his feet and began an unsteady shuffle out of the corridor. He was near the weapons room, as it turned out, the darkness of the empty facility welcome as he dragged himself inside and collapsed against the nearest wall. He slumped there, exhausted and wretched, his breath rasping through his bared teeth and fangs.
He might have slept for a few seconds or even an hour; he had no idea how much time had passed before the soft whisk of the opening door jolted him awake and the lights of the firing range lit up all around him. Reflections bounced off the mirrored glass of the training area, and through the bleariness of his vision, he saw that Tegan was standing near the door, his hand just now coming away from the light switch.
The warrior muttered a ripe curse and something about déjà vu, but Reichen’s brain was too beleaguered to try to comprehend his meaning. He sat there in misery, growling a warning for the other male to leave him alone.
Tegan scoffed and took a couple of long strides toward him instead. Piercing green eyes bore into Reichen with a cold brand of understanding. “Feeling about as shitty as you look, I take it.”
Reichen swallowed, his throat too parched for words. He glared up at the Gen One he considered a friend, his vision swimming from the steady pound filling his head. He caught the downward flick of Tegan’s gaze, knew that the warrior could read his agony in the churning colors of his exposed glyphs.
“That blood you took in the city a couple of nights ago should have held you long past now,” he said, his deep voice flat as hammered steel. Tegan’s jaw went tight, nostrils flaring slightly with his indrawn breath as he crouched down on his haunches in front of Reichen. “How long has the thirst been dogging you?”
He managed a vague shrug of one shoulder. “All day… it never really let up, even after I fed.”
“Fuck.” Tegan ran a hand through his loose tawny hair. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
Reichen grunted, let his eyes fall shut when his lids got too heavy to keep open. “It’s because of the pyro,” he murmured thickly. “The fires ease up … then the blood hunger sets in. Happens every time.”
“And every time it happens, the hunger gets worse,” Tegan said, not even close to a question. “Shit, Reichen. It might be the pyro bringing it on, but what you’re feeling is the first whiffs of Bloodlust, my man. You haven’t fallen over the steepest ledge yet, but you’re heading there fast. And you know damn well that’s what’s going on, don’t you?”
Reichen attempted to deny it with a shake of his head, but Tegan was no fool. When Reichen looked up into the warrior’s face, he saw bleak understanding there. Hell, he saw a male who’d tasted this same blinding thirst himself. A male who, from the grave look of him now, was still haunted by the memory of an even deeper blood addiction than the one Reichen battled each time his pyro overtook him.
He wanted to ask him how he’d fought it—how he’d won against the fierce thirst that could turn even the strongest members of the Breed into savage killers—but just then his gut gave another violent twist. He snarled with the spasming pain, his limbs contracting in on his body.
“Breathe through it,” Tegan commanded him. “You gotta be stronger than the thirst. Don’t let it own you.”
Reichen did as he was told, willing to grasp at any advice if it would help alleviate some of his agony. It took several minutes before the worst of it passed. Once it had, he nodded weakly, relieved by the sliver of peace that followed the pain.
“Tell me about the pyrokinesis,” Tegan said when Reichen huffed out a breath and dragged himself up to a sitting position. “How have you managed it so well until now? Hell, we’ve known each other off and on for the better part of a couple centuries, and I had no clue about your ability.”
“I’m not proud of it,” Reichen murmured, an understatement if ever he’d uttered one.
Tegan’s expression was sober but not condemning. “You think I haven’t done things that I regret? It’s hard to walk through even a year of life without hurting someone or something when you didn’t intend it. If I started telling you about all the shit I’ve done wrong or wish I could take back… trust me, we don’t have that kind of time. So, why don’t you go first. Tell me about the pyro.”
It might only have been the warrior’s way of distracting him, enticing him to talk instead of anticipating the next round of agony, but whatever Tegan’s motives, Reichen found himself explaining how he’d lived most of his life with no knowledge of the curse that lurked inside him. He told Tegan how he’d first come to discover the fires through Roth’s treachery some scant thirty years ago … and how abhorred he’d been to realize for that first, godawful time what his pyrokinetic heat would do to anyone careless enough to get near him.
“I killed an innocent young girl, Tegan. In mere seconds, she was so charred I couldn’t even recognize her as human.” He felt sickened all over again—not from blood hunger but from a profound self-loathing that hadn’t dampened and likely never would. “After that, I was determined to never let my power surface again. And I worked damned hard to make sure it didn’t. Then Roth sent his death squad to my Darkhaven and there was nothing I could do to hold the fires back. He took away everything and everyone who mattered to me.”
“Almost everyone,” Tegan said, those shrewd gem-green eyes unflinching. “How long have you been in love with Claire?”
Reichen expelled a deep sigh. “So long, I don’t even recall what it was like not to be in love with her.”
“You’ve drunk from her, yeah?”
He nodded, seeing no point in denying it.
“How about after the pyro? You drink from her then?”
“Yes,” Reichen said, recalling that first time he’d put his fangs into her throat, the night in Roth’s office in Hamburg. It seemed like a lifetime ago to him now. “I drank from her the night after I went to Roth’s Darkhaven.”
“How’d you feel after you drank from Claire? How bad was the thirst after you had her blood inside you?”
Reichen considered it for a moment. “Better, I guess. Not as severe.”
He hadn’t noticed it then, but now he was certain that drinking from Claire had lessened his need to overload on blood. He craved her always, but in a much different way than the post-pyro urge that turned him into something close to an animal.
Reichen nodded. “I would do anything for her, Tegan. Including walk away from her, which I did a long time ago.”
“And now?” Tegan prompted.
“Now…”
Reichen frowned, thinking of the way he’d left things with her. She’d asked him only to be with her—the one thing he wanted more than anything else—but in his heart he knew he couldn’t give her that. Not when his power was so close to ruling him. Closer than he wanted to admit, even to himself. And then there was the fact that Wilhelm Roth and Dragos were still breathing, still walking free and able to carry out their evil designs.
Reichen’s power was terrible, but perhaps a necessary weapon in this worsening war. At least then it might serve a purpose—a noble one. He might then serve a purpose, something more than just his own wants and desires.
“One more fire and I really don’t know if I will be able to come out of it, Tegan. Each time my power rises, it becomes stronger. Less controllable. The blood thirst afterward is hellish enough, but the fire itself is death to anyone who gets near it. I don’t care what happens to me, but Claire—” He broke off abruptly, refusing to consider the thought. “She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in my personal hell.”
Tegan arched a tawny brow. “You really think she’s not already caught up in it? Just because you push her away doesn’t mean she’ll be any safer without you.”
“She saw my death, Tegan.”
“What?”
“The little girl, Mira, showed her a vision of my death earlier today. Claire told me she saw the flames and the smoke. Saw herself running toward the fire, into the heat, to try to save me.”
“Jesus.”
Reichen nodded grimly. “You understand, of course, I can’t let her do that. She can’t be anywhere near me, not when the fire is in control. Harming her is the one thing I could not bear. I want her safe from Roth, as well. I don’t care how long it takes me to hunt down the bastard, I will find him, and I will see him dead.”
“Yeah, about that,” Tegan said. “You might get your chance sooner than later. It’s actually the reason I came looking for you. We got an update from Claire and the others a few minutes ago.”
Alarm spiked through Reichen’s blood, even stronger than the thirst that was still stabbing at him. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“Claire’s fine. Nothing’s wrong, but she did pick up on Roth’s presence a couple hours south of here. It was getting stronger the farther they drove into Connecticut, so they’re chasing it down, hoping to triangulate a location on him before sundown.”
“Roth is in Connecticut now? Where, exactly?” Reichen swallowed hard, every muscle tense. He felt the kindling flickers of his fury begin to awaken. He recognized the need to tamp them down, but his concern for Claire overrode all other rational thought. “Damn it, I don’t want her getting close to that son of a bitch!”
“Relax,” Tegan said evenly, taking quick, obvious note of the heat that had started to crackle under the surface of Reichen’s skin. “Claire is in no danger on this op, I promise you. They’re only mapping things out from the road, and they’ll be heading back for Boston in a few hours with whatever intel they find.”
Reichen simmered down, letting himself sag back against the wall. He cursed roundly and dropped his head between his updrawn knees. He could feel Claire in his blood, his bond to her giving him the assurance he needed that she was, in fact, okay. She was a calmness beneath the torrent raging in his own veins, cool water soothing the dry heat of the fire waiting for the opportunity to devour him.
“What if this has gone too far, Tegan?” His voice sounded wooden and hollow, even to his own ears. “What if after everything we’ve been through, after everything I’ve tried to do to protect her, it’s not enough? What if the vision she saw proves to be right? The one thing I can’t protect her from is me. What if Claire gets too close one day, and the heat destroys her?”
“And what if you’re wrong?” Tegan said. “What if she’s the only thing that might save you from yourself?”
Reichen stared at the hardened Gen One warrior who’d once struck down sixteen Rogue vampires in a feat of legendary, single-handed efficiency. Tegan had never been the warmest of individuals, but there was a tranquil wisdom in his eyes now—a soulful knowledge that hadn’t been present even when Reichen had seen him last, almost a year ago in Berlin. Love for his Breedmate, Elise, had transformed him somehow, made him stronger while at the same time it had smoothed away some of his roughest edges.
But Tegan and Elise had different obstacles they’d had to overcome. Reichen’s relationship with Claire had been complicated nearly from the beginning. Now it had become one impossibility after another.
“I can’t risk it,” Reichen said. “I won’t risk it. If I go down, damn it, I go down alone.”
Tegan exhaled sharply and bared his teeth in a smile that wasn’t quite friendly. “Blaze of glory, eh?”
“Something like that,” Reichen replied.
The warrior abruptly stood up and cast an assessing look on him. “You may think you’re keeping Claire out of harm’s way by shoving her aside right now, but the only one you’re protecting is yourself. If you go down, whether it’s the pyro or the Bloodlust that gets you, it’s going to kill that female, and you know it. You just want to make sure you’re not around to see it.”
Reichen didn’t try to deny the accusation. Not that Tegan gave him the chance. He backed away from where Reichen sat, then strode out of the weapons room, hitting the light switch on his way out and plunging the place back into darkness.
Wilhelm Roth was on a phone call with Dragos when his veins came alive with awareness of his erstwhile Breedmate. Remarkably, it seemed Claire was not far. In fact, by the way his pulse was stirring from his blood bond to her, he was damn well certain that Claire was within some twenty miles of where he stood … and moving closer all the time.
What the hell was she up to?
He checked the clock in Dragos’s lab and scowled to see that it was just past one in the afternoon. Broad daylight.
Had she and Reichen not turned to the Order for help, after all? Or had the warriors for some reason denied them sanctuary at their compound?
Roth could think of no reason Claire would be in the area in the middle of the day—presumably without the protection of Reichen or any of the warriors from Boston.
Could she actually be foolish enough to seek him out again on her own?
Roth might have laughed at such idiocy if not for the fact that his current objective for Dragos depended on Claire leading the Order straight into his hands. If she was coming alone, she would be fucking up the entire plan.
“You’re suddenly very quiet, Herr Roth. Anything amiss?” Dragos asked. His voice had to compete with a din of noise in the background on the other end of the line, a metallic roar that didn’t quite mask the fury that rode just below the surface of the vampire’s outward calm. “You were telling me how everything is in place, just as we arranged.”
“Yes, sire,” Roth replied. “But there is… something odd.”
“Oh?” The tone was as level as a blade poised above a head soon to roll. “Do tell.”
“It’s Claire. I sense her on the move, sire. I believe she may be getting close to the lab’s location. I’m certain she must sense me, the same as I am aware of her. It’s my guess that she has decided to come looking for me.”
“What time is it?” Dragos asked, his question pierced by the sudden blast of a horn and a muffled voice squawking unintelligibly over some manner of warehouse loudspeaker.
“It’s early afternoon, sire. A few minutes past one.”
Dragos grunted, contemplating in silence for a long moment. “If your lovely Breedmate is coming to find you, by all means, let’s help her get there. Give the Minions on ground-level security a description of the female. Tell them I want them to go out and find her, bring her into the facility.”
“But the plan,” Roth interjected. “I thought we needed her to lead the Order to us.”
“Yes,” Dragos hissed. “And she will. Her pain will draw the male who’s bonded to her, and he will ensure that the Order comes along.”
“Torture?” Roth suggested, torn between delight at Claire’s imminent pain and his own shared agony, since his blood bond to her would absorb everything that she was subjected to, as well.
Dragos chuckled on the other end of the line. “I’ll leave the specifics of her treatment up to you, Herr Roth. Contact me as soon as you learn anything more.”
“Yes, sire,” Roth answered.
He flipped the phone closed and began to imagine the many slow, sadistic ways he could make Claire scream.
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
Claire dried her hands on a brown paper towel as she came out of the public restroom of a small gas station situated on a rural stretch of two-lane blacktop somewhere near the northwestern border of Connecticut. At midafternoon, the sun was already beginning its descent toward the tops of the brushy pines and the leafless oaks that covered the hilly forested region of the state. She squinted, shielding her eyes from the blinding orange rays and wishing they had a few more hours to continue their search.
They were so close now; she could feel it all the way to her marrow. For the past couple of hours, she and Renata and Dylan had been circumnavigating the area where the blood bond Claire had now grown to hate beat the strongest. They were tightening the noose on Wilhelm Roth mile by mile, systematically narrowing down the range of locations where the Order was likely to find him. Another couple of hours combing the area and Claire was certain they’d have his location nailed to within an easy square mile.
If only the late-autumn day could stretch a bit longer, she thought, impatient as she tossed the used paper towel in a trash can and walked the short distance back to the Order’s black Range Rover parked at the gas pumps. Renata was filling the tank for the return trip to Boston, her stance cautiously casual as she leaned against the vehicle and watched the digital gauges clock on the pump’s display. Claire didn’t miss the fact that the female’s right hand was crossed over the front of her body and hidden beneath the folds of her dark trench coat, no doubt either resting on the butt of a pistol or wrapped around the hilt of one of her blades. She was as vigilant as any of the warriors, and, Claire imagined, just as deadly when the situation warranted lethal force.
Nodding to Renata as she approached, Claire climbed into the SUV and gently closed the passenger door behind her, careful not to wake Dylan, who was taking a quick doze in the backseat. It had been a long day, made even longer by the fact that none of them had gotten much sleep before they’d left the compound that morning. Claire was exhausted, but she couldn’t stand the idea of giving up before they’d gotten a solid lock on Roth. She reached around the seat to pick up the map that they’d been working from, which was now highlighted in color-block patches of yellow, green, and orange, to indicate the range of areas where her sense of Roth had been the strongest.
“Where the hell are you?” she whispered low under her breath, tuning out the ding of the station bell as a car pulled into the full-service pump next to her. She put all her concentration into that beat of dark, visceral awareness that ticked in her pulse, trying not to think about the fact that Roth must be sensing her in much the same way.
Did he know how close she was to finding him right now? He must, surely. Only the simple fact that the sun had yet to set gave her any kind of comfort when she thought about the fury she would face if she ever fell into his hands again. He would kill her, she was certain. But not before he took his anger out on her and made her wish she was dead.
Rattled by the thought of him, Claire pivoted in her seat again to stow the map.
It was then she noticed the two men getting out of the car beside her. They were big men, both dressed in black from their zipped-up leather jackets to the fatigues tucked into the tops of their combat boots. They looked her way as she watched them, and a chill settled deep in Claire’s bones. Their eyes were cruel, strangely vacant.
And this wasn’t the first time she’d seen the pair of human males today.
Claire had noticed them just a couple of hours earlier, when she and Renata and Dylan had paused at a greasy-spoon diner for lunch in a neighboring town. Hard to miss all that dark clothing and barely concealed menace. Hard to miss the way the two men studied her now, then exchanged a wordless look with each other before one of them went around back to get something out of the trunk.
She jumped when Renata opened the driver’s-side door. “We’ve got a tail.”
“I know,” Claire said as Renata dropped into the seat, closing the door with one hand and turning the key in the ignition with the other. “I saw them earlier. They were staring at us then, too. There’s something wrong with them—with their eyes. It’s making my skin crawl.”
“That’s because they’re Minions,” Renata said matter-of-factly as she threw the SUV into gear.
From the backseat, Dylan sat up and sucked in a quick breath. “Oh, shit. You guys, we’ve got company.”
“Yeah, we’re on it,” Renata replied, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Buckle up.”
Dylan started to say something more, but then Renata stomped on the gas and the Range Rover’s tires peeled rubber on the pavement. They screamed out of the gas station and onto the tree-lined, curvy two-laner.
In seconds, the Minions were right behind them.
Claire pivoted around to gauge their distance. “They’re coming up fast. Oh, my God, they’re going to ram—”
The sudden jolt of impact made the Rover jump and jostle on the road. To Renata’s credit, she held the wheel steady, correcting the vehicle when it started to veer sharply into the other lane. She sped up, gaining a couple of car lengths before the sedan came roaring up on them again, trying to force them off the road.
“There’s a small access lane up ahead on the right,” Dylan said, her voice raised to be heard over the whine of the engine and the pounding air of urgency that filled the cabin. “Turn in there, Renata. It’s just past that dead tree stump. Do you see it?”
“I see it,” Renata said, “but I don’t want to risk turning off and getting us trapped in the middle of the forest. Hang on. I think I can outrun these bastards.”
“We won’t be trapped,” Dylan insisted. “You have to do it now!”
Claire glanced back at the auburn-haired Breedmate and saw the certainty in her gaze. “How can you be sure of that?”
“Because the ghost of the dead Breedmate sitting back here next to me is telling me it’s our best chance of surviving.”
Claire felt her eyes go wide.
“Good enough for me in that case,” Renata said, and eased up on the gas only enough for her to make the turn off the road and onto the bumpy woodland path that Dylan had indicated.
“Keep going,” Dylan instructed. “Just follow this thing until I tell you to stop.”
“All right.” Renata gunned it, throwing up dust and pebbles in their wake.
Behind them, the Minions in the sedan had to hit their brakes hard as they skidded sideways to make the turn. They managed it, the car lurching forward like a bullet, still fast on their tail. Through the cloud of debris between the two vehicles, Claire could just make out the bared teeth and dark, sharklike eyes of the two human mind slaves.
Were they Roth’s Minions, or did they belong to someone even more dangerous than him—Dragos? She didn’t want to know. She only hoped that Renata’s driving skills and Dylan’s Breedmate talent would be enough to spare them. If not…
If not, then this stretch of thicket-choked forest might be the last thing any of them saw.
“Faster, Renata!” Dylan urged. “Keep going—as fast as you can!”
The Range Rover rocked and bounced, branches scraping its sides and slapping at the windshield and windows like spiny tentacles.
And still the Minions kept coming.
“Cut left,” Dylan shouted. “As sharply as you can, Renata. Cut left then punch the gas!”
Claire gripped the dashboard as the vehicle made a sudden, swinging pivot on its front wheels. The rear of the SUV arced out behind them in what felt like a slow-motion turn, as graceful as a ballerina. Claire glanced out her window just in time to see that they were riding the very edge of a sharp drop. Below them a couple of steep yards, a river raced and tumbled past boulders the size of a small car.
She couldn’t bite back her scream. Nor could she do anything but watch in stricken wonder as the Minions’ sedan came barreling toward them in that same instant. It smashed into their back bumper in a sickening crunch of protesting metal and kept going, shoving them forward out of the way as the car catapulted over the edge and plunged down, the hood crashing into the water.
“Holy shit!” Dylan cried. “It worked! Did you see that?”
Renata looked far from celebratory. The Range Rover was out of control, coming to an abrupt halt as the front bumper wrapped around the trunk of a small tree. Airbags exploded out of the dashboard with the impact, throwing off an airy whine and a puff of electronic smoke as they deployed. Dazed and shaken, it took a few seconds for Claire to get her bearings as the restraints slowly deflated.
Renata, meanwhile, calmly batted the obstacle out of her way and climbed out of the vehicle. She stalked around to the back of the SUV and grabbed the nasty-looking weapon that Nikolai had given her. Then she walked swiftly but steadily over to the edge of the embankment.
Claire and Dylan got out of the smashed Rover and followed, jogging to her side just as the Breedmate readied her aim on the Minions, who were scrambling to get out of their car before the river swept them downstream. Renata took just two shots—each hitting its target with unerring accuracy.
The Minions, both bleeding from gaping holes in their heads, drifted lifelessly into the swift-moving current.
“Everybody okay?” she asked, glancing over with a steady, unnerving calm.
“We’re fine,” Claire answered, still astonished by everything she’d just witnessed—not the least of which being Renata’s coolly efficient manner as she’d killed the two deadly assailants.
As the women turned away from the ledge, Dylan froze in her tracks. “Um…you guys? You know how we were hoping that if we found Roth we might also be able to use him to find solid intel on Dragos’s location?” She looked at Claire and Renata. “I think we’re getting close.”
“Is that what the dead Breedmate is telling you now?” Claire asked.
“Uh-huh.” Dylan slowly lifted her hand to indicate the wooded area all around them. “She and about twenty others like her. They’re coming out of the trees one after the other and standing right in front of us.”
Claire swallowed hard as she stared into the empty forest, the last few rays of daylight burnishing everything in a deep russet glow. She couldn’t see what Dylan was reporting, but the fine hairs began to rise on the back of her neck.
“We’d better call the compound,” Renata said.
“Uh-huh,” Dylan murmured. “Good idea. Because I think we may be standing almost on top of Dragos’s lair right now.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
Reichen had slept off most of the day, but he’d still awoken twitchy with the need to feed. After his confrontation with Tegan, he’d somehow managed to get himself from the weapons room to his temporary quarters in the compound, where he’d crashed on the bed and swiftly fallen into a state of unconscious oblivion.
Now, showered and dressed, finally able to remain upright on his own motor, he was swamped with the urge to hunt. He knew enough about Bloodlust to realize that the hunger would only worsen if he fed it now, but that didn’t slow his pace as he made his way along the corridor to the bank of elevators that would carry him up to street level and the city that pulsed with humanity just beyond the gates of the Order’s headquarters. His mouth watered at the thought, his gums aching with the swell of his fangs.
Aboveground it could only barely be sunset, but Reichen wasn’t worried about a few minutes of ultraviolet sizzle. He stalked to the elevators and pushed the button to call the car.
As he waited, impatient as a cat, he heard heavy boot-falls coming up from the other direction. Warriors Kade and Brock rounded a curve in the corridor, both of them garbed in full combat gear and hard-core weaponry. They looked as though they were suited up for war.
“Hey,” Kade said, his wolfish quicksilver eyes grim and narrowed as he greeted Reichen with a slight lift of his square jaw. His spiky jet hair was covered by a black knit skullcap, the same thing that stretched over Brock’s dark-skinned, close-shaved head. The two big males paused when Reichen turned to face them.
“What’s going on?” he asked the warriors, hoping they weren’t about to ask him the same thing.
“Heading out in a few minutes for Connecticut, my man,” Brock said, his deep voice a thunderous roll of bass and battle readiness. “With any luck, we’re gonna be handing Dragos his own ass on a platter before the night is through.”
“Dragos,” Reichen echoed. “We’ve got a lead on him?”
“Best one so far,” Kade put in. “Gideon’s getting the coordinates from Renata as we speak.”
“When did the women return?”
Brock gave a slow shake of his head. “They haven’t. The Rover is toast, so we’ll be picking them up tonight when we get there.”
Alarms kicked up a sudden racket in Reichen’s whole body. “What do you mean—the vehicle broke down on them?”
“Crashed into a tree,” Kade said. “Could have been a hell of a lot worse, if the Minions trying to run them off the road had actually gotten ahold of them. Everyone’s okay, and the mind slaves are dead. Renata gave them both a fatal case of lead poisoning.”
“Good Christ.” Reichen’s blood ran ice cold.
Minions.
A car crash and gunfire.
Claire…
“Gideon is on the phone with the women now?” he demanded.
Kade nodded.
“Where?”
“The tech lab.”
Reichen took off at a dead run, feet and heart pounding with the need to hear Claire’s voice, to hear from her own lips that she truly was unharmed.
Gideon was inside with most of the Order, everyone gathered and reviewing the map and coordinates that hung on the far wall of the lab. Tegan, Nikolai, Rio, and the former Gen One assassin named Hunter were all dressed like Kade and Brock, all dripping weapons and lethal purpose.
Reichen entered the room and walked straight over to Gideon, just in time to hear the warrior end his conversation with Renata and disconnect the call. “I need to talk to Claire.”
“She’s fine,” Gideon said. “The situation is totally under control.”
“Like hell it is,” he roared, practically shaking with concern. “They were attacked by Minions and now they’re stranded out there? What the fuck happened?”
“We knew the mission was not entirely without risk,” Lucan said soberly. When Reichen pivoted to face him, the Order’s leader went on. “The women knew the risks, too. They accepted it, and they handled it. Quite well, in fact.”
Reichen simmered down, but only slightly. “Tell me what happened.”
Gideon gave him a quick rundown of the facts Renata had reported: Claire’s certainty that they were within mere miles of Roth; the double sightings of the Minions who’d apparently been following them since early afternoon; the high-speed pursuit that ended in an undeveloped stretch of woodlands some three hours away; and the astonishing news that Dylan’s psychic gift had not only delivered the women to safety but also, apparently had led them right into the vicinity of what could only be Dragos’s hidden lair.
As stunned as he was to hear the day’s extraordinary events—as relieved as he was to know that neither Claire nor the other two women had been injured—another part of him was awash in confusion… and guilt.
Claire must have been terrified when she and her companions had come under attack by the Minions. At the very least, her adrenaline should have kicked into high gear, and yet Reichen’s blood bond to her had told him nothing.
“You didn’t know?” Tegan said, his gaze seeming to read right through him.
Reichen gave a curt shake of his head. He’d been laid flat while Claire was in serious danger. The knowledge of how badly he might have failed her hit him like a stab to the chest.
And now she was out there in the open, vulnerable, near enough to Roth that she could feel him, and possibly within Dragos’s reach, as well.
Reichen bristled with the thought. He felt the first crackling trace of heat begin to bloom in his gut while the Order went back to reviewing the night’s operation. Pushing the fire down deep, all his focus centered on Claire, he listened in to the warriors’ plan to search the wooded area the females had mapped out, with the goal of uncovering Dragos’s apparent base of operations. From the information Claire’s blood bond had given them, they were confident they’d find Roth, but the ideal goal remained to locate Dragos himself, flush the bastard out of hiding and into the Order’s hands.
The warriors began to disperse, those in combat fatigues heading for the corridor while Lucan, Dante, and Gideon would be monitoring the mission from the compound. When Reichen moved to join Tegan and the others on their way to the hallway, Lucan stopped him with a look.
“This is the Order’s mission, and we can’t afford any weak links in the chain.” At Reichen’s disapproving scowl, Lucan went on. “Listen, you’ve been a hell of an ally thus far, Reichen, but Tegan’s filled me in on a few things—what you’re going through with the pyro and the aftereffects. I also heard about the vision that Roth’s Breedmate saw in Mira’s eyes. Those are no small things, and we can’t afford any liabilities right now.”
Reichen held the Gen One warrior’s keen gray eyes. “I’m bonded to her, Lucan. I love her. If you want to keep me out of this, you’re going to have to kill me right here and now.”
A silence fell over the lab and the group of warriors standing around them.
“I’ve given the Order my full support,” Reichen said. “It’s cost me dearly, but I am dealing with that. Now I’m asking you to give me this one thing: I want Roth dead. I need Roth dead, and so does the Order. Let me take the son of a bitch down, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“And if it is the last thing you do?” Lucan pressed.
Reichen gave a slow shake of his head, feeling determination light up his veins in far greater measure than even the worst of his pyro. “I don’t intend to lose this battle, Lucan. I don’t intend to lose Claire, either.”
The Gen One vampire stared at him for a long moment, his gray eyes weighing him in unflinching scrutiny. “Very well,” he said at last. “Suit up and get the hell out of here. Godspeed, Reichen. I have a feeling you might need it.”
The last ray of sunlight dipped behind the westerly tree line just as Claire, Renata, and Dylan left the Range Rover behind them near the river and started walking up the dirt lane toward the road. They had collected everything of importance from the disabled SUV—maps, notes, weapons, and ammunition—and were taking up a post near the main road as the warriors had instructed Renata when she’d phoned in their situation a short time ago.
As they walked up the narrow path in the gathering dusk, Claire couldn’t keep from looking over her shoulder or jumping at every unexpected noise that came out of the ever-darkening forest that flanked both sides of them. The day had been unsettling enough as it was, but it was the buzzing in her veins—the dreadful certainty that Wilhelm Roth was near—that had her skin feeling too tight on her body, all of her senses on edge.
She kept revisiting her last dreamwalk with Roth, chilled to remember how he’d seethed with his promise to make Andreas and her suffer. And she also recalled, all too vividly, the numerous women being held in Dragos’s cages—prison cells that might be located not far from where she and her two companions had been standing not long ago. It sickened her to think of the horrors those captive Breedmates might have been through. Horrors that had ended in death for many of them, as evidenced by the group of specters that had shown themselves to Dylan back in those remote woods.
Dragos had to be stopped. Wilhelm Roth, as well, and any other members of the Breed who would condone the kind of torment and terror that she’d witnessed through Roth’s subconscious mind.
Claire knew men like that needed to be removed from existence, but it didn’t dampen her fear for the ones who had made it their life’s mission to see that kind of evil destroyed. It didn’t dampen her worry about Andreas, and the harrowing vision of fire and death that she prayed would never come true.
As she and her two companions sought shelter to wait for the warriors to come and meet them, Claire couldn’t help thinking that the night ahead of her might be only the beginning of an even greater darkness yet to come.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
Reichen sat beside Tegan in the backseat of a black Range Rover for what seemed an interminable drive to the northwestern corner of Connecticut. Rio was at the wheel, Nikolai riding shotgun, maintaining constant cell phone contact with Renata since the warriors left Boston some three hours past. Behind them in another SUV was the rest of the team accompanying them on the mission: Kade, Brock, and Hunter.
About forty-five minutes ago, they’d turned off the interstate and begun a meandering jog along one rural route after another, following both the coordinates the women had provided and the strength of the blood bonds that would have led Niko and Rio to their mates even without the use of maps and GPS systems. Likewise, Reichen’s sensory pull toward Claire was intensifying the farther they drove along the winding stretch of moonlit, two-lane blacktop.
“We just passed the mom-and-pop gas station you mentioned,” Niko said into his cell phone as the closed establishment fell behind them in the darkness. “We’re coming around the bend now. You should see the Rover’s headlights any second. We’ll blink them so you know it’s us.”
Up ahead of the vehicle, the road flared brighter as Rio flashed the high beams a couple of times.
“Yep, we see you,” Niko said when a dark-clothed figure came out of the woods up ahead some hundred yards and waved a signal of her location.
Watching from behind Nikolai, Reichen hardly drew breath until Rio had navigated the Rover off the road and onto the wooded access lane where the three Breedmates waited. His gaze searched out and settled hard on Claire. She looked so vulnerable and out of place surrounded by so much night and dark forest, to say nothing of the fact that Wilhelm Roth could not be far from the very spot where she now stood.
But Reichen read only the faintest bit of fear in her. Claire’s pulse beat steady and strong in his heart, and her gait was sure as she and her two companions came to meet the vehicle.
No sooner had Rio parked the SUV did he and Niko both jump out to pull their mates into relieved, unhurried embraces. Reichen and Tegan climbed out, as well. Tegan walking around back to greet the second vehicle as it rolled to stop behind them on the wooded dirt lane. Conversations buzzed quietly talk of tactics and strategy, and quick reviews of the established plans for combing the area where Dylan had seen the ghostly Breedmates in the hopes of launching an offensive attack on Dragos’s possible hideout.
Reichen, meanwhile, couldn’t take his eyes off Claire. He drifted over to her, crossing his arms when the urge to wrap them around her felt too strong to deny. He wasn’t sure she’d welcome his concern after the way they’d left things at the compound.
“Are you all right?” he asked, noticing that she, too, had kept her hands close to herself as he approached. “My God, Claire. I heard what happened today. You have no idea how worried I’ve been…”
She gave him an unreadable look, taking in his black combat gear and the many weapons supplied him by the Order and holstered on the belt around his hips. Then she met his eyes once more and nodded her head. “I’m fine,” she said tonelessly “Thank you for the concern.”
God, he hated this forced politeness, just as he hated the fact that the scant arm’s length that separated them now might as well be a mile. Claire gave him that perfected expression of placidity that had once belonged to Wilhelm Roth—the shuttered, pleasant mask from the photographs Reichen had seen of her. Now she was turning that look on him. Shutting him out with the same kind of cordial distance she’d once reserved for strangers and other individuals she didn’t quite trust.
The realization cut deep, despite the fact that he’d earned her cold shoulder. Hell, he’d earned much more than that where Claire was concerned. He’d upended her whole world, put her in the crosshairs of a deadly personal war. Worse by far was the fact that he’d come back into her life only to drag her into the center of his conflict with Roth.
“Claire,” he said softly, words intended for her ears alone. “There is so much I want to apologize to you for—”
“Please, don’t.” She glanced up at him in the darkness, gave him a faint shake of her head. There was no condemnation in her voice, no raw hurt. Only quiet resignation. “Do you really think I’m looking for you to tell me you’re sorry? I’m not, Andreas, not anymore. Especially not right now. When this is all over tonight, then you can say whatever you need to say to me.”
She worried that he was walking into his death, and maybe he was. He blew out a slow breath, amazed as always by the strength that she carried inside her. He caressed her for only the briefest second, memorizing the velvet texture of her warm, honeyed skin. “I’ve always loved you, Claire. You know that, don’t you?”
She pressed her fingers tenderly against his lips. “Don’t you dare pretend this is good-bye,” she whispered fiercely. “Damn you, Andre, don’t you dare.”
Reichen kissed the soft pads of her fingertips, then hooked his arm around the small of her spine and brought her up against him. Hunger seared him, blood and desire inflamed together, twin needs that centered on the woman who felt so right in his embrace.
“You’re mine, Claire,” he growled into her mouth as he kissed her, long and deep. All around them, the warriors were preparing to fan out and begin their search of the outlying forest. Reichen took a step away from Claire, feeling the gap of space like a sudden gust of chill air. “I have to go now.”
“I know,” she said softly. “But you’ll come back to me, right? This time, promise me, Andre … you will come back to me.”
He cast a quick glance into the dark woods, his senses prickling with the knowledge of a hard battle soon to come. He looked back to Claire and drank in the sight of her. His beautiful, extraordinary Claire. After tonight, she would be free of Roth for good. Reichen would make certain of that. After tonight, Claire would be safe, no matter what he had to do to ensure it.
“I have to go,” he said again.
Her gaze was imploring, a blade twisting below his sternum. “Andre…promise me?”
“Stay safe, Claire. I love you.”
He fell in beside Tegan and the other warriors and didn’t look back.
Claire stood there for a long moment, watching numbly as the forest swallowed up Andreas and the other warriors. She’d kept up her brave front longer than she thought she could, but now that he was gone, her spine felt less solid, her legs a bit unsteady beneath her. She started when a hand touched down lightly on her shoulder.
“Hey.” It was Dylan, her expression soft, sympathetic. “Come on back to the Rover, Claire. It’s warmer inside. Rio and I will keep you company until this is over.”
She let herself be led around to the waiting vehicle, realizing belatedly that Renata had joined the warriors as well. Inside the Range Rover, Rio was on two-way tactical communication with each member of the mission, including Andreas. The connection to him, even electronically, gave her a small degree of comfort. At least she could hear his voice from time to time, and know that he was still with her. Still alive.
She refused to consider the many terrible ways this night could end. Instead she clung to the remembered warmth of Andreas’s embrace, his passionate kiss, his loving words.
He had to come back to her.
He had to survive.
As she held those thoughts close to her like a shield, Tegan’s deep voice came over the receiver mounted to the Rover’s dashboard.
“Fuck, I think we’ve got something out here.” There was a rustle of movement in the background, the sound of boots traipsing carefully over dried leaves. The warrior dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Oh, hell yeah … we got something, all right. Dilapidated barn roughly four hundred and fifty yards northeast of the Rover.”
“Copy” came Brock’s bass growl. “Moving in now.”
Claire exchanged an anxious look with Dylan as more warriors reported that they were circling over to the location Tegan had given.
“Couple of Minions posted outside of it armed with semiautos,” Tegan added. “Reichen and I are moving in on them. Everyone else bring up the rear.”
Not a few seconds later, gunfire exploded from out of the distant woods.
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
Wilhelm Roth turned away from the old barn’s hidden closed-circuit cameras after the Order had mowed down the handful of Minions posted as guards at the ground-level entrance of the lab. The Minions were expendable, nothing more than an obstacle for appearance sake. After all, the Order might be suspicious if he and Dragos had rolled out a red carpet to welcome them. Let them think they had to expend some effort for their prize. Lull them into believing they were actually the ones in control, when their arrival had been anticipated—indeed, encouraged—all along.
Now that they had all gained entrance to the underground facility, it would be only minutes before the group of warriors and Andreas Reichen found their way down the bunker’s earthen catacombs to the heart of Dragos’s headquarters. A few minutes more than that before they realized the trap they’d entered and understood there could be no escape.
Just a matter of minutes before Roth had the distinct pleasure of killing them all in one fell swoop.
He smiled with genuine glee as he motioned to the half-dozen Gen One assassins gathered with him in the control room.
“Two of you come with me,” he said, not caring which of Dragos’s homegrown, highly trained killers accompanied him since they were all born and bred to deal in death. “The rest of you head up to guard the entrance. Make sure no one gets in or out.”
As four of them moved to carry out his command, Wilhelm Roth walked out of the control room to await his moment of triumph over Andreas Reichen and his doomed companions.
Tegan and Nikolai were the first ones down the dank, dark tunnel that had been carved deep into the earth and fortified by concrete and carbide steel supports. A few seconds after they’d descended, Niko came back up and signaled an all-clear to Brock, Kade, and Reichen. Hunter and Renata stayed on watch outside, covering the search party’s exit.
Once they’d removed the Minion guards from the entrance, Reichen and the others had moved into the old barn, which, they soon realized, wasn’t so old after all. Nothing about the hidden bunker was as it seemed on the outside.
At the other end of the sloping tunnel, easily some several hundred feet below, the bunker expanded and spread out as wide and long as a gymnasium. Fluorescent lights washed the place out in a pale white glow, illuminating cafeteria-style tables and chairs that had been stacked neatly against one wall. A hinged door with a round window at eye level appeared to open into some sort of kitchen and service area, also empty and evidently closed for business although the odors of recently cooked food still hung cloyingly in the air.
“Guess who’s coming to dinner,” Kade drawled under his breath.
Brock scowled as he nodded. “Humans.”
“Minions,” Tegan corrected with a snarl as he sniffed derisively. “Helluva lot of them, too. Dragos keeps plenty of staff down here.”
Nikolai grunted. “Yeah, but for what?”
“Let’s find out,” Tegan said, motioning the group forward with him as he moved through the empty space to the corridor that let out on the other side.
They crept soundlessly past multiple spoking hallways and door after door of vacant dormitory-type rooms with basic twin cots, shared toilets, and a decided lack of personal touches.
“Jesus,” Kade whispered. “How many Minions does one twisted bastard need at his beck and call, anyway?”
“Enough to man a very expansive clinical endeavor,” Reichen said, pausing in front of a pair of steel doors that he’d pushed open a crack in order to peer inside.
Beyond the doors was a massive laboratory with half-emptied cabinets and gaping file drawers, clumsily cleared work spaces, and a polished floor littered with pieces of equipment broken in what appeared to have been a hasty evacuation. The warriors entered cautiously, taking note of what little assets remained. There were a handful of toppled microscopes and cracked slides, and sundry other items that looked like they’d once starred in a chemist’s wet dream.
“Check this out,” Kade called from the far side of the lab. He indicated a lidded stainless steel drum that looked like a giant pressure cooker. “Now, what the hell do you suppose this thing does?”
Reichen and Tegan walked over with Brock and Nikolai, glancing inside the large cylinder as Kade popped the seals on the top and opened the lid. It was no longer plugged in, so the temperature inside had warmed considerably from the deep freeze maintained while the unit was operable, and the contents had all been removed. Still, there was no mistaking the machine’s purpose.
“It’s a cryo container,” Reichen said.
Tegan nodded grimly. He jerked his chin toward another nearby room, where a skewed fleet of clear Plexiglas boxes like one might expect to see in the maternity wing of a human hospital had been parked haphazardly along the far wall. “Incubators. Jesus Christ. Dragos is running a fucking breeding factory down here.”
“Or was,” Nikolai said. “He obviously cleared out in a hurry.”
“Maybe he knew we were coming,” Brock suggested. “Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m starting to get a real bad vibe.”
Kade gave his buddy an affirming look. “I don’t like it, either. Getting in was too easy. This could be some kind of trap.”
“All the rats do seem to have fled this ship,” Nikolai added. “Maybe they were on to something. Dragos wouldn’t leave a facility like this vulnerable to attack unless it was deliberate. I’d bet my left nut that he’s long gone from here, and took everything of value with him.”
“Dragos may be gone,” Reichen said, “but Wilhelm Roth is in here somewhere, and I mean to find the son of a bitch.” Anger spiked as he dismissed his own sense of unease to focus on a more immediate, crucial goal. “Turn back, if you want. I won’t begrudge any of you for it. But I’m going to push on.”
Tegan’s green eyes glittered dangerously. “Too many unanswered questions down here to turn back without covering every square inch of this hellhole. Fuck you very much, if you think we’re gonna let you do this on your own, Reichen.”
Reichen held that verdant stare and knew a deep appreciation for the kinship he’d formed with this warrior. With all of the Order, in fact. The rest of the warriors didn’t hesitate to nod their agreement with Tegan, or to fall in beside Reichen and him as they headed deeper into the empty facility.
Just when Dragos’s secret operation seemed it couldn’t get any more disturbing, Reichen caught his first glimpse of a long wing of prison cells, just as Claire had described from her dreamwalk with Roth. Except none of them contained captive Breedmates, a fact that gave little comfort when it was obvious from the condition of the cells that they’d only recently been evacuated.
“Holy hell,” Niko murmured as the group of them strode into the area to see them up close. “There’s got to be fifty cages here. If these were occupied with imprisoned females, what has Dragos done with them all?”
“Moved them, no doubt,” Tegan said. “Possibly to the same place he relocated all of his staff and equipment, although he might be splitting up his assets now that he’s been forced to leave this location in a hurry.”
“That is one sick fuck,” Brock remarked as he peered inside one of the cells and ran his big hand over his skull-trimmed head.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Kade had walked over to a heavily bolted door perhaps a bit too conveniently unlocked now. He stepped into the room on the other side and blew out a low whistle. “What. The. Fuck.”
Reichen and the others followed him inside. A shocked and prolonged silence fell over each of the Breed males, from the youngest of the group to the centuries-old Gen One whom Reichen had never once seen rattled beyond words.
For within the space on the other side of that door was a broad platform raised slightly off the floor. And on that platform was a large, pivotable chair rigged with heavy restraints built for an individual of immense size and strength. Ankle braces as thick as a woman’s thigh. Shackles for powerful wrists that must have supported hands big enough to crack an average human’s skull like a walnut.
“This is where he’s been keeping the Ancient,” Tegan said, the first of them able to form words. “Holy shit. He’s had the Ancient under his control all this time.”
“How?” Nikolai asked, then glanced down near their feet and exhaled a sober curse. “Ultraviolet light bars. Check the floor. The ceiling, too. The entire perimeter of this platform is circled by an array of UV light fixtures. When they’re activated, the UV bars would contain the Ancient inside better than the strongest, thickest kind of metal.”
The words were barely out of Niko’s mouth before a sudden, odd hum rent the air around them. Intense light exploded from all directions, so bright and hot, Reichen and the others had no choice but to cover their eyes with updrawn arms. He smelled the acrid taint of singed skin. At first, he worried that his pyro had awakened from out of nowhere. Then he realized this was something even worse.
Reichen squinted beyond the piercing blast of light, upward, toward a glassed-in viewing area he hadn’t noticed above the Ancient’s holding cell until that very moment.
Inside that viewing area stood Wilhelm Roth, grinning with smug satisfaction as Reichen, Tegan, and the rest of the warriors who’d come with them were hemmed in tight by the lethal vertical beams of ultraviolet light that surrounded them on all sides. Roth motioned to a pair of big males—black-clad, hard-eyed, and bristling with automatic weapons. Both males bore thick black polymer collars around their necks, their shaved heads and bare throats covered in Gen One glyphs, every massive, muscled inch of them seething deadly purpose. The two assassins exited both sides of the viewing area to twin landings at the top of a double flight of stairs.
They took aim on Reichen and the others trapped inside the UV light cage, then opened fire.
CHAPTER
Thirty
Claire’s heart slammed against her sternum at the sudden cacophony of gunfire that erupted over the comm device on the Rover’s dashboard. She’d been tensely monitoring the team’s progress inside Dragos’s lair along with Dylan and Rio, fear twisting like a serpent in her stomach with each step Andreas and the others took deeper into the horrible place.
Now her fear shot up her throat, exploding out of her in a scream as the sounds of ripping bullets, shouts, and chaos filled the vehicle.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, her blood freezing in her veins. “Oh, my God! No!”
She made a frantic lunge for the door handle beside her in the backseat, but Rio pivoted around from in front of her and clamped his hand down on her shoulder, keeping her in place.
“Stay, Claire. You can’t do anything to help them,” he said, his Spanish accent rolling, dark-fringed eyes grave. He hissed a curse as more gunfire cracked over the receiver.
Then, another disaster, this time from the ground level post near the barn’s entrance, where Renata and the male called Hunter were stationed.
Renata’s voice came into the vehicle in a breathless rush. “Ah, shit. We’ve got company. Four guards coming into view right now outside the old barn… Fuck, I think they’re Gen Ones—”
Blam! Blam! Blam!
More bullets began to fly the racket cutting Renata off and echoing from out of the forest like thunderclaps.
“Oh, Jesus,” Dylan whispered from her seat beside her mate in the front of the SUV as the Order came under attack both inside Dragos’s lair and outside on ground level. “Rio… what should we do?”
“Stay here, both of you,” he ordered them grimly, pulling a nasty-looking pistol out of its holster on his belt and loading the chamber. He threw open the driver-side door and leapt out. “Stay in the Rover and keep it running in case things go any further south and you need to haul ass out of here. I’m going in.”
The Gen One assassins rained down a hail of bullets on Reichen and the warriors caught within the UV prison below. Returning their fire wasn’t easy. The light bars were blinding and searingly hot, offering little room to dodge the incoming rounds while the warriors volleyed back shots with their own weapons.
From his periphery, Reichen saw Tegan take a bullet to the shoulder. Another grazed Nikolai in the thigh, knocking him on his ass for a second before he locked and loaded a second pistol and squeezed off several semiautomatic rounds. And up above, secure behind the bulletproof Plexiglas that shielded him from the fray, Wilhelm Roth was still watching, still gloating. Smiling, as though it were all merely entertainment and he’d already won this war.
Reichen’s fury churned on a swift, hard boil.
Already the pyro was rising up inside him; he felt the living heat ripple over his skin, watched with nonchalant acceptance as the bullets that should have punctured his body instead fell away the instant they met the field of psychic energy that enveloped him.
“Get behind me!” he shouted to Tegan and the others, spreading his arms wide to create an even wider field of protection. “Not too close,” he warned. “The heat will deflect the bullets, but it also kills.”
The warriors moved in as tight as was prudent, using Reichen’s body like a shield as they continued to strike back at their attackers, who had the advantage of unrestricted movement and seemingly endless firepower.
Reichen’s vision began to warp before his eyes. His pyro was building faster now, burning hotter than ever as he glared up at Roth. He let his rage expand, coaxed the flames to swell even bigger from within him. He summoned every ounce of fire at his command, letting it tumble and roil in his gut, willing it to strengthen as he held it down well past the point of pain. Past even the point of sanity.
Some threadbare shred of instinct told him that he was courting disaster, but he shoved reason aside and stoked the flames brighter. Tasting the need for vengeance—for a final, bloody justice—like potent liquor on his tongue.
“Wilhelm Roth,” he bellowed darkly, centering all of his hatred, all of his white-hot energy, on the male who had taken so much from him, even before he’d called for the slaughter of Reichen’s Darkhaven kin. “Tonight you die, Roth!”
Focusing his talent, Reichen fisted his hand and punched it through the ultraviolet light bars of the cell. He felt no burn, other than the heat coursing through him already. He glanced up and took great satisfaction in the sudden, slack-jawed astonishment written across Roth’s face. Grinning himself now in a smile full of hatred and laser-sighted purpose, Reichen stepped out of the Ancient’s cage with a roar of mingled triumph and murderous rage.
The two Gen One assassins blasted at him with their useless weapons. Reichen glanced up at them, heat rippling outward from his body with nuclear intensity. He summoned power to his raised and fisted hands, then turned it loose on the pair. Twin fireballs rocketed out of his palms. The spinning white-hot orbs struck their targets in an instant, incinerating the vampires on impact, bodies and weapons reduced to a flurry of drifting ash and molten bits of metal showering down from the top of the double staircases.
“Holy shit!” one of the warriors crowed from behind him, but Reichen had no time to relish the small victory.
Not when Roth was staring wide-eyed in panic, backing away from the window as if he was preparing to bolt.
Reichen crouched low, then sprang into the air. In one fluid motion, fire engulfing him, he leapt off the floor and sailed up to the broad sheet of Plexiglas that separated him from his quarry. He locked eyes with Roth, curling his lip off his teeth and fangs as he smashed into the window and watched the barrier shatter inward in a million melting pebbles.
Wilhelm Roth gaped at the towering pillar of hellish fire that had transformed Andreas Reichen into something too incredible for words. He’d understood the male’s unique Breed-born talent was pyrokinesis, but this … this was beyond reckoning.
It was awesome in its power, and Roth could not keep himself from staring, struck dumb with wonder and fear, as Reichen stalked toward him. The concrete floor scorched black beneath Reichen’s boots. The fluorescent lights overhead popped and smoked as he passed under them, moving inch by inch across the viewing room. Roth retreated, feeling his hair and skin singe from the intensity of the heat rolling off Reichen.
“You think you can accomplish anything by killing me?” he asked the glowing form that stalked him with obvious deadly intent. “You’ve seen this place, Reichen. You can figure out what it’s been used for all these years. Dragos has bred his own army down here. He’s done much more than that, and he cannot be stopped now. Do you actually think my death will make a difference in the grand scheme of things?”
“It will make a difference to Claire,” came the deep, heat-warped reply. “It will make a difference to me.”
Roth kept moving backward, until the gauges and switches of the UV cage’s control panel behind him bit into his spine. “Let me go, and maybe your friends down there in that cell will live.”
“You can’t harm anyone. Not anymore.” Reichen’s glance bounced from point to point on the control panel. Circuits crackled, shooting off sparks and bitter, electronic smoke. Roth had to duck out of the way of the small explosions, the fallout of Reichen’s searing gaze driving him deep into the corner of the room in a cower. Roth snarled, infuriated to have been sent to his knees, particularly by this male, whose death he had craved and sought for far too long.
As Reichen stepped closer, murder blazing from every pore of his body, Roth made an abrupt lunge for one of the gauges on the control panel. He understood the fact that he wasn’t going to walk away from this fight now, but damn if he would accept defeat alone.
With a grunt of determination, Roth smashed his fist onto the panic switch that would activate the lab’s emergency detonation sequence. Sirens immediately began to wail overhead. The alarms sounded from every direction, signaling the start of an irreversible countdown.
Roth chuckled. “My God. It’s almost worth it—knowing that I am about to die down here alongside you and the bulk of the Order. Seeing that look on your face right now… your defeat is palpable, Reichen. So is the horror and outrage—the raw, emotional pain—it’s all there, in your eyes.” He sighed, knowingly dramatic. “I only wish I could take Claire along with us when this whole goddamned place blows to kingdom come in the next five—ah, make that four minutes and forty-nine seconds.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Claire wanted it to all be a dream. A terrible nightmare that she could simply wake from and the world would go back to normal. She wanted to go back to three nights ago, when she and Andreas had been alone at the house in Newport, making love, walking along the wharfs, embracing under the moonlight.
But the sound of Wilhelm Roth’s cruelly animated voice—the realization of what he had just done to Andreas, to the warriors inside the abandoned lair with him… to the women who would be mourning their mates in mere minutes—sank into Claire’s soul like a poison.
“I can’t stay in here another second,” she murmured, meeting Dylan’s ashen look.
“We can’t leave, Claire. Can’t you hear the gunfire out there by the entrance?”
Claire heard it. Rio had been gone for only a few minutes. He and Renata and Hunter were still engaged with the Gen One assassins who’d come up to ground level. It was dangerous outside the vehicle; Claire knew that. But as she stared anxiously out the tinted windshield at the forest that surrounded her, she knew a deeper sense of dread.
“Oh, my God… no. This cannot be Mira’s vision.”
She opened the door and slid out of the Rover, realizing just now that the premonition she’d seen in the little girl’s eyes was about to come true. Right here, within the next five awful minutes.
Dylan came out of the vehicle and circled around to grab her by the arms. “Claire, please, get back inside. You can’t—”
“This is the same woods I saw in Mira’s eyes,” she cried, sick with certainty. The same location where she’d felt the anguish of losing Andreas in that pile of smoking rubble and ash. “The explosion, Dylan. This is exactly what Mira showed me. It’s really going to happen. Oh, my God… no!”
Tearing loose of the other Breedmate’s hold, Claire raced into the darkened woods, her heart breaking, about to burst from her chest, and Andreas’s name a desperate prayer on her lips.
Every cell in Reichen’s body screamed for him to unleash the full power of his fury on Wilhelm Roth. It would be the matter of an instant to render the bastard nothing but ashes to be trampled under his boots.
But incinerating Roth with a single blast of rage was far too merciful. Evil like him deserved to suffer, especially after the cowardice he’d just shown in activating explosives that none of the warriors trapped in the UV cage below had any hope of escaping. His friends should not have to die as part of this bad blood between Roth and himself.
It was that thought, more than any other, that gave Reichen the ability to ignore his hatred of Roth and loose his rage on the control panel that encompassed the entire back wall of the viewing room. He threw one bolt of flame after another at the gauges and monitoring devices, until finally there was a loud pop and the entire space went dark.
He didn’t see Roth moving until the son of a bitch had managed to scramble through a side door. Reichen pivoted to the blown-out window and glanced down at the warriors leaping off the cell’s deactivated platform.
“Reichen!” It was Tegan’s deep voice calling up to him, although Reichen’s vision was swamped with amber and rippling with the heat that was escalating ever hotter inside him. “Reichen, come on! Leave the son of a bitch. He’s dead if he stays in here.”
True enough, Reichen thought. But the way his body felt now, the way his veins were seething lava and his mind fixed on one thing—destruction—he realized that the moment he’d dreaded for so long had finally arrived.
He was too far gone. The fires were intensifying within him, no longer his to control.
“Reichen, goddamn it!” Tegan shouted, hesitating when the rest of the warriors were wisely rushing to evacuate. “Forget Roth and let’s haul ass out of this place before it fucking blows!”
“Take care of her for me,” he somehow managed to say, his throat feeling as dry as kindling, scraping with each syllable. “Get her somewhere safe… do that for me, Tegan.”
He didn’t wait to hear the dark curse that shot up from the room below. Reichen took off after Wilhelm Roth, trusting the warrior—his friend—to carry out his request. If he could be certain of Claire’s safety, he didn’t need anything else.
Nothing but the knowledge that Wilhelm Roth was dead.
He stalked through the anterior hallway where Roth had run, hearing the bow of metal bending, the steel and concrete reinforcements of the underground bunker protesting his presence. Empty metal supply carts sagged as he passed them, glass windows in doors and offices shattering from the sheer intensity of the white-hot flames that ringed his limbs and torso like an impenetrable, living cocoon of energy.
“Wilhelm Roth!” he roared, coming up on the vampire from a few dozen yards away.
Roth had been running like the vermin he was, but now he slowed, then stopped. No doubt he sensed the futility in trying to escape the death that was coming to him, either by Reichen’s hand or his own, when he’d smashed that detonator switch some three minutes ago.
Roth slowly turned around to face him. “You surprise me, Reichen. I would have thought your love for my faithless mate was stronger than your hatred of me.”
Reichen grunted. He wasn’t about to discuss Claire or his feelings for her with this offal. Roth had to know that with less than three minutes on the detonator, neither one of them was getting out of the bunker before it blew.
Reichen stalked forward, using all his focus to keep from ashing Roth on the spot. He wanted to make the next two minutes of his life count, and he could think of no greater purpose than killing Roth second by second, burning away his existence inch by inch. As he approached, Roth had no choice but to retreat backward, edging nearer to the end of the corridor.
He saw Roth’s skin start to go red. He moved closer, driving him farther back. Beads of sweat erupted from Roth’s brow and upper lip, then his entire face and throat sheened with moisture. And still Reichen advanced. Roth hissed as his exposed skin began to blister and burn. A stench rose up from his fair hair as it, too, started to singe under the heat of Reichen’s merciless talent.
Roth cried out when his clothes began to smoke. “Go ahead and do your worst,” he sputtered, gasping in agony yet finding the ability to peel back his splitting, scorched lips into a sadistic smile. “Have you forgotten? My blood bond to Claire… so long as I’m alive, she feels my pain. Torture me, and you torture her, too.”
Claire screamed and dropped to the ground on her knees. Up ahead of her in the dark, she saw Renata, Hunter, and Rio taking on the last of the Gen One assassins at the old barn. Through the black maw of the entrance, Claire watched as Kade and Nikolai, then Brock and Tegan came up from the depths of Dragos’s lair. What about Andreas? She was about to call out to the warriors, but the searing pain that racked her so suddenly had stolen her breath.
It had taken her down swiftly, heat running over her body as if she were standing in the heart of the devil’s own furnace. Or, rather, Wilhelm Roth was standing in that hellish inferno. It was his agony that rocked her, his pain echoing in her blood.
Andre.
He was the source of Roth’s pain. Which meant he was still alive. Still breathing somewhere in that underground bunker, which meant he still had a chance to get out before the worst could happen. He still had a chance to come back to her.
Claire dragged herself up to her feet, buoyed by hope.
She pushed through the painful psychic link to Roth and started running once more. If Tegan and the rest of the warriors had made it out all right, then she was certain that Andreas couldn’t be far behind them.
CHAPTER
Thirty-two
Reichen staggered back on his heels at the realization that he was hurting Claire as he took his hatred out on Roth. Like the heavy, Bloodlust-induced sleep that had muted his own bond to her earlier that day, his pyro now had obliterated nearly all his senses. It had stripped him of nearly everything but his fury, and the fire that rose along with it.
“Why did you do it?” Reichen demanded roughly. “Why did you need to have Claire?”
Roth’s smile stretched tight behind the cracking skin of his scorched lips. “Because you wanted her. And because she couldn’t see that I was a far better man. You were nothing compared to me. You never were. I even removed the one obstacle that prevented me from pursuing Claire in earnest—”
“The female you’d already taken as your mate,” Reichen growled.
“The female you had the audacity to coddle after I’d put her in her rightful place.”
Roth was staring at Reichen as though he should remember the event he spoke of. Reichen thought back to his dealings with Roth… and suddenly recalled a timid Breedmate sitting outside a Darkhaven party on a rain-soaked balcony. “I brought her inside and gave her my jacket,” he said, picturing her stricken face as he’d shown her that small kindness. “She was freezing and crying, so I sent her home with my driver.”
“You humiliated me in front of my peers. Even worse, in front of my subordinates. You and Ilsa both humiliated me that evening.”
“So you had her killed?” Reichen snarled, incredulous.
“Attacked by a Rogue vampire,” Roth said lightly. He shrugged. “No one questioned me about the incident, since it was my close associates who took the report.”
“Out of spite, you killed an innocent woman who trusted you above all others. Then you took Claire as your mate to get back at me.”
“I did more than that.” Roth sneered. “I arranged to get rid of you, as well. You vanished for a year without a word of excuse. Everyone wondered if you were dead. And yet Claire still wanted you.”
He practically spat the word.
Jealousy and pride, Reichen thought, sickened that something so petty had caused so much pain.
Roth’s stare was sharp, cuttingly so. “I suppose after I realized that, my hate for Claire exceeded even the hate I had for you. I would have enjoyed killing her, Reichen. Just as I enjoyed ordering the deaths of your Darkhaven kin and turning that human whore of yours into my Minion.”
Reichen roared with fresh anguish and outrage. He was through with Roth now. Sick to death of the bastard’s ugly words. He brought his hands out before him and felt the fires travel from his core through his limbs. Out to his fingertips that stretched toward Wilhelm Roth.
“Die, you sick fuck,” he snarled.
And then he released a double-barreled blast of flame and heat at the face of his most treacherous enemy. Roth’s death was instant, a mercy Reichen granted only because of Claire.
Reichen was still screaming with animal fury, still torching the empty floor where Roth’s ashes had piled up, when he felt the first rumblings of the explosion building under the soles of his feet.
The walls around him trembled.
Then the earth heaved violently with the force of the lab’s detonation.
Claire knew the precise moment that Wilhelm Roth took his last breath. It came to her as a sudden flood of peace—an impossible sense of freedom that lit up her veins and gave her limbs a renewed strength to carry her forward as she raced the few remaining yards toward the old barn where the warriors had just spilled out.
Roth was dead.
Andreas was alive.
God… could the hell of the past several days, of the past several decades that she and Andreas had been separated by Roth’s machinations, actually be coming to an end?
She wanted to believe it. Needed to believe it.
Claire clutched hope close, even as the ground beneath her feet gave a prolonged, bone-rattling shudder.
“Jesus Christ!” shouted a low male voice up ahead of her in the dark. “Did you feel that? This son of a bitch is about to blow!”
Claire kept running, denying what she was hearing. It couldn’t be true. It could not be happening. Not when Andreas hadn’t yet come out to safety.
“Get back, get back!” Rio’s rolling accent sounded from somewhere close. The big warrior came crashing through the trees with Renata, Hunter, and a couple of others from the mission. Rio reached for Claire, tried to pull her along with them, but she dodged his grasp and kept on running.
There were more shouted warnings, more urgent movement in the night-dark woods, as the shudder deep within the earth rumbled louder.
There was a violent jolt, then a deep, thunderous boom!
Strong arms and a warm, hard body wrapped itself around Claire, twisting her around to cushion her fall as the percussion blasted her backward, off her feet. She screamed but could hardly hear her own voice as the forest shook and roared with the force of a seemingly endless, ungodly explosion.
“Stay down, Claire.” Tegan’s voice blew hot against her ear. “I promised him I’d get you out of here in one piece.”
“Noo!” she cried, beyond caring if she lived or died, watching in horror as the derelict barn blasted skyward in a blinding mass of flames and heat and thick, roiling smoke. The plumes of fire shot out in all directions, showering large chunks of splintered wood and burning embers down onto the forest. More heat erupted from out of the hole bored into the earth beneath the barn, the entrance to the bunker from which Andreas had yet to escape. “Oh, my God… no! He’s still down there! Andreas, no!”
She vaulted to her feet. Tegan’s hold was firm on her arm, but she shook him off with a desperate cry. “Let me go, damn you!”
Adrenaline and despair sent her flying over the debris-strewn ground, through the thick growth of trees that was illuminated with unearthly orange light from the fire that seethed where the old barn had stood not a minute ago. She felt Tegan following behind her. The other warriors were moving in, too, silent and cautious. One of the Breedmates murmured a soft prayer for Andreas, tender words that Claire could hardly bear to hear.
She walked closer to the roaring heat. It was overwhelming, hitting her like a furnace thrown open in her face. Still, she kept moving toward it, transfixed by the earthen crater of rubble and smoldering ash that had collapsed inward with the blast.
“Andreas,” she called softly. Then louder, hoping he could hear her. Hoping for a miracle. “Andreas!”
When she would have gone even closer, close enough that the flames would have touched her, Tegan’s hands came down gently on her shoulders. “Come on, Claire. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Andre!” she cried, stubbornly refusing to give up.
A new plume of sparks belched upward from within the molten core of the crater, making the rubble shift and groan. She felt the warrior’s grasp on her tighten, and she knew he was prepared to carry her out of there if she delayed another second. But Claire didn’t budge. She called to Andreas again, her voice hitching on a sob as another deep rumble sounded from belowground.
Then she noticed something odd about the smoldering pit of cinders and churning flames …
Deep within its core, something was moving.
“Holy hell,” Tegan said, obviously spotting the same thing she had. “Holy fucking hell. It can’t be—”
“Andreas,” Claire gasped, awestruck and incredulous, and so very, very relieved.
She watched the rubble give way and melt around him as he climbed out of the center of the inferno and rose to stand on the edge of the crater, his body aglow with the white-hot power of his extraordinary, terrifying gift. Smoke billowed above him in great black clouds. Flames roared and undulated from behind him like a seething volcano, yet he stood there unscathed.
“Thank God,” she whispered, her heart soaring.
But then she realized something about him was terribly wrong.
The heat that enveloped him—the same heat that had proven impervious to bullets that first night she’d seen him like this—might have been the only thing that spared him from the killing force of the explosion, but the glow that surrounded him was brighter than ever. Hotter than the fires that roared all around him from the blast.
His gaze was vacant as it traveled from Claire to the others gathered there. Light poured out of his eye sockets, searing and inhuman. Merciless.
Claire took a step toward him, hesitant now. “Andreas? Andre…can you hear me?”
That flat, burning gaze swung back to her now. Heat blasted her, pushing her several paces in retreat. He wasn’t looking at her, she realized, but through her. He didn’t see her there, no more than he saw the rest of the warriors—his friends—standing before him in stunned silence. Claire recognized the danger he posed like this, even if he was too far gone to recognize it for himself now.
She had to break through to him. “Andre, it’s me, Claire. Talk to me. Tell me you know me. That you’re all right.”
He snarled, low and deadly, in the back of his throat. She didn’t let it scare her. Keeping her eyes locked on his, she took a step toward him.
“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed from nearby. He moved to block her path. “Claire, I don’t think you should—”
A fireball sailed through the air, crashing into the ground at Tegan’s feet.
“Andre, no!”
Tegan leapt out of the way of the assault, taking Claire with him. Andreas roared then, and let fly a sudden hail of flaming orbs. Chunks of dark earth ripped loose as the baseball-size blasts hit the ground, driving everyone back. Claire screamed for him to stop, and for a moment she thought he would. He looked at her, then suddenly lifted his hands to the sides of his head and staggered unsteadily on his feet. The glow around him dimmed as he pressed his palms hard against his temples, his face contorting in a grimace of pain.
When Claire glanced beside her, she saw the reason why.
Renata held him in a fixed, unblinking stare. As the Breedmate had done to the Gen One assassins a short time ago, now she blasted Andreas with the power of her mind. He went down on one knee, the rippling heat that traveled his body flickering like a strobe.
When she let up, Andreas was panting and shuddering. But the glow still enveloped him. And as he lifted his head, the roar that ripped out of his mouth shook the entire forest with feral, deadly fury.
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
The fire owned him.
He knew this, knew it from the moment the bunker had exploded all around him but didn’t take him down with it. He knew he was too far gone, even as he’d crawled out of the ashes and rubble intact, his body protected by the furious heat that only seemed to grow stronger, brighter, more uncontrollable by the second. He had lost the battle with his terrible ability, with himself, just as he’d feared would happen.
The others gaping at him in the flame-drenched darkness of the woods knew it, too. Especially her, the female whose welling, dark brown eyes tore at something deep within him. He loved her. Not even the madness of the unrelenting heat could burn away that fact.
She lived in his heart, this female.
His female.
His mate, something primal and anguished howled from inside him.
He loved her deeply, completely, but knew he could not have her. Not now.
Not ever again.
He threw his head back and roared at the thought, and his voice turned loose a ball of white flames. The orb pitched high, then smashed into the ground a half-dozen feet from him, showering the area in sparks and clumps of upheaved loam.
“Andreas, please,” his woman cried. “Let us help you.”
Fire danced all around her. Tears filled her eyes, her hands trembling as she held them out to him through the smoke and pale, floating ash that was raining down like snowflakes from the canopy of trees above.
“Andre, look at me. Hear me. I know you can.” She stepped toward him, ignoring the sober warnings of more than one of the males in her company. “I’m not ready to let you go,” she said fiercely, words that seemed to echo back at him like a memory.
Had he heard them in this very spot earlier tonight? Had he been the one to say them to her?
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t let it matter. She and the others with her—friends, his instinct called them—were not safe around him now. They had to go.
Except she wasn’t about to leave him there. He could see that plainly enough in the stubborn tilt of her jaw. He growled with fury, and felt the swell of another ball of heat building in his gut.
Incredibly, she moved even closer to him.
A vision flashed through his mind as he watched her take yet another step toward him. He saw a little girl with sandy pigtails and a gentle smile holding her hand out to him in a gesture of kindness. He saw a bright, innocent face offering him help and compassion…just before the fire that lived within him leapt out to consume her.
He’d killed something precious and pure once before. He would not do it again.
Bellowing his self-contempt, he sent a small volley of fireballs at the ground in front of him. A low barrier of flames twisted and crackled, driving her back. It wasn’t enough. He needed her gone—needed to know that she was far away from his destructive power.
He needed all of them gone now.
He threw more fire, forcing the entire group to pull back. As they gradually retreated, he saw the tear-streaked, beautiful face of the woman—his woman—fixed on him through the climbing wall of flames that separated them.
“No, Andre,” she mouthed. “No. I’m not going to let you do this.”
Heat gusted from the dancing flames in front of Claire and the others. Behind the wall of undulating fire, she watched Andreas’s face. His eyes were filled with torment and pain. With madness, too. Heartbreaking, bleak resolve smoldered in his gaze.
He was giving up.
He was trying to drive her away from him, so he could deal with his suffering—most likely his death as well—alone.
No, Claire thought, firmly rejecting the idea. No goddamn way was she going to accept that. Not after all they’d been through. Not when she’d been waiting for him, had never stopped loving him, all this time.
There had to be some way to break through to him. There had to be some way to help him.
“Renata,” she said, turning to look at the other Breedmate. “You did something to him a few minutes ago with your mind. It dimmed some of the heat surrounding him—”
“Yes,” Renata agreed. “I saw it, too.”
“I need you to do it again now.”
Nikolai stepped over, his expression grave. “Renata’s talent is lethal, Claire. It’s not something you want to mess around with, trust me. If she turns it loose on Reichen again, it might—”
“Might what? Kill him?” Claire felt hysteria bubble up inside her. “Look at him. He’s already dying. If we don’t do something fast, then the pyro will kill him.”
She looked at Renata, desperate for even the slimmest chance of saving Andreas. “Please … please, try.”
Renata gave a curt nod, then looked away to fix her attention on the formidable tower of heat and flames that was Andreas. She stared unblinking, focused like a laser. Claire felt the air beside her shift almost imperceptibly as an unseen current leapt outward from Renata’s mind and seized on its target.
He reared back the instant it hit him.
Claire’s heart lurched as he threw his head back and howled, all of his muscles going taut as cables. He grabbed both sides of his head and doubled over as Renata held him in the debilitating psychic grasp of her strong mind. Andreas shuddered and roared … and as he struggled, the glow that swamped him began to fade.
“Keep going, Renata! Oh, my God, I think it’s working.”
Claire heard more than one of the warriors curse from nearby, where they all stood watching, everyone as transfixed as Claire was as the mental blast Renata delivered continued to douse Andreas’s heat. He dropped to his knees, buckled over, still holding his head in his hands. He looked to be in complete agony, but the heat traveling his limbs and torso had lessened even more.
“Please, Andre … hang on,” she whispered, her heart shredding to see him suffer so. Her nerve faltered. Just when she was about to tell Renata to stop, Andreas pitched forward and collapsed in a heavy, boneless sprawl.
“Claire, stay back!” someone shouted, but she was already running toward him.
She dodged the flames that still burned in places on the ground and raced to Andreas’s side. Energy crackled over his skin, raising goose bumps on her arms, but the glow was gone. The heat was cooled.
“Andre,” she sobbed, folding her legs and dropping down beside him on the ground.
She lifted his head onto her lap and stroked his bloodless cheek and brow. He was cold. Unmoving
Oh, God.
“Andre, can you hear me?” She cradled his broad shoulders and bent to press her face against his. “Andreas, please don’t die. Please … come back to me.”
She kissed him all over, holding him tight. Praying she’d done the right thing. Hoping he was still in there somewhere, and that the gamble she’d taken with his life hadn’t been the worst mistake she would ever make.
“Andre, I love you,” she murmured, dimly aware that Renata and Dylan and the warriors had all gathered around them now. “You can’t leave me. You can’t.”
Tegan knelt down beside her and put his hand on the side of Andreas’s neck. “He’s alive. He’s breathing, but he’s out cold. Got a strong pulse, at least…”
“Thank God,” Renata whispered, clutching Niko in a tight embrace as she looked down at Claire in kinship and shared concern.
“We have to get him out of here,” Tegan said. He glanced up at Renata. “Will you be able to keep him under control if he comes to on the ride back to Boston?”
She nodded. “Whatever it takes, yeah. I’ll cover him.”
“Come on, Claire.” The warrior nudged her gently as he crouched to heft Andreas’s heavy bulk onto his shoulder as he would care for any one of his fallen brothers in arms. “I’ll carry him back to the Rover. Everything’s going to be okay now.”
Claire nodded numbly and fell in alongside him as they all made the short trek from the smoldering forest and obliterated bunker to the waiting vehicles.
She wanted to believe Tegan, but when she looked at Andreas’s unresponsive, ashen face, she couldn’t help feeling that where Andreas was concerned, everything was still a long way from okay.
CHAPTER
Thirty-four
Dragos snapped his cell phone closed and jammed it into the pocket of his cashmere dress coat. He stared up at the starlit sky above an industrial park off I-90 in Albany, New York, and hissed a violent oath. Wilhelm Roth wasn’t answering his calls.
Which meant that Wilhelm Roth was dead.
The fact that Dragos’s cameras and communication systems at his Connecticut headquarters had all gone offline and ceased working meant that the bunker had been detonated as planned. He could only hope that Roth had managed to ensure that a number of the Order’s members had been blown to pieces along with the hastily abandoned lab.
As for Roth himself, Dragos hadn’t actually cared if his German lieutenant survived the lab’s destruction; it was the matter of a moment to find another right arm to carry out his mission.
And so he had.
Dragos moved away from his Minion-chauffeured sedan to inspect the work of Roth’s replacement. The second-generation Breed male who’d been recruited from the West Coast was overseeing the movement of Dragos’s assets—a diversification made necessary by the aggravating and persistent interference of the Order.
But Dragos hadn’t come this far without anticipating a few speed bumps in his operation. Alternatives had been explored and provided for years ago, and now it was merely a matter of rearranging the pieces that he already had in play. The Order had cost him only a few days—a couple of weeks at most—then he would be right back in business once again.
Stronger than before.
Unstoppable, no matter what disturbing things he had seen in the witchy eyes of the child seer all those weeks ago in Montreal.
“Are we ready to move out yet?” he asked his lieutenant.
The big vampire nodded curtly where he stood behind one of several semi-trailer trucks that had been loaded and were waiting to roll out of the industrial park to their appointed destinations. The double doors of the one nearest his lieutenant were partially open yet, revealing the anxious faces of the Breedmates who’d been removed from their cells in the lab for transportation elsewhere. They knew better than to scream or try to escape. The industrial park was owned by Dragos, manned by his Minions.
Besides, the chains and shackles that bound the women to one another would prevent any of them from getting very far, even if they were foolish enough to attempt it.
“Seal them up and get them out of here,” Dragos said, watching in satisfaction as his lieutenant swung the doors closed and set the heavy steel bolt and locks. A quick thump of the vampire’s fist on the back of the truck sent the thing rolling with one of Dragos’s Minions at the wheel.
Farther on in the yard, several more trucks awaited their departure orders. Dragos walked past the ones containing his many millions of dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, his gaze fixed on the large white trailer at the far end of the line.
It was a refrigerated container, specially equipped for preserving the fragile cargo that was locked and sedated inside. Two Gen One assassins had been stationed within the trailer to stand guard over the contents; another pair would ride up front with the Minion driver and Dragos’s West Coast associate to ensure the shipment encountered no problems en route to the rail yard, where the next leg of the container’s long journey would begin.
“Everything is ready, sire.”
“Excellent,” Dragos said. “Contact me as soon as you arrive in Seattle to make the last connection.”
“Yes, sire.”
Dragos watched as the fleet of trucks lurched into motion and exited the yard.
The Order may have disrupted his operation, but he was far from defeated.
With a confident smile tugging at the corner of his lips, Dragos walked back to his waiting car. He climbed into the backseat and waited in boredom as the driver closed the door behind him then hurried back around to get behind the wheel.
Tonight the lair he’d gone to great pains and expense to construct was gone, but Dragos preferred to think of it as a necessary step in the evolution of his plans. Now he would begin a new phase in his operation, and he could hardly wait to get started.
Dragos leaned his head back against the soft leather seat and watched through the rear window as a thread of pale clouds skittered across the milky moon overhead.
Andreas didn’t wake up once during the three-plus hours it took to drive back to the Order’s headquarters.
Nor the entire next day.
Claire heard Tess use the word “coma” in conversation with Gabrielle and Savannah when the three women had been preparing the private apartment for him in the compound early that morning. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t worry her, and the longer he stayed unconscious, the deeper her dread became.
This slow, helpless waiting was even worse than watching him rail and struggle against his pyrokinesis. Claire held his hand as he lay unmoving on the bed. She knew he was in there. She could feel his blood moving beneath his skin, could see the occasional flicker of his closed eyelids when she spoke to him.
“Is there anything else you need?” Tess asked gently, drying her hands on a paper towel from the bathroom. Dante’s mate was trained in veterinary medicine and had possessed an even greater psychic gift for healing with her touch before her current pregnancy had inhibited her talent. Now she laid her hand softly on Claire’s and offered a kind, compassionate smile. “You really should eat, you know. And get some rest.”
“I know,” Claire said, glancing to the tray of uneaten food on the rollaway table brought up from the infirmary and now sitting beside the bed. “I’m fine. I’ll have something in a little while. I’m not really hungry. I just want to sit with him for a bit longer.”
Tess didn’t look convinced. “I’m going to come back and check on you in a couple of hours. Promise me that sandwich won’t still be sitting on that plate.”
Claire just smiled with an assurance she only wished she felt. “Please, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
Tess gave her a faint nod. “Let someone know if there is any change in him, okay? You both are in everyone’s thoughts and prayers right now, Claire.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, touched by the kindness everyone in the compound had shown her. They loved Andreas like one of their own, treated him like kin, and because of that, she loved them all, as well.
“I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Tess said as she slowly closed the door behind her.
Claire turned back to Andreas and smoothed her hand over his forehead, brushing his tousled brown hair back from his face. She watched him, wondering where he was in his deep, trauma-induced sleep.
Wondering when—and if—he would ever find the strength to return to her.
“Oh, Andre,” she whispered, gazing at the proud, handsome face she had loved for so long. She brought her lips to his and kissed him, unable to stem the tear that rolled down her cheek when his mouth pressed soft and warm, but unresponsive, against hers.
Claire moved up on the bed beside him, needing to be closer. Stretched alongside him, she laid her head against his shoulder and placed the palm of her hand over the steady beat of his heart pounding beneath his sternum. She closed her eyes and let that hardy pulse buoy her thoughts.
Andreas was alive. So long as she could touch him, breathe him, she would not give up hope that he would be with her once again.
And if he wasn’t ready to come back to her, then she would go to him.
“Forever this time,” she murmured.
Letting her eyes drift closed, she sought him out in the dream realm.
He wasn’t hard to find. Claire walked into a bleak, black void, drawn to the glow of a fire burning hotly in the distance. She was alone and naked, her bare feet walking over a length of cold, dark stone that seemed to stretch out for interminable miles … terminating at the place where the flames danced like orange streamers far ahead.
Andreas was up there, too.
Claire could just make out the bulk of a large male form, lying on the ground in front of the roaring wall of fire. He was naked, as well, sprawled brokenly on his side as he had been on the forest floor after Renata had blasted him into unconsciousness.
Claire walked closer, realizing only now that the length of black stone beneath her feet was merely a narrow strip of solid surface, a treacherous promenade that allowed no more than a couple of feet on either side of her. The black stone path floated over a sea of darkness, an abyss, which, at its core burned like the deepest pits of hell.
And Andreas lay at the very end of the long stretch of cold stone.
