by Lara Adrian
“Great. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Things had been hectic at the shelter, but it had been a good day, even a great one. They'd welcomed three new families into the sanctuary, put a roof over seven heads, and hot food into hungry mouths. The fact that every one of the transitions had gone smoothly and there hadn't been some violent cretin banging on the door demanding to see "his woman" as the new arrivals got settled had to be some kind of record.
Now, at just after midnight, the house was blessedly quiet. No infants squalling or sounds of muffled weeping from the newcomers. Sia let the silence wrap around her like a blanket as she finished in the laundry room and returned to the kitchen.
A plate of crunchy biscotti waited in the center of the kitchen table while Phaedra carried two mugs of steaming hot chocolate over from the stove. “I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to come and help out here at the shelter, Tamisia. I don’t know how I would’ve managed without you these past weeks.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you.” Sia took one of the mugs from her friend and gently blew at some of the steam. “I’d have gone mad already without something to keep me busy and a comfortable place to stay.”
“Comfortable?” She laughed softly. “Now you’re only being polite. The house hardly ever quiets down and that tiny attic bedroom you’re in upstairs is hardly what you’re used to.” Her gaze turned wry as she passed the plate of biscotti across the table. “Or was your brief stay with the Breed warriors of the Order so bad it makes this seem like an improvement?”
Sia scoffed at the reminder of how she’d first arrived in Rome. The terms of her exile had placed her in the care of the Breed, a blood-drinking race of beings who had long been her people’s primary, most dangerous enemy. Now the Order and the colony were dancing around a tenuous truce in order to unite against a greater enemy.
Sia wasn’t sure the partnership could ever work, let alone last. Her kind and theirs were too different, polar opposites, in fact. Atlanteans thrived on light and cherished peace. The Breed ruled the darkness and fed off bloodshed, violence in their very nature.
“Two weeks among those heathens was more than enough.” Sia dipped the edge of her biscotti into her cocoa. “Anything would be an improvement over that.”
Although to be fair, not all of the Breed were heathens. In the Order’s Rome command center, she had been treated kindly enough. In particular, by the group’s leader, Lazaro Archer, and his Breedmate, Melena. Most of the other warriors and their mates had been welcoming, too, if not a little curious about the disgraced Atlantean suddenly thrust upon them as an uninvited guest.
Only one warrior, a surly, menacing behemoth of a male named Trygg, looked at her as if she were the enemy in their midst. He’d barely uttered a word around her the entire time she was there. Not that she had wanted him to. Some of the other warriors’ mates had disclosed to her that Trygg had been an assassin for many years before he came to the Order. Not by his own will, but as part of an infamous training program created by a madman named Dragos.
Trygg certainly looked the part of a killer. Sia had been away from the command center for a month, yet the memory of his rugged, scarred face, shaved head, and cold, disapproving dark eyes still sent a wave of unease all the way into her bones.
Yes, anything was an improvement over spending another minute under the same roof with him.
Phaedra took a sip from her mug, smiling as she set it down. “Well, I’m grateful that you’re here, Tamisia. You were wonderful with the children today, especially Angelina. I think her mama likes you too.”
“Really?” Sia couldn’t hide her surprise. “How can you tell? Rosa is so meek and quiet.”
Secretive, she wanted to say, but held her observation back.
“Rosa is a shy one,” Phaedra agreed, “but that could change in time. We have no idea what she’s been through.”
“She hasn’t opened up to you either?”
Phaedra shook her head. “Not yet. But I did see her talking with one of the other mothers today, so I’m hopeful that she’ll eventually come out of her shell a bit.”
A small thump sounded above their heads. It wasn’t entirely out of place to hear movement in the house, but something about it—something about the abrupt way it went silent immediately afterward—made Sia’s veins go cold.
“Probably just someone getting up to find the bathroom,” Phaedra whispered.
“Probably,” Sia replied. She had no reason to think otherwise, but every preternatural instinct she had was screaming in alarm. When she glanced at Phaedra, she saw a flicker of the same stark awareness in her golden eyes too. “I’ll go take a look.”
