Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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Jesus, he could hardly grasp the hard truth of it.
Lucan paused, respectfully bowing his head low to the
warrior’s widow as she passed him. Danika was clinging
hard to Savannah, the latter’s strong, mocha-skinned arms
seeming to be all that prevented Conlan’s tall blond
Breedmate from collapsing in despair.
Savannah acknowledged Lucan where her weeping
charge was unable. “They’re awaiting you inside,” she told
him gently, her deep brown eyes glistening with tears.
“They will need your strength and guidance.”
Lucan gave Gideon’s woman a sober nod, then took
the few short strides that would bring him into the infir-
mary.
He entered in silence, unwilling to disturb the solem-
nity of the fleeting time that he and his brethren would
have to spend with Conlan. The warrior had sustained
staggeringly severe injuries; even from across the room,
Lucan could smell terrible blood loss. His nostrils filled
with the foul, mingled odors of gunpowder, electrical heat,
twisted metal shrapnel, and melted flesh.
There had been an explosion, with Conlan caught in
the center of it.
Conlan’s remains lay on a shroud-draped examination
table, his body divested of clothing except for the wide
strip of embroidered white silk that covered his groin. In
the short while since he’d been returned to the compound,
Conlan’s skin had been cleaned and annointed with a fra-
grant oil, all in preparation for the funeral rites that would
take place with the next rising of the sun, not a few hours
from now.
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Around the table that held the warrior, the others had
gathered: Dante, rigid in his stoic observation of death;
Rio, head bent down, fingers clutching a string of rosary
beads as he moved his lips silently to the words of his
mother’s human religion; Gideon, attending cloth in hand,
dabbing carefully at one of the many savage lacerations
that had torn open nearly every inch of Conlan’s skin;
Nikolai, who had been on patrol that night with Conlan,
his face paler than Lucan had ever seen it, his wintry eyes
stark, his skin marred with soot and cinder and small,
bleeding cuts.
Even Tegan was there, paying respects, although the
vampire stood just outside the circle of the others, his eyes
hooded, sullen in his solitude.
Lucan strode up to the table to take his place among his
brethren. He closed his eyes and prayed over Conlan in
prolonged silence. Some longtime later, Nikolai broke the
quiet of the room.
“He saved my life out there tonight. We’d just smoked a
couple of suckheads outside the Green Line station and
were heading back when I saw this dude get on the train. I
don’t know what made me look at him, but he shot us this
big, shit-eating grin, like he was daring us to come after
him. He was packing some kind of gunpowder on him. He
stank of that and some other shit I didn’t have time to get
a read on.”
“TATP,” Lucan said, scenting the acrid stuff on Niko’s
clothing even now.
“Turned out the bastard was carrying a belt of wired
explosives on him. He jumped off the train just before we
started rolling, and took off running down one of the old
tracks. We chased him, Conlan cornered him. That’s when
we saw the bombs. They were on a sixty-second clock, and
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it was counting down below ten. I heard Conlan roar at
me to get back, and then he launched himself at the guy.”
“Christ,” Dante swore, raking a hand through his black
hair.
“A Minion did this?” Lucan asked, figuring it to be a
safe presumption.
The Rogues had no qualms about spending human
lives like dust in order to carry out their petty turf wars or
to settle matters of personal retribution. For a long time,
human religious fanatics weren’t the only ones to employ
the weak of mind as inexpensive, expendable, yet highly
effective tools of terror.
But that didn’t make the ugly reality of what happened
to Conlan any easier to swallow.
“This wasn’t a Minion,” Niko replied, shaking his
head. “This was a Rogue, wired up with enough TATP to
take out half a city block by the look and stench of it.”
Lucan wasn’t the only one in the room to grind out a
savage curse at that bit of troubling news.
“So, they’re not content sacrificing just Minion pawns
anymore?” Rio remarked. “Now the Rogues are moving
bigger pieces on the board?”
“They’re still pawns,” Gideon said.
Lucan glanced to the quick-witted vampire and under-
stood what he was getting at. “The pieces haven’t changed.
But the rules have. This is a new brand of warfare, not the
minor firefighting we’ve been dealing with in the past.
Someone within Rogue ranks is bringing a degree of order
to the anarchy. We’re coming under siege.”
He turned his attention back to Conlan, the first casu-
alty of what he feared was to be a new dark age. In his
aged bones, he felt the violence of a long ago past rising up
to repeat itself. War was brewing again, and if the Rogues
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were making moves to organize, to go on the offensive,
then the entire vampire nation would find itself on the
front lines. The humans, too.