“Oh, God,” she whispered as she drew nearer, realizing just how precarious his position truly was. One careless movement—one unconscious slip—and he would tumble off the edge and plummet into the inferno raging below.
Claire approached him carefully and inched down next to him on the sheer precipice of stone. Tenderly, terrified of waking him suddenly she stroked her fingers over his cheek. He didn’t stir. His skin was too cold, his breathing unrushed, slumberous.
He slept on, didn’t even know she was there.
“That’s okay, Andre,” she told him softly as she moved down onto the cold black surface of the ledge. She curled herself behind him, wrapping her arm around him to keep him from falling and molding her body against his to give him her warmth. “We’ll sleep here together for a while. I’ll wait with you until you’re ready to come back to me.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-five
It’s been five days, Lucan. We have some decisions that will need to be made, and made quickly.”
Lucan nodded solemnly and glanced over to the worried gaze of Dante’s mate, Tess. She had been the one to discover Claire unconscious at Reichen’s side the day after the explosion at Dragos’s bunker. In the time since, Tess had been keeping a close watch on both Reichen and Claire, ensuring that they were kept warm and comfortable in the bed the couple shared, and looking for some way to help bring one or both of them around. So far, nothing had worked.
“Andreas’s Breed metabolism is stronger than Claire’s human one,” she said. “He can probably survive another few weeks or more without sustenance, but Claire is dehydrating quickly. Unless we get some fluids into her, vital organs are going to start failing soon.”
Lucan stared down at the woman sleeping in the bed. Her petite frame was nestled tightly against Reichen’s body, her arms wrapped lovingly around him, holding him in what looked to be a fiercely protective embrace. Her sleep seemed vastly different from Reichen’s. Where he lay motionless, unresponsive, Claire’s eyes flickered rapidly behind her closed lids. Her fine muscles twitched now and again, as though she were caught in a brief doze, not dead to the world for the past several days.
“You’ve tried everything to attempt to wake her?” he asked Tess.
“Everything, Lucan. It’s as if her body—as well as her heart and mind—simply refuses to come back to consciousness. She’s willing herself to remain asleep, I’m certain of it.”
He scowled, watching Claire’s eyelids twitch with the movement of her eyes beneath them. “She’s been dreaming this whole time?”
“Yes, since the moment I found her like this. I have to believe she’s using her talent to be with Andreas.”
Lucan huffed out a heavy sigh. “Even if it kills her in the process?”
“You saw them together, didn’t you?” Tess’s voice was gentle with sympathy and not a little awe. “I suppose I can understand the depth of devotion—of pure, unshakable love—that would inspire this kind of sacrifice. If it were Dante on that bed and I thought I could reach him in some way—in any way—I’d be right in there, too. For however long it might take. I know if it were Gabrielle, you would do the same for her.”
He was hardly going to stand there and deny it. But neither could he stand by and knowingly allow Claire, or Reichen, to waste away while he watched.
He glanced back to Tess and gave the Breedmate a tight nod. “Gather whatever you need from the infirmary to get her hydrated. I’ll go inform everyone of the situation.”
Several thousand miles away from Boston, on a remote stretch of railroad track that led into the frozen heart of Alaska’s interior, the wrecked remains of a large, refrigerated cargo container lay open and abandoned to the elements.
It had made the journey from the industrial yard in Albany, New York, to the rail station that sent it westward across the country, arriving as planned four days ago at the port of Seattle. From there, it had been loaded without incident onto a barge and shipped north, where it was scheduled to reach its final destination just a mere eighteen hours later.
By the time the first inklings of trouble had been detected by Dragos’s lieutenant and the cadre of Gen One guards escorting the dangerous cargo, it was already far too late to stop what was about to occur.
Now that dangerous cargo was gone.
The container was empty, aside from the savaged, bloodied bodies that littered its floor and the snow-covered ground outside.
And leading away from the moonlit tracks, into the tree-choked, frozen wilderness beyond, was a trail of huge footprints made by a feral, deadly creature not of this world.
A creature that had been biding its time through weeks of starvation and drugging, feigning lethargy and compliance, while waiting for its chance to escape.
CHAPTER
Thirty-six
The endless dark refused to release him. Reichen’s lungs expanded and drew in air as if he’d been underwater and just broke through the surface after half a year of drowning in the tide. He gasped in sharply, then immediately began to choke on the acrid taste of sulfur and smoke.
He felt a light weight draped around him in the pitch blackness of his surroundings.
Claire’s arms, holding him close.
Her soft, tender body curved along the length of him from behind.
Amid the bleak void that engulfed him, he’d never felt anything so perfect and right.
He knew he was dreaming, but for how long? He couldn’t dismiss the feeling that he’d been lost in the darkness of this other realm for a good long time. And Claire was with him.
Good Christ… had she been here with him the whole time?
He smoothed his palm over the velvety length of her arm. Her skin was cool to the touch, alarmingly so. She didn’t stir at all as he gently stroked her. What troubled him more was the shallow panting of her breath beside his ear, the notable limpness of her cold fingers as he grasped them in his own and tried to rouse her.
“Claire,” he murmured, his tongue thick, his voice sluggish and rusty in the heavy pall of this smoke-clogged dream. “Claire?”
She wouldn’t respond.
Panic clutched him, snapping his eyes open. It was then he noticed the glow of flames rising up from far below the cold hard perch where he and Claire had been lying together. As he sat up, the flames shot higher, as if they, too, had been merely resting but were now stirring with renewed life. Beyond the steep, narrow ledge was a great abyss. A pit of fire and roiling lava churned at the bottom of that hellish drop.
The flames surged violently upward, twisting and tumbling, nearly blinding him with the intensity of their heat.
Like a beast breaking loose of its shackles, the fire lunged for him. Bright white-hot tendrils made a sudden grab across the stone ledge, stretching greedy fingers of flame toward the place where he and Claire sat.
Reichen quickly covered Claire’s body with his own, twisting himself over her as the heat roared all around them. The burn licked at his naked skin, searing and relentless. But it couldn’t touch her. He wouldn’t permit it.
No goddamn way would he let the fires get near her.
He bellowed with fury as the force of his pyro rolled over him and around him. This hellish heat was his—it was him, the terrible curse of his birthright.
The very power that had protected him from the explosion in Dragos’s underground lair.
Memory of that moment slammed into him in an instant. He recalled how he’d had to conjure every measure of his fury in order to shield himself from the inferno that had erupted all around him. The pyro had spared him from death in the blast, but it wasn’t through with him yet. It was still burning inside him. Ready to consume him, just as Claire had tried to warn him.
Just as he himself had known it would, from the moment the very first spark had lit within him in that godforsaken field in Hamburg.
If he let go now—if he gave one fraction of his will to keep Claire safe from the heat—the curse that had plagued him for so long would own him. And it would destroy Claire in the process. He felt the fires searching for her, flames hissing and flicking like serpents’ tongues, hungry for a taste of the treasure he was denying them.
“No,” he heard himself growl. “Goddamn it. No.”
With his arms and body wrapped around her to shield her, Reichen turned all of his rage inward. He focused on the heat that lived in the deepest core of his being. He reached for it with his mind, with every measure of his will, feeling the pyro try to slither out of his grasp as he seized on it and yanked it tight in the fist of his determination.
He couldn’t let it win.
He had to finally take control of the beast.
He had to master it, here and now.
Forever.
He strengthened his mental chokehold on the twisting coil of fire inside him. All around him, he heard the hiss of flames, the sputter of struggling heat that was slowly being beaten down, extinguished. In the periphery of his gaze, he saw the writhing columns of flame drawing back from the stone ledge, back into the deep abyss that had borne them.
And still he didn’t let go.
He turned his face toward the rolling, gnashing fires that were still seeking to leap out of the pit, his teeth and fangs bared in a tight sneer as he roared with power and furious intent.
“No!” he bellowed. “I own you. You will bow to me now!”
It was his love for Claire that gave him the resolve he needed in this moment. His need to protect her, to keep her safe above all else, was the driving force that made him certain he could defeat the curse of his destructive power.
It was the love she’d given him in return—the love he could feel beating inside him, in his veins, in the blood bond that linked him to her now and always—that made him reach for the hope that one day he might not only master his hellish ability but maybe even come to view it as something more than a curse. He knew a sudden certainty that the curse he had dreaded for so long might one day become a talent that would serve him, instead of destroying him.
Reichen clung to hope, and to his love for Claire, as he commanded the fires to quell. He sent them back down into the abyss below, not out of fear or self-contempt but out of strength. Out of a burgeoning sense of unshakable control.
A triumphant cry broke out of him as the last bright flame began to gasp its death.
The fires went dark in the pit.
The choking ash and smoke cleared away.
His eyes blinking open, Reichen lifted his head and found himself no longer isolated on the narrow bridge of cold black stone, but in the center of a large bed. He was curled over the small form of Claire’s body, still shielding her, even though the dark dream had finally released them.
He stroked her cheek. “Claire, are you all right? Open your eyes for me, sweetheart.”
No response.
Panic twisted in his gut. He said her name again, more choked this time for the alarming look of her as she lay motionless across his lap, her silky black hair falling loosely over her cold, sallow brow. He took her slender shoulders in his hands and gave her listless body a firm shake.
“Claire. Wake up now.”
An icy pain stabbed him as he leaned down and pressed his mouth to her parched, cracked lips. She was so weak… starving. The piercing jab he was feeling now belonged to her. He felt the severity of her hunger echoing in his blood, keening in his veins.
He thought back to the endless dream, and the swamping, unrelenting weight of it. How long had it been since he was last awake? He remembered storming Dragos’s vacated lair with the Order. He remembered killing Wilhelm Roth. He remembered the explosion in the underground headquarters, and the look of fear and horror on Claire’s face as he strode out of the rubble engulfed in hellish fire. He remembered her courage as she railed at him in stubborn determination, refusing to let him die.
Then he remembered… endless nothing.
It might have been days since he’d lost consciousness. Maybe a week or more.
How long had Claire been with him in the dream realm, neglecting her own well-being to comfort him through the darkness?
“Claire, please. Open your eyes. Tell me you can hear me.” He smoothed his hand over her face and hair, feeling his heart cracking open as he held her weakened body against him. “Let me know that you are still with me, that I haven’t lost you.”
God help him, but she did not respond at all. She was cold and unmoving, her breathing far too thready and shallow.
Reichen vaguely registered the sound of approaching footfalls outside the open door of the room, but all of his focus was rooted on bringing Claire around. Someone gasped from within the corridor, followed by more voices as a small crowd of warriors and their mates gathered outside the door.
“Holy hell,” Tegan muttered, a curse that was echoed by more than one person.
Reichen didn’t know if their stunned reaction was meant for the fact that he was awake and absent of the pyro or for the disturbing condition of Claire lying limply in his arms. He swung his head toward Lucan, Tegan, and several other members of the Order who stood outside the room with Tess and the rest of the Breedmates who lived in the compound. Tess and Savannah were holding IV tubes and bags of clear liquid. Behind them, Gideon had rolled up a gurney from the infirmary.
“Something is wrong with Claire,” he murmured, his throat dry. A cold gust seemed to blow through his body, settling behind his sternum.
“Let us help her,” Tess said gently, lifting the medical supplies she’d brought.
“No. It’s too late for that,” he murmured, knowing instinctively that she was beyond the need of any mortal intervention.
She needed blood.
As much as he had once feared that he would only bring her harm, that his love would not be strong enough to keep her safe from what the pyro had made him become, Reichen felt beyond any shadow of doubt that he was the only one who could save her now. He snarled when a couple of the warriors began to enter the room, as if they meant to pull Claire away from him.
She was his—now and always.
“Come back to me,” he whispered, then lifted his wrist to his mouth and sank his fangs deep into his flesh.
Blood surged from his veins as he carried the wound to her slack lips and pressed the punctures against her tongue.
“Drink, Claire,” he whispered softly, holding her head up and willing her to live. He didn’t care if he had to beg her. Didn’t care that they had an audience watching in solemn, uncertain silence just a few feet away. “Drink for me now. Please, Claire …”
The first sweep of her tongue against his skin made Reichen suck in a sharp breath. Then she began to swallow, fixing her lips more firmly to the source of warm, life-giving blood. His blood, which would flow within her and give her prolonged strength and life.
His blood, which would bind her to him as his mate, now and forever.
“Andre,” she murmured drowsily, lifting her dark-fringed gaze up to him. “I’ve been so afraid. I thought I’d lost you.”
“Never,” he replied. “Never again.”
Her mouth curved into a weak smile as she went back to suckling at his wrist.
“Take all that you need of me, love,” he encouraged her tenderly, his throat clogged with emotion. He didn’t care that his voice and hands shook as he brought her closer. He was thoroughly unashamed of the depth of his feeling for this woman.
His woman.
His mate.
His beloved, finally, and for all the rest of their lives.
When he glanced over to where his friends had been gathered, he was surprised to see that they were gone. The door to the room was closed, leaving Claire and him to the intimacy of their reunion alone.
Reichen didn’t rush her so much as a second. He let her drink for a long time, content simply to hold her in his arms and watch as his blood brought a glow to her cheeks and renewed life to her body.
And some long while later, after she was finally sated and strong, he settled back on the bed with her and wrapped her in his protective embrace, giving her a hundred solemn promises that he was very eager to keep, and loving her with all the reverence and worship of a blood-bonded male who had stared hell in the face and now understood that he was holding heaven in his arms.
EPILOGUE
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND
ONE WEEK LATER
Reichen stood alone at the moonlit shore of Narragansett Bay, deep in a private meditation that had become his nightly ritual after he and Claire had left Boston. Behind him, the sounds of her soft piano music drifted down from the house. He let the soothing notes wash over him as he focused all of his mental energy on the bright orb of fire that he held suspended in the foot of space between his palms.
The ball spun faster as he slowly brought his hands into a closer span. The light grew hotter, turning from the orange glow of flame to an intense whitish blue. And still Reichen squeezed it tighter, compressing the fire’s power into a smaller and smaller area that was completely under his control.
The pyrokinesis that had once coursed through his entire body like a savage brush fire was slowly coming to heel. Finally bending to his will, obeying his command.
The exercise was exhausting, but each time he worked the fire he got better at it. Tonight he had held it for ten minutes straight—twice as long as he had only the night before. He was determined to shape his ability into a true talent, and he had Claire to thank for getting him this far.
She was his grounding strength. Her blood kept him steady, and her love kept him whole. He was finally coming to accept himself as he was—all that he was, including this part of him, which he’d tried for so long to deny. He’d gone three decades living a shallow existence, closing himself off from true emotion for fear that it would make him weak. Now he felt everything in exponentially greater measure. With Claire at his side, he was finally coming to embrace all that it meant to truly be alive.
Distantly, as he honed the orb of fire into a smaller, brighter sphere, he registered that the music from inside the house had stopped. It took all of his focus to keep the ball spinning between his palms. So much so that he didn’t hear anyone approaching until a deep male voice muttered a vivid curse behind him.
“It’s all right, Tegan,” Claire said, as Reichen slowly pivoted to face them. Her smile was amused, and not a little proud as she met her mate’s gaze. “You’re getting better at this. Last time you did it, the orb only got as small as an orange.”
Reichen quirked a brow at her as he crushed his hands together and extinguished the flames completely. His body was tired from the exertion it took to manage his talent, but his heart soared to see Claire’s confidence in him. And he was glad to see his friend from Boston, too.
“Tegan,” he said, extending his hand to the warrior in greeting.
The Gen One gave him a cautious nod as he clasped the hand that had just been lit with preternatural heat. “Impressive,” he said, grinning now. “Someone’s obviously been eating his Wheaties.”
Reichen laughed. “I have something far better than that, my friend.”
Claire came over and wrapped her arm around him, nestling into his side. He would never tire of feeling her pressed close to him, and the past week they’d spent together in Newport had been the best rehabilitation he could have asked for. He was content beyond his wildest imaginings, but seeing Tegan now, he had to admit a growing itch to get back into the thick of the action with his friends in the Order.
“Have there been any further leads on Dragos since we spoke a couple of days ago?” he asked, figuring the warrior hadn’t come all the way down to Rhode Island just on a house call.
“We’re following up on a few things, but the son of a bitch seems to have cleared out of the area. He clearly knew we would be closing in on his location in Connecticut, and we’re not discounting the fact that he might have established alternative locations long before now. Our best bet for the time being is to chase down his network of associates in the Enforcement Agency.”
“Anything I can do to help,” Reichen said. “Tell me where I am needed. You know I’m available to the Order.”
“You’ve been invaluable already, my man. Without you and Claire both, we might not have found Dragos’s lab at all. Now many of our suspicions about his operation are confirmed. It’s more critical than ever that we find Dragos, but we also need to find the Ancient he’s been imprisoning all this time. No telling where he might have moved the creature, but the fact that it’s out there somewhere is a disaster just waiting to happen.”
Reichen nodded soberly. “Sounds like the Order has its hands full, even more so now than before.”
“Yeah, we do,” Tegan agreed. “Actually, Lucan and the rest of us in Boston agree that we could use an envoy to help us gather support among the European population. Your reputation has been gold among the Darkhavens over there, as well as with the Enforcement Agency. We’re going to need someone with a cool head and good instincts to help us gather our own alliances, and at the same time root out any possible alliances of Dragos’s among those groups. Any chance you might be willing to leave your nice little love nest here in Newport to do some diplomatic work for us from time to time?”
Reichen glanced down to meet Claire’s gaze. They had agreed to make the house in Newport their home, maybe even start a family of their own before too long. He was eager for the life they were planning together, but duty and loyalty to the Order tugged at him, as well.
She understood that fact; he saw the acceptance in her eyes. She smiled and gave him a small nod. “At the rate you’re going, by next week you’ll have grown bored of juggling fire. You’ll be looking for new challenges. Maybe we both will be. Maybe there is work enough for both of us with the Order,” she said, turning a questioning look on Tegan.
The warrior smiled. “We would be honored to count on you both.”
“I didn’t exactly leave Germany on the best terms,” Reichen murmured. “The Agency over there may view me as a fugitive, not a friend.”
“Actually” Tegan said, “for all intents and purposes, you’re a dead man. You died last summer, in the fire that destroyed your Darkhaven. Now Roth and everyone in his circle are dead, too. To anyone else, you’re a ghost, Reichen. Which will give you even greater opportunity to get close to our targets over there and shore up covert alliances.”
“A spy for the Order?” Reichen said, liking the idea already.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. It’s going to be damned hard work at times. And it’s going to be deadly dangerous, too.” Tegan asked, “You think you can handle that?”
Reichen looked to Claire again, feeling stronger than ever when he saw the faith and admiration shining back at him in her soft brown eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I think I can handle that.”
With Claire beside him, loving him—believing in him—he could handle anything at all.
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author Lara Adrian lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, and to sign up for her e-mail newsletter, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Thirsty for more?
Don’t miss the next novel in Lara’s
hot and thrilling
Midnight Breed series
Shades of
Midnight
BY
LARA ADRIAN
Coming from Dell in January 2010
PRAISE FOR
LARA ADRIAN’S
MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
ASHES OF MIDNIGHT
“Ashes of Midnight will scorch its way into your heart.”
—Romance Junkies
“Lara Adrian continues to kick butt with her latest release… . Ashes of Midnight is an entertaining ride and, as usual, kept me riveted from page one.”
—The Romance Reader Connection
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
“Adrian’s newest heroine has a backbone of pure steel. Rapid-pace adventures deliver equal quantities of supernatural thrills and high-impact passion. This is one of the best vampire series on the market!”
—Romantic Times
“Veil of Midnight will enthrall you and leave you breathless for more.”
—Wild on Books
MIDNIGHT RISING
“Fans are in for a treat … Ms. Adrian has a gift for drawing her readers deeper and deeper into the amazing world she creates … I eagerly await the next installment of this entertaining series!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Packed with danger and action, this book also explores the tumultuous emotions of guilt, anger, betrayal, and forgiveness. Adrian has hit on an unbeatable story mix.”
—Romantic Times
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
“This is one of the best paranormal series around. Compelling characters and good world-building make this a must-read series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“One of the Top 10 Best Romance Novels of 2007.”
—Selected by the Editors at Amazon.com
“Ms. Adrian’s series just gets better and better … Midnight Awakening was exactly what I hoped it would be, then so much more … I’m intrigued and without a doubt completely hooked.”
—Romance Junkies
“Vengeance is the driving force behind this entry in the intense Midnight Breed series … Things look bad for the characters, but for the readers it’s nothing but net!”
—Romantic Times
KISS OF CRIMSON
“Vibrant writing heightens the suspense, and hidden secrets provide many twists. This dark and steamy tale … is a winner and will have readers eager for the next Midnight Breed story.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Hot sensuality with emotional drama and high-stakes danger … [Adrian] ensures that her latest is terrific supernatural entertainment.”
—Romantic Times
“[Adrian] pens hot erotic scenes and vivid action sequences.”
—The Romance Reader
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
“Evocative, enticing, erotic. Enter Lara Adrian’s vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
“Kiss of Midnight is dark, edgy, and passionate, an irresistible vampire romance.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Lara Adrian delivers a fast-paced, sexy romantic suspense that … stands above the rest … A gripping, sensual love story.”
—The Romance Reader
“Gritty and dangerous, this terrific launch book sets up an alternate reality filled with treachery and loss. The Midnight Breed series is poised to deliver outstanding supernatural thrills.”
—Romantic Times
ALSO BY LARA ADRIAN
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
MIDNIGHT RISING
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
ASHES OF MIDNIGHT
Shades of Midnight is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Dell Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Lara Adrian, LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33919-9
v3.0
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
To the charming and witty, the thoroughly unforgettable,
Miss Eithne O’Hanlon of the Emerald Isle,
for being such a wonderful advocate of the series,
and a source of many giggles and much
mayhem at the message boards.
Thank you for being you!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so very much to everyone who helps produce and market my books and put them into the hands of my readers, both in the United States and abroad. I feel incredibly fortunate to be associated with all of you, and I truly appreciate everything you do in support of my work.
Continued, humble thanks to my wonderful readers, whose emails, letters, and online messages keep me smiling at my keyboard, even in the midst of the most wicked deadline crunches. I can’t begin to express how much your enthusiasm and friendship means to me. (((HUGS)))
None of my books would be what they are without the input and support of my husband, whose belief and encouragement—not to mention killer plot ideas—have been invaluable to me. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better partner, both in life and in fiction. Thank you for all the good parts.
Prologue
Under a winter-dark Alaskan sky, a wolf song carried clear and majestic into the night. The howl stretched long, a thing of pure, wild beauty that reached through the dense spruce of the boreal forest and climbed the jagged, snow-covered walls of rock that rose up along the icy banks of the Koyukuk River. When the wolf sent up his haunting call again, it was met by a discordant hoot of laughter, then a drunken voice that answered from across the flames of a small campfire.
“Ow-ow-owwoooo! Owwoooo!” One of the three guys in the group who’d come out to party tonight on this remote stretch of land cupped his gloved hands to his mouth and yowled another ear-grating reply to the wolf, which had since gone silent in the distance. “Hear that? We’re having ourselves a little communication right there.” He grabbed for the bottle of whiskey as it came around the small gathering to him. “I ever tell you I’m fluent in wolf, Annabeth?”
Across the campfire, a soft laugh blew out on a cloud of steam from within the deep hood of the girl’s parka. “Sounded to me more like you’re fluent in stuck pig.”
“Ooh, that’s harsh, sweetheart. Seriously harsh.” He took a swig from the bottle and passed the Jack Daniel’s to the next person in line. “Maybe you want I should give you a little demonstration of my oral skills sometime. I promise you, I’m extremely gifted.”
“You are such an asshole, Chad Bishop.”
She was right, but her tone said she didn’t mean it. She laughed again, a warmly flirtatious, feminine sound that made Teddy Toms’s crotch go all tight and hot. He shifted on the cold rock he’d claimed for a seat, trying not to make his interest obvious as Chad announced he had to take a piss and Annabeth and the other girl with her began to chat together.
A sharp elbow jabbed Teddy in the right side of his rib cage. “You gonna sit there and drool all night? Get off your chickenshit ass and talk to her, for crissake.”
Teddy swung a look at the tall, skinny guy sitting next to him on the rock and shook his head.
“Come on, don’t be such a pussy. You know you want to. She ain’t gonna bite you. Well, not unless you want her to, that is.” Skeeter Arnold had been the one who brought Teddy to this gathering. He’d also been the one who supplied the whiskey, something Teddy, at the age of nineteen, had only sampled once in his life.
Alcohol was outlawed in his father’s house—outlawed in the whole six-person settlement where he lived, in fact. Tonight Teddy’d had the bottle to his lips more than ten times already. He didn’t see the harm in it. In fact, he kind of liked the way it made him feel, all warm and loose inside. Grown up, like a man.
A man who wanted more than anything to stand up and tell Annabeth Jablonsky how he felt about her.
Skeeter handed Teddy the nearly empty bottle and watched him drink the last swallow. “I think I got something else you’re gonna like, my man.” He pulled off his gloves and reached into the pocket of his parka.
Teddy wasn’t sure what he had, and didn’t much care at the moment. He was mesmerized by Annabeth, who had taken off her hood to show her friend some of the new piercings that tracked all the way up the delicate shell of her ear. Her hair was dyed polar white except for a streak of bright pink, even though Teddy recalled that she was naturally brunette. He knew, because he’d seen her dance last spring at a strip club in Fairbanks, where Annabeth Jablonsky had been better known as Amber Joy. Teddy’s cheeks flamed at the thought, and the hard-on he’d been trying to ignore was now in full bloom.
“Here,” Skeeter said, giving him something else to think about as Annabeth and her friend got up from the campfire and walked down to the frozen edge of the river. “Take a drag on this, my man.”
Teddy took the small metal pipe and held its smoldering bowl up near his nose. A nugget of something pale and chalky burned in the bowl, emitting a foul chemical stink that wormed its way up his nostrils. He winced, sliding a doubtful look at Skeeter. “W-w-what is it?”
Skeeter grinned, his thin lips peeling back off his crooked teeth. “Just a little dose of courage. Go ahead, take a hit. You’ll like it.”
Teddy brought the pipe to his mouth and sucked in the bittersweet smoke. He coughed only a little, so he exhaled and took another drag on the pipe.
“It’s good, right?” Skeeter watched him smoke some more, then he reached out to take the pipe away. “Easy, dude, save some for the rest of us. You know, I can get you more of this if you want it—booze, too. For a price, I can get you whatever kind of shit you like. You need a hookup, you know where to come, right?”
Teddy nodded. Even in the most remote parts of the bush, folks tended to know the name, and the general business, of Skeeter Arnold. Teddy’s father hated him. He’d forbidden Teddy to hang out with him, and if he knew Teddy had sneaked away tonight—especially when they were expecting a supply delivery at home tomorrow morning—he would kick Teddy’s ass from here to Barrow.
“Take this,” Skeeter was saying now, holding the pipe out to Teddy. “Go and offer it to the ladies with my compliments.”
Teddy gaped. “You mean, t-take it t-t-to Annabeth?”
“No, stupid. Take it to her mother.”
Teddy laughed nervously at his own awkwardness. Skeeter’s smile stretched wider, making his narrow face and long razor-hook nose look even more buglike than usual.
“Don’t say I never did you no favors,” Skeeter said as Teddy palmed the warm pipe and shot a glance to where Annabeth and her friend stood talking together near the frozen river.
He’d been looking for some way to strike up a conversation with her, hadn’t he? This was as good a chance as any. The best chance he might ever get.
Skeeter’s low chuckle followed Teddy as he began to make his way toward the girls. The ground felt uneven beneath his feet. His legs seemed rubbery, not totally in his control. But inside he was flying, feeling his heart pounding, his blood racing through his veins.
The two girls heard him approach with the crunch of the ice and stones underfoot. They turned to face him and Teddy gaped at the object of his desire, struggling to come up with just the right thing to say to win her over. He must have stood there staring for a good long while because both of them started to giggle.
“What’s up?” Annabeth said, a quizzical look on her face. “Teddy, right? I’ve seen you around a few times, but we haven’t really had a chance to talk before tonight. You ever go to Pete’s tavern down in Harmony?”
He lamely shook his head, working hard just to process the idea that she had actually just said she’d noticed him before tonight.
“You should come in sometime, Teddy,” she added cheerfully. “If I’m working the bar, I won’t card you.” The sound of her voice, the sound of his name on her lips, almost undid him on the spot. She smiled at him, revealing the slight overlap of her two front teeth that Teddy found utterly adorable.
“Um, here.” He thrust the pipe at her and took a step backward. He wanted to say something cool. He wanted to say something—anything—that might make her see him in some way other than a backwoods Native kid who didn’t know squat about the real world.
He knew things. He knew plenty. He knew Annabeth was a good girl, that deep down she was decent and kind. He knew that in his heart, would be willing to stake his very life on it. She was better than her reputation, and she was better than any of the losers she was hanging out with tonight. Probably even better than Teddy himself.
She was an angel, a pure and lovely angel, and she just needed someone to remind her of that.
“Okay, well, thanks,” she said now, and took a quick hit from the pipe. She passed it to her friend, and the pair of them started to turn away from Teddy in dismissal.
“Wait,” Teddy blurted. He sucked in a breath as she paused, looked back at him. “I, um, I want you to know that I … I think you’re really beautiful.”
Her friend stifled a laugh behind her gloved hand as Teddy spoke. But not Annabeth. She wasn’t laughing. She stared at him without speaking, without blinking. Something soft shone in her eyes—confusion, maybe. Her friend was snorting now, but Annabeth was still listening, not mocking him at all.
“I think you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever seen. You are … you’re amazing. I really mean that. Amazing in every way.”
Shit, he was repeating himself, but he didn’t care. The sound of his own voice, free of the stammer that made him hate to talk at all, shocked him. He swallowed and took a fortifying breath, prepared to put it all out there for her—everything he’d been thinking since he saw her dancing on the poorly lit, run-down stage in the city. “I think you’re perfect, Annabeth. You deserve to be respected and … and cherished, you know? You’re special. You’re an angel, and you deserve to be honored. By a man who will take care of you and protect you and … and love you—”
The air next to Teddy stirred, carrying the stink of whiskey and the spice of Chad Bishop’s overpowering cologne. “K-k-kiss me, Amber Joy. P-p-please! Let me t-t-touch your p-p-perfect t-t-tits!”
Teddy felt all the blood drain from his head as Chad strode over to Annabeth and wrapped his arm possessively around her shoulders. His humiliation compounded a hundred times to witness the sloppy, tongue-heavy kiss Chad slapped on Annabeth’s mouth—a kiss she didn’t reject, even if she seemed less than welcoming of it.
When Chad finally let her loose, Annabeth glanced at Teddy, then gave Chad a weak shove of her palm against his chest. “You’re retarded, you know that?”
“And you’re so damn hot you m-m-make my c-c-cock—”
“Shut up.” The words were out of Teddy’s mouth before he could stop them. “Shshut the fuck up. Don’t … don’t speak t-t-to her like that.”
Chad’s eyes narrowed. “I know you ain’t talking to me, asshole. T-t-t-t-tell me you’re not standing there, asking me to k-k-kick your sorry ass, T-T-Teddy T-T-T-Toms.”
When he started to lunge forward, Annabeth put herself in front of him. “Leave the poor kid alone. He can’t help the way he talks.”
Teddy wished he could disappear. All the confidence he’d felt a minute ago with her vanished under Chad Bishop’s taunting and Annabeth’s wounding pity. Nearby, he heard Skeeter and Annabeth’s friend joining ranks with Chad. They were all laughing at him now. All of them mocking his stutter, their voices smashing together, ringing in his ears.
Teddy turned around and ran. He jumped on his snow-machine and cranked the starter. The second the old engine sputtered to life, Teddy opened the throttle. He gunned it, tearing away from the gathering in a state of misery and fury.
He never should have gone with Skeeter tonight. He never should have drunk that whiskey or smoked that shit in Skeeter’s pipe. He should have stayed home, should have listened to his father.
That regret intensified as the miles fell away behind him and he neared home. Some five hundred yards away from the cluster of hand-hewn cabins that most of his family had lived in for generations, Teddy’s anger and humiliation gave way to a knot of cold dread.
His father was still awake.
A lamp burned in the living room, the glow from the curtained window reaching out to the surrounding darkness like a spotlight. If his father was up, he had to know that Teddy wasn’t home. And as soon as Teddy walked in, his father was going to see that he’d been partying. Which meant Teddy was in some pretty deep shit.
“God-d-dammit,” Teddy muttered as he killed the snowmachine’s headlight then steered off the main trail and cut the engine. He climbed off and stood for a minute, staring over at his house while he let his drunken legs get used to holding him upright.
Nothing he said was going to get him out of trouble. Still, he tried to come up with a reasonable excuse for where he’d been and what he’d been doing the past several hours. He was a grown man, after all. Sure, he had a responsibility to lend his father a hand where he could, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a life of his own outside the settlement. If his father gave him any shit about that, Teddy would just have to set him straight.
But as he got closer to the house, his courage began to desert him. Each careful step he took crunched loudly in the snow, amplified by the utter stillness that hung in the air. The cold swept down the collar of his parka, adding a chill to his already trembling spine. A bracing gust rolled through the center of the group of homes, and as the icy wind hit him full in the face, Teddy felt such a deep sense of dread, it made the hairs at the back of his neck rise.
He paused, glancing around him. Seeing nothing but moonlit snow and the dark silhouettes of the forest, Teddy continued on past his father’s log-cabin shop that supplied the family and the handful of other folks scattered in the surrounding region. He peered ahead, trying to determine if there might be a way for him to sneak into the house unnoticed. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs, the only sound he could hear.
Everything seemed so quiet. Lifelessly, unnaturally quiet.
It was then that Teddy stopped walking and glanced down at his feet. The snow beneath his boots was no longer white but dark—nearly black in the moonlight, a huge, horrific stain. It was blood. More spilled blood than Teddy had ever seen in his life.
There was more a few yards away. So much blood.
Then he saw the body.
To his right, lying just near the edge of the tree line. He knew that large shape. Knew the bulky heft of the shoulders beneath the thermal undershirt that was ripped and dark with more blood.
“Dad!” Teddy raced to his father and knelt down to help him. But there was nothing to be done. His father was dead, his throat and chest shredded. “Oh, no! Dad! Oh, God, no!”
Horror and grief choking him, Teddy scrambled to go find his uncle and two older cousins. How could they not know what had happened here? How was it possible that his father had been attacked like this and left to bleed in the snow?
“Help!” Teddy screamed, his throat raw. He raced next door and pounded on the jamb, calling for his uncle to wake up. Nothing but silence answered. Silence in the entire cluster of cabins and outbuildings that squatted on this tiny parcel of land. “S-s-someone! Anyone! Help me, p-p-please!”
Blinded by tears, Teddy raised his fist to bang on the door and scream again for help, but he froze in midmotion as the door drifted open. Just inside lay his uncle, as savaged and bloody as his father. Teddy peered into the darkness and saw the broken forms of his aunt and cousins.
They weren’t moving. They’d been killed, too. Everyone he knew—everyone he loved—was gone.
What the hell had happened here?
Who—or what—in God’s name could have done this?
He drifted into the center of the settlement, numb and disbelieving. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. For a split second, he wondered if the shit Skeeter had made him smoke had caused him to hallucinate. Maybe none of this was happening. Maybe he was tripping out, and seeing things that weren’t true.
It was a desperate, fleeting hope. The blood was real. The stench of it coated his nostrils and the back of his tongue like thick oil, making him want to heave. The death all around him was real.
Teddy sank to his knees in the snow. He sobbed, unable to contain his shock and grief. He howled and punched the frozen earth, despair engulfing him.
He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. They’d been too light, as stealthy as a cat. But in the next instant, Teddy knew he wasn’t alone.
And he knew, even before he turned his head and saw the burning glow of a predator’s wild eyes, that he was about to join his kin in death.
Teddy Toms screamed, but the sound never made it past his throat.
CHAPTER
One
Twenty-eight-hundred feet below the red single-engine de Havilland Beaver’s wings, the broad swath of the frozen Koyukuk River glistened under the morning moonlight like a ribbon of crushed diamonds. Alexandra Maguire followed the long stretch of ice-jammed, crystalline water north out of the small town of Harmony, the back of her plane loaded with supplies for the day’s delivery run to a handful of settlements nestled deep in the interior.
Beside her in the passenger seat of the cockpit was Luna, the best copilot she’d ever had, aside from her dad, who had taught Alex everything she knew about flying. The gray-and-white wolf dog had been standing in for Hank Maguire for a couple of years now, when the Alzheimer’s had really started taking hold of him. Hard to believe he’d been gone for six months now, although Alex often felt she had been slowly losing him for a lot longer than that. At least the disease that ate away his mind and memories had also ended his pain, a small mercy to be sure.
Now it was just Luna and her living in the old house in Harmony and making the supply runs to Hank’s small roster of clients in the bush. Luna sat erect next to Alex, her pointed ears perked forward, sharp blue eyes keeping a steady watch on the mountainous terrain of the Brooks Range, its dark, crouching bulk filling the northwest horizon. As they crossed the Arctic Circle, the dog fidgeted in the seat and let out a small, eager-sounding whine.
“Don’t tell me you can smell Pop Toms’s moose jerky from here,” Alex said, reaching out to ruffle the big furry head as they continued north along the Koyukuk’s Middle Fork, past the small villages of Bettles and Evansville. “Breakfast is still twenty minutes away, girlfriend. Make that thirty minutes, if that black storm cloud over the Anaktuvuk Pass decides to blow our way.”
Alex eyed the dark thunderhead that loomed a few miles up from their flight path. More snow was in the forecast; certainly nothing unusual for November in Alaska, but not exactly prime conditions for her delivery route today. She exhaled a curse as the wind coming off the mountains picked up speed and scuttled across the river valley to give the already bumpy ride a bit more gusto.
The worst of it passed just as Alex’s cell phone began to chirp in the pocket of her parka. She dug the phone out and answered the call without needing to know who was on the other end of the line.
“Hey Jenna.”
In the background of her best friend’s house, Alex could hear a Forest Service radio chattering about sketchy weather conditions and plummeting windchill factors. “Storm’s gonna be coming your way in a couple of hours, Alex. You on the ground yet?”
“Not quite.” She rode through another round of bumps as she neared the town of Wiseman and turned the plane onto the route that would take her to the first stop on her day’s delivery schedule. “I’m maybe ten minutes from the Toms place now. Three more stops after that, shouldn’t take more than an hour apiece even with the headwind I’m fighting right now. I think the storm is going to pass right by this time.”
It was hope more than qualified estimation, sympathy for her friend’s concern more than caution for her own safety. Alex was a good flier, and too well trained by Hank Maguire to do anything completely reckless, but the simple fact was the supplies she carried in her cargo hold were already a week overdue because of bad weather. She’d be damned if she was going to let a few snowflakes or gusty breezes keep her from delivering goods to the folks in the far-flung reaches of the interior who were counting on her for food and fuel.
“Everything’s fine on this end, Jenna. You know I’m careful.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But accidents happen, don’t they?”
Alex might have told Jenna not to worry, but saying it wouldn’t have done any good. Her friend knew as well as anyone—perhaps better than most—that the bush pilot’s unofficial creed was roughly the same as that of a police officer: You have to go out; you don’t have to come back.
Jenna Tucker-Darrow, a former Statie from a long line of Staties—and the widow of one to boot—got quiet for a long moment. Alex knew her friend’s mind was likely traveling down a dark path, so she worked to fill the silence with chitchat.
“Hey, when I spoke to Pop Toms yesterday, he told me he’d just smoked a big batch of moose meat. You want me to see if I can sweet-talk him into sending me back with some extra jerky for you?”
Jenna laughed, but she sounded as though her thoughts were a million miles away. “Sure. If you think Luna will let you get away with it, then yeah, I’d like that.”
“You got it. The only thing better than Pop’s moose jerky is his biscuits and gravy. Lucky me, I get some of both.”
Breakfast at Pop Toms’s place in exchange for semimonthly supply drops had been a tradition started by Alex’s father. It was one she enjoyed maintaining, even if the price of aviation gas well outweighed the price of Pop’s simple meals. But Alex liked the old guy and his family. They were good, basic folks living authentically off the same rugged land that had sustained generations of their stalwart kin.
The idea of sitting down for a hot, homemade breakfast and catching up on the week’s events with Pop Toms made every bump and dip in the flight out to the remote settlement worthwhile. As she crested the final ridge and began her descent toward the makeshift landing strip behind Pop’s store, Alex imagined the salty-sweet smell of smoked meat and buttermilk biscuits that would already be warming on the woodstove when she arrived.
“Listen, I’d better go,” she told Jenna. “I’m going to need both hands to land this thing, and I—”
The words caught in her throat. On the ground below, something odd caught Alex’s eye. In the dark of the winter morning, she couldn’t quite make out the bulky, snow-covered form lying in the center of the settlement, but whatever it was made the hair at the back of her neck prickle to attention.
“Alex?”
She couldn’t answer at first, all of her focus rooted on the strange object below. Dread crawled up her spine, as cold as the wind battering the windscreen.
“Alex, are you still there?”
“I’m, uh … yeah, I’m here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. I’m looking at Pop’s place just ahead, but something’s not right down there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t say exactly.” Alex peered out the window of the cockpit as she brought the plane closer, preparing to land. “There’s something in the snow. It’s not moving. Oh, my God … I think it’s a person.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know,” Alex murmured into the cell phone, but the way her pulse was hammering, she had no doubt that she was looking at a human being lying underneath a fresh cover of snow.
A dead human being, if whoever it was had been lying there unnoticed for anything longer than a few hours in this punishing cold.
But how could that be? It was almost nine in the morning. Even though daybreak wouldn’t come until close to noon this far north, Pop would have been awake for hours by now. The other folks in the settlement—his sister and her family—would have had to be blind to miss the fact that one of them was not only unaccounted for but sprawled in a frozen heap right outside their doors.
“Talk to me, Alex,” Jenna was saying now, using her cop voice, the one that demanded to be obeyed. “Tell me what’s going on.”
As she descended to begin her landing, Alex noticed another worrisome form on the ground below—this one lying between Pop Toms’s house and the tree line of the surrounding woods. The snow around the body was blood-soaked, dark stains seeping up through the blanket of fresh white in horrific intensity.
“Oh, Jesus,” she hissed under her breath. “This is bad, Jenna. Something awful has happened here. There’s more than one person out there. They’ve been … hurt somehow.”
“Hurt as in wounded?”
“Dead,” Alex murmured, her mouth gone suddenly dry with the certainty of what she was seeing. “Oh, God, Jenna … there’s blood. A lot of blood.”
“Shit,” Jenna whispered. “Okay, listen to me, Alex, I want you to stay on the phone with me now. Turn around and come back into town. I’m going to call Zach on the radio while I have you on the phone with me, all right? Whatever’s happened, I think we should let Zach handle it. Don’t you go near—”
“I can’t leave them alone,” Alex blurted. “People have been hurt down there. They might need help. I can’t just turn away and leave them now. Oh, God. I have to go down and see if I can do something.”
“Alex, dammit, don’t you—”
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m about to land.”
Ignoring Jenna’s continued orders to leave the situation to Zach Tucker, Jenna’s brother and the sole police officer in a hundred-mile radius, Alex cut off the call and eased the plane down onto its skis on the short landing strip. She brought the Beaver to an abrupt stop in the fresh powder, not the most graceful landing but good enough, considering that every nerve ending in her body was screaming in rising panic. She killed the engine and no sooner had she opened the cockpit door did Luna leap over her lap to bolt from the plane and run toward the center of the cluster of homes.
“Luna!”
Alex’s voice echoed in the eerie quiet of the place. The wolf dog was out of sight now. Alex climbed out of the plane and called for Luna once more, but only silence answered. No one came out of the nearby houses to greet her. No sign of Pop Toms at the log-cabin store just a hundred feet away. No sign of Teddy, who, despite his teenage front of indifference, adored Luna as much as the dog loved him. There was no sign of Pop’s sister, Ruthanne, either, nor her husband and grown sons, who were usually up well before the late daybreak of November and taking care of things around the settlement. The entire place was still and soundless, utterly lifeless.
“Shit,” Alex whispered, her heart jackhammering in her breast.
What the hell had happened here? What kind of dangerous situation might she be walking into when she got out of her plane?
As she reached back into the cargo hold to grab her loaded rifle, Alex’s mind latched onto the grimmest possibility. Middle of winter in the interior, it wasn’t unheard of for someone to go stir-crazy and attack his neighbor or do serious harm to himself, maybe both in short order. She didn’t want to think it—couldn’t picture anyone in this close-knit group of people snapping like that, not even sullen Teddy, whom Pop was worried had recently fallen in with a bad crowd.
Rifle at the ready, Alex climbed out of the plane and headed in the direction Luna had run. Last night’s fresh snow cover was powdery soft under her boots, muffling the sound of her footsteps as she cautiously approached Pop’s store. The back door was unlatched, wedged open half a foot by snow that had blown over the threshold and begun to accumulate. No one had been out here to check on the place for a minimum of several hours.
Alex swallowed the lump of dread that was steadily growing in her throat. She didn’t dare call out to anyone now. She hardly dared to breathe as she continued past the store to the cluster of cabins beyond. Luna’s bark made her jump. The wolf dog was sitting several yards out. At her feet was one of the lifeless forms Alex had spotted from the air. Luna barked once more, then nosed the body as if she were trying to make it move.
“Oh, Jesus … how can this be?” Alex whispered, taking another look around the silent settlement as she managed a firmer grip on her weapon. Her feet felt like lead weights as she walked toward Luna and that motionless, snow-covered bulk on the ground. “Good girl. I’m here now. Let me have a look.”
God help her, she didn’t need to get very close to see that it was Teddy lying there. The teen’s favorite black-and-red flannel shirt was sticking out of the shredded, bloodied mess of his heavy down parka. His dark brown hair was iced over where it rested against his cheek and brow, his olive-colored skin frozen and waxy, tinged blue where it wasn’t coated brick red with coagulated blood from the torn, gaping wound where his larynx used to be.
Alex rocked back on her heels, sucking in a great gasp of air as the reality of what she was seeing slammed into her. Teddy was dead. Just a kid, for crissake, and someone had killed him and left him there like an animal.
And he wasn’t the only one to suffer that fate at this remote family settlement. Shock and fear clawing at her, Alex stepped back from Teddy’s body and swung her head around to look at the surrounding area and houses. A door was smashed off its hinges across the way. Another motionless bulk lay outside one of the cabins. Still another, just below the open door of a pickup truck that was parked alongside an old wooden storage shed.
“Oh, God … no.”
And then there was the body she’d seen on her descent into the settlement, the one that looked so like Pop Toms, dead and bloodied at the edge of the woods behind his house.
Taking a firmer hold on her rifle even though she doubted that the killer—or killers, based on the depth of carnage here—had bothered to hang around, Alex found herself drifting toward that scarlet-drenched patch of snow near the tree line, Luna following at her heels.
Alex’s heart and stomach twisted together with each dreadful step. She didn’t want to see Pop like this, didn’t want to see anyone she cared about brutalized and broken and bloody … not ever again.
Yet she could no more stop her feet from moving than she could keep from kneeling beside the grisly, facedown corpse of the man who’d always greeted her with a smile and a big, warm bear hug. Alex set her gun down in the red snow next to her. A wordless cry strangling in her throat, she reached out and carefully rolled the big man’s shoulder. The ruined, sightless face that gaped up at her made Alex’s blood chill in her veins. His expression was one of pure terror, frozen across his once-jovial features. Alex could not even begin to imagine the horror of what he must have seen in the instant before he died.
Then again…
The old memory leapt out at her from the dark, locked corner of her past. Alex felt its sharp bite, heard the screams that had shattered the night—and her life—forever.
No.
Alex didn’t want to relive that pain. She didn’t want to think about that night, least of all now. Not when she was surrounded by so much death. Not when she was so totally alone. She couldn’t bear to dredge up the past she’d left eighteen years and thousands of miles behind her.
But it crept back into her thoughts as though it were yesterday. As though it were happening again, the unshakable sense that the same horror she and her father had survived so long ago in Florida had somehow come to visit this innocent family in the isolated wilds of Alaska. Alex choked back a sickened sob, brushing at the tears that burned her cheeks as they froze against her skin.
Luna’s low grunt beside her broke into Alex’s thoughts. The dog was digging at the snow near the body, her muzzle buried in the powder. She moved forward, sniffing out a scent that led toward the trees. Alex got up to see what Luna had found. She didn’t see it at first, then, when she did, the sight did not compute in her mind.
It was a footprint, bloodstained and partially obscured by the new-fallen snow. A human footprint that she had to guess would have fit a size fifteen or larger boot. And the foot that left it was naked—more than improbable in this deadly cold, impossible.
“What the hell?”
Terrified, Alex grabbed Luna by the scruff of her neck and held her fast at her side before the dog could follow the tracks any farther. She looked out to where they quickly grew lighter, then simply vanished into the elements. It didn’t make sense.
None of this made any sense in the reality of the world as she wanted to view it.
From the direction of her plane, she heard her cell phone ringing, accompanied by the airless crackle of the Beaver’s radio as an agitated male voice squawked for her to report in.
“Alex, goddamn it! Do you copy? Alex!”
Glad for the distraction, she picked up her rifle and ran back to the plane, Luna keeping pace at her side like the canine bodyguard she truly was.
“Alex!” Zach Tucker shouted her name over the airwaves again. “If you can hear me, Alex, pick up now!”
She bent in over the seat and grabbed the radio. “I’m here,” she said, breathless and shaking. “I’m here, Zach, and they’re all dead. Pop Toms. Teddy. Everyone.”
Zach swore a harshly whispered oath. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Oh, my God. Zach, how could this happen?”
“I’m gonna take care of it,” he told her. “Right now, I need you to tell me what you can about what you see, okay? Did you notice any weapons, any explanation for what might have gone on out there?”
Alex shot a miserable look back over at the carnage of the settlement. The lives cut short so violently. The blood that she could taste on the icy wind.
“Alex? Do you have any idea how these folks might have been killed?”
She squeezed her eyes shut against the barrage of memories that assailed her—the screams of her mother and her little brother, the anguished cries of her father as he grabbed nine-year-old Alex up into his arms and fled with her into the night before the monsters had a chance to kill them all.
Alex shook her head, trying desperately to dislodge that awful recollection … and to deny to herself that the killings here last night were stamped with the same kind of unthinkable horror.
“Talk to me,” Zach coaxed her. “Help me understand what happened if you can, Alex.”
The words would not come to her tongue. They remained trapped in her throat, swallowed up by the knot of ice-cold dread that had opened in the center of her chest.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice sounding detached and wooden in the silence of the empty, frozen bush. “I can’t tell you what could have done this. I can’t …”
“That’s okay, Alex. I know you must be upset. Just come on back home now. I’ve already got a call in to Roger Bemis out at the airstrip. He’s going to fly me out there within the hour and we’re gonna take care of the Tomses, all right?”
“Okay,” she murmured.
“Everything’s going to be okay now, I promise.”
“Okay,” she repeated, feeling another tear spill down her cold cheek.
Her father had said the same words to her all those years ago—a promise that everything would be all right. She hadn’t believed him. After what she had seen here today, the sense she had that something evil was closing in on her once more, Alex wondered if anything would ever truly be all right again.
Skeeter Arnold took a long drag off a fat joint as he kicked back in a battered baby blue velvet recliner, the finest piece of furniture he had in the shithole apartment he kept in the back of his mother’s house in Harmony. Holding the smoke deep in his lungs, he closed his eyes and listened to the yammering of the shortwave radio on the kitchen counter. The way Skeeter saw it, the kind of enterprise he was in, it just made good business sense to keep a handle not only on the Staties but also the local yokels too stupid to keep their asses out of trouble.
And yeah, maybe he liked to listen to the dispatches partly because he got a perverted amount of enjoyment out of other people’s misery, as well. Nice to be reminded sometimes that he wasn’t the biggest loser in the whole state of Alaska, no matter what his bitch of a mother told him on a regular basis. Skeeter exhaled slowly, thin smoke curling around the curse he mumbled when he heard the creak and groan of the old floorboards as the perpetual pain in his ass came stomping down the hallway to his room.
“Stanley, did you hear me calling you up there? Do you intend to sleep all damn day in there?” She ham-fisted a few hard raps on the door, then gave the locked knob a good, but ineffective, jiggle. “Didn’t I tell you to run out first thing this morning and pick up some rice and canned beans? What the hell are you waiting for, the spring thaw? Get off your lazy ass and do something useful for a change!”
Skeeter didn’t trouble himself to answer. Nor did he budge from his sprawl in the chair, or even so much as flinch as his mother continued to huff and puff and bang on the door. He took another lazy hit off the joint and savored the buzz, knowing the annoyance outside his room would eventually tire of him ignoring her and slink back to her harpy’s perch in front of the TV where she belonged.
To help drown her out in the meantime, Skeeter reached for the radio a few feet away and cranked the volume. Harmony’s one-and-only law enforcer, Trooper Zachary Tucker, sounded like he had his panties in a wad over something pretty big today.
“Stanley Arnold, don’t you think you can just tune me out, you miserable no-good excuse for a son!” His mother pounded on the door again, then stormed off, her big mouth still running all the way up the hall. “You’re just like your father. Never been worth a lick and never will be!”
Skeeter got up from the recliner and moved in closer to the radio as Tucker, reporting in with the State boys in Fairbanks, rattled off the coordinates of an apparent multiple death scene—probable homicide, he’d said—some forty miles out in the bush. Tucker was awaiting air transport from one of Harmony’s two resident pilots. He advised that the other one, Alex Maguire, had been the one who discovered the bodies while on a supply run and was presently on her way back into town.
Skeeter felt a twist of excitement as he listened. He knew the area in question very well. Hell, he’d been out that way just last night with Chad Bishop and a few other people. They’d been getting high and drinking by the river … right before they’d started tormenting Teddy Toms. In fact, the way it was sounding to him, the settlement the cops were talking about had to be the kid’s family’s place.
“No friggin’ way,” Skeeter whispered, wondering if he could possibly be right about that. Just to be sure, he jotted the coordinates down on his palm, then riffled through a pile of unpaid bills and other trash until he found the beer-stained area map he’d been using as a coaster for the past couple of years. He triangulated the spot on the map, disbelief and a sick sort of wonderment sliding through his senses.
“Holy shit,” he said, taking a long drag off his joint before snuffing it out on the burn-scarred Formica to save the rest of the buzz for later. He was too excited to finish it now. Too lit up with morbid curiosity to keep from running a tight pace back and forth across the cramped room.
Had Pop Toms or the old man’s brother-in-law gone off the deep end? Or had it been Teddy who finally snapped his leash? Maybe the kid had gone home and lost it after Skeeter and the others had driven him off in tears last night at the river?
He’d know all that soon enough, Skeeter figured. He’d always wanted to see a dead person up close. Maybe he’d just head out for a little detour on his way to the store for those beans and rice his mother wanted.
Yeah, and maybe he’d skip the errand-boy bullshit and just go do what he wanted for a change.
Skeeter grabbed his cell phone—the sweet new one with video capability and the cool skull-and-crossbones skin. Then he fished the key to his Yamaha sled out of the mess on his counter. He didn’t bother telling his mother where he was heading, just pulled on his winter gear and strode out into the bracing chill of the day.
CHAPTER
Two
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Heat blasted out of the Range Rover’s dashboard vents as Brock upped the temperature another few degrees. “Damn, it’s cold tonight.” The big male from Detroit cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew into his palms. “I hate winter, man. Feels like goddamn Siberia out there.”
“Not even close,” Kade replied from behind the wheel of the parked SUV, his gaze fixed on the decrepit brownstone they’d been surveilling for the past couple of hours. Even in the postmidnight darkness, with a fresh blanket of snow masking everything in pristine white, the place looked like total shit from the outside. Not that it mattered. Whatever they were peddling inside—drugs, sex, or a combination of both—was bringing a fairly steady stream of human traffic to the door. Kade watched as a trio of frat boys wearing university colors and a couple of bundled-up young women climbed out of a piece-of-crap Impala and went inside.
“If this was Siberia,” Kade added once the street got quiet again, “our balls would be jingling like sleigh bells and we’d be pissing ice cubes. Boston in November is a picnic.”
“Says the vampire born on a friggin’ Alaskan glacier,” Brock drawled, shaking his head as he held his dark hands in front of the vents and tried to rub off the chill. “How much longer you think we need to wait out here before our man decides to show his ugly face? I need to start moving before my ass freezes to this seat.”
Kade grunted more than chuckled, as impatient as his partner on tonight’s patrol of the city. It wasn’t the humans that brought Brock and him to this address in one of Boston’s roughest areas, but the individual purported to be behind the illegal activity. And if their intel proved valid—that the vampire who ran the place was also dealing in another forbidden commodity—then the night was going to end on a very unpleasant, probably bloody, note.
Kade could hardly wait.
“Here he is now,” he said, watching as a pair of headlights swung around the corner and a pimped-out black Mercedes with gold trim and gilded hubcaps prowled to a stop at the curb.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Brock said, smirking as the spectacle continued.
Music throbbed from within the sedan, the rhythmic bass and punching lyrics vibrating impossibly louder as the driver got out and went around to open the back passenger-side door. A pair of leashed white pit bulls were the first to exit the car, followed by their master, a tall Breed male trying hard to look badass even though he was wrapped in a long fox-fur coat and had gone about ten pounds beyond the respectable limits of bling and guyliner.
“Forget about the shit Gideon turned up on this asshole,” Kade said. “We’d be in the right to waste him just for going out in public dressed like that.”
Brock grinned, showing the very tips of his fangs. “You ask me, I think we ought to waste him just for making us freeze our stones off waiting for him out here.”
At the curb, the vampire gave his dogs a harsh yank of their studded leather leashes when they dared to take a step ahead of him. He kicked the one nearest to him as he strode toward the door of the brownstone, chuckling at the dog’s sharp yelp of pain. When he and his driver and his pair of hellhounds had all disappeared inside the building, Kade killed the Rover’s auxiliary power and opened his door.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s find a way in through the back while Homeboy’s busy making an entrance.”
They moved in behind the building and located a ground-level window half obscured by snow and street rubbish. Squatting on his haunches, Kade brushed away the ice and crusted-over filth, then lifted the hinged panel of glass and peered into the darkened space on the other side. It was a brick cellar, littered with a couple of rotted mattresses, spent condoms, used syringes, and a combined stench of piss, vomit, and various other expelled bodily fluids that assaulted Kade’s acute senses like a sledgehammer blow to his skull.
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, lips curling back off his teeth and fangs. “Homeboy’s housekeeper is so fired.”
He slipped inside, landing soundlessly on the rough concrete floor. Brock followed, 280-plus pounds of heavily armed vampire lighting as quietly as a cat beside him. Kade motioned past the revolting mess on the floor to a pitch-black corner of the room, where a short length of chain and a pair of shackles lay. A strip of silver duct tape had been cast off nearby, with several strands of long, light blond hair stuck to it.
Brock met Kade’s hard stare in the dark. His deep voice was more growl than words. “Skin trader.”
Kade nodded grimly, sickened by the evidence of all that had taken place in this dank, dark basement prison. He was about to head for the stairs and crash the party above when Brock’s low curse made him pause.
“We’re not alone down here, my man.” Brock indicated a barred door all but obscured by shadows and the rusted skeleton of an old box spring that leaned too neatly against it. “Humans,” he said. “Females, just on the other side of that door.”
Hearing the quiet, broken breathing now, and feeling the current of pain and suffering that rode on the fetid air, Kade moved with Brock toward the lightless corner of the cellar. They pushed aside the old box spring, then Kade lifted the thick metal bar that locked the door from the outside.
“Holy hell,” Brock whispered into the darkness. He stepped inside the small room where three young women sat huddled together in the corner, shivering and terrified. When one of them started to scream, Brock moved faster than any of the drugged humans could track him. Reaching down, he brushed his hand over the female’s brow, trancing her into silence with his touch. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Have any of them been bled?” Kade asked, watching as Brock willed the other two captives into similar states of quiet.
“They’ve been beaten recently, so there’s bruising. But I don’t see any bite wounds. Don’t see any Breedmate marks, either,” he added, doing a quick check of the women’s exposed skin and extremities, looking for the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark that differentiated mortal females from their more genetically extraordinary sisters. Brock gently released the pale arm he held, then stood up. “At least none of these three is a Breedmate.”
A small mercy, and one that hardly exonerated the vampire scum who’d been making a business out of trafficking women to the highest bidder.
“Give me a minute to scrub their memories of what they’ve been through and get them safely out of here,” Brock said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Kade gave him a tight nod and a flash of fang. “Meanwhile, I’m going to head upstairs and have a little private chat with Homeboy.”
With aggression burning like acid in his veins, Kade crept up the steps to the noise-filled main floor of the building, bypassing the orgy taking place under a cloud of narcotic smoke, trippy industrial music, and flashing strobe lights.
In a back office down the hall, he heard the thin rasp of the scumbag he was looking for.
“Fetch me the female who just came in with those Ivy League losers—no, not the blonde, the other one. If she’s a true redhead, she’s worth twice as much to me.”
Kade hung back, grinning as Homeboy’s beefy driver-slash-bodyguard came out of the office and saw him standing there in the hallway. The male was Breed, as well, and menace flashed as amber light in his irises when he saw the threat before him now.
“Shh,” Kade said pleasantly, a dagger already gripped in his hand and ready to let fly.
He released the blade in the instant the driver reached for his own weapon, nailing the big vampire dead center in the throat. The bulky body sagged to the floor, and as the heavy thump carried over the din of music and moaning from up the hall, Kade leapt around the corpse to fill the open doorway of Homeboy’s office.
The pair of white pit bulls lunged faster than their master in the ridiculous fur coat could react. Snarling and snapping, the dogs charged Kade. He didn’t flinch; there was no need. He caught their wild eyes in an unblinking look of command that brought them both to a sudden halt on the carpeted floor in front of his boots.
All of the Breed were born with their own unique talents—or curses, in some cases—in addition to the longevity, strength, and bloodthirst that were traits of their kind. In Kade, his talent was the ability to connect psychically with predator animals and direct their actions with a simple thought. It was a power he had honed to lethal precision from the time he was a boy in the frozen Alaskan wild, and with animals far more dangerous than these.
“Stay,” he said calmly to the dogs, then glanced up at the Breed male who gaped at him from across the small room. “You stay, too.”
“What the—who the fuck are you?” Panic and outrage deepened the lines around the vampire’s mouth as he took in Kade’s appearance, from the black fatigues and combat boots that matched the dark color of his spiky hair, to the impressive collection of blades and semiautomatic weaponry he sported at his hips and on holsters strapped to his thighs. “Warrior,” he breathed, evidently not so arrogant—or stupid—that he didn’t know some measure of fear at this unannounced visit. “What could the Order possibly want from me?”
“Information,” Kade replied. He took a step inside the room and closed the door behind him, pausing to scratch one of the now-docile pit bulls behind the ear. “We’ve heard some disturbing things about this business you’re running here. We need to know more.”
The vampire lifted his shoulders and made a half-assed attempt to look confused. “What’s to tell? I dabble in a variety of ventures.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Nice little venture you’ve got going down in the basement of this shithole. How long have you been trafficking women?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Now, see, making me repeat myself is not a smart thing to do.” Kade crouched low and motioned to the pair of pit bulls to come up alongside him. They sat at his feet like squat gargoyles, staring at their former master and obediently awaiting Kade’s command simply because that’s what he wanted them to do. “I’ll bet if I told these dogs to rip your throat out, I wouldn’t have to ask them twice. What do you think? Should we find out?”
Homeboy swallowed hard. “I-I haven’t been doing it for very long. A couple months short of a year, I guess. Started out with drugs and whores, then I started getting certain … requests.” He fidgeted with one of the many gold rings that gleamed on his fingers. “You know, requests for services of a more permanent nature.”
“And your clients?” Kade prompted as he rose to his full six-foot-four height. “Who are they?”
“Humans, primarily. I really don’t keep good records.”
“But you do provide these services”—he hissed the word through his fangs—“to members of the Breed, as well.”
It wasn’t a question, and Homeboy knew it. He gave another shrug, the collar of his fox coat brushing against his diamond-studded earlobe. “I deal in a cash business, simple supply and demand. Breed or human, the money is all the same.”
“And business is good,” Kade guessed.
“I’m getting by. Why is the Order so interested in what I’m doing, anyway? You looking for a piece of the action?” he hedged, his smile little more than a slimy split of his lips. “I could cut Lucan in, if that’s what this is about. I am a businessman, after all.”
“You are scum,” Kade said, incensed but not surprised that a bottom-feeder like this would think that he or any of his brethren were for sale. “And if I told Lucan you said that, he would shred you open from chin to balls. You know what? Fuck that. I’ll save him the trouble—”
“Wait!” Homeboy held up his hands. “Wait. Tell me what you want to know.”
“Okay. Let’s start with this. How many of the women you’ve locked up in that basement and sold were Breedmates?”
A sickening silence lengthened while the vampire considered how best to answer. Even this worthless offal had to know that those rare females bearing the Breedmate birthmark were revered, precious to all of the Breed. To bring harm to a Breedmate was to bring harm to the entire vampire race, for there were no other females on the planet who could carry Breed young in their womb. To knowingly collect a profit from a Breedmate’s pain, or to benefit in any way from her death, was about the most heinous thing one of Kade’s kind could do.
He watched the other vampire as he would an insect trapped under glass, and in fact, he valued this Breed male’s life even less.
“How many, you disgusting fuck? More than one? A dozen? Twenty?” He had to work to bite back his snarl. “Did you sell them unknowingly, or did you make an even bigger profit off their suffering? Answer the goddamn question!”
With Kade’s outburst, the pair of pit bulls rose up onto their feet, their compact muscles taut and straining, both of them growling with menace. The dogs were as attuned to Kade’s anger as he was to them. He held the dogs back with only the barest thread of self-control, knowing that if the vampire cowering in front of him had any information of value, he was duty-bound to wring it out of him.
Then he could kill him with a clear conscience.
“Who have you been selling Breedmates to? Answer the fucking question. I’m not going to wait all night for you to cough up the truth.”
“I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “That is the truth. I don’t know.”
“But you admit that’s what you’ve been doing.” God, he wanted to waste this piece of shit. “Tell me who you’ve been trafficking to, before I rip your ugly head off.”
“I swear—I don’t know who wanted them!”
Kade wasn’t about to let it go at that. “Was it more than one individual who came to you for the females? What about the name Dragos—ring any bells with you?”
Kade watched with narrowed eyes, waiting for the vampire to take the bait. But the name Kade cast out to him went unacknowledged. Anyone having dealt with the Breed elder known as Dragos—a villain whose evil had only recently been discovered through the efforts of the Order—would surely register some amount of reaction at the mention of his name.
Homeboy, however, was oblivious. He exhaled a sigh and gave a weak shake of his head. “I only dealt with one guy. He wasn’t Breed. Wasn’t actually human, either. Not by the time I met him, anyway.”
“A Minion, then?”
The news didn’t exactly put Kade at ease. Though the creation of Minions went against Breed law, not to mention basic morality, only the most powerful of the Breed could create the human mind slaves. Drained nearly to the point of death, Minions were loyal to their Master alone. Dragos was second-generation Breed and held himself above any law, Breed or otherwise. It wasn’t a question of whether Dragos kept Minions, but rather how many, and how deeply embedded into human society did they go.
“Would you know this Minion if you saw him again?”
The animal carcass wrapped around the vampire’s neck lifted once more with another shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe. He hasn’t been around for a long time now. Stopped doing business with him about three, maybe four months ago. For a while there, he was one of my regulars, then nothing out of him again.”
“You must have been so disappointed,” Kade drawled. “Describe him to me. What did the Minion look like?”
“Tell you the truth, I never got a good look at the guy. Never really tried, either. I could tell he was Minion, and the dude paid in large bills. Nothing more I needed to know about him.”
Kade’s veins tightened with animosity and a barely restrained rage to hear the ambivalence in his words. He had killed for lesser offenses than this—far less—and the urge to tear apart this worthless excuse of a male was fierce. “So, what you’re saying is you repeatedly sold him innocent females who were too drugged up to defend them-selves, with zero regard for what he was doing with them or where they might end up. No questions asked. That about it?”
“I guess you could say I run my business on the basis of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Kade agreed. “Or I could say that you run your business like an ass-licking coward and you deserve to die a slow and painful death.”
Worry spiked in an acrid stink as the vampire held Kade’s stare. “Now, let’s just wait a minute. Let me think for a second, all right? Maybe I can remember something. Maybe there is some way I can help—”
“I doubt it.” Kade scrutinized him, seeing from the look of scrambling panic on his face that he wasn’t going to get anything more useful out of this conversation.
Besides that, he was tired of looking at the asshole.
He reached down to lift the dogs’ chins in his palms, glancing into the intense brown eyes of one, then the other. The silent command was acknowledged with a faint twitch of sinew. The pit bulls jumped up onto the desk and sat in front of their former master, their eyes unblinking, sharp-toothed maws open and dripping saliva.
“Good boys,” Kade said. He pivoted to leave.
“Wait, so … that’s it?” Homeboy asked hesitantly from around the pair of slavering gargoyles that were now perched before him. “I wanna be sure we’re cool for now. I mean, I told you everything I know. That’s all you want from me, right?”
“Not exactly,” Kade said without looking back at the skin trader. He put his hand on the doorknob. “There is one more thing I want.”
As he walked out of the office and closed the door, he heard the pair of pit bulls launch into their attack. Kade paused there, closing his eyes and letting himself enjoy the violence of the moment through his talent’s visceral connection to the animals. He felt every breaking crunch of bone, every tear of the skin trader’s flesh as the dogs ripped into him. Inside the room, the vampire screamed and wailed, his pain a pleasant punctuation to the music and moaning still carrying on in the other part of the building.
Brock came striding up the hallway as Kade was stepping around the corpse of the driver.
“You take care of the females?” he asked as he and his patrol partner met up halfway.
“I scrubbed the memories of their whole captivity and sent them home,” Brock said. The big male spared only the briefest glance at the body before arching a brow at Kade. “How about you? Did you manage to get anything out of Homeboy?”
“Turns out he wasn’t actually much of a dog person,” Kade said around the continued shrieks coming from the direction of the office.
Brock’s mouth quirked at the corner. “So I hear. Anything else?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. Asshole’s been trafficking Breedmates, just as our intel suggested. His client was a Minion, but he didn’t know anything more than that. Never saw the mind slave up close and couldn’t describe him at all.”
“Shit,” Brock said, running a big hand over the top of his head. “So I guess Homeboy was a dead end, huh?”
Kade cocked his head as the last of the howls cut short behind him. “He is now.”
Brock exhaled a rueful chuckle. “Let’s get this place cleaned up and shut down. Got a text from Gideon, asking us to call in when we can. Something about a situation up north.”
“Up north, as in upstate?”
“No, man. Farther north than that.” Brock met his gaze and held it for longer than was comfortable. “Something’s evidently gone down in Alaska. He didn’t say what exactly, just said that Lucan wants you to report in to headquarters ASAP.”
CHAPTER
Three
Kade understood even before he and Brock arrived at the Order’s compound that the news he was about to get couldn’t be good. As the founder and leader of the warriors, not to mention a first-generation Breed somewhere in the vicinity of nine hundred years old, Lucan was hardly an alarmist by nature. So the fact that he saw fit to call Kade in specifically was a major clue that whatever the so-called situation was in Alaska, it was something seriously fucked up.
Speculation swirled in Kade’s gut, one disturbing scenario after another, awful things that were far too easy for him to imagine and burned like bitter bile in the back of his throat. He kept his dread to himself as he and Brock parked the Rover in the fleet garage behind the heavily secured estate at ground level, then took the hangar’s elevator down some three hundred feet to the subterranean nerve center of the Order’s operations.
“You cool, my man?” Brock asked as he and Kade stepped out of the elevator and into the white marble corridor that connected the labyrinthine compound’s many chambers like a central artery. “You know if this had anything to do with your kin back home, Lucan would have said so. I’m sure that whatever went down, everything’s good with your family. No worries, yeah?”
“Yeah. No worries,” Kade replied, but his mouth was on automatic pilot.
He’d left his family’s settlement in Alaska roughly a year ago to join the Order in Boston. It had been an abrupt departure, one spurred by the urgent summons he’d received from Nikolai, a warrior of the Order whom Kade had met decades past when his travels had taken him from Alaska’s frozen tundra to that of Niko’s Siberian homeland.
There were things Kade had left unfinished in Alaska. Things that haunted him still—worse, for the time and distance that had kept him away all these long months.
If anything had happened and he hadn’t been there to step in …
Kade pushed the thought from his head as he and Brock turned down one of the corridors that would lead them to the tech lab.
Lucan, the dark-haired Gen One, was waiting there in the compound’s glass-walled war room with Gideon, the blond, deceptively disheveled-looking resident genius who ran the Order’s extensive collection of technology. The pair stood together in front of a flat-screen monitor. Lucan raked his fingers over his sternly set jaw just as the lab’s transparent doors whisked open to permit Kade and Brock inside.
“How did the lead work out tonight in Roxbury?” he asked when the two warriors had entered the room.
Kade gave a brief rundown of what they found out from the skin trader, which wasn’t much. But as Kade spoke, he couldn’t keep his attention from drifting to the monitor behind Lucan. When the big male started to pace in that way he always did when he was either pissed off or deep in thought, Kade got his first good look at the image filling the computer screen.
It wasn’t pretty.
A blurry photo—or maybe it was a freeze-framed video image—splashed garish red and white across the monitor. Blood and snow. A brutal killing in the frozen wilds of Alaska. Kade knew it instinctively, and the knowledge cut through him like the edge of a blade.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice so wooden it sounded apathetic, wholly undisturbed.
“Nasty bit of video showed up on the Internet today,” Lucan said. “From what we can tell, this was captured by a cell phone camera a couple of days ago and uploaded from a Fairbanks ISP to a website that caters to crime-scene gawkers and other sick bastards who get off on viewing the dead.”
He gave a look to Gideon and with a click of the computer mouse, the frozen image onscreen came to vivid life. Over the excitable breathing and crunching footsteps of the person holding the camera, Kade watched as the crudely shot video showed the scene of what must have been a very brutal slaying.
A bloodied body lay dead on a snow-covered, gore-stained patch of land. The lens’s focus was shaky, but the operator managed to zoom in tight on the victim’s wounds. Shredded clothing and skin. A number of unmistakable tears and punctures that could only have been made by some very sharp teeth.
Or fangs.
“Jesus,” Kade muttered, struck by the savagery of the killing—the totality of it—as the video played past the four-minute mark and moved on to document no less than three more dead in the snow and ice.
“This looks like the work of Rogues,” Brock said, his deep voice as grim as his expression.
It was a sorry but unavoidable fact of life that there were members of the Breed population who could not—or simply would not—control their thirst for blood. While the majority of the vampire nation abided by laws and reasonable good sense, there were others who gave in to their hungers with no thought for the consequences. Those of the Breed who fed too much, or too frequently, soon found themselves addicted, lost to Bloodlust, the disease of the Rogues. Once a vampire tipped that scale, there was little hope for him to turn himself around.
Bloodlust was almost always a one-way ticket to madness … and death. If not by edict of the Order, then by the disease itself, which made even the most careful Breed male reckless. All a Rogue knew was his thirst. He would kill indiscriminately, take any risk, in the attempt to quench it. He would even slaughter an entire village if the opportunity was there.
“Whoever did this needs to be put down fast,” Brock added. “Son of a bitch needs to be put down hard.”
Lucan nodded his agreement. “The sooner, the better. That’s why I called you in, Kade. The situation up there could get out of hand pretty quick, not only if we’ve got a Rogue problem to contend with, but also because human law enforcement has gotten wind of the killings. Gideon tracked an Alaska State Police dispatch call out of a little interior town called Harmony. Fortunately, there’s fewer than a hundred people living there, but it only takes one hysterical mouth screaming the word ‘vampire’ to turn this whole thing into an even bigger disaster.”
“Shit,” Kade muttered. “Do we know who shot the video?”
“Hard to say right now,” Lucan said. “Gideon’s looking into it. We do know for sure there’s a trooper posted in the town—he’s the one who alerted the Fairbanks dispatch to the killings. Obviously, time is critical here. We need to know who’s responsible for the slayings, and we need to make sure no one up there gets anywhere close to the truth about what exactly took place out there in the bush.”
Kade listened, his veins still jangling with the brutality of what he had just seen on the monitor. In his peripheral vision was the final frame, paused on the screen, a blurred image of a young human’s blood-spattered face, his open, unseeing brown eyes clouded from the cold, ice crystals clinging to his dark eyelashes. He was just a kid, for crissake. Probably barely out of his teens, if that.
It wasn’t the first time Kade had seen the aftermath of a bloody slaughter in the Alaskan bush. When he’d left home all those months ago, he’d sure as hell hoped he’d never see that kind of carnage again.
“We’re spread thin here with our current operations, but we can’t afford to let the situation up north go unchecked,” Lucan said. “I need to send someone who knows the terrain and the people, and who has connections in the Breed population up there.”
Kade held Lucan’s stare, knowing he could hardly refuse the assignment, even if Alaska was the last place he wanted to be. When he’d left there last year to join the Order, he’d done so with the hope that he might never return.
He wanted to forget the place where he’d been born. The wild place that had called to him like a possessive, destructive lover every moment since he’d left.
“What do you say, my man?” Lucan asked as Kade’s silence grew long.
He didn’t see where he had any choice. He owed it to Lucan and the Order to take care of this unexpected, unpleasant business. No matter where it led him.
Even if the search for a vampire with an uncontrollable itch to kill ended up leading Kade home to a ten-thousand-acre stretch of land in the Alaskan interior. Home, to his family’s own backyard.
Grim with the idea, he gave the Order’s leader an accepting nod. “How soon do I leave?”
Forty-five minutes later, Kade was wearing a track in the rug of his private quarters, his packed duffel sitting on the end of the bed. A satellite phone lay beside the black leather bag, and for the third time in the past ten minutes, Kade reached for the device and punched in the number he hadn’t called since the night he left Alaska.
This time he let the call ring through.
It was a shock to hear his father’s strong voice come on the line.
“Been a while,” Kade said by way of greeting, to which his father only grunted.
It was a lame effort at contact after a year of being out of touch by his own doing. Then again, it wasn’t as if his father had ever accused him of being responsible or reliable, or anything else for that matter.
The conversation was awkward, a strained attempt at hi-how-are-you as Kade worked up the nerve to ask how everything was going back home. His father talked about the hard winter, the only benefit of the season being the fact that it kept the sun in hiding for all but three hours at midday. Kade recalled the extended darkness of the north country. His pulse kicked eagerly at the thought of so much night, so many hours of freedom in which to run.
It was obvious that his father hadn’t yet heard about the recent slayings. Kade didn’t mention them, nor did he speak of the mission that was sending him north. Instead, Kade cleared his throat and asked the question that had been burning in his gut since the moment he heard there had been trouble in Alaska.
“How’s Seth doing? Is everything all right with him?”
Kade’s blood went a bit cold in the hesitant silence that preceded his father’s reply. “He is well. Why do you ask?”
Kade heard the suspicion in his father’s voice, the mild disapproval that always had a way of creeping into the elder male’s voice whenever Kade dared to question matters concerning his brother. “Just wondering if he might be around, that’s all.”
“Your brother had Darkhaven business to attend to for me in the city” came the terse reply. “He left a few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks,” Kade echoed. “That’s a long time for him to be away. Have you heard from him at all recently?”
“Not recently, no. Why?” On the other end of the line, his father seemed to go silent with impatience. “What exactly is this about, Kade? A year without any contact from you, and now you want to interrogate me about your brother’s comings and goings. What is it you want?”
“Forget it,” Kade said, instantly regretting that he’d made the call in the first place. “Just forget I called. I gotta go.”
He didn’t wait for his father’s reply. Frankly, he didn’t need to hear it.
Kade ended the call without another word, his thoughts swirling with the grisly images he’d seen in the tech lab a short time ago and the knowledge that his brother had not been accounted for in potentially a number of weeks.
His brother, who shared the same dark talent as Kade.
The same dangerously seductive wildness—the violent power—that could so easily slip out of control. And had, at least once, Kade acknowledged with grim recollection.
“Goddamn it, Seth.”
He tossed the phone onto the bed. Then, with a furious growl, he whirled on his heel and slammed his fist into the nearest wall.