“Tamisia, the house is completely locked down and secure. All of the alarms are engaged. No one can get in without the whole perimeter lighting up and tripping a dozen sirens.”
And yet someone had.
Sia was all but certain of it.
And then, upstairs, a sharp female shriek confirmed her fears. The scream sounded worse than pained. The quiet that followed lasted not even a moment, then a baby started wailing.
“Oh, no.” Phaedra went chalk white. “That’s coming from Rosa and Angelina’s room.”
Sia nodded, grim. No wonder the young mother had seemed so afraid when she arrived a couple of days ago. Her nightmare was far from over. By the awful sounds of it, the man Rosa was running from had decided she wasn’t getting away so easily.
Cold dread swept her, seeping into her marrow.
The whole house was coming awake now, vibrating with confusion and terror.
All Sia heard was the piercing wails of the innocent little baby she’d left sleeping so peacefully just a short while ago.
Dammit, no.
Hot rage replaced the chill and her vision blurred into a red haze.
“Stay here, Phaedra. Call for help.”
“Tamisia, what will you do?”
She didn’t know exactly. There was no time for a plan. She only knew she had to act.
Without answering, she raced for the stairs, pausing only long enough to issue a sharp command to her friend. “The police, Phaedra. Do it now.”
Sia was immortal, inhumanly powerful, but she wasn’t a fighter. Never had been. She was a politician, shielded by a contingent of Atlantean guards who would fight at her bidding. But none of that mattered as she flew up the steps and past the open doors and terrified faces of the shelter’s other residents.
“Back inside, all of you. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”
No one balked at her hushed orders. One by one, the frightened women and handful of small children retreated, shutting their doors.
Pausing outside Rosa’s room, Sia caught the muffled sound of a gravely male voice behind the door. “It’s gotta be here somewhere. Keep looking! Santino said no loose ends.”
Suspicion pricked at Sia’s conscience. This didn’t sound like a violent ex-lover coming back to harm Rosa. This was something else. And no less dangerous.
Sia lifted her foot high and kicked the panel so hard it blasted off the hinges.
She’d anticipated one man when she came upstairs, but inside the room were two. One was crouched inside Rosa’s closet, hastily tossing her scant belongings. The contents of her small bureau were already dumped on the floor near him.
The other intruder, a massive male dressed all in black, stood beside Rosa’s bed, his back to Sia. Rosa dangled from his grasp around her neck, her bare feet hanging several inches off the mattress. Her petite body was limp, lifeless. Her gentle brown eyes gaped open, blank and unseeing.
“No!” Sia roared, even though she realized it was already too late to save her. “Let her go!”
Grief swamped her along with her rage. She’d failed Rosa. She could not fail Angelina too. The baby’s unrelenting cries pierced the room. Sia threw a quick glance to the crib where Angelina writhed and flailed.
At least the child was unharmed. Her wails had been torture when Sia heard
them from outside the room. Now they gave her strength and a deadly, furious resolve.
“I said put her down.”
Rosa’s attacker grunted, swinging his dark, shaggy head around to look at Sia.
Fiery amber eyes glowed like lit coals in his skull. His chuckle was inhuman, unearthly, his lips peeled back in a profane imitation of a smile. And within that smile, enormous fangs glinted in the darkness of the room.
Breed.
Sia swallowed as he pivoted around to face her head-on.
“Okay,” he snarled. His rough growl was the voice she’d heard on the other side of the door. “If that’s what you want, bitch, I’ll put her down.”
Barking out a coarse laugh, he threw Rosa to the floor, then kicked her out of his way as if she were nothing. His glowing eyes were wild and unfocused, his body trembling from head to toe. Something about him wasn’t right. A strange odor emanated from him, something sickly sweet that made her stomach turn.
She didn’t have time to contemplate what her instincts were trying to tell her.
He lowered his head and charged her.
