by Adrian, Lara
“We don’t know much yet. A groundskeeper called in the report less than a minute ago. Says when he showed up for work this morning, he found the residence broken into via the front door. As soon as he entered and realized something was wrong inside, the witness contacted JUSTIS. We’re dispatching a crime unit now to process the scene at the Darkhaven, estimated arrival about fifteen minutes. Given the nature of the attack on a civilian residence, I thought the Order might want to go in first and--”
“Wait a second. Hold up. The attack was on a Darkhaven?” Nikolai gripped his comm unit in an iron grasp. “Are you saying the fatalities are Breed?”
“That’s right. At least, that’s our understanding from what little we know right now.”
“Holy shit.” Niko felt Renata’s hand come down gently on his shoulder. He glanced at her, knowing his expression must be stark if her anxious gaze was anything to go by. “All right. Thanks for the call, man. I’ll have one of my teams on site in less than ten.”
CHAPTER 14
The quiet residential street was studded with fine homes and gated driveways, most of the addresses housing Breed families who had settled in the Pointe-Claire neighborhood not long after First Dawn twenty years ago. With the wide expanse of the Saint Lawrence River rolling picturesquely behind the large Darkhaven residences and the tree-lined ribbon of pavement meandering in front of them, it was easy to understand the appeal.
Unfortunately for one of these Breed families, today this peaceful suburban ideal had proven to be only an illusion.
“The address we’re looking for should be about a thousand yards up on the right,” Mira said from the passenger seat beside Aric. “Park here on the side street. We’ll hoof it the rest of the way, so the crime unit reporting in from JUSTIS doesn’t spot our vehicle and get their panties in a wad.”
He nodded to the Order team captain and pulled off the main street to where she indicated. In the rearview mirror, Kaya’s grim gaze met his from the backseat of the SUV.
“Do we know anything about the Breed family who was attacked?”
Mira pivoted around to answer. “The Order ran an ID, but there’s not much to tell. Jonathon and Elena Champlain, mated for nine years. He’s an accountant with a Breed-owned firm downtown. She’s a teacher--or, rather, she was. According to her work records, she’s been on leave for the past four months since the birth of their second child. Their other son is seven.”
“Two young children at home,” Kaya murmured, her voice heavy. “Is there a chance we’ll find either of them alive?”
Mira shook her head. “I don’t think so. From what Niko was told, it doesn’t sound like there were any survivors.”
No one spoke as Aric parked the vehicle. The three of them climbed out in silence, all garbed in black patrol fatigues and armed for combat. It was the second time Aric had been tapped for special duty because of his ability to daywalk. The second time he’d been partnered with Kaya in as many days, even though it seemed as if they’d known each other forever as they fell in with Mira at the lead and headed for the red-brick Tudor residence and whatever carnage awaited inside.
Her dread was palpable. Aric jogged alongside her, barely resisting the urge to reach out for her hand in reassurance. To think, just hours ago they’d been making love under the rising sun while elsewhere in the city a family was being slain in their home. Now, instead of holding Kaya in his arms back at the command center, they were dressed for war and speculating on probable body counts of murdered innocents they were already too late to save.
Such was the life of a warrior.
Aric had the stomach to deal with everything his role with the Order demanded, but damned if wanted to see Kaya subjected to the same ugliness. After the childhood she’d described to him, all he wanted was to protect her. To make sure she never suffered a moment’s pain or sorrow ever again.
Not that he stood any hope of doing that from D.C.
And not that Kaya wanted any such thing.
Gone was the apprehension that filled her face back in the vehicle. Now, she wore a look of steely purpose as they approached the Darkhaven. Mira motioned them to follow her around to the rear of the large house, sending Kaya into place as a corner sentry while Aric was directed toward a shuttered sliding glass door on the back of the residence.
He nodded without her telling him what she wanted him to do. The locks and steel-reinforced UV blinds took less than a second or two for him to disable. Once he had the obstacles out of the way, he gestured that he would go inside first, check things out.
The stench of spilled blood hit his nose the instant he crept over the threshold and into a warmly appointed living room. Peering toward the front of the house, he noted a large male body that lay unmoving in the foyer. Human, if he had to guess by the sharp copper bite of the dying hemoglobin that tainted the air. But there was another blood scent in abundance here too. Something sweeter than human red cells.
Fuck. Not a good sign.
Nor was the fact that the Darkhaven stood as still and quiet as a tomb.
Aric motioned an all-clear to Mira and Kaya. They entered behind him, slipping into the house in silence.
“Everyone’s dead here,” he murmured in a low whisper.
They didn’t ask if he was sure. His Breed senses were far more acute than both of theirs put together. He jerked his chin in the direction of the foyer and the front door, which hung ajar, swaying faintly in the soft morning breeze.
“Holy shit.” Mira’s mouth flattened as she strode past him, her long blond braid thumping at her spine as she walked toward the human corpse near the entrance.
Kaya fell in beside Aric, silent, barely breathing. The trio paused just beyond the perimeter of the odd crime scene, no one saying a word for a moment as they each soaked in the details.