CHAPTER
Four
The Arctic storm had pounded the Alaskan interior for two days straight, dumping three feet of snow on the small town of Harmony and its far-flung neighbors along the river and plunging daytime temperatures all over the region to fifteen below zero. Ordinarily, weather like that tended to do one of two things to folks: keep them knuckled down at home, or send them flocking to Pete’s, the local restaurant and tavern.
Today, despite the howl of the wintry wind and the skin-biting cold as the third and final hour of sunlight faded into midday dusk, nearly all of Harmony’s ninety-three residents were packed into the log-cabin Congregational church for an impromptu town hall meeting. Alex sat beside Jenna in the second row of pews, trying as hard as everyone else to make sense of the recent carnage in the bush, which had brought six dead, brutally savaged bodies into makeshift cold storage at Harmony’s airstrip and put the whole town into a state of anxious unrest.
Alex knew that Zach Tucker had tried to keep the news of the attack on the Toms settlement quiet, but despite the vastness of the interior, word traveled fast—faster still, in this isolated eleven-square-mile chunk of land that hugged the shore of the Koyukuk. Bad news, particularly the kind involving multiple unexplained deaths of a violent nature, tended to reach folks’ ears as if flown there on a raven’s wings.
In the forty-eight hours since Alex’s discovery of the killings, and Zach’s decision to transport the bodies from the crime scene into Harmony to await the clearing of the weather so the Staties in Fairbanks could come in and take over the investigation, the feeling around town had gone from one of shock and dismay to one of suspicion and dangerous, mounting hysteria. Forty-eight hours had been all the townspeople could take without demanding some answers about just who—or what—had so viciously attacked Pop Toms and his family.
“I simply don’t understand,” said Millie Dunbar from her seat in the pew behind Alex. The old woman’s voice trembled, not so much from her eighty-seven years of age but from sorrow and concern. “Who would want to harm Wilbur Toms and his family? They were such good, kind folks. Why, when my father first settled here, he traded with Wilbur’s grandfather upriver for many years. He never had a bad word for any of the Tomses. I just can’t figure who could be so evil to have done something like this.”
One of the townsmen near the back of the church piped in. “If you ask me, makes me wonder about the boy, Teddy. Too damn quiet, that one. Seen him hanging around town a bit of late, but he wouldn’t even say hello when spoken to, just acted like he was too good to answer. Made me wonder what the kid was up to, and if maybe he had something to hide.”
“Oh, please,” Alex said, feeling obligated to defend Teddy since he wasn’t there to do it for himself. She pivoted on the pew and shot a disapproving glance to the area behind her, where dozens of faces had hardened with suspicion because of Big Dave Grant’s baseless accusation. “Teddy was shy around people he didn’t know well, that’s all. He never talked much because of the teasing he always took for his stutter. And to suggest that he could somehow have anything to do with the murder of his family when he’s lying right next to them on a cold slab is disgustingly callous. If any of you had seen the condition they were left in—”
Jenna’s hand came down softly on Alex’s wrist, but the warning was unnecessary. Alex had no intention of taking that train of thought any further. Bad enough she’d been reliving the gruesome discovery over and over in her mind since she’d stumbled upon Pop Toms, Teddy, and the rest of their kin. She wasn’t going to sit there and rehash for everyone how brutal their murders had been. How savage the wounds that had rent flesh to the bone and torn open throats as if some kind of hellish beast had come out of the cold night to feed on the living.
No, not a beast.
A being out of a nightmare.
A monster.
Alex closed her eyes against the vision of blood and death that began to rise from the darkest reaches of her memory. She didn’t want to go there, never again. It had taken years and thousands of miles, but she had outrun that dark reality. She had outlived it, even though it had robbed her of so very much along the way.
“Is it true there wasn’t no murder weapon found?” someone shouted from the middle of the gathering. “If they wasn’t shot or stabbed, then how exactly were they killed? I heard there was a hell of a lot of blood spilled out there in the bush.”
From his position behind the pulpit, Zach held up a hand to quell the ensuing barrage of similarly curious questions from the crowd. “Until the AST detachment arrives from Fairbanks, all I can tell you is that we are treating this as a multiple homicide. Being that I am one of the investigating officers, I am not at liberty to discuss the details of the case with anyone at this time, nor do I think it would be wise for me to speculate.”
“But what about the wounds, Zach?” This time it was Lanny Ham who spoke up, his reed-thin voice edged with slightly more than its normal level of nervous energy. “I heard the bodies look like they were attacked by animals. Big animals. Is that true?”
“What does Alex think, since she was the one who found the bodies?” someone else asked. “Do either of you believe it could have been animals that killed them?”
“Roger Bemis said he saw a pair of wolves prowling around near his property on the west side of town the other day,” interjected Fran Littlejohn, who ran the town’s small health clinic. Ordinarily she was a reasonable woman, but now there was a strong note of worry in her voice. “Been a hard winter already and it’s just started. What’s to say it wasn’t a hungry pack that decided to attack the Toms place?”
“That’s a damn good point. And if it was wolves, what’s to say they won’t come looking around here, now that they’ve gotten a taste for human prey?” came another paranoid suggestion.
“Now hold on, everyone,” Zach said, his attempt to inject calm getting lost as the voices in the building escalated along with the level of hysteria.
“You know, I saw a wolf right before nightfall just last week. Big black male, sniffing around the Dumpster out back of Pete’s. Didn’t think nothing of it then, but now—”
“And don’t forget that it wasn’t more than a few months ago that wolves killed some sled dogs down in Ruby. The papers said they didn’t leave anything more than entrails and a couple of leather collars—”
“Maybe the smartest thing to do is to take some action here,” Big Dave said from his post at the back of the room. “Seeing how we’re stuck waiting on the Staties to get their shit together and come out to lend us a hand, maybe what we need to do is organize a hunting party. A wolf-hunting party.”
“It wasn’t wolves,” Alex murmured, her mind flashing back unwillingly to the sight of the bloodied track she saw in the snow. It hadn’t been left by a wolf, nor any other kind of animal, of that she was certain. But a small voice whispered that it wasn’t exactly human, either.
So … what, then?
She shook her head, refusing to let her thoughts wrap around the answer she hoped—prayed—could not be true.
“It wasn’t wolves,” she said again, lifting her voice over the din of paranoia running as rampant as a disease all around her. She stood up and turned to face the vengeful crowd. “No wolf kills like this, not by itself. Not even the boldest pack together would do this.”
“Miss Maguire is right,” said Sidney Charles, one of Harmony’s Native elders and the town’s long-running mayor, even if he held the office in name only in recent years. He nodded to Alex from his seat in the front row of the church, the dark hair of his leather-bound ponytail shot with gray, his tanned face lined the deepest at the corners of his mouth and eyes, creases earned from his kindhearted, jovial nature. Today he was somber, however, the heavy weight of all this talk of death showing in the slump of his otherwise proud shoulders. “Wolves have a respect for mankind, as we should respect them. I have lived a long time, long enough that I can promise you they did not do this awful thing. If I live for a hundred more years, I will never believe they would.”
“Well, all due respect, Sid, but I, for one, would rather not take that chance,” Big Dave said, to the ready agreement of several other men standing nearby. “Last I knew, there weren’t no season on dealing with problem wolves. Ain’t that right, Officer Tucker?”
“No, there’s not,” Zach relented. “But—”
Big Dave went on. “If we’ve got wolves threatening human settlements, folks, then it’s our right to defend ourselves. Hell, it’s our goddamned duty. I sure as shit don’t want to wait around until some rangy pack decides to attack again.”
“I’m with Big Dave on this,” said Lanny Ham, shooting up from his seat like a rocket. He wrung his hands in front of him, his nervous gaze darting around the room. “I say we take action before the same kind of trouble comes to roost right here in Harmony!”
“Are any of you listening at all?” Alex challenged, her anger flaring. “I’m telling you, wolves were not responsible for what happened to Pop Toms and his family. They were attacked by something terrible, something horrific … but it wasn’t a wolf. What I saw out there could not have been done by any kind of animal. It was something else—”
Alex’s voice snagged in her throat as her gaze strayed to the back of the church and clashed with a pair of silver eyes so piercing they stole her breath. She didn’t know the black-haired man who stood there in the shadows near the door. He wasn’t from Harmony, or any of its far-flung neighboring towns. Alex was sure she’d never seen those lean, razor-sharp cheeks and square-cut jaw, or the startling intensity of his gaze, anywhere before in the whole of the Alaskan interior. His face wasn’t the kind a woman would ever forget.
The stranger said nothing, didn’t even blink his inky lashes as she went suddenly mute and lost her train of thought. He merely stared back at her over the heads of the townsfolk as if she were the only one he saw, as if the two of them were the only people in the entire room.
“What do you think it was, dear?”
Millie Dunbar’s thready voice jolted Alex out of the unnerving hold of the stranger’s gaze. She swallowed on her parched throat and turned back to face the sweet old woman and the other people who were now waiting in silence to hear what she believed she saw out at the Toms settlement.
“I … I’m not really sure,” she hedged, wishing she’d never opened her mouth. She felt the heat of the stranger’s eyes on her and was suddenly unwilling to voice what she had been thinking that day in the bush, and in all the torturous hours that had passed since.
“What did you see, Alexandra?” Millie pressed, her expression a heart-squeezing mix of hope and dread. “How can you be so certain it wasn’t animals that killed those good folks?”
Alex gave a weak shake of her head. Damn it, she’d walked right into this on her own, and now, with almost a hundred pairs of eyes locked on her, awaiting her explanation, there was little she could do to back out of it. Not without making herself look like an idiot and condemning an innocent pack of area wolves to the overzealous attention of Big Dave and the posse that seemed to be waiting for permission to roll out and blow them away with no cause.
Shit.
Was there any choice but the truth here?
“I saw … a track,” she admitted quietly.
“A track?” This time it was Zach who spoke, his light brown brows drawn low over his eyes as he scrutinized her from his position at the pulpit above the congregation. “You didn’t tell me anything about a track. Where did you see it, Alex? What kind of track was it?”
“It was a footprint … in the snow.”
Zach’s frown deepened. “You mean, a print from a boot?”
Alex stood there in silence for a long moment, unsure how to phrase what she was about to say next. No one said anything in that lengthening quiet. She felt the weight of all their focus, all the town’s anticipation rooted on the tall, curveless blonde who’d spent most of her life in Harmony but was still regarded as something of an outsider because she’d come with her dad from the humid swamps of Florida.
It was the recollection of those sun-baked, heat-drenched wetlands that filled Alex’s senses now. She could taste the salty brine of the water on her tongue, could smell the sweet odor of moss-covered cypress trees and fragrant lilies filling the air. She could hear the trilling song of cicadas and the low creak of bullfrogs serenading the dark as she’d watched her mother rock her little brother to sleep on the screened porch of the cabin while she read to them in that soft, gentle voice that Alex missed so much. She could see the golden hunter’s moon that had slowly risen toward the glittering sea of stars high above the earth.
And she could feel, even now, the bolt of fear that arrowed through her heart as the night had been shredded by violence when the monsters came to feed.
It was all still there for her.
Still so shatteringly real.
“Alex.”
Zach’s voice startled her, made her shake herself back to the here and now, back to Harmony, Alaska, and the horrific dread that gripped her when she considered that the terror she fled in Florida might somehow find her again.
“What the hell is going on, Alex?” There was impatience in the clipped tone of Zach’s voice. “I need to know what you saw out there. All of it.”
“I saw a footprint,” she stated as clearly as she could manage. “Not from a boot. It was from a bare foot. A very large foot, and very humanlike, only … not quite—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Big Dave said around a snort of laughter. “It wasn’t wolves that killed them, it was Bigfoot! Now I’ve heard it all.”
“What are you doing, Alex? Is this some kind of joke?”
“No,” she insisted, pivoting away from Zach’s disbelieving look to the rest of the townsfolk. They were all staring at her as if waiting for her to burst into laughter.
Everyone except the black-haired stranger in the back.
His silver eyes bored into her like spears of ice, only the feeling she got the longer she held his gaze was not one of cold but of bone-melting heat. And there was no mockery in his expression. He listened with an intensity that shook her to her core.
He believed her, when every other person in the place was dismissing her with polite—and some not so polite—looks of confusion.
“It’s not a joke at all,” Alex told the residents of Harmony. “I’ve never been more serious, I swear to you—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Big Dave announced. He started lumbering toward the door, several other men laughing among themselves as they followed him outside.
“I know it sounds crazy, but you have to listen to me,” Alex said, desperate that she be believed, now that she’d laid the truth out for them.
Part of the truth, at least. If they wouldn’t take her word about the track she saw in the snow, they would never accept the even more incredible—more terrifying—truth of what she feared was to blame for the murders of Pop Toms and his family.
Even Jenna was gaping at her as if she’d just gone off her rocker. “No one could survive in that cold without proper clothing, Alex. You couldn’t have seen a bare footprint out there. You know that, right?”
“I know what I saw.”
All around them, the meeting began to disband. Alex craned her neck to try to find the stranger, but she couldn’t see him anymore. He was gone. She didn’t know why that thought should disappoint her. Nor did she understand why she felt so compelled to search him out. She was impatient with the need, and desperate to get out of there.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Jenna stood up, giving Alex a sympathetic, if bewildered, smile as she caught her in a tight hug. “You’ve been through a lot. The past couple of days have been rough for everyone, but I’m sure especially you.”
Alex pulled back and gave a vague shake of her head. “I’m fine.”
The church door opened and closed as another group of people walked out into the brisk night. Was he out there, too? She had to know.
“Did you see that guy in the back of the church tonight?” she asked Jenna. “Black hair, pale gray eyes. He was standing by himself near the door.”
Jenna shook her head. “Who are you talking about? I didn’t notice anyone—”
“Never mind. Listen, I think I’m going to skip Pete’s tonight.”
“Good idea,” Jenna agreed as Zach stepped down off the raised platform of the pulpit and walked over to join them. “Go home and get some sleep, okay? You’re always worrying about me, but right now you need to give yourself a little TLC. Besides, it’s been a while since I had a burger and a beer with my old fart of a brother, just the two of us. He’s been avoiding me lately, making me wonder if maybe he’s got a secret girlfriend or something.”
“No girlfriend,” Zach said. “Don’t have time for that when I’m married to my job. You all right, Alex? That was seriously weird and not like you at all. If you want to talk about what happened, with me or even a professional—”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, getting irritated now, and thankful for the anger that was letting her put her troubling past on the back shelf where it belonged. “Look, forget what I said tonight. I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just messing with Big Dave.”
“Well, he’s an asshole and he deserved it,” Jenna said, looking more than a little relieved that she wouldn’t have to call in the white coats after all.
Alex smiled with a lightness she didn’t really feel. “I’m gonna go. Have fun at Pete’s, you guys.”
She hardly waited for them to tell her good-bye. Her rush to the door impeded by a trio of little old ladies talking and walking in slow motion, Alex’s pulse was racing by the time she got her first lungful of the frigid night outside. She stood under the snow-laden eaves of the log-cabin church and glanced in all directions, looking for the striking face that had burned itself into her memory that first instant she saw him.
He wasn’t there.
Whoever he was, whatever had brought him to Harmony when the rest of civilization was barred by bad weather, he’d simply walked out into the darkness and vanished into the thin, cold air.
CHAPTER
Five
Kade trekked deep into the frigid wilderness of the bush, leaving the tiny town of Harmony some forty miles behind him. There were only a handful of winter travel options for humans this far incountry: plane, dogsled, or snow-machine. Kade traveled on foot, his duffel and gear slung onto his back, his snowshoes carrying him over the surface of blowing drifts that could swallow a man to his earlobes. The brittle wind sawed at him as he ran up one steep rise then down through yet another gully, his inhuman speed and endurance all thanks to the part of him that was Breed.
It was his Alaskan heart and soul that relished the cold and the punishing terrain, calling to the wildness inside him—the wildness that was quick to rise again now that he was back on the familiar tundra of his homeland.
Following the frozen Koyukuk River north toward the general location of the Toms settlement was easy enough. Once he got close to the area where the killings had occurred, his acute sense of smell led him the rest of the way. Despite the thick cover of fresh-fallen snow from the storms of the past couple days, to one of his kind, the taint of spilled blood still carried on the wind like a beacon lighting the path toward the scene of the recent carnage.
What he’d seen on the Web-posted video images Gideon had obtained in Boston had prepared him somewhat for his mission. He’d gone to Harmony’s airstrip after the town hall meeting to get a private look at the dead who lay on ice in the yard’s sole hangar. The wounds had been grisly on the video. Seeing them up close and personal certainly hadn’t been an improvement.
But Kade had studied the lacerations—the near eviscerations—with a cool head and an objective eye. He hadn’t found any surprises during his visit to the makeshift morgue. It hadn’t been either animal or human that killed the Toms family.
Something else had brutalized them … just as the young woman, the pretty brown-eyed blonde named Alexandra Maguire, had insisted in the gathering at the town church.
Now, she, on the other hand, had been a surprise.
Tall and lean, with a simple beauty that needed no enhancements, the female had stunned Kade when she stood up and declared that she had seen something strange in the snow. For one thing, Kade had not been aware of any witnesses, except the idiot who’d recorded the video and had the bad sense to post it online. Locating and silencing that particular problem was among Kade’s top mission priorities for the Order, just below the priority of identifying the Rogue vampire—or vampires—responsible for the bloody attack and seeing that justice was served with a cold, swift hand.
But now there was an added complication in the form of this female, Alex.
Just one more wrinkle in a situation already full of them. Whatever she saw, whatever she knew about the killings out here in the bush, she was a problem that Kade would have to deal with before things were complicated any further. He could sure as hell think of worse things to do in the line of duty than pump the attractive blonde for information.
One of those worse things loomed ahead of him in the darkness—the shadowy cluster of houses and outbuildings that comprised the Toms family settlement. Kade’s nostrils twitched with the scent of old blood beneath the white cover of snow that blanketed the site. From this distance some hundred yards away, the scene looked picturesque, peaceful. A quiet frontier outpost nestled among the spruce and birch of the boreal woods that surrounded it.
But the stench of death clung to the place even in the cold, growing more pungent as Kade walked up to the stout log building nearest the trail. He removed his snow-shoes and walked up the two steps to the porch. The rough-hewn door was closed but unlocked. Kade squeezed the latch and gave the door his shoulder, pushing it open.
A large pool of frozen blood glistened like black onyx in the scant glow of the moonlight spilling in around him as he stood on the threshold of the house. His body’s reaction to the sight and scent of the crystallized red cells hit him like a hammer to the skull. Even though the blood was spilled and old, of no use to Kade, whose kind could only take nourishment from the veins of living human beings, his fangs punched out from his gums in response.
He hissed a low curse through those stretching fangs as he lifted his head and caught sight of more blood—more signs of struggle and suffering—in the smeared, dark trail that led from the main room of the cabin toward the short hallway that cut down its center. One of the victims had tried to escape the predator who’d come to kill them. Kade set down his duffel and snowshoes, then followed the corridor. The human had only sealed its fate by fleeing to the back bedroom. Cornered there, the garish splatters on the walls and unmade bed told Kade enough of the brutality of this slaying, as well.
There had been two more lives cut down in this place, and Kade took no satisfaction in piecing together the horrific scenarios of their murders as he walked the rest of the settlement and analyzed the attack. He’d seen enough here. He knew with heavy certainty that the deaths had Bloodlust written all over them. Whoever killed the humans here had done so with a fervor that exceeded anything Kade had ever seen before—even that of the most savage, addicted Rogue.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, his gut tight with disgust as he wheeled away from the ghostly settlement and staggered toward the surrounding forest in need of fresh air. He gulped it in, dragging the taste of brisk winter deep into his lungs.
It wasn’t enough. Hunger and rage twisted around him like tightening chains, suffocating him in the heat of his parka and clothing. Kade tore it all off and stood naked in the biting November night. The chill darkness soothed him, but not by much.
He wanted to run—needed to run—and felt the cold arms of the Alaskan wilderness reach out to embrace him. In the distance, he heard the low howl of a wolf. He felt the cry resonate deep in his marrow, felt it singing through his veins.
Kade threw his head back and answered it.
Another wolf replied, this one markedly closer than the first. In minutes, the pack had moved in, inching toward him through the tight clusters of spruce. Kade glanced from one pair of keen lupine eyes to another. The alpha stepped forward from the trees, a big black male with a ragged right ear. The wolf advanced alone, moving as shadow across the pristine white of the snow.
Kade stood his ground as first the alpha, then the others, walked a slow circle around him. He met their inquisitive eyes and sent a mental promise that he meant them no harm. They understood, as he knew they would.
And when he silently commanded them to take off, the pack bolted into the thick curtain of the starlit woods.
Kade fell in alongside them and ran with the wolves as one of the pack.
Elsewhere in the cold, dark night, another predator strode the frozen, forbidding terrain.
He’d been walking for hours, alone and on foot in this empty wilderness for more nights than he could recall. He thirsted, but his need was not as urgent as it had been when he’d first set out into the cold. His body was nourished now, his muscles, bones, and cells infused with power from the blood he had taken recently. Admittedly, too much blood, but already his system was leveling out from the overfill.
And now that he was stronger, his body revived, he was finding it difficult to curb the thrill of the hunt.
That’s what he was, after all: the purest form of hunter.
It was those predatory instincts that pricked to awareness as the quiet of the woods he crept through was disturbed by the rhythmic gait of a two-legged intruder. The stench of wood smoke and unclean human skin assailed his nose as the dark shape of a man wrapped in a heavy parka materialized not far from where the hunter watched and waited in the darkness. A metallic jangle sounded with each step the human took, emanating from the steel chains and sharp-toothed clamps he gripped in his gloved hand. In the other hand was a dead animal held by its hind feet, a large rodentlike creature that had been gutted along the way.
The human trapper trudged toward a small log shack up the trail.
The hunter watched him walk past, unaware of the gaze that followed him with greedy interest.
For a moment, the hunter debated the merits of cornering his prey within the confines of the tiny shelter versus indulging in a bit of sport among the trees and drifts outside.
Deciding on the latter, he stepped out from the cover of his observation spot and made a low sound in the back of his throat—part warning, part invitation for the now-startled human to run.
The trapper did not disappoint.
“Oh, Jesus. What in God’s name—” Fear blanched his bearded face and rendered his jaw slack. He dropped his paltry prize into the snow at his feet, then stumbled into a terrified dash for the woods.
The hunter’s lips curled off his fangs with anticipation of the chase.
He let his prey crash away some sporting distance, then he set off after him.
CHAPTER
Six
Alex packed up her snowmachine and hit the trail with Luna on board in front of her about an hour before daybreak. She was still rattled from the town meeting the night before, and more than a bit curious about the stranger who’d apparently vanished into the bush as oddly as he’d appeared in the back of Harmony’s little log church.
Who was he? What did he want in tiny, remote Harmony? Where had he come from when the recent snowstorm had left most of the interior cut off from all of the nearest major ports?
And why had he been the only person in the entire assembly last night who’d listened to her account of the footprint left in the snow out at the Toms place and not made her feel like she had lost her mind?
Not that any of that mattered today. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Mysterious was long gone from Harmony, and Alex had a sled packed with as many supplies as she could carry—bare necessities for a few of the folks she’d had to neglect when her plane run to the bush was cut short the other day.
Now she had a scant three hours of daylight and just enough gasoline stowed on board and in the Polaris’s oversize fuel tank to make the hundred-mile round trip.
She had no good reason to detour toward the Toms settlement about an hour into her drive. None, except the gnawing need for answers. The hope—futile as she feared it to be—that she might find some kind of explanation for the slayings that didn’t involve bloodied footprints in the snow and memories dredged up from the pit of her own private hell.
As Alex steered the snowmachine onto the drifted-over trail that led to Pop Toms’s place, Luna jumped off to romp in the fresh, glittering powder.
“Stay with me,” Alex warned the eager wolf dog as she slowed her sled on the approach to the small cluster of dark wood structures.
Watching Luna’s eagerness to race ahead brought on an unwelcome flashback to that awful moment three mornings ago and to the grisly discovery of young Teddy’s body.
And, just like that day, Luna tore off now, ignoring Alex’s calls for her to wait.
“Luna!” Alex shouted into the stillness of the early afternoon. She cut the gas on the snowmachine and leapt off, then huffed and waded as best she could through the deep drifts that had hardly slowed Luna down at all. “Luna!”
Up ahead several yards, the wolf dog ran up the steps of Pop’s porch and disappeared inside. What the hell? The door was open, even though Zach had made certain everything was closed up tight before the bodies of Pop and his family had been taken away. Had the wind blown the door open?
Or had it been something more dangerous than an Arctic gale that swept through here in the time since the killings?
“Luna,” Alex said as she drew closer to the log building, hating the small shake in her voice. Her heart rate started to jackhammer in her chest. She swallowed past her anxiety and tried again. “Luna. Come on out of there, girl.”
She heard movement inside, then a creak and a loud pop as a floorboard protested the cold and the weight of whoever—or whatever—was inside with her dog.
More movement, footsteps approaching the open space of the door. Fear crawled up the back of Alex’s neck. She reached around to the handgun holstered under her parka at the small of her back. She drew the weapon and held it in a two-fisted grip in front of her, just as Luna came trotting nonchalantly out to greet Alex at the bottom of the stairs.
And behind her, farther inside Pop’s house, was a man—the dark-haired stranger from the back of the church last night. Despite the cold, he was dressed in nothing but a pair of loose blue jeans, which he was casually fastening as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
He held Alex’s incredulous gaze with a calmness she could hardly fathom, looking for all the world like staring down the barrel of a loaded .45 was something he did every day.
“You,” Alex murmured, her breath clouding in front of her. “Who are you? What the hell are you doing out here?”
He stood unmoving, unfazed, inside the main room of the house. Instead of answering her questions, he tipped his strong, squared chin to indicate her pistol. “You mind pointing that somewhere else?”
“Yeah, maybe I do,” she said, her pulse still pounding and not entirely from fear now.
The guy was intimidating, nearly six-and-a-half-feet tall, with broad, muscled shoulders and powerful biceps that looked capable of dead-lifting a bull moose. Beneath an unusual pattern of hennalike tattoos that danced artfully over his chest, torso, and arms in some kind of intricate tribal design, his skin had the smooth, golden color of a Native. His hair seemed to indicate the same lineage, jet black and straight, the close-chopped spikes looking as silky as a raven’s wing.
Only his eyes gave him away as something other than pure Alaskan. Pale silver, piercing against the thick, inky lashes that fringed them, they held Alex in a grip that felt almost physical.
“I need to ask you to step outside where I can see you,” she said, not comfortable with this situation—or this unnerving man—in the least. Even though she was certain she was no match for him, with or without bullets to back her up, she made her best attempt at affecting Jenna’s no-bullshit police officer tone. “Right now. Out of the house.”
He cocked his head to the side and glanced past her to the soft overcast haze of the thin afternoon daylight outside. “I’d rather not.”
He’d rather not? Was he serious?
Alex flexed her fingers to get a better grip on the pistol, and he slowly lifted his hands in a show of nonforce.
“It’s about ten below out there. A man could freeze off something vital,” he said, having the nerve to quirk his lips into an amused half smile. “My clothes are inside. As you can see, I wasn’t dressed for company. Or for a shoot-out on the tundra.”
His wry, easy humor deflated most of her trepidation. Without waiting for her to reply—without any regard at all for the loaded firearm still aimed dead-center on him—he pivoted around and walked deeper inside Pop’s house.
Good lord, those fascinatingly odd tattoos wrapped all the way around to his back, too. They seemed to move with him, accentuating the lean, hard muscle that bunched and flexed with his every step.
“No need for you to stand out there in the cold, either,” he said, his deep voice doing something crazy to her pulse as he disappeared from her sight. “Stow the gun and come inside if you want to talk.”
“Shit,” Alex breathed on a huff.
She let her arms relax, not quite sure what just happened. The guy was unbelievable. Was he that arrogant or just plain crazy?
She had half a mind to squeeze off a warning shot, just to let him know she was serious, but at that same moment, Luna gave a short whine and loped back up the steps and into the house behind him. Disloyal mutt.
With a low-muttered curse, Alex lowered the pistol and cautiously walked up to the porch and the open door of what had been almost a second home to her for the past several years. As she entered Pop’s place now, it couldn’t have felt more foreign to her. Wrong in every way.
Without Pop Toms’s booming voice to greet her as she walked in, the house felt colder, darker, emptier than ever. Thankfully, there was no blood spilled within, as he and Teddy had either run or been chased outside before their killer managed to catch them. Everything looked just as it would be if they’d been there, only it chilled Alex like some kind of alternate reality that had collided with the one she knew.
Out of place in the cramped living room was a black leather duffel bag that sat unzipped on the skirted orange-and-brown plaid sofa. Alex stole a quick look at the contents, noting a couple changes of clothes inside and a rather nasty hunting knife that had been removed from its sheath and set atop a pair of black military-style fatigues.
But the gleaming, serrated blade that looked as though it would make short work of a grizzly’s hide was merely an appetizer for the rest of the weaponry laid out in Pop’s living room.
A high-powered rifle with a blunted barrel was propped in the corner nearest the door. Beside it on the scarred lamp table that Pop Toms had made with his own hands as a wedding gift for his wife some three decades ago was a book-size case of custom rounds. The tips of the big, shiny bullets were pointed and capped, the kind of ammunition that ripped through the toughest flesh and bone in an instant, showing no mercy and taking no prisoners. Another gun, a semiautomatic 9mm that easily trumped her .45 revolver, rested in a black chest holster next to the case of hollow points.
Having lived in the bush most of her life, Alex didn’t cower at the sight of weapons or hunting gear, but this personal arsenal—and the awareness that the man who owned it had suddenly, silently, returned to the room with her—took her aback.
She glanced up to find him shrugging into a thick gray chamois shirt and rolling the sleeves off’ his forearms. The fascinating array of tattoos disappeared as he worked a couple of the buttons closed in front. In the tight confines of the room, Alex caught the scent of Arctic air and crisp pine, as well as something wilder that seemed to cling to him and made her senses come to full attention.
God, had she been so long without male companionship that her survival instinct was broken? She didn’t think so, and then again, she wasn’t the only female in the room to be affected by this stranger who’d appeared out of nowhere last night. Luna had parked her traitorous butt at his feet and gazed up adoringly at him while he reached down and scratched her behind the ears. Normally the wolf dog was cautious around strangers, wary of new people, but not with him.
If she needed someone to vouch for a person’s character, she could do a lot worse than listen to Luna’s instincts. For that matter, Alex had her own internal gauge for judging whether she could trust someone, a sort of instinctual lie-detector that she’d been aware of since she was a child. Unfortunately, in order for it to work, she needed to be close enough to touch the person—even a simple brush of her fingers against someone was usually connection enough for her to tell if she was being lied to.
Tempting as it was to put her hands on some of this guy’s bare skin, it would also mean setting down her gun. Frankly, she didn’t think it would be smart to get that friendly just yet.
“Who are you?” Alex demanded, wondering if he would answer this time. “What were you doing at the town meeting in Harmony, and what business do you have being out here? This is a crime scene you’re compromising, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed. And the three feet of fresh snow burying the place had compromised it long before I got here,” he said without apologizing, still rubbing his big hand over Luna’s head and under her chin while the dog practically drooled with contentment.
Alex could have sworn something unspoken passed between man and canine in the moment before Luna rose and came strolling back to Alex to lick her hand.
“Name’s Kade,” he said, pinning her with that shrewd, steady, silver gaze. He reached out and offered his hand, but Alex hadn’t quite decided if she could trust him that far yet. He hesitated for a moment, then let his arm fall back down to his side. “I gather from what I heard last night that you were close to the victims. I’m sorry for your loss, Alex.”
It unnerved her, the way he said her name with such easy familiarity. She didn’t like the way his voice, and his uninvited, unexpected compassion seemed to reach inside her chest and wrap itself around her senses. She didn’t know him, and she definitely didn’t need his sympathy.
“You’re not from around here,” she said abruptly, needing to maintain some sense of distance as the walls seemed to crowd in on her the longer she was in his presence. “But you’re not from Outside, either. Are you?”
He gave a vague shake of his head. “I was born in Alaska, grew up north of Fairbanks.”
“Oh? Who’s your family?” she asked, trying to sound conversational rather than interrogatory.
He blinked, just once, a slow shuttering of his remarkable eyes. “You wouldn’t know my family.”
“You might be surprised. I know a lot of people,” she said, pressing all the harder for his evasiveness. “Try me.”
His broad lips curved at the corners. “Is that an invitation, Alex?”
She cleared her throat, caught off guard by the innuendo, but even more so by the sharp kick of her pulse as he let the question hang between them. He walked toward her then, an easy, long-legged stride that brought him to within arms’ reach of her.
God, he was gorgeous. All the more so up close. His lean face was sharp angles and strong bones, his black brows and lashes setting off the wintry color and keen intelligence of his eyes, which tilted ever so slightly at the corners. Wolfish eyes. A hunter’s eyes.
Alex felt snared in them as he came even closer. She felt the heat of his hand on hers, then a firm but gentle pressure as he carefully extracted the pistol from her fingers.
He offered it back to her in the open palm of his hand. “You won’t need to use this, I promise.”
When she mutely accepted the gun and returned it to its holster behind her back, he strode over to the sofa and sheathed the wicked blade that had been resting at the top of his open duffel.
“You must have been shaken up pretty badly, being one of the first to see what had happened here.”
“It wasn’t a good day,” she said, the understatement of the year. “The Tomses were decent people. They didn’t deserve to die like this. No one does.”
“No,” he replied soberly. “Nobody deserves this kind of death. Except the beasts responsible for what happened to your friends.”
Alex looked at him as he closed the lid on his lethal rounds and put the case back into his bag. “Is that what brought you here—you and all these weapons? Did someone from Harmony hire you to come in and slaughter an innocent pack of wolves? Or are you here to collect on your own instead?”
He cocked his head in her direction. “No one hired me. I’m a problem solver. That’s all you need to know.”
“Bounty hunter,” she muttered, with more venom than probably was wise. “What happened out here had nothing to do with wolves.”
“So you said last night in that meeting.” His voice was more level than she’d heard it thus far. And when he looked at her, it was with a probing intensity that made her take a step backward on the boot heels of her Sorels. “Nobody believed you.”
“Do you?”
If possible, that hard silver gaze mined deeper. As though he could see right through her, all the way down to the memories she could not bear to relive. “Tell me what you know, Alex.”
“You mean, tell you more about the footprint I found outside?”
He gave the barest shake of his head. “I mean the rest of it. How is it that you can be so certain these killings weren’t done by animals? Did you see the attack?”
“No, thank God,” she answered quickly.
Too quickly maybe, because he took a step toward her, scowling now. Sizing her up.
“What about the video? Is there more of it somewhere? Something beyond the footage shot after the killings had occurred?”
“What?” Alex had no need to feign confusion now. “What video? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Three days ago, a cell phone video clip was shot out here and posted to an illegal site on the Internet.”
“Oh, my God.” Appalled, Alex brought her hand up to her mouth. “And you saw it?”
The tendon that jerked in his cheek was confirmation enough. “If you know something more about the slayings that took place here, I need you to tell me now, Alex. It’s very important that I have all the information I can get.”
If Alex had been tempted to blurt everything out last night in the town meeting, now, as she stood alone before this man—this stranger who rattled her inexplicably on every level of her being—the words clogged up tight in her throat. She didn’t know him. She wasn’t at all sure she could trust him, even if she did somehow ratchet up the nerve to drag her darkest suspicions into the light.
“Why are you really here?” she asked him softly. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for answers, Alex. I’m looking for the same thing I believe you are—the truth. Maybe there’s a way for us to help each other.”
The sharp trill of Alex’s cell phone broke the lengthening quiet. It rang again, giving her the excuse she needed to put a few paces between herself and the man whose presence seemed to be sucking all the air out of the room. Alex turned away from him and connected to the call.
It was Jenna, phoning to remind her that they were supposed to meet up for dinner at Pete’s tonight. Alex murmured a hasty confirmation but stayed on the phone after Jenna said her good-byes and disconnected. “Yeah, no problem,” Alex said into the dead air of the receiver. “I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops. All right. Yep, bye.”
She stuffed the phone into the pocket of her parka and pivoted back to face Luna’s new favorite person, who was now seated on the sofa with Alex’s dog lying at his feet. “I have to get going. Deliveries to make before sundown, and then I’m meeting a friend for dinner in town.”
She was anxious to get away now, but why did she feel compelled to make excuses to this man? What should he care why she was leaving as though she couldn’t run out of there fast enough?
Alex subtly snapped her fingers and called Luna’s name. To the wolf dog’s credit, she ambled over without looking too heartbroken to be summoned away from him.
“I’ll let Officer Tucker know that you were here today,” she added, figuring it couldn’t hurt to remind him that she was friendly with the police.
“You do that, Alex.” He didn’t get up from his negligent slouch on Pop Toms’s sofa. “Be careful out there. I’ll see you around.”
Alex caught his slow-spreading grin as she rounded up Luna and headed out the door of the cabin. Although she didn’t dare look behind her, she could feel those quicksilver eyes at the back of her neck, watching her as she hopped on her snowmachine with Luna and gave the motor some juice. She’d driven out a few hundred yards before another thought hit her.
She hadn’t seen another sled parked anywhere.
So just how the hell had he made the forty-plus-mile trip from Harmony all the way north through the open wilderness?
CHAPTER
Seven
Kade waited out the short few hours of daylight in the cabin at the Toms settlement. As soon as it was safe for him and his solar-sensitive Breed skin to venture outside, he took off on foot once more, this time heading for the ten-thousand-acre plot of land his family owned north of Fairbanks.
He wondered how he would be greeted in his father’s Darkhaven compound—he, the prodigal, the unapologetic black sheep, who’d left a year ago without excuse or explanation, and never looked back. He felt some guilt for that, but didn’t figure anyone would believe him if he said it.
He wondered if Seth would be at the compound when he arrived, and, if so, what his brother would say about the killings that had brought Kade home from Boston to investigate on behalf of the Order.
But more than any of that, Kade wondered what it was that Alexandra Maguire was hiding.
Kade had enough personal experience with keeping secrets to guess that the attractive female bush pilot wasn’t being entirely honest about what she knew of the recent deaths—not with the townsfolk or local law enforcement, nor with him earlier today. Possibly not even with herself.
He could have pushed her for the truth when he’d met her at the Toms settlement, but Alex didn’t seem the type to be forced into doing anything she didn’t want to do. Kade would need to win her trust in order to win the information he needed from her.
He might even have to seduce it out of her, an idea he considered with far too much interest. Yeah. Tough job, getting close to Alexandra Maguire. Every mission should demand that onerous a task.
Thoughts of how he would play things with her the next time he saw her made the hours and miles fall away behind him. In no time, he had reached the huge tract of forested, virgin wilderness that had been in his family’s possession for centuries. The familiar smell of the woods and the earth that lay dormant beneath the snow put a tightness in his chest. For so long, this expanse of land had been his home, his kingdom and domain.
How many times had he and Seth run wild and whooping through this very forest, brothers-in-arms, young lords of the chase? Too many to recall.
But Kade remembered the night that the idyll of their shared childhood had ended. He still felt the weight of that moment in the cold hand of dread that clamped down on the back of his neck as he approached the sprawling compound of hand-hewn log buildings that comprised his father’s Darkhaven.
Unlike most Breed civilian communities, this Darkhaven had no perimeter fence or closed-circuit security cameras. There were no guards posted along the way, either. Then again, this far out in the bush, there was no need. The land itself acted as sentry to the many residences and the people living within them. Harsh, remote, expansive.
If the predators on four legs didn’t dissuade any unwanted human visitors from stumbling onto the property, Kade’s father and the roughly twenty other Breed males living inside the Darkhaven would be happy to take care of them.
Kade trudged through the snowy path that led up to the large main house. He knocked on the doorjamb, uncomfortable entering the place unannounced.
His father’s younger brother came to the door and opened it. “What are you doing standing out there in the snow, Seth …?”
“Uncle Maksim,” Kade said, tipping his head in greeting when recognition lit up the other male’s face. “How are you, Max?”
The Breed male was nearly three hundred years old but, like all of their kind, looked to be in the prime of life with his unlined face and thick brown hair. “I am well,” he replied. “This is certainly a welcome surprise, Kade. Your father will be so pleased that you are home.”
Kade resisted the urge to chuckle at that sentiment, but only because he knew his uncle meant it as kindness. “Is he here?”
Maksim nodded. “In his study. My God, it’s a relief to see you again and to know that you are alive and well. You’d been away so long without contact, I’m afraid many of us had assumed the worst about you.”
“Yeah,” Kade said, knowingly wry. “I get that a lot. Will you tell my father I’m here?”
His uncle clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll do better than that. Come with me. I’ll take you to him myself.”
Kade followed the big male through the massive residence to the private study that overlooked the broad western range of the property. Maksim rapped his knuckles on the door, then squeezed the latch and pushed it open.
“Kir. Look who’s returned home, my brother.”
Kade’s father turned away from an open program on his computer, rotating in his large leather chair to face them. Kade watched the stern expression darken from one of surprise and relief, to one of confusion and not-too-mild disappointment when he realized it was the prodigal son who waited at the threshold, not the favored one. The scowl deepened. “Kade.”
“Father,” he replied, knowing there would be no emotional embraces or warm welcomes as his father got up from his seat and strode around to the front of his long desk.
He spared only the barest glance at his brother who stood behind Kade near the door. “Leave us, Maksim.”
Kade felt rather than saw his uncle’s silent, obedient retreat from the room. He watched his father instead, seeing the harsh disapproval in the dark gaze that pinned him across the distance of the private study. Kade set down his duffel of belongings and weaponry and awaited his father’s displeasure.
“You failed to mention you intended to come home when we spoke a couple days ago.” When Kade offered no excuse, his father exhaled sharply. “Then again, that’s hardly surprising. You didn’t bother to say much before you left us a year ago, either. Just walked away with no thought to responsibility or to your family.”
“It was time for me to go,” Kade replied after a long moment. “There were things I needed to do.”
His father’s scoff sounded brittle with animosity. “I hope it was worth it. You broke your mother’s heart, you realize that, don’t you? Until you called out of the blue the other day, she was certain you’d gone off and gotten yourself killed by joining up with those warrior vigilantes back in Boston. And although Seth would be the last person to speak poorly of you, I can tell you that your leaving broke his heart, too. Your brother has changed since you’ve been away.”
And of course, the blame for that and everything else sat squarely on Kade’s shoulders. He shook his head, knowing that it was no use trying to defend himself or the Order. Lucan and the other warriors didn’t need his father’s support or approval. For that matter, neither did he.
He’d survived without that for a long damned time already, and he had since given up needing to prove himself to the man.
“So, Seth is still away on business for you?”
His father met the question with a narrow look. “He’s due back soon. I presume he will also feed while he’s gone, which is likely the reason for his delay.”
“What about Patrice?”
“They are not yet mated,” came his father’s clipped reply.
Kade grunted in acknowledgment, and wished he could feel more surprise to hear this news. For half a dozen years, it had been accepted that Seth and Patrice, one of the Breedmates who lived in the family Darkhaven since she was a child, would eventually become a blood-bonded pair. At that time, Patrice had chosen him above all the other males in the region, and to his parents’ delight, Seth had agreed to make the female his mate. Problem was, he seemed to find one good excuse after another to put her off.
Without a Breedmate to fulfill a vampire’s need for blood, he was forced to feed off the mortal population for sustenance instead. Most Breed males welcomed the unbreakable, eternal bond that would release them from the slavery of their bloodthirst and provide a steady, loving source of strength and passion for the whole of a male’s life.
But there were some who preferred to remain unattached, hunting where they willed, relishing the constant chase and conquest of new human prey.
Kade himself was in no rush to lock himself down with a Breedmate of his own, another point of contention with his father and mother, who had been blood-bonded and happily mated for more than a century. Instead they’d pinned their hopes on Seth. He’d been the studious one, the cerebral one, who it was assumed would one day take the reins as the leader of the family Darkhaven or form his own.
Kade had always been the raucous opposite of his brother. It was that reckless streak that had likely condemned him in his father’s eyes, while Seth’s careful outward control had given him seemingly limitless freedoms.
“Well,” his father said after a prolonged silence. “Since you’ve come to your senses and returned home now, I trust this means you’re ready to try to be part of the family once more. As it seems you’ve come back with barely more than the clothes on your back, I’ll make arrangements to transfer some funds into your old account.”
“I didn’t come here for a handout,” Kade bit off, his anger spiking at the assumption. “And as for staying, it’s not in my plan—”
“Where is my son?” Kade’s words were cut short by a petite cyclone who threw open the doors of the study and breezed inside. “It really is you! Oh, Kade!”
She pulled Kade into a fierce embrace, her body vibrating with emotion. His mother was just as beautiful and vibrant as ever—more so, her glow enhanced by the large, expectant swell of her belly beneath the loose-fitting, winter-white sweater and pants she wore. Ebony-haired with pale silver eyes that matched both his and Seth’s, Kade’s mother, Victoria, was a breathtaking woman. Like her mate, she, too, appeared no more than thirty years old, her aging halted by the blood bond she shared with Kir.
“Oh, my darling boy. I’ve been so worried about you! Thank God you’ve come back—and will you look at me, just in time.” She smiled, positively beaming. “You’ll have two new brothers in less than a month. Identical twins again, just like you and Seth.”
Although she seemed delighted by the prospect, Kade felt a sick twist in his gut. The talent that he and Seth shared, the ability to communicate with and command predator animals, was a unique skill passed down to them genetically from their Breedmate mother, in the same way that Seth and he shared Victoria’s smooth golden skin, dark hair, and exotic eyes. But unlike her, in Kade and Seth, with their father’s Breed blood running hot through their veins, the talent had a dark side. He hated to think that the pattern might repeat itself in another set of brothers.
“You look well, Mother. I’m glad to see you so happy.”
“I’m even happier now that you’re here. You’ll see I’ve kept your quarters just as you left them. Not a day passed when I didn’t hope and pray that I would have both of my beloved sons safe and sound, living under our roof again as a family.”
She threw her arms around him once more, and Kade felt all the worse for what he had to say. “I … I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. I didn’t come back to live here, Mother. I’m here on business for the Order.”
She drew back, her expression falling. “You won’t stay?”
“Only until my mission is complete. Then I have to return to Boston. I’m sorry if you thought—”
“You can’t go,” she murmured, tears welling in her eyes. “You belong here, Kade. This is your home. We are your family. You have a life here—”
He gently shook his head. “My life is with the Order now. They need me, and I have important things to do. Mother, I am sorry to disappoint you.”
She sobbed behind her hand, and took a few steps back on her heels. She wobbled unsteadily with the sudden movement, and Kade’s father was right at her side, wrapping her protectively under his arm. He spoke softly to her, tenderly, private words that seemed to soothe her somewhat. But her tears and sobs did not stop completely.
Kade’s father escorted her carefully to the door, pausing only to lift his head and level a hard look on his son. Their gazes met and clashed, neither one of them willing to back down. “You and I are not finished here, Kade. I will expect you to wait for me until I finish looking after your mother.”
He waited as ordered, but only for a minute. Time away had made him forget what it had been like to be in this place. He couldn’t live under his father’s roof any more than he could live under Seth’s shadow. It killed him to cause his mother distress, but if he’d needed a reminder that he didn’t belong here, he’d gotten it as clearly as possible in the look his father gave him as he was walking out the door.
“Shit,” Kade hissed, as he grabbed his duffel bag and exited the study.
He walked outside, thinking the frigid air would help clear his head. Instead his gaze was snagged by the sight of his brother’s cabin. He knew he shouldn’t go inside—he had no right, actually—but the need for answers was more powerful than any sense of guilt at invading Seth’s privacy. Kade opened the door and walked inside.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Some sense of chaos or the scattered clutter of a troubled mind? But Seth’s quarters were as neat as ever, not a single thing out of place. All of his furnishings and belongings were orderly and precisely arranged. There was a philosophy book on the reading table beside the sofa, a collection of classical music on rotation in the stereo CD player. On Seth’s computer workstation, a file folder containing spreadsheet printouts he was obviously working on for their father lay neatly closed underneath a crystal paperweight.
Seth, the perfect son.
Except, the more Kade looked around, the more the cabin seemed staged rather than lived in. Things were too neat. Too carefully arranged, as though put there on the chance that someone might be poking about, searching for something amiss. Or for some overt sign of deception, just as Kade was doing now.
But Kade knew his brother better than anyone else. He was a part of Seth, unlike anyone else could be because of the inextricable bond they’d been born with as identical twins. From the time they were boys they’d been two parts of one whole, inseparable, with an unspoken mutual understanding of each other.
Kade had believed that he and Seth were alike in every way … until the first time he saw his brother command a wolf pack to pursue and slaughter a grizzly.
They were just boys then, fourteen years old and eager to test the boundaries of both their strength and their preternatural abilities. Seth was showing off, bragging about how he’d befriended an area wolf pack and could command the minds of more than one animal at a time. Kade had never done that—he hadn’t even realized he could—which made Seth all too willing to demonstrate.
He’d summoned the pack with a howl, and before Kade realized what was happening, he and Seth were running with the wolves in search of prey. They came across a grizzly bear catching salmon in a river. Seth told the pack to take the bear down. To Kade’s astonishment, they obeyed. But even more stunning—infinitely more abhorrent—was the sight of Seth participating in the slaughter.
It was a bloody, prolonged battle … and Seth had reveled in it. Slick with the animal’s blood and gore, he’d called Kade to join in, but Kade had been appalled. He’d vomited in the weeds, never feeling so sick with misery in all his life.
Seth had teased him privately for weeks afterward. He’d goaded Kade, acting as the devil on his shoulder, challenging him to test the limits of his talent to determine which of them was the more powerful twin. Kade had stupidly given in. Pride had made him a fool, and so he’d picked up the gauntlet Seth had thrown.
He’d honed his ability until it came as naturally to him as breathing. He’d learned to love the feel of the untamed wild on his skin, drenching his senses, caught between his teeth and fangs. He’d become so adept, so addicted to the power of his talent, it was soon nearly impossible to hold it under rein.
Seth had been furious that Kade’s ability had exceeded his own. He was jealous and insecure, a dangerous combination. He’d suddenly found something more to prove to Kade, and his violent inclinations took on a more disturbing focus.
At some point, Seth had quietly advanced his dark talent toward other prey.
He and his pack had killed a human.
It happened just months before Kade was recruited by the Order. Repulsed, furious, he’d intended to drag Seth in front of their father and the rest of the Darkhaven and expose his inexcusable breach of Breed law. But Seth had pleaded with him. He’d sworn up and down that it had all been a terrible mistake—a game somehow gotten completely out of hand. He had begged Kade not to turn him in. He’d promised that the killing had been accidental, and that it would never happen again.
Kade had doubted him even then. He should have exposed Seth’s secret. But Seth was his beloved brother—the other half of him. Kade knew what the news of Seth’s crime would do to his parents, particularly his mother. So Kade had kept the secret, even though holding it had been eating away at him constantly every moment since.
He’d protected Seth from the truth and sheltered his parents from the pain of it, and when the call came from Nikolai in Boston that the Order needed new recruits, Kade jumped on the chance to join.
Now the slayings of the Toms family had brought it all back. He hoped like hell his brother wasn’t capable of killing an entire family in cold blood, but he feared Seth’s promise a year ago was proving too hard for him to keep.
With that fear heavy on his mind, Kade started to walk toward the door. He didn’t realize until he was halfway there that he was walking on the thick pelt of a grizzly. The skin covered the living room floor, and although the bear Seth and his wolves had killed all those years ago was long lost to time and the elements, the frozen snarl of this dead bear’s head gave Kade pause. He walked back and knelt down near the open jaw of the animal.
“Ah, Christ. Let me be wrong,” he whispered as he carefully stuck his hand into the sharp-toothed maw.
He reached back as far as he could and swore tightly as his fingers brushed the soft cloth and loose bulk of a hidden pouch at the back of the grizzly’s throat.
Kade withdrew the small drawstring bag, hearing a metallic jingle as it came to rest in his palm. He loosened the strings and poured out the contents. Several gold rings slid into his hand, along with a braided leather bracelet with a bear tooth dangling from it and small locks of clipped hair collected from a variety of human heads. Dried blood caked some of the items.
There could be no mistaking them for anything but what they were …
Souvenirs that Seth had apparently been collecting. A killer’s hidden cache of mementos, taken from his victims.
“You son of a bitch,” Kade ground out harshly. “You sick, fucking son of a bitch.”
Anger and grief collided in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. He wanted to make excuses, grasp for any possible explanation except the one that was clanging around like a warning bell in his skull.
His brother was a killer.
Had he attacked the Toms family so heinously, too?
Something deep inside Kade just could not reconcile the wholesale slaughter of an entire family.
Despite the dread that was sitting like ice in his gut, he needed more answers before he was willing to convict Seth of being that kind of monster. He needed proof. Hell, he needed to look his brother in the face and demand the truth from him, once and for all.
And if it turned out that Seth was guilty, then Kade was prepared to do what needed to be done. What by rights he should have done when he’d first seen evidence of Seth’s apparent disregard for human life.
He would hunt his goddamn brother down and he would kill him.
CHAPTER
Eight
Most of the crowd at Pete’s that night was gathered in the bar area out front, the din of conversation competing with the racket of a hockey game on satellite TV and an old Eagles song wailing on the jukebox that squatted near the unisex restroom and the entryway to the game room in back. Alex and Jenna sat across from each other at one of the tables in the center of the place. They’d finished dinner some time ago and were now splitting a piece of Pete’s homemade apple pie while they nursed the warming dregs of their microbrews.
Jenna had been yawning off and on for the past hour or so and checking her watch, but Alex knew her friend was too polite to bail on her. Selfishly, Alex wanted to prolong their visit. She had insisted on the pie and one last beer, had even fed a couple of quarters to the jukebox so she had the excuse to wait for her song to play before they left.
Anything to avoid going home to her empty house.
She missed her dad, now more than ever. For so long, he had been her closest friend and confidant. He’d been her strong, willing, and capable protector when the world around her had been turned upside-down by violence. He would be the only one who’d understand the unspeakable fears that were swirling in her now. He’d be the only one she could turn to, the only one who could tell her that everything would be all right and almost convince her that he believed it.
Now, except for her dog, she was alone, and she was terrified.
The urge to pull up stakes and run from what she’d seen that awful day at the Toms settlement was almost overwhelming. But where to? If running from Florida to Alaska hadn’t been far enough to escape the monsters that lurked in her memories, then where could she possibly hope to escape them next?
“You gonna twirl that fork all night, or are you going to have some of this pie?” Jenna downed the last of her beer and set the bottle on the rough wood table with a soft thump. “You wanted dessert, but you’re making me eat most of it.”
“Sorry,” Alex murmured as she put down her fork. “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was.”
“Everything okay, Alex? If you need to talk about what happened the other night at the meeting, or out at the Toms place—”
“No. I don’t want to talk about it. What’s to say anyway? Shit happens, right? Bad things happen to good people all the time.”
“Yeah, they do,” Jenna said quietly, her eyes dimming under the glare of the tin lamp overhead. “Listen, I was over at Zach’s for a little while this afternoon. Sounds like the Alaska State Troopers in Fairbanks have their hands full at the moment, but they’ll be sending a unit out to us in a few days. In the meantime, they discovered video footage of the crime scene on the Internet, of all places. Some asshole apparently went out there with a cell phone camera not long after you’d been there, then uploaded the video to an illegal site that allegedly pays a hundred bucks for actual blood-and-guts material.”
Alex sat forward in her chair, her attention snapped sharply back into focus to hear a confirmation of what Kade had told her out at the Toms place. “Do they know who?”
Jenna rolled her eyes and gestured toward the game room, where a small group of the local stoners were shooting darts.
“Skeeter Arnold,” Alex said, unsurprised that the slacker, perpetually unemployed yet never without a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other, would be the one so lacking in respect for the dead that he would sell them out for a few dollars. “What a bastard. And to think that he and Teddy Toms had been hanging out together quite a bit before …”
She couldn’t finish the sentence; the reality was still too raw.
Jenna nodded. “Skeeter has a way of latching on to kids he can manipulate. He’s a user and a loser. I’ve been telling Zach for the past year or more that I have a hunch the guy is pushing drugs and alcohol on the dry Native populations. Unfortunately, cops need to have this sticky thing called evidence before they arrest and prosecute, and Zach keeps reminding me that all I have on Skeeter Arnold is suspicion.”
Alex watched her friend, seeing the tenacity sparking in Jenna’s eyes. “Do you miss it? Being a cop, I mean.”
“Nope.” Jenna frowned as though considering, then gave a firm shake of her head. “I couldn’t do that job anymore. I don’t want to be responsible for cleaning up someone else’s tragedies or fuckups. Besides that, every time I’d walk up to a traffic accident, I’d be wondering whose heart was going to be torn apart once I called in my report. I don’t have the stomach for police work now.”
Alex reached out and gave her friend’s hand a gentle, understanding squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re a great cop, and that’s because you do care. It was never just a job to you, and it showed. We need more people like you looking out for the rest of us. I keep thinking that maybe one day you’ll go back to it.”
“No,” she replied, and through the link of their hands, Alex’s inner sense told her that Jenna meant it. “I lost my edge when I lost Mitch and Libby. Do you realize it will be four years later this week?”
“Oh, Jen.”
Alex recalled very well the November night that took the lives of Jenna’s trooper husband and their little girl. The whole family had been traveling home from a special dinner in Galena when an icy snow kicked up and sent their Blazer sliding into oncoming traffic. The eighteen-wheeler that hit them was hauling a full load on its oversize trailer—five tons of timber on its way to the Lower Forty-eight.
Mitch had been driving the Blazer and was killed on impact. Libby held on for two days in the hospital, broken and bruised on life support, before her little body simply gave up. As for Jenna, she had lain in a coma for a month and a half, only to wake up to the terrible news that Mitch and Libby were gone.
“Everyone says that in time it won’t hurt so bad. Give it time, and I’ll be able to console myself with happy memories of what I had, not dwell on what I’ve lost.” Jenna blew out a hitched breath as she withdrew her hand from Alex’s loose grasp and picked at the label on her empty beer bottle. “It’s been four years, Alex. Shouldn’t I have some closure by now?”
“Closure,” Alex scoffed. “I’m the wrong one to ask about that. Dad’s only been gone six months, but I don’t think I’ll ever give up hoping to see him walk through the door again. That’s part of the reason why I’m thinking I might …”
Jenna stared at her as the words trailed off. “Might what?”
Alex shrugged. “I guess it’s just that I’ve been wondering lately if things might be better for me if I sold the house and moved on.”
“Move on, as in leave Harmony?”
“As in leave Alaska, Jen.” And hopefully leave behind all of the death that seemed to follow her wherever she ran. Before it had the chance to catch up to her again. “I’m just thinking that maybe I need a fresh start somewhere, that’s all.”
She couldn’t read Jenna’s expression, which seemed trapped somewhere between misery and envy. Before her highly persuasive friend could launch into a counteroffensive argument for why Alex needed to stay, a loud roar of masculine enthusiasm went up from the area of the bar.
“What’s all that about?” Alex asked, unable to tell what was going on with her back to the ruckus. “Did Big Dave’s team win or something?”
“I don’t know, but he and his crew just bellied up to the bar in a hurry.” Jenna glanced back at her then and exhaled a soft curse. “You are my best friend, Alex, and you know I’m damned picky when it comes to my friends. You can’t sit there over a half-eaten slice of pie in the middle of hockey night at Pete’s tavern and casually drop a bomb on me about you’re thinking of moving away. Since when? And why haven’t you talked to me about any of this? I thought as friends we shared everything.”
Not everything, Alex admitted silently. There were some things she wasn’t brave enough to share with anyone. Things about herself and things she’d seen that would label her either mentally unstable or positively deranged. Jenna didn’t even know that Alex’s mom and little brother were murdered, let alone how.
Slaughtered.
Attacked by creatures out of the worst nightmare.
Alex and her father had concocted a more believable lie as they’d made the trip to Alaska to begin their lives without the other, missing half of their family. To anyone who asked, Alex’s mother and kid brother were killed by a drunk driver down in Florida. They had died instantly, painlessly.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
Alex had felt guilty for perpetuating the lie, especially to Jenna, but she’d consoled herself that she was only protecting her friend. No one would want to know the horror that Alex and her father witnessed and narrowly escaped. No one would want to think that evil so terrible—so bloodthirsty and violent—could actually exist in the world.
She told herself that she was still protecting Jenna, shielding her friend in much the same way that Alex’s father tried to shield her.
“I’m just thinking about it right now, that’s all,” she murmured, then drank the last sip of her warm beer.
No sooner had she set it down than a platinum-haired waitress came over carrying two fresh ones. The bright pink streak in her bleached-blond hair matched the garish shade of her lipstick, Alex noted, as the young woman bent down to place the chilled bottles on the table.
Alex shook her head. “Oh, wait a second, Annabeth. We already paid our bill and we didn’t order these.”
“I know,” she said, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the bar area. “Someone out front just bought a round for the house.”
Jenna groaned. “If it’s from Big Dave, I’ll pass.”
“Not him,” Annabeth said, grinning broadly, her whole face lit up. “Never saw this guy before—tall, spiky black hair, incredible eyes, absolutely smoking hot.”
Now it was Alex’s turn to groan. She knew it had to be Kade, even before she pivoted in her seat and shot a searching look into the small crowd of men gathered at the bar. He towered over the others, his silky, dark head at the center of the throng.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered as the waitress left the table.
“Do you know him?” Jenna asked.
“He’s the guy I saw at the back of the church last night. His name is Kade. I saw him again today out at the Toms settlement when I was making my supply run.”
Jenna frowned. “What the hell was he doing out there?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I found him in Pop Toms’s cabin, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed in the middle of the afternoon. And he was well armed, too—I’m talking high-powered rifle, knife, handgun, and rounds intended for some very large game. I gather he’s looking to help out with our supposed wolf problem.”
“No wonder Big Dave seems so fond of him,” Jenna remarked dryly. “Well, I couldn’t possibly drink another beer, free or otherwise. I’m beat. I need to stop by Zach’s to drop off some files he asked me for, then I really should head home.”
Alex nodded, trying not to think about the fact that Kade was in the same room with her, or the unnerving way her pulse seemed to skitter at the idea.
Jenna stood up and pulled her long down coat from a hook on the wall. “How about you? You want me to give you a ride to the house?”
“No.” Late as it was, and as crowded as Pete’s seemed to be getting now that Kade was there, it still beat the thought of what awaited her at home. “Go on, don’t worry about me. I’m going to finish this pie and maybe have a cup of coffee to wash it down. Besides, I’d rather walk the two blocks home. The fresh air will do me good.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” At her nod, Jenna gave her a quick hug. “No more talk of moving away, all right? Not without consulting me first. Got it?”
Alex smiled, but it felt like a weak effort. “Got it.”
She watched her friend wade through the tavern, the cop in Jenna unable to resist stealing an assessing sidelong glance at the stranger in town. Above the noise of the place, Alex heard the hollow jangle of the old cowbell on the door as Jenna slammed it shut behind her.
Alex cut into the pie with the edge of her fork, but stopped short of bringing it to her mouth. What the hell was she doing? She wasn’t the least bit hungry, and the last thing she needed was a cup of Pete’s crude oil–quality coffee to keep her awake all night once she finally did work up the nerve to go home.
God, she was being ridiculous. What she really needed was to go home, feed Luna before the dog tore up the house in retaliation for being abandoned all night, then try to get some solid sleep for a change. She could think about everything else in the morning, when her head was clearer. Things would make more sense then. At least, she hoped so, because she wasn’t sure what could possibly happen to throw her off balance any more than she was now.
As soon as she stood up and shrugged into her parka, Alex felt the two beers she’d consumed make a quick rush to her bladder. Great. Using the restroom at Pete’s meant walking right past the bar—and Kade. She considered ignoring the urgent press of her plumbing, but the two blocks to her house from the tavern, in the frigid cold, would be torture. Maybe even disastrous.
So what if Kade might see that she was there? She sure as hell didn’t need to talk to him. She didn’t even need to so much as look at him.
Yeah, brilliant plan. Too bad it fell apart the moment she took two paces away from her table.
She felt Kade’s quicksilver eyes slicing through the crowd to zero in on her like twin laser beams. His gaze went through her every nerve ending in much the same way—hot, electric. Alex tried to ignore the effect he had on her, which was made a bit easier when she separated Big Dave’s grating voice from the others and heard him bragging about his recent hunting exploits while Kade smiled and nodded along like he was hanging out with his best friends.
Twenty-four hours in town and he was one of the good ol’ boys already. How freaking nice for him.
Disgusted, Alex continued on past the jukebox to the restroom. Breathing a small sigh of relief to find it unoccupied, she went right in and did her business, rolling her eyes as the good times and laughter continued on the other side of the locked door. It wasn’t until she was at the sink washing her hands that she happened to look up into the mirror and saw a tired, haggard reflection of herself staring back at her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, wishing she’d at least taken the time to dab on some mascara when she left the house tonight. And maybe paused long enough to drag a brush through her windblown, wrecked mop of hair.
She made a futile attempt at smoothing some of the blond flyaways, but there wasn’t a lot she could do. No wonder Kade stared as he had. She looked like a walking Medusa who hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in about a week straight—which was just about accurate, come to think of it.
Had she looked this bad when she saw him earlier today? She hoped not. She hoped he hadn’t thought—
“For crying out loud. Why should you give a rat’s ass what he thinks, huh?” she told the hopeless face in the mirror. “That man out there is the last person you need to impress.”
Alex nodded at her own advice, at the same time wondering if everything that had happened lately had pushed her past some invisible line where it was suddenly acceptable to have conversations with her own reflection. Bad enough she talked to Luna as if the wolf dog could understand every word; this was taking things just a bit too far.
Taking a deep breath, Alex hooked her unruly hair behind her ears, then opened the bathroom door and stepped outside.
“Everything all right in there?”
Kade. Oh, God.
He leaned on the edge of the jukebox, which she noticed had finally coughed up the song she’d chosen nearly an hour ago. He was grinning at her, humor playing at the corners of his broad mouth and in the pale light of his eyes. Had he possibly heard her berating herself over the irony of Sheryl Crow singing about her favorite mistake?
“I see you’re making friends in Harmony already.”
He grunted, shot a casual look over at the knot of men who were still pounding down beers before turning all of his attention back on her. “Big Dave and some of the others are going to track the wolf pack that’s been spotted around here lately. They asked me to join them.”
Alex scoffed. “Congratulations. I’m sure you’ll all have a great time.”
As she brushed past him, he said, “I also heard tonight about a death in the bush late last winter that seemed suspicious. A Native man, living by himself in a cabin ten miles northwest of Harmony. Big Dave seems to think wolves were responsible for that one, too.”
Alex pivoted back, shaking her head. “You’re talking about Henry Tulak? He was a drinker and a little bit crazy. He most likely did something stupid and died of exposure.”
Kade lifted one thick shoulder. “Big Dave and the others said nothing could be proven because Tulak’s body wasn’t discovered until the spring thaw. Nothing left of him by then but a few bones.”
“And if you lived in the interior for any amount of time—as you claim—you’d know that nothing lasts for long in the bush. If the elements don’t absorb you, the scavengers will. It doesn’t mean that wolves killed that man.”
“Maybe not,” Kade said. “Except the rumor is that the last time anyone saw Tulak alive, he was talking about seeing a wolf pack prowling around his place. Said he felt like they were sizing him up, waiting for the chance to strike.”
Alex’s frustration spiked to hear this kind of bullshit perpetuated, and especially by Kade, whom she would have guessed to be smarter than Big Dave Grant and his band of boneheads. “Big Dave would say anything to get folks riled up. That’s his nature. If I were you, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he says.”
“I’m here to gather information, Alex. Right now, Big Dave seems to be the most forthcoming. All I’m getting from everyone else in this town is evasions and half-truths, neither of which interests me.”
Okay, now she was offended. Her internal barometer blazed right through frustration and into fury. “Why are you really here? Talk about evasions and half-truths! Look at you. You show up here, nobody knows you, nobody even knows where you came from—”
“I told you, north of Fairbanks. By way of Boston, if we’re going to start being honest with each other now.”
So, he wasn’t actually from Alaska, just flew in from Outside. She couldn’t have been less surprised. As casually as she could, she put her hand down on top of his forearm and leaned in closer, as though she were a cop questioning an uncooperative witness. “How did you get to Harmony when everyone else has been grounded by bad weather the past several days? For that matter, how did you get out to the Toms settlement after you left Harmony last night?”
“I walked. On snowshoes, of course.”
“You walked more than forty miles in the middle of the night.” Alex laughed, but without humor. She listened for the prickling of her instincts as she kept her hand resting on his arm, waiting for her senses to tell her whether he was trustworthy. Nothing registered. He was as clear as glass, unreadable. Still, that didn’t change the crock he was trying to feed her. “Such bullshit. You stand there and accuse me of lying to you, when you’ve told me nothing about yourself other than your name is Kade and you’re a bounty hunter looking to cash in on an innocent pack of wolves.”
He gave only the barest shake of his head. “I never said I came here to hunt wolves, for a bounty or otherwise. You made an assumption. And you are wrong.”
“Okay, I give up then. What are you doing here, and why did you come loaded up with a hell of a lot of serious firepower? What exactly do you want, Kade, the non–wolf hunter from north of Fairbanks by way of Boston?”
“I told you that when we talked earlier today. I want answers. I need to have the truth—the entire truth—about what happened to your friends. I think you can help me with that, Alex. I think you might be the only person who can.”
He glanced down to where her hand was still settled on his arm. Alex abruptly drew it away, his deep voice vibrating inside her, his words making her feel that she possibly could trust him, whether her instincts could confirm it or not.
She did not want to warm to him, dammit. She didn’t want to put her trust in anything he said when her heart was racing at hyperspeed and everything in her screamed for her to run. Run, before she made the mistake of letting this man into her private hell when she didn’t know anything about him.
“What are you trying to pull?” she asked softly, wishing she had the strength just to walk away and leave him standing there instead of giving in to the curiosity that made her want to know more. “What kind of game are you playing here?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, despite the intense steadiness of his gaze that said there wasn’t much that escaped his keen intellect. “What game do you think I’m playing?”
Alex stared back at him, forcing herself to try to read in his eyes all the things he probably wouldn’t tell her. “You tell me you’re not a wolf hunter, but you let Big Dave and the other men believe that you are. You tell me you want information from me, yet you give up nothing in return. You’re either one of the good guys, or you’re not. So, which one are you, Kade?”
Something flickered across his expression. “Do you view everything in terms of right or wrong, black or white? Is everyone either good or bad in your judgment?”
“Yes, they are.” She hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but she had to admit she took a certain comfort in the clarity of that. Right was right and wrong was wrong. In her experience, there was a very distinct line between good and bad.
And Kade still hadn’t answered her question.
To her astonishment, he reached out and brushed his fingers across her cheek where some of her tangled hair had fallen into her face. She knew she should balk at the uninvited touch, but the warmth of his caress—even as fleeting as it was—felt too good to deny. “You can be honest with me, Alex. You can trust me that whatever you tell me, I mean you no harm.”
God help her, but she was tempted to blurt out everything right then and there.
She didn’t know this man from Adam, really, and yet when she was looking in his eyes, still feeling the trailing heat of his touch on her skin, she wanted to believe that she truly could trust him. In some frightened, little-girl corner of her heart, she actually hoped that he might be able to help her banish some of the demons that had haunted her nearly all her life.
She felt, inexplicably, that if she told him about the beasts that killed her mom and her little brother—the same beasts she felt certain had killed the Toms family, as well—Kade would understand. That he, of all people, would be her strongest ally.
“You can tell me,” he said, his deep voice so gentle and coaxing. “Tell me about the track in the snow. You know what made that footprint, don’t you? Tell me, Alex. I want to help you, but I need you to help me first.”
“I …” Alex swallowed hard, finding it took more effort than she expected to work up her courage. “What I saw … it’s hard to say the words …”
“I know. But it’s okay, I promise. You’re safe with me.”
She drew in a nervous breath and got a sudden whiff of acrid smoke and the odor of unwashed clothing from somewhere nearby. No sooner had she registered the stale stench than she saw Skeeter Arnold and a couple of his stoner buddies shuffling from the bar back to the game room. A cell phone decorated in a skull-and-crossbones motif in one hand, a beer in the other, Skeeter tipped his bottle in Kade’s direction as he passed. “Thanks for the brewskies, dude. That was straight-up righteous of you, man.”
Kade hardly spared Skeeter a glance, but Alex couldn’t hide her revulsion. And she was glad for it, because the disgust she felt for Skeeter Arnold doused some of the temporary insanity that was making her think she could trust the stranger who was playing her like an instrument of his own design.
“I take it you aren’t fond of that guy,” Kade said as Alex weathered an inward shudder of repugnance.
She grunted. “You know that video you mentioned to me, the footage of the Toms family that had been uploaded to the Internet? Well, that’s the creep who did it.”
Kade’s eyes narrowed as they locked on to Skeeter from across the room. His gaze was more than intense—it was lethal. And as Alex watched him, she noticed that the pattern of tattoos on his forearms, part of them just visible under the pushed-up sleeves of his shirt, were not the henna color she remembered but a dark shade of deep blue-black.
Well, that was certainly odd.
Maybe she’d had one beer too many if she was seeing his tattoos change colors. Or maybe she simply remembered wrong. She’d been so gobsmacked by the unexpected sight of him at the Toms place earlier today, not to mention the fact that his incredible body had been half naked besides, it was completely possible that she’d mistaken the color of his ink. Except she’d never seen such an amazing work of body art ever in her life, and the image of him standing there, buttoning up his jeans like she’d just roused him out of bed, was a sight burned indelibly into her memory.
After a long minute of searing Skeeter Arnold with his eyes, Kade finally looked back at Alex. “I’ll deal with him later. What you have to say is more important.”
Alex took a step back now, sensing the danger in the man even though he was speaking to her in the same gentle tones as before. But something was different. There was an air of menace about him that put her on edge.
And there remained the fact that when she’d asked him if he was good or bad, he hadn’t answered her.
“I think I’d better go now,” she murmured, retreating another step before making a quick dodge past him.
“Alex,” she heard him call from behind her.
But she kept moving, cutting through the knot of people packed into the bar and desperate for some cold, sobering air—and freedom from her troubling, visceral response to Kade.
CHAPTER
Nine
Kade exhaled a low growl as he watched Alex cut through the tavern and all but run for the exit.
He had pushed a little too hard with her, a tactic he should have known would fail just from the brief time he’d spent around her, studying the way she operated. Alexandra Maguire only dug in her heels harder if someone attempted to lean on her.
And then, on top of that, he’d made everything worse by having the bad sense to touch her.
He hadn’t been able to resist, and some part of him acknowledged even as it was happening that she’d seemed to welcome the contact. Right up until the moment that greasy slacker with the burnout’s gaze and thin beak of a nose came walking up and disrupted them. Kade had a serious urge to pound the guy for that alone, never mind the fact that the stoner had also been the one to broadcast visual evidence of a vampire attack all over the World Wide Web.
As for dealing with Alex, Kade had seen the fear in her eyes as he pressed her for answers. She’d been terrified to spit the words out, but he was certain he’d been very close to getting her to open up completely about what exactly she knew. And the cold-as-ice feeling in his gut was telling him that what she knew went a whole lot deeper than just the recent attack and slaying of the family in the bush.
Could she possibly be aware of the Breed’s existence?
Had she seen one of his kind before?
Jesus Christ, what if she’d found more than just an un-explainable footprint out there at the Toms settlement?
If she had information that might implicate Seth in the killings—or clear him, slim as that hope seemed—Kade had to know. He had to know right now.
And if she did, in fact, have any inkling about the Breed, Kade figured it would be a hell of a lot easier to strip the memory from her outside in the shadows of the dimly lit parking lot than in the middle of a crowded restaurant and bar.
He stalked out after her to the snow-covered lot. She was already halfway across the short span of plowed tundra, walking briskly past the couple of pickup trucks and the half-dozen snowmachines parked outside Pete’s. She didn’t even break stride as the clank of the bell on the door sounded behind Kade as he leapt off the squat, covered porch and fell in, hot on her heels.
“Do you always run away when you get scared?”
That brought her up short. She pivoted around, an odd look on her face, as though his comment hit too close to home. But then she blinked and the look was gone, replaced with a narrowed gaze and a stubborn tilt of her hooded head. “Do you never give up, even when you know you’re not going to win?”
“Never,” he said, zero hesitation.
She muttered a particularly vivid curse and kept on walking, headed in the direction of the street. Kade caught up to her in a few long strides.
“You were going to tell me something back there in the tavern, Alex. Something important that I really need to know. What was it?”
“God!” She spun toward him, anger flashing in her brown doe eyes. “You’re impossible, you know that?”
“And you’re beautiful.”
He didn’t know why he said it, other than that he found it too hard to keep the thought inside his head when she was standing there looking windblown and wild, her cheeks carrying the pink kiss of the Arctic chill, her blond hair framing her face in tousled waves beneath the fur ruff of her parka’s hood.
If Brock or any of the other warriors in Boston had heard him just now, they’d guess that he was just playing this female, plying her with flattery to get what he wanted from her. Kade himself wanted to believe that was the cause of his ham-handed blurt. But as he looked at Alexandra Maguire, her simple beauty lit up by the thin moonlight overhead and the multicolored glow of the neon bar signs in the windows behind him, Kade knew that he wasn’t playing any kind of game here. He was attracted to her—fiercely attracted—and he wanted her to understand that he wasn’t the enemy.
Not precisely, at any rate.
Her outrage cooled to something resembling confusion as she started to take a backward step away from him. “I really have to go now.”
Kade lifted his hand but stopped short of physically holding her back. “Alex, whatever secret you’re keeping, you can tell me. Let me share some of the burden with you. Let me protect you from whatever it is that’s got you so scared.”
She shook her head, her light brown brows knitting together. “I don’t need you. I don’t even know you. And if I felt the need to share, I have friends I can talk to instead.”
“But you haven’t told any of them, have you.” It wasn’t a question, and she knew it as well as he did. “There isn’t another single person in your life who knows what you’re keeping bottled inside you. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
“Shut up,” she murmured, her breath steaming on the chill air, her voice cracking softly. “Just … shut up. Leave me alone. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Does anyone really know you, Alex?”
She went so still and quiet, Kade thought for sure he’d crossed yet another line that would drive her farther away from him. But she didn’t spin around and leave him eating her wake. She didn’t curse him out, or strike him, or scream for anyone to come out of Pete’s and do it for her. She stood there, looking up into his eyes in a silence that felt so lost, so broken.
His warrior’s duty to collect vital intel and erase a potential security risk for the Order collided with the sudden urge he had to offer comfort, to protect this female who professed so strongly to have no need for either.
Kade stepped closer to her, and then he did touch her again. Just the lightest brush of his fingertips over one golden strand of her hair as it caught on the wintry breeze. She didn’t move. Her breath had stopped puffing through her parted lips, and this close, Kade could hear the rush of blood pulsing through her veins as her heart rate kicked into a faster beat.
“You asked me in the bar if I was a good guy or a bad guy,” he reminded her, his voice low and rough for the awareness of her body’s heat mingling with his as he inched tighter into her space. He shook his head slowly. “That’s not my call to make, Alex. Maybe you’ll find I’m some of both. The way I look at the world, everything is just a different shade of gray.”
“No … I can’t live like that,” she said, the tone of her voice naked with sincerity. “It would make it all too complicated, too hard to know what’s true or not. Too hard to know what’s real.”
“I’m real,” Kade said, holding her gaze as he stroked his fingers along the curve of her jaw. “And you feel very real to me, too.”
She drew in a soft breath at his touch, and as her lips parted, Kade swept his mouth against hers in an impulsive—instantly electric—kiss.
He held her face tenderly in his palm as he brushed his lips over hers and savored the soft, wet heat of her mouth. Alex’s kiss was sweet and open and giving … so damned good. The feel of her body pressing against his sent a jolt of fire swimming through him, searing every nerve ending with the stamp of her lean curves and the warm, wind-and-woods scent of her.
He wasn’t thinking about gathering intel or finding a quiet place to scrub her mind once he had the information he needed. The feeling he had right now had nothing to do with offering her comfort or protection, either.
All he felt was need for this woman, his desire for her startlingly intense.
And a hunger that was growing more consuming the longer Alex remained in his arms.
With a simple, unplanned kiss, she drowned him in a swamping tide of lust and bloodthirst. He hadn’t fed since he arrived in Alaska, a careless oversight that now sank sharp talons into him, demanding to be slaked every bit as urgently as the throb that beat hard and hot between his legs.