Sia felt a great wave of energy rise up from the pit of her being. It exited through her raised hands in a powerful burst of light and strength. The force of it collided with the Breed male’s massive body, sending him crashing against the far wall.
“What the fuck!” The human who’d been preoccupied with Rosa’s personal belongings now scrambled to turn around in the open closet, his skinny limbs refusing to cooperate. Planted on his backside amid the contents of Rosa’s drawers and handbag, his bleary eyes bulged as he looked from Sia to the behemoth Breed male she’d just knocked cold without laying so much as a finger on him.
Power still thrummed deep within Sia, fueled by her fury.
“Wait!” The man held up one hand in surrender. “None of this is my fault! The bitch should’ve known better than to run from Santino. Should’ve known she’d get caught eventually.”
As he spoke, Sia saw him fumble with his other hand to grab something from beside him.
She didn’t realize it was a gun until he aimed it at her with trembling fingers. Without hesitation, he squeezed the trigger again and again and again.
Chapter 2
Son of a bitch.
It was supposed to be a recon mission, nothing more. Now Trygg was cooling his heels in an alleyway across from an old three-story house near the train station, waiting for the two assholes he’d been tailing to wrap up their apparent breaking and entering so he could resume his surveillance of them.
Or, rather, he had been waiting.
Until the moment one of the windows on the second floor lit up with what appeared to be a cosmic explosion of pure white energy. Followed by gunfire.
A lot of gunfire.
“Fuck it.”
He emerged out of the shadows and headed for the house.
The Order had specifically instructed him not to do anything to alert Roberto Santino or his crew to his presence during this intel-gathering mission. Trygg had been following Santino’s muscle, a Breed male named Franco, for the better part of a week now. In the process, Trygg had two of the three set points pinned into the triangulation formula he’d mapped out and was only a couple more data points from being able to nail Santino’s lair down to a quarter-mile radius.
Which meant the Order was as close as they’d ever been to locating and taking down one of the most dangerous drug kingpins of Europe.
That mission was a must-do. There were thousands of garden variety narcotics dealers in the world, both human and Breed, and although the Order would never be able to stop them all, Santino was different. The human made no secret of his hatred for the Breed, and he was indulging in that sentiment by dealing in Red Dragon, the worst thing to hit Trygg’s kind since its predecessor, Crimson, some twenty years ago.
Secretly manufactured and only effective on the Breed, Red Dragon was a problem nobody needed. Not when relations with the human population in general were already strained. Add in persistent, growing problems with terror groups like Opus Nostrum, and more recent conflicts with the Atlanteans and their unpredictable queen, Selene, and the dead last thing the Order wanted was an epidemic of blood-crazed Breed civilians raising hell—and inciting panic—in all corners of the globe.
In a word, this situation with Santino was war. And collateral damage was to be expected in any war. Not what the Order wanted, but there were times it couldn't be helped. Trygg knew his mission. His commander, Lazaro Archer, had spelled out the rules of engagement for him in no uncertain terms: Anything that jeopardized the prime objective was verboten.
Too bad following rules wasn’t Trygg’s strong suit.
He stalked across the street, certain this was a bad fucking idea. The cries of a baby that had been faint even with his preternaturally sharp hearing intensified tenfold as he leapt to a small wrought-iron balcony on the second story of the house. Over the wailing of the infant in the next room, sounds of a struggle continued. And as troubling as the racket was, the putrid stench of a Breed male high on Red Dragon made Trygg’s own blood boil with rage.
The point of entry he stood at was equipped with a remarkably sophisticated alarm system, but it was no match for his Breed ability. With a silent command, he disabled the sensors and cut the heat registers on the glass before mentally freeing the lock on the balcony doors.
It was the same method Santino’s Breed thug had used to let himself and his human companion inside a few minutes ago.
What the hell business did they have here?
And where had that blast of white light come from?
He’d have to sort all of that out later. Right now, he needed to neutralize the situation inside the house before things went any further sideways.
