by Lara Adrian
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 ling
ering 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.