From somewhere in the hunger-drenched fog of his consciousness, Kade heard the rumbling approach of a vehicle nearing the parking lot. He wanted to ignore the low growl of the truck’s engine, but then a male voice called out from the shadows.
“Alex? Everything all right out here?”
“Shit,” she hissed, pulling back now. “This was a mistake.”
Kade said nothing as she retreated several more steps, but then speech would have proved a bit difficult, given the fact that his fangs now filled his mouth. She wouldn’t look at him, which suited Kade just fine, since one glimpse of his eyes right now—transformed from the pale gray they normally were, to the bright amber glow that betrayed him as one of the Breed—would have turned the ill-conceived impulse of kissing her into a catastrophe of huge proportions.
“I never should have let you do that,” she whispered, then ducked around him.
Kade slanted a cautious look over his shoulder at the idling Blazer bearing Alaska State Trooper colors, watching as Alex walked up to it. “Hey, Zach. What’s going on? I thought Jenna was at your house.”
“She just left. Said you were at Pete’s, so I thought I’d swing by and have a beer with you.” Tucker’s voice carried on the chill wind. “What the hell are you doing out here? Were you with someone?”
“No, not with anyone,” she said. Kade felt, rather than saw, the quick backward glance that Alex shot into the shadows where he stood. “I was just leaving. Give me a ride home?”
“Sure, get in,” Zach Tucker said, and Alex opened the door and climbed inside.
Kade clamped his molars together, curbing the lust that was still coursing through him as he watched her close the door and drive off with the human male. He’d detected the trace odor of bullshit in the trooper’s casual tone, and had to guess that Zach Tucker wasn’t the only man in Harmony who was happy to use any excuse to put himself in close company with—and in the good graces of—sexy Alexandra Maguire. Kade had a very strong impulse to go after her, whether she’d been glad to escape him or not.
But if he needed something to distract him from that idea, he got it in spades as the tavern door banged open and out walked Skeeter Arnold and three of his stoner pals.
Kade observed the knot of twenty-something guys, smiling with satisfaction as the group disbanded and Skeeter was left standing alone while his friends took off in a rumbling old F150. When Skeeter started to walk toward the back lot, Kade peeled away from the shadows to follow him and have a word or two about the hazards of pissing off a bunch of vampires.
But before Kade took two steps toward the asshole, headlights came on in the parking lot and a black Hummer rolled out behind Skeeter Arnold. The vehicle gleamed under the weak lights of the lot, and compared to the other clunkers parked at Pete’s, Kade would bet his left nut that whoever was driving it wasn’t local. When the truck slowed down to deliberately keep pace with Skeeter, who paused to stick his head inside the open passenger-side window, Kade’s hackles raised along with his suspicion.
What the hell would someone with Hummer-style tastes want with a low-budget loser like Skeeter Arnold? Something was said to the stoner in barely audible tones before he chuckled and eagerly nodded.
“Yeah, sure. For the right price, I might be interested in hearing more about that,” he said, then opened the door and hopped inside.
“What the fuck are you up to?” Kade muttered as the vehicle sped away, kicking up clots of snow in its wake.
He had a feeling that whatever transaction might be taking place between Skeeter Arnold and his newfound business associate, it was going to prove to be much bigger than the small-time dealer’s usual fare.
A low, hissing heat and a sentimental old country song drifted from the dashboard of Zach’s state-issued Blazer as Alex glanced at the side mirror, watching the parking lot at Pete’s fade into the darkness behind her.
“Thanks for the ride, Zach.”
“No problem. I’ve got to run out for eggs and hot sauce, anyway. Breakfast of champions, you know. And single thirty-five-year-old cops with no nutrition sense.”
Alex gave him a polite smile as they traveled the last of the short two blocks to her house. She felt every bit as relieved as she did foolish for having run off on Kade as she had, but the fact was, she had welcomed the rescue. God knew she’d needed one, before she’d been tempted to do anything more with him right out there in the open, among the pickup trucks and snowmachines.
What had she been thinking, letting a complete stranger put a move on her like that? She wasn’t the type to let a guy take advantage of her with empty flattery or free-range hands—and being a young, unmarried woman in the Alaskan interior, she’d known plenty of men who’d tried.
Except with Kade tonight, it hadn’t felt like any sort of play or move, as smooth as the art of seduction seemed to come to him. And although she’d never so much as seen his face before he showed up yesterday, she had to admit—to herself at least—that he seemed like anything but a stranger to her.
Kade seemed to know her—to understand her—on a level that astonished her.
He seemed to be able to look deep inside her, into the dark places not even she was brave enough to face, and that’s what terrified her about him the most.
It was that unnerving sense of awareness that had made her so desperate to escape him tonight.
“Home sweet home,” Zach said, breaking into her thoughts as he rolled to a stop outside her weathered wood-sided house. “Jenna probably told you already, but I got word the AST unit out of Fairbanks should be here later this week.” At Alex’s nod, he lifted his right arm up onto her seatback and leaned in a bit closer. “I know this can’t be easy for you. Hell, it’s not easy for me, either. I knew Wilbur Toms and his family for a lot of years. I don’t know how this kind of awful thing could have happened to them. But the truth will come out, Alex. It will.”
Zach’s face, half illuminated by the pale lights of the dash, seemed troubled, cautious. And after her blurt at the town meeting, she could hardly be surprised if his cop instincts told him she was holding something back.
“If there’s anything more that you recall about the crime scene, Alex, I need you to tell me, all right? Anything at all. I’d like to know we’re on the same page by the time the Fairbanks unit arrives and starts throwing its weight around town.”
“Sure,” she murmured. “Yeah, Zach. If I think of anything else, I’ll make sure to tell you.”
Even as she said it, she knew she would speak no more of the track in the snow or the bone-deep fear she harbored that something terrible was on the loose in the frigid wilderness not far from where they sat now. The thing she feared was worse than any kind of danger posed by man or animal. It was monstrous. It would not be stopped by Zach Tucker or a bunch of Staties, and Alex was going to try her damnedest to forget all about it.
She was going to try to forget everything that had happened in the Florida swamps so long ago, too. Best to just let it all go, bury it deep, and move on.
Or move away.
Run.
“Sleep well,” Zach said as she climbed out of the Blazer and closed the passenger door. “You call me anytime, you hear?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Zach. And thanks again for the lift.”
He flashed a quick smile that was there and gone before he put the truck in gear and drove away. As Alex walked toward the front door of the old house she’d shared with her father since she’d been that frightened little girl, uprooted from her entire world—her entire reality—the notion of running away from it all only deepened. It would be so much easier, leaving her memories behind. Starting over somewhere new would be the best way for her to purge the fears that dogged her, that had come back darker now, more dreadful than ever before.
She could not face horror like that again.
Nor could she allow herself to be wooed into a state of false confidence that anyone—even a man like Kade—could stand firm against an evil like the one she knew existed. Getting involved with him on any level was the last thing she needed. Yet that didn’t keep her from wondering what he thought of her now, or from wishing she would have apologized before ditching him in the cold.
She tried not to think about the way his mouth fit so perfectly, so electrifyingly hot, on hers. Tried not to think about the way her heart was still racing, her stomach still coiled in an excited knot at the thought of being in his arms. She tried not to imagine what might have happened if Zach hadn’t come along when he did, but picturing herself with Kade—maybe naked together in her bed, maybe hastily unzipped and out of control in the middle of Pete’s parking lot if they couldn’t make it that far—was disturbingly easy to do.
“Oh, this is so not good,” she muttered under her breath as she opened the door and walked in to be greeted by eager wolf dog kisses and much happy tail wagging. “I know, Luna, I know … I’m late. Sorry, baby. It’s been a long day for me, too. Come on, let’s go take care of you now.”
Alex busied herself with turning the dog loose in the back to pee while she prepared a bowl of food and fresh water. After Luna was back inside and gobbling her kibble, Alex stripped off her parka and clothes while she headed down the hallway to the bathroom for an overdue, but indulgently long and hot, shower.
The heated spray against her bare skin did nothing to quench the lingering heat of Kade’s kiss. She soaped up, trying to recall how long it had been since she’d let a man run his hands in slow appreciation over her naked body. How long had it been since she’d been intimate—truly intimate—with someone? The weak moment she’d spent with Zach a few weeks after her father died didn’t really count. That had been one night, a couple of hours, really. She’d been an emotional wreck and supposed she’d just needed someone to help her make it all go away, even for a short while.
Is that what she was doing with Kade? Was she latching on to him, manufacturing something between them that wasn’t really there—couldn’t possibly be there—because of the new trauma she was going through now?
Maybe that’s all this was, a temporary feeling of being left adrift and in search of safe harbor. Tonight Kade had told her she’d be safe with him. While part of her believed that—an instinctual, primal part of her—she also knew that the fire he stoked inside her with just a kiss felt anything but safe. She couldn’t help feeling that getting close to him might be the biggest risk she’d ever taken. He saw too much about her, knew too much. And tonight he made her feel too much.
Alex groaned as she leaned forward in the tight tub-and-shower combo, bracing her forearm against the slick tiles and resting her head against her arm as the hot water sluiced off her body. She closed her eyes and there was Kade. His chiseled, striking face. His bright, penetratingly intense eyes. The heat inside her was still there, heat that made her whisper his name as she reached down with her free hand to touch herself as him.
She relaxed into a blissful state of resignation, letting the hot water and steam and thoughts of him melt away everything else.
CHAPTER
Ten
Kade hung back in the darkness, watching from within a tight copse of spruce and pine some five hundred yards from where Skeeter Arnold’s fancy ride had taken him. Twenty-plus miles out of Harmony, situated near the base of a small mountain and a narrow tributary that spoked off the Koyukuk, the ten-acre patch of land and squat white buildings sat fenced in and gated by fifteen-foot-high steel links and coiled barbed wire. Security lights and cameras were mounted all around the place, and the pair of uniformed guards trying to keep warm in the shack out front were carrying military-grade assault rifles.
Kade might have guessed the friendly little spot to be a supermax prison, if not for the weathered metal sign bolted onto the gate that read in chipped black lettering: COLDSTREAM MINING COMPANY.
Outside in the yard, a group of workers were busy unloading various-size sealed crates from two large cargo containers parked near what appeared to be some kind of warehouse. Some crates were wheeled into the storage facility, while others were brought into the secured entrance of the mine itself.
Curiouser and curiouser, Kade thought, figuring the more than two hours Skeeter had been inside the main office building hadn’t been spent interviewing for a job.
Kade was more than eager to question the human about his business here—along with the rest of his entrepreneurial ventures—but if Skeeter’s new friends didn’t turn him loose in the next few minutes, his interrogation would have to wait for another time. More important was the need to check in with the Order and let them know what he’d uncovered thus far. He also needed to get his head on straight about Alexandra Maguire.
To his complete irritation, his libido perked up with the eager suggestion that he turn back for Harmony and go find her again. Not that it should surprise him that thoughts of her simmered just beneath the surface of his consciousness. Their kiss still had him on fire inside—banked flames, but embers needing only the slightest trace of fuel to ignite.
And that was bad news.
Bad news to want the female so badly, especially when his mission depended on keeping her silent. Deflecting her suspicions, whatever the cost. Erasing the risk she posed to his mission, the Order’s goals, and the security of the Breed nation as a whole.
Whatever Alexandra Maguire knew about the killings in the bush—whatever she knew about Kade’s kind in general—had to be shut down, and shut down fast.
Had it only been earlier that day that he’d considered seducing the truth out of her, if necessary? Now that plan had a serious kink in it, because if their kiss had shown him anything, it was that letting himself get close to Alex—even in the name of duty—wasn’t going to be easy. She had an unanticipated effect on him already, from the mile-wide independent streak she wore like a carefully placed mask, to the threadbare hint of vulnerability he’d glimpsed in her tonight.
No, going back to find Alex at home right now was not an option. Besides, he doubted she’d look favorably on him stalking her after the way she bolted from him at Pete’s. Hell, for all he knew, Zach Tucker might still be with her. Obviously they were friends, and no doubt the clean-cut trooper appealed to her stated need to categorize everything into neat compartments. From his domed hat and meticulously pressed uniform to the tops of his precisely laced boots, Officer Tucker projected cut-and-dried, black-and-white, good-guy appeal.
Except something about the man bothered Kade. Partly the apparent ease of his relationship with Alex, although jealousy wasn’t something Kade caved to very often. That didn’t keep him from gritting his teeth thinking about the guy, or from wondering if maybe a quick trip back to Harmony just to look in on Alex wasn’t in order after all. Picking up where they’d left off in Pete’s parking lot was optional. Not to mention sorely tempting.
Before the idea could take root any more than it had already, Kade dismissed it with a curse muttered low under his breath.
Bad fucking news—that’s what this entire mission was shaping up to be.
With that thought dogging his heels, Kade slipped away from his surveillance of Skeeter Arnold and his new high-security pals, and started off in the direction of his father’s Darkhaven a few hours away on foot. He could wait out the daylight there, check in with headquarters in Boston about his findings so far, and see if Gideon could turn up anything of interest on the Coldstream Mining Company.
Skeeter Arnold had lost all track of time. He rode in the backseat of the black Hummer, surprised to see the clock on the expensive ride’s dashboard up front read 6:00 AM.
He’d been gone all night?
It felt as though he’d just left Pete’s tavern a few minutes ago and now here he was, back again. Only now everything was different.
He was different.
He felt it in the way his body sat so straight on the leather seat, his spine erect, shoulders lifted out of their usual heavy slump. He felt empowered somehow, and knew the source of that power was sitting beside him: motionless, silent, radiating dark menace and cool, lethal control.
Skeeter didn’t know his name. He couldn’t even recall if he’d been told.
It no longer mattered.
“You will tell no one of what transpired tonight,” said the airless voice from within the deep hood of a black-fur parka. “You will go home immediately and destroy all copies of the video footage of the slayings.”
Skeeter nodded obediently, eager to please. “Yes, Master.”
He recalled thinking that when the Hummer driver first approached him about sharing some information with an interested private party, the transaction was sure to involve someone stuffing a sweet amount of cash into his pocket.
He’d been wrong about that.
And when he’d been brought out to the old mining company location to meet the so-called interested private party, he’d been wrong to guess that the tall man in the pricey suit and crisp white shirt was a man at all. He was something more than that.
Something … other.
Skeeter had been a little afraid as he was escorted via armed guards from the vehicle and through the main building, into a secured area that looked like some kind of research facility, pimped out in shiny stainless steel exam tables and easily a few million bucks in computer equipment. It was all pretty weird, though the biggest head-scratcher had been the large vertical cylinder that seemed to be some kind of cage with thick metal chains and shackles bolted to the floor of it.
As he had tried to make sense of its purpose, the individual he was to meet with—the same individual seated beside him now—came into the room to question Skeeter about many things. He’d been asked about the cell phone video he’d taken at the Toms settlement. He’d been asked what he knew of the slayings, if he’d witnessed the creature who’d attacked the humans.
Skeeter recalled his confusion over the odd way the questions were phrased, and he worried that he had somehow walked into a situation more dangerous than it seemed. But there had been no opportunity to turn back. He’d walked into something deadly serious. He’d known that, even then.
He’d been questioned about Alexandra Maguire, and what the rumors were around town about the killings. When he’d volunteered about the stranger in Harmony, the big, muscular dude with the jet black hair and wolfy eyes who showed up out of the blue just a couple of nights ago asking similar questions of the townsfolk, the air in the room had seemed to grow as thick as fog.
Skeeter recalled the dread he’d felt as the tall man in the expensive-looking suit pulled a satellite phone from a nearby table and left the room for a few minutes.
He remembered being antsy, needing to distract himself from whatever disaster might be waiting for him on the other end of that phone call. He’d asked the laboratory workers what the cage was used for, watching as three of them in white jumpsuits tested some of the fittings and clicked computer controls that operated different functions on the thing.
Skeeter had guessed out loud that it wasn’t meant to hold a human. The size of the cell, as well as the size of the table inside and the heavy-duty restraints affixed to it, had seemed designed for something much larger than any man. A grizzly, maybe, Skeeter had said, to no reply from any of the workers or the armed guards.
But someone had an answer for him, impossible as it was to believe.
“It was built for one of my kind,” the tall man in the expensive-looking suit had said as he’d walked back into the room.
And he had looked different to Skeeter then. Still rich and important, still the same current of lethal power about him, but his face had seemed tighter, his features drawn sharper, more pronounced.
Skeeter recalled seeing a sudden spark of amber light flashing in the narrowed gaze that refused to let him squirm, even though every cell in his body was screaming for him to get the hell out of there. He recalled catching a fleeting glimpse of sharp white teeth, recalled thinking that he was only seconds away from dying … then he felt the full body blow that knocked him completely off his feet.
Skeeter could not remember much after that moment of pure terror.
Everything slowed down, went black.
But he hadn’t died.
He’d woken up a short while ago and all of his confusion—all of his fear—was gone.
Now he belonged to the powerful individual seated beside him, the vampire who had made him into something more than human tonight, as well. Skeeter’s loyalty was ensured by blood, his very life tied to that of his Master.
“You will report to me with any and all information you can gather,” said the voice that commanded him in all things now.
“Yes, Master,” Skeeter replied, and when he was given a nod to go, he climbed out of the Hummer and waited as it eased away from the side of the road and departed.
When it was gone, Skeeter walked across Pete’s parking lot to the lone snowmachine that still sat parked outside. He hopped on and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried again with the same result, then swore roundly when he realized he’d forgotten to buy gas for the damned thing last night.
“Morning,” a familiar voice greeted him as chain-encased snow tires crunched in the frozen road. “Need a hand?”
Skeeter shook his head without looking at Zach Tucker. Of all the shitty luck, he had to run into Harmony’s sole cop today.
Tucker didn’t accept his refusal. The Blazer rolled up next to Skeeter’s sled and idled while the trooper got out and went around back to grab a red can of gasoline out of the back of the truck.
“Late night, huh?” he asked as he walked over and unscrewed the cap on the Yamaha’s fuel tank. “Looking a bit ragged this morning, Skeeter. Must have been out partying with new friends from out of town or something. Nice Hummer, by the way.”
Skeeter offered no explanation, watching the red can empty into his snowmachine.
“No charge this time,” Tucker said as he finished. But when Skeeter thought the cop might simply move on, instead he got in his face with a tight whisper. “I thought I told you to lay low for a while—quit the goddamn dealing and partying until we get this thing cleaned up around here. And for the record, posting that fucking cell phone video on that death fetish website was just about the stupidest thing you could do. Now I’ve got those assholes in Fairbanks busting my balls about losing control of a crime scene!”
Tucker was furious, and ordinarily that might make Skeeter worry.
But not today.
“Do I need to remind you that our little operation stands a damn good chance of getting blown up in our faces? I’ve got Staties coming up here later this week to crawl all over this investigation. I won’t have you giving them added reasons to stick around and see what else is going on out here. You got that?”
Skeeter ignored him, moving around him to take a seat on the sled.
“Are you that fucking stupid,” Tucker scoffed, “or are you just stoned?”
“I have never been clearer in my life,” Skeeter replied.
“I want to know who you were partying with last night. Where did you go? Jesus Christ, were you idiot enough to tell them anything about me or our arrangement?”
“None of that is any of your concern. What you want no longer matters. I have other priorities.”
When Skeeter turned the engine over, Tucker’s hand came down hard on his shoulder. “If you fuck with me on this, don’t think I won’t throw you under the bus. You’ll go down faster than you can say felony possession with intent to distribute. Cross me now and I swear to God I will bury you.”
Skeeter held the flinty gaze of his recent silent business partner. “That would not be wise, Officer Tucker.” He saw the momentary flinch of shock in the cop’s eyes and felt a small sense of triumph that he had put it there. “Thanks for the gas, though.”
Skeeter gave the sled some juice and tore out of the parking lot. By the time he reached his mother’s house at the end of the block, he was full of his newfound power and twitchy with the need to carry out his Master’s orders. He parked the snowmachine and ran into the back door of the house, aware, but not caring, that his heavy boots clomped loudly on the old wooden floor of the hallway.
Before he was inside his apartment for even as much as a minute, his mother started moving around upstairs, her muffled complaints echoing down to him beneath her bedroom. He knew she’d be storming down to bitch at him, and could hardly say that he was disappointed when she did.
“Stanley Elmer Arnold!” she screamed, banging on his door. “Do you have any idea what time it is? You worthless piece of shit! How dare you stay out all goddamn night, making me worry about you, only to drag your sorry ass back home at the crack of dawn and wake me out of a dead sleep! You’re nothing but a loser and a—”
Skeeter was at the door and in the hallway with her, his hand clamped punishingly around her throat and cutting her off before the words had a chance to shriek out of her mouth.
“Be quiet, bitch,” he told her harshly. “I’m working in here.”
If she’d uttered even one syllable as his hand peeled away from her, Skeeter would have killed her, right then and there. And she knew it, by God. She understood that things would be different now.
Soundless, she stepped back from him, wobbling just a little in her ratty slippers and matted terry housecoat. Slowly she turned around and walked carefully back up the hallway where she’d come from.
Skeeter Arnold cocked his head at her retreating bulk, then smiled as he returned to the more important tasks that awaited him in the shithole apartment he called home.
CHAPTER
Eleven
It was strange being back in his old quarters at his father’s Darkhaven, as though he’d somehow walked into a distant, remembered dream of home that no longer seemed to fit him quite the same way. True to her word, however, Kade’s mother had made sure nothing was out of place since he’d left a year ago. After the long night he’d had in Harmony, he could appreciate the thick, engulfing cushion of his leather mission-style recliner, which was perfectly situated in front of the massive, river-rock fireplace that roared with freshly laid logs.
Kade leaned back and chuckled into his satellite phone as Brock caught him up on everything he was missing in Boston the past couple of nights.
“I’m telling you, man, if we aren’t careful, these females around here are gonna show our asses up. The way they’ve been tackling daytime missions topside, they’re starting to make the rest of us look bad.”
Since Kade had phoned in to the Order’s compound headquarters a few minutes ago, Brock had been regaling him with stories about some of the other warriors’ Breedmates and their current efforts to assist in what had been, until very recently, something of an all-boys club. Now Order missions had become all-hands-on-deck kinds of operations—solely devoted to stopping a power-hungry Breed maniac named Dragos from unleashing his personal brand of hell on both humankind and Breed alike.
Dragos’s resources were as deep as his pockets and, so it happened, as black as his plans. His most heinous act had been the capture and imprisonment of an unknown number of Breedmates, whom he’d been collecting for decades and using to give birth to an army of savage assassins. With Dragos’s headquarters sacked by the Order just a few weeks ago, his operation had been disrupted—disassembled and diverted, the Order suspected.
Finding the captive Breedmates before he could harm any more of them was the Order’s primary objective now. Because timing could mean the difference between lives lost or saved, Lucan had agreed to utilize every weapon in the Order’s arsenal, which included the very special, uniquely gifted, females who’d taken some of the warriors as their mates.
There was Rio’s mate, Dylan, who had the ability to see the spirits of other Breedmates who’d passed and, when she was lucky, obtain critical information from them. There was Elise, who was mated to Tegan and who had a talent for hearing corrupt, dark human intentions. She accompanied Dylan to area shelters, private homes, and flophouses, her ability helping her assess the motives of the folks they met with along the way.
Gideon’s mate, Savannah, used her tactile skill for reading the history of an object, hoping to find traceable links to some of the missing. Nikolai’s mate, Renata, whose power to mind-blast even the strongest vampire made her a formidable ally on any mission, provided armed bodyguard service to the other Breedmates for their daytime missions.
Even Andreas Reichen’s mate, Claire, who’d only recently recovered from her own ordeal at the hands of Dragos and his associates, was apparently getting involved in Order business. Using her gift for dreamwalking, she’d been trying to make contact with some of the known Breedmates who’d been reported missing over the years.
“You know,” Brock added wryly, “when Niko recruited me for this gig a year ago, I was expecting it to be just a great excuse to kick some Rogue ass.”
Kade grinned, recalling their initial patrols around Boston, which typically involved taking out the city’s feral blood addicts and making things go boom. “Kind of makes you miss the simplicity of the first few months on the job, doesn’t it?”
Brock grunted in agreement. Then, “Speaking of Rogues, how’s it going up there in the icebox? Been two days and counting. You got that situation swept up yet?”
“I’m following up on a few leads, but nothing solid right now. I’ll probably be here another few days, maybe a week.”
Brock’s exhaled curse told Kade what he thought of that prediction. “Better you than me, my man. Better you than me.” There was a pause before he asked, “You have a chance to see your family yet?”
“Yeah,” Kade said, tipping his head back to stare at the thick beam rafters of the cabin. “My arrival home went over about as well as I expected.”
“That good, huh?”
“Put it this way, I get a warmer reception stepping outside in the twenty-below darkness.”
“Harsh,” Brock said. “I’m sorry, man. Seriously.”
Kade shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t need to talk about my welcome homecoming. Just wanted to touch base and pass along another bit of info that Gideon might find interesting.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“I found the asshole who posted the video clip of the attacked humans. His name is Skeeter Arnold, local burnout, probable small-time dealer. I watched him leave a bar and take off in a shiny new chauffeured Hummer. He was brought to some kind of mining company office out in the sticks. The name on the gate was Coldstream Mining Company. Put Gideon on that when he gets a chance. I’m curious to know what kind of business this loser might have with them.”
“You got it,” Brock said. “You take care out there. Don’t freeze off anything you might need later.”
Kade chuckled despite the unease he felt just thinking about this whole assignment. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and ended the call.
As he set the phone down on the lamp table beside him, a firm rap sounded on the cabin’s front door.
“Yeah, it’s open,” he said, expecting to see his father. He steeled himself for the disapproval that would follow. “Come on in.”
Maksim entered instead, sparking a relief Kade could hardly hide. He rose, smiling, and gestured for his uncle to join him in front of the fire.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Max said. “At least, not so soon. I hear it did not go well between you and my brother the other day. I wish he wasn’t so hard on you.”
Kade shrugged. “We’ve never seen eye to eye. I sure as hell don’t expect us to start now.”
“Now that you are one of the Order’s warriors,” Max said, his eyes lighting with eager conspiracy, his deep, slightly accented voice edged with unhidden admiration, “I am proud of you, nephew. Proud of the work you are doing. There is honor in it, just as there has always been honor in you.”
Kade wanted to dismiss the praise as unneeded, but hearing it—particularly from Max, who, although he was a couple centuries older than Kade, had always felt like a brother to him—felt too damn good to pretend it didn’t matter.
“Thanks, Max. It means a lot, coming from you.”
“No need to thank me. I speak the truth.” He stared at Kade for a long moment, then leaned forward, his elbows planted on his spread knees. “You’ve been gone a year. You must be doing important things for Lucan and his Order.”
Kade grinned, seeing Max’s angle from a mile away. Like him, Max craved adventure. Unlike him, Max had committed himself to serving as second banana to Kade’s father, the leader of the Fairbanks Darkhaven. Max’s loyalty had shackled him to this ten-thousand-acre prison, and although he would never shirk his duty or his promise to his rigid, uncompromising brother, Max appreciated the concept of risk and reward, courage and honor, every bit as much as Kade did.
Because of that, and because Kade knew Max’s loyalty extended to him, as well, he knew that trusting him with a few details of his experiences with the Order and their current mission would not be misplaced.
“I heard there was some upheaval in the Enforcement Agency out East some months back,” Max said, watching Kade eagerly, waiting for him to elaborate.
“There was,” he admitted, recalling one of the first missions he’d been involved with, and the beginning of the trouble the Order now had with the madman called Dragos. “Our intel uncovered a high-ranking director of the Agency who wasn’t what he seemed. This guy had been operating under an assumed name and seeding a secret rebellion for decades—longer, in fact. We’re still trying to figure out just how far the corruption goes, but it hasn’t been easy. Every time we get close to the bastard, he goes deeper to ground.”
“So, you pursue him harder,” Max said, talking like any one of the warriors back in Boston. “You keep hitting him, keep pounding him from all angles, until he’s too exhausted from running that he has no choice but to stand and fight. And then you destroy him, once and for all.”
Kade nodded grimly, hearing the wisdom in Max’s advice and wishing their pursuit of Dragos was as simple, as clean, as that.
What Max didn’t know—what neither he nor anyone else could be permitted to know—was that Dragos was only the tip of a very treacherous iceberg. Dragos had a secret weapon, one he’d been holding for centuries. Around the same time that Kade had joined the Order, they had discovered the existence of a creature long thought to be dead. An Ancient. One of the bloodthirsty otherworlders who’d fathered the entire Breed race on Earth millennia ago.
Dragos was that creature’s grandson, and he’d been breeding his army of ruthless, unstoppable vampire assassins off him for longer than anyone wanted to contemplate.
If that news were to get out to the Breed communities in the United States and abroad, it would incite widespread panic.
If it were to leak to the human populations that not only did vampires walk among them, but one megalomaniac intended to put himself in power and enslave them all?
Armageddon.
Kade had to mentally shake himself out of that nightmare scenario. “While the rest of the Order is doing just what you said, I drew the short straw to come up to Alaska. I’ve been looking into an attack on some humans in the bush—a whole family settlement, wiped out in one night.”
Max frowned. “Rogues?”
“That’s our guess.” And Kade’s hope, although each minute of this assignment led him farther and farther away from that as a viable outcome. “You haven’t heard of any trouble in the Darkhavens, have you? Anyone rumored to be edging toward Bloodlust?”
Max gave a slow shake of his head. “Nothing like that. There was an incident at the Darkhaven in Anchorage about nine months ago. Some idiot kid nearly bled out a human at a party, but that was the only problem in the region lately.”
The news didn’t make Kade feel any better, certainly. Because if there were no Rogues on the loose, then that left only one reasonable place to lay the blame.
“I wonder if Seth has heard anything,” he murmured, trying to keep the dread and fury out of his voice. “Sure would hate to miss seeing him while I’m here.”
“He would hate to miss you, as well,” Max said, and Kade could see that he meant it sincerely.
He didn’t know about Seth. Like everyone else, he had no clue.
Only Kade knew.
And the burden of that knowledge was sitting heavier in his gut all the time.
Max sat back in his chair and softly cleared his throat. “There’s something I want to tell you, Kade. Something you need to understand … about your family, and about your father.”
“Go on,” Kade said, not entirely sure he wanted to hear how much his father adored Seth and wished Kade had been more like him.
“My brother, your father, does not find it easy to show his affection. Especially with you.”
“Funny, I hadn’t noticed.” Kade grinned with humor he didn’t feel.
“Our family has a dark secret,” Max said, and Kade felt his body go a little numb. “Kir and I had a younger brother. You never knew that, I’m sure. Not many do. His name was Grigori. Kir loved him very much. We all did. Grigori was a clever, charming boy. But he was also a bit wild. Even at his young age, he rebelled against authority and walked the razor’s edge of every situation without any fear.”
Kade found himself smiling, thinking that he might have liked Grigori, too.
“Despite his faults, Kir doted on the boy. But some years later, when it was learned that Grigori had gone Rogue, that in his Bloodlust he had killed, Kir wrote him off completely. Just like that,” Max said, giving a sharp snap of his fingers. “We never saw Grigori again. Kir never so much as spoke of him after we heard the news about Grigori turning Rogue, nor has he since. From that time forward, Kir was a changed man.”
Kade listened, reluctant to admit the pang of sympathy he had for his father and the loss he suffered.
“Perhaps your father worries that he could not shoulder that kind of pain again,” Max suggested. “Perhaps it’s just that he sees a bit too much of Grigori in you sometimes.”
And he’d apparently decided to write Kade off early, while pinning all of his fatherly hopes on Seth.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kade murmured, and he half meant it, too. He was too busy dealing with real life-and-death shit to worry about how low his father’s expectations might be for him. “I appreciate the information, Max. And the insight. I also appreciate that you came by.”
Max, perceptive as ever, took the gentle hint and stood up. “You have things to do. I should not delay you.”
When he stuck out his hand, Kade grabbed him into a brief embrace instead. “You’re a good man, Max. A good friend. Thank you.”
“Anything you need, Kade, you need only ask.”
They walked to the door together, and Kade opened it just as a pair of women, bundled in winter coats and each carrying a folded down-filled blanket, were walking past the cabin. One of them looked over and did a quick double-take.
“Oh … Kade?” she asked, then her pretty face lit up with a bright smile. “Kade! I heard you’d returned to Alaska, but I didn’t realize you were here.”
“Hello, Patrice,” he said, giving a polite smile to the Breedmate his twin brother had kept waiting in the wings for the past couple of years.
Beside him, Max had gone very still. Kade could feel heat radiating from the other male as Patrice continued to chat animatedly, sweet and gorgeous with her bright red hair and dark green eyes illuminated by the firelight pouring out from the door.
“Ruby and I were just on our way to watch the aurora borealis from one of the ledges. Would either of you like to join us?”
Kade and Max both said no together, but it was Max’s refusal that dimmed Patrice’s smile the most, although she tried to hide it with the edge of the blanket she held. As the Breedmates walked away, Kade noticed that the elder male couldn’t keep his eyes off them.
Or, rather, one of them.
“Patrice?” Kade asked, stunned by the carefully restrained longing he’d just seen in both of them.
Maksim snapped out of his stare and looked at him. “She has promised herself to another. I would never interfere with that, regardless of how long it takes Seth to finally accept the precious gift he’s been given. The ignorant, arrogant little bastard.”
Kade watched his uncle walk off the porch and continue on across the snowy grounds to his own quarters.
He didn’t know whether to chuckle over the virulence of Max’s declaration, or curse Seth for potentially ruining two more lives.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Alex poured a kettle of boiling water into the battered old drip coffeemaker on the stove. As the kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh-brewed beans for a second time that morning, she turned back to the little table where she and Jenna were having breakfast. Or rather, Alex was having breakfast. Jenna had only nibbled at her home fries and had left her scrambled egg mostly untouched.
“God, I hate winter,” she murmured, leaning back in the creaky wooden chair and slanting a thoughtful look at the darkness that still pressed thick and deep against the windows at 8:00 AM. “Some days it feels like it’s never going to end.”
“It will,” Alex said, as she sat across from her friend and watched the haunted look grow deeper in Jenna’s eyes.
Of course, it wasn’t really the darkness or the cold that was weighing her down. Alex didn’t have to look at the calendar on the wall near the telephone to understand Jenna’s mounting gloom.
“Hey,” Alex said, forcing a brightness into her voice. “If the weather stays clear to the weekend, I was thinking about flying down to Anchorage. Maybe do some shopping, go to the movies. You game for a girls’ weekend in the city?”
Jenna glanced back at her and gave a weak shake of her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. Besides, you owe me now. I just made the last of my Red Goat coffee for you. I need to hit Kiladi Brothers and stock up again.”
Jenna smiled, a bit sadly. “The last of your beloved Red Goat? Wow, you must be worried about me. You think I’m in pretty bad shape, huh?”
“Are you?” Alex asked carefully, a direct question that required a direct answer. She reached across the table and placed her hand over Jenna’s. She watched her friend closely, listening to the instinct inside her that always seemed to know whether she was being given the truth or a lie. “Are you going to be all right this time?”
Jenna held her gaze as if locked there. She sighed quietly. “I really don’t know, Alex. I miss them. They gave me a reason to get up in the morning, you know? I felt needed, that my life had some higher purpose when Mitch and Libby were in it. I’m not sure I’m ever going to have that again.”
The truth, then, pained as it was. Alex acknowledged her friend’s admission with a tender squeeze of her hand. She blinked, releasing Jenna from the invisible hold of her truth-seeking stare. “Your life has purpose, Jenna. It has meaning. And you’re not alone. You have Zach and me for starters.”
Jenna shrugged. “My brother and I have been drifting apart for a while now, and my best friend has been talking a lot of nonsense lately about picking up and moving away.”
“Just talking,” Alex said, feeling a pang of guilt for both the cowardice that was making her think very hard about running again and for the half-truth she gave Jenna now, in the hope of making her feel better.
She got up and took their coffee mugs with her to the stove.
“So, what time did you end up leaving Pete’s last night?” Jenna asked as Alex poured fresh coffee and brought it back to the table.
“I left a little while after you did. Zach came by and gave me a ride home.”
Jenna took a sip from her mug and set it down. “Did he now?”
“Just a ride,” Alex said. “He offered to have a beer with me at Pete’s, but I was already on my way home.”
“Well, knowing my brother, he probably just wanted an excuse to get you in his truck. He’s had a thing for you since we were teenagers, you know. Maybe for all his tough-guy, married-to-his-job talk, he’s still secretly got his eye on you.”
Alex didn’t think so. Their one night together had been proof enough to both of them that whatever they had together would never go beyond friendship again. She’d known Zach for close to a decade, but he felt more like a stranger to her than Kade did after just a day.
Incredibly, despite the way Kade unsettled her emotionally, deep down, she felt more protected with him on a physical level than she did with Zach, a decorated officer of the law.
Good lord. Just what that said about her judgment, Alex was sure she didn’t want to know.
As she pondered that thought over a long drink of her coffee, the kitchen phone started to ring. Alex got up and answered the business line on automatic pilot. “Maguire Charters and Deliveries.”
“Hey.”
That one word—that deep, now intimately familiar growl of a voice—went into her ears and down to the core of her like a current of raw electricity.
“Um, hello … Kade,” she said, wishing she didn’t sound so dumbstruck. And did she have to sound so breathless besides? “How did you get my number?”
Across the small kitchen from her, Jenna’s brows raised in surprise. Alex pivoted around and leaned over the counter, hoping to hide some of the heat that was creeping into her cheeks.
“There aren’t a lot of Maguires in Harmony,” he said on the other end. “Not a lot of pilots, either. So I took an educated guess and called the only listing I could find that happened to cover both criteria—one Hank Maguire of Maguire Charters and Deliveries.”
“Oh.” Alex’s mouth tugged into a smile. “And how do you know that’s not my husband?”
His low chuckle rasped like velvet. “You sure as hell don’t kiss like a married woman.”
Alex’s insides went all soft and warm at the reminder, and it was getting damn hard not to squirm when she thought about his lips on hers and the steamy mental revisit she had enjoyed by herself last night in the shower. “So, um, why did you call? Do you … ah, are you calling on business?”
God help her, she almost tacked on “or pleasure” but had the good sense to bite back the words before she’d embarrassed herself by blurting them out. The last thing she needed was to be thinking about Kade and pleasure in the same sentence. She’d gotten a pretty good taste of that already. Enough to know that it spelled danger and complications, things she had plenty enough of as it was.
“I’m supposed to meet Big Dave and a few other guys in Harmony today,” Kade said, casually tossing out the best reason she needed to not want anything to do with him.
“Oh, that’s right,” Alex replied. “The big wolf hunt.”
And here she was, letting her raging hormones blind her to the fact that she still wasn’t sure what his game truly was. Anger spiked bitterly in her throat.
“Well, have fun. I gotta go—”
“Wait,” he said, just as she was about to drop the receiver back in its cradle. “I’m supposed to go out with Big Dave today, but actually I was hoping to hire a guide to take me out to Henry Tulak’s place instead.”
“Henry Tulak,” Alex said slowly. “What could you possibly want out at his cabin?”
“I just … I really need to know how that man died, Alex. Will you take me out there?”
He sounded sincere, and oddly resigned. Because it seemed so important to him, Alex found herself hedging when she likely should be shutting him down flat. “What about Big Dave?”
“I’ll give him my regrets next time I see him,” he replied, sounding anything but concerned about standing up the town blowhard and his pals. “What do you say, Alex?”
“Yeah, okay.” And dammit, she didn’t have to feel so excited about the prospect of spending time with him. “It will be daybreak around noon, so why don’t you meet me here in Harmony at eleven? We’ll have light enough for travel, and a couple of hours to check out the site once we get there.”
Kade grunted, as though considering on the other end of the line. “I’d rather not wait for daylight to head out there, if that’s all right with you.”
“You’d rather travel in the dark?”
She could actually feel the slow smile spreading over his features as he answered, “I’m not afraid of a little darkness if you’re not. I’m on the road already, heading your way. I can be at your place within the hour.”
Well, he was bold, she had to give him that. The man set his mind on something and wasn’t afraid to go after it.
“Will an hour from now work for you, Alex?”
She glanced at the clock and wondered how fast she could get out of her faded long johns, shower, and make some kind of sense out of her face and hair. “Um, sure. Okay, an hour it is. I’ll see you then.”
As they hung up, Alex could feel Jenna’s curious stare at her back. “That was Kade, huh?”
She turned around, grinning sheepishly. “Ah, yup.”
Jenna leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms over her chest, looking like a total cop, even in her sweat-shirt and faded jeans, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. “This is the same Kade from Pete’s last night, the same Kade you saw out at the Toms place yesterday and said you wanted nothing to do with? That Kade?”
“That’s the one,” Alex replied. “And before you say anything else, I’m just taking him out to the Tulak place to have a look around.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s just business,” Alex said, hastily clearing her breakfast dishes and dumping them in the sink. She pulled aside a piece of egg-soaked toast and tossed it into Luna’s waiting mouth. “The way I see it, if it will keep one more gun from being aimed at the area wolf packs, then I’m more than happy to divert Kade with an in-country day trip.”
When she came back to the table to wipe it down, Jenna stared hard at her.
It didn’t take Alex’s uncanny inner lie detector, or even Jenna’s years of training as a cop, to read the plain and obvious fact that Alex was smitten. Turned inside-out by a man she’d known only a couple of days. Tempted to let this man who was a hundred confusing shades of gray into her tidy little black-and-white world.
“Be careful, Alex,” Jenna said. “I’m your friend and I love you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I know,” she said. “And I won’t.”
Jenna laughed under her breath and waved her hand dismissively in front of her. “Well, why are you standing around when you need to get ready for this nondate? Go on. Luna and I will handle breakfast cleanup detail.”
Alex grinned. “Thanks, Jen.”
“But when you get back from this nondate,” Jenna called after her as she raced down the hall, “I’m gonna want this guy’s last name and social security number. And a full medical history, too. You know I’m not kidding!”
Alex did know that, but she was laughing anyway, floating on a welcome, if unaccustomed, feeling of excitement and hope.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
Kade hadn’t realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Alex again until he was watching her through the frosted glass window of her front door as she came to let him in. Tall and lean, dressed in dark jeans and a citrus-green fleece with a white turtleneck underneath it, her warm blond hair collected into a pair of braids that just cleared her shoulders on either side, she looked fresh as spring in the dead of the frigid winter. She smiled at him through the ice crystals clinging to the window, her naturally pretty face enhanced with only a bit of mascara and the sudden blush that rose into her cheeks.
“Hi,” she said as she swung the unlocked door open for him. “You found me.”
He inclined his head in a nod. “I found you.”
“Let me guess,” she said, her smile lingering. “You walked all the way here like you did the other day in the bush?”
He smirked and gestured toward the snowmachine he’d parked in her yard. “I decided to ride today instead.”
“Ah, of course you did.” She held the door open for him. “Come in. I just have to grab my boots and gear and we can be off.”
As she disappeared around a corner of the living room, Kade walked inside the cozy little house, letting his gaze roam over the simple furnishings and the inviting, casual feel. He could smell Alex in this place, could feel her in the clean, unfussy lines of the sofa and chairs, in the rustic, dark woods of the tables and the earthy greens and browns and creams of the woven rug under his feet.
She came back into the room with laced-up Sorels on her feet and a thick khaki-colored parka draped around her. “Ready if you are. Leave your sled where it is. We’ll go out the back and take mine to the airstrip.”
Kade paused a couple of steps behind her. “The airstrip?”
“Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “No snow in the forecast for the next couple of days, so why waste time sledding out when we can fly there?”
“I didn’t realize we were going to fly.” He felt a momentary twinge of uncertainty, something wholly foreign to him. “It’s dark outside.”
“My plane can’t tell the difference between day and night,” she said, a playful light dancing in her soft brown eyes. “Let’s go. That is, unless you’re uncomfortable with a little darkness, Kade.”
She was goading him, and damned if he didn’t enjoy it. He smiled, more than up to any challenge she wanted to toss his way. “Lead on.”
With Alex in charge and Kade happy to be riding behind her on the sled, if only for the excuse of wrapping his arms around her, they sped through the frozen back lots of town to where her single-engine plane was tethered at Harmony’s joke of an airstrip. Aside from the hangar where the bodies of the Toms family still rested in temporary storage, the airport consisted of a short strip of hard-packed snow and landing lights that barely cleared the tops of the highest drifts.
Alex’s de Havilland Beaver had one neighbor for company, a small Super Cub that was rigged with fat tires instead of straight skis like Alex’s. A wind gust rolled through the cleared land of the runway, pushing a cloud of powdery snow across the ground like a tumbleweed.
“Bustling place, eh?”
“Better than nothing.” She parked the snowmachine and they climbed off. “Go ahead and get inside. I’ve got to run the system checks before we’re ready to take off.”
Kade might have balked at being ordered around by a female, if he hadn’t been so intrigued by Alex’s confidence in what she was doing. He climbed into the unlocked cockpit of the plane and closed the door. Even though the Beaver was the workhorse plane of the interior, Kade was struck immediately by the claustrophobic fit of the cockpit. At six foot four and 250 pounds without weapons and clothing, he was a large male by any standards, but sitting in the passenger seat of the single-engine plane, the curved metal panels and narrow windows felt like a tight cage.
Alex came around to the pilot’s side and hopped into the seat behind the wheel. “All set,” she announced cheerfully. “Buckle up and we’ll be airborne in no time.”
This far remote in the Alaskan interior, it wasn’t surprising that there was no traffic control, no tower to radio in to for clearance before takeoff. It was all on Alex to get them off the ground and headed in the right direction. Kade watched her work, impressed as hell by the way she took charge of the aircraft and set it moving on the pitifully brief runway. A minute later, they lifted off into the darkness, climbing higher and higher into a morning sky devoid of light except for the distant blanket of stars that glittered overhead.
“Nice job,” he said, glancing at her as she leveled off their ascent and steered them through a few short patches of bumpy, gusting wind. “I take it you’ve done this once or twice before.”
She slid him a little smile. “I’ve been flying since I was twelve years old. Had to wait to get my official training and license until I was eighteen, though.”
“You like being up here with the stars and clouds?”
“I love it,” she said, nodding thoughtfully as she checked a couple of the gauges on the plane’s dashboard, then looked back out at the vast nothingness in front of them. “My dad taught me to fly. When I was a kid, he used to tell me that the sky was a magic place. Sometimes when I’d get scared or wake up out of a nightmare, he’d take me up with him—no matter what time it was. We’d climb high into the sky, where nothing bad could reach us.”
Kade could hear the affection in her voice when she spoke about her father, and he also heard the sorrow of her loss. “How long since your father passed?”
“It’s been six months—Alzheimer’s. Four years ago, he started forgetting things. It got worse pretty quickly, and after about a year, when it started to affect his reflexes in the plane, he finally let me take him to the hospital in Galena. The disease progresses differently for everyone, but for Dad, it seemed to take hold of him so fast.” Alex let out a deep, reflective sigh. “I think he gave up as soon as he heard the diagnosis. I don’t know, I think maybe he was giving up on life even before then.”
“How so?”
It wasn’t meant to be a prying question, but she bit her lip as he asked it, a reflexive reaction that said she probably felt she’d already told him more than she’d intended. From the sudden, uneasy look she gave him, he could see that she was trying to size him up somehow, trying to decide if it was safe to trust him.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, her gaze turned back out the windscreen as if she couldn’t tell him and look at him at the same time. “My, um … my dad and I moved to Alaska when I was nine years old. Before that, we lived in Florida, down on the ’Glades, where my dad ran seaplane charter tours of the swamps and the Keys.”
Kade studied her in the dim light of the cockpit. “That’s a whole different world from here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it sure was.”
A sudden metallic clatter sounded from somewhere on the plane, and the cockpit gave a vibrating shudder. Kade held on to his seat, grateful to see that Alex wasn’t panicking. Her attention went laser sharp to her instrument panel, and she gave the plane some added speed. The shake and rattle calmed, and the ride smoothed out once again.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, her tone as wry as her expression. “Like my dad used to say, it’s a scientific fact that some of the most alarming aircraft noises can only be heard at night. I think we’re okay now.”
Kade chuckled uneasily. “I’m gonna have to take your word on that.”
They flew over a sloping peak, then made a gradual direction change that brought them back over the Koyukuk below.
“So, what happened in Florida, Alex?” he said, returning to the subject he had no intention of dropping now. Instinct told him he was mining close to pay dirt about the secrets she seemed to be holding, but he wasn’t looking to further his mission right now. He was genuinely interested in her—hell, if he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that he was starting to truly care about her—and he wanted to understand whatever she’d been through. Hearing the pain beneath her words, he wanted to help heal some of it if he could. “Did something happen to your father or you in Florida?”
She shook her head and gave him another of those measuring, sidelong looks. “No, not us … but my mom and my little brother …”
Her voice broke, quiet and choked off. Kade could feel a scowl pulling his brows together as he stared at her. “How did they die, Alex?”
For one stunning moment, as her eyes held his, unblinking and stark with revisited fear, a cold dread began to form in his gut. The small compartment they shared some eight thousand feet off the ground got even tighter, compressed by Alex’s terrible silence beside him.
“They were killed,” she said at last, words that only made Kade’s pulse beat faster when he considered one possible cause—a terrible cause that would make this whole involvement with Alex even more impossible than it already was. But then she gave a shrug of her shoulders and looked straight ahead once more. She sucked in a deep breath and released it. “It was an accident. A drunk driver blew a traffic light at an intersection. He plowed into my mom’s car. She and my little brother were both killed on impact.”
Kade’s scowl deepened as she recited the facts in a rush, as though she couldn’t spit them out fast enough. And recite seemed an apt description, because something about the explanation struck him as being too pat, too well rehearsed.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he said, unable to tear his scrutinizing, now-suspicious gaze away from her. “I guess it’s a small blessing that they didn’t suffer.”
“Yeah,” she replied woodenly. “At least they didn’t suffer.”
They flew for a while without speaking, watching the dark landscape beneath them alternate from the lightless patches of tightly knit forest and jagged, soaring mountains, to the electric-blue glow of the snow-covered tundra and foothills below. In the distant sky, Kade saw the eerie green flash of the northern lights. He pointed it out to Alex, and though he’d seen the aurora countless times from the ground in the near century since his birth, he’d never been in the sky to watch the streaking colors dance across the horizon.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Alex remarked, clearly in her element as she navigated in a wide arc to give them a longer look at the lights.
Kade watched the display of colors, but his thoughts were still on Alex, still trying to piece together the facts from the loose bit of fiction she seemed to want him to believe. “Alaska is about as different as you can get from Florida, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “My dad and I wanted to start over—we needed to, after Mom and Richie—” She took a breath as though catching herself from saying something more than she intended. “After they died, my dad and I flew to Miami to book a flight to someplace where we could start our lives over again. There was a globe in one of the bookstores at the terminal. Dad showed me where we were, then asked me to pick out the place where we should go next. I chose Alaska. When we got here, we figured Harmony sounded like it would be a friendly town for us to make a new home.”
“And was it?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice a bit wistful. “It feels different to me now that he’s gone, though. I’ve been thinking it might be time for me to take another look at the globe, see another part of the country for a while.”
Before Kade could probe any further down that path, the single engine’s rattle and shake was back with a vengeance. Alex sped them up again, but the noise and shudder persisted.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m going to have to take us down now,” she said. “There’s the Tulak cabin below. I’ll try to land as close as I can.”
“All right.” Kade glanced out the window to the ground coming up beneath them more quickly than he liked. “Just try to put it down easy. I don’t see anything close to a runway down there.”
He needn’t have been concerned. Alex brought the shuddering plane down onto its skis in a soft glide, managing to miss a couple of ancient spruces that seemed to materialize out of the darkness as they coasted over the top of the powdery snow. The cabin was right in front of them now, but Alex slowed the Beaver and steered into a gentle curve, navigating pretty damned tightly on precious little preparation for their abrupt landing.
“Jesus, that was close,” he said as they came to a stop in the snow.
“Think so?” Alex’s amused expression spoke volumes as she powered down the engine.
She climbed out and Kade followed her up to the engine. She peered inside. “Dammit. Well, that explains the problem. A couple of screws must have jiggled loose of the engine cowling and fell out.”
Kade knew as much about engine cowlings as he did knitting. And he had no business hoping the plane’s trouble would keep him stranded in the wild with Alex for a few hours. Better yet, a few nights.
“So, what are you telling me, we’re grounded until we get some help?”
“You’re looking at the help,” she told him, shooting him a grin as she walked back to grab her toolbox from the plane’s cargo hold.
Part of Kade’s reason for bringing her out with him to the remote location had been to once and for all get to the bottom of what she knew about the Toms killings. Now, after the half-truth she’d told him about the deaths of her mother and brother, he had another reason to question her. And he told himself that if it did turn out that Alex knew something about the existence of the Breed—and all the more so if that knowledge had anything to do with the loss of her family members in Florida—then relieving her of the burden of that memory would be doing her a kindness.
But this wasn’t just about his mission. He’d tried to convince himself it was, but duty had taken a swift backseat from the moment he arrived at Alex’s place today. The way his pulse hammered around this female sure as hell wasn’t part of the plan. His heart was still banging from the sudden landing, but as Alex came back to where he stood, looking smart and capable and too damned adorable as she went to work on the engine, the banging in his chest settled into a heavy throb.
“You mind holding the flashlight for me?” She clicked it on and handed it to him, then stripped off her glove and fished around in her toolbox for a handful of odd-size screws and bolts. “A couple of these should do the trick until we get back home.”
Kade watched her carefully hand-thread each screw into the mounting, wondering if the other warriors in Boston felt the same pride and amusement when they watched their mates doing what they did best.
The thought jarred him as soon as it entered his mind … since when had he been the type to think about having a mate, let alone place Alexandra Maguire anywhere near that scenario? At best, she was a temporary obstacle in fulfilling his mission for the Order. At worst, she was a security risk for the entire Breed nation—one that he was duty-bound to silence, the sooner the better.
But none of that mattered to his drumming heart, nor to the crackle of awareness that coursed through every vein and cell of his body as she finished her work not a few inches from him. Behind her, far in the distance, the green light of the aurora borealis was joined by a rising ribbon of red. The color framed Alex as she pivoted her head to look at him now, and he wondered if he’d ever seen anything quite so beautiful as her face haloed by the frozen magic of the Alaskan wilderness. She didn’t speak, just held his gaze with the same wordless intensity that he felt coursing through himself.
Kade switched off the flashlight and set it down on top of the now-closed engine casing. He took off his gloves and reached for Alex’s bare hand, warming her cold fingers between the press of his warm palms. He held her hand in a light grasp, giving her the power to pull away if she didn’t want his touch. But she didn’t resist.
She entwined her fingers through his, looking up into his eyes with raw, searching intensity. “What do you want from me, Kade? Please, I need to know. I need you to tell me.”
“I thought I knew,” he said, then gave a slow shake of his head. “I thought I had it all figured out. God, Alex … meeting you has changed everything.”
He freed one hand to cup it along the curve of her cheek, slipping his fingers between the hood of her parka and the velvety warmth of her face.
“I can’t read you,” she said, frowning as she gazed up at him. “It makes me uncomfortable that I can’t figure you out.”
He touched the tip of her nose, gave her a wry smile. “Too much gray in your black-and-white world?”
Her expression stayed serious. “It scares me.”
“Don’t be.”
“You scare me, Kade. All my life, I’ve run from the things that frighten me, yet with you …” She released a slow, uncertain sigh. “With you, I can’t seem to stay away.”
He stroked her cheek, smoothed the pads of his fingers over the light creases in her brow as she looked up at him. “There’s no reason to be afraid when you’re with me,” he told her, meaning it completely.
But then he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers, and the kiss meant to be tender reassurance ignited into something wilder as Alex kissed him back so openly, teasing his mouth with the tip of her tongue. All of the heat that had leapt between them the night before in Pete’s parking lot sprang to life again now, only swifter, more intense for the hours of longing Kade had known in between. He was on fire for this female, dangerously so. Kissing her was risky enough; desire already had his fangs stretching from his gums, his vision going sharp with the flood of amber light that would soon fill his irises.
Seducing her had not been his goal here, no matter what his mission for the Order was, or how badly he wanted to unravel Alex’s secrets to satisfy his own personal curiosity.
He drew back, his head held low, face turned away from her to hide the changes he could not let her see. Changes that would startle her.
Changes that he would not be able to explain.
“What is it?” she asked, her soft voice husky from the kiss. “Is anything wrong?”
“No.” He shook his head, still cautious to keep his face shielded as he willed his lust to cool. “Nothing wrong at all. But it’s too damned cold to be standing out here. You must be freezing.”
“I can’t say I’m feeling any chill at the moment,” she replied, making him smile despite the war raging inside him.
“We should go inside.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he walked around to the passenger side of the plane. “I just need to grab my gear. Go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
“All right.” She hesitated for a moment, then started walking toward the cabin, her boots crunching in the snow. “Bring some firewood while you’re at it. Folks use this place as a trail shelter now, so you should find some in the shed out back.”
He waited until she had gone inside the log shelter before he pulled his weapons duffel out of the plane and headed around to look for the woodshed. The Arctic air slapped at him as he strode through the unspoiled snow. He welcomed the chafe of the bitter, cold weather. He needed the clarity of the icy wind.
And still he burned inside for Alex.
He wanted her badly, and it would take nothing short of a glacier swallowing him whole to douse any of the heat that she ignited in him.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Alex walked into the one-room cabin and closed the door behind her to seal out the cold and, she hoped, steal a minute of privacy so she could deal with the tumult going on inside her. She leaned back against the weathered panel and exhaled a long, tremulous sigh. “Get a grip on yourself, Maguire.”
She wanted to pretend the kiss didn’t mean anything, that the simple fact Kade had pulled away first should tell her that even he thought letting things get heated between them was a bad idea. Except things were already heated. More than heated, and denying it wasn’t going to make the fact go away. There wasn’t anywhere far enough that Alex could run to outpace the desire she had for Kade. And the kicker was, she didn’t want to run from that feeling. For the first time in her life, there was something that scared the hell out of her but didn’t make her itchy to bolt.
No, even worse, her feelings for Kade made her want to draw closer to him.
Scarier still, she felt that Kade might be someone strong enough to lean on, strong enough for her to open up to—really open up to—about everything she’d been holding inside her for so long. Some part of her wanted to believe he might be the one man strong enough to stand beside her through any storm, even one thick with monsters, where the night had teeth and the wind roared, bloodthirsty with hunger.
Kade would stand with her.
Alex knew that in much the same way she had always known when someone lied to her. Although she couldn’t seem to read him as she could other people, the same innate sense of hers told her that it was because Kade was unlike other people in some way. He was unlike any man she’d ever met or might ever meet again.
That same odd but unshakable instinct had been at work on the flight out from Harmony, when she had come so close to telling him the truth—all of it—about why she and her dad had fled Florida. The truth about what exactly had killed her mom and little brother.
It had been a struggle to work against the impulse that wanted her to let Kade in, and as she’d tossed him the polished lie that she’d used on so many others without the slightest compunction, not being honest with Kade had made her feel awful. Imagine that—she’d withheld one of the most fundamental truths about herself from everyone in Harmony who’d known her since she was a child, yet after just a few days of flirting with a stranger, she was ready to lay it all out on the line for him.
But Kade wasn’t a stranger to her now. He hadn’t felt like a stranger, not even that first night in the back of the church, when his bright silver eyes had met her gaze across the room.
And if all they’d been doing in the time since was merely flirting, then why did her heart feel like it was battering against her sternum every time she was near him? Why did she feel, against all logic and reason, that she belonged with this man?
With the cold of past memories and the uncertainty of the future crowding in on her, she needed something strong and warm to hold on to.
Not just anything, or anyone … but him.
She needed Kade’s warmth now—his strength—even if only for a little while.
The woodshed in back of the cabin had a decent supply of seasoned, split logs, kept dry and stacked inside the snug outbuilding that bore Henry Tulak’s initials above the door. It was customary in the bush that wanderers looked out for one another, leaving fuel and food for the next person and respecting the land in order to preserve it for others as well as oneself.
As Kade pulled from the supply and set his logs aside, he considered what he might leave in exchange for the fuel he would be burning for Alex in the cabin. He knelt down and unzipped his duffel bag. The only thing he carried that would prove useful to someone in the wild would be his weapons, but the Rogue-killing guns he carried were far too valuable to leave behind. A knife, then. He had more than one in his pack.
As he reached into the duffel in search of a blade he could stand to part with, his boot heel caught on something hard and white, jammed between the floorboards of the woodshed.
“What the hell?”
He moved aside to get a better look at what he might have crushed under his foot. A bear tooth. The long, sharp ivory point was wedged deep into the seam of two boards, as though it had been ground in by countless boots before his. But it wasn’t the tooth itself that made Kade’s blood go cold in his veins. It was the thin length of braided leather attached to the tooth.
Precisely the same kind of leather band that had been fastened to another bear tooth he’d seen just recently.
The one he’d found stained with dried, aged human blood and hidden in Seth’s private cache of little treasures. The twisted collection of souvenirs, kept by a killer.
His brother had been here.
Ah, Christ … had Seth killed the human who’d been found dead and scavenged in this spot last year?
Kade wanted to deny the proof in his hand as mere coincidence, but the coldness that settled in his chest told him that his twin had been in this very spot a winter ago, when Henry Tulak took his last breath.
“Son of a bitch,” Kade whispered, sick with the understanding, even though he’d been searching for evidence of it since his arrival in Alaska.
Now that it was staring him full in the face—the certainty that only an identical twin could have about his other half—there could hardly be any more denying what he’d known in his heart for a long time. His brother was a killer. No better than the Rogues Kade had always hated and now hunted as a member of the Order. Fury raked him, outrage not only at Seth but at himself, for still wanting to believe he was wrong about his brother. In his heart, Kade knew there was no mistake. No more doubt to excuse Seth, or the repugnance of his actions.
Kade worked the bear tooth free with the tip of the knife and held it in front of him, staring in revulsion at the evidence that had just damned his brother. That same evidence now compelled Kade to do what was just and right—to do what was his duty, not only for the Order but as a male whose personal code of honor demanded justice.
He needed to find Seth and put an end to his killing.
He needed to leave, right now. He was too on edge with fury and resolve to fly back to Harmony with Alex; he would head out on foot to begin his personal hunt while the noon daybreak was still a couple of hours away. He would cover the whole damned interior on foot if need be—call the wolves to help him find Seth if he couldn’t track him down fast enough on his own.
Kade shoved the bear tooth charm into the front pocket of his jeans and set the knife on top of the logs, an offering in trade despite the fact that he had no use for the wood now. The only thing he needed now was to get the hell out of there and do the job that had brought him home to Alaska in the first place.
By the time he made the trek around from the shed and up to the cabin, he was a powder keg of anger and deadly purpose. But when he opened the cabin door, ready to offer some lame excuse to Alex about why he had to abandon her there, he was greeted by warm air and the golden glow of a fire crackling in the small pipe stove in the center of the cabin.
And Alex, seated within a fluffy nest of sleeping bags and soft wool blankets. Her blond hair was loosened from its braids, falling down in tousled waves around her bare shoulders. Bare, naked shoulders, just like her long, slender legs, which peeked out from beneath the tattered blanket that only partially covered her.
Holy hell … beautiful, sexy Alex, naked and waiting for him.
Kade cleared his throat, suddenly at a loss for words, let alone the excuses he meant to hand her about why he had to leave right away.
“I, ah … I found some wood and matches in the bucket over there,” Alex said. “I thought I’d warm things up in here.”
Warm it up? If she was any hotter, Kade’s body would have gone up in flames where he stood. His heart was still pounding from the unpleasant discovery in the woodshed, but now its rhythm took on a deeper, more urgent beat. He felt a muscle jerk violently in his jaw as he watched the soft firelight dance over her smooth, creamy skin.
“Alex …”
He gave a weak shake of his head, unable to summon the words to deny her. The dozen or more reasons why this was a bad idea—particularly now, when duty compelled him to put aside his own selfish cravings and focus wholly on the mission he’d been sent there to do—fled from his lust-drenched brain. Hunger swamped him, desire flooding over the rage that had consumed him not even a minute ago outside.
This was bad, this need he had for her. Given its timing, he wasn’t sure that taking things between Alex and him to an intimate level could possibly be any worse of an idea right now.
That is, until she stood up and began to walk toward him. The threadbare blanket that draped her form so loosely, trailing behind her, now split open in the front and gave him an unhindered glimpse of her lean, endless legs with every slow step she took. And as she drew nearer, the thin fabric shifting to bare the soft white flesh of her left hip, Kade saw the tiny crimson teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark that pushed this entire situation out of the realm of your basic bad ideas and squarely into the disaster zone.
She was a Breedmate.
And that changed everything.
Because Alexandra Maguire wasn’t merely a mortal, human woman he could play around with, pump for information, maybe fuck for a while, then eventually mind-scrub and forget. She was as good as kin to one of his kind, a female to be honored and revered, as precious as gold.
She was something rare and miraculous, something he damned well didn’t deserve, and she had no bloody idea.
“Ah, Christ.” He set the duffel bag down on the floor. His business with Seth and the Order would both have to wait. “Alex, there’s something … we need to talk.”
She smiled, a sensual, playful curve of her lips. “Unless you need to tell me that you have some kind of disease or that you’re actually into guys …”
He stared at her, wondering if there had been clues he’d missed along the way. But he hadn’t been looking at Alex as anything more than a source of information at first, an unwilling witness that he would need to pry open by any means necessary. Once he’d talked to her, he had begun to like her. And once he’d begun to like her, it was hard not to crave her.
And now?
Now he was honor-bound to protect this female at any cost, and that damned well included protecting her from falling into the hands of a male like him. He was putting her in danger just by being with her, dragging her deeper into his mission for the Order and closer, especially after today, to the horror of his brother’s sick little games. If he was half the warrior he had pledged himself to be, he would sweep Alex out of this place and get her the hell back home, never to see or hear from him again.
“Kade?” She cocked her head slightly as she came closer, still waiting for his answer, her tone still playful. “That’s, um, that’s not what you need to tell me, is it?”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said, practically purring the words. “Because I really don’t want to talk right now.”
Kade drew in a breath as she drifted up close to him, no more than an inch and a paltry scrap of wool between them. And the scent of her … warm skin, feminine heat, and the spicy-sweet trace of something even more elusive that he now knew had to be the Breedmate’s unique blood-scent.
Even without the damned birthmark, hell, in spite of it, Alexandra Maguire was an intoxicating combination that wrapped around him—through him—like the most potent drug.
She looked up at him, her caramel-brown eyes darker than ever, deep pools to drown in. “I want to be with you, here and now, Kade.” Slowly she opened the blanket, baring herself to him completely as she wrapped her arms around him, ensconcing them both within its folds. The heat of her naked body seared him, imprinted itself on his memory like a brand. “I’m tired of feeling cold all the time. I’m tired of feeling so alone. Just for now, I want you to touch me, Kade. I just want to feel your hands on me.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. He knew the courage it took for her to admit her vulnerability to him, to put herself out to him like this. He couldn’t pretend that he wanted this any less than she did. He’d craved her since the moment he first saw her. Now all of his good intentions—all of his thoughts toward duty and honor—incinerated in an instant.
He brought one palm up along the delicate line of her spine; the other rose to caress the graceful curve of her cheek and the silky skin of her nape. Her pulse fluttered against the pad of his thumb as he stroked the tender skin over her carotid. As he played that soft, erotic patch of flesh with his fingers, she closed her eyes and tipped her head back, granting him more access than was wise.
Kade’s own pulse hammered, each tick of her heartbeat, each small quiver of her body against him as he stroked her, spurring his most primal hungers. He dipped his head and nuzzled his face in the cradle of her neck and shoulder, daring only the briefest kiss when his fangs were quickly filling his mouth, his tongue eager for a taste of her. He exhaled the urge on a low growl, trailing his mouth around to the front of her throat, then lower, bending as he palmed one perfect breast and lifted the rosy nipple to his lips.
He suckled her, careful not to graze her with the sharp points of his fangs as he tugged the tight little bud deeper into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue and reveling in her breathless gasps of pleasure. He reached down with his free hand, gripping the sweet swell of her rump, then teasing the seam of her body from behind. She felt so good in his arms, so right. He crushed her to him, letting his fingers cleave deeper, into the slick folds of her sex. She was wet and hot, her flesh a welcoming haven as his touch delved within her.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, arching into his embrace. “Kade …”
On a moan, he released her breast from his toying bite and came back to her lips, capturing her sigh in a deep, hungered kiss. Although she matched his fevered pace, he was the one who set it, more urgent than intended, but he was too far gone to take things slowly. He was also too well aware of the changes coming over him—changes that would require some explaining, which would also require talking, something she had not been interested in before and something he was incapable of at the moment.
Still kissing her, unable to take his mouth off hers, he guided her back toward the nest of blankets near the fire. Together they undressed him, a hasty stripping off of his coat and shirt, boots and jeans. Kade shucked the rest of his clothing as Alex broke their kiss and trailed the tip of her tongue down along the side of his neck. He shook with the sudden jolt of desire that flooded his veins, felt the rush of blood racing through his limbs and down to the throbbing length of his cock. His skin prickled with the transformation of his dermaglyphs, the pattern of Breed markings that tracked over his chest and arms and down onto his thighs. The glyphs, normally a shade or two darker than his own skin color, would surely be saturated with color now, deepening to reflect the desire he felt for Alex.
“Ah, fuck,” he growled, drawing in a sharp hiss as she nipped playfully at the tender skin below his jaw. He didn’t know how much more he could take. When she reached down and stroked the length of his shaft, he couldn’t bite back his animal snarl. She palmed the blunt head of his sex, her touch both curious and demanding as she slicked his moisture over the sensitive skin.
“Lie down with me,” he said, his voice ragged, his breath sawing in and out of him.
He took her by the arms and sank with her to the blanket-covered floor of the cabin, kissing her as he gently pressed her beneath him. She was so soft and warm against his body, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her thighs parted where his hips wedged between them. His cock nestled into the wet cleft of her sex, rampant with the need to drive deep, but Kade only played at entering her, sliding between the plush petals of her body as he teased his mouth along the flickering heartbeat at the side of her neck. He reached down to grasp himself, rubbing his hard flesh against her softness, using the broad tip of his penis to stroke the tight little bud of her clit. She moaned, arching to meet his tempo, spreading her legs to invite him deeper. He resisted the temptation, but only barely.
She’d asked him to make her warm, and so she was, but he wanted to make her hotter than she’d ever been. The sudden, unfathomable need to brand himself upon her body—to bring her pleasure unlike anyone had before him—beat in his blood like a drum. Stunned by the feeling, he drew back slightly. But Alex looked too good, felt too good, and before he could remind himself that she deserved better, he was kissing his way down the front of her body. He savored every sweet inch of her from the small mounds of her breasts to the firm muscle of her belly and the damning little birthmark at her hip that made all of this pleasure and selfish need of his so wrong.
But wrong or not, as selfish as it was for him to give in to his desire for Alex, he was well beyond resisting now. The feel of her beneath him kicked the flame in his blood to full boil. The scent of her pulled him like a magnet toward the downy patch of curls between her legs. He kissed her there, using his lips and tongue and teeth until she was writhing against his mouth. And still he didn’t stop. He suckled her and stroked her, pleasuring her until she arched up beneath him and cried out with a shattering, shuddering climax.
And still he didn’t stop.
He kept kissing and suckling and stroking her, bringing her to the crest of another wild release, and then, only then, did he rise up to cover her with his body, thrusting deep and roaring as the hot, wet walls of her sheath contracted around his pumping shaft. He drove into her, realizing that he too had needed this warmth, this sense—even if temporary—that he wasn’t alone. He’d needed Alex like this, in this moment, as much as she only thought she needed him.
Kade’s release coiled hard in the base of his cock, intensifying with every fevered thrust. Hotter and hotter, tighter and tighter, until he couldn’t hold back a second more. He went taut with the force of it and plunged as far as she could take him, burying his face in her shoulder and giving a hoarse shout of release as his seed exploded from him in a heated, liquid rush.
He couldn’t have held back if he’d tried, although there was no threat of pregnancy so long as there was no exchange of blood. But even that proved more tempting than it should be. Kade’s fangs punched long from his gums as he lost himself inside Alex’s molten heat. He heard her pulse racing, felt it in the frenzied echo of his own heartbeat. And where his mouth rested in a tight grimace against her skin, he felt the rush of her blood pounding just beneath the surface of her delicate skin.
“Ah, Christ … Alex,” he hissed, tormented by the flood of sensations she aroused in him.
Everything Breed in him demanded that he make this female his own, that he lay claim to her blood as he’d just laid claim to her body.
Kade clamped down hard on that further need, but damn, it wasn’t easy. He rolled her against him, spooning her from behind to help conceal the changes that had come over him in their passion.
“Are you all right?” she asked him as he struggled to get ahold of his impulses and some scrap of rational thought.
“Yeah,” he managed after a moment. “Better than I have a right to be.”
“Me, too,” she said, her smile evident in the drowsy contentment of her voice as it fanned warm and light over the top of his forearm. “In case you’re wondering, my pilot services usually don’t include getting naked with my clients.”
“Good,” Kade said, little better than a growl as he gathered her closer to the front of his still-heated body. He didn’t want her getting naked with anyone, he realized with a jolt. He wouldn’t have liked the idea before what just happened between them today, and he sure as hell wouldn’t take it well now.
“What about you?” she asked as he covered them both with the blankets to shield his glyphs from her view.
“What about me?”
“Do you … do this often?”
“Get naked with sexy Alaskan bush pilots in the middle of the frozen wilderness?” He paused for a minute, letting her think he was giving the question serious consideration. “Nope. This was a first for me.”
And so was the fierce sense of possession that still drummed in his blood when he thought of Alex being with any other male. He wondered idly if it was the fact that she was a Breedmate that had drawn him to her from the first. But even as he thought it, he knew that the birthmark that connected her to the shadowy world he inhabited as one of the Breed was the least of the qualities that attracted him to Alexandra Maguire. The last thing he needed right now was an emotional entanglement, least of all with a female bearing the teardrop-and-crescent-moon mark.
But he was entangled. In fact, he had just tied a few more knots in an already impossible situation.
Cursing himself for the first-class fool he clearly was, Kade kissed the top of her head and gathered her close as he waited for his eyes to resume a normal appearance and his fangs to have a chance to retreat.
It took some time, and even after his body settled into a comfortable peace, his hunger for the woman in his arms remained.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Daylight broke thin and overcast outside the wide mouth of the woodland cave. The predator had sought shelter there a short while ago, when the sun’s first weak rays had begun to claw their way through the winter darkness. Few things existed that were stronger than he, particularly in this primitive world that was so different from the distant one he’d been born into many millennia ago, but as advanced a life-form as his kind was, his hairless, dermaglyph-covered skin could not process ultraviolet light, and just a few minutes’ exposure would kill him.
From deep within the safety of the dark cave, he rested from the previous night of hunting and wandering, impatient for the thready light of daybreak to exhaust itself and retreat once more. He needed to feed again soon. He still hungered, his cells and organs and muscles requiring extensive rejuvenation after the long period of deprivation and abuse he had suffered while in captivity. The instinct to survive warred with the knowledge he had that he was, wholly and utterly, alone on this inhospitable chunk of orbiting debris.
There were none like him left here now, not for a long time. He was the last of the eight explorers who had crashed on this planet, a lone castaway with no chance of escape.
They had been born to conquer, born to be kings. Instead, one by one, his stranded brethren had all perished, whether by the harshness of their new surroundings or in war with their own half-human progeny centuries later. Through treachery and a secret bargain with his offspring, he alone had survived. But it had been that same treachery and covert dealing that had enslaved him to the son of his son, Dragos.
Now that he was free, the only thing more attractive than ending his time on this forsaken planet was the idea that he might be able to take his duplicitous heir with him in death.
He howled with remembered fury for the long decades of pain and experimentation that had been inflicted on him. His voice shook the walls of the cave, an unearthly roar that ripped from his lungs like a battle cry.
A gunshot answered from somewhere not too distant, somewhere in the woods beyond.
There was a sudden crash in the frozen bracken outside. Then a steady, fleeting beat of animal footsteps—several sets—racing near the mouth of the cave.
Wolves.
The pack split up, half running to the right of the cave’s entrance, half darting to the left of it. And behind them by only a few seconds, the sounds of human voices, armed men in dogged pursuit.
“This way,” one of them shouted. “Whole goddamn pack ran up this ridge, Dave!”
“You men take the westerly path,” a thunderous voice commanded in reply. “Lanny and I’ll take the ridge on foot. There’s a cave up this way—good chance one or more of the mangy bastards are hiding inside.”
The buzz of revving engines and the stench of burning gasoline filled the air as some of the men sped off. A few moments later, outside the cave’s mouth, in the daylight that barred the only route of escape, the silhouettes of two people holding long rifles took shape. The man in front was large, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders and a belly that might have been muscular in younger years but had since turned to flab. The man with him was a full foot shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter, a timid creature with a thready voice.
“I don’t think there’s anything in here, Dave. And I’m really not sure it’s a good idea for us to split off from the others …”
Confined to the shadows, the cave’s sole occupant shrank back behind a wall of jagged rock—but not soon enough.
“There! I just saw a pair of eyes glowing inside here. What’d I tell ya, Lanny? We got one of those goddamn bastards right fucking here!” The big man’s voice was eager with aggression as he raised his weapon. “Shine that flashlight and let me see what I’m shooting at, will ya?”
“Uh, okay, Dave.” His nervous companion fumbled the task, clicking on the beam and sending it in a shaky bounce around the floor and walls of the cave. “Do you see it anywhere? I don’t see nothing in here at all.”
Of course he didn’t, because the glowing gaze the larger man had seen just a moment ago was no longer low to the ground but looking down on the pair of humans from where the hunter now clung to the rock ceiling above their heads, poised over them in the dark like a spider.
The big man lowered his weapon. “What the hell? Where the fuck could it have gone?”
“We shouldn’t be here, Dave. I think we should go find the others …”
The big man took a few more steps into the cave. “Don’t be such a pussy. Give me that light.”
As the smaller man reached out to hand it over, his boot caught on a loose rock. He stumbled, went down on his knees with a yelp of pain and surprise. “Oh, shit! I think I cut myself!”
The coppery proof of it rose up in a sudden olfactory blast. The scent of fresh blood drilled into the predator’s nostrils. He breathed it in and hissed it back out of his lungs through his bared teeth and fangs.
Below him on the floor of the cave, the nervous little man’s head jerked upward. His stricken face went slack with horror under the alien, amber glow of now-thirsting eyes.
He screamed, his voice as high and curdled as a human girl’s.
At the same time, the big man wheeled around with his rifle.
The cave exploded with a sharp crack of gunfire and a blinding flash of light as the predator leapt from his hold on the rocks overhead and launched himself at the pair of humans.
Alex couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so deeply or so uninterruptedly. Nor could she recall ever feeling quite so spent and sated as she did after making love with Kade. She stretched beneath the fluffy pile of blankets and sleeping bags on the floor, then rose up on her elbow to watch him as he added more wood to the fire in the cabin’s little pipe stove.
He crouched on his haunches, the thick muscles of his back and arms bunching and flexing as he pivoted to place another log in the stove, his smooth skin bathed in the warm amber glow of the firelight. His short black hair was a bed-rumpled mess of glossy spikes that gave him a wilder air than normal, all the more so when he turned his head to glance her way and she was hit with the chiseled angles of his killer cheekbones and jaw, and the piercing silver of his dark-fringed eyes.
He was gorgeous, a hundred times more breathtaking when he was sitting there naked in front of her, his gaze intense and intimate, locked onto hers. Alex’s body still hummed with the memory of their passion, the pleasant ache between her legs pulsing a bit warmer for the way he looked at her now, as if he wanted to devour her all over again.
“Did we sleep through daylight?” she asked, suddenly needing to fill the heated silence.
He gave a brief nod. “The sun’s been gone for a couple of hours.”
“You’ve been outside, I see,” she said, noting the fresh supply of split logs stacked up beside him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just came in a minute ago.”
She smiled, arching her brows. “I hope you didn’t go out there like that. It can’t be more than zero degrees in the dark.”
He grunted, his sensual mouth curving with wry humor. “I don’t have any shrinkage issues.”
No, this was definitely not a man who’d have the slightest insecurities about his masculinity. Every inch of him was lean, hard, sculpted muscle. At nearly six and a half feet, he had the brutal form of a mythical warrior, from the thick, ropey bulk of his shoulders and biceps, to the carved planes of his chest and the washboard abs that tapered to narrow, perfectly cut hips. The rest of him was impressively perfect, as well, and she could testify that he certainly knew what to do with it.
