the glass. She had to choke back a sob. “What’s wrong with
you?”
Miserable with herself, she threw the knife into the sink
and backed away as it clattered against the stainless basin.
The steady percussion of helicopter rotors chopped
through the quiet of the night sky above the old asylum.
From out of the low cloud cover, a black Colibri EC120
descended, coming to a soft touchdown on a flat expanse
of rooftop.
“Cut the engine,” the leader of the Rogues instructed
his Minion pilot after the craft had settled on its makeshift
helipad. “Wait here for me until I return.”
He climbed out of the cockpit, greeted at once by his
lieutenant, a rather nasty individual he’d recruited out of
the West Coast.
“Everything is in order, sire.” The Rogue’s thick brow
bunched over his feral yellow eyes. His large bald head still
bore the scars from electrical burns inflicted during a bout
of Breed interrogation he’d undergone about a half a year
ago. However, amid the rest of his hideous features, the
numerous scorch marks were merely a footnote. The
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Rogue grinned, baring huge fangs. “Your gifts tonight
have been very well-received, sire. Everyone eagerly awaits
your arrival.”
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the
Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he
was led into the building’s top floor, then on toward an ele-
vator that would take him into the heart of the facility.
They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off
the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-
ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the
Rogue lair.
As for the leader himself, he’d been based in private
quarters elsewhere in Boston for the past month, privately
reviewing operations, assessing his obstacles, and deter-
mining his strongest assets in this new territory he meant to
control. This was to be his first public appearance—an
event, as was fully his intention.
It wasn’t often he ventured into the filth of the general
population; vampires gone Rogue were a crude, indiscrim-
inate lot, and he had come to appreciate finer things dur-
ing his many years of existence. But an appearance was
due, however brief. He needed to remind the beasts of
whom they served, and so he had given them a taste of the
spoils that would await at the end of their latest mission.
Not all of them would survive, of course. Casualties
tended to mount in the midst of war.
And war was what he was selling here tonight.
No more petty conflicts over turf. No more divisive in-
fighting among the Rogues or pointless acts of individual
retribution. They would unite and turn a page not yet
imagined in the age-old battle that had forever split the
vampire nation in two. For too long, the Breed had ruled,
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striking an unspoken treaty with the lesser humans while
striving to eliminate their Rogue kin.
The two factions of the vampire race were not so dif-
ferent from each other, separated only by degrees. All that
stood between a Breed vampire fulfilling his hunger for life
and the Bloodlust addiction of the Rogue’s unquenchable
thirst for blood was a mere few ounces. The bloodlines of
the race had diluted in the time since the Ancients, as new
vampires grew to adulthood and paired with human
Breedmates.
But no amount of human genetic corruption would
completely obliterate the stronger vampire genes. Blood-
lust was a specter that would haunt the Breed forever.
The way the leader of this budding war saw it, one
could either fight the innate urge of his kind, or use it to
one’s best advantage.
He and his lieutenant guard had reached the end of the
corridor now, where the pulsing drone of loud music re-
verberated through the walls and under their feet. Behind
battered steel double doors, a party raged. In front of those
doors, a Rogue vampire on watch sank down heavily on
one knee as soon as his slitted pupils registered who waited
before him.
“Sire.” There was reverence in the gravel of his rough
voice, deference in the way he did not glance up to
meet the eyes shaded behind dark glasses. “My lord, you
honor us.”
He did, in fact. The leader gave a slight nod of ac-
knowledgment as the watchman came to his feet. With a
grimy hand, the guard pushed open the doors to permit
his superior entry to the raucous assembly gathered within.
The leader dismissed his companion, freeing himself to
private observation of the place.
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It was an orgy of blood and sex and music. Everywhere
he looked, Rogue males groped and rutted and fed on a
rich assortment of humans, both men and women. They
knew little pain, whether or not they attended this event
willingly. Most had been bitten at least once, drained
enough to be riding a wave of lightheaded, sensual bliss.
Some were further gone, slumped like pretty cloth dolls
into the laps of wild-eyed predators who would not cease
feeding until there was nothing left to devour.
