by Adrian, Lara
Hunters like Nathan had been raised by handlers, as Brynne and her half-sisters had been. But where Brynne and the other Breed females were shackled by lies and abuse and genetic-stunting chemical therapies, the Hunters were kept obedient by the use of even crueler tactics.
Nathan looked at her finally, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that touched her. Not because she pitied him, but because she admired how normal his life seemed now, with Jordana. With the Order. With his mother, Corinne, and Hunter, her Gen One mate who was also a product of Dragos’s madness.
“No one who survived those damned labs did it unscathed,” Nathan said.
Brynne nodded. “I know.”
“Yeah, I know you do. But you look like you need someone to say it out loud for you now.”
She stared at him in the dim light of the dashboard. Although he had no idea how deep her wounds had gone, or how hideous her reality was even years and miles away from the torture of the labs, his compassion moved her.
She swallowed on an arid throat. “Thank you, Nathan.”
He gave a curt nod. “Go do what you have to do and take care of your needs. I’ll wait for you here.”
Certain she misheard him, or at least misunderstood his meaning, Brynne’s breath caught.
Did he know she dreaded walking into that parlor?
Holy shit. Was he giving her permission to go feed on her own terms?
“Nathan, I—”
She didn’t get the chance to say another word.
Without warning, something big fell from the roof of a nearby building and smashed onto a parked car about a block up the street. Metal crunched. Glass exploded. Alarm lights and sirens split the darkness.
People started screaming, pointing up at the roof of the nearby parking deck.
“What the fuck?” Nathan killed the engine. “Stay in the vehicle!”
He leaped out and vanished into the night before Brynne even realized he was moving.
She sucked in a gasp as she peered through the windshield.
Another body pitched to the street, plummeting down like a stuffed dummy freefalling off the parking garage rooftop. Except they weren’t dummies. They were humans—brutalized, broken, their clothing shredded and blood-soaked.
Savaged.
Nausea swamped Brynne as she realized what she was seeing. “Oh, my God.”
Something else descended to the street now. A Breed youth, his chin and the whole front of his body painted red from his crime. The young male dropped into a crouch next to his kill and howled like the animal he had become, his fangs enormous, his face feral with Bloodlust.
Holy shit.
The male was Rogue.
And he wasn’t alone. Another descended to the rooftop of a parked van, wearing more evidence of the slaughter.
Brynne instinctively reached for her JUSTIS-issued firearm, but her fingers came away empty. Dammit. She’d lost her service weapon the same day she’d lost her job with the agency.
Panic swept the street as swiftly as a flash fire.
The humans who’d stopped to stare in dazed confusion now bolted blindly away from the scene. One after another, they streamed past Brynne in the SUV, shrieking as they raced for cover.
It was just what the pair of predators wanted.
They vaulted airborne, leaping over Brynne’s vehicle and several others in one fluid bound. The fleeing humans in their sights didn’t stand a chance.
But that didn’t mean Brynne wasn’t going to try to save at least some of them.
She was Breed too—something even deadlier than that, thanks to the genetic cocktail that had spawned her. Whether armed with weapons or her bare hands, she was a nightmare neither of these two fucks would be expecting.
Jumping out of the SUV, she had her fists full of the first Rogue’s shirt in a split second. She took him down to the asphalt. Her knee planted firmly in the center of his spine, the Bloodlusting male went wild, snarling and struggling in an effort to shake her off. Brynne seized the vampire’s skull and gave it a sharp twist, snapping bone and tendons.
She released the dead Rogue, her eyes already piercing the night to track her next target.
There he was. While she’d paused to deal with his companion, the other Rogue had enough time to pluck one of the stragglers from the herd. Snatching a rangy human male under his arm, the vampire dodged into a side alley to enjoy his spoils.
“Shit.”
Brynne was rounding the corner in a heartbeat, but she was already moments too late.
The Rogue had the human down on the pavement, his fangs sunk deep in the front of the man’s throat, greedily taking his fill while his victim convulsed and sputtered wetly under the assault.
Brynne’s bile rose at the sight.
“Get off him.”
Her voice was an airless growl of sound, nothing like she’d heard before. It was her own hunger clawing at her, making her mouth feel desert dry and her vision burn hot with amber light. Twined with her battle rage, she was something beyond formidable now.
The Rogue grunted, swinging his head around to look for the source of the intrusion.
And although his mind was gone, his senses owned by the Bloodlust that made him Rogue, he apparently still had some small spark of sanity—enough to make his own glowing eyes go a bit wider in his skull as he registered what he was up against.
But the madness in him overruled everything else.
Still in his crouch, the Rogue let go of the dying human and swiveled on his bare heels, ready to face off with Brynne to defend his prey.
Brynne braced for the attack she knew was coming. On a roar, the feral vampire flew at her.
Instead of letting his greater weight and unhinged fury catapult her backward, she took hold of him and spun, using his forward momentum to pivot them together in midair. Then she shoved hard, slamming the Rogue into the wall of the brick building at his back.