Good lord, he was a living work of art, which was only enhanced by the intricate yet subtly rendered pattern of ink—what kind of ink was that, anyway?—that tracked over the golden skin of his torso and limbs like the path of an appreciative lover’s tongue. Alex followed the swirling, intriguingly strange designs with her eyes, wondering if it was only a trick of the firelight that made the henna color of his tattoos seem to flush a deeper shade as she stared at him in open appreciation.
Grinning as though he were used to women admiring him, he stood up and slowly walked back over to where she lay in their nest on the floor, totally uninhibited in his nudity.
Alex laughed softly and shook her head. “Does it ever get boring for you?”
He cocked a dark brow as he dropped into a negligent recline beside her. “Boring?”
“Women falling all over you,” she said, realizing with a bit of stunned surprise that she didn’t exactly like that idea. Hated it, in fact, and she wondered where the pang of jealousy was coming from, considering she had no personal claim on him simply because they’d shared a few sweaty—and, yes, okay, flat-out spectacular—hours enjoying each other’s bodies.
He stroked a stray lock of hair out of her face and drew her gaze to his. “I only see one woman here with me right now. And I can assure you, I am anything but bored.”
He cupped her face in his palms and kissed her, easing her back onto the blankets. His gaze smoldered as he looked down on her, and she could feel the rigid pressure of his erection nudging at the side of her hip where he’d stretched out beside her. “You’re a special woman, Alexandra. More special than you know.”
“You don’t even know me,” she protested quietly, needing to remind herself of that fact more than him. They’d known each other for what—a couple of days? It wasn’t like her to allow someone into her life so quickly, or so deeply, especially after such a short time. So, why him? Why now, when everything in her world felt as though it were perched on the edge of a very steep cliff? One strong push from the wrong direction, and she was gone. “You don’t know anything about me … not really.”
“Then tell me.”
She looked up into his eyes, startled by the sincerity, the raw plea, in his voice. “Tell you …”
“Tell me what happened to you in Florida, Alex.”
All the breath seemed to squeeze out of her lungs in that instant. “I did tell you—”
“Yes, but you and I both know that it wasn’t a drunk driver that took your mom and brother from you. Something else happened to them, didn’t it? Something that you’ve kept secret all these years.” He spoke with gentle patience, coaxing her trust. And God help her, she felt ready to give it to him. She needed to share it with someone, and in her heart, she knew that someone was Kade. “It’s okay, Alex. You can tell me the truth.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the awful words—the horrible memories—rise up like acid in her throat. “I can’t,” she murmured. “If I speak it, then everything I’ve tried to put behind me … everything I’ve worked so hard to forget … it will all become real again.”
“You can’t spend your life running from the truth,” he said, and something haunted crept into his voice. A sadness, a resignation that told her he understood some of the burden she’d carried for so long. “Denying the truth never makes it go away, Alex.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she replied quietly. In her heart, she knew that. She was tired of running and sick of fighting to keep the horror of her past buried and forgotten. She wanted to be free of it all, and that meant facing the truth, no matter how awful—no matter how unfathomable—it may be. But fear was a powerful enemy. Maybe too powerful. “I’m scared, Kade. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face it alone.”
“You are.” He dropped a tender kiss on her shoulder, then brought her gaze back to his. “But you’re not alone. I’m with you, Alex. Tell me what happened. I’ll see you through it, if you’ll let me.”
She held his imploring stare and found the courage she needed in the steely strength of his eyes. “We’d had such a good day together, all of us. We picnicked down by the water, and I had just taught Richie how to do a backflip off the dock. He was only six years old, but he was fearless, and willing to try anything I did. It had been a perfect day, filled with so much love and laughter.”
Until darkness had settled over the swamp, bringing unholy terror with it.
“I don’t know why they chose our family. I’ve searched for a reason, but I’ve never been able to find one for why they came out of the night to attack us.”
Kade caressed her carefully as she struggled for the words that came next. “Sometimes there are no reasons. Sometimes things happen and there’s nothing we can do to make sense of them. Life, and death, isn’t always neat or logical.”
Sometimes death sprang out of the shadows like a wraith, like a monster too horrific to be real.
“There were two of them,” Alex murmured. “We didn’t even know they were there until it was too late. It was dark, and we were all sitting on the veranda, relaxing after supper. My mom was on the porch swing with Richie, reading us Winnie-the-Pooh before bed, when the first one came out of nowhere without warning and pounced on her.”
Kade’s hand stilled. “You’re not talking about a man.”
She swallowed. “No. It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t even … human. It was something else. Something evil. It bit her, Kade. And then the other one grabbed Richie with its teeth, too.”
“Teeth,” he said evenly, no shock or disbelief in his voice, only a steady, grim understanding. “You mean fangs, don’t you, Alex? The attackers had fangs.”
She closed her eyes as the impossibility of the word sank in. “Yes. They had fangs. And their eyes … they glowed in the dark like bright coals, and in the center of them, their pupils were thin and long, like a cat’s. They couldn’t have been human. They were monsters.”
Kade’s touch was soothing on her face and hair as the terror of that awful night played out again in her mind. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. I only wish I could have been there to help you and your family.”
The sentiment was sweet, however improbable, given that he couldn’t be more than a few years older than she. But from the sincerity of his voice, she knew he truly meant it. No matter their odds, or the enormity of the evil they faced, Kade would have stood with her against the attack. He would have kept them all safe when no one else could have.
“My father tried to fight them off,” Alex murmured, “but everything was happening so fast. And they were so much stronger than he was. They knocked him away like he was nothing. By then, Richie was already dead. He was so little, he didn’t stand a chance of surviving that kind of violence. My mother screamed for my dad to run, to save me if he could. ‘Don’t let my daughter die!’ Those were her last words. The one who held her sank his huge jaws around her throat. He wouldn’t let go, just kept his mouth clamped down hard on her. He was … oh, God, Kade. This is going to sound crazy, but he was … drinking her blood.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and Kade pressed his lips to her brow, gathering her closer to him and offering much-needed comfort. “It doesn’t sound crazy, Alex. And I’m sorry for what you and your family endured. No one should have to bear that kind of pain and loss.”
Although she didn’t want to relive it, the memories had been resurrected now and after keeping them buried for so long, she found she couldn’t hold them back. Not when Kade was there to hold her, making her feel warmer and safer than she ever had before.
“They were like animals the way they tore at my mom and Richie. Not even animals would do what they did. And, oh, God … there was so much blood. My father scooped me up and we started running. But I couldn’t look away from what was happening behind us in the dark. I didn’t want to see any more, but it was so unreal. My mind couldn’t process it. It’s been years, and I’m still not sure I can explain what it was that attacked us that night. I just … I want it to make sense, and it doesn’t. It never will.” She drew in a hitching breath, revisiting a fresher pain, a more recent confusion. Looking up into Kade’s sober gaze, she said, “I saw the same kind of wounds on the Toms family. They were attacked, just like we were, by the same kind of evil. It’s here in Alaska, Kade … and I’m scared.”
For a long moment, Kade said nothing. She could see his keen mind turning over all that she’d told him, every incredible detail that would have made anyone else scoff in disbelief or tell her she needed to seek professional help. But not him. He accepted her truth for what it was, no trace of doubt in his eyes or his level tone. “You don’t have to run anymore. You can trust me. Nothing bad is going to touch you so long as I’m around. Do you believe me, Alex?”
She nodded, realizing just now how resolute her faith in him was. She trusted him on a level that was something more than instinctual, it was blood deep. What she felt for him defied the fact that he had entered her life only earlier that week, nor did it have anything to do with the way that she burned for him physically—hungered for him in a way she wasn’t quite prepared to examine.
She simply looked into Kade’s unfaltering eyes and she knew, down to her soul, that he was strong enough to carry whatever burden she shared with him.
“I need you to trust me,” he told her gently. “There are things you need to understand, Alex, now more than ever. Things about yourself, and what you saw, back in Florida and here, as well. And there are things you need to know about me, too.”
She sat up, her heart thudding oddly in her breast, heavy with a wary sense of expectation. “What do you mean?”
He glanced away then, his gaze following the soft path of his touch as his caress drifted down the length of her naked body, then lingered at the flare of her hip bone. With the pad of his thumb, he traced a skimming circle over the tiny birthmark there. “You’re different, Alexandra. Extraordinary. I should have recognized that right away. There were signs, but somehow I missed them. I was focused on other things and I … damn it.”
Alex frowned, more confused than ever. “What are you trying to say?”
“You’re not like other women, Alex.”
When he looked back up at her now, the confidence that normally sparked so brightly in his eyes was missing. He swallowed, the dry click of his throat making her blood run a bit colder in her veins. Whatever he had to say, he was the one who was afraid now, and seeing that trace of uncertainty in him made her anxiety spike a bit, too.
“You’re very different from other women, Alex,” he said again hesitantly. “And I … you need to know that I’m not like other men, either.”
She blinked, feeling an unseen weight press down on her in the silence that spread out between them. The same instinct that told her to demand more answers pleaded with her to back away and pretend she didn’t want to know—didn’t need to know whatever it was that had Kade so tongue-tied and antsy. All she could do was watch him and wait, worrying that he was about to send her entire world into an even greater tailspin.
The sharp trill of her cell phone jolted her like a kiss from a live wire. It rang again and she dived for it, welcoming the excuse to escape the strange, dark shift in Kade’s demeanor.
“This is Alex,” she said, recognizing Zach’s number as she flipped the phone open and took the call.
“Where are you?” he demanded, not even sparing a second on hello. “I just drove by your house and you’re not there. Are you out at Jenna’s?”
“No,” she said. “Jenna was at my house this morning, before I left. She must have gone home.”
“Well, where the hell are you, then?”
“I’m out on a call,” she said, bristling a little at his curt tone. “I had a, um, a charter client book a flight this morning—”
“Well, we’ve got a bad situation here in Harmony,” Zach cut in harshly. “I’m in the middle of a medical emergency and I need you to fly a critical injury in from the bush.”
Alex snapped out of the emotional fog that had held her before she took the call. “Who’s been injured, Zach? What’s going on?”
“It’s Dave Grant. I don’t have the whole story yet, but he and Lanny Ham and a bunch of other men from town were out hunting west of town today. They ran into trouble, serious trouble. Lanny Ham is dead, and apparently it’s not looking very good for Big Dave right now, either. The guys are afraid to put him on a snowmachine, for fear that they won’t get him back here in time enough to save him.”
“Oh, my God.” Alex sat back on her folded legs, a cold numbness crawling over her skin. “The injuries, Zach … what happened?”
“Something attacked them out there, according to the other men. Dave is delirious and he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s in and out of consciousness, talking a lot of nonsense about a creature lurking in one of the caves west of Harmony. Whatever it was that got ahold of him and Lanny, well, it’s bad, Alex. Real bad. Tore both of them up something awful. The news is all over town already and everyone’s in a panic.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, my God … oh, my God …”
Kade’s hand came to rest lightly on her bare shoulder. “What is it, Alex?”
She shook her head, incapable of forming the words.
“Who’s that with you?” Zach demanded. “For fuck’s sake, Alex. Are you with that guy from Pete’s the other night?”
Alex didn’t think she needed to answer to Zach Tucker about whom she was spending time with, not when one man was dead and another man’s life was hanging in the balance. Not when the horror of her past—the horror she had feared had visited the Toms family just a few days ago—was now raking her heart open all over again.
“I’m out at the Tulak cabin, Zach. I’ll leave right away, but I’m probably forty-five minutes out.”
“Forget it. We can’t afford to wait on you. I’ll track down Roger Bemis instead.”
He disconnected, leaving Alex sitting there, frozen in shock.
“What happened?” Kade asked. “Who’s been hurt?”
For a moment, it was all she could do to concentrate on breathing in and out. Her heart banged miserably, guilt gnawing at her. “I should have warned them. I should have told them what I knew instead of thinking I could deny it.”
“Alex?” Kade’s voice was cautious, his fingers firm but tender as he lifted her face up toward his. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Big Dave and Lanny Ham,” she murmured. “They were attacked today in the bush. Lanny’s dead. Big Dave might not make it.”
And if Kade had gone with them, instead of coming out with her? The idea that he might have been close to that danger—or worse, a victim of it—made her heart lurch. She felt ill with fear and dread, but it was her anger that she clung to.
“You’re right, Kade. I can’t run away from what I know. Not anymore. I have to face this evil. I have to take a stand now, before anyone else gets hurt.” Fury buoyed her where fear threatened to hold her down. “I need to tell the truth—to everyone in Harmony. To the whole damned world, if that’s what it takes. People need to know what’s out there. They can’t destroy an evil they don’t even know exists.”
“Alex.” He pressed his lips together, started to shake his head as though he meant to dissuade her. “Alex, I don’t think that would be wise …”
She held his stare, incredulous. “It’s because of you that I feel strong enough to do this, Kade. We need to stand together—everyone—and defeat this.”
“Ah, Christ … Alex …”
His hesitation felt like a cold blade slowly pressing into her sternum. Confused by his change in attitude, but too determined to do what was right—to do what she had to do now—she backed away from him and started getting dressed. “I have to get back to Harmony. I’m leaving in the next five minutes. You can decide if you’re coming with me or not.”
CHAPTER
Sixteen
They didn’t speak the whole flight back.
Kade sat beside Alex in miserable silence, torn between wanting to explain to her about the Breed and her place within that world and fearing that if she knew what he truly was, she would lump him into the same category of monster that she abhorred and was now so determined to expose to all of Harmony and the rest of humankind.
The fear that she would hate him kept his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth for the entire forty-five minutes it took for her to fly them back to the snow-packed airstrip on the edge of town. He was a bastard for withholding the whole truth from her; he knew that. He’d proven himself something even worse than that in the Tulak cabin, when he’d let his desire for her trump his duty—his own personal code of honor, flimsy as it might be—that would have compelled a better male to put all of the cards on the table before he’d taken her.
But it hadn’t been all about the sex with Alex. It wasn’t just about desire, although he had that for her in spades. Things would be a hell of a lot easier right now if it was merely physical.
The fact was, he cared about her. Cared for her. He didn’t want to see her hurt anymore, least of all by his own words or actions. He wanted to protect her from the things that had harmed her in the past, and he would do whatever possible to see to it that nothing bad could touch her ever again.
Oh, yeah, he was doing a damn fine job there.
Doing a first-class job on everything he’d touched since his arrival back in Alaska.
In light of the evidence he’d found at the cabin, what might have been a simple, sideline mission to rout out a probable Rogue problem in the frozen north country was now a quest to locate a killer in his own family. And now he had at least one more dead human to add to that mix, potentially two, if the report of Big Dave’s injuries was accurate.
Another savage attack that Kade prayed against all suspicion otherwise would not have Seth’s name written all over it.
He was still chewing on that dread as Alex brought the plane down in a flawless landing. Damn, even as shaken as she had to be, Alex was total cool control behind the wheel. A real professional. Just one more thing that made him appreciate her all the more.
“Shit,” he exhaled low under his breath as he stared out the window of the cockpit. He really did have it bad for this female.
“Looks like half the town is gathered outside the health clinic,” Alex said. “Since Roger Bemis’s plane is in, I’m guessing they must have brought Big Dave and Lanny in from the bush already.”
Kade grunted, looking a block up the center of town at the converted ranch house where a couple dozen people had assembled under the floodlight that lit the yard, some on foot, others seated astride idling snowmachines.
Alex cut the plane’s engine and opened the pilot’s door. Kade got out with her, walking around the front of the plane as she secured it and locked everything down. Her movements were efficient, her gloved hands working as if by habit more than conscious thought. When she finally glanced over at him, Kade saw that her face was pale as ash, her features stricken and wary. But her gaze was sharp with grim determination.
“Alex … let’s talk about this before you go in there and say what you think you need to say to those folks.”
She frowned. “They need to know. I need to tell them.”
“Alex.” He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, more firmly than he’d intended. She stared at his fingers clamped around her, then looked back up at him. “I can’t let you do this.”
She pulled out of his hold, and for a second he considered trancing her to keep her away from the gathered crowd up the road. With a small mental effort and one brief sweep of his palm over her forehead, he could place her into a pliable state of semiconsciousness.
He could buy precious time. Prevent her from jeopardizing his entire mission for the Order by alerting her fellow townsfolk to the existence of vampires living among them, preying on them from the shadows.
And she would hate him even more—rightfully so—for the further manipulation.
She took a step back from him, her brows still knitted together in confusion. “What’s wrong with you all of a sudden? I have to go.”
He didn’t stop her when she pivoted around and headed off at a jog for Harmony’s small health clinic. On a gritted curse, Kade went after her. He caught up in an instant, then wove with her through the anxious, chattering crowd.
“… just terrible that something like this should happen again,” murmured a white-haired woman to the person next to her.
“… he lost so much blood,” someone else remarked. “Tore them up, was what I heard. Not much left intact on either man.”
“A horrible thing,” said another detached voice in the crowd, shrill with panic. “First the Tomses, now Big Dave and Lanny. I wanna know what Officer Tucker plans to do about this!”
Kade strode beside Alex as she marched toward Zach, who stood near the entrance of the clinic, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He acknowledged her with barely a glance, continuing to bark grave orders to someone on the other end of the line.
“Zach,” she said, “I need to speak with you—”
“Kinda busy,” he snapped.
“But, Zach—”
“Not now, goddamn it! I’ve got one man dead and another bleeding out in there and the whole fucking town is going apeshit around me!”
Kade could hardly contain the protective snarl that curled at the back of his throat at the human’s outburst. His own anger spiked dangerously, muscles tensed and ready for a fight he realized he was more than eager to initiate. Instead, he subtly took Alex by the arm and placed himself between her and the other male. “Come on,” he said to her, guiding her away from the trooper and his meltdown in progress. “Let’s go somewhere else until things settle down.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t go. I need to see Big Dave. I need to be sure—”
She broke away from him and dashed up the concrete steps and into the clinic, with Kade fast on her heels. The place was quiet inside, only the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights that tracked from the vacant reception area down the hallway toward the examination rooms. From the sparse look of the clinic and its lack of equipment, it didn’t appear that it was set up for dealing with much more than the occasional abrasion or vaccination.
Alex headed down the hall at a determined, brisk pace.
“Where’s Fran Littlejohn? She never keeps it this cold in here,” she murmured, at just about the same time that Kade was noticing the temperature, as well.
An arctic chill, blowing up the hallway from one of the rooms in back. The only one with the door closed.
Alex put her hand on the knob. It didn’t budge. “That’s odd. It’s locked.”
Kade’s warrior instincts lit up like firecrackers. “Get back.”
He was already standing in front of her, moving faster than her eyes could possibly track him. He gripped the doorknob and gave it a hard twist. The lock snapped, mechanisms were crushed to powder in an instant.
Kade pushed the door open … and found himself staring into the cold dead eyes of a Minion.
“Skeeter?” Alex’s voice was sharp with surprise, and well-placed suspicion. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
The Minion’s business was potently clear to Kade. On the floor next to Big Dave’s bed lay a large, middle-age woman—the clinic technician, no doubt. Unconscious, but she was still breathing, which was better than he could say for her patient on the bed.
“Fran!” Alex cried, racing to the unresponsive woman’s side.
Kade’s focus was centered elsewhere. The room reeked with the overpowering stench of human blood. Had it been fresh, Kade’s physiological response would have been impossible to hide, but the odor was stale, the cells no longer living. Nor was Big Dave, who lay on the bed, virtually unrecognizable for the severity of his injuries. All Kade needed was one whiff of the spilled, coagulating hemoglobin to know that the man was several minutes dead already.
“My Master was displeased to hear about the attack today,” the Minion said, his thin face pale and emotionless. Behind him was an open window, his obvious means of entry into the room. And in his hand was a bloodied pair of suture scissors that had been used to speed the consequences of Big Dave’s life-threatening wounds.
“Kade … what’s he talking about?”
Skeeter smiled at Alex, a deviant, rictus grin. “My Master hasn’t been too pleased to hear about you, either. Witnesses are a problem in general, you understand.”
“Oh, my God,” Alex murmured. “Skeeter, what are you saying? What have you done!”
“You son of a bitch,” Kade hissed, launching himself at the Minion. He took Skeeter down to the floor in a bone-crushing assault. “Who made you? Answer me!”
But the human mind slave only stared up at him and sneered, despite the punishing blows Kade delivered on him.
“Who the fuck is your Master?” He hit Skeeter again. And again. “Talk, you goddamn piece of shit.”
Answers eluded him. Some irrational part of him cast about and latched on to Seth’s name, but that was an impossibility. Although Kade and his twin were Breed, their bloodline wasn’t old enough or pure enough for either of them to create a Minion. Only the earliest generations of the vampire race had the power to drain a human to the brink of death, then take command of its mind.
“What are your orders?” He pounded the Minion’s grinning, bleeding, soulless face. “What have you told your Master about Alex?”
Behind him now, her voice broke through the violence raging in him. “Kade, please … stop. You’re scaring me. Stop this now and let him go.”
But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t let the human who had been Skeeter Arnold go, not now. Not knowing what he was. Not knowing what he might be commanded to do to Alex if he was turned loose to carry out his Master’s wishes again.
“Kade, please …”
With a guttural roar, he grasped the Minion’s head in his hands and gave it a savage twist. There was a crunch of bone and sinew, then a hard thump as he let the lifeless bulk fall onto the floor.
He heard Alex’s sharp intake of breath at his back. He thought she might scream, but she went utterly silent. When Kade pivoted his head to look up at her, it wasn’t difficult to read the confusion—the complete shock—in her wide brown eyes.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said quietly, feebly. “It couldn’t be helped, Alex.”
“You … killed him. You just killed him… with your bare hands.”
“He wasn’t really alive anymore, Alex. Just a shell. He wasn’t really human anymore.” Kade frowned, knowing how that must sound to her by the stricken, confused look on her face. He slowly rose to stand and she took a step backward, out of his reach.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Ah, fuck,” he muttered, raking his fingers over his scalp. She’d been through more than her share of violence in her life; the last thing she needed was to be a party to more because of her involvement with him. “I hate that you’re here right now, seeing this. But I can explain—”
“No.” She gave an abrupt shake of her head. “No, I have to get Zach. I have to get help for Big Dave and I have to—”
“Alex.” Kade took hold of her arms in a light but unyielding grasp. “There’s nothing that can be done for either of these men now. And bringing Zach Tucker or anyone else into this is only going to make things more dangerous—not only for them, but for you. I won’t risk that.”
She stared at him, her eyes searching his.
In the quiet that seemed to expand to fill the room, the clinic worker Skeeter had knocked to the floor began to rouse back to consciousness. The woman groaned, mumbled something indiscernible.
“Fran,” Alex said, turning back to help the older female.
Kade blocked her path. “She’ll be fine.”
With Alex watching him warily, he went to the woman’s side and gently placed his hand over her forehead. “Sleep now, Fran. When you wake, you’ll remember none of this.”
“What are you doing to her?” Alex demanded, her voice rising as the clinic worker relaxed into his touch.
“It will be easier for her if she forgets that Skeeter was here,” he said, ensuring Fran’s mind was scrubbed of the assault on her and any recollections she might have of Kade and Alex being present, as well. “It will be safer for her this way.”
“What are you talking about?”
Kade swiveled his head to face her. “There is more to your monsters than you know, Alex. Much more.”
She stared at him. “What are you saying, Kade?”
“Earlier today, out at the cabin, you said you trusted me, right?”
She swallowed, nodded mutely.
“Then trust me, Alex. Ah, fuck. Trust no one but me now.” He glanced back at Skeeter Arnold’s body—the Minion corpse he was now going to have to lose somewhere, and fast. “I need you to go back outside. You can’t say anything to anyone about Big Dave or Skeeter or what happened in here just now. Tell no one what you saw in here, Alex. I need you to walk out there, go back home, and wait for me to come to you. Promise me.”
“But he—” Her voice choked off as she gestured toward the broken body on the floor.
“I’ll take care of everything. All I need is for you to tell me that you trust me. That you believe me when I tell you there’s no reason for you to be afraid. Not of me.” He reached out to stroke her chilled cheek, relieved that she didn’t flinch from him or pull away. He was asking for a hell of a lot from her—far more than he had a right to. “Go home and wait for me, Alex. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She blinked a couple of times, then took a few steps backward. Her eyes were bleak on his as she inched toward the open door, and for a moment he wondered if her fear would prove too much for her now.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I trust you, too, Alex.”
He turned around and listened as she walked out and left him there to clean up his mess alone.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
In one instant, her world had suddenly shifted on its axis.
Alex walked away from Kade, surprised that her legs were functioning when her mind was spinning with the illogic of what she’d just witnessed him do—not only to Skeeter Arnold, but also to Fran Littlejohn. Was it some type of hypnotism he’d used on her, or something more powerful than that to make the woman bend so easily to his will?
And Skeeter …
What did he mean, saying all those strange things to Kade, talking about how he was carrying out orders from his “Master”? It was crazy talk, and yet Skeeter hadn’t seemed crazy. He’d seemed very dangerous, no longer the small-time drug dealer and all-around loser she knew him to be, but something deadly. Something almost inhuman.
He wasn’t really alive anymore … just a shell.
He had killed Big Dave in cold blood, and Kade had snapped Skeeter’s neck with his bare hands.
Oh, God. Nothing was making sense to her.
There’s more to your monsters than you know, Alex.
Kade’s warning echoed in her head as she stepped out into the lightless cold of the afternoon. How could any of this be happening? It couldn’t be happening. How could any of this be reality?
But she knew it was, just as surely as she had always known that what had happened all those years ago in Florida was reality, too.
Trust no one but me now.
Alex wasn’t sure she had any choice. Who else did she have? What Kade had just done—everything he’d just said in the clinic—had left her with more questions than she was prepared to ask. She was terrified and uncertain, more than ever now. Kade was dangerous; she’d seen that for herself only a minute ago. Yet he was also protective, not only of Alex herself, but of Fran Littlejohn, too—a woman he didn’t even know.
In spite of all he’d said and done just now, Kade was a solid anchor in a reality that had suddenly cast Alex adrift. It was his strength and trust that buoyed her as she stared at the small crowd still clustered in front of the clinic. The dozen-plus faces she had known for so long now appeared to her as strangers as she unobtrusively slipped past them. Even Zach, who glanced over when she had just about made it to the outer edge of the throng, seemed less a friend than a source of doubt and unwanted complication.
His eyes narrowed on her, but she kept walking, desperate to get out of there. “Alex.”
An arrow of sudden, cold panic stabbed her. Zach was the last person she needed to see right now. She pretended not to hear him, walked a bit faster.
“Alex, hold up.” He pushed his way through, catching her by the sleeve of her parka. “Will you wait a damned minute?”
Given no choice, she paused. It was a struggle to keep her expression neutral as she faced him. There was no containing the tremble that swept her body while Zach scowled at her in the dark.
“Are you all right? Your face is white as a sheet.”
She shook her head, jerked her shoulder in an awkward shrug. “I’m just a little wrung out, I guess.”
“Yeah, no shit,” he said. “Listen, I’m sorry I was short with you before. Things seem to be going from bad to worse around here lately.”
Alex swallowed, nodding. He didn’t even know the half of it.
Trust no one but me now … Tell no one what you saw in here, Alex. Promise me.
Kade’s words drifted through her thoughts as Zach watched her expectantly. “So? You’ve got my undivided attention, for the moment at least. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Um …” Alex fumbled for a reply, feeling oddly unsettled by the way Zach seemed to peer at her in speculation, maybe even suspicion. “I just … I was concerned about Big Dave, of course. How is he? How do you, um, think he’s doing?”
The questions felt clumsy on her tongue, especially when her heart was still banging from everything she’d witnessed in the clinic.
Zach’s expression turned a bit more scrutinizing. “You saw him yourself, didn’t you?”
She shook her head, not sure she could deliver a convincing lie.
“Didn’t I see you go inside—you and your, ah, new friend?” He leaned on the word, unnecessarily hard. “Where is he, anyway? Still inside?”
“No,” she said, all but blurting it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kade and I were out here the whole time. He just left.”
Zach didn’t quite seem to buy it, but before he had a chance to press her further, the clinic door opened and Fran Littlejohn came out onto the stoop. “Officer Tucker! Where’s Zach? Somebody call Officer Tucker right away!”
Alex stared, weathering a rising feeling of dread as Fran’s head bobbed, searching the crowd.
“Over here,” Zach called. “What is it?”
“Oh, Zach!” The clinic technician heaved a sigh, her thick shoulders slumping. “I’m afraid we lost him. I’d just given him another dose of sedative, and I turned away for what couldn’t have been more than a minute at most. When I looked back just now, I saw that he had passed. Big Dave is dead.”
“Goddamn it,” Zach muttered. Although he spoke to Fran, he shot a tight glance at Alex. “No one else with you in there, Fran?”
“Just me,” she said. “Poor Dave. And poor Lanny, too. God bless them both.”
As a wave of soft murmurs and whispered prayers traveled the crowd, Alex cleared her throat. “I have to go, Zach. It’s been a long day, and I’m really tired. So, unless you have any more questions—”
“No,” he said, but the look he gave her was guarded, filled with a reluctant acceptance of everything he’d just heard. “Go on home, then, Alex. If I need you, I know where to find you.”
She nodded, unable to dismiss feeling oddly threatened by his comment as she turned and walked away.
Some five miles out of Harmony, deep in the frozen wilderness, Kade shrugged the burden of Skeeter Arnold’s lifeless body off his shoulders and dropped it down a steep ravine.
He stood there for a moment, after the Minion’s corpse had tumbled out of sight, letting the bitter cold air fill his lungs and steam his breath as he stared out at the vast nothingness all around him. The sky was dark overhead, the snow-covered ground glowed midnight blue under the afternoon starlight. In the distant woods, a wolf cried, long and lamenting, summoning its pack to run. The wildness of his surroundings called to Kade, and for one sharp instant, he was tempted to give in to it.
Tempted to ignore the chaos and confusion that he’d left behind him in Harmony. Tempted to run from the fear he’d put in Alex, and the unpleasant business of the truth that he would have to deliver to her when he got back.
Would she despise him for what he had to tell her?
Would she recoil in horror when she came to understand his true nature?
He couldn’t blame her if she did. Knowing what she’d endured as a child, and now, having seen him kill a man before her eyes, how could he possibly hope that she would look at him with anything more than fear or revulsion?
“Ah, fuck,” he muttered, dropping down into a squat on his haunches at the edge of the ravine. “Fuck!”
“Problems, brother?”
The unexpected voice, the unexpected familiarity of it—here, of all places, now, of all times—shot through Kade like a current of raw electricity. He vaulted to his feet and spun around, his hand reaching automatically for one of the blades he wore on his belt.
“Easy,” Seth drawled slowly, inclining his head to indicate the precarious edge of the ravine directly behind Kade. “Better watch your step.”
Kade’s fury spiked as he took in his twin’s unkempt, shaggy appearance. “I could say the same thing to you … brother.”
He kept the knife gripped in his fist, pivoting around, cautiously following Seth as he strolled toward him to peer into the ravine. Seth grunted. “Not the most savvy way to dispose of a kill, but I suppose it won’t take long for the scavengers to find it.”
“Yeah, you know all about that, don’t you?”
Seth looked at him, Kade’s own silver eyes—his own face—staring back at him as if in a mirror. Except Seth’s short black hair hung limply in dull, matted hanks, his cheeks and jaw sallow, the skin shadowed with grit and grime. His face was leaner than Kade recalled, on the verge of gaunt. He looked strung out, and there was a feral glint in his heavy-lidded gaze.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded. “How long have you been carrying out your sick killing games?”
Seth chuckled, dark with amusement. “I’m not the one dumping a human into a snowy grave.”
“Minion,” Kade corrected him, though why he felt the need to explain was beyond him.
“Really?” Seth arched a brow. “A Minion, all the way out here in the bush … interesting.”
“Yeah, I’m all atwitter,” Kade said. “And you didn’t answer my fucking question.”
Seth’s mouth curved at the corners. “What would be the point, when you already know what I’m going to say?”
“Maybe I need to hear it from your own lips. Tell me how you’ve been stalking and killing humans ever since I left Alaska last year—hell, it’s been going on for a lot longer than that, hasn’t it?” He ground out a sharp hiss of disgust. “I found something you might recognize. Here—”
He dug the bear tooth charm out of his pocket and tossed it at his twin.
“Now you have a matched set,” Kade said. “This one, and the one you took off the Native man when you killed him last winter.”
Seth glanced into his palm at the braided strip of leather and the long, pale tooth attached to it. He shrugged, unapologetic, curling his fingers around the prize. “You’ve been home to the Darkhaven,” he murmured. “Going through my things. How rude of you. Very devious and underhanded, Kade. That’s always been more my style than yours.”
“What happened, Seth? Single kills weren’t getting you off anymore, so you’ve had to graduate up to wholesale slaughter?”
Kade watched the dispassionate mask of his brother’s face quirk with confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Now you’re going to stand there and try to deny it? You’re unbelievable,” Kade scoffed. “I’ve seen the bodies, or what was left of them. You slaughtered an entire family—six lives in one night, you sick son of a bitch. And today you added two more to your fucked-up tally when you attacked those men from Harmony.”
“No.” Seth was shaking his head. He had the balls, even, to look insulted. “You’re wrong. If there have been kills like that, as you claim, they’re not mine.”
“Don’t lie to me, damn you.”
“I’m not lying. I am a killer, Kade. I have a … a problem, you might say. But even my perverted morals have their boundaries.”
Kade stared, sizing him up. Even after a year away, he knew his twin well enough to see that Seth was telling him the truth.
“I’ve never taken a whole family, nor am I responsible for the two men you say were attacked today.”
Kade felt a cold pit opening up in his gut. Twisted though he may be, his brother was being honest about this. He hadn’t killed the Toms family. He hadn’t killed Lanny Ham and left Big Dave Grant for dead.
If not Seth, then who?
Kade had long abandoned the idea that Rogues might be responsible—not without reports of missing Breed males from the region’s Darkhaven populations or some other indicators that there were vampires in the throes of Bloodlust running loose in the area.
So, what possibility was left?
Could it be the vampire who’d made Skeeter Arnold his mind slave? And if so, why would a powerful Breed elder prefer to hunt in the remote, sparsely populated wilds of Alaska when he could choose from countless cities teeming with humans instead? It simply didn’t add up.
But none of that excused Seth’s crimes, or his unrepentance for his actions.
“What happened to you?” Kade asked him, staring into the face that was so like his own, the brother he still loved, despite everything he’d done. “Why, Seth? How did you allow yourself to lose so much control?”
“Lose control?” He laughed, shaking his head at Kade. “When else can we feel more in control than during the hunt? We are Breed, my brother. It’s who we are, it’s in our very blood. Killing is what we are born to do.”
“No.” Kade spat the denial as Seth began a slow prowl around him.
“No?” he asked, cocking his head in question. “Isn’t that why you leapt at the chance to join the Order? Tell me you don’t enjoy your license to kill on behalf of Lucan and your brothers-in-arms in Boston. Say it, and I will be the one standing here calling you a liar.”
Kade clamped his molars tight, admitting, at least to himself, that there was some truth in Seth’s words. He joined the Order to escape what he was becoming in Alaska, as much as he had joined to feed the wildness inside him with something that had some degree of honor in it. But there was a higher purpose in his work for the Order now. With the enemy they had in Dragos, his work for the Order had never been more vital. And he wouldn’t let Seth cheapen that with the comparison to his own sick games.
“You know that this cannot continue, Seth. You have to stop.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” His lips peeled back from his teeth, baring the tips of his fangs. “In the beginning, when we were young, I did try to curb my … urges. But the wildness kept calling to me. Doesn’t it call to you anymore?”
“Every minute that I’m awake,” Kade conceded quietly. “Sometimes even in my sleep.”
Seth sneered. “But of course, you, the noble one, can resist it.”
Kade stared at him. “How long have you hated me, brother? What could I have done differently to make you see that it was never a competition between us? I didn’t have anything to prove with you.”
Seth said nothing, merely stared at him in bleak consideration.
“You’ve made mistakes, Seth. We all do. But there is still some good in you. I know there is.”
“No.” Seth shook his head vigorously, the agitated twitch of a festering mind. “You were always the strong one. All the good went into you, not me.”
Kade scoffed. “How can you say that? How can you think it? You, the favored son, the hope of the family. Father never made a secret of that.”
“Father,” Seth replied, exhaling sharply. “If he feels anything for me, it’s pity. I have needed him, where you never did. You’re just like him, Kade. Can neither one of you see that the way that I can?”
“Bullshit,” Kade said, certain in his rejection of the idea.
“And then you went off and joined the Order,” Seth continued. “You were gone and I sank deeper into your shadow. I wanted to hate you for leaving. Hell, maybe I do.”
“If you need an excuse for what you’ve done, then so be it,” Kade ground out savagely. “Blame me, but you and I both know you’re only looking for a way to justify what you’re doing.”
Seth’s answering laughter was little more than a growl, deep in his throat. “Do you really think I’m looking for justification? Or for any kind of absolution? I kill because I can. I won’t stop, because it is part of me now. I enjoy it.”
Kade’s gut twisted. “If that’s true, then I feel sorry for you. You are sick, Seth. I should put you out of your misery … right here and now.”
“You should,” Seth replied without inflection. “But you won’t. You can’t, because I am still your brother. Your own rigid morals would never let you harm me and we both know it. That’s a line you would never cross.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
As he said it, the wolf howl he’d heard a few minutes ago sounded once more, from somewhere nearby. Kade glanced over his shoulder, toward the thick knot of pine and spruce in the crouching darkness, feeling the wild summons coursing through his veins. As it must have been for Seth, as well.
Even though he should hate his brother, he couldn’t.
And although his threat was well deserved, he knew in his heart that Seth was right. Kade could never bring himself to harm him.
“We need to sort this shit out, Seth. You have to let me help you—”
When he swiveled his head back around to face his twin again, all that greeted him was the empty winter landscape … and the bone-deep, bitter understanding that any hope of saving Seth was gone along with him.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Each step was agony.
Every inch of his naked body was blistered and raw from ultraviolet exposure, his normally rapid healing processes impeded by the added damage he’d sustained from the shotgun blast that had ripped into his thigh and abdomen. Fresh blood would speed the required regeneration. Once he fed, his soft tissue and organs would mend in a few hours, as would his skin, but he could not risk another minute without seeking adequate shelter.
He had barely survived the daylight, having been forced to flee the cave after the humans had stumbled upon him there. He’d run, bleeding and wounded, into the surrounding woods, into the lethal rays of the sun outside the cave. He’d had only enough time to dig a hole in a deep bank of hard-packed snow and bury himself within before the severity of his combined injuries had shut his body down and rendered him unconscious.
Now, a short while after he’d roused to find welcome darkness, he knew only that he needed to seek new shelter before the next sunrise. Needed to find somewhere secure to recuperate further, so he would be strong enough to hunt again and feed his damaged cells.
His feet dragged in the moonlit snow, his pace slow and halting. He despised his physical weakness. Hated that it reminded him of the torture he had endured while in captivity. But animosity drove him now, forced the shredded muscles of his legs to move.
He didn’t know how long or how far he had walked. Easily miles from the cave and his makeshift shelter in the snow.
Ahead of him, he saw a dim orange glow through the veil of silhouetted evergreen trunks. A human residence, apparently occupied, and far removed from any other signs of civilization.
Yes, it would do.
He stalked forward, ignoring his pain as he locked all focus on the remote little cabin and the unsuspecting prey within it.
As he neared, his ears pricked with the low, mournful sounds of human suffering. It was faint, muffled by logs and plank-shuttered glass. But the anguish was clear. A female was weeping inside the cabin.
The predator crept up to the side of the domicile and pressed his eye to a crack in the wooden shutter that covered the window to bar the cold.
She was seated on the floor in front of a dying fire, drinking from a half-consumed bottle of dark amber liquid. Before her was an emptied box of printed images, scattered in disarray all around her. A large black pistol lay on the floor next to her bent knee. She was sobbing, incredible sorrow pouring out of her.
He could feel the overwhelming weight of her grief, and he knew that the weapon was not beside her as a means of protection. Not tonight.
The scene gave him pause, but only for a moment.
She must have sensed his eyes on her. Her head snapped to the side, her reddened eyes fixed on the very spot where he stood, concealed by the closed shutter and the darkness of the night outside.
But she knew.
She rose, picking up the gun as she wobbled to her feet.
He backed away, only to move on silent feet toward the front door of the cabin. It wasn’t locked, not that it would have barred him if it had been. He squeezed the latch with his mind, pushed the door open.
He was inside the cabin and had his hands wrapped around the woman’s throat before she realized he was there.
Before she could open her mouth to scream, before she could command her drink-impeded reflexes to pull the pistol’s trigger in defense of the sudden attack, he bent his head and sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her slender neck.
Alex sat at the table in her kitchen with Luna resting at her feet. Every light in the house was turned on, every door and window locked up tight.
It had been nearly two hours.
She didn’t know how much more waiting she could take. While Luna slept calmly, blissfully oblivious, across her toes under the table, Alex’s mind had been spinning. Churning over questions she hardly dared to ask, and worrying for a man who had left her wondering just who—or what—he truly was.
But the small voice inside her that so often urged her to run from the things that scared her was silent when she thought of Kade. Yes, she was uncertain after what she witnessed today. Frightened that the path ahead of her might be even more unsteady than the past she’d left behind her. But running was the last thing she intended to do—not now. Not ever again.
Idly, she wondered how Jenna was holding up. It couldn’t be easy on her, hearing about the deaths in town when she was nearing the anniversary of her own personal grief. Alex reached for her cell phone, wanting to hear her friend’s voice. She was just about to punch in Jenna’s number when there was a soft rap on the back door.
Kade.
Alex put down the phone and stood up, dislodging her canine foot warmer, who groaned in protest before dropping her head back down to sleep some more. Alex drifted toward the door where Kade waited. Now that he was there, looking so dark and immense and dangerous through the glass window, some of her courage faltered.
He didn’t demand or force his way inside, even though she knew without the slightest doubt that there was little she could do to bar him from entering if that’s what he intended to do. But he merely stood there, leaving the decision entirely up to her. And because he didn’t force her, because she could see a shadowed torment in the piercing depths of his silver eyes that hadn’t been there before, Alex opened the door and let him in.
He took one step inside her little kitchen and pulled her into a hard, long embrace. His strong arms circled her, held her close, as though he never wanted to let her go.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pressing his mouth into her hair. “I hated to leave you alone.”
“I’m all right,” she said, drawing back to look at him when he finally released her from his hold. “I was more worried about you.”
“Don’t,” he said. Scowling, he stroked her cheek, swallowed hard. “Ah, Jesus. Don’t worry for me.”
“Kade, what the hell is going on? I need you to be honest with me.”
“I know.” He took her by the hand and led her back to the table. She dropped into her chair as he took the one next to her. “I should have explained everything to you earlier, as soon as I realized …”
Her heart sank a bit as his words trailed off. “As soon as you realized, what?”
“That you were part of this, Alex. A part of the world that belongs to me and those of my kind. I should have told you everything before you saw me kill that Minion. And before we made love.”
She heard the regret in his voice for the intimacy they’d shared, and weathered more than a little sting because of it. But the other part—the peculiar way he’d referred to himself and his kind, and the fact that he was somehow including her in that equation—was what made her mind stutter to attention. And then there was the odd word he’d used to describe Skeeter Arnold.
“A ‘Minion’? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Kade. I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean.”
“I know you don’t.” He raked his palm over his jaw, then exhaled around a vivid curse. “Someone got to Skeeter Arnold before I did. Someone bled him, almost to the point of killing him, before bringing him back so that he could serve. He wasn’t human anymore, Alex. He was something less than that. Someone had made him into a Minion, a mind slave.”
“That’s crazy,” she murmured, and as badly as she wanted to reject what she was hearing, she couldn’t dismiss Kade’s grim, sober demeanor. “You also said that I am a part of this. A part of this, how? And what did you mean back at the clinic, when you said there was something more I didn’t know about the attack on my family? What could you possibly know about the monsters that took my mom and Richie?”
“What they did was monstrous,” Kade said, his tone unreadable, too level for comfort. “But there is another name for them, too.”
“Vampire.” Alex had never voiced the word out loud, not in relation to the murders of her mom and little brother. It stuck to her tongue like bitter paste, foul even after she had spit it out. “Are you actually trying to tell me—my God, do you really expect me to believe they were vampires, Kade?”
“Rogues,” he said. “Blood addicted and deadly. But they were also part of a race separate from humans called the Breed. A very old race, not the undead or the damned, but a living, breathing society. One which has existed alongside mankind for thousands of years.”
“Vampires,” she whispered, sick with the thought that any of this could be real.
But it was real. Some part of her had known this truth all along, from the instant her family was shattered by the attack all those years ago.
Kade’s eyes remained steady on her. “In the simplest terms, to say that they were vampires is fair enough.”
Nothing seemed simple to her anymore. Not after everything she had seen. Not after everything she was hearing now. And definitely not when it came to Kade.
She felt some measure of retreat in him as he looked at her, some amount of hurt in his bleak gaze, and it gnawed at her. “You told me once that nothing is simple. Nothing in your world is simply good or bad, black or white. Shades of gray, you said.”
He didn’t blink, just held her in an unflinching look. “Yes.”
“Is this what you meant?” She swallowed, her voice cracking just a bit. “Is this the world that you live in, Kade?”
“We both do,” he replied, his voice so gentle it terrified her. “You and I, Alex. We’re both a part of it. I am, because my father is Breed. And you are, because you bear the same birthmark as my mother and a small number of other, very rare women. You are a Breedmate, Alex. Your blood properties and unusual cellular makeup connect you to the Breed on the most primal level.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She shook her head, recalling how tenderly he had touched the odd little scarlet mark on her hip when they were together in the cabin earlier today. Without trying, she could still feel the heat of his fingertips on that very spot. “A birthmark doesn’t make me anything. It doesn’t prove anything—”
“No,” he said carefully. “But there are other things that do. Have you ever been sick in your life? Have you always felt a little bit lost, a little bit detached, different from all the other people around you? Some part of you has always been searching, reaching for something you could never quite grasp. You’ve never truly found your place of belonging in the world. I’m right, aren’t I, Alex?”
She couldn’t speak. God help her, she could hardly breathe.
Kade went on. “You’re also gifted in some way that you can’t really explain—some innate ability that separates you from the rest of the mortal world.”
She wanted to tell him he was wrong about all of that. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Everything he said summed up her experience and her innermost feelings. It was as though he had known her all her life … as though he understood her on a level that even she herself had not.
Until this very moment, impossible as it seemed.
“Since I was a child, I have always had an instinct for knowing when someone was telling me the truth or a lie.” Kade nodded as she spoke, unsurprised. “I can read others,” she said, “but not you.”
“It’s possible that your talent only works on humans.”
Humans. Not him, because he was something … other.
A coldness swept her as the realization sank in fully.
“Are you—” Her voice cracked, almost wouldn’t come. “Are you telling me that you’re like them—the ones that killed my mother and Richie? The ones that killed the Tomses and Lanny and Big Dave?”
“I’m not sure who’s to blame for the killings here recently, but I’m nothing like that. And only the sickest, most heinous members of my kind would do what was done to your family, Alex.” He reached out and took her hand in his, brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed them with aching tenderness. His quicksilver eyes held her gaze with an intensity that seared her, deep inside. “I am Breed, Alex. But I will never harm you, or anyone you love. Never. My God, I sure didn’t see you coming—didn’t see any of this coming. I never expected I’d end up caring like this.”
“Kade,” she whispered, not knowing what she wanted to say to him after all the things he’d just told her. She was filled with questions and uncertainty, overwhelmed with a confusion of emotions, all of it centered on the man—the Breed male—who held her hand right now, and her heart.
As though he understood the torment she was feeling, he leaned around the small table and gathered her into his arms. Alex went to him, letting him pull her onto his lap.
“I don’t know what to think of all this,” she murmured. “I have so many questions.”
“I know.” He drew her away from him and smoothed the backs of his fingers along the side of her face, the curve of her neck. “I’ll answer anything you ask me. When I come back, you can ask me everything you need to know.”
“When you come back?” The thought of him leaving, now, when her head—hell, her whole life—was turned upside-down, was unthinkable. He stood up, easing her up with him. “Where are you going?”
“Something has been bothering me about Skeeter Arnold. I saw him with someone the other night, outside Pete’s tavern. They took him to a mining company several miles from here.”
“What was the name of it?”
“Coldstream.”
Alex frowned. “That place shut down about twenty years ago, but I heard new management moved in recently. They’re keeping things pretty private out there. Put up a bunch of surveillance equipment and security fences around the perimeter.”
“New management, eh?” Kade’s dark expression spoke volumes.
“You don’t think …”
“Yeah, I do. But I need to be sure.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
His dark brows crashed together. “Absolutely not. It could be dangerous—”
“Exactly why I’m not about to wait around and worry. I am going with you.” She walked over and grabbed her parka, pretending she didn’t hear his muttered curse behind her. “Well, are you coming, or what?”
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Since his snowmachine was still parked at Alex’s house from earlier that morning, they had each taken a sled and rode out together, heading for the Coldstream Mining Company several miles out of town. Rather than draw undue attention, they’d ditched the noisy machines about a half mile from the secured site and walked the rest of the way on snowshoes.
The reconnaissance would have gone a lot faster if he’d been able to do it alone, but Kade was inwardly relieved to have Alex with him. At least this way she was in sight and within arm’s reach. Back in town by herself left her vulnerable, a concept that made his heart squeeze a bit tighter in his chest as he navigated the dark, frozen tundra at her side.
Up ahead of them several hundred yards, floodlights washing over the snow, the mining company’s compound was alive with activity. As had been the case when Kade first surveilled the location, tonight a handful of uniformed workers continued to empty one of the two parked cargo containers outside the mouth of the mine itself. Guards with automatic rifles patrolled the barricade out front; mounted security cameras were trained on the land surrounding the tall chain-link perimeter fence.
Kade paused, putting his gloved hand on Alex’s arm. “This is as far as we go.”
“But we need to get much closer to see what’s going on in there,” she whispered, her breath clouding as it penetrated the fleece mask that protected her face.
“Too dangerous for you to get any closer, and I’m not about to leave you here without me.”
“Then let’s go back to Harmony and get my plane. We can fly over for a better look.”
“And risk letting them identify you from the ground?” Kade gave a curt shake of his head. “Not even if Harmony had a hundred pilots who owned little red single-engines. No, there is another way.”
He inhaled deeply, letting a low howl build slowly in his throat. Then he sent it skyward in a long, searching summons. It took only a moment for a wilder reply to answer from somewhere not far off toward the west. Kade sought the lupine voice with his mind, then, with a wordless command, he called the wolf out from the night.
Alex startled when the silver-furred animal stepped into view from the woods and walked directly into their path.
“It’s okay,” Kade told her. He glanced at her, his mouth curving at her open astonishment. “You have your talent; I have mine.”
“Yours is way better,” she murmured on a breathless whisper.
He smiled, then fixed his gaze on the wolf’s bright, intelligent eyes. It listened to the silent instructions he gave, then it dashed off in stealth motion to carry them out.
Alex gaped at him. “What did you just do? And, um … how?”
“I asked the wolf to help us. She’ll get closer to the site than we can, and through the link she and I now share, she will show me everything she sees.”
Alex got quiet as Kade focused on the temporary connection that put him inside the wolf’s senses. Kade closed his eyes, feeling the rhythmic fall of its paws in the snow, hearing the soft huffs of its lungs, the steady, rapid beat of its heart. And through the keen night-sharp vision, he saw the webbed fence and heavy-security outbuildings, the workers—Minions, all of them, he realized now—shuffling in and out of the mine’s cavernous entrance, wheeling crated equipment and large, unmarked cartons of God knew what kinds of supplies.
The new management had moved in, all right, and from the looks of it, they wanted to make damned sure that no one got too close to see what they were about.
And speaking of the mining company’s new management …
The wolf’s ears pricked to attention, self-preservation instincts pushing her down into a low crouch as a large male with fair hair and expensive taste in suits strode from within the mine. Although Kade had never seen him before, he didn’t miss for an instant that the male was Breed. If his size and demeanor hadn’t given him away, the extensive network of dermaglyphs would have. The markings tracked out from the rolled-up cuffs and open throat of his white dress shirt, in patterns that clearly declared him an elder of the Breed.
Easily powerful enough to turn a human like Skeeter Arnold into his Minion.
And flanking him like an obedient hound was another Breed male. If the one dressed like a Wall Street banker was formidable simply for the purity of his bloodline, then the individual standing with him trumped him by roughly a mile. Armed to the fangs and dressed from head to toe in black combat gear, his head shaved bald, covered with dense glyphs, this was a new enemy that Kade and the rest of the Order had only recently become familiar with.
Through the wolf’s eyes, he saw the gleaming black collar that ringed the assassin’s neck—an electronic collar rigged with an explosive device that ensured the vampire’s loyalty to his creator’s deviant initiatives.
“Ah, fuck,” Kade muttered aloud as he remotely observed the scene from his lupine helper’s eyes. “Dragos has sent one of his assassins here.”
“Who?” Alex whispered from beside him. “Assassins? Oh, my God. Kade, tell me what you see.”
He shook his head, unable to explain things adequately while his gut was churning with sudden dread and suspicion.
Why would Dragos send a lieutenant of his operations and one of his personal stock of born-and-bred Gen One killers to the middle of the frigid Alaskan interior?
What the hell were they doing here?
Once the vampires were gone inside another building, Kade directed the wolf to change position, to find a safe, concealed spot to dig beneath the perimeter fence and creep inside. He needed a better look at the cargo containers, particularly the one that the Minion workers seemed to take little interest in—the one, he noticed now, that bore huge dents in its sides and smashed, twisted hinges on the double doors at its rear.
He waited, heart pounding in time with the wolf’s as she dug her claws into the snow and burrowed deep, then wedged her body beneath the fence. She pulled herself through and began a stealthy crawl, knowing instinctively to keep to the shadows. As she neared the freight containers, Kade’s muscles tensed.
He had guessed he would find bad news inside the wrecked cargo hold. He’d been more than right about that. As the courageous wolf poked her head into the gaping ruin of the doors, peering into what had been a refrigerated space, Kade made instant, grim sense of the objects that held little meaning to her.
He saw the smashed, large steel-and-concrete box that sat inside, its lid torn off and reduced to broken rubble. He saw the bloodstains that had dried nearly black on the floor and walls of the hold—bloodstains that reeked of his own kind as the wolf drew the trace scent into her sensitive nostrils. He saw the titanium restraints that had once encircled the thick wrists and ankles of a creature that most of the Breed population believed had been driven to extinction centuries ago … a creature that the Order knew firsthand did, in fact, still live.
The Ancient.
One of the alien forefathers who’d sired the entire Breed race on Earth.
The powerful, savage otherworlder that Dragos had been using to further his insane goals.
Had Dragos and his associates moved it north after the Order’s recent strike on Dragos’s hidden lair? Had they thought to relocate the Ancient as far from the Order’s reach as possible, transferring it to the old mine?
Or had that been the plan, until the Ancient somehow found a way to escape his captivity?
Kade thought back on the recent killings in the bush and on today’s brutal attack on the two men from Harmony.
Neither Seth nor Rogues had been to blame.
Now he knew that with the gravest certainty. It had been something much worse.
“Jesus Christ,” Kade hissed. “It’s out here somewhere. On the loose.”
He commanded the wolf to abandon her prowl at once, and stayed with her as she made a quick escape from the mining company grounds. As her dark silver shadow vanished into the nearby forest, Kade broke their mental connection and reached for Alex’s hand.
“We have to get out of here. Now.”
She nodded at his urgent tone and ran with him, wasting no precious time on questions. He would explain everything to her, but first, he needed to contact the Order in Boston. Lucan and the others needed to know what he’d discovered here, and just how far his mission had veered off course.
Zach Tucker knocked the carbide handle of his state-issued Maglite against the rickety doorjamb a few more times and waited, not with any kind of patience, on the back steps of Skeeter Arnold’s run-down apartment.
Since the asshole had been ignoring his cell calls and text messages for the past twenty-four hours, Zach saw little choice but to make an in-person inquiry at the house Skeeter shared with his mother. Five minutes standing in the cold, freezing his balls off while he banged on the door with no reply, but he wasn’t going anywhere until he got some answers out of the cocky piece of shit.
Answers, and the five hundred dollars cash that Skeeter owed him from their most recent deal.
If Skeeter thought he could walk away without giving Zach his cut, he was sorely mistaken. And if he’d somehow gotten it into his fool head that he no longer needed Zach—that maybe he’d found himself another source of procurement in the area and suddenly had ideas about severing their association—then Skeeter Arnold might just discover that he was deadly mistaken.
Zach rapped on the door again, hard enough it was a wonder the frozen wood didn’t shatter under the repeated blows of his flashlight handle.
Finally, a muffled voice sounded from somewhere inside—not Skeeter, but Ida Arnold, his offensive bitch of a mother. Zach despised the old woman, though not as much as Skeeter must have, being subjected to her piss and venom every day.
“Goddamn it, I’m coming! I’m coming!” she hollered, the heavy shuffle of her footsteps punctuating every syllable. The porch light went on over his head, then the door was yanked open on another coarse grumble.
“Evening, Ida,” Zach said pleasantly as she scowled at him.
“What do you want?” She crossed her arms over her breasts, tugging at the edges of her old housecoat. “You come to tell me he’s in trouble again?”
“No, ma’am.”
She grunted. “He dead?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing like that.” He cocked his head. “Why would you think that?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, is all. I heard what happened to Big Dave and Lanny Ham today.” At Zach’s grim nod, she huffed out a breath and shrugged. “Never did care much for either one of them, tell you the truth.”
“Yes, well,” Zach replied idly. He cleared his throat, adopting his cop voice, the one that Jenna said made him sound like a self-righteous prick. All he knew was, it generally got results. “I actually came by to talk to Stanley.”
The fact that he’d used her son’s given name and not the nickname that all the rest of Harmony had called him from the time he was a skinny, snot-nosed kid made Ida Arnold’s scowl burrow a bit deeper on her forehead.
“Is he here, ma’am?”
“No, he ain’t. Haven’t seen hide nor hair since early this morning.”
“He hasn’t called or anything to let you know where he might be, ma’am?”
She barked out a cutting laugh. “He don’t tell me nothin’, just like his no-good father before him. Thinks I’m blind and dumb, that boy,” she muttered. “I know what he’s up to, though.”
“Oh? And what’s that, Ida?” Zach asked carefully, narrowing his eyes under the glare of the overhead light as he watched the old woman’s expression harden.
“He’s dealing again, drugs, for sure. My guess is he’s also bootlegging to some of the dry Native settlements up-river.”
Zach felt his brows rise, even as his gut clenched into a tight ball. “What makes you suspect Skeet—Stanley—is involved in something like that?”
She tapped the center of her chest with her finger. “I raised him, for better or worse. I don’t need proof to know when he’s up to no good. I’m not sure what he’s gotten himself into lately, but he’s starting to scare me. I think he has it in him to hurt me one day. In fact, after the way he treated me when he was here last, I don’t doubt it for a second. Never seen him act so nasty and arrogant. Acted like he suddenly grew a pair of balls.”
Zach cleared his throat at the woman’s crudeness. “This was yesterday, you said?”
She nodded. “He came home looking like something the cat dragged in. When I said something about it, he grabbed me by the throat. I tell you, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there. But he just mumbled that he had work to do, then went inside his room and closed the door. That’s the last he was home, far as I know. Part of me hopes he never comes back, the way he treats me. Part of me wishes he would just … go away. To prison, if that’s where he belongs.”
Zach stared at her, realizing that her fear and dislike of her own son could work to his advantage here. “When he was here at the house last, did he say what kind of work he was doing?”
“He didn’t say, but that boy’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. You wanna have a look inside his apartment? It’s a damn pigsty, but if it’s proof you need—”
“Can’t do that,” Zach said, even though right now he wanted nothing more. “From a law enforcement standpoint, I can’t search his residence. That would require a lot of paperwork and procedures.”
The rounded bulk of her shoulders slumped a bit. “I see—”
“However,” Zach added helpfully, “seeing how I’ve known you folks for the past decade or so since I’ve lived in Harmony, I suppose if you asked me as a personal favor to come in and have a look around—unofficially, as it were—then I would not be opposed.”
She peered at him for a long moment, then stepped back from the door and motioned him inside. “It’s this way, down the hall. He’ll have locked the door, but I keep a spare key tucked behind the baseboard.”
Ida Arnold ambled down to her son’s door, retrieved the tarnished brass key from its hiding place, then unlocked and opened the door for Zach.
“I’ll be just a few minutes,” he said, dismissing her with both his tone and his unblinking academy-trained stare. “Thank you, Ida.”
Once she had shuffled back up the hallway, Zach walked into Skeeter’s dump of an apartment and began a swift, thorough search of the place. Empty food wrappers, bottles, and other trash littered the floor and nearly every flat surface. And there—surprise—on the counter next to an old police radio, a roll of twenty-dollar bills, secured with a rubber band.
It didn’t seem like Skeeter to leave his money lying around. Didn’t seem like him to leave his cell phone behind, either, but there it was, jammed into the seat of a tattered light blue recliner. Guess that explained the ignored calls and texts, although it hardly excused Skeeter for being an asshole out at Pete’s the this morning.
Zach grabbed the cash and counted it out: fifteen bills. Not the five hundred bucks Skeeter owed him, but he’d gladly take what he could get.
Hell, he’d take the cell phone, too.
If it didn’t give him any insight into Skeeter’s recent activities or his apparent newfound business associates, then Zach would pawn the damned thing next time he went to Fairbanks to pick up new product from his connections in the city. Skeeter Arnold owed him, and one way or another, Zach intended to collect what he was due.
CHAPTER
Twenty
Alex sat on the sofa in her living room, sharing a piece of buttered toast with Luna, both of them watching Kade walk a repeated track from the kitchen and down the hallway as he spoke on satellite phone to Boston.
In the time since they’d been back to her house, he’d brought her up to speed on a few more things about himself and the work he’d been sent to do in Alaska. Her mind was still reeling over the fact that he wasn’t precisely human. Now she understood that he was also part of a group of Breed males pledged to maintain peace between their race and humankind. From the way he described it, the Order sounded almost military, which made some kind of sense to her when she looked at Kade and observed his dark combination of lethal strength and laser-sharp confidence.
And despite the danger that rolled off him in waves, especially what she’d witnessed today, Kade was gentle with her, protective. As shaken as she was by all she had seen and heard in the past few hours—the past few days—she felt secure with him.
Even when he’d gone on to explain the worst of the threats that faced him and the warriors of the Order.
He had told her about the enemy the Order was doggedly pursuing and committed to destroying, a second-generation Breed male called Dragos. Alex had listened in quiet but horrified comprehension as Kade had described the many evils Dragos had perpetrated, not the least of which being the mass abduction and abuse of an unknown number of women like her—Breedmates, tracked down and collected over a period of decades to be used as vessels for the personal army of assassins Dragos had bred.
What truly gave her pause, and what made her blood run cold in her veins, was one final truth that Kade revealed to her tonight. The fact that a creature not of this world—a creature far worse than the blood-addicted Rogues who’d killed her mom and Richie—was somehow loose in the Alaskan interior.
Even Kade was grim when he spoke of the Ancient to his friends at the Order’s Boston compound, describing to them the damaged freight container and the presence of vampires and Minion workers at the old mining company location. Although he kept his voice low, it was impossible for Alex to miss the fact that he and his brethren were preparing for battle against the new threat.
The thought of Kade walking into harm’s way made her breath come a little shorter, her heart beat a bit heavier. She couldn’t bear it if something happened to him. Not after the time they’d shared, an incredibly short time, in which he was somehow becoming an inextricable part of her life. In just a couple of days, he had become her friend and her lover, her confidant. Somehow he was coming to mean something even more than all of that.
Could she possibly be falling in love with him?
Falling in love … with a vampire.
No, he wasn’t that.
Kade was Breed, and that was different. He was different.
It was hard for her to reconcile that he was cut from the same fabric as the monsters that had attacked her family. Hard for her to believe that somewhere in his DNA, he carried the genes of something completely inhuman, unfathomably lethal. Something not of this Earth. It was hard for her to reconcile that the strong, proud, devastatingly sexy man prowling her modest little house was actually not a man at all, but something different. Something so much more.
Alex watched him in fascination, all the more so for what she’d seen him do outside the mining company grounds with the wolf. In an instant, he’d become part of the beautiful animal, connecting on some unspoken level that had left Alex gaping at him in awe. Even now, she marveled, feeling the current of wildness, of dark, commanding power, lingering in him still. He was intense and mysterious, strong and seductive. And yes, hot as hell.
Everything about Kade captivated her.
She merely had to look at him and she burned.
And he knew it, too. She saw the spark of awareness light the silver of his eyes as he wrapped up his call and set the phone down on the end table next to the sofa.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, seating himself beside her. “You must be exhausted. I know this is a lot to handle.”
She gave a vague shrug. “My head’s still spinning, but at least I have answers now. The things that never made sense to me before are clearer. Not exactly reason to jump up and cheer, but it’s good to finally have the truth, however terrifying it might be. So, thank you for that, Kade.”
He took her hand in his, their palms pressed together lightly as he ran his thumb over the thin skin of her wrist. His touch was warm, soothing. Achingly tender. “God, I hate that you’ve been dragged into this. There are places that you can go where you’ll be safe, Alex. The Breed has numerous Darkhavens that would take you in—secure communities where you would be welcomed and protected. Better than what I can do for you now. After seeing what we did out at the mine, this has all gotten too real. Too dangerous—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, curling her fingers around his and holding his grave gaze. “I’m not going to run. Don’t ask me to, Kade.”
His jaw went tight as he stared at her. His dark brows lowered over his eyes, mouth going flat as he grimly shook his head. “This is my battle. The Order’s battle. Tomorrow some of the warriors will arrive from Boston. I’ll be meeting up with them when they get in, and from there we’ll launch an offensive strike on Dragos’s operations at the mine. We don’t know what we’re going to find. I just know that I want you as far away from this mission—and any possible fallout—as you can get.” He reached up and smoothed his fingers lightly over her cheek. “That also means getting you as far away from me as possible, before I put you any further at risk.”
“No.” Alex turned her face, pressing her mouth to the warm heat of his palm where it rested against her. She kissed the heart of his large hand. “I can’t hide anymore, Kade. I don’t want to live like that, always looking over my shoulder, afraid of the things I don’t understand. You can’t ask me to, not when meeting you has given me the strength to believe that I can face my fears. Meeting you has given me the strength to understand that I must face them.”
He cursed harshly, but his caress was soft, his gaze penetrating, the pale silver color that ringed his pupils dark with desire. “You give me too much credit. You were stronger than you realized, to have gone through what you did as a child and not let it destroy you. Not many could. That’s courage, Alex. You didn’t need me for that. You still don’t.”
She smiled, reaching out to hold his face in her hands as she kissed him. “I do need you,” she whispered against his mouth. “What’s more, I want you, Kade.”
His breath rasped out of him on a sigh as she slanted her lips over his again and moved closer to him on the sofa. His arms went around her, holding her in a loose cage as she climbed up onto his lap and pushed her tongue into his mouth.
He groaned, caught her tongue with his teeth … then abruptly broke contact and turned his head away from her.
“What’s wrong? Why did you stop?” She panted the words, her lips and tongue stinging with a delicious heat. She tasted blood, only the smallest trace, but instinct brought her hand up to her mouth and the tip of her finger came away wet with a scarlet stain.
She glanced at Kade’s downcast face and felt his torment in the way his big body vibrated with barely leashed control, as though he were waging a private war inside himself.
“Look at me,” she whispered. When he didn’t immediately comply, she lifted his stubborn chin and physically brought his gaze back to hers. “Look at me … let me see you.”
“Trust me, you will not want to,” he muttered, glancing away quickly.
But not before she noticed the change that had come over his eyes. He hadn’t been able to turn quite fast enough to hide the fact that their normally pale gray color was now shot with fiery amber. And his pupils … something was different about them, too.
“Kade, please,” she said gently. “Let me see you as you really are.”
Slowly, he lifted his face. His dark lashes flicked up, and Alex was stunned by a blast of ember-bright color that glowed like lit coals. And in the center of all that fire, his pupils had narrowed to catlike slits. It startled her, the strangeness of his gaze, the way it transformed his face, sharpening the angles of his high cheekbones and squared jaw. She stared, robbed of words. All but robbed of breath.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Alex.” His deep voice rasped, sounding oddly thick to her, and then she realized why. She saw the gleam of sharp white teeth behind his lip as he spoke. His fangs. Not quite hidden, despite his obvious effort to conceal them from her view. When he looked at her now, there was a desperation in his amber eyes. Desperation and longing like she’d never seen before. “I don’t want you to hate me, but this is who I am, Alex. This is who I truly am.”
Despite the tiny shiver of wariness that kicked her heart into a more frantic beat, Alex leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. She held his tormented gaze, then let her eyes travel downward, to his parted lips and the bright points of his fangs, which seemed to have grown even larger now, sharper.
“I’m not feeling anything close to hate,” she whispered, tilting her head up and wetting her suddenly dry lips. “If you’d just kiss me again, you’d know that.”
Sparks flashed like lightning in his eyes in the moment before he descended on her. Alex felt the leashed power in him, and she sensed the control he exerted to keep that power in check as he took her mouth in a hot, hungered, claiming kiss.
Alex gave herself over to him, reveling in the warm, wet brush of his lips on her mouth, her chin, her throat. She slipped her hands under the black cotton of his long-sleeved T-shirt, running her palms up the firm, satin-smooth muscle of his back. She could feel the vague outlines of his tattoos under her fingertips, a complicated pattern of swirls and arcs that she traced with her nails but really wanted to follow with her tongue.
“Let me see your body. I want to see all of you,” she murmured, tugging at his shirt. She pulled it over his head and could only stare in wonder once she’d unveiled him. “My God,” she gasped. “Those are not tattoos, are they?”
“Dermaglyphs,” he said, settling back to let her look at the intricate design that pulsed across his torso, shoulders, and arms as though it were alive. The markings that had been only a shade darker than the rest of his skin were now flooded with variegated hues of deepest wine, indigo, and gold. “We’re born with them, the same way Breedmates are born with their mark.”
“They’re beautiful, Kade.” His dermaglyphs were artful, lacy intertwinings, a glorious web of shifting colors. Alex leaned in to run her finger along a particularly graceful line that tracked around the flat disk of his right nipple. The deep purplish hue blushed darker under her touch. She looked up at him, amazed. “How’d you do that?”
“You did it.” His mouth quirked. “The colors of the glyphs change according to a male’s mood.”
“Oh,” she said, going warm at his dark, meaningful look. “And your mood is?”
He didn’t answer, just moved forward and took her in another long, slow kiss that turned her core molten. He pressed her down onto the sofa beneath him and began to undress her, prompting Luna to jump off the far end and slink into the kitchen on a disgruntled huff.
“Uh-oh. I think you may have just lost points with her,” Alex murmured in between kisses.
He chuckled, a low and deep rumble that vibrated against her mouth. “I’ll apologize later. Right now, there’s only one female whose opinion matters to me.”
He took his time stripping her of her double layer of fleece and cotton shirts and loose-fitting jeans. He covered every inch of her with his mouth, kissing a long, hot trail down her neck and breasts and abdomen, stroking her bare limbs as his glowing, fevered gaze drank her in.
By the time he had her naked, Alex was panting and aching with desire. He knelt on the sofa above her, his thick thighs wedged between the spread of hers. He was still in his jeans, which sat low on his lean hips, straining tight across the large swell of his groin.
She raised up and reached out to him, needing to feel his warm flesh under her hands. All over her body.
Deep inside her.
He said nothing as she unfastened the button of his pants and edged the zipper down. He was naked beneath the dark denim, his rigid cock spilling over as soon as it was freed of its confinement. He rose up as she tugged his jeans off his hips and pushed them down around his knees, a move that brought his gorgeous length within an inch of her mouth.
Alex couldn’t resist the temptation. She cupped his shaft and balls and brought him to her, wrapping her lips around the broad head and delighting in Kade’s strangled moan as she slid her mouth all the way down to the base of him.
He felt so good against her tongue, hot and earthy, as soft as velvet wrapped around a column of solid steel. Alex drew him deep again, then eased back to suckle at his crest, all the while watching as the glyphs on his abdomen and upper thighs churned in ever-deepening hues.
“Ah, Christ,” he hissed as she played her mouth around the rim of his head, then took him all the way to the back of her throat. His fingers speared into her hair, clutching her skull as his body went tight as a cable. “Alex … ah, fuck …”
His hands were trembling as he set her away from him. His eyes threw off an intense heat, and his face was stark with passion as he hastily shucked his jeans to the floor. Gloriously naked, he moved toward her once more and gently wrapped his palm around her nape. His touch was firm with possession, yet he didn’t simply take. His transformed gaze was hungry yet patient. His kiss passionate yet tender.
There was nothing simple about him.
Nothing simple about the way he made her feel.
Kade was simply a mass of contradictions, each one more fascinating than the last.
He made her feel safe and protected, perhaps the biggest contradiction of all. He made her feel cared for … even loved.
And dear God, did he make her burn.
Her body arched into him as he stroked her, every inch of her hypersensitive and greedy for his touch. She couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t hold him tight enough, as he prowled on top of her and spread her thighs wide with his.
“I want to take this slow tonight,” he said, his voice rough and dark, almost unrecognizable. “I just want to savor you … savor us.”
He watched her as he entered her, thrusting slowly, filling her with deliberate care even though his hips bucked and the tendons in his neck popped tight under his skin. He rocked her gently, stoking her building climax with maddening restraint.
She wanted to scream for him to go faster, to take her as hard as he could if it would ease the coil of need that he’d put inside her.
But making love to him felt too good to rush. She didn’t want the feeling—or this night—to end. Neither did he; she could see that in his face. She could feel it in every measured thrust of his hips. In every hot, savoring caress of his mouth as he kissed her breath away.
The hours would pass quickly enough. Tomorrow his mission with the Order would begin again. Tomorrow all the death and danger that lurked outside the haven of this moment would return.
Much too soon, Alex thought.
And so she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around the slow, torturously wonderful pump of his hips, and she let herself spin out into a blissful abandon. She welcomed every deep thrust. Sighed with every long retreat. Relished in the weight and warmth of Kade’s magnificent body rubbing against her.
When she came, it was a delicious unraveling of her senses. Alex cried out, shuddering as the orgasm rocked her from a place so deep within her, it seemed to detonate from her very soul. She clung to him, catching the muscled bulk of his shoulder between her teeth as an aftershock rumbled through her.
“Kade,” she gasped brokenly. “Oh, God …”
He groaned with sharp force and lifted her pelvis up off the cushions. His thrusts gained strength, driving deeper now, yet still bridled by his rigid control.
“Let go,” Alex whispered. “Just let it go. I want all of you, Kade.”
He snarled, a raw, animalistic sound of refusal. When he scooped her into his arms and tried to hide his face from her view, Alex pushed back. His face was wild with torment, constricted with pleasure and pain. And his fangs … Good lord, the bright white points filled his mouth as he stared down at her, thrust so powerfully, she couldn’t hold back her sharp cry.
Her own pleasure was cresting once more, bringing with it a keening hunger that twisted tight in her belly, beginning a slow boil in her blood.
“Oh, God … Kade.” She panted with sensation and need, all of it centered on him. She dug her fingernails into the bulk of his arms, buried her face in the curve of his strong neck and shoulder as he crashed into her with long, punishingly intense strokes.
The coil of hunger within her contracted even more, burning into a need so primal it shook her. The scent of his skin, its silky, smooth heat against her lips, against her tongue, made her dizzy with desire. His tempo roughened as he rode her, harder and deeper, grunting with each urgent grind of his pelvis.
Alex sighed his name. She moaned, lost to the swelling rush of another orgasm. She cried out as it washed over her, a quenching flood of pleasure and release that should have doused the smoldering thirst that lived in her now, but only made it explode into a gnawing demand.
She wanted to taste him.
Not in any way that she had already, but in a way that shocked her. In a way that should have terrified her, but only made her blood race hotter, faster, alive with a dark power she could hardly tame.
Beneath her open mouth, she felt the quickened thud of his heartbeat knocking in the vein at his throat. She pressed her tongue against it, then her teeth. Closed them experimentally over the corded tendons and the heated pulse that seemed to beat in the same desperate rhythm within her, as well.
Kade snarled a dark curse but only pumped his hips with more fury.
Alex reveled in the feel of him losing control. She ran her tongue and teeth over the tender skin, then clamped down harder …
Kade arced sharply above her, threw his head back, and roared.
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
He couldn’t hold back another second longer.
His release shot out of him in a scalding rush as Alex’s blunt little teeth grazed his throat in a teasing, testing bite that almost—not quite—broke the surface of his skin. She couldn’t know how badly he wanted it. How staggering the need he had for her to draw his blood into her mouth, to drink from him. How intensely he wanted to claim Alex for his own and bind her to him forever.
“Fuck,” he gasped as her satiny walls milked his pumping cock and her mouth wreaked holy havoc on his senses. “Alex … ah, Christ!”
He came harder than ever before, lost to his desire for her. Lost to the deafening drum of his pulse that demanded she was already his, blood-bonded or not.
His woman.
The only female he would ever want again.
His forever mate.
Kade raised up onto his knees to look at her, his sex still buried inside her heat, still hard for her and hungry for more. His neck burned from the playful nip of her mouth. He could still taste the sweetness of her blood on his tongue from when he’d so stupidly let his fangs graze her lip as he’d kissed her. That small taste had damned him, and maybe her, as well.
Desire and bloodthirst swamped him, sharpening his vision and making his fangs throb with the urge to penetrate her tender flesh. He clutched her hips and rocked against her, watching as she arched beneath him, following him toward the peak of another shattering release.
She cried his name, her spine bowing upward, blood flushing her pale skin with a pink glow. Kade watched her in tortured admiration, never having seen anything as beautiful as Alex in the throes of erotic bliss.
He wanted to give her more, the kind of pleasure and release—the passion, and, yes, the love—that only a blood-bonded male could give his mate.
God, how he wanted.
“Alexandra,” he rasped, the only thing he could manage when hunger and desire for her swamped him, stripping him of all thought except the want of this female. He wanted to warn her that he was dangerous like this, but all that left his mouth was a sound somewhere between a curse and a moan.
She should have pushed him away, but instead she did the exact opposite. Her hands came up to reach for him, bringing him back down atop her. Breath rushing through her lips in short gasps, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him, a deep, wet, welcoming joining of their mouths.
Kade tried to fight the need—the hunger—but Alex was quickly undoing every bit of his control. Dimly he realized that he hadn’t fed since leaving Boston a few days ago, and as much as he wanted to blame his thirst on basic survival, he knew to his marrow that it was the taste of Alex he wanted.
Only her.
He was unhinged now, treading the edge of a very deep crevasse and about to drag her down into it along with him. He knew this. He knew damned well that he should make sure Alex knew it, too.
But then she deepened their kiss, sucking his lower lip between her teeth with a hunger he would not mistake, even at his most sober moment. And he was anything but sober now, when his body was smoldering, his blood racing through his veins like liquid fire.
Kade broke away from her mouth on a growl. He traced his lips and tongue along the delicate line of her jaw, then down to the tender spot beneath her ear, knowing it would doom him but too far gone to stop now. The feel of her pulse ticking against his mouth dug spurs into the soft belly of his need, turning raw ache into fierce agony.
“Ah, God … Alex,” he whispered harshly, then took the tender flesh of her throat between his teeth and fangs and slowly pressed down into her vein.
She drew in a sharp gasp as he penetrated her skin, a sudden flinch stiffening her body and halting her breathing. Kade paused as though slapped, horrified at what he’d just done and fearing he would not have the strength to pull away now, even if she hated him.
But then Alex’s hands relaxed on his shoulders, began to stroke him. She exhaled a tremulous, pleasured sigh and he responded with a rough, grateful moan as he drew the first sweet taste of her into his mouth.
And, oh, she was sweet.
Alex’s blood swept over his tongue like silk, the unique honey-and-almond scent of her mingling with the musky heat of her arousal. Kade drank her in, stunned by the roar of heat and pleasure that flowed into him with each draw he took from her vein. Her blood quenched him, empowered him. Inflamed him all over again, more intensely than before.
She was his. And although it would take a mutual exchange of blood to bond them together as mates, his link to her now was unbreakable. It was a visceral bond, one that could be broken only by death.
And he had just forced it on her.