But then, that was to be expected when one threw ten-
der lambs into a pit of ravenous beasts.
As he strode into the thick of the gathering, his palms
began to sweat. His cock tightened behind the carefully
pressed fall of his tailored pants. His gums began to throb
and ache, but he bit his tongue in an effort to keep his fangs
from stretching long in hunger the way his sex had so
greedily responded to the erotic barrage of sensory stimu-
lation hitting him from all angles.
The mingled scents of sex and spilling blood called to
him like a siren’s song—one he knew well, though that was
in his very distant past. Oh, he still enjoyed a good fuck
and a juicy open vein, but those needs no longer owned
him. It had been a hard road back from the place he’d
once been, but in the end, he had won.
He was Master now, of himself, and, soon, much, much
more.
A new war was beginning, and he was poised to deliver
Armageddon itself. He was cultivating his army, perfecting
his methods, aligning allies who would later be sacrificed
without hesitation on the altar of his personal whim. He
would wreak a bloody vengeance on the vampire nation
and the human world that existed only to serve his kind.
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When the great battle was over, the dust and ash finally
cleared, there would be none to stand in his way.
He would be a goddamned king. As was his birthright.
“Mmm . . . hey, handsome . . . come in and play with
me.”
The husky invitation reached his ears over the din of
noise. From out of the writhing pit of slick, naked bodies, a
female hand had risen to grasp at his thigh as he walked
past. He paused, glancing down at her with open impa-
tience. There was a faded beauty under her smeared dark
makeup, but her mind was utterly lost to the delirium of
the orgy. Twin rivulets of blood ran down her pretty throat
and over the tips of her perfect breasts. She had other
open bites elsewhere as well: at her shoulder, on her belly,
and on her inner thigh, just below the narrow strip of hair
that shadowed her sex.
“Join us,” she begged, pulling herself out of the twist-
ing jumble of arms and legs and rutting, howling Rogue
vampires. The woman was all but drained, a scant few
ounces this side of dead. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused.
Her movements were languid, as if her bones had turned
to rubber. “I have what you want. I’ll bleed for you, too.
Come, taste me.”
He said nothing, merely pried the pale, bloodstained
fingers from the fine weave of his expensive silk pants.
He frankly wasn’t in the mood.
And like any successful dealer, he never touched his
own product.
With his large hand flat against her chest, he pushed
the woman back into the churning fray. She squealed as
one of the Rogues caught her in a rough hold, then sav-
agely flipped her over his arm to bear her down beneath
him and enter her from behind. She shrieked and moaned
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as he rammed into her, but choked silent an instant later,
when the Bloodlusting vampire sank his huge fangs into
her neck and sucked the last drop of life from her depleted
body.
“Enjoy these spoils,” said the one who would be king,
his deep voice ringing out magnanimously over the animal
roars and the skull-battering blast of the music. “Night is
on the rise, and you will soon earn all of the rewards I see
fit to give you.”
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Lucan rapped on Gabrielle’s apartment door again.
Still no response.
He had been standing on her front stoop in the dark for
about five minutes, waiting for her either to open the damn
door and invite him in, or curse him as a bastard from be-
hind the perceived safety of her multiple locks and tell him
to get lost.
After the hard-core moves he’d put on her the night be-
fore, he wasn’t sure which reaction he deserved. Probably
the irate kiss-off.
He dropped his knuckles onto the door once more,
hard enough that the neighbors likely heard it, but there
was no movement from within Gabrielle’s apartment.
Only quiet. Too much stillness on the other side.
She was in there, though. He could sense her through
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the layers of wood and brick that stood between them.
And he smelled blood, too—not a lot, but trace amounts
somewhere near the door.
Son of a bitch.
She was inside, and she was hurt.
“Gabrielle!”
Concern ran like acid through his arteries as he
calmed his mind enough to focus his mental powers on
the chain lock and double bolts that were set on the other
side of the door. With effort, he turned one lock, then the
other. The chain slid free of its channel, swinging loose
against the doorjamb with a metallic scrape.