The dead man wore a delivery service uniform. Near the bulky shape of his crumpled, semi-prone body was a crushed package and a large spill of coarse black dirt. Blood leaked out from under the human’s corpse, coagulating in a dark puddle on the creamy rug and hardwood.
Mira toed the body with the tip of her combat boot, rolling the man onto his back. “Jesus Christ.”
His throat and chest had been slashed wide open. Four symmetric lacerations delivered with enough force it was a wonder he hadn’t lost his head.
Mira frowned as she glanced over at Aric and Kaya. “What do you guys think? Whatever was in that box must’ve really pissed off the owner of this Darkhaven.”
“No.” Kaya’s gaze drifted down to the smashed box. “There was nothing in it. Look closer. It’s an empty box.”
“She’s right,” Aric agreed. The pieces were starting to fall in place now, painting a picture of cowardice and deception. “The delivery was a setup. It was the only way to get the Darkhaven door open with a minimum of effort.”
Mira’s face blanched. “At this hour, with the sun blazing over the lawn, there are few Breed who would risk exposure by opening the door to anyone.”
“Right,” Aric said. “And this dead fuck right here was counting on that fact. He wanted Jonathon Champlain’s Breedmate to answer the door because he needed to overpower her in order to get inside.”
Mira nodded. “But he came down to protect her. He would’ve been here in an instant. Less than an instant. Those wounds on the body are evidence enough of that.”
“There’s a lot of blood on the stairs,” Kaya pointed out. “It goes all the way up to the second floor.”
Aric nodded grimly. “It’s hers. I can smell it from here.”
Mira stepped away from the dead man and the mess surrounding his corpse. “So, where is Jonathon Champlain?”
Aric’s gaze fell to the strange spill of black dirt at their feet. A chill washed over him, settling in his marrow. “Ah, fuck. No.”
He crouched on his haunches and reached for the empty package, moving it to the side so he could have a closer look at what his instincts were telling him but his brain refused to ac
cept as reality.
An acrid odor rose up as he moved the box out of his way. The odd stench was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, yet every cell in his body recoiled as the smell of ashed Breed remains--not dirt--wafted into his lungs.
Something gleamed within the pile of black cinders. He retrieved it, holding the strange bullet casing up so he could examine it. The round was formed of silvery metal caged around a diamond-hard glass shell that would have contained something far more powerful than gunpowder. A specialized kind of round that served only one purpose.
Killing members of the Breed.
Mira gasped. “Is that what I think it is?”
“An ultraviolet bullet,” Aric answered woodenly. “Whoever came in behind the delivery man came in prepared to kill.”
Kaya’s gaze bounced between them, confused and stricken. “I don’t understand. A UV round? How can something like that exist? And since it obviously does, where the hell did it come from?”
“A few weeks ago, a scientist who pioneered major advances in ultraviolet technology was murdered by members of Opus Nostrum,” Aric explained. “Opus got their hands on his work and they quickly began developing it into weaponry.”
“Breed-killing weapons,” Kaya murmured, her hand coming up to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
“The Order has kept all of this under wraps,” Mira added. “You know about the UV bomb that Opus tried to detonate at the GNC peace summit earlier this month?”
“Yes,” Kaya said. “If you and Kellan and the rest of the Order hadn’t killed the Opus member responsible for that bomb, hundreds of Breed diplomats and most of the Order would have been ashed in front of the entire world.”
Mira’s nod was understated, especially considering the magnitude of what she, along with her mate and the Order, had accomplished that night. “Killing Reginald Crowe and disabling his bomb only stopped one disaster from happening. By then, we’d also learned that Opus was manufacturing large caches of ultraviolet arms and ammunition.”
“The Order tracked down a large supply of both in Ireland,” Aric told Kaya. “We took out the Opus member who’d been stockpiling the shit and detonated all but a few samples of everything we found, but there was no guarantee that some of it hadn’t already leaked out to Opus operatives.”
Mira slanted a look at the dead human. “I guess we have an answer to that question now.”
Aric nodded, but his mind was already filling with further questions in need of answers. Opus Nostrum may have played some role in this killing, but the selection of a civilian Darkhaven seemed too random. Opus tended toward high-profile targets, not suburban families, Breed or otherwise.
Aric glanced at the stairs and the blood trail that Champlain’s Breedmate left behind. Although his senses told him he wasn’t going to like what he found up there, he headed in that direction, leading the way for Kaya and Mira.
His gut clenched at the sight of another pile of ashes at the top of the stairs. This one was considerably smaller than the one in the foyer. Aric tried not to picture a seven-year-old Breed boy racing out of his bedroom in terror as his parents struggled with the intruders downstairs.
Kaya’s strangled gasp behind Aric told him that she’d spotted the child’s remains too.
“Oh, God,” Mira whispered. “The mother’s bloody footprints lead all the way to the bedroom at the end of the hall.”
“Yeah,” Aric answered, his booted feet moving leaden beneath him as they approached the pastel-colored room that stood as silent as the grave ahead of him.
In his mind, the logical sequence of the attack played out in horrific detail. The morning delivery, used as a trap to lure Elena Champlain to the door alone. The first assailant pushes his way inside, dropping the ruse of a package and crushing it under his boot as he knocks the female down with his fist, splattering her blood on the wall.