The thought shamed him, but it was difficult to feel remorse when Alex was clutching at him with greedy hands, panting and writhing against him as another orgasm rocked her. She moaned hotly under the hypnotic spell of his bite, her hips rising up to take him deeper inside her as he drew the honeyed sweetness of her blood into his mouth.
If she’d been merely Homo sapiens, she would have felt comfort, even pleasure, as he fed from her. But because she was a Breedmate, and because of the passion that was still coursing through both of them now, Alex’s response was exponentially more intense. Her ecstasy was his now, a part of him through her blood he’d taken inside him. Now every intense feeling she experienced would be his, as well, from joy to pain.
As he drank more of her, he felt her desire rising, ratcheting to a fevered yearning she struggled to bear. His thirst had not ebbed, but it was her need that moved him now. With a careful sweep of his tongue over the twin punctures, he sealed the bite closed.
“Come on,” he murmured, gathering her up into his arms. “I’m taking you to bed now.”
Drowsy and boneless, she rested lightly against his bare chest as he carried her down the hallway and into her bedroom. He placed her on the quilted comforter, kissing her as he settled in next to her on the bed. He caressed every silken inch of her, every curve and muscle imprinting itself on his touch.
“Look at me, Alexandra,” he said when she closed her eyes in pleasure. His voice was rough and dark, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. “I need to know that you see me now, as I am. This is what I am.”
She lifted her lids and gazed up at him. He waited to see her revulsion, for he would never have looked more feral—more inhuman—than he did at that moment. His glyphs pulsed with shifting colors, hues of desire and passion melding with those of his lingering hunger and the torment he felt for everything that had happened here with Alex tonight. Not the least of which being the blood bond he’d initiated and could not sever, even if she despised him for it.
He watched her study him, afraid to speak. Fearful that she would hate him now, or look away, repulsed by what he had become. “This is me, Alex,” he said quietly. “This is all of me.”
Her light brown eyes drank him in, unfaltering. She stroked the mutating glyphs on his chest, following the pattern with a light, learning touch. She reached down farther, smoothing her palm over his thigh, then back to the erect length of his cock. He exhaled a wordless growl of pleasure as her fingers lovingly caressed him.
Through her blood, the precious part of her that swam inside him, feeding his cells, he read the depth of her desire for him. There was no fear or uncertainty in her as she gazed at him. There was only a soft but fevered demand as she reached up to grip the nape of his neck and guide him back down to her mouth.
“Make love to me again,” she whispered against his lips.
It was a command that Kade was more than willing to oblige. He gently rolled over her as she parted her legs to welcome him once more. He entered her slowly and tenderly as he brought her into his arms. Their kiss was long, passionate, fevered as she traced her tongue over his fangs and his sex erupted deep inside her. Kade shouted with his release and crushed her to him.
God help him, he knew now what the other mated warriors had said about the pleasure—the humbling rapture—of the blood bond. With Alex, with this woman who had awakened feelings in him he’d never wanted to risk before, now Kade knew what forever could be. He craved it, with a ferocity that stunned him.
In that moment, with Alex wrapped around him so warm and content and open to him, he wanted to hold the feeling close … even if the wildness within him whispered insidiously that it couldn’t last.
The fire that had been slowly dying on the grate a few hours ago had long since gone cold. Jenna Tucker-Darrow lay tightly curled on her side on the floor of the cabin’s main room, shivering as she roused from the depths of a dreamless, unnaturally heavy sleep. Her limbs were listless, uncooperative, her neck too weak and tender to let her lift her head.
With some effort, she managed to crack her eyelids open and peer into the darkness of her cabin. Dread crawled up her spine on talons made of ice.
The intruder was still there.
He sat on the floor across the room from her, his head tipped down. He was a massive, menacing presence, even at rest.
He wasn’t human.
She still struggled with that awareness, wondered if what she was seeing could be blamed on the single-malt Scotch she’d been drowning herself in—Mitch’s favorite, and the crutch she leaned on every year around this time to get her through the awful anniversary of his and Libby’s deaths.
But the immense intruder who broke into her home and was now holding her prisoner there wasn’t some type of alcoholic hallucination. He was flesh and bone, though she’d never seen flesh like his before. He’d shown up unclothed despite the subzero temperatures outside, and his skin from head to toe was hairless, covered in a dense tangle of red and black markings that were too extensive to be the work of a tattoo artist. And whatever he was, he was stronger than any man she’d ever come across in her time in law enforcement, even though he was unarmed, and nursing some grievous injuries.
Jenna had seen her share of gunshot wounds, enough to know that the shredded chunk of flesh and muscle blown out of his thigh and the smaller one in the side of his abdomen must have been the result of shotgun blasts. His other injuries, the blisters and seeping lesions that covered most of his skin, were less discernible, particularly in the dark. They looked like radiation burns, or a seriously intense sunburn—the kind you could get only if you did your UV baking under a full-body magnifying glass.
Jenna couldn’t even begin to guess where he’d come from, or what he wanted with her. She’d thought he meant to kill her when he forced his way inside her house. Truthfully, she wouldn’t have cared if he had. She’d been halfway there on her own, anyway. She was tired of living without the people she cared about most. Fed up with feeling so damned useless and alone.
But the intruder—the creature, for that’s what he was—did not break in with the intention of killing her. At least, not right away, from what she could tell.
He had done something equally heinous, however.
He’d bitten her in the throat, and to her shock and disbelief, he’d fed on her blood like a monster.
Like a vampire.
Impossible, she knew. Her logic wanted to reject the idea, just as it wanted to reject what her eyes were still witnessing now when she looked across the room at the impossible idea in the flesh.
Jenna shuddered at the recollection of his huge fangs descending on her, tearing into the side of her neck. Thankfully, she couldn’t remember much beyond that. She might have fainted, but she suspected he had done something to render her unconscious. Whether she was weakened from blood loss or whatever he’d done to knock her out, she couldn’t be sure.
She tried again to move from her tight ball on the floor but succeeded only in getting his attention. His head came up, the fiery twin laser beams of his eyes pinning her from across the room. Jenna stared right back, refusing to cower to him, no matter what the hell he was. She had nothing to lose, after all.
He watched her for a long time. Maybe he was waiting for her to back down, or try to hoist herself up and launch at him in a fit of futile rage.
Belatedly, she noticed that he held something rectangular and shiny in his huge hands. A picture frame. She knew the one it was, didn’t have to look to the fireplace mantel above the place where she lay to realize he was holding a photograph of her with Mitch and Libby. The last one she had of them together, taken just days before they were killed.
Her breath came a little faster as a feeling of weary outrage spiked in her. He had no right to touch anything of hers, least of all something as precious as that final image of her family.
Across the room, the hairless head cocked at an inquisitive angle.
He rose, began a slow, painful-looking walk toward her. Idly, she noticed that his gunshot wounds had stopped bleeding. The flesh didn’t seem quite as ragged as it had before, almost as if it were healing at an accelerated—almost visibly accelerated—rate.
He paused in front of her and slowly eased himself down onto his haunches. Although she was anxious, fearful for what he meant to do to her now, Jenna worked hard not to show it.
He held the picture frame out to her.
Jenna stared, unsure what to do.
He remained there for the longest time, watching her, his blistered hand holding the photograph of her smiling with her husband and child out to her like some kind of offering. When she didn’t move or speak, finally, he set it down on the floor next to her. The glass was cracked, the edges of the silver frame marred with smudges of his blood.
Jenna looked at the happy faces behind the ruined glass and could not hold back her choked cry. Pain engulfed her, and she dropped her forehead onto the floor and sobbed quietly.
Her captor limped back to the other side of the room and watched her weep, before turning to look out the unshuttered window, up at the starlit sky overhead.
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
Resisting the pull of wakefulness that would draw her out of a deep, sensual, very enjoyable dream, Alex sighed languorously and shifted on her bed. Aside from the black velvet sleep that caressed her now, she needed only one more thing to make her state of warm, lazy bliss complete. She sent her arm out in a slow sweep of the mattress, searching for Kade’s warmth.
He wasn’t there.
Had he left without telling her?
Wide awake now, she came up onto her elbows and stared at the empty darkness of her bedroom. She flicked on the nightstand lamp, huffing out a disappointed groan that he was gone. But then, up the hallway, she heard the squeak of the faucet as the shower turned off.
A moment later, Kade came strolling in, naked except for her pink bath towel, which was knotted loosely around his trim hips.
“You’re awake,” he said, raking his fingers through the damp ebony spikes of his hair.
“You’re leaving already?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. Beads of water glistened on his shoulders and chest, a few of them sliding down his smooth skin and glyphs in thin rivulets. He looked and smelled delicious, and Alex had the strongest urge to lick him dry.
He smiled as if he sensed the lusty direction of her thoughts. “I have to go. My brothers-in-arms from Boston will be flying into Fairbanks in a couple of hours. We’ll be rendezvousing at an old truck stop midway between there and the mining company. We can’t risk giving Dragos or his men the chance to know we’re on to them, so we’re going to hit the mine without delay.”
He spoke so casually about the danger that awaited him and his friends. All Alex could think of was the very real possibility that he might be hurt. Or worse, something she didn’t even want to imagine. Just the thought of Kade walking into that mine—potentially into the hands of Dragos, or an even larger evil, should they cross paths with the creature they suspected had been transported to the area—made Alex quake inside with a raw, marrow-deep dread. “I don’t want you to go. I’m afraid if you do, I might never see you again.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, and something dark, something ironic, traveled over his handsome face. “You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily, Alex. Not now.”
He placed his palm along her cheek, then leaned down and kissed her, his mouth so tender on hers it opened up an ache in the center of her chest.
She ached in a number of places, all the right places.
By the time his lips left hers, each of her pulse points were lit up as though they’d been touched by lightning. Lower still, a heavy throb in her core sent heat pooling between her legs. After the hours of passion they’d enjoyed, she still burned for him as though she’d had only the smallest taste.
She sighed with the remembered pleasure of all they’d done together. “Last night was …”
“Yeah. It was.” He smiled, but there was a hesitation in his voice. Something haunted about his eyes.
He caressed her bare shoulder, then let his fingers travel up along the side of her neck, the only part of her that felt more alive and heated than the slick cleft of her thighs. Alex nestled into his feather-light strokes, shivering with a growing hunger for him as he ran his thumb across the vein that fluttered more frantically in response to his touch.
“You bit me,” she whispered, feeling an odd thrill just to say the words.
He inclined his head in a grim nod. “I did. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t have the right to take that from you.”
Did he mean her blood? “It’s all right, Kade.”
“No,” he said gravely. “It’s not all right. You deserve more than that.”
“I … liked it,” she told him, meaning it with a sincerity that shocked even her. “What you did, it felt good. It still does. Everywhere you touched me last night feels very good.”
He exhaled slowly, his breath hot as it fanned her brow. He hadn’t stopped petting her throat. She could have enjoyed his soothing touch for hours more.
“What I did last night has changed everything, Alex. I drank from you. I bonded myself to you, and I can’t take it back. Not even if you hate me for it.”
She tilted her head up and kissed the stern line of his mouth. “Why would I hate you?”
He stared at her for the longest time, as though weighing the impact of what he wanted to tell her. “I drank from you, Alex, knowing full well that you are a Breedmate. Knowing that once your blood was in my body, there would be no going back. I’m connected to you now, and it’s unbreakable. It’s forever. I knew what it meant, but I just … wanted you so badly, I couldn’t stop. I should have, but I didn’t.”
Alex listened, seeing the torment in his eyes. She could see the regret, too, and it twisted her heart like a vise.
“Last night, you couldn’t stop,” she said, needing to understand, even if it would kill to hear it. “But now, you wish you could take it back. Because you feel differently … about me?”
His head came up sharply, his dark brows lowered over his eyes. “No. Jesus … no, Alex. What I feel for you—” The words broke off, seemed to catch in his throat. “What I feel for you is stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. It’s love, Alex, and it was there before last night. It would be with me even if I hadn’t taken your blood.”
She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until it whooshed out of her on a sigh. “Oh, Kade.”
He blew out a dry curse as he caressed her. “I don’t know how I let this happen. I sure as hell never expected to find what I have with you. Not now, when everything else around me couldn’t be more messed up.”
“Then we’ll sort it out,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We can sort everything out, together. Because I’ve fallen in love with you, too.”
He cursed again, but this time it was with reverence, a whispered oath as he gathered her close and pulled her into a deliriously passionate kiss. Alex felt his muscles flex and twitch under her fingertips. She felt the tremor of need that racked him as he eased her onto her back and he crawled over her. The pink towel fell away and Alex drank in the magnificent sight of his body, the thick jut of his arousal, all of that power poised to enter her.
His gaze was fierce, pale silver flashing with amber fire. “Ah, God … Alexandra. I need to hear it now. Tell me you are mine.”
“Yes,” she said, then cried the word again as he thrust deep and ushered her toward the crest of a swift, hot wave of release.
He had stayed in bed with Alex for nearly another hour, much longer than he had intended, but even at that, it had been damn near impossible to find the ambition to leave. Which meant he’d had to haul some serious ass in order to reach the rendezvous point in time to meet the arriving warriors. He’d made it—barely—and had just gotten off his snowmachine to wait for them when the roar of their engines came ripping out of the darkness.
The four vampires were outfitted like him in black winter gear and visored black helmets. As Breed, none of them needed the aid of their sled’s headlight to guide them. Their huge forms, each of them bristling with weapons, spilled from the shadows of the night as they flew into the vacant, run-down truck stop. The whine of their snowmachines filled the air, heavy tractor chains throwing off’ plumes of gray exhaust and chewed-up snow behind them.
The Order’s answer to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Kade thought with a wry grin as he watched the group of warriors skid to a halt in front of him.
Brock was the first off his sled. He cut the power and swung his leg over the seat, sweeping up his helmet’s visor as he strode over and greeted Kade with a broad smile and a hard right cuff to the shoulder. “You just wouldn’t be happy until I had to drag my ass up here to this godforsaken icebox, that it? Gotta tell you, I’m feelin’ some hate here, my man. Or I would be, if I could actually feel anything other than Arctic cold gnawing at my vitals.”
Kade grinned at the warrior who had become his closest friend. “Good to see you, too.”
Directly behind Brock was another of the Order’s newer recruits, the ex–Enforcement Agent Sterling Chase—or Harvard, as he was also known, on account of his highbrow civilian education and the stuffy demeanor he’d sported in the beginning of his involvement with the warriors. That cool air of superiority was still there, but sharpened to an icy edge in the year since he’d joined the Order.
Chase was deadly, and took something of an unhealthy satisfaction in his work. In fact, Kade was shocked as hell to see the male, considering it had only been a couple of weeks since a street battle in Boston had left him grounded with a nasty gunshot wound to the chest. Looking at him now, Kade couldn’t help seeing a bit of Seth’s unapologetic arrogance in the male’s chilling blue eyes as he pulled off his helmet and bared his brush-cut blond head to the elements. His lean face was almost gaunt and there was a glint of emptiness in the warrior’s eyes. An apathy that Kade felt as though he were only truly noticing for the first time.
“Got satellite imagery of the mining company location,” Chase said without greeting, pulling a small laptop out of his gear and firing it up as the others gathered around them. “It’s fresh intel. Gideon procured the images right before we left the compound.”
“Good,” Kade replied. “You feeling all right, Harvard?”
He glanced up, his expression was unreadable, bleak. “Never better.”
As Kade considered the warrior, the two others in the unit came over, both of them immense, both ruthlessly efficient weapons in the Order’s deadly arsenal. They were both also first-generation Breed, although Tegan was centuries older than the male called simply Hunter. Where Tegan had been one of the Order’s founding members along with its Gen One leader, Lucan, Hunter had come on board only a few months ago, an unlikely ally, given that he was a product of Dragos’s genetic experimentation labs.
Bred off the last surviving Ancient—the very creature potentially at large in Alaska right now—and one of the many unknown, captive Breedmates whom Dragos had been collecting for decades as part of his grasp for power, Hunter was likely no older than forty or fifty years. But during that short span of life, he’d known only discipline and solitary purpose.
He’d been raised an assassin, an emotionless Hunter, given no name other than that of his function—his sole worth—to Dragos, the one who made him.
Behind the glossy visor of his helmet, Hunter remained his usual close-lipped, automaton self as he and Tegan approached the rest of the group. As for Tegan, he’d never been Mr. Congeniality. It wasn’t that long ago, little more than a year, that Tegan’s involvement in the Order looked dubious at best. But he had proven himself in the end, and earned the love of a good woman besides. Now, as Lucan’s second in command, the formidable warrior put all of his merciless, lethal intensity into every mission for the Order.
His bright green gaze was piercing as he stripped off his helmet and gave Kade a curt nod of greeting. “Nice work, turning up the lead on Coldstream Mining. Gideon tracked it back to an outfit calling themselves TerraGlobal Partners. It’s a dummy corporation, a front with about ten layers of bullshit entities behind it.”
“Let me guess,” Kade said dryly. “All roads will eventually lead to Dragos.”
Tegan nodded. “Dante, Rio, and Niko are running with the data, pursuing every bread crumb we can find, no matter how small or spread out. Meanwhile, Lucan and Gideon are holding down the fort in Boston. Had to practically tie Lucan down to keep him from coming with us on this one, but we can’t leave the compound unprotected when we still don’t have a direct bead on Dragos himself. Too much precious cargo at home.”
Kade nodded, hearing the grim concern in the other male’s voice when he spoke about his Breedmate, Elise, and the other warriors’ mates who called the Order’s headquarters their home.
Kade understood that feeling now.
When he thought of Alex, and the fact that he had to leave her at her house in Harmony while he was on this mission …
When he thought there was a chance, if things should go terribly wrong and he couldn’t return to her, that she might fall prey to the Ancient or to any other danger, and he wouldn’t be there to keep her safe …
Holy hell.
Each thought was worse than the other, an awful spiral that he had to mentally shake himself out of to catch up to what Tegan was saying.
“Based on what we’ve seen from Dragos already, we have to assume the mine has some kind of self-destruct mechanism in place. If we can’t find the nerve center of the lair, we’re going to have to detonate the place ourselves.”
Brock grunted. “Which is why I’m packing enough C-4 to blow a meteor-size crater into the side of that mountain. Gotta tell you, I’ll be glad to unload this shit.”
Tegan gave him a wry nod, then set about giving instructions for the raid on the mine. The warriors had already discussed the plan of attack in Boston; now it was just a matter of carrying out the mission.
“Too bad Andreas Reichen isn’t here to add some fire to this party,” Chase added, referring to the most recent addition to the Order’s ranks, the former Darkhaven leader from Germany. “Little bit of pyrokinesis would go a long way tonight.”
“Yeah, it would,” Tegan replied. “But his talent is still too raw. Until he gets it under control, we’re better to keep him working diplomatic relations for the Order.”
“Diplomatic relations.” Brock chuckled, a deep, amused rumble in his chest. “God knows not a one of us standing here now is suited for that kind of work.”
“Damn straight,” Tegan agreed, smiling with cold menace. “So, let’s stop the yammering and go kick some ass.”
As the group broke and prepared to move out, Brock lagged behind the others and gave Kade a questioning look. “What’s going on with you? I’ve gone on too many patrols with you not to notice that you’ve got something heavy weighing on your mind, my man.”
“Nah.” Kade shook his head. “It’s nothing. I’m good. Let’s roll.”
Brock’s dark eyes narrowed. He took a sideways step and blocked Kade’s path, keeping his voice too low for the others to hear. “Now, see, that’s the kind of lame-ass thing you say to someone who hasn’t watched your back as often as you’ve watched theirs. So, let me ask it again. What the fuck happened since you got here?”
Kade stared at his comrade and friend—the warrior who was as close as a brother to him. Closer, even, than his own identical twin. The twin Kade no longer knew, and had lost as his kin a long time ago.
It shamed him to think of Seth now, let alone try to explain what he’d discovered about him in the time that he’d been back in Alaska.
He would have to tell the Order all of it at some point—he knew that. He would have to tell Alex about Seth eventually, as well. But there were other things weighing just as heavily on him, not the least of which being the fact that in the midst of all the madness and strife since he’d left Boston, he had somehow dropped his guard and let himself fall in love.
“The woman,” he said lamely. “Alexandra Maguire …”
“You mean the Breedmate,” Brock corrected, having no doubt heard something about her from one of Kade’s calls into the compound. “Did something happen to the female?”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Kade exhaled a short breath, wry and hedging. “Alex has become important to me. Really important.”
As Brock stared at him, the other warriors were getting on their sleds and juicing up their engines. The roar of machinery rumbled all around them, everyone waiting to get moving.
Brock gaped a minute longer, then let out a whoop of laughter. “Naah! Oh, hell no. Not you, too?”
Kade grinned, gave him a helpless shrug. “I love her, man. And she says she loves me, believe it or not.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Brock said, still chuckling and shaking his head. “This is becoming a goddamn epidemic lately.”
“Then you’d better watch your step, too.”
“Shit,” he replied, letting the word hiss out of him on a slow exhalation. “Now who am I going to hang with after patrols—Harvard? Thanks a lot, man. I’ll bet Hunter over there would be a barrel of laughs, too.”
From across the way, Tegan tipped up the visor on his helmet and shot them a summoning look. “Let’s do this.”
Brock waved his acknowledgment, then turned back to Kade. “Ball-busting aside, man, I look forward to meeting your woman. But first, let’s go kick some Dragos ass.”
Kade chuckled as he walked over to his snowmachine and prepared to ride out with his brethren, but his light mood was mostly a mask for the unpleasant reality that was settling heavier and heavier on his shoulders. Because assuming he survived the raid on the mine tonight, he would have the unpleasant task of dealing with Seth soon afterward.
He meant to start a life together with Alex, if she would have him, but he couldn’t do that without taking care of the business he should have addressed before he ever left Alaska in the first place.
Seth was sliding toward Bloodlust, if he wasn’t there already. His madness had to be stopped.
And Kade was the only one who could do it.
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
Kade had only been gone a couple of hours, but the waiting was driving Alex crazy.
Sleep was out of the question, even though she hadn’t been getting much of it lately. She had already fed Luna breakfast and taken a shower, and if she walked around her tiny house looking for one more thing to dust or scrub or straighten, she was going to scream.
Maybe she could invite Jenna over.
Better yet, maybe she could go to her house instead. God knew, she could use the distraction of some company while her heart was caught in a vise, waiting for word from Kade, letting her know that he was all right.
Ordinarily, she might have just hopped on her snowmachine and rode over unannounced, but this was the one time of the year that Jenna appreciated her privacy—demanded it, even. The November anniversary of Mitch and Libby’s deaths had always been a struggle for her friend, and it hurt Alex to think that Jenna preferred to suffer it out alone rather than lean on her for support during the difficult time.
It also bothered Alex that she hadn’t heard a word from Jenna since she had seen her last.
Going more than a day or two without at least a phone call or quick drop-in was unusual for Jenna, no matter what time of the year it was.
Alex picked up her phone to call her and noticed that the message symbol was lit up. Probably Jenna, Alex thought with a relieved laugh under her breath. She’d probably left a voicemail asking Alex why she hadn’t called or come around herself. Alex punched in her access code and waited for the message to play.
It wasn’t Jenna. One of the clients on her supply route, a new mother with a sick baby and a husband gone some six months doing work on the pipeline, wanted to know if Alex could possibly bring out some formula and more fuel for the cabin’s generator. She was just about out of both, and worried that the coming snowstorm would only make things worse. The call had come in yesterday morning. More than twenty-four hours ago.
“Dammit,” Alex whispered.
The woman’s cabin was only about ten miles out of town, but the thought of venturing outside Harmony before daylight, especially with the knowledge of the savage creature that likely lurked in the darkness, gave Alex more than a moment’s pause.
Then again, could she really sit back in her house and leave everyone else to their own devices simply because she was afraid? Hadn’t she just told Kade that she was through with hiding and running, cowering in the corner from the evil she had always known existed but had been too cowardly to face?
She had meant it.
Kade had given her the strength to face her fears.
And the fact that he was out there somewhere, right now, fighting for her—for all of mankind and Breed alike—gave Alex an even greater, renewed sense of power. Noble, courageous Kade was her man, her mate. He loved her. With that knowledge buoying her, there was nothing she needed to fear anymore.
“Come on, Luna.” Alex gestured for the wolf dog to follow her as she headed for the kitchen and grabbed her parka off the hook. She stomped into her boots, then grabbed the key to her snowmachine. “Let’s go for a ride, girl.”
And on the way back from her delivery, she would swing by Jenna’s place just to make sure everything was all right with her, too.
“We counted seven Minions patrolling the areas south and west of the site,” Kade said as he and Brock came back from a quick reconnaissance of the mining company. “From what we could see, every one of them is armed with semiauto assault rifles and wired with comm devices. No outward sign of the Gen One assassin or Dragos’s man, so odds are they’re holed up inside somewhere.”
As Tegan gave a nod in acknowledgment, Chase walked up with his report from the other side of their operation’s target. “Four Minion guards at the gate out front, and a couple more staking out the eastern stretch of the perimeter fence. I’m guessing that’s not the extent of them. We’re going to find more of the bastards once we get inside. Only question is, how many more.”
“No matter.” Hunter’s deep voice held no inflection, only cold assessment. “Minions have inferior, human reflexes. Regardless of their numbers or their weaponry, it is doubtful they can disable us all. They will pose only a temporary obstacle to our mission.”
“Right,” Tegan agreed, somewhat dryly. “Once we infiltrate the site and get past the Minions on guard, our objective is twofold. Determine if the Ancient is being held inside, and if so, where. Second, we capture the vampire in charge of the site. If he’s taking orders from Dragos, then he knows where Dragos is and what he’s up to. So, we need to bring the son of a bitch in and make him talk. Which means we need to bring him in alive.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to bring him in happy,” Chase drawled, the tips of his fangs already visible in anticipation of the battle to come. “Just need to make sure his mouth works.”
“We go in stealth,” Tegan continued, turning a brief, narrowed glance on the warrior before addressing the group as a whole. “We’ll split up into teams and clear as wide a path as we can through the mine’s security detail—but do it quietly. No bullets unless absolutely necessary. The closer we can get to the mine’s entrance without alerting the whole damned place to our presence inside, the better.”
The group of warriors responded with accepting nods.
“We need a frontline team to move in on the guards at the gate,” Tegan said, looking to Kade and Brock. At their agreement, he slanted a look at Chase. “The two of us will search and secure the outbuildings and cargo containers, and make sure Hunter has a clear path to the mine entrance itself. Once the Minion guards are disabled and the outbuildings are secured, we’re gonna need all hands at the ready to move in and breach the mine.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Brock said.
Kade nodded and met his friend’s glance through the fine snow that had been kicking up for the past several minutes. “Let’s do this.”
“All right,” Tegan said. “Everyone knows what needs to be done. Lock and load, and we are rolling.”
The warriors divided into the assigned teams and moved out. Their preternatural speed and agility would benefit their mission, especially since, as Hunter had said, despite the Minions’ numbers, they were at the disadvantage in this battle simply because they were human. Their human eyes would not be able to track the swiftness of the warriors’ movements as the band of Breed males rushed the perimeter fences and leapt over the nine-foot barrier in fluid, spring-heeled grace.
Kade was the first one to clear the fence. He came down on a Minion who’d been on watch at the shack out front, dropping the guard to the frozen ground and silencing his shout of alarm with a blade drawn instantly across his throat. As he dragged the body into the shack, he glanced over and saw that Brock was also inside, the black warrior’s Minion target eliminated with a hard, breaking twist of its neck.
Together the two warriors moved on to their next point of attack, Kade leaping onto the roof of the nearest outbuilding while Brock disappeared around the corner of another. Kade spotted his quarry on the ground below. The Minion strolled the area between the perimeter fence and one of the corrugated equipment storage trailers, his watchful eyes trained on the empty darkness beyond the fence. He went down with little more than a grunt of surprise as Kade launched himself from the rooftop and put him to a swift death on the ground.
Brock, too, had added another Minion to his tally. He dumped the limp body of his second Minion target beside Kade’s.
Up ahead, partially concealed by the flurry of snow that was starting to pick up intensity, Tegan was just releasing the broken, lifeless body of a large Minion guard and stripping him of his weapons. Farther still, toward the pathway that led to the mine’s entrance, Kade could just make out the immense form of Hunter as the Gen One male stepped past two freshly dead Minions who lay in slumped heaps at his feet.
Kade shot a look around the site for the remaining member of the team and found him up near the cargo containers. Chase had a Minion clutched by the throat, holding the struggling mind slave in a slow and painful death grip, his booted feet several inches off the ground. The Minion flailed and convulsed as he began to strangle.
“End it,” Kade muttered in a tight whisper as he watched Chase’s expression contort with some kind of wild fury. From beside him, Kade heard Brock growl, a low rumble deep in his throat as he, too, caught sight of the other warrior toying with his prey.
Just then, Chase drew his knife and brought it up, poised to deliver a killing strike.
That’s when Kade saw a flash of dark movement across the way—another Minion, stepping out onto an exterior staircase of one of the surrounding buildings. The Minion guard had his rifle aimed at Chase, about to squeeze the trigger.
“Goddamn it,” Kade snarled, bringing up his own weapon and training it on the sudden threat to Sterling Chase’s life. Tegan’s warning to hold all fire unless absolutely necessary rang through his head.
Fuck it.
He had to do it. If he didn’t, in another fraction of a second, the Order was going to lose one of its own.
Kade fired.
The shot cracked like a sudden clap of thunder. Up on the stairwell, an explosion of blood and gore blasted out of the side of the Minion’s head as Kade’s bullet met its target dead-on. The Minion’s corpse toppled over the edge, landing with a hard thump on the ground below.
At the same time, an alarm went off inside the buildings. The ringing peal of the sirens echoed all around the exterior of the site, plunging the area into instant chaos.
Before Kade had a chance to regret the move that had spared his brethren’s life but possibly put their mission in jeopardy, an army of Minions came pouring out of the place from all directions. Gunfire erupted everywhere. Kade and Brock dived for cover behind the nearest outbuilding, returning fire on the group of Minion guards who moved in on them from across the way.
Through the curtain of thickening snowfall, Kade noticed an additional company of Minions over near the squat brick building that protected the mine’s entrance. A dozen of them swept out to fortify the front of the building, while behind them, still more appeared in the narrow windows, which were thrown open and bristling with the long black barrels of high-gauge semiautos.
Bullets volleyed from all directions as Kade and the others tried to mow down the line and clear a path toward the mine’s entrance, the obvious nerve center of Dragos’s operation there. The warriors took out several targets, but not without a few hits on their side. Although their Breed genetics gave them the speed to anticipate and dodge an incoming shot, in the heat of battle it was easy to lose track—and potentially lose one’s head.
Kade took a nasty graze to his shoulder as he fired on the Minions. Beside him, Brock flinched away from one bullet and barely evaded another. The rest of the warriors were under similar attack and, like Kade and Brock, giving back as good as they were getting. Minions dropped from various positions, until all that was left were a few tenacious guards holding the line at the front of the mine’s entrance.
Then, as if to give the challenge an even finer point, the building’s steel door opened and an immense, black-clad shape emerged.
“Assassin,” Kade hissed to Brock as the huge Gen One male he’d seen a few days ago with Dragos’s lieutenant strode outside to join the fray.
No sooner had he said it than one of the warriors broke out of formation and stalked forward, gun blazing.
Holy hell.
Hunter.
“Cover him!” Tegan shouted, but Kade and the others were already on it, vaulting up from their positions and falling in behind the former assassin to blast at their enemies and storm the mine’s entrance in force.
Several yards in front now, Hunter’s long, determined strides chewed up the snow-covered ground as he dodged to evade a hail of bullets coming at him from ahead on the right. Another volley answered, and the Gen One took a solid hit to his left thigh. Then another to his right shoulder.
Hunter barely flinched as his flesh tore away with the impacts. Head lowered, he threw down his weapon and bulldozed forward in a streak of speed that only Breed eyes could follow. All of his fury—all of his lethal intent—was focused on the other Gen One assassin, the Breed male who had been born and bred the same as he, and trained to be expert in just one thing: dealing death.
At the same moment Hunter shot forward, the assassin released his gun and launched himself into the air in a great leap. The pair of Gen Ones collided in a crash of pummeling bone and muscle. As they went down onto the ground, locked in vicious hand-to-hand combat that would not cease until one or the other was killed, the rest of the warriors moved in quickly to mow down the remaining Minions guarding the mine.
The dual battles were furious, bloody, and seemed to take place in a vacuum of time that was both agonizingly slow motion and spinning out at the speed of light.
Kade and the others converged on the mine’s entrance. Blood and bone and bullets sprayed the snow-filled darkness. Minions fell in greater numbers now, their sharp, agonized screams splitting the night as the mine’s alarms continued to blare and howl.
And on the ground nearby, Hunter and the Gen One assassin rolled and twisted in an indiscernible blur of movement, hammering each other with their fists. As Kade took out another Minion near the entrance, he saw the flash of the assassin’s fangs in the darkness as the Gen One opened his maw and brought his bite down hard on Hunter’s shoulder.
Kade had an opening to fire on the bastard, but in the midst of all the chaos around them, it was a miserably thin chance. If he missed, he could put a bullet in Hunter’s head instead.
He blew out a curse and lined up his shot—just as Hunter grabbed the black polymer collar around the assassin’s neck and threw him off. Hunter pounced onto the male’s chest. Silent, merciless, he grabbed the vampire’s huge, hairless head in both hands and cracked it hard onto the snow-packed ground. Kade felt the skull-crushing thump reverberate in the ground beneath his boots.
The assassin’s fight slowed then, but Hunter wasn’t finished. Hands moving with grim efficiency and ruthless strength, he hoisted the heavy bulk of the other male and sent the disabled assassin flying. The body crashed into the side of one of the cargo containers, the assassin’s electronic collar shooting off a shower of sparks as it impacted with the corrugated steel.
“Oh, shit!” Kade shouted, having seen firsthand what those collars could do. “UV blast coming—everybody down!”
His command sent Hunter and all the rest of the warriors straight to the deck. No sooner had they hit the ground than there was a sudden, blinding flash of pure white light. The ultraviolet ray shot out from beneath the assassin’s head, cutting a clean line through skin, flesh, tendons, and bone. When it extinguished a moment later, the immense Gen One assassin lay in the melting snow in a broken heap, his hairless, glyph-covered head severed cleanly from the rest of him.
Without missing a beat, Hunter drew a pistol from his weapons belt and squeezed off more rounds at the handful of Minions who were staggering around, temporarily blinded by the explosion of light a second ago. Kade and the rest of the group joined in, and, within moments, nothing stood in their way of the mine’s entrance except a field of fallen bodies.
Tegan kicked in the steel door and led the push inside the building. The front room was vacant, except for more Minion carnage and a couple of security cameras. At the back of the space was another door, this one steel, as well, but fortified with a heavy latch and turnstile lock, like the door of a bank vault.
“Brock,” Tegan said. “Give it a bump of that C-4.”
Brock moved forward and swung the black ammunitions satchel off his back. He took out one of the pale cakes of explosive material and cut off a small piece. When he’d pressed it into place on the steel door and set the charges, everyone drew back outside and covered their heads as he hit the detonator and blew the door.
“We’re in,” he said, as the rolling smoke and dust started to clear.
They hauled open the blasted interior door and crept into the corridor on the other side. Bunk rooms lined one side of the passageway, presumably for the Minion guards who manned the place. Farther down was a storage room, a modest kitchen, and farther still, a communications room that looked recently vacated of personnel.
The warriors continued their search, past a spartan quarters that was nothing more than a prisonlike room with no light or bunk for sleeping, just a blanket folded neatly on the floor. On a small stool in the corner sat an open box of rounds and a sheath for a large blade.
Hunter looked inside the room with a dispassionate eye. “The assassin slept here.”
The cold cell was in stark contrast to the plush living quarters the group encountered a few yards down the corridor. Through the partially open door, Kade glimpsed a lot of dark, polished wood and luxurious furnishings. Behind a gleaming cherry desk a leather wing chair was still spinning, in motion from its recent occupant’s apparently hasty departure.
No doubt, this fancy suite belonged to Dragos’s lieutenant.
Kade gestured down the passageway, toward the last remaining room before the corridor opened into the mine shaft itself. “Only one way he could have run.”
“Yeah.” Tegan’s green gaze slid to him in agreement. “Right into a trap.”
He motioned for the others to fall in behind him, then led the way into the shadowy maw of the corridor.
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
The snowstorm that had started as a teasing flurry was worsening into heavy, persistent flakes as Alex and Luna were riding back from making the delivery out to the bush. Alex was glad to have been able to help the young mother who’d been counting on her today, but she fretted that she hadn’t yet been able to touch base with Jenna. She took out her cell phone and tried calling Jenna’s cabin once again.
No answer.
The niggle of worry she’d been carrying for her friend had only increased in the time Alex had been out, turning into a full-fledged jab of concern. What if Jenna was taking things harder this year than before? Alex knew that she struggled, that she despaired still, over the loss of her husband and child. What if that despair had deepened to something worse this time?
What if it had become something dangerous and she’d harmed herself?
“Oh, God … Jenna. Please let me be wrong.”
With Luna running alongside her, Alex gave the sled more speed as she diverted from the game trail that would eventually lead into Harmony. She headed away from town instead, toward Jenna’s cabin a mile outside.
She was still an easy fifteen minutes away when she saw something moving in the trees up ahead of her. She couldn’t quite make out the shape in the dark, but it looked to be … a person?
Yes, it was. Someone crashing through the snow-laden underbrush of the forest. Incredibly, in spite of the bitter cold, he was utterly naked.
And he wasn’t alone.
Several other shapes materialized from the shadows to run alongside him, four-legged, dark forms … a pack of half a dozen wolves. The sight of the man and wild animals together didn’t so much shock her as it confused her.
Kade?
Alex cut the gas and slowed her sled to a crawl, Luna drawing to a pause at her side.
“Kade,” she called, his name rushing out of her mouth on a breath of pure instinct. She felt a brief moment of elation to see him, but then logic crashed down on her like a cold hammer. Kade had left hours ago to meet the other warriors from Boston. What would he be doing out here, like this?
Something about him didn’t seem quite right …
It couldn’t be Kade.
But … it was.
The headlight of her snowmachine pinned him in its beam. The wolves scattered into the forest, but he stood there now, alone, one arm raised to shield his brightly glowing amber eyes from the glare. His dermaglyphs were so dark they seemed black against his skin, and something almost as dark—something her mind refused to acknowledge at first—slickened his naked body from head to toe.
Blood.
Oh, Jesus.
He was injured … badly injured, by the horrific look of him.
Alex’s heart gave a sick lurch in her chest. He was wounded. His mission with the Order must have gone terribly wrong.
“Kade!” she cried, and leapt off her sled to run toward him. Luna circled in front of her, blocking her way as she barked in a high-pitched whine, a warning to her, or maybe even the dog could see that something was very wrong with him.
“Kade, what happened to you?”
He cocked his head at her and stared as though transfixed, his black hair wild about his head and slick with wetness. Even from the hundred feet that separated them, Alex could see that blood splattered his face, streaked off his chin in gory lines.
Why wouldn’t he answer her?
What the hell was wrong with him?
Alex paused, her feet suddenly refusing to move. “Kade? Oh, my God … please, talk to me. You’re hurt. Tell me what happened.”
But he didn’t utter a single word.
Like a creature of the forest himself, he bolted away from her, vanishing into the dark woods.
Alex called after him, but he was nowhere to be seen now. Her sled’s headlight cut deep into the trees where Kade and the wolves had been. She took a couple of hesitant steps forward, trying to ignore the knot of dread in her gut and the low, tentative warning of Luna’s growl beside her.
She had to find Kade.
She had to know what had happened.
Alex’s uncertain steps became a jog, her boots dragging in the snow. Her heartbeat was racing, lungs squeezing for each breath as she ran through the frigid darkness, following the piercing beam of her snowmachine’s headlight.
She sucked in a gasp when she saw the bloodstains in the snow. So much blood. Kade’s footprints tracked it everywhere. So had the pack’s many paws.
“Oh, God,” Alex whispered, feeling sick, about to retch, as she ventured deeper into the forest, following the trail of gore.
The snow was stained almost black the farther she went. Blood as she’d never seen. Far too much for Kade to have lost and still be able to stand upright, let alone run off as he had when he’d realized she was there.
Alex walked numbly, all of her instincts clamoring for her to turn around before she saw something she would never be able to purge from her mind.
But she couldn’t turn away.
She couldn’t run.
She had to know what Kade had been doing.
Alex’s feet slowed as she reached the place where the carnage had begun. Her vision swam as she stared down at the bloodied aftermath of a vicious attack. A vampire attack—worse than any savagery she’d witnessed before. Another human being, another innocent person, brutalized by the monstrous killers of her nightmares.
By Kade, though she never would have believed it had she not seen him with her own eyes.
Alex couldn’t move. God, she could barely feel a thing as she stood there, numb with shock and a horror so profound she couldn’t even summon the breath to scream.
Kade felt the oddest sensation in his chest as he and the other warriors pushed farther into the corridor of the mine’s shaft. He crept forward in the dark, weapon held at the ready, trying to dismiss the chill feeling that was knotting up tight behind his sternum.
Jesus, had he taken a chest hit in the earlier fracas?
Surreptitiously, he felt around for a wound or the stickiness of spilling blood but found nothing. Nothing but the phantom ache that seemed to want to suck a lot of the air out of his lungs. He shook it off, struggling to keep his attention on the pitch-black cavern that stretched out ahead of him and the other warriors.
The alarm sirens continued to wail from behind them; nothing but quiet awaited in the depths of the mine shaft. Then—the most minute scuff of a footstep came from somewhere deep within the shadows. Kade heard it, and he was certain all the rest of the warriors had, too.
Tegan held up his hand to halt their progress in the passageway. “Looks like the damn place is empty,” he said, fishing for Dragos’s lieutenant as he cast the line into the murky abyss ahead. “Hand me some of that C-4. Let’s blow this mother—”
“Wait.” The detached voice was begrudging and arrogant, an airless grunt of sound in the dark. “Just … wait, please.”
“Show yourself,” Tegan ordered. “Walk out nice and slow, asshole. If you’re armed, you’ll be eating lead before you take the first step.”
“I do not have a weapon,” the voice growled back in reply. “I am a civilian.”
Tegan scoffed. “Not today. Show yourself.”
Dragos’s associate came out of the darkness as instructed, but only barely. Dressed in tailored gray pants and a black cashmere sweater, he looked to be more of a boardroom strategist than a military tactician. Then again, from what the Order had seen in the past of Dragos’s handpicked associates, he seemed to recruit his lieutenants based on pedigree and aptitude for corruption more than anything else.
Hands held up in surrender, Dragos’s man hung back near the shadows of the mine shaft. He moved with slow deliberation, his carefully cultured expression not quite able to mask his fear as his eyes took stock of the five Breed warriors holding him in their killing sights.
“Who are you?” Tegan demanded. “What’s your name?”
He said nothing, but his gaze seemed to slide almost in-discernibly to his side.
“Is there anyone else left inside?” Tegan asked. “Where is the Ancient? Where is Dragos?”
The male took a hesitant step forward. “I would need some kind of assurances from the Order,” he hedged. And there went that quick, telling dart of his eyes again. “I would require sanctuar—”
A gunshot exploded out of the darkness, cutting short his words as it blew away a sizable chunk of the vampire’s head.
“Assassin,” Hunter snarled at the same sharp instant, but his warning was eclipsed by more gunfire blasting out of the shadows.
Dragos’s lieutenant—the vampire who might have given the Order their best lead on their enemy—was collapsed on the floor in a pulpy, boneless heap. Kade and the four other warriors opened fire on the black maw of the mine shaft, peppering the area with rounds as they dodged the gunfire coming back at them.
“Take cover!” Tegan shouted as the incoming bullets showed no sign of stopping.
Kade and Brock dived into the nearest chamber in the corridor of the shaft, Tegan right behind them. Chase and Hunter took posts farther up on the other side of the passageway, returning fire on the relentless hail of bullets that ripped out of the darkness.
“Brock,” Tegan said, his fangs gleaming in the darkness. “Throw some boom down the corridor. We’ll shoot it from here and set it off.”
Brock put down his gun and grabbed a pack of C-4 from his satchel. Working quickly, he stuffed a blasting cap and a small detonator into the pale cake. When it was done, he gave Tegan a nod. “Gotta hit this shit pretty square. If we miss the embedded detonator, we get no spark.”
Kade caught the warrior’s dark gaze. “No spark, no boom.”
“Right.”
“Toss it,” Tegan said.
Brock moved to the opening of the door. He threw the C-4 in a high arc, and as it disappeared into the shadows of the mine shaft, the three of them opened fire. It was hard to tell if they’d hit the cake, until a spark cracked brightly in the darkness. Then the material exploded with a shuddering blast.
A billowing cloud of smoke and pulverized rubble pushed forward like a tsunami, blowing bits of concrete and choking dust into the room where Kade, Brock, and Tegan had taken cover.
And then, charging through the blinding wave of debris, came the Gen One assassin.
He was nothing more than a blur of motion and momentum, all of it crashing forward like a cannonball. Tegan leapt out to intercept him, and soon both Gen One males were engulfed in a deadly fight. The darkness and the churning cloud of debris swallowed them up as the struggle intensified, weapons clanging against the stone floor, fists crunching against flesh and bone.
The sudden, pungent scent of blood rose up from the confusion of movement.
A roar of fury—Tegan’s low bellow of rage … then silence.
Someone found a light switch and flicked it on. Fluorescent tubes lit the corridor in a hazy fog of bluish-white light.
And there was Tegan, his thigh bloodied from a deep wound, his serrated titanium knife slipped between the assassin’s thick neck and the black polymer collar that ringed it. “Slowly, now,” he cautioned Dragos’s homegrown killer. “Stand up very carefully.”
The bald Gen One growled, his eyes flashing pure hatred. “Fuck you.”
“Get up,” Tegan commanded. “Careful. It’s real easy to lose your head in a situation like this.”
Grudgingly, radiating menace, the assassin rose to his feet. With Kade and the others holding their weapons on the vampire, Tegan slowly walked him into the nearby chamber. The room’s function was familiar enough to Kade since he and the Order had encountered a similar one when they’d raided Dragos’s headquarters in Connecticut just a few weeks ago. It was a holding cell, the cylindrical cage at its center, with its electronic restraints and computerized control panel designed for the containment of one particular captive.
“Where is the Ancient?” Tegan demanded as he guided the assassin over to the heavy-duty restraints that had been built to hold the otherworlder. Tegan glanced at Kade and Brock. “Lock this son of a bitch down.”
They each took a hand and slapped the shackles around the Gen One’s wrists. While they secured his arms, Chase walked over and fitted two more cuffs around his ankles.
“Where is the Ancient?” Tegan asked once more, his words tightly clipped. “Okay, how about this. Where’s Dragos? He’s obviously diversifying his operation now, moving his pieces around instead of keeping them all together in one place. So, he moves the Ancient into cold storage up here, but what about the rest of it? Where is he hiding now? Where are the Breedmates he’s holding prisoner?”
“He won’t know.” Hunter’s deep voice cut through the din of the alarms outside and the tension mounting inside the Ancient’s containment chamber. “Dragos tells us nothing. As his Hunters, we serve. That is all.”
Tegan snarled, looking like he wanted to snap the assassin’s collar then and there. Keeping one hand on the blade that pressed against the UV collar, he put his other hand on the assassin’s brow and pushed the big head backward. “Motherfucker. He knows something.”
The assassin’s mouth curved with private amusement.
“Start talking, you lab-spawned piece of shit, or you go up in smoke right here and now.”
The assassin’s gaze was glacial. “We are all about to go up in smoke,” he hissed through his teeth and fangs.
Kade glanced at the control panel on the opposite wall, only just that second realizing that there was a digital timer counting down on a five-minute clock. On top of the gnawing cold that was still chewing away at his chest, now a sick sense of déjà-vu gripped him as he watched what had to be the mine’s self-destruct mechanism ticking off seconds. “Shit. He’s already dropped the switch. This whole place is gonna blow.”
Tegan growled, low and deadly, as he withdrew the knife from under the assassin’s chin and left him standing in the Ancient’s holding cell. Kade and the others stepped back as he strode over to the control panel and punched the button that operated the ultraviolet light bars. The vertical beams of light went live, circling the Gen One assassin inside and imprisoning him more securely than any amount of metal could.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tegan said, stalking out the door. The rest of the warriors fell in behind him, Kade and Brock at the rear.
Brock paused to give the captive assassin a broad smile. “Don’t go anywhere now, you hear?”
Ordinarily, Kade would have gotten a good chuckle out of his partner’s grim humor, but it was damned hard to appreciate anything when his heart was hammering like he’d just run a hundred miles and his veins were lighting up with the same odd chill that had made a home in his chest.
He ran with the rest of the group, out of the mine’s building and into the main yard of the site, which looked like a war zone. The alarm sirens howled the loudest outside, screaming into the night. The snow was coming down at a furious pace now, blanketing the field of dead Minions and dropping visibility to next to nil.
“We need to adios these bodies, make sure there’s nothing left to identify once this place blows,” Tegan said. “Come on, let’s drag them inside one of the outbuildings and send them off with the rest of that C-4.”
“On it,” Brock said.
Kade joined the rest of the warriors as they worked to clear the yard before the self-destruct clock wound down to zero. It was getting hard for him to breathe now, his blood throbbing with alarm sirens of its own, awareness seeping through the wash of adrenaline and battle focus that had swamped his senses for much of the combat at the mine.
As he and his brethren dragged the last of the Minion dead into place, and the first rumblings of the coming explosion began to shake the ground, the cause of his internal distress hit him broadside.
Alex.
Holy hell.
Something had happened. She was upset, shaken. Something had terrified her … horrified her. And he felt her trauma like his own now, because he had taken her blood into his body, and it was that blood bond that had been clamoring in his own veins.
Her name was a plea—a prayer—as the ground beneath him gave a mighty shudder, and the mining company blew sky high behind him.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
Okay, Alex. Now, hold on here. Slow down, all right?” Zach Tucker carefully closed the door of the shed in back of his house and looked at Alex in stunned disbelief. She couldn’t really blame him. No one in their right mind would believe what she’d just told him—not unless they’d seen it with their own eyes. “You’re telling me you just found another dead body in the bush, and you think it was … a vampire attack?”
“I know it was, Zach.” Her heart ached to say the words, but the image of Kade, and the image of the hunter’s savaged body he’d left behind, tore at her with icy talons. “Oh, God, Zach. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”
He frowned, staring at her for a long moment. “Why don’t you come inside? It’s freezing out here, and you’re shaking like a leaf.”
Not from the cold of the outdoors, but from the confusion and horror of discovering that Kade had betrayed her. He’d sworn he was different from the monsters of her nightmares, and she had believed him. She would have believed everything he’d told her, if she hadn’t seen the blood-soaked proof of his deception for herself just a short while ago.
“Come on,” Zach said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and guiding her away from the shed, toward his house. Luna got up to follow, keeping pace at Alex’s heels, but before the wolf dog could make it into the house, Zach closed the door in her face. “Sit down, Alex. Let’s take this slowly now, all right? Help me make sense of what you think you saw.”
Numbly complying, she sank down onto the sofa in his living room. He took a seat beside her. “I don’t think I saw anything, Zach. I did see it. It’s real, everything I told you. Vampires do exist.”
“Listen to yourself. This isn’t like you, Alex. You’ve been acting strangely ever since the attack on the Tomses. Ever since that guy—Kade—showed up in Harmony.” Zach’s eyes narrowed on her. “Has he been giving you drugs? Is that what his business is in Harmony? Because if some asshole thinks he can come into my town and start dealing—”
“No!” Alex shook her head. “God, is that what you think? That I’m telling you all of this because I’m high or something?”
“I had to ask,” he said, still watching her with an intensity that unsettled her. “I’m sorry, Alex, but all of this sounds a little … well, crazy.”
She exhaled a sharp breath. “I know what it sounds like. I don’t want to believe it any more than you do. But it’s the truth. I’ve known it was the truth since I was nine years old.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vampires, Zach. They’re real. Years ago, they killed my mom and my little brother.”
“You always said it was a drunk driver.”
She slowly shook her head. “It wasn’t. I saw the attack with my own eyes. It was the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed. And I didn’t need to see the attack on Pop Toms and his family to know that the same evil killed them, too. I should have said something then. Maybe I could have stopped what happened to them, or to Lanny Ham and Big Dave.”
Zach’s frown deepened to a questioning scowl. “You’re saying it was vampires that attacked them in that cave?”
“One vampire,” she corrected. “The same one that probably killed the Toms family. It’s stronger than other vampires, Zach. It’s one of the fathers of the entire vampire race. And it’s not … from this world.”
Zach leaned back and barked out a loud guffaw of laughter. “Oh, Christ, Alex! What the fuck are you on right now? You look sober enough, but you must be completely stoned to sit there with a straight face and expect me to believe this shit. Alien vampires, that’s what you’re talking about?”
“I know it’s hard to imagine something like that could exist, but I’m telling you, it does. Vampires exist, and they call themselves the Breed.” She stopped short of naming Kade in their number, not quite ready to betray him, even though he seemed to have had no difficulty when it came to her.
Zach stood up and threw out his hands at her. “Go home. Sleep it off.”
“Listen to me,” she cried, desperate that he not dismiss her as wasted or crazy. She could see that she was losing this battle, she was afraid that her failure to convince him now might cost other lives before long. “Zach, please! We have to warn people. You have to believe me.”
“No, I don’t, Alex.” He whirled around to face her, something brutal in his expression. “I’m not even sure I can believe anything you’ve said today, including your claim of another dead body in the woods. I don’t have time for this kind of bullshit right now, okay? I have my own problems I’m dealing with! Folks are already worked up over everything that’s going on around here lately. I’ve got troopers arriving tomorrow, and the last thing I need is you adding to my headaches with a lot of crazy talk about bloodthirsty, killer aliens running loose in the bush!”
Alex looked away from him, unable to hold the sharp fury in his gaze.
She’d never seen him so angry. So … unglued. He was in a state of near panic himself, and it didn’t seem due to anything she’d told him. As she turned her head, she noticed a folded wad of cash on the coffee table and a cell phone that looked vaguely familiar. She stared at both items, a peculiar inkling of suspicion worming its way up her spine.
“Isn’t that Skeeter Arnold’s cell phone?”
Zach seemed caught off guard by the question. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, I confiscated it off the little bastard this morning.”
He picked up the roll of twenty-dollar bills without offering an explanation and stuffed it into his pocket, his eyes on her the whole time. Alex’s blood slowed in her veins, oddly chilled. “I haven’t seen Skeeter around all day. When did you see him?”
Zach shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t long before you got here. I figure the Staties are going to want that phone for their investigation, seeing how he used it to record that video of the Toms settlement.”
The explanation made sense to her.
And yet …
“How long ago was it that you saw him?”
“About an hour ago,” he replied, his answer clipped. “What does it matter to you, Alex?”
She knew why he sounded defensive, even without having to reach out and confirm it with her gift for divining the truth with her touch. Zach was lying to her. Skeeter was dead hours before now—dead at Kade’s hands, after Skeeter had finished off Big Dave.
Why would Zach lie about seeing him?
As the question sifted through her mind, she thought about the cash Zach had tucked away, and the cell phone he couldn’t have gotten when he said he had … and the fact that although most of Harmony and the communities roughly a hundred miles out knew that Skeeter had connections in bootlegging and drug-dealing, Zach had never found sufficient evidence to arrest him. Maybe Zach hadn’t been looking hard enough.
Or maybe Zach had no desire to remove Skeeter Arnold from his line of work.
“Oh, my God,” Alex murmured. “Did you and Skeeter have some kind of arrangement, Zach?”
That defensive gaze narrowed even further now. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Alex stood up, feeling some of her horror from everything that had happened today begin to melt under the heat of her outrage. “You did, didn’t you? All your trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks. Is that where you picked up supplies for him? What kind of commission did you skim off the top of his drug deals, or off the backs of the Native kids who threw their lives away on the alcohol he peddled to them on the side? Good kids, like Teddy Toms.”
Zach’s eyes blazed with anger, but he offered her a sympathetic look. “Is that really what you think of me? You’ve known me for years, Alex.”
“Have I?” She shook her head. “I’m not so sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“Then let me take care of you,” he said, his voice gentle, but she was hardly convinced. “I’m going to get my coat, and I’m going to take you home so you can get some rest. I think you need it, Alex.” He pressed his lips together and gave her a vague nod. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
As he walked out of the room, Alex stood there, overwhelmed with uncertainty.
Everything in her life had tilted beneath her. She didn’t know whom she could trust now.
Not Kade.
And apparently not Zach, either.
She didn’t think it would be wise to trust him at all now.
Flames and debris shot high into the darkness as the mining company exploded behind him.
Kade threw a glance backward, feeling the push of the expanding heat against his face, heat that turned the snowstorm that swirled around him and the other warriors into a brief, warm spittle of rain. The warmth didn’t last. Frigid cold roared back in, all of it settling in Kade’s chest.
“Alex,” he whispered.
He had to reach her.
Brock shot him a concerned look. “What’s going on?”
Kade rubbed at the icy hurt under his breastbone. “I’m not sure. It’s Alex, and whatever I’m feeling, it’s not good.”
Even though he could tell from his blood bond to her that she wasn’t in mortal danger, every instinct within him screamed for him to go to her. But he had a duty to the Order, and a duty to the warriors he still might have failed by losing sight of the ball on this mission. Dragos’s Alaskan outpost was destroyed, a few more of his assets eliminated, but the Ancient was still at large. The warriors’ mission here would not be complete until that deadly otherworlder was located and contained.
“Shit,” Kade hissed.
This was not good. He couldn’t go another second without talking to Alex at the very least. He had to reassure himself that she was all right. And part of him just needed to hear her voice.
“Call her,” Brock said. When Kade hesitated, wondering why the ice in his chest was crawling up to his throat to taste like dread, Brock gave him a stern look. “Call your female.”
Kade took out his cell phone and walked until he was several yards from the other warriors. He dialed Alex’s number. It rang three times before she answered.
“Alex?” he said into the silence on the other end. At his back, the crackle of flames and the soft hail of falling shrapnel seemed deafening when she was so quiet. “Alex … are you there? Can you hear me?”
“What do you want?” she sounded a bit out of breath, as if she were walking somewhere at a good clip.
“What do I want,” he echoed. “I … are you okay? I know you’re upset. I felt it. I’ve been worried that something happened—”
Her scoff cut him off at the knees. “That’s funny. When I saw you earlier, you didn’t seem to care that I was upset.”
“What?” He gave himself a mental shake, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “What’s going on with you?”
“Did you want me to see you like that? Is that what you meant when you said you were afraid I might hate you one day? Because right now I don’t know what to think.” Her voice was tight with anger, and with hurt. “After what I saw, I don’t know how I feel. Not about you or us or anything.”
“Alex, I don’t have any idea—”
More huffing breaths, her boots crunching in the snow. “What was all that talk about a mission with the Order? Was it all bullshit, Kade? Just a game you played to make me think you were something better than what you are?”
“Alex—”
She sucked in a sob. “My God, was everything between us just a bunch of bullshit, too?”
Kade stalked farther away from the settling destruction behind him and the other warriors who had taken notice of his departure from the group. “Alex, please. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I saw you!” she burst out sharply. “I saw you, Kade. In the woods, covered in blood, running with that pack of wolves. I saw what you did to that man.”
“Ah, Christ,” he muttered, comprehension dawning in a smothering wave. “Alex …”
“I saw you,” she whispered now, her voice breaking. “And I know you saw me, because you looked right at me.”
“Alex, it wasn’t me,” he said, his heart sinking. “It was my brother. My twin, Seth.”
“Oh, please.” She scoffed. “How convenient for you to just remember him now. Let me guess, you’re Dr. Jekyll and he’s Mr. Hyde.”
Kade understood her doubt. He understood her anger, and her disdain of him. Her emotion swelled in his own chest, squeezing his heart as though it were caught in a vise. “Alex, you don’t understand. I didn’t want to tell you about Seth because I am ashamed. Of him, of what he’s done. Of myself, too, and the fact that I have not put a stop to his madness before now. I didn’t tell you about him because I thought you would think I was just like him.” He blew out a harsh sigh. “Shit … maybe it was only a matter of time before you realized that I was like him.”
She was silent for a long moment, her footsteps halted. In the background, he could hear Luna’s soft whine. “I’m hanging up now, Kade.”
“Wait. I need to see you. Where are you, Alex?”
“I don’t …” She inhaled a deep breath, blew it out in a rush. “I don’t want to see you. Not right now. Maybe not ever again.”
“Alex, I can’t let you do this. I want to talk to you, in person, not like this.” He closed his eyes, felt some of his hope drifting away. “Tell me where you are. I can be at your house in a few minutes—”
“I’m not at home. After what I saw today, I didn’t know what to do, or where to go. So I went to Zach’s.”
The human police officer. Ah, fuck.
Panic drilled into the center of Kade’s being. “Alex, I know you’re upset and confused, but do not tell him any of this—”
“Too late,” she murmured. “I have to go now, Kade. Stay away from me.”
“Alex, wait. Alex!” The cell phone beeped as the connection ended. She hung up on him. “Goddamn it.”
He tried her back again, but there was no answer. Three rings, four … her voicemail picked up and he hung up.
Tried again. Same result.
“Shit!” Kade roared with anger, frustrated and raw with self-directed fury for what Alex had been through. Trauma he’d had a hand in, and which had likely lost him the one woman he hoped would be at his side for the rest of his life.
When he pivoted around, Tegan was standing there. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Kade gave a vague shake of his head.
“A female, obviously,” Tegan said. “The Breedmate from Harmony?”
Kade held the grim gaze of the Gen One warrior. “I am bonded to her. I love her.”
Tegan, also a mated Breed male, grunted. “There are worse things.”
“Yeah,” Kade agreed. “There are worse things. She thinks I betrayed her. I didn’t, but I wasn’t honest with her, and I let her down. She said she never wants to see me again.”
“Go on,” Tegan said.
“Alex knows about the Breed,” Kade said. “She knows about the Ancient, too. Shit, she knows everything. And I think she may have told it all to the state trooper stationed in Harmony.”
Tegan didn’t blink. His stare was bleak, calculating. Ruthless. “That would be unfortunate.”
Kade nodded, blew out a curse. “I think it’s too late to stop her. She told me she went to his house today. She’s upset, and scared. I think she might have gone to the human for help.”
“I see.” Tegan’s growl was so deep it was hardly audible. “Then it looks like we’re going to Harmony now. We need to contain the situation. And if need be, we’ll have to contain your female, as well.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
Come on, Luna. Let’s go.”
Alex sat on her snowmachine outside Zach’s house and waited for Luna to get situated in front of her on the sled. With her cell phone turned off after the repeated calls from Kade, Alex pocketed it and could only sit there for a moment in the snow-flurried darkness, willing herself to simply breathe in and out.
She couldn’t talk to him anymore. Not now. Her heart felt weak, and even as she’d been telling him to stay away from her, there was a part of her that wanted to let him back in, even though everything around her was in turmoil. Perhaps because of that fact, she still wanted the comfort of Kade’s strength around her.
She still wanted his love.
But she didn’t know if she could trust her feelings right now. Nothing seemed clear. Since meeting Kade, gone was her comfortable black-or-white, good-or-bad world. He had changed everything. He’d opened her eyes, and she could never go back to living as she had been.
She was changed forever, most significantly because no matter how much she wanted to fear him, to hate him for what he was, her heart refused to let him go.
Alex started up her snowmachine. She just needed to get away from everyone so that she had some room to think, and clear her head. She needed safe haven, and could think of only one place to find it now—Jenna’s cabin. In all the upheaval of the past few hours, her plans to check in on her friend had been derailed. If there was one person she could trust right now, Alex knew it was Jenna.
Behind her, the door to Zach’s house banged shut.
“Hey, where are you going?” he called to her, coming down across the yard at a brisk clip. “I said I wanted to take you home, make sure you got there safely. I don’t think you’re in any condition—”
“I don’t want your help, Zach.” Alex turned a hard look on him, disgusted to think she had ever considered him a friend. Worse, that she’d once allowed herself to be intimate with him. If Kade was dangerous because of the Breed blood that flowed in his veins, then Zach was a far more insidious threat for the way he was willing to use innocent people—to corrupt them and ruin lives—for the benefit of his own personal gain. “How much money did you and Skeeter make together over the years? How little value do you place on the people you’ve been sworn to protect and serve, when you’re willing to sell them out like you have?”
Zach glared. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Alex. You’re delusional.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are.” He stepped nearer. “I’m concerned you are a danger to yourself.”
“You mean a danger to your livelihood, don’t you?”
He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “As an officer of the law, I cannot in good conscience let you leave my custody like this, Alex. Now, step off the sled.”
She shook her head and gave the engine some gas. “Fuck you.”
Before she could take off, Zach’s hand went around her wrist. He jerked her arm tight, nearly unbalancing her. Alex glanced down in alarm to see that he had drawn his pistol from the holster belted around his waist.
She gasped in stunned terror, at the very same instant that Luna swiveled her big head around and clamped her jaws onto the arm that held Alex.
Zach hollered a pained cry. His bruising grasp fell away, and Alex, wrapping one arm around her beloved Luna to hold her steady in front of her on the sled, gave the snow-machine a thrust of power that sent it leaping into a fast escape.
She sped through the swirling curtain of snowfall, not daring to look back.
Not even when she heard Zach shout her name, followed by the buzzing whine of another snowmachine as he came after her.
The woman lay prone on the floor of the cabin, unmoving, except for the relaxed rise and fall of her breathing. She was tranced, unaware of the small incision he’d made in her nape a short while ago.
That careful incision now trickled a thin stream of blood as he crouched beside her and brought the edges of her delicate human skin together. He bent over her and licked away the coppery rivulet, then pressed his tongue against the wound and sealed the flesh closed.
His own body was mended, as well. The ultraviolet burns were cooled, his skin no longer festering with blisters and ripe with pain. The gunshot wounds in his thigh and abdomen were knitted tight with new, regenerated flesh. And the thirst that had been his fevered companion since his escape from captivity had, at last, subsided.
Now that his mind was clear, he had the opportunity to reflect, to consider what lay ahead of him.
More running. More hiding, struggling to stay one step ahead of the progeny that sought to either capture or destroy him. More of the same existence he had known since he and his brethren had taken their first step in this inhospitable human world.
He would survive.
But to what end?
While his instinct assured him he was far from defeated, his logic calculated that there was no way for him to ever win. There was no end in sight, only more of the same.
He and the other seven conquerors who crash-landed here so long ago should have been kings among the lesser, human life-forms that inhabited this planet. They might have been kings, if not for the uprising of their half-human sons. If not for the war that had left only him, his survival dependent on the treachery of the son who had secreted him away in a mountain cave.
He shouldn’t have been surprised that treachery awaited him once he’d been awakened.
After his period of hibernation, he had expected the world to be different, laid out like a bounty for him to feast upon. Instead he’d been shackled and starved, weakened by chemicals and technology he’d imagined would have been far out of the grasp of the crude humanity that existed when he last knew it.
Earth had advanced. It was nothing remotely close to the world he had left behind, but enough so that life here for him would forever be a trial. An endless monotony of days and nights, pursuit and retreat.
He wasn’t sure he had the will or the desire.
The woman lying before him was caught in a similar snare. He had witnessed her despair, and he had tasted her defeat in each pulse of her heartbeat as he had taken his nourishment from her. He tasted her loneliness, her hopelessness, and it plucked at something deep inside him.
She, too, was a warrior. He saw it in the few, scattered images in frames within her domicile. This woman in a human warrior’s uniform, carrying weapons and a look of determination in her eyes. That look was not gone, even when she’d been weakened from blood loss and terrified. She was still strong, still a warrior in her heart, but she no longer saw it in herself.
She, too, was lost … alone.
But where she had been prepared to give up in those moments before he intruded on her plans, his advanced genetic makeup would permit no such surrender. He was born a conqueror, born for war. He was the ultimate predator. Whether he desired it or not, his body would resist death to its final gasp … no matter how long it took to get there.
And he was also driven to see his enemies defeated, by whatever means required.
It was that drive that compelled him to take the measure he had a few moments ago with this woman lying unconscious, and wholly unaware, on the floor of the cabin.
Now he moved back from her in grim consideration. Idly, he brought his left forearm up to his mouth and sealed the small cut he’d made there. His tongue swept over the faint indentation in the muscle beneath his skin as the wound closed up and vanished, as if the incision were never there.
As he got up and stalked to the other side of the room, he heard the approaching roar of gas-powered engines not far from the cabin.
Had they found him so soon?
Whether his pursuers were human or Breed, he couldn’t be sure.
But as he tested the newly regenerated sinew and skin of his arms, he smiled grimly, satisfied that he was prepared to meet any incoming threat.
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
Alex flew as fast as she dared through the snow and wilderness on the way to Jenna’s cabin. She could still hear Zach behind her, gaining on her. Cutting a hazardous path back and forth, praying she might lose him in the nearly blinding storm, she hoped that the gun he’d pulled on her in town had just been a momentary lapse of good sense on his part.
But she’d seen the dangerous gleam in his gaze. He was furious, and he was desperate to protect his secret. Probably most of all from Jenna. But would he be desperate enough to kill Alex in the process?
The knot of dread that was lodged in her throat said he would.
Alex’s heart was beating like it wanted to leap out of her rib cage by the time she reached Jenna’s property. She skidded into an abrupt halt and killed the engine. Luna jumped off with her and the pair of them started running for the cabin’s front porch.
“Jenna!” she called. “Jenna, it’s me!”
Almost to the steps, Alex heard Zach’s snowmachine grind to a halt behind her. “Don’t take another step, Alex.”
Oh, God.
“Jenna!” she cried. “Are you there?”
There was no answer. No movement of any kind came from inside the cabin.
Behind her, the soft click of the pistol’s hammer.
“Goddamn you, Alex.” Zach’s voice sounded wooden, utterly devoid of emotion. “Why are you making me do this?”
“Jenna,” she called again, quieter now, realizing the futility of it.
The cabin was silent. Jenna either would not, or could not, hear her. What if her earlier dread for Jenna’s wellbeing was accurate? Alex hardly dared imagine it.
Nor would she even have the chance, because Zach was apparently out of his mind and Alex was likely about to die here and now.
Then, from within the stillness ahead of her, Alex heard the faintest sound—a small moan, barely audible even as close as she was to the door. Alex’s heart gave a hopeful stutter.
“Jenna?” She braved the smallest step forward, one foot on the bottom step of the porch. “If you can hear me, please open—”
The gunshot rang out like a cannon blast behind her. Alex felt the heated whisper of the bullet as it sang past her head and lodged into the wooden doorjamb not even three feet in front of her.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, holy Christ.
Zach had shot at her.
Alex’s body froze with shock and a fear so deep and cold it left her shaking all over. She exhaled a shuddering breath and slowly pivoted her head, not about to let Zach shoot her in the back. If he was going to do it, then, by God, he was going to do it looking her in the eyes.
But no sooner had she turned than there was an explosion of movement behind her. Something huge blasted out of Jenna’s cabin in a blur of speed, splintering the door right off its hinges. Zach screamed. His gun went off again, the bullet ripping audibly through the thick, snow-laden canopy of pine boughs overhead.
Alex grabbed Luna and hit the ground, her face buried in the warm fur of the wolf dog’s neck. She didn’t know what just happened. For an instant, her mind struggled to process the guttural snarl and the sickening, wet sounds that followed.
Then she knew what it had to be.
Slowly she raised her head. The scream that crawled up to her lips died as her gaze locked onto a deadly creature that eclipsed anything she’d ever seen before.
The Ancient.
Through the steady fall of snowflakes in the darkness, his amber gaze burned laser bright, searingly savage. He was naked, hairless, covered from head to toe in dermaglyphs so dense and intertwining they all but concealed his nudity. His enormous fangs dripped with blood—Zach’s blood, taken from the gaping hole that had once been his throat.
A terrible thought slammed into her: Had this monster also gotten to Jenna?
Alex closed her eyes, whispering a prayer for her friend and hoping desperately for some kind of miracle that might have spared her from the brutal savagery that had just befallen Zach.
Luna growled in Alex’s arms and the creature cocked its head at an exaggerated angle, staring at the animal. He started to prowl away from Zach’s lifeless body, a low growl ticking in the back of his alien throat.
Alex’s lungs compressed, squeezing out what little air was in them. She thought for certain the Ancient was about to kill her, too, but its questioning stare lingered for an agonizing few seconds. Time during which the distant buzz of more snowmachines carried on the wind.
Alex sent a nervous glance toward the sound.
When she looked back again, the Ancient was gone, nothing but the sway of a few low-hanging branches at the edge of the forest to tell which direction he’d fled.
The knowledge of Alex’s fear hit Kade like an anvil driven into his gut.
He and the other warriors were hauling ass on their snowmachines, nearly to Harmony when the feeling gripped him that they were moving farther away from Alex, not closer. He quickly redirected the group, leading the way along a game trail that rambled to the west of town.
Fresh sled tracks told him he was on the right path, but no more so than the homing strength of his blood bond to Alex, which pulsed more powerfully as his snowmachine chewed up the trail, heading toward a small log cabin up ahead in the dark a few hundred yards.
Kade’s heart soared that he had reached her, only to crash an instant later when the copper stench of human blood tickled his nostrils. It wasn’t hers—he’d know her honey-sweet bloodscent anywhere—but the idea that Alex was near any kind of death sent fear arrowing through his veins.
Kade goosed the throttle of his sled, but the damn thing was still too slow for his liking. He steered off the trail and ditched it, vaulting in a fluid leap before hitting the ground running, using every ounce of his Breed agility to reach her.
“Alex!” he shouted, speeding past the carnage in front of the cabin and glancing around only long enough to note the brutalized corpse of Zach Tucker and the splintered ruins of what had been the cabin’s front door. “Ah, God … Alex!”
He ran inside and found her on folded knees beside her friend Jenna, who lay on the floor of the darkened cabin. Kade flicked on a lamp, not so much for himself as for the two women. Jenna seemed confused, her eyes drowsy, her voice groggy as though she were just coming to after having been unconscious.
“Alex,” Kade murmured gently, his voice breaking with emotion.
She turned to face him then, and slowly rose to her feet. She took one hesitant step forward, and that was all he needed. Kade went to her and pulled her against him, wrapping her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head, so damned relieved to see that she was unharmed.
“Alex, I am so sorry. For everything.”
She drew back and glanced away from him. He could read the emotion in her eyes. The quiet uncertainty that said she wasn’t sure she could trust him fully yet. It crushed him to see that doubt in her eyes. Even worse was knowing that he was the one who put it there.
She led him away from Jenna, who was still murmuring incoherently, in and out of wakefulness.
Alex’s gaze held his with bleak calm. “It was the Ancient, Kade. He was here.”
He swore, though he was unsurprised, given the condition of the body outside. “You saw him? Did he touch you? Did he … ah, Jesus … did he do anything to you at all?”
She shook her head. “He must have been hiding in Jenna’s cabin when Zach and I arrived a few minutes ago. He exploded out the front door after Zach tried to shoot me—”
“What?” Kade’s blood went from the icy chill of his fear to the boiling heat of rage. If Tucker wasn’t already dead, Kade would have torn his lungs out. “What the hell happened? Why did that son of a bitch want to hurt you?”
“Because I realized what he was up to. Zach and Skeeter were in business together, dealing drugs and selling alcohol to the dry Native settlements in the bush. I knew something was wrong when I saw Skeeter’s cell phone and a lot of cash at Zach’s house today. He tried to lie about it, but I knew.”
“He picked the wrong person for that, eh?”
Her smile was faint and fleeting. “I don’t want Jenna to see …” She gestured toward the front yard as her words trailed off. “She’ll have to know the truth, of course, but not like this.”
Kade nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
As they spoke the rest of the warriors roared up to the cabin on their sleds. Kade went out to intercept them, informing them that the Ancient had been there just a short while ago and that the victim outside was the brother of Alex’s friend.
Chase and Hunter fell in to perform a discreet cleanup, while Tegan and Brock walked with Kade back inside.
“This is Alex,” he said, making quick introductions to the two warriors. It was difficult not to touch her as he explained what had occurred before they arrived, just to reassure himself that she was whole and unharmed.
“Are you and your friend all right?” Tegan asked, the Gen One’s voice deep with respect despite the fact that he’d come there to assess a situation that had gone from mildly screwed up to fucked up beyond all recognition.
“I’m okay,” Alex replied. “But I’m worried about Jenna. I didn’t see anything wrong with her, but she doesn’t seem quite right to me, either.”
Tegan glanced at Brock, but the big warrior was already heading over to have a look at the woman across the room.
“What’s he going to do to her?” Alex asked, worry creasing her brow.
“It’s all right,” Kade said. “If something is wrong, he can help her.”
Brock smoothed his hands over Jenna’s back, then gently swept aside her hair and placed his dark fingers against the wan paleness of her cheek. “She’s been tranced,” he said. “She’s coming out of it, though. Gonna be fine.”
Chase and Hunter strode into the cabin and looked to Tegan. “The yard is cleared. The two of us can start searching the area for the Ancient’s trail.”
Tegan pursed his lips, blew out a sharp sigh. “He’s miles away from here by now. A needle in a haystack. We’ll never catch him in this wilderness. It’s not like we can track the son of a bitch across the whole damn interior in this blizzard.”
Kade felt Alex’s gaze light on him. “What about Luna? If you used your talent with her, would she be able to help us track the Ancient?”
Tegan eyed the wolf dog that had come over to nuzzle Kade’s hand. “It might be our best shot, man.”
“Yeah, I can do it,” he said, “but what about the rest of you? Are we all going to run with her, fully loaded with weapons in case we catch up to the bastard?”
“I can fly you,” Alex suggested.
“No way.” Kade shook his head. “No fucking way. I’m not going to put you any farther into this whole thing than I already have. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”
“I want to do it. I’m not going to leave Luna, and I can carry all of you in my plane while she tracks the Ancient on the ground.”
“It’s dark, Alex,” he bit off harshly. “And it’s snowing like a bitch.”
“I’m not seeing your point,” she countered. “And the longer we stand here arguing about this, the farther that creature can run. That’s a risk that I’m not willing to take.”
Tegan leveled a questioning look on Kade. “She’s right. You know she is.”
Kade slanted his gaze to Alex, seeing in her eyes all of the courage and determination that had made him fall in love with her in the first place. The fact was, the Order needed her right now. He was proud of Alex and petrified at the same time. But he exhaled a low curse and said, “Yeah. Okay, let’s do this.”
“What about the human?” Chase asked, gesturing toward Jenna. “We’d better scrub her before she sees anything more than she already has.”
When the ex–Enforcement Agent started to walk toward her, Brock wheeled his head around, fangs gleaming behind his lips. “Back off, Harvard. You don’t touch her. Got it?”
Chase paused at once. He gave a negligent shrug and withdrew as Brock turned his attention back to the human female.
As the tension in the cabin subsided, Alex kneeled down beside Luna and wrapped the wolf dog in a loving hug, whispering something to her before she looked up at Kade. “All right, she’s in your hands. Promise me you’ll be careful with her.”
“I promise,” he said, meaning it completely.
As Alex moved away, Kade took Luna’s chin in his palm and met her intelligent gaze. He established his connection with the canine’s mind, then gave her the silent command to show him where the Ancient fled.
Alex had her arms crossed over her chest, one hand pressed to her mouth, as Luna took off running from the cabin and into the swirling snowstorm outside.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
Not long afterward, Alex was flying them over the dark wilderness landscape, with Kade in the copilot’s seat and three of his Breed brethren huddled in the cargo area behind them. Kade called out directions to her, navigating their course through his mental link to Luna on the ground.
Alex couldn’t see her. They were too far up, the snow too thick in the darkness, for her to make out anything much farther than the nose of the plane. These were dangerous conditions to fly in—potentially deadly—but Alex knew this terrain intimately. She followed Kade’s directions, practically able to anticipate the path Luna was tracking along the Koyukuk, the most logical route the Ancient would have taken into the bush.
“Keep following the river,” Kade told her. “The trail is getting fresher now. We’re gaining on him.”
Alex nodded, focusing on her flying and the heavy gusts that blew down off the Brooks Range as they pushed farther north along the frozen river below. Although she could barely see the icy ribbon of water, she knew that they were coming up on a spot where the fleeing Ancient would have been forced to make a choice: stay low to the ground and trust the thickening woodlands to conceal him from pursuit, or veer to the west and take his flight to higher terrain, up into the craggy ridges of the mountains. Neither option would provide the best landing conditions, but in this weather, there was little more treacherous than attempting a short landing on high, potentially unstable rock.