The wall shook, old mortar crumbling with the impact. The Rogue was dazed from the crushing strike, but he wasn’t down. He came at her again, another ferocious leap and crash that hurtled them both across the narrow alley to the wall on the other side.
She grunted in sharp pain as her back collided into the bricks. The Rogue dropped her, letting her sag to the ground. He rocked back on his heels as if to ready himself for the killing blow. As if he’d won.
Brynne’s smile was not her own. It belonged to the beast inside her. The one whose power surged inside her now, more lethal than anything this lowly blood addict would ever know.
She rose like a wraith in front of the Rogue. He had no chance to react, no chance to stop the violence that exploded out of her.
She lashed out, lightning-quick. Her fingers ripped through clothing, flesh, and bone. The Rogue roared as she opened his chest with slashing strikes of her hands, his agony only feeding her power.
His chest cavity shredded, the Rogue shrieked and convulsed on his feet. But that wasn’t enough for the monster raging within her now.
Grabbing a fistful of the vampire’s mangy hair, she bellowed with battle fury as she drove the vampire’s head into the bricks at her back. The skull caved in with a sickening crunch.
She smashed it again and again, lost to an unearthly violence that seethed through her veins like poison. She didn’t know what finally made her head clear enough to realize her opponent was dead.
But no, that wasn’t right.
She did know.
The scent of fresh blood lifted her chin from the revolting carnage she’d wrought.
On the ground nearby, the human was shuddering in a growing pool of red. He was dying. Easily only moments from the grave already.
But his blood was still alive.
And it called to her.
It called to the beast who’d been pacing its cage for too long—since the last time she’d finally broken down and fed. She hungered now. So severely she could hardly stand the agony of it.
Brynne drifted over to the man. H
is gaping, sightless eyes probably didn’t register the inhuman face looking down at him.
But Brynne saw what she looked like now.
In the scant light of the street, she saw her face reflected in the glossy surface of the dying man’s blood.
It made her want to weep, that reflection of who—and what—she truly was.
Instead, she knelt down beside her dying blood Host…and she fed.
CHAPTER 19
Zael sensed the sudden shift of energy in the Order’s headquarters even before he heard the heavy drum of boots on marble floors and the jangle of weapons. Following the sound down to the central artery of the command center, he found all of the warriors suited up and rolling out for patrols.
Or, rather, for battle.
“What’s going on?”
Lucan cut him a stark glance. “Rogues. We’ve got upwards of a dozen of them on the loose right now.”
Zael knew the derogatory term for a blood-addicted member of the Breed. In fact, there probably wasn’t a person alive in the past twenty years—mortal and immortal alike—who hadn’t at least heard of the violence and carnage Rogues had inflicted on the human population. But it had been a long time since they had posed any kind of threat, thanks in most part to the work of the Order.
It hardly seemed coincidental that this kind of disaster was coming so quickly on the heels of two other shocking strikes against public confidence and security.
“You think Opus is behind this?”
“They haven’t confirmed yet, but I don’t think there’s any question. This has Opus written all over it.” Lucan practically spat the words.
“There have been isolated Rogue attacks in other locations recently,” Tegan added. “Apparently, Opus got its hands on a chemical substance that makes bloodthirsty killers out of anyone who takes it.”
“Fucking déjà vu all over again,” Sterling Chase snarled as he fastened an arsenal of firearms around his hips.
“Yeah, it is,” Dante agreed. “We grabbed a bunch of the shit and torched the rest when we took down Riordan, but there was already some of it in play.”
“And now it’s here in D.C.,” Lucan said, his tone bleak. He motioned for the warriors to start rolling out. “Nathan took out three Rogues so far, but they’re cutting a bloody path through Georgetown as we speak.”
Zael’s stomach clenched. “Ah, fuck.” The alarm he’d felt upon entering the weapons room a moment ago now turned to ice-cold dread. “Brynne’s in Georgetown.”
Lucan gave him a curt nod as the commanders and other warriors began filing out to the corridor. “She’s with Nathan. He left her in the vehicle while he went to check things out. If she stays put, she should be okay until we reach her.”
“Where?” Despite the assurances, Zael’s pulse kicked hard and didn’t let up. “Tell me exactly where she is.”
Darion Thorne was the first to speak. “Nathan was taking her to a blood Host parlor. It’s on Wisconsin Avenue, near M Street.”
Zael knew the area. Not well, but enough for his needs right now. The Order and everything else pushed from his thoughts, he put an image of the intersection in his mind’s eye. Then he glanced at the Atlantean emblem that dangled from the leather thong around his wrist.
The piece of silvery crystal responded to his psychic request with a brilliant flare of light.
It flashed brighter, enveloping him in its power—and then Zael was no longer picturing the Georgetown intersection in his mind, he was standing there in the flesh.
The street was ghostly in its stillness, only the bleating cry of a vehicle alarm piercing the night. Zael started walking. Up ahead of him, a brutalized body lay broken and covered in gore next to the smashed hood of a car. Blood streaked the asphalt, which was also littered with items the terrorized people had lost in their haste to vacate the area.