Her mate flashes downstairs in that next instant, the blood bond and her likely screams alerting him to the danger. He kills the delivery man to give his Breedmate a chance to run for safety--but the assailant wasn’t alone. The others push inside now, at least one of them armed with ultraviolet weaponry. They ash Jonathon Champlain. Another ashes their young son, who would have been just old enough to be a threat to an unarmed human. To a man carrying an ultraviolet weapon? The child would be as inconsequential as a gnat.
Any Breed male allergic to sunlight, no matter his size or skills, would be no match for a tiny bullet filled with liquid UV.
As for the lady of the house, Aric had a sickening feeling that her death was far less merciful.
The door to the nursery was wide open. He entered, and it was all he could do not to stagger back on his heels.
The female lay on the floor, brutalized, her clothing torn off. Stab wounds and slashes all over her body. In the crib, her infant son had been reduced to a blackened scorch mark against the soft white sheets and smiling stuffed animals.
And on the walls, written in the Breedmate’s blood, were shocking messages of hate.
Breed whore!
Death to the bloodsuckers!
Ash them all!
There were dozens more, each more graphic and uglier than the next. Aric didn’t bother to read them all.
But Kaya and Mira were.
He saw their horror reflected in their eyes as the entirety of the slaying washed over them.
Kaya looked as though the slightest touch would knock her over. Her face was bloodless, shell-shocked. Her dark brown eyes were glazed and welling with unspilled tears.
Mira blew out a soft curse. When she spoke, her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Please collect all of the spent UV rounds, Aric. We should bring them back for Niko to analyze. I’m going to . . . I need to go outside for a minute.”
“All right.” He nodded once, accepting his grim task with total solemnity. “Kaya, you should go too.”
At first, she didn’t move. Didn’t so much as blink.
Aric reached out for her, his touch landing lightly on her shoulder. She flinched, a bone-deep jerk of movement that seemed to startle her out of the horrified daze that gripped her. Her gaze lifted to his, bleak and unreadable. He couldn’t resist cupping her trembling jaw in his palm.
“Go on with Mira,” he gently instructed her. “You don’t need to see any more of this.”
She gave him a wobbly nod. Then, unspeaking, she pivoted and left him to finish his work.
CHAPTER 15
Kaya hung her head over the sink in her quarters’ en suite bathroom and splashed a handful of cold water over her face. Her stomach heaved, threatening to revolt for the second time since she had returned with Aric and Mira from the Darkhaven in Pointe-Claire.
They’d been back at the command center for a couple of hours and she still couldn’t purge the horrific scene from her mind. The blood and death and hatred. The unimaginable cruelty of the ones who’d perpetrated the slaughter of that innocent family in their home.
But her stomach turned for another reason too.
One that put a coldness in her veins as she gathered her shower-damp hair into a long ponytail, then donned running gear and headed out of her room to the mansion corridor outside.
She had to get away from the confinement of the command center’s walls, if only for a short while. She needed space and time to process everything that had happened, not only today but ever since Aric showed up in Montreal.
More than anything, she needed to look for some clarity . . . no matter where that search might lead her.
Aric was coming out of a guest room at the other end of the hallway as she headed for the central staircase that led to the large foyer. He held a tablet in one hand, his comm unit in the other.
“Hey,” he said, his deep voice soothing with just that simple greeting. “I was on my way to check on you. Thought I’d head down to the war room to dig back into the reception images and look for Mercier’s Opus contact.”
“Oh. Right.” It seemed like a
week had passed since they’d begun that task together. If only it felt so long since she’d lain naked and pleasured in Aric’s arms. She could hardly look at him now without reliving the bliss of his touch . . . and the erotic power of his body as he moved inside her. She cleared her throat. “I was, um, just going out for a little bit. After this morning, I could use a long run.”
“You want some company?”
“No.” She only hoped her reply didn’t sound as abrupt as it felt on her lips. “I won’t be gone long. If anyone asks for me, will you let them know I’ve gone out?”
“Sure.” He nodded. “When you get back, come down and join me. We need to nail this Opus bastard now more than ever.”
She wouldn’t deny the importance of excising a cancer like Opus Nostrum. If they had supplied the UV ammunition used in today’s slayings--and there seemed to be zero doubt about that--then the Order should show no mercy to anyone with ties to the terror group or their sympathizers. On that, she and Aric were agreed.
But it was the idea of teaming up with him again in close quarters that made a knot of reluctance form in her breast. It had been a mistake letting her guard down around him. An even bigger mistake making love with him, no matter how incredible it had been.
She couldn’t allow herself to make that mistake again. She needed to keep her head on straight. Stay focused on the things that mattered. If she had let her priorities slip since meeting Aric Chase, what she witnessed at the Darkhaven today had been a stark wakeup call.
And that meant keeping her distance from the Breed male as much as possible between now and the time that he would be returning to his life in D.C.
“Kaya.” He said her name softly, concern etched on his handsome face. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She nodded. Forced all of her misgivings and regrets deep down in order to give him a casual shrug. “I’m fine. I’ll see you when I get back from my run.”