Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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tent and secure.
God, had she ever?
One of the adults supervising the kids from nearby
summoned them to lunch, breaking up their raucous
game. As the children dashed over to the picnic blanket
to eat, Gabrielle swung her camera’s focus back across
the Common. In the blur of movement through the lens,
she glimpsed someone looking back at her from within the
shade of a large tree.
She brought her camera away from her face and
glanced to where a young man stood, partially concealed
by the trunk of the old oak.
He was an unremarkable presence in the busy park, al-
beit a vaguely familiar one. Gabrielle noted his mop of
ashy brown hair, his drab button-down shirt and standard-
issue khaki pants. He was the type of person who’d blend
in easily in a crowd, but she was certain she’d seen him
somewhere recently.
Hadn’t he been at the police station last weekend when
she’d given her statement?
Whoever he was, he must have realized she’d spotted
him because he pulled back suddenly and ducked around
the back of the tree to begin heading out of the park
toward Charles Street. He dug a cell phone out of his
pants pocket, then threw a glance over his shoulder at her
as he strode at a fast clip toward the street.
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The back of Gabrielle’s neck tingled with suspicion
and a sinking feeling of alarm.
He had been watching her—but why?
What the hell was going on here? Something was defi-
nitely up, but she wasn’t about to stand around and guess
at it any longer.
With her eyes trained on the guy in khakis, Gabrielle
started after him, stuffing her camera back into its case and
shrugging the straps of the small padded backpack up
onto her shoulders as she walked. The kid was ahead of
her about a block by the time she cleared the park’s wide
lawn and stepped onto Charles.
“Hey!” she called after him, breaking into a jog.
Still on his phone, he pivoted his head to look at her. He
said something urgent into the receiver, then flipped the
cell closed and fisted it in his hand. Turning away from her,
his quick pace became a full-on sprint.
“Stop!” Gabrielle shouted. She drew the curious atten-
tion of other people on the street, but the kid continued to
ignore her. “I said stop, damn it! Who are you? Why are
you spying on me?”
He tore up crowded Charles Street, vanishing into the
sea of strolling pedestrians. Gabrielle followed, dodging
tourists and office workers on lunch break, her eyes fixed
on the bobbing bulk of the kid’s backpack. He turned
down one street, then another, wending deeper into the
city, away from the shops and businesses on Charles and
back toward the tightly clustered area of Chinatown.
She didn’t know how far she’d tracked the kid, or even
where exactly she’d ended up, but all of a sudden she real-
ized she’d lost him.
She spun around near a busy corner, utterly alone, un-
familiar surroundings closing in on her. Shopkeepers
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stared at her from under shaded awnings and doors left
open to welcome the summer air. Passersby threw her an-
noyed looks as she stood stockstill in the middle of the side-
walk, blocking the flow of foot traffic.
It was then she felt a menacing presence behind her on
the street.
Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder and saw a black
sedan with dark-tinted windows slowly moving between
the other cars. It moved gracefully, deliberately, like a shark
cutting through a school of minnows in search of better
prey.
Was it coming toward her?
Maybe the kid who’d been spying on her was inside.
Maybe his appearance, and that of this ominous-looking
car, had something to do with whomever had purchased
her photographs from Jamie.
Or maybe it was something worse.
Something to do with the horrific attack she had wit-
nessed last weekend. Her report to the police. Maybe it
had been a gang slaying she stumbled upon after all.
Maybe those vicious creatures—she couldn’t quite con-
vince herself that they were men—had decided she was
their next target.
Icy fear lanced through her as the vehicle veered into
the near lane, which hugged the sidewalk where she still
stood.
She started walking. Picked up her pace.
Behind her, the car’s accelerator roared.
Oh, God.
It was coming after her!
Gabrielle didn’t wait to hear the peal of rubber being
laid behind her. She screamed, and took off in a blind run,
her legs pumping as fast as they could.
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There were too many people around. Too many obsta-
cles in her direct path. She dodged the milling pedestrians,
too rattled to offer apologies as some of them clucked their
tongues and swore at her in reproach.