He saw the glossy, black bulk of the Order’s SUV parked at the curb, just as Lucan had assured him it would be. But Zael’s lungs constricted as he realized the vehicle was empty, the passenger door ajar.
He wheeled around in the middle of the street, his gaze searching for any signs of life.
“Brynne!”
There was no answer. Only the nagging drone of the alarm. He silenced it with a sharp mental command.
“Brynne! Where are you?”
His feet started moving on their own. It wasn’t hard to tell which way the other people had gone. Personal effects, blood, even the savaged body of another victim lay in his path.
And then—a grim, but hopeful, sign.
A dead Breed male, his head twisted grotesquely as if by violent, monstrous strength.
One of Nathan’s kills, perhaps. Zael didn’t much care how the vampire met its end. One less Rogue was one less threat of danger to Brynne.
He shouted her name again, but still there was no answer.
Jogging now, he ran more than a block, then paused as he neared a narrow side alley. The sight—and smell—staggered him. He wasn’t Breed, but even he was rocked back on his heels by the coppery stench of pooled blood on the pavement inside the alleyway.
He approached the foulness, his eyes rooted to the pair of bodies that lay in crumpled heaps on the ground.
Relief washed over him when he saw that neither of the dead was Brynne. One was a Breed male, his corpse savaged beyond description. The other was a human of slight build, whose bloodless pallor made his skin glow milky white in the thin moonlight.
The horror of what had plainly taken place in the alley sickened him. Although the Rogue’s death had been brutal, the human had suffered horrifically as well. The front of his throat was torn away, no doubt by the Rogue. Another bite wound pierced his wrist—this one less violent, and certainly not the injury that killed him, but there was no mistaking the predation that had taken place.
Zael stared at the two large punctures, and something troubling nagged at his senses.
He wanted to call out to Brynne again, but the silence in the alley held his tongue.
He wasn’t alone.
He took a step forward and the prickle in his veins became a throb.
“Brynne?” He said her name in little more than a whisper as he tilted his head back and looked up, following the wall of old red bricks that rose on both sides of the narrow street.
And there she was.
Huddled in the corner of a rickety black iron fire escape four stories up.
“Ah, fuck… Brynne.”
The crystal at his wrist put him up there with her in that next instant. She flinched under the flash of pure white energy, drawing herself into a tight ball as far away from him as she could get. Her dark hair was a chaotic tangle that all but covered her face, many of the strands soaked and stiff with drying blood.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
The sound she made when he took a step forward and reached for her made the hair on the back of his neck rise in warning.
The growl that came out of her was anguished, pained…alien.
“Brynne, look at me. It’s Zael. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Go. Away.”
If he wasn’t looking at her with his own eyes now, he never would have believed the twisted, gravely rasp belonged to her. She kept her head down, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees. Her feet were bare, the skin on the tops of them covered with dermaglyphs. Deep colors surged and pulsed in furious, changeable hues on the backs of her hands too.
He looked closer, his gaze snagging on something peculiar about her fingers.
Her nails… They were black.
No, not fingernails, he realized now.
Talons.
Sharp as razors, the nails on the tips of her fingers gleamed as black as obsidian.
“Brynne,” he murmured. “Let me see you. Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” Anger lashed out at him with her reply. She gave a brief toss of her head, a moan leaking out of her. “Go away, Zael. Please.”
“I said go away!”
Finally, her head came up. But it wasn’t Brynne glowering at him now. Zael gaped at the molten amber light that poured out of her eyes. Thin pupils locked on him in rage—in staggering deadly intent. Glyphs surged all over her face now, drawing attention to the sharpened angles of her cheekbones and brow, and the enormous lengths of her fangs.
Not Breed, because not even the eldest Gen One transformed like this in the throes of hunger.
Brynne was something else. Something other.
Something Zael and his people hadn’t seen up close for thousands of years.
The beautiful, tormented face staring back at him now in dangerous fury was the face of an Ancient.
CHAPTER 20
The Rogues were running through Georgetown like a pack of wild dogs.
Faces painted red with human blood, eyes blazing as bright as yellow coals in their feral faces, two more howling males bounded into the empty street where Lucan stood over the body of another he had just stopped a second ago with a titanium bullet to the head.
Like humans hopped up on heavy narcotics and adrenaline, Rogues didn’t go down easy. It took brute strength or a hell of a lot of lead—sometimes a combination of both. Titanium helped. The metal was highly corrosive poison to the diseased blood system of a Rogue, as evidenced by the sizzling mess that was growing near Lucan’s boots. The dead Rogue would be nothing but ash in a few minutes.
Lucan turned to deliver the same end to the pair of newcomers now closing in on him in the middle of the swanky Georgetown shopping district. He took the first one down with a single shot of titanium between the eyes—before realizing it was the last round left in his weapon.
Ah, fuck.
The second Rogue roared as his companion dropped into a puddle of melting flesh and bone. He charged at Lucan, head lowered and jaws snapping. Lucan drew his backup pistol and fired multiple times, but the lead rounds only pissed the Rogue off. The vampire vaulted at Lucan, leaving him no choice but to meet the threat up-close-and-personal.