“The trail is turning,” Kade announced. “We need to bank left.”
“Okay,” Alex replied, sending up a silent prayer as she changed course away from the river and headed toward the mountain range instead. “Hang on, everyone. There are going to be some bumps as we turn into the headwinds.”
“How you doing up there?” Tegan asked from behind her. “You sure you can handle this?”
“Piece of cake,” she said—not quite the truth—and felt Kade’s hand slide over to brush hers.
It felt good, the contact of his touch. Even though she still carried the chilling vision of what she’d seen in the woods, her stomach still coiled with ice from that experience and the even greater terror of having seen the Ancient at Jenna’s cabin, Alex could not deny her feelings for Kade. He was the one person who knew her, better than any other now. Despite everything that had occurred between them and around them, her heart could not completely seal itself off from the comfort that only he could give her.
Some of the betrayal and anger she’d had for Kade and the rest of his kind had melted when she’d seen how he and his friends from the Order had handled the awful situation at the cabin. Kade had been tender and loving with Alex, respectful and considerate with Jenna. The other warriors had been, too. Especially the one called Brock, who had stayed behind to tend to Jenna.
It was difficult to reconcile a race of beings that could show so much humanity yet belong to the same ruthless, otherworldly line as the creature that had killed Zach and so many others in recent days. Or the blood-addicted Rogues who’d killed her mom and little brother. Or the twin Kade had been too ashamed to admit he had until Alex had seen Seth’s savagery for herself.
But Kade and the other Breed males he’d introduced her to were different. They were good men, regardless of the genes that made them something other—something more—than men.
They had honor.
Kade did, too. And now, as she flew him and his brethren of the Order through a patch of gusty air, toward the jagged crag of the mountain and an imminent battle with a creature not of this world, she only hoped that she and Kade would have the chance to sort out the tangled mess of what they meant to each other. She could only pray there would be some kind of future waiting for them on the other side of the danger that lay ahead right now.
“Luna’s tracking the Ancient’s scent up the base of the mountain,” Kade said from beside her. “Ah, shit … it’s rough rock and it’s damned steep. Son of a bitch is escaping up the ridge. We’re gonna lose him on the mountain.”
“Just tell me where Luna’s heading,” Alex said. “I’ll worry about getting us there.”
She flew the plane along the dark ridge, following Kade’s directions, straining to see through the windscreen as the fine flakes of snow danced and rolled in her line of vision.
“Damn it,” he snarled a moment later. “The scent is gone. It just went cold. Luna’s circling around on the ledge below us, but she can’t pick up the Ancient’s scent anymore.”
“Because he leapt from that point,” Hunter remarked evenly. “The Ancient is now either above the animal, or below her.”
“We’re close enough to pursue him on foot,” Tegan said. “The Ancient can’t get far now without us right on his ass. But we need to set this plane down now.”
“Okay, here we go,” Alex said, and peered through her window, seeing limited options for anything more than the shortest of short landings.
She aimed the little plane toward a small patch of pristine snow on the rocky tableau, and began the descent.
Kade had seen Alex in action behind the controls of her plane before, but it didn’t diminish his awe for her as she brought the small plane down onto a narrow, snowy ledge on the mountain. It wasn’t until they had landed that Kade noticed she’d successfully touched them down into a gentle glide that left barely a few feet of room for error on any side.
None of the warriors uttered a word as the single-engine growled into idle and the plane came to a delicate rest on the ridge.
Not even Hunter, who sat stock-straight in the cargo hold, his face imperturbably calm, even though his knuckles looked a bit white for their grip on the netting above his head.
Finally, Chase muttered a ripe curse.
Tegan chuckled low under his breath. “Hell of a landing, Alex.”
“Hell of a woman,” Kade said, looking across the cockpit at her and taking a personal pride in her that he probably had no right to feel. But her gaze was soft on him, although brief, and it gave him a surge of hope that maybe he hadn’t lost her completely.
Maybe there was a chance for them yet.
As the group climbed out of the plane and suited up with weapons and ammunition, Luna came bounding up the sloping incline and straight into Alex’s open arms. For a moment, Kade selfishly held onto his telepathic connection to the wolf dog, letting himself savor the warmth of Alex’s love for the animal.
When he broke the link, Tegan was standing next to him, armed for war. “We’re going to split up: Hunter will take the incline, Chase and I will cover the ground below,”
Kade gave him a grim nod. “Where do you want me?”
Tegan glanced over at Alex, who was talking in low, praising tones to Luna. “Stay here and make sure your female is safe. That’s more important than anything else you can do, yeah?”
Kade considered the comment, feeling duty spurring him to say that the mission was the most important thing right now. That nothing mattered more than his pledge to the Order, his brethren, and their goals. Part of him believed that. Part of him knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would give his life for any one of the warriors, just as they would lay down their lives for him. They were family, as tight as any bond he’d ever known.
But Alex was something even more.
She owned his heart now. He wouldn’t even attempt to deny that. And he knew that when Tegan spoke about her, the mated Gen One warrior drew from a point of personal experience, as well.
“Yeah,” Kade admitted to him. “Without Alex … ah, Christ. Without her, nothing else would matter.”
Tegan nodded, mouth pressed in a thin line. “Maybe you ought to make sure she knows that.”
He cuffed Kade on the shoulder, then gestured to the other warriors to fall in and begin the next leg of their pursuit. When Hunter had vaulted up to the next ledge and Tegan and Chase had dropped to the one below, Kade strode over to Alex.
“I guess the three of us make a pretty good team,” he said, reaching out to scratch behind Luna’s ears only because it distracted his hands from reaching for Alex instead.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re not going with the others?”
“Tegan wanted me to stay behind and look after you. He knows how much you mean to me, and he knows it would kill me if anything happened to you.”
A small line formed between her brows as she looked at him. For the longest time, there was only silence between them. The quiet of falling snow and the faint cry of a wolf baying low in the distance.
When Alex finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I wanted to hate you. When I saw you in the woods, covered in blood—”
“Not me,” he reminded her. “It wasn’t me, Alex. It was Seth, not me.”
She nodded. “I know that. I believe you. But it was you I saw in that moment. It was you, Kade, seeming just as monstrous as the Rogues who killed my mom and Richie. I wanted to hate you in that moment … but I couldn’t. Part of me refused to let go of you, even then, when you couldn’t have seemed more hideous and evil to me. I still loved you.”
He exhaled a relieved sigh and pulled her into his arms. “Alex … I’m so sorry for what you thought. For what you saw. I’m sorry for everything.”
“That’s what scared me the most, Kade. That I could love you even if you were a killer. Even if you were a monster, like
“Like my brother,” he answered softly. “I’m not him. I promise you that. You never have to be afraid of me. I love you, Alexandra. I always will.”
Gingerly he took her beautiful face in his hands and kissed her. She felt so good in his arms, against his lips, he could have kissed her forever.
But behind them, Luna’s throaty growl put Kade’s combat instincts on high alert.
He felt the slightest shift in the air as he drew away from Alex and moved her behind him on reflex—
Just as a large, dark shape dropped out of the sky.
Several yards away from them, the Ancient landed with fluid grace on his feet in the snow. Baring his teeth and enormous fangs, the deadly creature fixed his amber gaze on Kade and hissed with murderous intent.
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
Alex screamed.
Terror clenched her as the Ancient’s glyph-covered legs contracted into a low crouch, amber eyes bathing Kade in awful light.
“Alex, get out of here.”
She swallowed on a throat gone bone dry. “W-what?”
“Go!” Kade ordered her, his eyes rooted on the threat in front of him. “Get back in the plane, take off. Get as far away from this rock as you can. Go now!”
Fear poured through her veins, but her legs refused to move. She couldn’t abandon Kade like this, no matter what he said. No matter what he faced. They would face it together. “I’m not leaving. I won’t—”
“Damn it, Alex, go!” he snarled, reaching for one of the big semiautomatic pistols holstered under his parka.
He moved with a speed she could hardly follow. One second his hand was slipping into his unzipped coat, the next he was holding the gun in front of him, squeezing off a hail of several rounds.
But the Ancient was faster, even than Kade.
He dodged the gunfire, and then his powerful legs pushed off the ground in a lunge that would have sent him crashing into Kade—should have, if not for the sudden blur of movement that was Hunter. The immense Gen One warrior careened into the Ancient from the ledge above, tumbling them both to the snowy ground in a confusion of tossing, rolling chaos.
They struggled together, nearly an even match in terms of strength and power, both of them fighting as though prepared to battle to the death.
Kade moved into the fray just as Hunter took a severe swipe to the base of his neck and shoulder. Blood spurted from his wound, which only seemed to make the Ancient grow more frenzied, its eyes wilder now, fangs elongating further. It reared its great head back and opened its jaws on a furious howl.
Kade fired a shot, and instead of the Ancient striking again at Hunter, he had to spend precious effort dodging Kade’s bullet.
Alex blinked, which was all the time it took for the Ancient to have his fingers wrapped around Kade’s pistol. Metal crushed in his fist, then, using a power she could hardly fathom, the otherworlder flung Kade bodily through the air. He landed at the sheer edge of the cliff, his head split open on the rock, bleeding above the temple.
“Kade!” Alex cried, heart freezing to ice.
He tried to get up, but it was a clumsy, disoriented attempt. He slumped back down with a groan.
One misstep and he would be lost.
“Kade! Oh, God—don’t move!”
Snow swirled all around, the storm having worsened to near blizzard conditions since they’d landed. She could just make out Hunter’s large shape as he came up off the ground to lunge at the Ancient again. On a vicious hiss, the creature wheeled around and thrust the big Gen One away from him.
Then the Ancient began to prowl toward Kade at the edge of the cliff’s steep drop.
Alex’s heart wanted to explode out of her breast as she inched her way nearer and nearer to her plane. She wasn’t about to run, not even now. She was scared as hell, more than she’d ever been in her life, but she had to do something—for Kade, and for his brethren—no matter how insignificant her actions might prove to be against this threat.
She grabbed the loaded rifle she kept in the back of the plane.
Raised it as the Ancient stalked closer to where Kade was now trying to drag himself up once more. She couldn’t let the creature reach him.
Alex pulled the trigger.
The gunshot cracked like thunder in the snow-tossed darkness.
The Ancient hadn’t seen it coming. His large hand was pressed to his chest, but blood seeped through his fingers.
The otherworlder curled his lip back and snarled. Then he started prowling forward again … no longer toward Kade, but toward her and Luna near the plane.
Alex heard the howl of wolves from somewhere close. So many voices. At least half a dozen or more. She heard them, and could almost hear the beat of their paws rising up through the bitter cold of the storm and the chilling terror of the situation playing out on the ledge.
Alex knew the wolves were near, but she hadn’t been at all prepared for the sight of them, suddenly rushing up from the craggy slopes below. The pack charged en masse, leaping in tandem at the same target: the alien creature who roared with outrage as the eight predators attacked.
And as the wolves bit and tore and jumped at the Ancient, another adversary came over the ridge from below.
Seth.
Alex’s breath caught as the Breed male who looked so much like Kade emerged out of the shadows and the swirling chaos of the storm. He didn’t seem so much identical to Kade now as he did a mirror image—reversed somehow, as though he were the wilder, more dangerous half of the Breed male she loved.
Seth’s huge fangs gleamed as white as bone. His eyes threw off a feral amber light that seared like lasers. Alex swallowed as he gave her a brief, sidelong glance. She thought she saw an apology written in the stark expression on his face. Perhaps some measure of remorse.
But then, with a battle cry that made her blood run cold, he surged into a powerful leap and threw himself onto the Ancient.
They were too close to the edge of the cliff.
The forward momentum was too great to be stopped.
Alex’s eyes flew wide when she realized what was about to happen. She squeezed them shut an instant later, as Seth and the Ancient careened over the ledge together.
———
“Seth!”
Kade shouted his brother’s name, the cotton in his head from the blow he took having cleared instantly when he saw Seth locked in battle with the Ancient. Horror choked him not a second later, as they sailed past him at the cliff’s edge and plummeted into the darkness.
There was a great rumbling that seemed to come from all around him, like the roll of thunder, only he felt it in the ground beneath him. Above him, too.
Then, the violent crack of ice and hard-packed snow giving way from the rocky crag overhead.
The avalanche roared off the cliff, tons of crushing snow and ice, sweeping like a tidal wave past Kade’s head and down, into the mountain’s steep cleft below. A blinding, choking cloud of fine, powdery crystals rose up in its wake, chilling Kade’s face and forcing him to look away from the snow-filled crevasse where the Ancient and his brother had fallen. Nothing could survive the suffocating weight of that much snow.
Kade felt soft hands coming around his shoulders, the warmth of Alex’s body catching him in her embrace, holding him close. And behind them on the ledge, he heard the low sounds of voices. Hunter, Tegan, and Chase, a hush of murmured disbelief for everything that had just occurred.
“Kade,” Alex whispered, her tone quiet and comforting. “Oh, God … Kade.”
All he wanted was to wrap his arms around her and accept the love she offered him now, but his heart cried out for his twin. The thought of losing his brother raked him; Seth’s sacrifice was too difficult to process. Too terrible to be real.
Kade extracted himself from Alex’s sheltering arms and scrabbled to the sheer edge of the cliff.
“Seth!” he yelled into the rocky void, straining to find even the slimmest thread of hope that his brother might not be dead.
And then … a dark, broken form, lying on a jagged outcrop about a hundred feet down. Moving only slightly, but alive.
Hope soared in Kade’s chest.
“Jesus Christ. It’s him.” He got to his feet. “Seth, hang on!”
Alex gasped. “Kade, what are you doing? Kade, don’t—”
He stepped off the edge.
Alex’s scream followed him as he dropped at a calculated leap, down into the cleft of rock. His booted feet came to a rest beside his brother. Kade crouched and swept the ice and snow away from Seth’s battered face and body.
“Goddamn you, Seth.” His voice cracked with a mix of relief and pain as he took in the extensive injuries that his brother had sustained in both the fight with the Ancient and the fall. Seth bled from multiple contusions on his head and limbs, but it was the vicious gash in his torso that concerned Kade the most.
Regenerating from that kind of damage would be a challenge for the fittest Breed male, but for one in Seth’s gaunt, emaciated condition? Shit. It didn’t look good for him at all.
Seth’s eyes were closed, his body limp and broken. He was barely breathing, except for the thin rasp of air that wheezed out of his lungs when he parted his lips and tried to speak to Kade.
“G-go,” he huffed out after a moment. “You can’t … can’t save me, brother.”
Kade exhaled a sharp curse. “Like hell I can’t. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“No. Leave me … I am dying. Already dead. You and I both know it.”
“Not like this, brother,” Kade ground out. “You will heal. I’ll take you home to Father’s Darkhaven, and you will recover from all of this.”
“No,” Seth murmured quietly. His eyes peeled open slowly on his pained hiss. “No, Kade. I won’t.”
The sight of his twin’s gaze almost made him glance away. The pupils were needle-thin, vertical slits bathed in bright amber. Seth’s gaze was hot with anguish, a feral gaze. His fangs were still extended. The glyphs that were visible through large rips in his clothing were dark and pulsing with color, as though he starved for blood.
All the signs were there, but it killed Kade to recognize them.
From the time he’d last seen him, his brother had succumbed to Bloodlust.
Seth was Rogue.
“There’s no going back for me now,” Seth murmured. “You tried to warn me …”
“Ah, fuck,” Kade whispered. “Ah, damn it, Seth. No. No, this can’t be.”
Seth sucked in a short gasp and a violent cough racked him. His body shuddered. His skin seemed to grow paler before Kade’s eyes. “Let me go, brother. Please.”
Kade shook his head. “I can’t. You know that. I wouldn’t have given up on you, not before … not now. You saved my life up there, Seth. Now, goddamn it, I’m gonna save yours.”
He turned his head and shouted up the cliff to Tegan and the others above. “I need some ropes. My brother’s wounded. He can’t make it up on his own. I’m going to need a harness to lift him back to the top.”
The warriors peered down at them, then vanished to carry out Kade’s request. Then Alex’s face appeared in their place, just the sight of her a haven to him, giving him a feeling of pure, honest love—something he’d needed more than anything in that moment.
Seth’s cracked, bloodied lips parted in a weak smile. “You’re in love,” he said, something wistful in his wheezing voice.
“Yeah,” Kade replied. “Her name is Alexandra. I’m going to make her my mate, if she’ll have me.”
Seth closed his eyes, gave a weak nod. “I would have liked to have met her.”
“You will.” Kade stared down at him, seeing a stillness washing over his broken body. “You have to hang on, Seth. Come on … open your eyes. Keep breathing, damn you!”
But Seth’s eyes remained closed.
He breathed, but only one final time. His chest compressed with his last exhalation, and then he was gone.
Seth’s pain was over.
Kade gathered his twin’s ravaged body into his arms. He sat with him on the frozen ledge and gently rocked him, praying that Seth had finally found peace.
CHAPTER
Thirty
No one said a word as the warriors helped Kade lift Seth up from the ledge. They worked soberly, handling the lifeless body like precious cargo even though it had to be obvious, even in death, that Kade’s twin was Rogue.
Seth’s dermaglyphs were still dark with angry color, his fangs still protruding behind his slack lips. Although his eyes were closed, beneath the lids, his pupils would still be elongated, his irises still swamped with furious amber.
All marks of the Bloodlust that had owned him and that declared him an enemy to every law-abiding member of the Breed. All the more so to the warriors of the Order, who were sworn to rid the population of all killers in their midst.
Yet despite that, Tegan and Chase lay Seth down with reverent care on the snow-covered ground before Kade, while Hunter went to the edge of the crevasse and surveyed the deep chasm far below. He turned a level look on Tegan and gave a mild shake of his head. “I can find no sign of life whatsoever down there. The Ancient is surely dead.”
Tegan nodded. “Good. Even if the fall didn’t kill him, a few thousand tons of snow and ice will certainly finish the job.”
Just then, Alex walked back from the plane with a folded blanket in her hands. She had tears in her eyes as she glanced at Kade, then began to gently shake out the shroud that would cover Seth’s bloodied, broken corpse.
Kade held up his hand. “Wait. I need to see him like this. I need all of you to see him, and to know that this could have just as easily been me.” He glanced at the grim faces of his brethren from the Order, from Hunter’s impassive golden eyes, to Chase’s narrowed scowl, and then to Tegan’s steady, unreadable regard. Finally, Kade looked at Alex, the person whose opinion mattered more than any other. “Seth—my twin—was a killer. I’ve known it for a long time, but I didn’t want to admit it. Not even to myself. What I really didn’t want to admit was that he and I were not so different.”
“He was Rogue,” Tegan said. “There is a difference.”
“Yes.” Kade lifted his shoulder in acknowledgment. “But it took many years for him to fall. And during those years, he hunted like an animal. He killed in cold blood. Seth was sick with a wildness that he couldn’t curb. I knew he was, because the wildness lives in me, too.”
Kade saw Alex swallow hard, saw her hold the blanket to her as if she suddenly needed its warmth. He felt the little spike in her pulse as she stared at him in wary silence. Through his bond to her, he could feel her fear as if it were his own.
He hated like hell knowing that he was causing it, and the urge to soothe her worries with a comforting lie was nearly overwhelming. But he was through with secrets. He couldn’t hide anymore, or pretend he was something stronger than what he was, even at the risk of losing Alex here and now.
She had to know the truth, and so did the group of Breed males standing before him.
“From the time Seth and I were boys, we let our talent rule us. It was hard to resist the freedom it offered, and the power. It was heady stuff back then—to command other deadly predators, to run alongside them. To hunt with them. Sometimes, to experience the precision of a kill as seen through their eyes. And once the wildness had called to us, it only got harder to rein it in. At times, it still is.”
Although Alex didn’t so much as blink, Kade felt the twist of her stomach as she listened to him. She was repulsed, not by Seth this time, or by some misunderstanding that Kade could smooth away with charm or well-meaning promises. She was seeing the truth now, at last, and as terrible as it felt to know that he was pushing her away with his honesty, he couldn’t stop until she knew it all.
“Too much power is never a good thing,” Chase interjected into the long silence, the ex–Enforcement Agent’s voice deep with reflection. “It corrupts even the strongest.”
“Yeah, it does,” Kade agreed. “It corrupted Seth early on. I don’t know when he first started killing humans. It doesn’t really matter now. Eventually, I found out, and I should have stopped him then and there, but I didn’t. Instead I left Alaska. I got the call from Niko that the Order was looking for new recruits, and I couldn’t get out of here fast enough. To save myself from turning into what Seth had become, I ran to Boston and left him to fend for himself”
Tegan eyed him gravely. “That was just last year. Seth was no child then. How long would you have considered him your responsibility?”
“He was my brother,” Kade said, casting a pained look at the corpse of the Rogue that had once been his mirror image. “Seth was a part of me, almost an extension of who I was. I knew he was sick. I should have stayed here to keep him in line. And if he didn’t quit the killing, or if it turned out he couldn’t, then I should have made sure he was stopped for good.”
Tegan’s green eyes narrowed. “It’s no easy thing, to kill a brother, no matter what he’s done. Ask Lucan, he’ll tell you.”
“Is it any easier to break a father’s heart?” Kade scoffed, a bitter sound that grated in his throat. “My father would have expected this of me, not Seth. All his hope and attention has always been pinned on Seth. He’ll be devastated to see him like this. Just as he would have been if I’d exposed Seth’s secret instead of protecting it all this time.”
Tegan grunted. “The truth only gets uglier the longer you try to hold it down.”
“Yeah. I know that now.” Kade’s gaze strayed to Alex, but she had turned away from him. Handing the blanket over to Chase, she strode back to her plane in silence with Luna trotting at her heels. Kade cleared his throat. “I need to take my brother home to his family. That’s where he belongs. But first I want to make sure Alex is all right. Her friend Jenna, too.”
“There’s also the added problem of one dead trooper back in town,” Chase put in.
Kade nodded. “Not to mention several more people on ice after the attacks by the Ancient, and a unit of Staties currently on the way in from Fairbanks to look into those recent killings in the bush.”
“Shit,” Tegan said. He gestured to Chase to cover Seth’s body. “You and Hunter bring him to the plane. And be careful, yeah? Rogue or not, Kade’s brother saved his life today. What Seth did more than likely saved all our asses up here.”
The two warriors nodded in agreement as they carried Seth away. When Kade took a step to follow them, Tegan held him back with a meaningful look.
“Hey,” he said, his voice pitched only for Kade’s ears. “I know something about what you’re dealing with, so you’re not alone. A long time ago, I gave in to a similar wildness, only my drug of choice back then was rage. It nearly killed me. It would have, if Lucan hadn’t pulled me out of it. Now it’s Elise who keeps me grounded. But it’s always there. The beast never fully goes away, but I’m here to tell you that it can be mastered.”
Kade listened, recalling what he’d heard of Tegan’s own struggles, both in the Order’s earliest days in Europe centuries ago, and the more recent events that had brought Tegan and his Breedmate Elise together in the past year.
“I’m not gonna say I’m happy to hear all of this today,” the Gen One said, “but I respect that you trusted us enough to put it out there.”
Kade gave him a short nod. “I owed it to you.”
“Damn straight you did,” Tegan replied. “You need to remember one thing, my man. You lost a brother in Alaska today, but you’re always gonna have family in Boston.”
Kade held the intense gem-green stare. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tegan confirmed, his broad mouth breaking into a brief smile. “Now let’s get the fuck off this frozen rock and go take care of business.”
Alex could not pretend that hearing Kade’s admission hadn’t frightened her. Seeing his brother—the twin who looked so much like him—transformed into the same kind of monster that had killed her mother and Richie only made things worse.
Could Kade one day turn into a monster, too? He certainly believed he could, and the worry put an ache in Alex’s chest, not so much out of fear for herself but out of concern for Kade.
She didn’t want to see him in pain. She didn’t want to lose him to the disease—or to the addictive wildness—that had claimed Seth.
With the exception of Jenna, whom she could only pray would be all right, Alex had already lost everyone she loved. Now Kade could be next. He feared the seductive nature of his talent. Seeing what it had done to Seth, Alex feared it, too. She wasn’t sure she could handle letting herself fall any deeper in love with Kade, only to lose him later to something she could never compete with and hope to win.
But the problem was, she did love him.
It was the depth of that love that terrified her the most as she flew him and the other warriors back to Harmony. She couldn’t dismiss the knowledge that Kade’s Rogue brother lay dead and shrouded in the cargo hold, a grim warning of the future that might await Kade one day.
Losing her loved ones to Rogues had been difficult enough. Losing Kade to the same vicious enemy that had robbed her of her family was a prospect too terrible to consider.
Alex dragged her thoughts away from those dark worries and searched for a place to land near Jenna’s cabin outside town. They had decided on the way to avoid using Harmony’s airstrip when it would risk drawing more undue attention from the upset residents. Instead, Alex brought the plane down in a small clearing not far from Jenna’s property.
“The trail to the cabin is just through those trees,” she told Kade and the others as she brought them to a stop and killed the engine.
Kade turned to look at her from the passenger seat, the first time he had done so since they’d left the mountain to head back into Harmony. His eyes flicked down for a moment as he cleared his throat. “After we sort things out here in town, I’d like to return Seth to my family’s Darkhaven near Fairbanks. I know it’s a lot to ask of you. Too much, probably, especially after—”
“It’s not too much to ask,” Alex replied. “Of course, Kade. I’ll take you there whenever you’re ready.”
His expression was sober, contrite. “Thank you.”
She nodded, feeling a bit sorry herself for the way he seemed to be pulling back from her with his silence, and his carefulness when he did speak to her. Or maybe it wasn’t so much that she felt him pulling back but, rather, pushing her away.
Alex climbed out of the plane with him and the other three Breed males, leaving Luna to stand watch over Seth’s body while the rest of them went to check on Jenna and Brock.
As soon as her friend’s cabin came into view with the door smashed open and Zach’s blood still visible beneath the freshly fallen snow, the reality of what had occurred there rose up on Alex in a swell of emotion.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, breaking into a run as they drew closer. “Jenna!”
Brock appeared in the open doorway, his huge Breed body blocking the entrance as Alex dashed up the steps of the porch. “She’s doing fine. Confused and not exactly coherent yet, but she’s unharmed. She’s going to be okay. I put her in the bedroom so she could rest more comfortably.”
Alex couldn’t help herself from throwing her arms around the big male’s shoulders in a grateful hug. “Thank you for taking care of her, Brock.”
He nodded solemnly, his dark brown eyes warm with a kindness that seemed incongruous with the warrior’s immense, lethal appearance. “What happened?” he asked as Alex moved past him into the cabin and Kade and the other warriors came in behind her. “Did you find the Ancient?”
“Long story,” Tegan said. “We’ll fill you in later, but suffice to say the Ancient is dead. Unfortunately, not without casualties on our side. Kade lost his brother in the battle.”
“What?” Brock’s expression fell as he put a comforting hand on Kade’s shoulder. “Ah, Jesus. Whatever happened, I’m sorry.”
Alex was moved by the true emotion—the tight bond—shared between Kade and Brock, between all of the warriors gathered in the small space of the cabin. It humbled her to see such strong men—men who were, at their core, something far more extraordinary than that, in fact—looking out for one another like family.
Feeling something of an outsider in that moment, Alex drifted into the bedroom where Jenna lay curled up on the bed where Brock had placed her.
Jenna stirred as Alex sat down gently on the edge of the mattress. “Hey,” she murmured, her voice groggy, barely above a whisper. Her eyelids lifted the smallest fraction.
“Hey.” Alex smiled and swept a bit of hair from Jenna’s pale cheek. “How are you feeling, honey?”
Jenna murmured something indecipherable as her eyes fluttered closed once more.
“She’s been in and out of consciousness since you guys left.”
Alex turned her head and found Brock standing behind her. Kade and the other warriors came into the bedroom, as well, all of them looking on Jenna with quiet concern.
“She’s still weak from blood loss,” Brock said. “The Ancient must have been with her long enough to feed from her. She’s luckier than most. At least she’s still alive.”
Alex closed her eyes at that, regret for Jenna’s ordeal squeezing some of the air out of her lungs.
“I put her in a light trance to calm her,” Brock added, “but something’s not quite right. The trance isn’t keeping her down completely, which is particularly odd, considering she’s human.”
“Not a Breedmate?” Tegan asked.
Brock shook his head. “Just your basic Homo sapiens from what I can see.”
Tegan grunted. “I guess that’s good news, at least. What’s going on with her?”
“Damned if I know. She’s not in any pain, but she keeps drifting awake, mumbling a lot of nonsense. Not even words, just a strange, incoherent rambling.”
Alex glanced back down at her friend and caressed her softly. “Poor Jenna. She’s been through so much. She didn’t deserve this on top of everything else she’s endured. I wish I could just snap my fingers and erase everything that happened here today.”
“That can be arranged, actually,” Tegan said. When Alex pivoted a startled, questioning look on him, he went on. “We can scrub her memory of all of this. It’s painless, and it’s fast. She won’t even know we were here. We can make it so that she remembers nothing of the past day, or two, a week … longer than that, if necessary.”
“You can do that?”
Tegan shrugged. “Comes in handy from time to time.”
Alex looked at Kade. “What about me? Can you erase my memory of all this, too?”
Kade held her gaze for what seemed an endless moment. “Is that what you want?”
There was a time when Alex would have jumped at the chance to toss away all of the awful memories that had plagued her. To be able to blink her eyes and recall none of the loss or grief, none of the fear.
There was a time, not that long ago, in fact, when she would have given anything to forget all of it.
Not anymore.
Her past was part of who she was now. The things she witnessed, terrible as they had been, had shaped her life. She couldn’t willingly discard her memories of her mother and Richie, not even the memories of the night they were killed. To do that would be just another form of running away, of hiding from the things she didn’t feel strong enough to face.
She didn’t want to be that person anymore.
She couldn’t go back to living that way, never again.
Before she could say as much, Jenna began to toss on the bed. She flexed and contracted her limbs, her face pinched in a frown, breath huffing through her parted lips. She murmured something unintelligible, then her movements became more agitated.
Brock moved up beside Alex and placed his big hand on Jenna’s back with the utmost tenderness. He closed his eyes, concentrating as he caressed her, and some of Jenna’s distress seemed to ease under his touch.
“Brock,” Tegan said, giving a faint shake of his head. “Don’t trance her just yet. I need to hear what she’s saying.”
The warrior nodded but kept his hand on Jenna’s back, still stroking her with a light motion. She relaxed on the bed, but her lips kept moving, whispering more of the peculiar ramblings as she drifted into a calmer state.
Tegan listened for a moment, his face growing more grave with every strange syllable that spilled out of Jenna’s mouth. “Holy shit. We can’t scrub this female’s mind of anything. And we can’t risk trancing her any more, either.”
“What’s going on?” Alex asked, worried by the stunned look on the warrior’s normally impassive face. “Is something wrong with Jenna after all?”
“We won’t know that until we get her back to Boston.”
Alex stood up, alarmed now. “What are you talking about? Take Jenna to Boston? You can’t make that decision for her. She has a life here in Harmony—”
“Not anymore,” Tegan said, his voice brooking no argument. “When we leave here, the woman will be coming with us.”
Kade moved over to stand beside Alex. “What is it, Tegan?”
The elder Breed male tilted his head in Jenna’s direction, where she continued to murmur softly under Brock’s gentling hand. “Alex’s human friend is not incoherent. She’s speaking in another language. The Ancient’s language.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
It took a while for the aftershock to wear off, following the bomb Tegan had dropped about Jenna. While Kade and his fellow warriors had connected via satellite phone with the Order’s headquarters to brief Lucan on the various developments and potential disasters in Alaska, Alex had remained in Jenna’s bedroom with her friend the entire time.
She was worried about Jenna; Kade knew that.
Alex had tried to argue with Tegan and him that it wasn’t fair to yank Jenna out of her world in Harmony and carry her off to Boston as if Jenna had no say in the matter whatsoever. But Tegan would not be swayed, nor would Lucan, once the Order’s leader had been informed of the stunning revelation concerning Jenna Tucker-Darrow and the fact that the human female was suddenly speaking a language that hadn’t originated on this planet nor been heard here for several centuries at that.
A language that was recognizable only to the few, very oldest of the Breed, and one the Order hoped might somehow prove useful in their efforts against their enemy, Dragos.
Alex had been reluctant to leave Jenna alone with Kade’s brethren when the time came for her and Kade to leave for his family’s Darkhaven. Tegan had given his word that Jenna would be safe with them, but Kade noticed it was Brock’s personal reassurance that finally eased some of the worry from Alex’s eyes.
“He’ll take good care of her until we get back,” Kade said now, seated beside Alex in the cockpit of her plane as they passed over the lights of Fairbanks a few thousand feet below. Alex had also entrusted Luna to the warrior, having sent the wolf dog back to Jenna’s cabin before she and Kade departed. “You don’t need to worry, Alex. I’ve fought beside Brock for the past year, trusting him to watch my back as I’ve watched his. When he gives his word, you can count on him to keep it. Jenna couldn’t be in better hands.”
Which was more than he could say for Alex, Kade thought grimly. If he hadn’t needed the plane to transport Seth’s body to his family’s domain, he would have insisted that Alex stay behind in Brock’s care, too. The reception that awaited him at his father’s Darkhaven would not be pleasant—he knew that. The last thing he wanted was for Alex to witness his shame, or to see the pain his return was sure to cause in his kin when he brought Seth’s corpse back to them.
That was a path he wished he could walk alone, but there was a small part of him that was grateful for her company beside him. Selfishly, he took a measure of comfort just in her presence at his side.
Alex glanced over at him in his silence. “What about the rest of the people in Harmony? I heard Tegan say on the phone that he and Chase and Hunter were going to contain the situation while we’re taking care of Seth. What exactly does ‘contain the situation’ mean? They won’t … hurt anyone in town, will they?”
“No. No one will be hurt,” Kade said, having been part of the discussion with Lucan and the others as they’d strategized the mission’s final steps in Alaska. “You know how you said you wished there was a way to erase Jenna’s memories of the Ancient and what she might have been through with him?”
Alex shot him an incredulous look as understanding dawned on her. “You mean the whole town? There are nearly a hundred people in Harmony. What are Tegan and the others going to do, walk down every street, knocking door to door?”
Kade smiled despite the gravity of the situation, including the chasm of unresolved issues that still gaped between Alex and him. “I’m sure they’ll find a way to get the job done. Tegan is nothing if not efficient.”
Kade glanced out the window as the dark landscape below the plane changed from the uniform terrain of city with its plowed streets and snow-covered rooftops, to the rugged, far-reaching wilderness of the bush. “My father’s ten thousand acres begin just at that ridge ahead. There’s a clearing where we can land on the other side of those tall spruce to the north. The Darkhaven compound is within an easy walk of the clearing.”
Alex gave a nod of acknowledgment as she guided the plane to the ground where he had indicated.
Once they had landed, Kade went back to the cargo hold and retrieved Seth’s bloodied, blanket-wrapped body. He carried the lifeless bulk in a careful grasp, Seth’s weight a precious burden he would never know again. As much as he intended to bring his brother home alone, as was his duty, he had to admit Alex’s presence as he made the trek to the Darkhaven compound lent a comfort he hadn’t expected he would need.
She walked beside him in sober purpose, into the snowy yard of the main residence. It had to be late morning by now, probably only a couple of hours before the noon daybreak. Most of the Breed population of this small community would be inside their private quarters, sleeping perhaps, some of them making love.
Kade paused in front of the large house where his mother and father lived, reflecting that in just a few minutes, he would shatter their lives with grief and pain. The very things he had sought to protect them from in keeping Seth’s secret for so long.
“Are you okay?” Alex hesitated beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder, a tender, warm touch that gave him more strength than she could have possibly known.
He needed that strength in the moment that followed.
From within the Darkhaven came the sound of footsteps traveling swiftly over the wood-plank floors. His mother’s voice called from somewhere inside. “Kir? Kir, what is it? Where are you going?”
Kade’s father did not answer.
The doors of the main residence burst open with the force of the elder Breed male’s emotions alone. He stalked over the threshold like a tempest, clearly roused from his bed and having paused only long enough to tug on a pair of loose flannel lounging pants before he flew outside to face the news no parent wanted to hear.
Alex gasped at the sight of him, though her shock came as no surprise to Kir’s surviving son.
Six and a half feet of muscled fury, dermaglyphs seething with the dark hues of anger and alarm, stood frozen on the porch of the large log residence. Gray eyes burned with amber, flicking questioningly over Alex before landing on Kade in searing judgment.
“Tell me what has happened to my son.”
Kade had never heard his father’s voice shake, not even at Kir’s worst. The tremor in that deep baritone now was like a knife to Kade’s gut.
“Father … I am sorry.”
Kir thundered down the steps and into the snow. He stopped in front of Kade and Alex, reached out with a shaking hand to lift the blanket that covered Seth’s face.
“Ah, Christ. No.” The words choked in the back of his throat, raw with anguish. He looked once more, longer now, as though forcing himself to take full measure of the Rogue’s face that had been hidden beneath the shroud. “I prayed this wouldn’t happen again. Goddamn it, not to one of my sons.”
“Kir!” Kade glanced up as his pregnant mother strayed out to the porch, her silk nightgown engulfed by the large parka she’d apparently grabbed and thrown on inside the house. Her steps faltered as she saw Kade standing there in the snow, his arms filled with an unmistakable bulk. “Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh, dear lord, no! Please tell me that’s not—”
“Stay back,” Kade’s father barked. Then he gentled his voice to a heartbreaking softness. “Victoria, I beg you … don’t come any closer. Please, my love, go back inside. Do as I say. You don’t need to see this.”
With a sob, she inched back toward the door, aided by Maksim, who’d just come outside in that moment, as well. Max took her arm to steady her as he brought his brother’s mate back into the Darkhaven.
“Give him to me,” Kade’s father said once the doors had closed and both Max and Victoria were back inside. “Let me have my dead son.”
Kade released Seth to him, and watched as his father carried the body, barefoot through the ankle-deep snow, toward the Darkhaven’s chapel that stood near the center of the compound. There, as was custom, Seth’s corpse would be prepared for the funeral rites to be carried out at the next sunrise.
Kade felt Alex’s arms come around him in a warm embrace, but it did little to ease the cold regret that gnawed at him like a vulture on carrion.
In just a couple more hours, nothing but a pile of sun-scorched ash would remain of his brother—or of Kade’s place among his kin.
Back in Harmony, the warriors were hauling ass to clean up the situation with the locals, which had begun some time ago with the task of disappearing several dead bodies from cold storage at the airstrip and at the town’s tiny clinic.
“One nice thing about all this snow and wilderness out here is there’s a lot of goddamn snow and wilderness out here,” Tegan remarked dryly as Chase and Hunter met up with him at their waiting snowmachines on a game trail several long miles into the bush.
They’d sledded out of Harmony with the Toms family, Big Dave, and Lanny Ham in tow, carrying all of the Ancient’s recent victims to a cavern in the area mountains. A few strategically fired gunshots had collapsed the ice and rock at the cavern’s mouth, sealing it off and ensuring that the dead would not be found until sometime well into the next ice age.
“Any word from Gideon about Phase Two of this operation?” Tegan asked Chase, who’d been charged with coordinating the in-town portion of their task list for the day
“Everything’s in place,” Chase said. “Gideon has spoken with one Sidney Charles, Harmony’s acting mayor, informing Mr. Charles that the unit dispatched from the Alaska State Trooper division in Fairbanks should be arriving within the hour to address the townspeople as a group and collect statements.”
“And I take it the good mayor was agreeable to that?”
Chase nodded. “He told Gideon he would personally see to it that every citizen was in attendance. They’re gathering at Harmony’s church to wait for us as we speak.”
Tegan chuckled low under his breath. “So, where does that leave things? Breaking and entering, evidence tampering, compromising a crime scene, impersonating police officers, scrubbing roughly a hundred human minds in one fell swoop and getting it done before first light …”
Chase grinned. “All in a day’s work.”
Kade wasn’t sure he would be welcomed in the Darkhaven chapel where all of the compound’s residents had gathered to say their good-byes to Seth in the remaining minutes before daybreak. He had intended to sit the damned ritual out completely, pacing his quarters in front of Alex like a caged animal as the hour crept closer and closer to noon, when the winter sun would finally make its brief appearance. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“I have to be there,” he blurted, stopping in front of Alex where she sat on the sofa in his cabin’s living room. “Whether they think I belong with them now or not, I need to be there. For Seth. And for myself, too. Goddamn it, they all need to hear what I have to say.”
He stormed out of the cabin and headed across the frozen grounds. The faintly blue-tinged snow, lighted by the approaching sunrise, crunched under his boots with each long stride that carried him toward the chapel.
The windows of the small log building were already shuttered tight in anticipation of daybreak. As Kade drew nearer, he heard the soft murmur of voices lowered in private prayer, mingled with the intermittent sounds of the grieving inside.
Even before he reached for the latch of the door, he could smell the paraffin odor of the eight candles that would be burning at the altar, and the fragrant scent of the perfumed oil that anointed Seth’s body in preparation for the infinity rites about to take place.
Eight ounces of oil to bless and cleanse him. Eight layers of pristine white silk to shroud him until his body would be surrendered to the sun. Eight minutes of scorching ultraviolet exposure for the one who would be chosen from among the living to attend Seth in private for the final moments of the funeral ceremony.
“Fuck,” Kade whispered, paused at the chapel doors as the reality of it all settled on him.
His brother was dead.
His family was in mourning.
And Kade felt more than partly to blame for all of it.
He opened the chapel door and stepped inside. Nearly every head swung in his direction, some looking on him in pity, others staring at him like the stranger he had become in the year he’d been gone with the Order.
Everyone gathered in the chapel was dressed in ceremonial attire—females draped in black hooded gowns, males in belted long black robes. He found his parents in the front row of pews, standing with Maksim and Patrice, all of them garbed in black, their faces pale with shock, eyes rimmed in red, moist with grief. Had Seth been mated to Patrice, as his widow, she would have been gowned in hooded scarlet to signify their blood bond. His body, cocooned in white silk on the altar, would have borne a single crimson kiss where his Breedmate would have scored her own lips then pressed her mouth to his in one final good-bye.
As Kade considered the solemn traditions of his kind, he couldn’t help thinking of Alex. He couldn’t keep from flashing forward to a future where he was the one laid out on the funeral altar, his face transformed as Seth’s was, frozen by Bloodlust under the shroud of white silk. Would Alex love him then?
Could he really ask her to love him now, after everything she knew about him? After everything she had seen and heard in the past several hours, could he ever expect to have her trust or affection ever again?
For that matter, what about the people gathered in this chapel? Would his kin at this Darkhaven have anything but scorn for him, once he’d said his piece?
Kade didn’t know. At the moment, he didn’t damn well care. He strode to the center aisle, knowing how out of place he must look in his combat-worn, bloodstained black fatigues, guns and blades bristling from the belt around his hips while his lug-soled boots echoed hollowly over the polished wood path toward the altar.
His father’s gaze narrowed darkly as Kade began to walk toward the front of the chapel. As he passed the rows of filled pews, he heard the quiet murmurs of prayers and softly whispered praises for his brother.
“Always such a charming boy, wasn’t he?” someone reflected in a barely audible voice. “How tragic that something like this could have happened to him.”
“Seth was the studious and responsible one,” another detached whisper recalled. “He might have made a fine Darkhaven leader himself one day.”
“Poor Kir and Victoria, they must be heartbroken,” remarked yet another grief-choked resident, voice lowered so that Kade could hardly hear as he passed. “Would anyone have imagined that Seth could turn Rogue? What a waste, and what a disappointment for his family.”
“Kir has refused to speak of it” came a hushed reply. “I understand he is so ashamed, he would let no one near the body after Kade brought Seth home.”
“That’s right,” someone else chimed in confidentially. “It’s only because Victoria insisted that Kir even permitted a gathering for the funeral rites. It’s as though he wanted to simply sweep Seth away like he never existed.”
Kade ignored the quiet wave of whispered speculation behind him as he made his way to the altar at the front of the chapel. His father’s shame and disapproval didn’t surprise him. The fiercely disciplined, rigidly perfect Kir would never tolerate a Rogue in the family, let alone willingly deign to admit that his favored son had fallen to Bloodlust.
Kade was ashamed, too, not so much for his brother’s weaknesses and unforgivable misdeeds but for his own failure to help Seth turn his life around before it was too late.
“This moment belongs to my brother,” he said, addressing the assembled group of his relatives and the other residents of the Darkhaven. “I have no wish to take even a second of this time away from Seth, but there are things you all should know. Things all of you need to understand before you condemn him for what became of him in the end.”
“Sit down, Kade.” His father’s voice was low and level, but his eyes crackled with command. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
Kade nodded. “I know. I should have come forward a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe if I’d said something earlier, my brother would’ve had a chance. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”
His father rose, coming up off his seat on the bench. “Nothing you say here will change a goddamn thing. So hold your tongue, boy. Let it be.”
“I can’t,” Kade said. “I’ve carried Seth’s secret for too long. I’ve been carrying my own secrets, too. It’s long past time I let them go.”
Kade’s mother blinked back a fresh rush of tears, one slender hand cradling the swell of her stomach, where another pair of twin boys was growing inside her. “What are you talking about? What secrets, Kade? Please … I want to know.”
He looked past the disapproving glare of his father, to the plea that swam in his gentle mother’s moist eyes. Maybe what he said in this room, before all of these witnesses, would someday help the new pair of brothers who would soon be born with the same talent—the same seductive, wild calling—that he and Seth possessed. For that reason alone, he had to speak.
And then, there was Alex.
Kade’s gaze strayed to the back of the crowded chapel, where she had entered in silence and now stood near the closed doors, her steady gaze as tender as it was strong. She nodded faintly, the only approval that truly mattered in this room.
“My brother was not well,” he told the quiet gathering. “From the time we were boys, we both struggled with the ability we inherited at birth. Maybe in someone else, like you, Mother,” he said, glancing at her as he spoke about the unique gift she also possessed, “the talent might have been a strength. For Seth and me, it became a curse. It was too much power for boys who were stupid with arrogance and too naive to understand the consequences. We abused the talent we inherited from you. At first, we treated it like a game, running with a pack of wolves in the woods, hunting with them … killing with them. We let the wildness rule us. At some point, I realized Seth could not stop.”
“Oh, my son,” she gasped. “I am so sorry. I had no idea—”
“I know that,” he said, interrupting her before she could assume any more blame that wasn’t hers. “No one had any idea. It was wrong for Seth and me to conceal the truth. I made it worse when I left Alaska last year.”
Kir’s scowl deepened. “Worse, how?”
“Seth had killed a human.” Kade ignored the horrified gasp that traveled the congregation, his eyes rooted on his father. “He’d killed, and I knew he had. He promised me it was a mistake he would never repeat. I didn’t believe him. I wanted to, but I knew my brother too well. I should have done something then. I should have found a way to ensure he wouldn’t do it again. Instead, I left.”
Silence fell over the room as Kade spoke. It stretched endlessly, a cold, sodden weight that bore down on his shoulders as he weathered his father’s unreadable gaze. Kade’s mother rushed to fill the terrible quiet.
“You had to leave, Kade. The Order needed your help in Boston. You had important work to do there—”
“No,” Kade said, shaking his head in slow denial. “I was glad to join the Order, but that’s not why I left. Not really. I left Alaska because I feared that if I stayed, I would become like Seth. To save myself, I abandoned my brother—abandoned all of you—and I ran to Boston for my own selfish reasons. There was no honor in what I did.”
He glanced to the back of the chapel as he said it, meeting Alex’s gaze. She was listening without judgment, the only pair of eyes in the room that wasn’t fixed on him in contempt or stunned disbelief.
“What Seth did was wrong,” Kade continued. “He was sick, maybe beyond help, even before his weakness turned him Rogue. But despite all that, he died with honor. Because of Seth’s sacrifice a few hours ago, I am alive. More important, there is a beautiful, extraordinary woman standing at the back of this room who’s also alive because of Seth’s actions in the final moments of his life.”
As a whole, the group turned to look on Alex. She didn’t flinch at the sudden attention, nor at the whispers of speculation and curiosity that traveled the chapel on Kade’s announcement.
“Seth wasn’t perfect,” Kade said. “God knows, I’ll never be. But I loved my brother. And I owe him everything for what he did today.”
“You honor him well,” a male voice murmured from somewhere on Kade’s left. He glanced over and found Maksim standing now. He nodded soberly. “You honor all of us here today, Kade.”
The praise from his uncle—his friend—was unexpected, and tightened Kade’s throat. Then similar murmurs rose up from others in the room.
Kir walked forward and placed his hand on Kade’s shoulder. “It’s time. Daybreak is coming, and I must take Seth into the sun.”
Kade reached up, wrapped his fingers around the thick strength of his father’s wrist. “Let me. Please … it should be me, Father.”
He expected a curt refusal. A dark glare that would force Kade to insist on taking the burden—the final honor—of accompanying Seth’s body for the eight minutes of solar exposure required by Breed funeral tradition.
But Kir did not argue. He took a step back, saying nothing as Kade stripped off his soiled combat shirt and weapons belt, then set them down on the wooden bench nearby.
No one uttered so much as a syllable as he went to the altar and lifted his brother’s shrouded bulk into his arms, then began the walk through the corridor that emptied onto the chapel’s snowy back garden, where the noontime sun was just beginning to break through the winter gloom overhead.
CHAPTER
Thirty-two
Alex waited in Kade’s cabin, anxious with concern for what he was subjecting himself to in the yard behind the Darkhaven’s chapel. Eight full minutes of ultraviolet light on his exposed skin. Eight minutes of excruciating pain, before duty would permit Kade to leave his brother’s body to the consuming rays of the sun.
Alex wouldn’t have had any idea about the funeral tradition of the Breed had it not been for Kade’s uncle, Maksim, and the young Breedmate named Patrice, both of whom had walked back to introduce themselves in the moments after Kade had carried Seth’s body away. The pair had been warm and welcoming, waiting with Alex while the rest of the congregation departed via underground tunnels that connected all of the buildings in the Darkhaven compound.
Max and Patrice had offered to keep Alex company in Kade’s quarters to await him and help tend his burns, but Alex had declined as politely as she could. She didn’t think Kade would want to be fussed over. She wasn’t even sure he would want her there now, a worry that made the wait for his return drag out all the more.
But thoughts for herself blew away like cinder on the breeze when she heard Kade’s footsteps coming up the front porch of the cabin.
Alex ran to the door and opened it, stricken by the sight of him standing there with daylight blazing behind him. Incredibly, after the eight minutes he’d given his brother, Kade had not taken the tunnels but had instead apparently walked across the grounds from the chapel to his quarters.
“Oh, my God,” Alex whispered as his pale silver eyes stared out at her from the reddened, blistered skin of his face. Her throat squeezed up like it was caught in a fist. “Come inside now.”
As he walked past her, his bare shoulders, arms, and torso radiated palpable heat that she could feel a foot away from him. He was obviously in agony, but he showed no sign of it beyond the visible UV damage of his skin.
“Come with me,” Alex said. “I have a cool bath waiting for you.”
He shot her a questioning look.
“I met Maksim and Patrice in the chapel. They told me what you might need when you came back.” His mouth curved slightly at that, but when he tried to speak, his voice was nothing but a raspy croak of sound. “Come on, Kade. Let me take care of you.”
He walked with her to the bathroom down the hall. He put up no resistance as she helped him undress, removing his boots and socks one at a time as he stood on the tiled floor, his broad palm feeling like an electric iron against her shoulder as he held on to her for balance. Alex carefully stripped him of his black fatigues and briefs. She couldn’t contain her soft gasp, struck as always by the masculine perfection of his body and the complex artistry of his glyphs, even though at the moment she was too concerned about soothing his burns to take much pleasure in the sight of his nakedness.
She helped him step into the tub, watching as he slowly sank down into the cool water on a hiss that stretched into a long, deep sigh.
“Is that all right?”
He moaned and gave a faint nod, his eyes drifting closed as steam from his heated skin curled over the surface of the water. “Thank you,” he murmured thickly, settling deeper into the bath.
Alex picked up a soft cloth and submerged it in the tub. “Just relax now. I’ll do the rest.”
Gingerly she trickled the clear, cool water over the blistered bulk of his shoulders. She did the same to his burned back and chest, then his strong, bare arms. As carefully as she could, she brought the cloth to his face and cleansed the raw, reddened skin of his lean, angled cheeks and the strong, stern lines of his chin and brow.
As he relaxed deeper, Alex gently tipped his head back so she could wet his ebony hair and run cool water over his scalp. “The things you said in the chapel today about Seth, and about yourself … I was very proud of you, Kade. It took a great deal of courage to stand up there like you did.”
He grunted, a wordless sound of denial.
“You may not think so, but you were a good brother to Seth. I think everyone saw that today. You are a good son to your parents, too.”
His eyelids flicked open even as his dark brows lowered in a frown. “A few minutes of talk,” he rasped on a dry voice. “That’s all it was. Doesn’t erase the past. Doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
Alex squeezed more water into his hair and tenderly ran her fingers through the silken strands. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”
“Seeing what my brother was should tell you the answer to that,” he said, all but growling the words. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you what he was capable of. You saw that firsthand in the woods outside Harmony.”
“Yes,” Alex agreed softly. “I did. But that was Seth, not you. Or do I have to remind you that those were your very words to me when I told you what I saw? Seth was a killer, not you.”
He exhaled a vivid curse, but Alex ignored his rising anger.
“Seth was the one who went Rogue, Kade. That doesn’t mean you will, too.”
He shifted in the tub, lifting his head so that he was looking her squarely in the eyes. “Most of my life, Alex, I have been hiding from the truth, living in denial. Running from the things I couldn’t control. I thought if I put enough distance between myself and my problems, they would just … go away. Well, they don’t.”
Alex nodded. He could just as well be talking about her life. “I know now that running away doesn’t solve anything,” she whispered. “You have to stand up and face the things that scare you the most. You’ve taught me that, Kade.”
His scowl deepened. “That’s what I intend to do. But I need to do it alone, Alex.”
“What do you mean?”
“The things I talked about in the chapel today, and on that mountain when we brought Seth’s body up from the ledge. I can’t risk putting you in the middle of my problems.”
“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?” She caressed his tight jaw, only the barest skate of her fingers over the tender skin. “I’ve heard everything you’ve said. I’ve seen what happened to your brother. I understand your fear, Kade. But I’m not going to run away. Not ever again. And I won’t let you push me away, either. I love you.”
He expelled a harsh breath, and when he looked at her now, sparks of amber lit the silver irises of his eyes. She saw the glint of his fangs behind his lips, sharp white points gleaming with deadly power.
“I love you, Kade,” she insisted, refusing to back down. “And unless you tell me here and now that you don’t love me, too, then I can think of no reason why either of us should be alone.”
He stared hard at her, his jaw held tight. “Goddamn it, Alex. You know I can’t say that. I do love you. And that has complicated everything.”
She smiled with a humor she barely felt. “A little too much gray for you?” she asked softly. “And here I thought I was the one who liked to keep things simple, black and white.”
He didn’t return her smile. He was too far gone for that. As Alex drew back, she saw his eyes move from her lips to the base of her throat.
Her pulse was fluttering there, a fast tick that intensified to a heavier throb as she watched Kade stare hungrily at that spot. He caught her looking at him and abruptly glanced away. Tried to hide his awareness of her blood, pounding below the surface of her skin. Tried to hide his thirst from her.
Alex brought his gaze back to her with a coaxing touch. “You don’t have to deny who you are or what you need, Kade. Not from me. Not anymore.”
Silently she put down her wet cloth and positioned herself against his mouth, sweeping her hair away from her neck.
Her name was a reverent whisper on his lips as he drew in his breath, then blew it out in a heated rush against her skin. Kade descended on her in a swift motion, his sharp bite filled with need and a desperation that he made no effort to conceal.
Inside Zach Tucker’s house in Harmony, a pair of Alaska State Troopers recently arrived from the post in Fairbanks slumped in subdued silence, both men tranced on the living room sofa.
In a recliner next to them, Mayor Sidney Charles snored softly, tranced, as well. The elderly Native man had proven immensely cooperative, albeit unwittingly so, to the Order’s mission objectives in town. Not only had he delivered on his promise to summon every citizen of Harmony into the church a few hours ago, but he’d also had the good manners to escort the newly arrived Staties to Zach Tucker’s place when their plane had touched down from Fairbanks around daybreak.
With Brock still on post at Jenna’s cabin, Tegan, Chase, and Hunter had since relocated their operation to Tucker’s house. They’d waited out the scant few hours of daylight there, using the idle time to dig into the dead trooper’s computer records and look for further evidence of his corruption in the house. They hadn’t had to look very far.
Zach Tucker might have been a bush cop but he had an accountant’s eye for record keeping. He’d logged every drug deal and bootlegged bottle of booze that had passed through his hands and into Skeeter Arnold’s for distribution around the area.
When the two Staties woke up, they were going to find every handwritten ledger and computer-stored spreadsheet in Zach Tucker’s ransacked house. They were going to find the safe where Zach kept all of the considerable cash he’d made from his little side business over a period that had to have been several years.
The uniformed troopers were going to follow a hunch neither one of them could shake that would lead them to a remote area of the bush where they would discover Harmony’s sole police officer, brutally murdered and scavenged by animals. Near the body, they would find Skeeter Arnold’s cell phone, showing a history of plenty of calls to and from Trooper Tucker. With Skeeter nowhere to be found, nor heard from, the Staties would conclude that Tucker, and possibly Skeeter, as well, had apparently found themselves on the losing end of a deal gone horribly, fatally wrong.
What the troopers from the Fairbanks unit would not find was evidence of any other strange happenings in Harmony. With no one in town recalling the spate of recent deaths, let alone the names of the victims, and with a strategically placed computer worm originating from Boston that wiped out half of the AST’s dispatch logs for the past week, there would be no reason for the Staties to look for anything more than a disappointing matter of police corruption in the otherwise peaceful town of Harmony.
“That’s gonna do it,” Chase said as he came out of Tucker’s home office. “The computer password is disabled and there’s a spreadsheet of our boy’s current-year transactions conveniently left open on the monitor. These troopers are going to think Tucker was not only an asshole, but a complete moron besides.”
Tegan chuckled. “I’ll finish in here with the humans. Tell Hunter we’re rolling out in five minutes.”
Chase nodded. He took a step, then paused. “Any word from Kade?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Damn shame about his brother,” Chase said, his voice oddly wooden.
“Yeah,” Tegan said. “It is a shame.”
When the ex–Enforcement Agent pivoted to walk away, Tegan cleared his throat. “Hey, Harvard. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about what happened out there at the mine.”
“What about it?”
“Just wondering what the fuck you were thinking when you held that Minion by the throat for a while instead of going for a clean, quick kill.”
Chase’s grin seemed somehow too tight for his face. “Just having a little fun, is all.”
Tegan stared, assessing the once-straitlaced agent who’d proven to be a valuable asset to the Order, if a bit reckless at times. “Fun can get you killed, my man. You’d do well to remember that.”
Chase’s expression was nonchalant, the lift of his shoulders casual, unconcerned. “Sure, Tegan. Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind.”
Tegan watched him walk outside, then he turned his attention toward instructing the tranced humans to awaken once he and the other vampires had time enough to get several miles out of town.
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
Kade stood outside his quarters at the Darkhaven compound in a black silk robe, leaning against the timber post of the back porch that looked out over the property’s vast acreage. It was now a few hours after the sun had retreated, and darkness blanketed the region once more. He was lost in his thoughts, staring out at the far horizon, where the greenish glow of the aurora borealis streaked across the starlit sky.
Alex drifted outside to join him. He heard her walking up softly behind him, closed his eyes as she gently wrapped her arms around his waist. She made a soft noise in the back of her throat, then sighed when he skimmed his fingers tenderly under the white satin sleeve of her robe to stroke her bare arms.
They had spent most of the day in his bed, lying in each other’s arms. His body was still healing from the funeral rite, though much improved, thanks to the blood Alex had given him. Now his skin was merely red and tender, no longer blistered and searing with pain. His libido reminded him that he was well enough to want Alex. God knew, there was nothing that would keep him from desiring her.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmured as they stood together as one under the starlit sky and watched the aurora dance in the distance. “You’ve been through a lot the past few days. You should rest some more.”
Alex moved around to the front of him and burrowed into his warmth. “I came out here to tell you the same thing. How do you feel?”
He grunted, gave a brief nod. “Better, thanks to you. And all the more so when I have you in my arms.”
She lifted her head to meet his gentle kiss. The brush of her lips was warm, inviting. Filled with tenderness for all they’d been through, and ripe with a tentative hope for what may still lay ahead for them.
“I needed you today, Alexandra,” he whispered against her mouth. “I tried to convince myself that I didn’t, but you are all that I need. Thank you for everything you did for me today. Thank you just for being here.”
She smiled up at him, her voice soft with emotion. “You never need to thank me for that.”
“God, I love you,” he murmured, his chest tightening as he gazed down at her. “You honor me, Alex. You humble me. I don’t think you realize how much. You could have any male you choose—”
She reached up to caress his cheek with aching sweetness. “There is only one male I would choose. Only one male I could ever love.”
His words perished on a low moan as he bent his head to hers and caught her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. Need surged within him, hot and demanding. He wanted Alex—wanted her in his bed, beneath his fangs. He wanted her in every way he could have her.
So total was his desire, he hardly heard the rapid knock that fell against the front door of his cabin.
He would have ignored it completely if Alex hadn’t drawn back, breathless. “Someone’s here.”
“I don’t care.” Kade moved to kiss her again.
The knock came again, louder now. Insistent and demanding.
Kade snarled a curse as he caressed her beautiful face, then withdrew to stalk toward the door. He knew who he’d find on the other side, even before he opened it.
“Father,” he said, his clipped tone hardly able to be interpreted as a greeting.
Kir stared at him, then glanced past Kade’s shoulder to where Alex had drifted in from the back porch. “We need to talk.”
Kade stood firm, blocking the threshold with his body. “I’ve said all that I needed to.”
“But I have not.” Another look went in Alex’s direction. “Hear me out. Please, son.”
Kade had never heard his father utter either one of those words in conversation with him before. Perhaps that was why he finally loosened his death grip on the door handle and stepped aside to permit his father entry.
But he wasn’t about to budge where Alex was concerned. “Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Alexandra. She is my mate. I will keep nothing from her.”
Kir’s brows rose ever so slightly on his proud forehead. “Of course.” He inclined his head in Alex’s direction, a gesture of respect that won him a few small points with Kade. “Is it all right with you if we sit for a while, son?”
Kade nodded, then held his hand out to Alex in a motion for her to join them. She glided over and sat beside him on the sofa, Kir taking the leather chair across from them. For a long moment, the elder male merely looked at the both of them, his expression unreadable, his shrewd eyes unblinking as he silently appraised them.
“Today was a day I prayed would never come,” he said at last. His deep voice sounded hollow, still raw from grief. “For a very long time, since you were mere boys, I have lived in fear of the thought of losing your brother.”
Kade dropped his gaze, fresh shame rising up on him. “I know you’re disappointed, Father. I know … ah, Christ.” Alex slipped her hand into his, her fingers wrapped around his own. Kade swallowed past the ash that seemed to have settled in his throat. “I know you must wish that it was me, not Seth.”
“You know nothing,” Kir snapped. Kade’s head came up at that, and his father’s voice gentled. “You don’t know what I wish, or what I feel. How could you know, when I never gave any of myself to you? I poured everything into Seth instead. I gave him too much.”
Kade shrugged. “He was your son. You loved him.”
“You are also my son,” he replied. “And I love you both, Kade. But it was Seth who needed it more. He never had your independence. He wasn’t born with your courage.”
Kade frowned. “You doted on him. Everyone did.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Because you were stronger than he, Kade. In every way, you were his better. Seth knew that as well as I did. I tried to compensate for his failings by giving him more attention than I did you, but it spoiled him even more.”
“You let him handle Darkhaven business for you,” Kade pointed out. “You seemed to be grooming him for a Darkhaven of his own.”
Kir slowly shook his head. “A father’s futile hopes, nothing more. I tried to give him the chance to make something of himself. Time and again I tried. Seth would never have made a good leader. He was too weak, too insecure.”
“And me?” Kade asked, the question blurting out of him before he had the chance to bite it back.
“You,” Kir said, thoughtful as he looked at him. “You were untamable. You were unstoppable, from the moment you came howling and kicking out of your mother’s womb. You were a force of nature, Kade. Everyone who looked upon you saw that you were something unique, something special. I knew a child once who was not so different from you.”
“Grigori,” Kade murmured, watching his father’s expression mutate from mild surprise to remembered regret.
“Grigori,” Kir repeated quietly. “I presume you heard something about him from my other brother, Maksim.”
Kade nodded. “Max told me a little. I know that Grigori meant a lot to you, and I know that he went Rogue.”
Kir’s brows rose a fraction. “Yes, he did.”
“And you thought I would end up like him one day.”
“You?” He scowled, then gave a small shake of his head. “I never thought that of you. It was Seth I worried about. You reminded me of Grigori, that is true. Everything vibrant and robust and strong in him, I saw in you, Kade. Seth, however, had none of those qualities. He was only like my brother in that he possessed the same flaws and insecurities that eventually doomed him. I knew it, and I lived in dread of what might become of Seth. As for you, I could only hope that you would never be put into the position that I had been with Grigori. I prayed you would never be faced with that kind of decision.”
Something cold coiled around Kade’s heart at his father’s words. Alex’s fingers tightened around his as if she, too, felt the dread of what Kir might say. “Tell me what happened, Father.”
“I never wanted you to have to shoulder the burden of having to destroy something you loved.” Kir’s eyes dimmed with regret. “I thought that if I kept Seth close enough, if I gave him every opportunity to prove himself, my strength might be enough to hold him up. If I could keep Seth from giving into the weakness I saw in him from the time he was a child, then maybe he wouldn’t end up like Grigori. Maybe you would not be forced to do what I had to do.”
“Max said Grigori was never seen or heard from after your family received word that he’d gone Rogue and killed someone in his Bloodlust. Max said you refused to speak of Grigori after that.”
Kir nodded grimly. “There was no need to speak of him again. He was dead. As his brother, I felt it was my duty to make sure that he could never kill again.”
Alex exhaled the smallest gasp at the sober confession. Kade was stunned to discover how similar his father’s path had been to his own, how much he never knew about the male who’d sired him or the life his father had led before Kade and Seth had been born.
He muttered a curse, but there was no venom in it. There never could be again, not after tonight. “I have resented you nearly all my life,” he admitted. “I thought you despised me.”
Kir clucked his tongue, gave a remorseful shake of his head. “Never. I only wanted the best for you. For both my sons. And now, for the two new ones who will be born in a few short weeks, as well.”
“We have wasted a lot of time on secrets and festering fears,” Kade said to him. He turned a look on Alex, swamped by love for the female who owned his heart. “I can’t waste another minute like that.”
Kir stood up. “Nor should I waste any more of your time when you and Alex could be spending it together. I want you to know that I am proud of you, Kade. And I am glad to see that you have found happiness. You’ve found love, and next to all your other strengths, that is the one that will see you through any challenge.”
Kade swallowed, gave an awkward nod. “Thank you, Father.”
“How long will you and Alex be staying here at the Darkhaven?”
“Not long,” Kade replied. “A few more hours at the most. Some of my brethren from the Order are waiting in a town not far from here. We have a mission to wrap up, and then we’ll be heading back home.”
“Both of you?” Kir asked, glancing from Kade to Alex.
“I guess I’d better make it official and ask her,” Kade said, smiling as he stroked Alex’s cheek. He drew her gaze to his. “What do you think, Alex? Any chance I can convince you to come back with me to Boston?”
Her soft brown eyes gleamed. “I’ve never been to New England. I think I’d like to see it.”
Kade’s grin burst across his face. “I’ll show you the whole damn world if you’ll let me.”
They kissed, interrupted a moment later by Kir’s slightly awkward clearing of his throat. Alex was blushing furiously. Kade felt no embarrassment for his affection, meeting his father’s amused look with an unapologetic quirk of his brows.
Kir smiled, then strode to the door, Kade and Alex walking at his side. When they paused at the threshold, Kade held out his hand, but his father didn’t take it. Instead, he pulled Kade into a firm embrace. “I know that you have made a family in Boston with the Order,” he said as he drew back to meet Kade’s eyes. “I’m glad for you. But you have a family here, as well. You and your beautiful Alexandra both have family here.”
“May I hug you, too?” Alex asked, turning her warmth on Kade’s gruff father.
Kir’s mouth curved into a rare smile. “I would be honored if you did.”
As Alex embraced him, the elder male glanced at Kade, his gaze filled with too many emotions for Kade to name. Pride, forgiveness, regret, hope … years of emotions that went unspoken between father and son. Maybe now they would have the chance to repair the things that had been buried under so many secrets, so many useless fears.
And then there was Alexandra.
Kade looked at the female he loved—his female, his mate. His heart overflowed with all the things he wanted to say to her, things he wanted to share with her … promises he intended to give her now, in the hope that he would have the rest of his life with her to make good on them.
Kade wrapped his arm around Alex’s shoulders as they stood together and watched his father stroll across the moonlit snow toward the main house. When he was gone, Kade turned to Alex and swept her up into his arms.
She gasped as her feet left the ground, then laughed as he pivoted around and started walking with her toward his bedroom. “Put me down! You’re hardly recovered from your burns, Kade. You really shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Oh, yes, I should,” he replied, gazing into her eyes with a hunger he wouldn’t have been able to mask even if he’d tried.
They made love together, at first a tempestuous, fevered joining, both of them lost to the swell of their emotions and to the urgent demands of their desire for each other. Kade ravished her body, made her climax so many times she finally gave up trying to keep count.
Alex’s senses were filled with him, her body thrumming as she came down from the crest of another wave of pleasure, nestled in the protective shelter of Kade’s arms.
She loved him so deeply she ached with her devotion. And in the afterglow of their passion, she knew that he loved her, too.
His touch was tender as he stroked the sensitive skin of her neck, his fingers skating like velvet beneath her ear. “I haven’t done right by you,” he murmured quietly. “When I drank from you that first night at your house in Harmony. It should have been your choice, Alex. I took that from you. I should have told you what it meant before I bonded myself to you. I should have had honor enough to earn the right, not steal it the way I did.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she murmured. “All that matters is that we are together now. I want you forever, Kade. I want …” The words trailed off, not out of fear or uncertainty, but out of the depth of her longing. She turned her head to look at him. “All I want is you, to be bonded to you as your mate.”
“And all I want is to make you happy, and to know that you are safe and protected.”
“I am. There’s nowhere I could be happier—or more secure—than here in your arms.” She caressed his handsome face, seeing the torment that still lingered in his expression. The measure of self-doubt that hadn’t quite faded from his eyes, and might never fully disappear. “Together we are strong, Kade. Stronger than the wildness inside you. You heard what your father said: Love is the greatest strength. Nothing is more powerful than that.”
“You really believe that?”
“More than anything,” she replied. “But the question is, do you?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his silver eyes searching. “So long as I have you beside me, I can believe that anything is possible. I love you, Alexandra. You are everything to me.”
He brought her closer and kissed her—the most tender, reverent kiss she had ever known. Alex melted into him, her body responding in a fluid rush of warmth that pooled in her core. She tipped her head back as his mouth traveled down the line of her jaw, to the side of her throat.
Kade reared his head back on a growl. He stared at her, his eyes blazing with amber sparks, his fangs glowing white. Already he was panting with need, fierce with hunger for her.
He scowled, dark emotions tossing in the depths of his silver eyes. “Forever?”
“Forever, Kade.” She let her fingers drift over his sensual mouth, where the points of his fangs glinted behind his parted lips. “Bind me to you now. I want to taste you. I want to have forever with you.”
On a deep growl, his gaze locked on hers, he brought his wrist up to his mouth. He parted his lips, then sank his fangs into the flesh and muscle. Blood dripped from the punctures and down his chin. Tentative, he held his arm out to her.
Alex took him in her hands and brought his wrist to her lips.
The first taste of him was a shock. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but none of her imaginings had prepared her for the reality of drinking from Kade. His blood was a sweetness that rolled over her tongue, a stunning wildness that stole her breath. She drank in the scent of his skin and the earthy spice of his blood as she drew from his open vein.
Power surged through her like lightning.
Kade groaned with pleasure and she drank more, greedy now, desire pulsing through every nerve ending and making all of her senses come vividly to life. Heat roared deep inside her, and she whimpered as the first wave of orgasm rose up on her and swept her away.
Kade’s growl was purely male, purely triumphant.
Alex was still riding the crest of rapture as he licked the wound at his wrist, then spread her body, opening her thighs to the searing heat of his hungry gaze.
“You are mine now, Alex. God help you, you are mine forever now.”
“Then show me,” she whispered, her voice roughened from pleasure. She swept her tongue along her lips, savoring every last taste of him on her mouth. She tipped her head to the side, presenting her throat to him. “Show me that I will always belong to you, Kade.”
His lip curled away from his fangs, which shone as sharp and pristine as diamonds in the dim light of the aurora dancing in the distance outside the cabin. Alex took in the savage beauty of his face, feeling nothing close to fear when she looked at him now.
He was her heart, her lover, her mate.
Her everything.
“Love me, Kade,” she murmured.
“Forever,” he replied.
Then, with a groan of pleasure and surrender, he bent his head and sank his bite deep into her flesh and showed her just how pleasurable their forever was going to be.
Thirsty for more?
Don’t miss the next novel in Lara’s
hot and thrilling
Midnight Breed series
Taken by Midnight
Taken by
Midnight
BY
LARA ADRIAN
Coming from Dell in Fall 2010
PRAISE FOR
LARA ADRIAN’S
MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
SHADES OF MIDNIGHT
“[Lara Adrian] once again serves up a blockbuster hit.… With a fast-paced tale of romantic suspense and intense and realistic characters … Lara Adrian compels readers to get hooked on her storylines, and that’s why Shades of Midnight deserves a Perfect 10.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“[A] rapid fire story … Besides delivering wonderful paranormal romances, the Midnight Breed series also continues to add complexity.… A twist at the end could prove quite interesting. This is time well spent!”
—Romantic Times
ASHES OF MIDNIGHT
“Ashes of Midnight will scorch its way into your heart.”
—Romance Junkies
“Lara Adrian continues to kick butt with her latest release.… Ashes of Midnight is an entertaining ride and as usual kept me riveted from page one.”
—The Romance Reader Connection
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
“Adrian’s newest heroine has a backbone of pure steel. Rapid-pace adventures deliver equal quantities of supernatural thrills and high-impact passion. This is one of the best vampire series on the market!”
—Romantic Times
“Veil of Midnight will enthrall you and leave you breathless for more.”
—Wild on Books
MIDNIGHT RISING
“Fans are in for a treat.… Ms. Adrian has a gift for drawing her readers deeper and deeper into the amazing world she creates.… I eagerly await the next installment of this entertaining series!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Packed with danger and action, this book also explores the tumultuous emotions of guilt, anger, betrayal and forgiveness. Adrian has hit on an unbeatable story mix.”
—Romantic Times
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
“This is one of the best paranormal series around. Compelling characters and good world-building make this a must-read series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“One of the Top 10 Best Romance Novels of 2007.”
—Selected by the Editors at Amazon.com
“Ms. Adrian’s series just gets better and better.… Midnight Awakening was exactly what I hoped it would be then so much more.… I’m intrigued and without a doubt completely hooked.”
—Romance Junkies
“Vengeance is the driving force behind this entry in the intense Midnight Breed series.… Things look bad for the characters, but for the readers it’s nothing but net!”
—Romantic Times
KISS OF CRIMSON
“Vibrant writing heightens the suspense, and hidden secrets provide many twists. This dark and steamy tale … is a winner and will have readers eager for the next Midnight Breed story.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Hot sensuality with emotional drama and high-stakes danger … [Adrian] ensures that her latest is terrific supernatural entertainment.”
—Romantic Times
“[Adrian] pens hot erotic scenes and vivid action sequences.”
—The Romance Reader
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
“Evocative, enticing, erotic. Enter Lara Adrian’s vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
“Kiss of Midnight is dark, edgy and passionate, an irresistible vampire romance.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Lara Adrian delivers a fast-paced, sexy romantic suspense that … stands above the rest.… A gripping, sensual love story.”
—The Romance Reader
“Gritty and dangerous, this terrific launch book sets up an alternate reality filled with treachery and loss. The Midnight Breed series is poised to deliver outstanding supernatural thrills.”
—Romantic Times
Also by Lara Adrian
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
KISS OF CRIMSON
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
MIDNIGHT RISING
VEIL OF MIDNIGHT
ASHES OF MIDNIGHT
SHADES OF MIDNIGHT
Taken by Midnight is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Dell Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Lara Adrian, LLC
Excerpt of Deeper Than Midnight © 2010 by Lara Adrian, LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELL is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Deeper Than Midnight by Lara Adrian. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33968-7
v3.1
To Heather Rogers,
for being awesome
Contents
Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Excerpt from Deeper Than Midnight
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With each book I write, I am reminded how fortunate I am to be working with so many talented, conscientious people who comprise my publishing and literary representation teams, both in the United States and abroad. Thank you very much for everything you do. It’s a privilege to be working with all of you.
Special thanks to my home team for basic care and feeding, and for handling all the countless things that tend to slip while I’m happily immersed in my writing. I couldn’t do this without your love and support.
And to my readers, a debt of gratitude for embracing my characters and for honoring me with the gift of your time and friendship whenever you sit down to read one of my books. I hope you continue to enjoy the ride!
CHAPTER
One
Life … or death?
The words drifted at her through the darkness. Detached syllables. The rough scrape of a flat, airless voice that reached into the heavy drowse of her mind and forced her to come awake, to listen. To make a choice.
Life?
Or death?
She groaned against the cold plank floor beneath her cheek, trying to bar the voice—and the relentless decision it demanded—from her mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard these words, this question. Not the first time in the space of some endless hours that she’d peeled one heavy eyelid open in the frigid stillness of her cabin home and found herself looking into the terrible face of a monster.
Vampire.
“Choose,” the creature whispered thinly, the word drawn out in a slow hiss. He crouched over her where she lay, curled and shivering on the floor near the cold fireplace. His fangs glistened in the moonlight, razor sharp, lethal. The tips of them were still stained with fresh blood—her blood, drawn from the bite he’d made in her throat only moments before.
She tried to get up, but couldn’t rouse her weakened muscles to so much as flex in response. She tried to speak, managed only a rasping moan. Her throat felt as dry as ash, her tongue thick and listless in her mouth.
Outside, the Alaskan winter roared, bitter and unforgiving, filling her ears. No one to hear her screams, even if she’d tried.
This creature could kill her in an instant. She didn’t know why he hadn’t. She didn’t know why he kept pressing her for the answer to a question she had been asking herself nearly every day of her life for the past four years.
Ever since the accident that had taken her husband and little girl.
How often had she wished she’d been killed along with them on that icy stretch of highway? Everything would have been so much easier, less painful, if she had.
She could feel a silent judgment in the unblinking, inhuman eyes that fixed on her in the dark now, searingly bright, pupils as thin as a cat’s. Intricate skin markings tracked all over the creature’s hairless head and immense body. The webbed pattern seemed to pulse with violent color as he watched her. Silence lengthened while he patiently examined her as he might an insect trapped inside a glass jar.
When he spoke again, this time his lips did not move. The words penetrated her skull like smoke and sank deeply into her mind.
The decision is yours, human. Tell me what it will be: life, or death?
She turned her head away and closed her eyes, refusing to look at the creature. Refusing to be part of the private, unspoken game he seemed to be playing with her. A predator toying with his prey, watching it squirm while he decided whether to spare it or not.
How it shall end depends on you. You will decide.
“Go to hell,” she slurred, her voice thick and rusty.
Iron-strong fingers clamped onto her chin and wrenched her around to face him once more. The creature cocked his head, those catlike amber eyes emotionless as he drew in a rasping breath, then spoke through his bloodstained lips and fangs.
“Choose the course. There isn’t much time now.”
There was no impatience in the voice that growled so near her face, only a flat indifference. An apathy that seemed to say he truly didn’t care one way or the other what answer she gave him.
Rage boiled up inside her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, to kill her and get it over with, if that’s what he meant to do. He wasn’t going to make her beg, damn it. Defiance churned in her gut, pushing anger up her parched throat and onto the very tip of her tongue.
But the words wouldn’t come.
She couldn’t ask him for death. Not even when death might be the only escape from the terror that held her now. The only escape from the pain of having lost the two people she’d loved the most and the seemingly pointless existence that was all she had left since they’d been gone.