She didn’t care, certain this was life or death.
A quick look behind her would prove to be disastrous.
The car was still roaring through the traffic, hot on her
heels. Gabrielle put her head down and dug in harder,
praying she could make it off the street before the vehicle
plowed into her.
In her haste, her ankle twisted beneath her.
She stumbled, losing balance. The ground came up
and she fell hard onto the rough concrete. Her bare knees
and palms broke the worst of her tumble, both getting
chewed up in the process. The searing burn of torn flesh
brought tears to her eyes, but she ignored it. Gabrielle
surged to her feet. She was hardly up off the ground before
she felt the hard clamp of a stranger’s hand gripping her at
the elbow.
She sucked in a sharp gasp, panic pouring through her.
“You okay, lady?” The grizzled face of a municipal
worker swung into her line of vision. His wrinkled blue
eyes flicked down at her abrasions. “Aw, jeez. Look at that,
you’re bleedin’.”
“Let go of me!”
“Didn’t you see those pylons right there?” He hooked
his thumb over his shoulder at the orange cones she’d
blown right past. “I got this section of sidewalk all torn up
here.”
“Please, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
Caught in his helpful but hindering grasp, Gabrielle
looked just in time to see the dark sedan pull up to the cor-
ner where she’d been standing only a moment ago. It
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rocked to an abrupt halt at the curb. The driver’s door
opened and a broadly built, towering man stepped out.
“Oh, God. Let go!” Gabrielle yanked her arm away
from the man who was trying to assist her, her gaze rooted
on that monstrous black car and the danger that was crawl-
ing out of it. “You don’t understand, they’re after me!”
“Who is?” The muni worker’s voice was incredulous.
He looked to where she was gaping and let out a laugh.
“You mean that guy? Lady, that’s the friggin’ mayor of
Boston.”
“Wha—”
It was true. Her eyes were wild as she watched the ac-
tivity at the corner with new understanding. The black
sedan wasn’t after her at all. It had pulled up to the curb
and the driver now waited, holding open the back door.
The mayor himself came out of a restaurant, flanked by
suited bodyguards. They all climbed into the backseat of
the vehicle.
Gabrielle closed her eyes. Her raw palms were burning.
Her knees, too. Her pulse was still pounding, but all the
blood seemed to have drained from her head.
She felt like a complete fool.
“I thought . . .” she murmured as the driver closed the
door, got in the front, then eased the official’s car back into
traffic.
The worker let go of her arm. He walked away from
her, back to his sack lunch and coffee, shaking his head.
“What’s a matter with you? You crazy or somethin’?”
Shit.
She wasn’t supposed to see him. His orders had been to
observe the Maxwell woman. Note her activities. Deter-
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mine her habits. Report everything back to his Master.
Above all, he was to avoid detection.
The Minion spat another curse from where he was hid-
ing, his spine flat against the inside of a nondescript door
in a nondescript building, one of many such places nestled
among the Chinatown markets and restaurants. Carefully,
he drew open the door and peered around it to see if he
could spot the woman somewhere outside.
There she was, right across the busy street from him.
And he was pleased to see that she was leaving the area.
He could just make out her coppery hair as she wended
through the traffic on the sidewalk, her head down, her
pace agitated.
He waited there, watched her until she was well out of
sight. Then he slipped back onto the street and headed in
the opposite direction. He’d blown more than an hour on
lunch break. He’d better get back to the police station be-
fore he was missed.
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Gabrielle ran another paper towel under the cold water
running in her kitchen sink. Several others lay discarded in
the basin already, sopping wet, stained pink with her blood
and gray with grime from the sidewalk grit she’d washed
out of her palms and bare knees. Standing there in her bra
and panties, she squirted some liquid soap onto the wad of
damp toweling, then gingerly scrubbed at the abrasions on
each of her palms.
“Ow,” she gasped, wincing as she ran over a sharp little
stone embedded in the wound. She dug it out and tossed it
into the sink with the other shards of gravel she’d recov-
ered in her cleanup.
God, she was a mess.