Lucan threw open the door, his boots pounding over
the tiled foyer. Gabrielle’s camera bag lay directly in his
path, likely fallen where she dropped it in her haste. The
jasmine-sweet scent of her blood slammed into his nostrils
just an instant before an erratic trail of small crimson
splatters caught his eye.
A bitter tang of fear laced the air of the apartment as
well. Its odor had faded, some hours old, but lingering like
fog.
He strode through the living room, about to head for
the kitchen where the blood droplets continued. As he
stalked farther inside, his gaze snagged on a stack of pho-
tos lying on the sofa table.
They were rough cuts, an odd assortment of images.
Some he recognized from Gabrielle’s work-in-progress,
the one she was calling Urban Renewal. But there were a few
shots he hadn’t seen before. Or maybe hadn’t looked close
enough to notice.
He noticed them now.
Goddamn, did he ever.
An old warehouse near the wharf. An abandoned paper
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mill just outside the city. Several other forbidding-looking
structures that no human—let alone an unsuspecting
woman like Gabrielle—ought to be getting anywhere near.
Rogue lairs.
Some of them were defunct now, forced into that status
by Lucan and his warriors, but a few others were active
cells. He spotted several that Gideon currently had under
surveillance. Sifting through the others, he wondered how
many other photos she had here of Rogue locations not
yet on the Breed’s radar.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered tightly, fingering through
a couple more images.
She even had some exterior shots of local Darkhavens,
obscure entryways and masking signage meant to conceal
the vampire sanctuaries from easy detection, whether from
nosy humans or the enemy Rogues.
Yet Gabrielle had found all of these places. How?
It sure as hell wasn’t by chance. Her extraordinary vi-
sual sense must have led her to them. She had already
proven to be all but immune to the regular tricks of vam-
pire guile—mass hypnotic illusion, mind control . . . now
this.
With a curse, Lucan shoved a few pictures into the
pocket of his leather jacket, then tossed the rest back onto
the table.
“Gabrielle?”
He moved into the kitchen, where something even
more disturbing waited for him.
The scent of Gabrielle’s blood grew stronger here,
drawing him to the sink. He froze in front of it, something
cold clamping down around his chest as he stared into the
basin.
It looked like someone had tried to clean up a crime
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scene, and had done a piss-poor job of it. More than
a dozen waterlogged, bloodstained paper towels were
clumped in the sink along with a paring knife that had
been removed from the wooden block on the counter.
He picked up the sharp blade and gave it a quick in-
spection. It hadn’t been used, but all the blood in the sink
and spattered on the floor from the foyer to the kitchen be-
longed solely to Gabrielle.
And the torn clothing that lay in a discarded heap near
his foot carried her scent, too.
God, if anyone had touched her—
If anything had happened to her . . .
“Gabrielle!”
Lucan followed his senses down to the basement level
of her apartment. He didn’t bother with lights; his vision
was most acute in the dark. Tearing down the stairs, he
called her name into the quiet.
At the back corner of the space, Gabrielle’s scent grew
strongest. Lucan found himself standing before another
closed door, this one framed in thick weatherstripping to
block out all exterior light. He tried the latch, rattling the
door on its meager lock.
“Gabrielle. Can you hear me? Baby, open the door.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He didn’t have the patience
for that, or the focus to carefully release the hook and eye
closure on the other side. With a growl of fury, Lucan
smashed his shoulder into the door and burst inside.
His eyes instantly found her in the lightless space. Her
body was curled up on the floor of the cramped darkroom,
naked except for a skimpy lace bra and bikini underwear.
She jerked awake with the sudden crash of his arrival.
Her head came up fast. Her eyelids were heavy, puffed
from recent crying. She’d been sobbing in here, and for
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some length of time by his guess. Exhaustion poured off
her in waves. She looked so small, so vulnerable.
“Ah, God. Gabrielle,” he whispered, dropping into a
low crouch beside her. “What the hell are you doing in
here? Did somebody hurt you?”
She shook her head, but didn’t answer right away. With
dragging hands, she pushed her hair out of her face, trying
to find him in the dark. “Just . . . tired. I needed quiet . . .
peace.”
“So you locked yourself down here?” He blew out a
sharp breath, relieved, except for the fact that her body did
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