He released her from his hard grasp and watched with maddening calm as she sagged back down to the floor. Time stretched, impossibly long. She struggled to summon her voice, to speak the word that would either free her or condemn her. Crouched near her still, he rocked back on his heels and cocked his head in silent consideration.
Then, to her horror and confusion, he extended his left arm and sliced one talonlike fingernail deep into the flesh above his wrist. Blood spilled from the wound, dripping wetly, scarlet raindrops falling to the wood planks below him. He thrust his finger into the open cut, digging into the muscle and tendons of his arm.
“Oh, Jesus. What are you doing?” Revulsion squeezed her senses. Her instincts clamored with the warning that something awful was about to happen—maybe even more awful than the horror of her captivity with this nightmarish being who’d taken her prisoner hours ago to feed off her blood. “Oh, my God. Please, no. What the hell are you doing?”
He didn’t reply. Didn’t even look at her until he’d withdrawn something minuscule from within his flesh and now held it pinched between his bloodied thumb and finger. He blinked slowly, a brief shuttering of his eyes before they pinned her in a hypnotic beam of amber light.
“Life or death,” the creature hissed, those ruthless eyes narrowing on her. He leaned toward her, blood still dripping from the self-inflicted wound in his forearm. “You must decide, right now.”
No, she thought desperately. No.
A rushing surge of fury rolled up from somewhere deep inside her. She couldn’t hold it down. Couldn’t bite back the burst of rage that climbed up her raw throat and exploded out of her mouth in a banshee scream.
“No!” She raised her fists and pounded on the hard, inhuman flesh of the creature’s bare shoulders. She thrashed and raged, railing at him with every ounce of strength she could summon, relishing in the pain of impact every time her blows landed on his body. “Damn you, no! Get the hell away from me! Don’t touch me!”
She beat her fists against him again, over and over. Still, he crept closer.
“Leave me alone, damn it! Get away!”
Her knuckles connected with his shoulders and the sides of his skull, blow after blow, even as a heavy darkness began to descend on her. It felt thick around her, a sodden shroud that made her movements sluggish, her thoughts muddled in her mind.
Her muscles slackened, refusing to cooperate. Yet still she pounded on the creature, striking slowly, as though she were throwing punches in the middle of a black, tar-filled ocean.
“No,” she moaned, eyes closed to the darkness that surrounded her. She kept sinking deeper. Farther and farther into a soundless, weightless, endless void. “No … let me go. Damn you … let me go …”
Then, when it seemed as though the darkness that enveloped her might never release her, she felt something cool and moist pressed against her brow. Voices speaking in an indiscernible jumble somewhere over her head.
“No,” she murmured. “No. Let me go …”
Summoning the last shred of strength and will she possessed, she threw another punch at the creature holding her down. Thick muscle absorbed the blow. She latched on to her captor then, grabbing at him, clawing at him. Startled, she felt the crush of soft fabric bunching in her hands. Warm, knit wool. Not the clammy, bare skin of the creature who’d broken into her cabin and held her prisoner.
Confusion fired a warning shot in her sluggish mind. “Who … no, don’t touch me …”
“Jenna, can you hear me?” The deep, rolling baritone that sounded so near her face was somehow familiar to her. Oddly soothing.
It beckoned to something deep within her, gave her something to grab hold of when she had nothing but fathomless dark sea around her. She moaned, still lost, but feeling a slender thread of hope that she might survive.
The low voice she somehow needed desperately to hear came again. “Kade, Alex. Holy shit, she’s coming out of it. I think she’s finally waking up.”
She sucked in a hard breath, gasping for air. “Let me go,” she murmured, uncertain she could trust her feelings. Uncertain she could trust anything now. “Oh, God … please, no … don’t touch me. Don’t—”
“Jenna?” Somewhere nearby, a female voice took shape above her. Tender tones, sober concern. A friend. “Jenna, honey, it’s me, Alex. You’re all right now. Do you understand? You’re safe, I promise.”
The words registered slowly, bringing with them a sense of relief and comfort. A feeling of peace, despite the chill terror that was still washing through her veins.
With effort, she dragged her eyelids open and blinked away the daze that clung like a veil to her senses. Three forms hovered around her, two of them immense, unmistakably male, the other tall and slender, female. Her best friend from Alaska, Alexandra Maguire. “What … where am …”
“Shh,” Alex soothed. “Hush now. It’s all right. You’re somewhere safe. You’re going to be okay now.”
Jenna blinked, worked to focus. Slowly, the shapes standing around her bedside became human. Half sitting up, she realized her fists were still full of the wool sweater worn by the larger of the two males. The immense, fierce-looking African American with the skull-trimmed hair and linebacker shoulders, whose deep voice had helped pull her out of the drowning terror of her nightmare.
The one she’d been pounding on relentlessly for God knew how long, mistaking him for the hellish creature who’d attacked her in Alaska.
“Hey,” he murmured, his broad mouth curving gently. Dark brown, soul-searching eyes held her waking gaze. That warm smile quirked with unspoken acknowledgment as she loosened her death grip on him and settled back onto the bed. “Glad to see you decided to join the land of the living.”
Jenna frowned at his light humor, reminded instead of the terrible choice that had been forced on her by her attacker. She exhaled a rasping sigh as she struggled to absorb her new, unfamiliar surroundings. She felt a bit like Dorothy waking up in Kansas after her trip to Oz.
Except the Oz in this scenario had been a seemingly endless torment. A horrifying trip to some kind of blood-soaked hell.
At least the horror of that ordeal had ended.
She glanced at Alex. “Where are we?”
Her friend came near and placed the cool, damp cloth to her forehead. “You’re safe, Jenna. Nothing can hurt you in this place.”
“Where?” Jenna demanded, feeling an odd panic beginning to rise. Although the bed she lay on was plush beneath her, abundant with fluffy pillows and blankets, she couldn’t help but notice the clinical white walls, the fleet of medical monitors and digital readers assembled all around the room. “What is this, a hospital?”
“Not exactly,” Alex replied. “We’re in Boston, at a private facility. It was the safest place for you to be now. The safest place for all of us.”
Boston? A private facility? The vague explanation hardly made her feel better. “Where’s Zach? I need to see him. I have to talk to him.”
Alex’s expression paled a bit at the mention of Jenna’s brother. She was silent for a long moment. Too long. She looked over her shoulder to the other man standing behind her. He was vaguely familiar to Jenna, with his spiky black hair, penetrating silver eyes, and razor sharp cheekbones. Alex said his name on a quiet whisper. “Kade …”
“I’ll get Gideon,” he said, offering her a tender caress as he spoke. This man—Kade—was obviously a friend of Alex’s. An intimate one at that. He and Alex belonged together; even in Jenna’s rattled state of consciousness, she could sense the deep love that crackled between the couple. As Kade stepped away from Alex, he shot a look at the other man in the room. “Brock, make sure things stay calm in here until I come back.”
The dark head nodded once, grimly. Yet when Jenna glanced up at him, the big man called Brock met her gaze with the same gentling calm that had greeted her when she’d first opened her eyes in this strange place.
Jenna swallowed past a knot of dread that was climbing steadily into her throat. “Alex, tell me what’s happening. I know I was … attacked. I was bitten. Oh, Jesus … there was a … a creature. It somehow got into my cabin and it attacked me.”
Alex’s expression was heavy, her hand tender where it came to rest on Jenna’s. “I know, honey. I know what you went through must have been awful. But you’re here now. You survived, thank God.”
Jenna closed her eyes as a raw sob choked her. “Alex, it … it fed off me.”
Brock had moved closer to the bed without her notice. He stood directly beside her and reached out to stroke his fingertips along the side of her neck. His big hands were warm, and impossibly tender. It was the oddest sensation, the peace that emanated from his light caress.
Part of her wanted to reject his uninvited touch, but another part of her—a needy, vulnerable part that she hated to acknowledge, let alone indulge—could not refuse the comfort. Her banging pulse slowed under the gentle rhythm of his fingers as they traveled lightly up and down the length of her throat.
“Better?” he asked quietly as he drew his hand away from her.
She exhaled a slow sigh with her weak nod. “I really need to see my brother. Does Zach know I’m here?”
Alex’s lips pressed together as an aching silence grew long in the room. “Jenna, honey, don’t worry about anything or anybody else right now, okay? You’ve been through so much. For now, let’s just focus on you and on making sure you’re well. Zach would want that, too.”
“Where is he, Alex?” Despite the fact that it had been years since Jenna wore the badge and uniform of an Alaska State Trooper, she knew when someone was sidestepping the facts. She knew when someone was trying to protect another person, trying to spare them from pain. As Alex was doing with her this very moment. “What’s happened to my brother? I need to see him. Something’s wrong with him, Alex, I can see it in your face. I need to get out of here, right now.”
Brock’s big, broad hand came toward her again, but this time, Jenna swept it away. It had only been a slight flick of her wrist, but it knocked aside his hand as though she’d put all of her strength—and then some—into the motion.
“What the hell?” Brock’s eyes narrowed, something bright and dangerous crackling in his dark gaze, there and gone before she could fully register what she was seeing.
And at that very moment, Kade returned to the room, two other men with him. One was tall and lean, athletically built, his disheveled crown of blond hair and rimless, pale blue sunglasses that rode low on the bridge of his nose giving him something of a geeky mad-scientist vibe. The other, dark haired and grim faced, strode inside the small room like a medieval king, his very presence commanding attention and seeming to suck all of the air out of the place.
Jenna swallowed. As former law enforcement, she’d been accustomed to facing down men twice her size without flinching. She’d never been easy to intimidate, but looking at the likely thousand-plus pounds of muscle and brute strength that now surrounded her in these four men—to say nothing of the distinctly lethal air they seemed to wear as casually as their own skin—she found it damned hard to hold the scrutinizing, almost suspicious, gazes that were locked onto her from each man in the room.
Wherever she’d been brought, whoever these men were whom Kade associated with, Jenna got the very distinct impression that the so-called private facility wasn’t a hospital at all. It sure as hell wasn’t a country club.
“She’s been awake only for a few minutes?” asked the blond, his voice carrying just the barest hint of an English accent. At Brock and Alex’s joint nods, he walked up to the bed. “Hello, Jenna. I’m Gideon. This is Lucan,” he said, gesturing to his mountain of a companion, who now stood next to Brock on the other side of the room. Gideon frowned at her over the top of his shades. “How do you feel?”
She frowned back at him. “Like a bus ran me over. A bus that apparently dragged me from Alaska all the way to Boston.”
“It was the only way,” Lucan interjected, command palpable in his level, ask-no-permission tone. He was the leader here, no question about that. “You hold too much information, and you needed specialized care and observation.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What I need is to be back at home. Whatever that monster did to me, I survived it. I won’t be needing any kind of care or observation because I’m fine.”
“No,” Lucan countered grimly. “You are not fine. Far from it, in fact.”
Although it was said without cruelty or threat, an icy cold dread seeped through her. She looked to Alex and Brock—the two people who’d assured her just a few minutes ago that she was all right, that she was safe. The two people who’d actually managed to make her feel safe, after waking up from the nightmare that she could still taste on her tongue. Neither of them said a thing now.
She glanced away, stung and not a little afraid of what that silence might truly mean. “I have to get out of here. I want to go home.”
When she started to swing her legs over the edge of the bed to get up, it wasn’t Lucan or Brock or any of the other huge men who stopped her, but Alex. Jenna’s best friend moved to block her, the sober look on her face more effective than any of the brute strength standing ready elsewhere in the room.
“Jen, you have to listen to me now. To all of us. There are things you need to understand … about what happened back in Alaska, and about the things we still need to figure out. Things only you may be able to answer.”
Jenna shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only thing I know is that I was held captive and attacked—bitten and bled, for God’s sake—by something worse than a nightmare. It could be out there still, back in Harmony. I can’t sit here knowing that the monster that terrorized me might be doing the same hideous things to my brother or to anyone else back home.”
“That won’t happen,” Alex said. “The creature who attacked you—the Ancient—is dead. No one in Harmony is in danger from him now. Kade and the others made sure of that.”
Jenna felt only a ping of relief, because despite the good news that her attacker was dead, there was still something cold gnawing at her heart. “And Zach? Where is my brother?”
Alex glanced toward Kade and Brock, both of whom had moved closer to the side of the bed. Alex gave the faintest shake of her head, her brown eyes sad beneath the layered waves of her dark blond hair. “Oh, Jenna … I’m so sorry.”
She absorbed her friend’s words, reluctant to let the understanding sink in. Her brother—the last remaining family she had—was dead?
“No.” She gulped the denial, sorrow rising up the back of her throat as Alex wrapped a comforting arm around her.
On the wave of her grief, memories roared to the surface, too: Alex’s voice, calling to her from outside the cabin where the creature lurked over Jenna in the darkness. Zach’s angry shouts, a current of deadly menace in every clipped syllable—but menace directed at whom? She hadn’t been sure then. Now she wasn’t sure it mattered at all.
There had been a gun blast outside the cabin, not even an instant before the creature leapt up and hurled itself through the weather-beaten wood panels of the front door and out to the snowy, forested yard. She remembered the sharp howl of her brother’s screams. The pure terror that preceded a horrific silence.
Then … nothing.
Nothing but a deep, unnatural sleep and endless darkness.
She pulled out of Alex’s embrace, sucking back her grief. She would not lose it like this, not in front of these grim-faced men who were all looking at her with a mix of pity and cautious, questioning interest.
“I’ll be leaving now,” she said, digging deep to find the don’t-fuck-with-me cop tone that used to serve her so well as a trooper. She stood up, feeling only the slightest shakiness in her legs. When she listed faintly to the side, Brock reached out as if to steady her, but she righted her balance before he could offer the uninvited assist. She didn’t need anyone coddling her, making her feel weak. “Alex can show me the way out.”
Lucan pointedly cleared his throat.
“Ah, I’m afraid not,” Gideon put in, politely British, yet unwavering. “Now that you’re finally awake and lucid, we’re going to need your help.”
“My help?” She frowned. “My help with what?”
“We need to understand precisely what went on between you and the Ancient in the time he was with you. Specifically, if there were things he told you or information he somehow entrusted to you.”
She scoffed. “Sorry. I already lived through the ordeal once. I have no interest in reliving it in all its horrible detail for all of you. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d just as soon put it out of my mind completely.”
“There is something you need to see, Jenna.” This time, it was Brock who spoke. His voice was low, more concerned than demanding. “Please, hear us out.”
She paused, uncertain, and Gideon filled the silence of her indecision.
“We’ve been observing you since you arrived at the compound,” he told her as he walked over to a control panel mounted on the wall. He typed something on the keyboard and a flat-screen monitor dropped down from the ceiling. The video image that blinked to life on the screen was an apparent recording of her, lying asleep in this very room. Nothing earth-shattering, just her, motionless on the bed. “Things start to get interesting around the forty-three-hour mark.”
He typed a command that made the clip advance to the spot he mentioned. Jenna watched herself on-screen, feeling a sense of wariness as her video self began to shift and writhe, then thrash violently on the bed. She was murmuring something in her sleep, a string of sounds—words and sentences, she felt certain, even though she had no basis to understand them.
“I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“We’re hoping that you can tell us,” Lucan said. “Do you recognize the language you’re speaking there?”
“Language? It sounds like a bunch of jibberish to me.”
“You’re sure about that?” He didn’t seem convinced. “Gideon, play the next video.”
Another clip filled the monitor, images fast-forwarding to a further episode, this one even more unnerving than the first. Jenna watched, transfixed, as her body on-screen kicked and writhed, accompanied by the surreal soundtrack of her own voice speaking something that made absolutely no sense to her.
It took a lot to scare her, but this psych ward video footage was just about the last thing she needed to see on top of everything else she was dealing with.
“Turn it off,” she murmured. “Please. I don’t want to see any more right now.”
“We have hours of footage like this,” Lucan said as Gideon powered down the video. “We’ve had you on twenty-four-hour observation the whole time.”
“The whole time,” Jenna echoed. “Just how long have I been here?”
“Five days,” Gideon answered. “At first we thought it was a coma brought on by trauma, but your vitals have been normal all this time. Your blood work is normal, too. From a medical diagnostic standpoint, you’ve merely been …” He seemed to search for the right word. “Asleep.”
“For five days,” she said, needing to be sure she understood. “Nobody just falls asleep for five days straight. There must be something else going on with me. Jesus, after all that’s happened, I should see a doctor, go to a real hospital.”
Lucan gave a grave shake of his head. “Gideon is more expert than anyone else you can see topside. This thing cannot be handled by your kind of doctors.”
“My kind? What the hell does that mean?”
“Jenna,” Alex said, taking her hand. “I know you must be confused and scared. I’ve been there myself very recently, although I can’t imagine anyone going through what you have. But you need to be strong now. You need to trust us—trust me—that you are in the best hands possible. We’re going to help you. We’ll figure this out for you, I promise.”
“Figure what out? Tell me. Damn it, I need to know what’s really going on!”
“Let her see the X rays,” Lucan murmured to Gideon, who typed a quick series of keys and brought the images up on the monitor.
“This first one was taken within minutes of your arrival at the compound,” he explained, as a skull and upper spinal column lit up overhead. At the topmost point of her vertebrae, something small glowed fiercely bright, as tiny as a grain of rice.
Her voice, when she finally found it, held the barest tremor. “What is it?”
“We’re not sure,” Gideon replied gently. He brought up another X ray. “This one was taken twenty-four hours later. You can just make out the threadlike tendrils that have begun to spread outward from the object.”
As Jenna looked, she felt Alex’s fingers tighten around her own. Another image came up on-screen, and in this one, the tendrils extending from the brightly glowing object appeared to lace into her spinal column.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, reaching up with her free hand to feel the skin at her nape. She pressed hard and almost gagged to register the faint ridge of whatever it was embedded inside her. “He did this to me?”
Life … or death?
The choice is yours, Jenna Tucker-Darrow.
The creature’s words came back to her now, along with the recollection of his self-inflicted wound, the nearly indiscernible object he’d plucked from within his own flesh.
Life, or death?
Choose.
“He put something inside me,” she murmured.
The slight unsteadiness she’d felt a few moments ago came back with a vengeance. Her knees buckled, but before she ended up on the floor, Brock and Alex each had an arm, lending her their support. As terrible as it was, Jenna could not tear her eyes away from the X ray that filled the screen overhead.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned. “What the hell did that monster do to me?”
Lucan stared at her. “That’s what we intend to find out.”
CHAPTER
Two
Standing in the corridor outside the infirmary room a couple of minutes later, Brock and the other warriors watched as Alex sat down on the edge of the bed and quietly comforted her friend. Jenna didn’t break down or crumble. She let Alex wrap her in a tender embrace, but Jenna’s hazel eyes remained dry, staring straight ahead, her expression unreadable, glazed with the stillness of shock.
Gideon cleared his throat, breaking the silence as he glanced away from the infirmary door’s small window. “That went well. Considering.”
Brock grunted. “Considering she just came out of a five-day Rip van Winkle to learn that her brother is dead, she’s been leeched by the granddaddy of all bloodsuckers, brought here against her will—and oh, by the way, we’ve found something embedded in your spinal cord that probably didn’t originate on this planet, so congratulations, on top of all that, there’s a good chance you’re part Borg now.” He exhaled a dry curse. “Jesus, this is messed up.”
“Yeah, it is,” Lucan said. “But it would be a hell of a lot worse if we didn’t have the situation contained. Right now, all we need to do is keep the female calm and under close observation until we gain a better understanding of the implant itself and what, if anything, it could mean to us. Not to mention the fact that the Ancient must have had a reason for placing the material inside her in the first place. That’s a question that begs an answer. Sooner than later.”
Brock nodded in agreement with the rest of his brethren. It was only a slight movement, yet the flexing of his neck muscles set off a fresh round of pain in his skull. He pressed his fingers into his temples, waiting for the knifelike agony to pass.
Beside him, Kade frowned, jet-black brows furrowing over his wolfy, silver eyes. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” Brock muttered, irritated by the public show of concern, even though it was coming from the one warrior who was as tight as a brother to him. And even though the hard stab of Jenna’s trauma was shredding him from the inside out, Brock merely shrugged. “No big thing, just par for the course.”
“You’ve been eating that female’s pain for almost a week straight,” Lucan reminded him. “If you need a break—”
Brock hissed a low curse. “Nothing wrong with me that a few hours back out on patrols tonight won’t cure.”
His gaze strayed to the small panel of clear glass that looked in on the infirmary room. Like all of the Breed, Brock was gifted with an ability unique to himself. His talent for absorbing human pain and suffering had helped keep Jenna comfortable since her ordeal in Alaska, but his skills were just a Band-Aid at best.
Now that she was conscious and able to provide the Order with whatever information they needed about her time with the Ancient and the alien material embedded inside her, Jenna Darrow’s problems were her own.
“There’s something more you all need to know about the female,” Brock said as he watched her carefully swing her bare legs over the edge of the bed and stand up. He tried not to notice how the white hospital gown rode halfway up her thighs in the instant before her feet touched the floor. Instead he focused on how readily she found her balance. After five days of lying flat on her back in an unnatural sleep, her muscles absorbed her weight with only the smallest tremor of instability. “She’s stronger than she should be. She can walk without help, and a few minutes ago, when it was just Alex and me in the room with her, Jenna was getting agitated about wanting to see her brother. I went to touch her and calm her down, and she deflected my hand. Tossed me off like no big thing.”
Kade’s brows rose. “Forgetting the fact that you’re Breed and have the reflexes to go along with it, you’ve also got about a hundred pounds on that female.”
“My point exactly.” Brock glanced back at Lucan and the others. “I don’t think she realized the significance of what she’d done, but there’s no mistaking the power she threw at me without really trying.”
“Jesus,” Lucan whispered tightly, his jaw rigid.
“Her pain is stronger now than it has been before, too,” Brock added. “I don’t know what’s going on, but everything about her seems to be intensifying now that she’s awake.”
Lucan’s scowl deepened as he glanced at Gideon. “We’re certain she’s human, and not a Breedmate?”
“Just your basic Homo sapiens stock,” the Order’s resident genius confirmed. “I asked Alexandra to conduct a visual scan of her friend’s skin right after they arrived from Alaska. There was no teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark anywhere on Jenna’s body. As for blood work and DNA, all of the samples I took came back clear, as well. In fact, I’ve been running tests every twenty-four hours, and there’s been nothing notable. Everything about the woman to this point—aside from the presence of the implant—has been perfectly mundane.”
Mundane? Brock barely refrained from scoffing at the inadequate word. Of course, neither Gideon nor any of the other warriors had been present for the head-to-toe body search performed on Jenna upon her arrival at the compound. She’d been racked with pain, drifting in and out of consciousness from the time Brock, Kade, Alex, and the rest of the team who’d joined them in Alaska had made the trip back home to Boston.
Given that he was the only one who could level her out, Brock had been drafted to stay at Jenna’s side and keep the situation under control as best as it could be. His role was supposed to have been purely professional, clinical and detached. A specialized tool kept close at hand in case of an emergency.
Yet he’d had a startlingly unprofessional response to the sight of Jenna’s unclothed body. It had been five days ago, but he remembered every exposed inch of her ivory skin as though he were looking at it again now, and his pulse kicked at the memory.
He recalled every smooth curve and sloping valley, every little mole, every scar—from the ghost of a c-section incision on her abdomen, to the smattering of healed puncture wounds and lacerations that peppered her torso and forearms, telling him she’d already come through hell and back at least once before.
And he’d been anything but clinical and detached when Jenna lapsed into a sudden convulsion of agony in the moments after Alex had finished searching in vain for a birthmark signifying that her friend was a Breedmate like the other women who lived at the Order’s compound. He’d placed his hands on both sides of her neck and drawn the pain away from her, all too aware of how soft and delicate her skin was beneath his fingertips. He fisted his hands at the thought as it rose up on him now.
He didn’t need to be thinking about the woman, naked or otherwise. Except now that he’d gone there, he could think of damned little else. And when she glanced up and caught his gaze through the glass of the little window in the door, an unbidden heat went through him like a flaming arrow.
Desire was bad enough, but it was the odd sense of protectiveness serving as a chaser that really threw him off kilter. The feeling had begun in Alaska, when he and the other warriors first found her. It hadn’t faded in the days she’d been at the compound. If anything, the feeling had only gotten stronger, watching her fight and struggle through the strange sleep that had kept her unconscious since she’d come out of her ordeal with the Ancient in Alaska.
Her frank gaze still held his from across the infirmary: cautious, almost suspicious. There was no weakness in her eyes, nor in the slight tilt of her chin. Jenna Darrow was clearly a strong female, despite all she’d been through, and he found himself wishing she’d been a mess of tears and hysteria instead of the cool, in-control woman whose unflinching stare refused to let him go.
She was calm and stoic, as brave as she was beautiful, and it sure as hell wasn’t making her less intriguing to him.
“When was the last time you ran blood work and DNA?” Lucan asked, the grave, low-voiced question giving Brock something else to focus on.
Gideon pushed back his shirtsleeve to check his watch. “I drew the last sample about seven hours ago.”
Lucan grunted as he pivoted away from the infirmary door. “Run everything again now. If the readings have changed so much as an iota from the last sample, I want to hear about it.”
Gideon’s blond head bobbed. “Given what Brock has told us, I’d also like to take some strength and endurance measurements. Any information we can gather from studying Jenna could be crucial to figuring out what exactly we’re dealing with here.”
“Whatever you need,” Lucan said grimly. “Just get it done, and fast. This situation is important, but we also can’t afford to lose momentum on our other missions.”
Brock inclined his head along with the other warriors, knowing as well as any of them that a human in the compound was a complication the Order didn’t need when they still had an enemy on the loose—namely Dragos, a corrupt Breed elder whom the Order had been pursuing for the better part of a year.
Dragos had been working in secret for many decades, under more than one assumed identity and within clandestine, powerful alliances. His operation had grown numerous and long-reaching tentacles, as the warriors were discovering, and every one of those grasping arms was working in concert toward a single objective: Dragos’s complete and total domination over both the Breed and humankind alike.
The Order’s primary goal was his destruction and the swift, permanent dismantling of his entire operation. The Order meant to take Dragos out at the roots. But there were complications to that goal. He had all but vanished recently, and there were, as always, layers of protection in front of him—secret allies within the Breed nation, maybe outside of it, too. Dragos also had an unnumbered army of skilled assassins at his command, every one of them born and bred specifically for killing. Deadly Breed males who were direct progeny of the otherworlder who, until his escape to Alaska a few weeks ago and subsequent death, had been under Dragos’s command.
Brock glanced into the infirmary room where Jenna had begun to pace back and forth like a caged animal. To say the Order had their hands full at the moment was putting it mildly. Now that she was awake, at least his part was over. His talent had seen Jenna through the past week; where she went from here would be up to Gideon and Lucan to decide.
Inside the room, Alex pivoted away from her friend and approached the door. She opened it and stepped out to the corridor, her brown eyes soft with concern under the dark blond bangs that fringed her forehead.
“How’s she doing?” Kade asked, moving toward his woman as though gravity pulled him there. They were a newly mated pair, having met during Kade’s mission in Alaska, but looking at the warrior and his pretty bush pilot Breedmate, it seemed impossible to Brock that they had only been together for a couple of weeks. “Does Jenna need anything, babe?”
“She’s confused and upset, understandably,” Alex said, moving into the shelter of Kade’s body just as he had done with her. “I think she’ll feel better after a long shower and some fresh clothes. She says she feels stir crazy in the room and wants to take a walk to stretch some of the tightness out of her legs. I told her I would ask if it was all right.”
Alex looked to Lucan as she said it, directing the request to the Order’s oldest member, its founder and leader.
“Jenna is not a prisoner here,” he replied. “Of course she is free to wash and dress and walk around.”
“Thank you,” Alex said, gratitude brightening some of the uncertainty in her eyes. “I told her she wouldn’t be kept here as a prisoner, but she didn’t seem to believe me. After what she’s been through, I guess that’s not surprising. I’ll go tell her what you said, Lucan.”
As she turned to slip back into the infirmary, the Order’s leader cleared his throat. Kade’s mate slowed and swung a glance over her shoulder, some of the wind already leaving her sails as she met Lucan’s stern look. “Jenna is free to walk about and do most anything she likes—so long as someone is with her, and so long as she doesn’t try to leave the compound. See that she has whatever she needs. When she’s ready for her walk around the compound, Brock will take her. I’m putting him in charge of her well-being. He’ll make sure Jenna doesn’t lose her way.”
Brock had to work to bite back the curse that rose to his tongue.
Just frigging great, he thought, wanting like hell to reject the continued assignment that would keep him in close quarters with Jenna Darrow.
Instead he acknowledged Lucan’s order with a nod.
CHAPTER
Three
Jenna’s hands were fisted as she shoved them deep into the pockets of the belted, white terry robe that covered her thin hospital gown. Her feet swam in the new, but extra-large, man-size slippers Alex had retrieved out of a cabinet drawer in the infirmary room where Jenna had awakened less than an hour ago. She shuffled beside her friend, walking along a lighted, marble-white corridor that snaked and twisted in a seemingly endless maze of similar walkways.
Jenna felt oddly numb, not just from the shock of hearing that her brother was dead but from the fact that the nightmare she’d awakened from had not ended with her survival. The creature that had attacked her in her cabin might have been killed, as she’d been informed, but she wasn’t free of its hold.
After what she saw in the X-ray images and on the video feed from the infirmary, she knew with a bone-deep dread that part of that fanged monster still held her in its ruthless grasp. She should be screaming in terror for that knowledge alone. Deep down, fear and grief roiled. She clamped a hard lid on her bubbling hysteria, refusing to show that kind of weakness, even to her best friend.
But there was a true calmness inside her, one that had been with her in the infirmary room—since the moment Brock had put his hands on her and promised she was safe. It was that reassurance as well as her own determination to soldier on that kept her from breaking down as she walked the labyrinth of corridors with Alex.
“We’re almost there,” Alex said as she led Jenna around another corner, toward another long stretch of gleaming hallway. “I thought you’d be more comfortable getting cleaned up and dressed in Kade’s and my quarters rather than the infirmary.”
Jenna managed a vague nod, although it was hard to imagine that she might be comfortable anywhere in this strange and unfamiliar place. She walked cautiously, her rusty cop instincts prickling as she passed unmarked room after unmarked room. There wasn’t a single exterior window in the place, nothing to indicate where the facility was located, nor what might lie beyond its walls. No way to tell even whether it was day or night outside.
Above her head, tracking the length of this corridor like the others, small black domes concealed what she guessed must be surveillance cameras. It was all very state-of-the-art, very private, and very secure.
“What is this place, some kind of government building?” she asked, voicing her suspicions out loud. “Definitely not civilian. Is it some kind of military facility?”
Alex slid her a hesitant, measuring glance. “It’s more secure than any of those things. We’re about thirty stories belowground, not far outside the city of Boston.”
“A bunker, then,” Jenna guessed, still trying to make sense of it all. “If it’s not part of the government or military, what is it?”
Alex seemed to consider her reply for a moment longer than was needed. “The compound we’re in, and the gated estate that sits above us on street level, belongs to the Order.”
“The Order,” Jenna repeated, finding that Alex’s explanation was raising more questions about the place than it answered. She’d never been anywhere like this before. It was alien in its high-tech design, a far cry from anything she’d ever seen in rural Alaska or any of the places she’d been in the Lower Forty-eight.
Adding to the strangeness, beneath her slippered feet, the polished white marble was inlaid with glossy black stone that made a running pattern of odd symbols along the floor—arcing flourishes and complex geometric shapes that somewhat resembled tribal tattoos.
Dermaglyphs.
The word leapt into her thoughts out of nowhere, an answer to a question she didn’t even know to ask. It was an unfamiliar word, as unfamiliar as everything about this place and the people who apparently lived here. And yet the certainty with which her mind supplied the term made it feel as though she must have thought or said it thousands of times.
Impossible.
“Jenna, are you all right?” Alex paused in the corridor a couple of steps ahead of where Jenna’s own feet had ceased moving. “Are you tired? We can rest for a minute, if you need to.”
“No. I’m okay.” She felt a frown creasing her forehead as she glanced up from the intricate design on the smooth floor. “I’m just … confused.”
And that was due to more than just the peculiarity of where she found herself now. Everything felt different to her, even her own body. Some part of her intellect knew that after five days unconscious in a sickbed, she probably should be exhausted from even the short distance she’d just walked.
Muscles didn’t naturally rebound from that kind of inactivity without a bit of pain and retraining. She knew that from her own personal experience, from the accident four years ago that had put her in the hospital ICU in Fairbanks. The same accident that had killed her husband and young daughter.
Jenna remembered all too well the weeks of hard rehabilitation it had taken to get her back on her feet and walking again. And yet now, after the ordeal she’d just awakened from, her limbs felt steady and nimble. Completely unaffected by the prolonged lack of use.
Her body felt oddly revived. Stronger, yet, somehow not quite her own.
“None of this makes sense to me,” she murmured, as she and Alex continued their progress down the long corridor.
“Oh, Jen.” Alex touched her shoulder with a gentle hand. “I know about the confusion you must be feeling right now. Believe me, I know. I wish none of this had happened to you. I wish there was some way to take back what you’ve gone through.”
Jenna blinked slowly, registering the depth of her friend’s regret. She had questions—so many questions—but as they walked deeper into the maze of corridors, the mingled sounds of voices carried out from a glass-walled room up ahead. She heard Brock’s deep, rolling baritone and the lighter, quickly spoken, British-tinged syllables of the man named Gideon.
As she and Alex neared the meeting room, she saw that the one called Lucan was there, too, as were Kade and two others who only fortified the large-and-lethal vibe that these guys seemed to wear as casually as their black fatigues and well-stocked weapons belts.
“This is the tech lab,” Alex explained to her. “All the computer equipment you see in there is Gideon’s domain. Kade says he’s some kind of genius when it comes to technology. Probably a genius when it comes to just about everything.”
As they paused in the passageway, Kade glanced up and gave Alex a lingering look through the glass. Electricity crackled in his silver eyes, and Jenna would have to be unconscious in her sickbed not to feel the shared heat between Alex and her man.
Jenna got her own share of looks from the others gathered in the glass-enclosed room. Lucan and Gideon both turned her way, as did two other big men who were not familiar to her. One of them a severe-looking, golden-eyed blond whose stare felt as cold and unfeeling as a blade, the other an olive-skinned man with a thick crown of chocolate-brown waves that accentuated his long-lashed topaz eyes and an unfortunate mass of scars that riddled the left side of his otherwise flawless face. There was curiosity in the men’s frank stares, maybe a bit of suspicion, too.
“That’s Hunter and Rio,” Alex said, indicating the menacing blond and the scarred brunet respectively. “They’re members of the Order, too.”
Jenna gave a vague nod of acknowledgment, feeling as conspicuous in front of these men as she had her first day on the job with the Alaska State Troopers, a fresh-from-the-academy rookie and a female besides. But here, the feeling wasn’t so much about gender discrimination or petty male insecurities. She’d known enough of that bullshit during her tenure with the Staties to realize this was something different. Something a whole lot deeper.
Here, she felt that by virtue of her mere presence, she was treading on sacred ground. In some unspoken way, she got the sense from the five pairs of eyes studying her that in this place, among these people, she was somehow the ultimate outsider.
Even Brock’s dark, absorbing gaze settled on her with a weighty appraisal that seemed to say he wasn’t sure he liked seeing her there, regardless of the care and kindness he’d shown her back in the infirmary.
Jenna wouldn’t have argued that point for a second. She tended to agree with the vibe she was getting through the glass walls of the tech lab. She didn’t belong here. These were not her people.
No, something about each of the hard, unreadable faces fixed on her told her that they were not her kind at all. They were something else … something other.
But after what she’d been through in her cabin in Alaska—after what she’d seen of herself in the infirmary room—could she even be certain of what she was now?
The question chilled her to her bones.
She didn’t want to think about it. Could hardly bear to accept that she’d been fed upon by something as monstrous and terrifying as the creature that had held her prisoner in her own home all those hours. The same creature that had implanted the bit of foreign matter in her body and turned her life—what little had been left of it—inside out.
What was to become of her now?
How would she ever get back to the woman she was before?
Jenna nearly sagged under the weight of more questions she wasn’t ready to consider.
Making it worse, the sense of confusion that had followed her through the corridors of the compound rose up on her again, stronger now. Everything seemed to amplify around her, from the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights over her head—lights that glared too bright for her sensitive eyes—to the accelerating drum of her heartbeat that seemed to be heading for overdrive, pushing too much blood through her veins. Her skin felt too tight, wrapped around a body that was quickening with some strange new awareness. She had felt its stirrings from the moment she’d opened her eyes in the infirmary, and instead of leveling out, it was getting worse.
Some strange new power seemed to be growing inside her.
Stretching out, awakening …
“I’m feeling kind of weird,” she said to Alex, as her temples ticked with the pound of her pulse, her palms going moist where they remained fisted deep inside the pockets of her robe. “I think I need to get out of here, get some air.”
Alex reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Jenna’s face. “Kade’s and my quarters are just up this way. You’re going to feel much better after a hot shower, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Jenna murmured, allowing herself to be guided away from the glass wall of the tech lab and the unnerving stares that followed her.
Several yards ahead in the curving hallway, a pair of elevator doors slid open. Three women walked out wearing snow-dusted winter parkas and wet boots. They were followed by a similarly bundled-up young girl who held a pair of dogs on leashes—a small, exuberant mutt terrier and Alex’s regal gray-and-white wolfdog, Luna, which had apparently also made the recent move from Alaska to Boston.
As soon as Luna’s sharp blue eyes lit on Alex and Jenna, she lunged forward. The girl who held the leash let out a little yelp, more giggle than anything, her parka hood falling back and freeing a mop of blond hair to bounce around her delicate face.
“Hi, Alex!” she said, laughing as Luna pulled her along the corridor in her wake. “We just got back from a walk outside. It’s freezing up there!”
Reaching out to pet Luna’s big head and neck, Alex gave the child a welcoming smile. “Thanks for taking her. I know she likes being with you, Mira.”
The little girl bobbed her head enthusiastically. “I like Luna, too. So does Harvard.”
Whether in protest or agreement, the scrappy-looking terrier barked once and danced frenetically around the larger dog’s legs, stubby tail wagging about sixty miles an hour.
“Hello,” said one of the three women. “I’m Gabrielle. It’s good to see you up and around, Jenna.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex interjected, rising to make quick introductions. “Jenna, Gabrielle is Lucan’s Breedmate.”
“Hi.” Jenna brought her hand out of her robe pocket and extended it in greeting to the pretty auburn-haired young woman. Beside Gabrielle, a striking African-American woman offered a warm smile as she extended her hand in welcome.
“I’m Savannah,” she said, her voice like velvet and cream, instantly making Jenna feel at home. “I’m sure you’ve already met Gideon, my mate.”
Jenna nodded, feeling ill-equipped for pleasantries despite the warmth of the other women.
“And this is Tess,” Alex added, indicating the last of the trio, a heavily pregnant blonde with tranquil, sea-green eyes that seemed wise beyond their years. “She and her mate, Dante, are expecting their son very soon.”
“Just a few more weeks,” Tess said as she briefly clasped Jenna’s hand, her other coming to rest lightly on the large swell of her belly. “We’ve all been very concerned about you since you arrived here, Jenna. Do you need anything? If there’s something we can do for you, I hope you’ll let us know.”
“Can you zap me back in time about a week?” Jenna asked, only half joking. “I’d really love to erase the past several days and go back to my life in Alaska. Can anyone here do that for me?”
An uneasy look passed between the women.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Gabrielle said. Although regret softened her expression, Lucan’s mate spoke with the serene confidence of a woman cognizant of her own authority but disinclined to abuse it. “What you’ve been through is terrible, Jenna, but the only way through it is forward. I am sorry.”
“No sorrier than me,” Jenna said quietly.
Alex murmured a few hushed words of good-bye to the other women. Then she scratched Luna behind the ears and gave the wolfdog a quick kiss on the snout before navigating Jenna back toward their trek up the passageway. Somewhere in the distance, Jenna picked up the harsh grate of metal striking metal, and the muffled sounds of laughter amid a spirited conversation—by the tone of it, a good, old-fashioned pissing contest—between at least one woman and no less than three men.
Jenna shuffled alongside Alex as they turned a corner in the corridor and the din of voices and weaponry faded away. “How many people live here?”
Alex cocked her head, considering. “The Order has ten members right now who live here at the compound. All but Brock, Hunter, and Chase are mated, so that makes seven of us Breedmates, plus Mira.”
“Eighteen people in total,” Jenna said, absently counting them off in her mind.
“Nineteen now,” Alex corrected, as she slanted a gauging look over her shoulder.
“I’m temporary,” Jenna said, walking along, up another length of marble hallway, then pausing behind Alex as she slowed in front of an unmarked door. “As soon as one of your new secret agent pals figures out how to get rid of the thing in my neck, I’ll be leaving. I don’t belong here, Alex. My life is in Alaska.”
The way Alex’s sympathetic smile wavered on her lips put a lurch in Jenna’s pulse.
“Well, here we are.” She opened the door to a private apartment and motioned Jenna inside. She walked ahead of her and turned on a table lamp, filling the spacious quarters with a muted glow. Alex seemed anxious somehow, walking through the place like a whirlwind and talking too fast. “I want you to make yourself at home, Jen. Relax for a minute in the living room, if you like. I’ll get you some fresh clothes and start the shower for you. Unless you’d rather close your eyes for a little while? I could give you one of Kade’s T-shirts to sleep in and turn down the bed for you.”
“Alex.”
She disappeared into the adjacent bedroom, still talking a mile a minute. “Are you hungry? Would you like me to fix you something to eat?”
Jenna walked over to the open doorway. “Tell me what’s going on here. I mean, what’s really going on.”
Finally, Alex paused.
She pivoted her head around and just stared for what felt like a full minute of silence.
“I want to know,” Jenna said. “Damn it, I need to know. Please, Alex, as my friend. Tell me the truth.”
Alex stared at her, let out a long exhalation as she slowly shook her head. “Oh, Jen. There’s so much you don’t know. Things I didn’t know myself until just a couple of weeks ago, after Kade showed up in Harmony.”
Jenna stood there, watching her normally frank and forthright friend struggle for words. “Tell me, Alex. What is this all about?”
“Vampires, Jen.” The word was whispered, but Alex’s gaze didn’t waver. “You know they’re real now. You saw that for yourself. But what you don’t know is that they’re not like we’ve been taught to believe from movies and horror novels.”
Jenna scoffed. “That thing that attacked me was pretty horrific.”
“I know,” Alex continued, imploring now. “I can’t excuse what the Ancient did to you. But hear me out. There are others of his kind that are not so different from us, Jen. On the surface, of course, we aren’t quite the same. They have different needs for survival, but deep down, there is a core of humanity inside them. They have families and friends. They are capable of incredible love and kindness and honor. Just like us, there is good and bad among them, too.”
It wasn’t that long ago—a mere week, in fact—that Jenna would have burst out laughing at hearing something so outlandish as what Alex was telling her now.
But everything had changed since then. A week ago felt like a century from where she was standing now. Jenna couldn’t laugh, couldn’t even muster a word of denial as Alex went on, explaining how the Breed, as they preferred to be called, had come to exist and then thrive for thousands of years in the shadows of the human world.
Jenna could only listen as Alex told her how the Order had been founded centuries ago by Lucan and a handful of others, most of whom were long dead. The men headquartered in this compound were all warriors, including Kade and Brock, even the charmingly geekish Gideon. They were Breed, preternatural and deadly. They were something other, just as Jenna’s instincts had told her.
To a man, the Order’s members, then as now, had pledged themselves to provide protection for both the human race and the Breed, their mission hunting down blood-addicted vampires called Rogues.
Jenna held her breath when Alex softly confessed that when she was a child in Florida, her mother and younger brother were attacked and killed by Rogues. Alex and her father had narrowly escaped with their lives. “The story we told everyone about my mom and Richie when we moved to Harmony was just that, Jen. A story. It was a lie we both wanted to believe. I think Dad eventually did, and then the Alzheimer’s took care of the rest. I almost could have believed our lie, too, until the killings began up in Alaska. Then I knew. I couldn’t run from the truth anymore. I had to face it.”
Jenna closed her eyes, letting all of these incredible realizations settle on her shoulders like a heavy cloak. She could hardly dismiss what she’d been through, no more than she could dismiss the raw pain of her best friend’s experience as a child. Alex’s ordeal was in her past, thankfully. She had carried on. She had found happiness finally, perhaps ironically, with Kade.
Jenna hoped she might be able to move beyond the nightmare she’d endured, but she felt the cold touch of a shackle when she thought about the bit of unknown material floating beneath the base of her skull.
“What about me?” she heard herself murmur. Her voice rose with the spike of anxiety that flooded her bloodstream. “What about the thing that’s inside me, Alex? What is it? How am I going to get rid of it?”
“We don’t have those answers yet, Jenna.” Alex moved closer, concern creasing her brow. “We don’t know, but I promise you, we’ll find a way to help you. Kade and the rest of the Order will do everything in their power to figure this out. In the meantime, they will protect you and make sure you’re well cared for.”
“No.” Jenna wrapped her arms around herself. “All I need is to be back home. I want to go back to Harmony.”
“Oh, Jen.” Alex slowly shook her head. “The life you knew in Alaska is gone now. Everything in Harmony is changed. Precautions had to be taken.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What are you talking about? What precautions? What’s changed?”
“The Order had to make sure that word of the Ancient and the strange happenings around town didn’t leak out to the rest of the population.” Alex’s gaze stayed steady on hers. “Jenna, they scrubbed everyone’s memories of the week surrounding the killings in the bush and the other deaths around Harmony. As far as anyone up there is concerned, you and I have both been gone from Harmony for months already. You can’t go back and raise a lot of questions. It would all come crashing down around us if you do.”
Jenna forced herself to hold it together as she processed everything she was hearing. Vampires and covert headquarters. An alternate world that had existed alongside her own reality for thousands of years. Her best friend of the past two decades having barely survived a vampire attack as a child.
And then the part that brought back a fresh wave of grief: the recent multiple homicides in Harmony, which apparently included her brother. “Tell me what happened to Zach.”
Alex’s face was full of regret. “He had secrets, Jen. A lot of them. Maybe it’s better if you don’t know everything—”
“Tell me,” Jenna said, hating the gentle treatment she was getting, particularly from Alex. “We’ve never let bullshit stand between us, and I sure as hell don’t want to start now.”
Alex nodded. “Zach was dealing drugs and alcohol to the Native populations. He and Skeeter Arnold had been working together for some time. I didn’t figure it out until just before Zach …” She exhaled softly. “When I confronted Zach about what I knew, he got violent, Jen. He pulled a gun on me.”
Jenna closed her eyes, sick to think that her older brother—the decorated cop she strived to emulate practically all her life—was, in fact, corrupt. Granted, they had never been truly close, siblings or not, and they’d been drifting apart more and more in recent years.
God, how many times had she pressed Zach to look into Skeeter Arnold’s questionable activities around Harmony? Now Zach’s reluctance to do so made a lot of sense. He didn’t really care about what was going on in town. He was more concerned with protecting himself. How far would he have gone to protect his dirty little secret?
“Did he hurt you, Alex?”
“No,” she said. “But he would have, Jen. I took off on my snowmachine, out to your place. He followed me. When we got there, he fired off a shot—to scare me, more than anything. Everything happened so fast after that. The next thing I knew, the Ancient had crashed out of your cabin and took him down. After the initial strike, it was over very quickly for him.”
Jenna stared then, for a long moment, utterly at a loss for words. “Jesus Christ, Alex. Everything you’re telling me here … it’s all true? All of it?”
“Yes. You said you wanted to know. I couldn’t withhold it from you, and I think it’s better that you understand.”
Jenna stepped backward, stumbling a bit. She was suddenly awash in confusion. Suddenly swamped in emotion that shortened her breath and put a tight squeeze on her chest. “I have to … need some time alone …”
Alex nodded. “I know how hard this must be for you, Jenna. Believe me, I know.”
She drifted toward the adjoining bathroom, Alex moving across the floor with her, sticking close as though she thought Jenna might collapse. But Jenna’s legs weren’t about to give out on her. She was stunned and shaken by what she’d just heard, but her body and mind were far from weak.
Adrenaline coursed through her, flooding her senses and putting her fight-or-flight instinct on high alert. She forced a calmness into her expression as she looked at Alex now, while inside she felt anything but calm. “I think I’ll take that shower now. I just … I want to be alone for a little while. I need to think …”
“All right,” Alex agreed, ushering her inside the enormous bathroom. “Take whatever time you need. I’ll get you some clothes and shoes, then I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
Jenna nodded, her eyes following Alex to the door and waiting for it to close behind her. Only then did the tears begin to fall. She wiped at them as they streamed down her cheeks, hot as acid, even while the rest of her felt chilled to the core.
She felt lost and scared, as desperate as an animal caught in a trap. She had to get out of this place, even if it meant chewing off her own limb to escape. Even if it meant using a friend.
Jenna cranked the hot water in the massive two-person shower. As the steam began to fill the room, she thought about the elevator that had carried the other women and the young girl down from the outside.
She thought about freedom, and what it might take for her to taste it.
“Still another two bloody hours to sundown,” Brock said, glancing at the clock on the tech lab wall as if he could will the night to come. He pushed off the conference table he’d been leaning against, his legs antsy, his body needing to move. “The days may be short this time of year in New England, but damn, do they crawl sometimes.”
He felt eyes on him as he began a tight prowl of the room. It was only himself, Kade, and Gideon in the tech lab now; Lucan had gone to find Gabrielle, and Hunter and Rio had both left to join Renata, Nikolai, and Tegan in the weapons room for a bit of sparring before the start of the night’s patrols in the city. He should have gone with them. Instead he’d stayed behind in the lab, curious to see the results of Gideon’s latest blood work on Jenna.
He paused behind the computer screen and watched a set of stats scroll on the display. “How much longer is it going to take, Gid?”
For a few seconds, the clatter of fingers racing over a keyboard was the only reply. “I’m just running one last DNA analysis, then we should have some data.”
Brock grunted. Impatient, he crossed his arms over his chest and continued wearing a track in the floor.
“You feeling all right?”
When he pivoted his head, he met Kade’s narrowed, assessing look. He scowled back at the warrior. “Yeah, why?”
Kade shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I’m not used to seeing you so twitchy.”
“Twitchy?” Brock repeated the word like it had been an insult. “Shit. I don’t know what you mean. I’m not twitchy.”
“You’re twitchy,” Gideon put in over the clickety-clack of his work at the computer. “In fact, you’ve been visibly distracted for the past few hours. Ever since Alex’s human friend woke up today.”
Brock felt his scowl deepen even as his pace across the floor grew more agitated. Hell, maybe he was on edge, but only because he was eager for darkness to fall so he could hit the pavement on patrol and do what he’d been trained to do. That was all. It had nothing to do with anything—or anyone—else.
If he was distracted by Jenna Darrow, it was because her presence in the compound was a breach of Order rules. They had never permitted a human inside their headquarters. All of the warriors were acutely aware of that fact, a point made obvious when she and Alex had walked past the tech lab a short time ago. And that this human woman carried something alien inside her—something undetermined, which may or may not prove detrimental to the Order and its mission against Dragos—made her presence there all the more disturbing.
Jenna had everyone on edge to a certain degree. Brock was no different. At least, that’s what he told himself as he paced one final time behind Gideon’s workstation, then exhaled a rough curse.
“Fuck it, I’m outta here. If anything interesting comes in on that blood work before nightfall, I’ll be in the weapons room.”
He strode to the tech lab’s door and paused as the wide glass panel slid open in front of him. No sooner had he stepped across the threshold than Alex came rushing toward the lab from the direction of her and Kade’s quarters.
“She’s gone,” Alex blurted as she entered the room, clearly upset. “It’s Jenna … she’s gone!”
Brock didn’t know why the news should hit his gut like a physical blow. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Alex replied, misery in her eyes.
Kade was at his mate’s side in less than half a second. “What happened?”
Alex shook her head. “She took a shower and got dressed. When she came out of the bathroom she said she was tired. She asked me if she could lie down for a while on the sofa. When I turned around to get her a pillow and spare blanket from the closet, she was just … gone. Our apartment door was wide open into the corridor, but there was no sign of Jenna. I’ve been looking for the last few minutes, but I can’t find her anywhere. I’m worried about her. And I’m sorry, Kade. I should have been more careful. I should have—”
“It’s okay,” he said, gently stroking Alex’s arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe I did. I told her about the Breed and about the Order. I told her everything about Zach, and about how we left things back in Harmony. She had so many questions, and I thought she had a right to know.”
Brock stifled the curse that was riding at the tip of his tongue. He knew damn well that he would have been hard-pressed to lie to Jenna, too.
Kade nodded, sober as he dropped a kiss on Alex’s brow. “It’s okay. You did the right thing. It’s better that she knows the truth up front.”
“I’m just afraid that the truth has sent her into a panic.”
“Ah, Christ,” Gideon muttered from his position in front of the compound’s computer banks. On one of the panels that monitored the estate’s motion detectors, lights started blinking like a Christmas tree. “She’s in the mansion at ground level. Or, rather, she was in the mansion. We’ve got a security breach on an exterior door.”
“I thought all topside points of entry were locked as procedure,” Brock said, not meaning it to come out as the accusation it sounded like.
“Have a look for yourself,” Gideon said, pivoting the monitor as he clipped on a hands-free headset and punched a speed-dial number. “Lucan, we have a situation.”
While the Order’s leader got a quick rundown, Brock stalked over to the computer command center, Kade and Alex following. On the security camera feed from the estate above the compound, one of the mansion’s steel-reinforced lock bars was twisted off its mountings like a piece of taffy. The door was flung open to the daylight outside, the glare of solar rays on the snow-filled yard nearly blinding, even on-screen.
“Holy hell,” Brock muttered.
Beside him, Alex gasped in disbelief. Kade was silent, his gaze as grim as it was stunned when his eyes slid to Brock. On the phone, Gideon was now giving urgent orders to one of the Order’s more formidable females in residence, namely Renata, to head topside on the double and bring Jenna back in.
“I’ve got her location on camera now,” he told Renata. “She’s on the east side of the property, heading southeast on foot. If you take the south service door, you should be able to head her off before she reaches the perimeter fence.”
“The perimeter fence,” Brock murmured. “Jesus Christ, that thing is juiced with more than fourteen thousand volts of electricity.”
Gideon kept talking, advising Renata of Jenna’s progress and position.
“Cut the power,” Brock said. “You have to cut the power to the fence.”
Gideon swiveled a dubious look on him. “And let her waltz right off the property? No can do, my man.”
Brock knew the warrior was right. He knew the smartest, best thing to do for the Order was to ensure that the human woman stayed contained within the compound. But the thought of Jenna coming into contact with a potentially lethal dose of electricity was too much. It was, in a word, unacceptable.
He glanced at the security camera feed and saw Jenna, clad in a white sweater and jeans, her loose brown hair flying behind her as she raced across the snowy yard at a blind clip toward the edge of the property. Straight for the ten-foot-tall fence that hemmed the estate in from all sides.
“Gideon,” he growled, as Jenna’s fleeing form grew smaller on the monitor. “Cut the goddamn power.”
Brock didn’t wait for the other warrior to comply. He stalked over and slammed his hand down on the control panel. Lights blinked on, and a persistent beeping kicked up in warning of the disabled power grid.
A long silence filled the room.
“I see her.” Renata’s voice came over the speaker in the lab. “I’m right behind her.”
They watched on-screen as Nikolai’s mate sped on foot in the direction of Jenna’s trail in the snow. Moments ticked by as they waited for further word.
Finally, Renata spoke, but the curse she hissed into her mouthpiece wasn’t what anyone in the room had hoped to hear. “Goddamn it. No …”
Brock’s veins went cold with dread. “What’s happened?”
“Talk to me,” Gideon said. “What’s going on, Renata?”
“Too late,” she replied, her voice oddly wooden. “I was too late—she got away. She’s gone.”
Gideon leaned in, cocking his head toward Brock. “She climbed the bloody fence, didn’t she?”
“Climbed it?” Renata’s answering laugh was more of a sharp exhalation. “No, she didn’t climb it. She … ah, shit. Believe it or not, I just watched her jump over it.”
CHAPTER
Four
The road hummed beneath Jenna’s jeans-clad backside and the soles of her snow-sodden shoes, the smell of smoked meat and male sweat wafting at her from all directions inside the unlit confines of the delivery van. She sat on the floor among stacked crates and cardboard cartons, jostling with every bump. Her stomach roiled, though whether from the adrenaline that was pouring through her or the cloying mix of processed meat and body odor that hammered her nostrils, she couldn’t be sure.
How she’d managed to get off the compound’s property was a blur. Her head was still swimming with the disturbing revelations of the past few hours, and her senses had been on overdrive from the moment she made the decision to attempt escape. Even now, sights and sounds and motion—every bit of sensory input—seemed to be flying at her in a chaotic blur.
Up in front of the van, the driver and his passenger chattered animatedly in a thick, Slavic-sounding foreign language. They had known enough English to agree to take her into the city when she’d flagged them down on the street outside the estate grounds, and at the moment that had been good enough for her. Except now that they had gone a few miles, she couldn’t help but notice they had stopped smiling at her and trying to talk to her in broken English.
Now the driver cast furtive glances at her in the rearview mirror, and she didn’t like the sound of the low-voiced, chuckling exchanges the two men shared as she bounced around in back of the darkened van.
“How far to downtown?” she asked, holding on to a crate of hard salami as the van took a left through a caution light. Her stomach pitched with the motion, her ears ringing, head pounding. She squinted through the windshield at the front of the vehicle as it headed toward the late-afternoon glow of the city in the distance. “The bus station, yes? That’s where you said you’d take me. How far is it?”
For a second, she wondered if either of them could hear her over the loud rumble of the van’s engine as the driver gave it more gas. The sound seemed deafening to her. But then the passenger pivoted around and said something to her in his own language.
Something that seemed to amuse his lead-footed friend behind the wheel.
A knot of dread formed in Jenna’s gut. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. No bus station. Take me to the police. Po-lice,” she said, dragging out the word so there could be no misunderstanding. She gestured to herself as the driver flicked a scowling glance at her in the mirror. “I’m a cop. I am police.”
She spoke with the no-bullshit edge that came to her like second nature, even all these years since she’d been in uniform. But if the pair of jokers up front picked up on her tone or what she was telling them, they didn’t seem moved to believe her.
“Police?” The driver chuckled as he looked over at his companion. “Nassi, nuk duken si ajo e policisë për ju?”
“No,” the one apparently named Nassi replied, shaking his head, thin lips pulling back from crooked teeth. His thick-browed gaze traveled in a slow crawl over Jenna’s body. “Për mua, ajo duket si një copë e shijshme e gomarit.”
She looks like a tasty piece of ass to me.
Jenna thought the dark leer that Nassi sent her must have been enough to tell her what he’d said, but the words seemed so clear to her. Impossibly clear. She stared at the two men as they began a private conversation in their native tongue. She watched their lips, studied the sounds that should have been entirely foreign to her—words that she couldn’t possibly understand yet, somehow, did.
“I don’t know about you, Gresa, my friend, but I could do with a bit of prime American tail,” Nassi added, so confident that his foreign speech would slip right past her, he had the balls to look Jenna square in the eye as he spoke. “Take this bitch back to the office and let’s you and me have a little fun with her.”
“Sounds good to me.” Gresa laughed and dropped his foot down on the gas pedal, sending the delivery van speeding under a highway overpass and into the throng of busy traffic.
Oh, God.
Jenna’s feeling of dread from a few minutes ago went as cold as ice in her belly now.
The sudden jolt of acceleration threw her back on her ass. She scrambled to hold on to the crates around her, knowing her chances of escaping the fast-moving vehicle were nil. If the fall out of the van didn’t kill her, the roaring cars and trucks flying by on both lanes beside them certainly would.
Making everything worse, her head was beginning to spin with the barrage of lights and noise from outside the van. Automobile exhaust fumes, coupled with the stench inside the vehicle, formed a nauseating olfactory stew that had her stomach turning on itself, threatening to rise up on her. All of her surroundings seemed amplified and too intense, as though the world had somehow gotten more vivid, more choked with detail.
Was she losing her mind?
After all that she’d been through recently, after all she’d seen and heard, she shouldn’t be surprised if she was cracking up.
And as she sat back, miserable against the crates and cartons, listening to the two men discuss their ideas for her in eager, violent detail, she got the feeling that her sanity wasn’t the only thing at risk right now. Nassi and his friend Gresa had some rather nasty plans for her back at their office. Plans that included knives and chains and soundproof walls so no one would hear her screams, if Jenna could trust her sudden newfound fluency in their language.
They were arguing over which of them would get to enjoy her first, as they wheeled the van off the main road and into a ratty section of the city. The pavement narrowed, streetlights growing more sparse the deeper they traveled into what looked to be an industrial area. Warehouses and long, red-brick buildings crowded the street and alleyways.
The delivery van bounced over large potholes and uneven asphalt, the tires crunching in the iced-over brown slush that bunched on both sides of the pavement.
“Home sweet home,” Nassi said, in English this time, grinning at her from around his passenger seat. “Ride is over. Time to collect our fare.”
The two men laughed as the driver put the van in park and cut the engine. Nassi came out of his seat and started to head back inside the van. Jenna knew she would have only a few seconds to act—precious seconds to disable one or both of the men and bolt.
She inched into a stable position, preparing for the moment she knew was coming.
Nassi smiled broadly as he walked farther into the vehicle. “What do you have to offer us, hmm? Let me see.”
“No,” Jenna said, shaking her head and feigning the helpless female. “No, please.”
He chuckled wolfishly. “I like a woman who will beg. A woman who knows her place.”
“Please, don’t,” Jenna said as he stepped ever closer. The stink of him nearly made her retch, but she kept her eyes fixed on him. When he got within arm’s length of her, she thrust out her left hand, palm forward, as though to physically hold him off.
She knew he would grab her.
She counted on it, and could barely contain the answering jolt of triumph that surged through her veins as he snatched her by the wrist and hauled her up off the floor of the van.
She put her weight into the movement, using his own brute force to launch herself at him. With the heel of her free hand, she smashed him hard under the nose, driving soft cartilage up into his septum with a bone-crunching pop.
“Aaghh!” Nassi howled in agony. “Putanë! Bitch, you will pay for that!”
Blood gushed from his face and onto her as he thrust his hands out and roared toward her. Jenna feinted left, dodging his grasp. Up in front of the van, she heard the other man scrambling around, moving out of the driver’s seat to fumble with the console between the seats.
She didn’t have time to worry about him right now. Nassi was furious, and in order to get out of the van, she’d have to get through him first.
Jenna locked her hands together and brought her elbows down on her attacker’s spine. He shouted in pain, coughing as he made another sloppy grab for her. She eluded him again, dancing out of his reach as though he were standing still.
“Puthje topa tuaj lamtumirë, ju copille skëmtuar!” she whispered to him tightly, a threat she made good on when she then brought her knee up between his legs and nailed him with a sharp blow to the groin.
Nassi went down like a ton of bricks.
Jenna spun on a scream of her own, ready to do battle with his friend Gresa now.
She didn’t see the gun in the other man’s hand until the flare of the shot burned as bright as lightning. The sudden crack of the bullet as it exploded toward her was deafening. She blinked, dazed and oddly detached, as the searing fire of its impact slammed into her.
“Have we got anything?”
Lucan strode into the tech lab where Brock, Kade, Alex, Renata, and Nikolai were all gathered around Gideon’s workstation.
Brock had his hands braced on the desk, staring over Gideon’s shoulder at the monitor. He gave Lucan a grim shake of his head. “Nothing solid yet. Still searching DMV records for possible matches.”
Jenna had been gone more than an hour. Their best lead on where she might have fled was a couple seconds of surveillance footage captured by a mounted security camera on the south perimeter of the estate.
At roughly the same time that Renata saw Jenna leap the fence and disappear off the grounds, an unmarked white delivery van drove by on the street adjacent to the property. Gideon had only been able to get a partial reading on the van’s Massachusetts commercial plates before it rounded a corner and disappeared out of range. In the time since, he’d hacked into the Boston DMV and had been running plate number combinations, trying to narrow down whom the van was registered to and where it might be found.
Brock was sure that if they located that van, Jenna couldn’t be far behind.
“Whether we’ve got solid leads or not, as soon as the sun sets in the next hour and a half, we’re gonna need patrols scouring the city,” Lucan said. “We cannot afford to lose this woman before we understand what she might mean to our operations.”
“And I can’t afford to let anything happen to my dearest friend,” Alex said, pointing out the emotional wrinkle in the whole situation with Jenna. “She’s upset and hurting. What if something bad happens to her out there? She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“We’ll find her,” Brock said firmly. “I promise you, we will.”
Kade met his gaze and gave a solemn nod. After the stunning circumstances of Jenna’s escape from the compound, finding the human woman with the bit of alien material inside her body was a mission none of the warriors would shirk. Jenna Darrow had to be retrieved, no matter what it took.
“Hang on, hang on,” Gideon murmured. “This could prove interesting. I just got a couple of new hits on the latest sequence. One of them is registered to an auto garage in Quincy.”
“The other one?” Brock asked, leaning in to get a closer look.
“Meat-packing plant in Southie,” Gideon said. “Outfit called Butcher’s Best. Says they specialize in personal cuts and catering.”
“No shit,” Renata said, her chin-length dark hair swinging as she pivoted her head to look at the others gathered in the lab. “The banking exec who lives a couple of miles up the road is hosting his Christmas house party next weekend. Makes sense that a catering van might be up this way.”
“Yeah, it does,” Lucan agreed. “Gideon, let’s get an address for this place.”
“Coming right up.” He hit a few keys and both the street listing and a satellite map appeared on-screen. “There it is, down in the underbelly of Southie.”
Brock’s eyes fixed on the location, burning as hot as laser beams. He pivoted around and stalked out of the tech lab, determination in every hard clip of his boot heels on the marble floor.
Behind him, Kade dashed out of the lab into the corridor. “What the fuck, man? The sun won’t be setting for a good while. Where are you going?”
Brock kept walking. “I’m gonna bring her back.”
CHAPTER
Five
The sun was just beginning to dip below the tip of the Boston skyline as Brock swung one of the Order’s SUVs onto a side street in Southie. Under his black leather duster, he was geared up in UV-protective black fatigues, gloves, and wraparound shades. At a decade or so past a century and several bloodlines removed from first-generation Breeds like Lucan, Brock’s skin could withstand the sun’s rays for a short period of time, but there wasn’t a member of his kind alive who didn’t treat the daylight with a healthy dose of respect.
He had no intention of frying his own bacon, but the thought of sitting at the compound waiting on twilight while an innocent woman was wandering the city, alone and upset, had been too much for him to stand. His decision was made all the more sound when he spotted the nondescript white delivery van sitting outside the address Gideon had traced. Even before Brock got out of the Rover, the odor of fresh-spilled human blood reached his nose.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, stalking through the frozen slush and street grime toward the vehicle.
He peeked inside the passenger window and his gaze snagged on a spent bullet casing on the floor between the seats. The coppery smell of hemoglobin was stronger here, nearly overpowering.
Being Breed, he couldn’t control his body’s reaction to the presence of fresh blood. Saliva surged into his mouth, his canine teeth ripping farther out of his gums until the fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue.
Instinctively, he dragged the scent into his nostrils, trying to determine if the blood was Jenna’s. But she wasn’t a Breedmate; her blood scent did not carry its own unique stamp as did Alex’s or that of the other females at the compound.
A Breed male could track the scent of a Breedmate for miles, no matter how faint. Jenna could be bleeding sight unseen right under Brock’s nose, and there would be no way for him to tell if it was her or any other Homo sapiens.
“Damn it,” he growled, swinging his head in the direction of the meat-packaging plant nearby. The fact that someone had recently bled inside the delivery van was all the proof he needed that Jenna was likely in danger.
His rage simmered toward boiling in anticipation of what he would find inside the squat red-brick building. From the street as he approached the place, he could hear men’s voices and the hum of a ventilation system compressor droning on the roof.
Brock crept around to a side door and peered inside its small wire-reinforced window. Nothing but packing crates and boxes of wrapping material. He grasped the metal knob and twisted it off in his fist. Tossing it into a pile of filthy snow by the stoop, he slipped inside the building.
His combat boots were silent on the concrete floor as he moved through the storage and cleanup area, toward the center of the small plant. The rumble of conversation grew louder as he progressed, at least four distinct voices, all of them male, all of them edged with the coarse syllables of an Eastern European language.
Something had them agitated. One of the men was shouting and upset, coughing wetly and wheezing more than breathing.
Brock followed the long, grated drain that ran down the center of the room. His nostrils filled with the chemical stench of cleaning products and the sickly sweet odor of old animal blood and spices.
The open doorway ahead of him was curtained with several vertical strips of plastic. As he got within a few feet of it, a man speaking Albanian over his shoulder came in from the other room. He wore a blood-smeared apron, his bald head covered in an elasticized plastic cap, a large cleaver clutched in his hand.
“Hey!” he exclaimed as he pivoted his head and saw Brock standing there. “What you do in here, asshole? Private property! Get the fuck out!”
Brock took a menacing step toward him. “Where is the woman?”
“Eh?” The guy seemed caught off guard for a second before he regrouped and brandished his cleaver in front of Brock’s face. “No woman here. Get lost!”
Brock moved fast, knocking the blade out of the man’s hand and crushing his throat in his fist before the son of a bitch had a chance to scream. Stepping around the silenced corpse, Brock parted the plastic curtain and walked into the main processing area of the building.
The presence of spilled human blood was stronger in here, still fresh. Brock spotted a man seated alone on a stool inside a windowed office, a bunched-up, red-soaked cloth held under his nose. In this area of the building, sides of beef and pork hung suspended on large hooks. The room was chilly, ripe with the stink of blood and death.
Brock’s boots chewed up the distance as he stalked to the office and threw open the door. “Where is she?”
“W-what the fuck?” The man scrambled up off the stool. His heavily accented voice was clumsy with an unnatural lisp, nasal from the severe break in his nose. “What is going on? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell you don’t.” Brock reached out and grabbed a fistful of the guy’s blood-splattered shirt. He lifted him off the ground, letting his feet dangle four inches from the concrete. “You picked up a woman outside the city. Tell me what you’ve done with her.”
“Who are you?” the man croaked, the whites of his eyes growing wider as he struggled—and failed—to get loose. “Please, let me go.”
“Tell me where she is, and maybe I won’t kill you.”
“Please!” the man wailed. “Please, don’t hurt me!”
Brock chuckled darkly, then his acute hearing picked up the sound of rushing footsteps, moving stealthily behind the butcher tables and equipment in the adjacent room. He glanced up … just in time to see the glint of a steel pistol barrel trained on him.
The shot erupted, shattering the office window and ripping into the flesh of his shoulder.
Brock roared, not from pain but fury.
He swung his gaze on the bastard who shot him, pinning the human with the fiery amber light of his eyes, which had transformed from their normal dark brown to the molten color of his other, more lethal nature. Brock curled his lips back off his teeth and fangs and bellowed in rage.
There was a high-pitched shriek as the man holding the gun turned tail and ran.
“Oh, Christ!” wailed the wheezing human whom Brock still held fast by the throat. “I do nothing to her—I swear! Bitch broke my nose, but I didn’t touch her. G-Gresa,” he sputtered, lifting his hand to point in the direction his buddy had fled. “He shot her, not me.”
At that unwelcome newsflash, Brock’s fingers tightened around the fragile human windpipe. “She’s been shot? Tell me where the fuck she is. Now!”
“T-the chiller,” he gasped. “Oh, shit. Please don’t kill me!”
Brock squeezed punishingly harder, then tossed the blubbering son of a bitch against the far wall. The human cried out in pain, then dropped in a sniveling heap on the concrete floor. “You’d better pray she’s all right,” Brock said, “or you’re gonna wish I had killed you just now.”
Jenna huddled on the floor of the large walk-in refrigerator, her teeth chattering, body shivering in the cold.
Outside the sealed steel door, loud noises sounded. Heavy crashes, men shouting … the abrupt crack of gunfire and the bright clatter of breaking glass. Then a roar so intense and deadly, it jerked her head upright just as it was starting to become too weighty to keep lifted, her eyelids growing too difficult to hold open.
She listened, hearing only silence lengthening now.
Someone neared the cold cell that held her. She didn’t need to hear the thud of approaching footsteps to know that someone was there. As chill as it was inside, the blast of icy air coming from the other side of the locked door was arctic.
The latch gave a snick of protest in the instant before the entire steel panel was ripped from its hinges on a deafening metallic squeal. Steam poured out of the opening, shrouding a massive, black-clad mountain of a man.
No, not a man, she realized in dazed astonishment.
A vampire.
Brock.
His lean face was so stark, she hardly recognized him. Huge fangs gleamed white behind the broad mouth that was drawn grim and furious. His breath sawed in and out between his lips, and behind a dark pair of wraparound sunglasses, twin coals blazed with a heat Jenna felt as surely as a touch when he scanned the fogged space and found her slumped and shivering in the corner.
Jenna didn’t want to feel the rush of relief that swamped her as he strode inside and dropped down onto his haunches beside her. She didn’t want to trust the feeling that said he was a friend, someone to help her. Someone she needed, in that moment. Maybe the only person who could help her.
She started to tell him she was okay, but her voice was thready and weak. His ember-bright eyes seared her through the veil of his dark shades. He glanced down and hissed when he saw her wounded thigh and the blood that had soaked the leg of her jeans and formed a small pool beneath her.
“Don’t talk,” he said, stripping off his black leather gloves and pressing his fingers against both sides of her neck. His touch was light but comforting, seeming to warm her from the inside out. The chill drifted away from her, taking the pain of her gunshot wound with it. “You’re going to be all right now, Jenna. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
He stripped off his black duster and wrapped it around her shoulders. Jenna sighed as the heat from his body and the scent of him—leather and spice and strong, deadly male—enveloped her. As he leaned back, she noticed that a bullet hole had torn through the beefy round of his shoulder.
“You’re bleeding, too,” she murmured, more alarmed by his injury than by the thought that her rescuer was a vampire.
He shrugged off her concern. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll live. It takes more than that to slow down one of my kind. You, however …”
The way he said it, the grave look that ran across his face as his shaded eyes drifted to her bleeding thigh, seemed almost accusatory.
“Come on,” he said, reaching out to gently scoop her into his arms. “I’ve got you now.”
He carried her out of the refrigerated room like she was nothing but feathers in his arms. At five foot eight and fit, a tomboy from the time she took her first steps, Jenna had never been the type to be toted around like some kind of fragile fairy princess. As a former cop, she’d never expected that from a man, nor wanted it.
She had always been the protector, the first one into danger. She hated that she was so vulnerable now, but Brock’s solid arms felt so good underneath her, she couldn’t muster the will to be offended. She held on tight as he strode through the small plant, past the grisly meat hangers and more than one broken, lifeless person lying on the floor.
Jenna turned her head away and buried her face in Brock’s muscular chest as they cleared the last room of the plant and exited to the outside. It was dusk on the street, the snow-packed alleyway and crouching buildings bathed in the darkening blue of evening.
As Brock stepped off the stoop, a sleek black SUV rolled up from a cross street. It came to a stop at the curb and Kade jumped out of the backseat.
“Ah, fuck,” Alex’s mate growled. “I smell blood.”
“She’s been shot,” Brock said, his deep voice grave.
Kade stepped closer. “You okay?” he asked her, his light gray eyes taking on a faint yellow light in the gathering darkness. Jenna nodded her reply, watching as the points of his lengthening fangs glinted behind his upper lip. “Niko and Renata are with me,” he told Brock. “What’s the situation inside?”
Brock grunted, dark humor beneath the dangerous tone of his voice. “Messy.”
“Figures,” Kade said, quirking a wry look at him. “You don’t look so good yourself, my man. Nice hit to the shoulder. We need to get Jenna back to the compound before she loses any more blood. Renata’s behind the wheel of the Rover. She can take her in while the rest of us clean up inside.”
“The human is my responsibility,” Brock said, his chest vibrating against Jenna’s ear. “She stays with me. I will bring her to the compound.”
Jenna caught the look of curiosity that flashed across Kade’s face at Brock’s statement. He narrowed his eyes but said nothing as Brock strode past him to the idling SUV, Jenna carried lightly in his arms.
CHAPTER
Six
How we doing?” Renata asked Brock from behind the wheel of the black Rover as the vehicle sped out of South Boston on a course for the Order’s compound. Her green eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, slender dark brows knit in a frown. “Our ETA’s about fifteen minutes out. Everything okay back there?”
“Yeah,” Brock replied, glancing down to where Jenna lay, resting quietly across his lap in the backseat. He had sliced off one of the seatbelts and tied it around her thigh as a tourniquet, hoping it would help stanch the blood loss. “She’s hanging in.”
Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted and tinged with blue from the cold she’d been subjected to inside the meat chiller. Her body still trembled under the cover of his leather duster, though he guessed her shuddering was more in reaction to shock than any amount of discomfort. His Breed talent was making sure of that. With one palm cupped around her nape, the other stroking her temple, he drew Jenna’s pain into himself.
Renata cleared her throat pointedly as she watched him in the mirror. “What about you, big guy? Hell of a lot of blood back there. You sure you wouldn’t rather drive and I’ll look after her until we get to the compound? Say the word and I’ll pull over. Won’t take but a minute.”
“Keep driving. Situation’s under control back here,” Brock said, although he wondered if Niko’s shrewd Breedmate would buy it, given that his growled reply was spoken through gritted teeth and fully extended fangs.
It had been hard to contain his reaction to Jenna bleeding when he first found her inside the building. Now that he was trapped in close confines with her, feeling the heat of her spilling blood through the leather of his duster, smelling its coppery fragrance, and hearing the low thud of each heartbeat that pushed still more blood from her wound, Brock was living a private hell in the back of the SUV.
He was Breed, and there was none among his kind who could resist the pull of fresh human blood. It didn’t help him any that the last time he’d fed had been … hell, he wasn’t even sure. Probably pushing a week, which would have been bad even in the best of circumstances. And these were hardly the best of circumstances.
Brock focused all his effort on pulling Jenna’s pain. Easier to keep his mind off his hunger that way. It also helped keep him from noticing how soft her skin was, and how the curves of her body fit so nicely against him.
The absorbed pain of her injury—and the slighter irritation of his own—was the only thing that kept his body from having yet another sort of reaction to her, as well. Even then, he couldn’t totally ignore the uncomfortable tightness of his fatigues, or the way the light flutter of her pulse against his fingertips where they rested against her nape made him yearn to put his mouth against her instead.
To taste her, in all the ways a man could crave a woman.
It took a great deal of effort to shake the thought from his mind. Jenna was a mission, that’s all. And she was human, with the fragility and short shelf life to go along with it. Although if he was being honest with himself, he’d be the first to admit that he had long preferred mortal females over their sisters who were born Breedmates.
When it came to romantic entanglements, he tried to keep things casual. Nothing too permanent. Nothing that might last long enough for him to let down a woman who had grown to trust him.
Yeah, he’d already been there, done that. And he damn well had the guilt and self-loathing to prove it. No desire to go down that particular stretch of road ever again.
Before his memories could drag him toward the shadows of his past failings, Brock glanced up and saw the gated entrance of the Order’s compound looming ahead. Renata announced their arrival to Gideon on her hands-free headset, and as the Rover rolled to a stop at the tall iron gate, it unlocked and swung open to welcome them inside.
“Gideon says the infirmary is prepped and waiting for us,” she said as she drove to the fleet garage in back.
Brock grunted in response, hardly able to speak now for the crowding presence of his fangs. The whole back section of the Rover was bathed in amber, the glow of his transformed eyes throwing off light like a bonfire even from behind the dark lenses of his shades.
Renata parked the vehicle inside the large hangar, then jogged around to help him get Jenna out of the backseat and into the elevator that would take them down from street level to the compound headquarters belowground. Jenna roused as the doors closed and the hiss of the hydraulics went into action.
“Put me down,” she mumbled, struggling a bit in Brock’s arms as though she was annoyed with the assistance. “I’m not in pain. I can stand up by myself. I can walk—”
“No, you can’t,” he said, cutting her off, his words terse and rasping. “Your body is in shock. Your leg needs tending. You won’t be walking anywhere.”
Through the daze of her lingering shock, Jenna glo
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About the Author
Lara Adrian lives in New Hampshire with her husband where she is at work on the next novel in her sexy vampire series featuring the Midnight Breed.