Her new skirt was torn and ruined. The hem of her
sweater was frayed from scraping the pavement. Her
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hands and knees looked like they belonged to a clumsy
tomboy.
And she’d make a public, total ass of herself besides.
What the hell was wrong with her, freaking out like she
had?
The mayor, for chrissake. And she had run from his car
like she feared he was a . . .
A what? Some kind of monster?
Vampire.
Gabrielle’s hand went still.
She heard the word in her mind, even if she refused to
speak it. It was the same word that had been nipping at the
edge of her consciousness since the murder she’d wit-
nessed. A word she would not acknowledge, even alone, in
the silence of her empty apartment.
Vampires were her crazy birth mother’s obsession, not
hers.
The teenaged Jane Doe had been deeply delusional
when the police recovered her from the street all those
years ago. She spoke of being pursued by demons who
wanted to drink her blood—had, in fact, already tried, as
was her explanation for the strange lacerations on her
throat. The court documents Gabrielle had been given
were peppered with wild references to bloodthirsty fiends
running loose in the city.
Impossible.
That was crazy thinking, and Gabrielle knew it.
She was letting her imagination, and her fears that she
might one day come unhinged like her mother, get the best
of her. She was smarter than this. More sane, at least.
God, she had to be.
Seeing that kid from the police station today—on top of
everything else she’d been through the past several days—
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just set something off in her. Although, now that she was
thinking about it, she couldn’t even be sure the guy she saw
in the park actually was the clerk she’d seen at the precinct
house.
And so what if he was? Maybe he was out in the
Common having lunch, enjoying the weather like she was.
No crime in that. If he was staring at her, maybe he
thought she looked familiar, too. Maybe he would have
come over and said hi to her, if she hadn’t charged after
him like some paranoid psycho, accusing him of spying
on her.
Oh, and wouldn’t that be lovely, if he went back to the
station and told them all how she’d chased him several
blocks into Chinatown?
If Lucan were to hear about that, she would absolutely
die of humiliation.
Gabrielle resumed cleansing her scraped palms, trying
to put the whole day out of her head. Her anxiety was still
at a peak, her heart still drumming hard. She dabbed at
her surface wounds, watching the thin trickle of blood run
down her wrist.
The sight of it soothed her in some strange way. Always
had.
When she was younger, when feelings and pressures
built up inside of her until there was nowhere for them to
go, often all it took to ease her was a tiny cut.
The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been
paring an apple at one of her foster homes when
the knife
slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her
thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a
rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn’t felt panic
or fear.
She’d felt fascination.
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She’d felt an incredible sort of . . . peace.
A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle
cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never
with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it fre-
quently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound
sense of calm.
She needed it now, when she was anxious and jumpy as
a cat, her ears picking up every slight noise in the apart-
ment and outside. Her head was pounding. Her breath
was shallow, coming rapidly through her teeth.
Her thoughts were careening from the flash-bright
memories of the night outside the club to the creepy asy-
lum she’d taken pictures of the other morning, to the con-
fusing, irrational, bone-deep fear she’d experienced this
afternoon.
She needed a little peace from all of it.
Even just a spare few minutes of calm.
Gabrielle’s gaze slid to the wooden block of knives
sitting on the counter nearby. She reached over, took one
in her hand. It had been years since she’d done this. She’d
worked so hard to master the strange, shameful com-
pulsion.
Had it truly ever gone away?
Her state-appointed psychologists and social workers
eventually had been convinced that it had. The Maxwells,
too.
Now, Gabrielle wondered as she brought the knife over
to her bare arm and felt a surge of dark anticipation wash
over her. She pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy
part of her forearm, though not yet firm enough to break
the skin.
This was her private demon—something she had never
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openly shared with anyone, not even Jamie, her dearest
friend.
No one would understand.
She hardly understood it herself.
Gabrielle tipped her head back and took a deep breath.
As she brought her chin back down on the slow exhale, she
caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The face
staring back at her was drawn and sorrowful, the eyes
haunted and weary.
“Who are you?” she whispered to that ghostly image in