“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 th
e 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.
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