A fresh chorus of screams went up as he pushed open the glass doors and slipped inside what he realized now was another bedroom in the house. One occupied by three women of varying ages, all of them clad in nightshirts or robes, huddled together and shrieking at him in terror.
He scowled at the fearful gaggle of females, a response that only made them scream louder. Shit. He knew he was a frightful sight just based on his size and width alone. With his shaved head and the jagged scar that dug deep into the flesh of his left cheek from below his eye to his squared jaw, his looks bordered on nightmarish.
His fangs didn’t help, he was sure. The points dug into his tongue as he glowered at the trembling women. “Be quiet. I’m not here to hurt you.”
It was a feeble attempt to reassure them, but they were beyond reasoning anyway. And he had neither the skill nor the time to try.
On a snarl, he touched the forehead of the woman nearest to him. “Sleep,” he commanded her, putting her into an instant trance.
The two others went down just as swiftly.
Of all the weapons at his disposal, using his Breed ability to manipulate someone’s mind was the one he employed the least. In fact, he hated having to use it. As a former Hunter, raised in captivity and trained to kill by a madman named Dragos, Trygg knew what it was like to be controlled, to be forced into doing something at another’s will.
For the first fourteen years of his life, he’d been enslaved to the brutal program, compelled to obey through ruthless conditioning and an ultraviolet collar that would have obliterated him if he’d refused any command.
But Dragos was only the first of Trygg’s masters.
The last of them had sliced his face wide open—just before he killed her.
Trygg shook off the old memories as an animal roar shook the walls from the room next door. Franco was a sadistic individual in general, but if the Breed male was hopped up on Red Dragon tonight, Trygg hated to think of the violence he was capable of now.
Death and gun smoke clung to the air in the hallway. There was something else in the air too. Something peculiar, like the scent of a recent thunderstorm.
The door to the neighboring bedroom had been smashed off its hinges. Fro
m inside, the infant continued to cry. Trygg leapt over the broken panel and into the midst of a scene he never would have imagined.
Three unmoving bodies lay on the floor. A human woman, crumpled like a broken doll beside the narrow bed. Another human, a scrawny male with greasy hair and the sallow face of a crack addict, sprawled in a dead slump inside the open closet as if a great gale force had blown him there.
And the third—the biggest shock of all—Santino’s man Franco, lying prone on the floor where he’d been taken down by the woman who stood over him, her long legs straddling his body from behind. The tall, slender blonde held the immense Breed male’s head gripped between her hands, giving his neck a final crunching twist just as Trygg stepped inside the room.
“Holy fuck.”
She whirled around at the sound of his low voice, her beautiful face a mask of fury, sky-blue eyes fierce with killing fire that all but dared him to test her. A bullet had grazed her shoulder during the struggle, opening a tear in the thin material of her light gray T-shirt. Bright red blood stained the fabric, making his fangs throb in Pavlovian response as he watched the wound slowly heal itself.
His stunned gaze traveled downward, to where the centers of her palms held an unearthly glow. Energy pulsed there, banked but unmistakably strong. He supposed that explained the lightning blast he’d witnessed from outside.
Trygg’s mind reeled at the evidence of her unleashed power. But equally astonishing was the fact that he knew this woman.
“Ah, Christ,” he snarled as his irritated gaze lifted once again to her face. “You gotta be shitting me.”
Tamisia the Atlantean.
Her expression registered recognition too. And plenty of haughty disdain. “What are you doing here?”
He grunted. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I work at the shelter. I live here.”
This was where she’d ended up? Working at a women’s shelter in one of the roughest areas of the city? Trygg wouldn’t have guessed that of the elegant, icy immortal in a million years.
She looked different from when he’d last seen her. Slimmer, her golden skin more pale than luminescent. Her eyes, despite being filled with battle rage, seemed even more haunted than before. Most of her white-blonde hair had come loose from a long braid at her back. It hung in a wild tangle around her, its distinctive single streak of iridescent gold along the left side of her face hanging limp and dulled.