“We can discuss this more at length, but not now. This
time is Conlan’s. Let us honor him.”
“I’ve said my goodbyes,” Tegan murmured. “Conlan
knows I respected the hell out of him in life, as I do in
death. Nothing’s ever gonna change on that score.”
A heavy wave of anxiety swept the room as everyone
waited for Lucan to react to Tegan’s abrupt departure. But
Lucan wasn’t about to give the vampire the satisfaction of
thinking he’d pissed him off, which he had. He waited for
the retreat of Tegan’s boot falls to fade down the corridor,
then he nodded to the others to resume the rite.
One by one, Lucan and each of the four other warriors
sank down on their knee to pay further respects. They
spoke a single prayer, then rose together, and began to
withdraw to await the final ceremony that would put their
fallen comrade to rest.
“I will be the one to carry him up,” Lucan announced
to the departing vampires.
He caught the exchange of looks between them, and
knew what it meant. Elders of the vampire race—Gen
Ones, especially—were never asked to bear the burden of
the dead. Th
at obligation fell to the later generation Breed
who were further removed from the Ancients, and who, as
such, could better withstand the burning rays of the rising
sun for the time required to lay a vampire to proper rest.
For a Gen One like Lucan, the funeral rite would be a
torturous eight minutes of exposure.
Lucan stared at the lifeless form on the table, unwilling
to look away from the damage Conlan had suffered.
Damage suffered in his place, Lucan thought, sick with
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the knowledge that it should have been him on patrol with
Niko, not Conlan. Had he not sent the Highlander out at
the last minute as his own replacement, Lucan might have
been lying on that cold metal slab, his limbs and face and
torso charred from hellish fire, his gut blasted open with
shrapnel.
Lucan’s need to see Gabrielle tonight had trumped his
duty to the Breed, and now Conlan—his grieving mate, as
well—had paid the ultimate price.
“I will take him topside,” he repeated sternly. He slid a
bleak scowl at Gideon. “Summon me when the prepara-
tions are completed.”
The vampire inclined his head, granting Lucan more
respect than he was due in that moment. “Of course. It
won’t be long.”
Lucan spent the next couple of hours alone in his private
quarters, kneeling in the center of the space, head dropped
in prayer and somber reflection. Gideon arrived at the
door, as promised, nodding to indicate that it was time to
remove Conlan from the compound and surrender him to
the dead.
“She’s pregnant,” Gideon said grimly as Lucan rose.
“Danika is three months with child. Savannah just told me.
Conlan had been trying to work up the courage to tell you
that he was leaving the Order once the baby arrived. He
and Danika were planning to withdraw to one of the
Darkhavens to raise their family.”
“Christ,” Lucan hissed, feeling even worse for the
happy future Conlan and Danika had been robbed of, and
for the son who would never know the man of courage and
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honor who had been his father. “Everything is in prepara-
tion for the ritual?”
Gideon inclined his head.
“Then let’s do this.”
Lucan strode forward. His feet and head were bare, as
was the rest of his body beneath a long black robe. Gideon
was robed as well, but wearing the formal belted tunic
of the Order, as were the other vampires who awaited
them in the chamber set aside for all manner of Breed
ritual—from marriages and births, to funerals, like this
one. The three females of the compound were present as
well, Savannah and Eva in ceremonial hooded black
gowns, Danika garbed in the same manner, but in deepest
scarlet, to signify her sacred blood-bond with the departed.
At the front of the gathering, Conlan’s body lay on an
ornate altar, cocooned in a thick shroud of snowy silk
wrappings.
“We begin,” Gideon announced simply.
Lucan’s heart was heavy as he listened to the service, to
the symbolism of infinity in each of the ceremony’s rites.
Eight ounces of perfumed oil to anoint the skin.
Eight layers of white silk shrouding the body of the
fallen.
Eight minutes of silent, daybreak attendance by one
member of the Breed, before the dead warrior would be
released to the incinerating rays of the sun. Left alone, his
body and soul would scatter to the four winds as ash, a part
of the elements forever.
As Gideon’s voice came to a slow pause, Danika
stepped forward.
Turning to face the gathering, she lifted her chin and
spoke in a hoarse, but proud, voice. “This male was mine,
as I was his. His blood sustained me. His strength pro-
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tected me. His love fulfilled me in all ways. He was my
beloved, my only one, and he will be in my heart for all
eternity.”
“You honor him well,” came the hushed, unison reply
from Lucan and the others.
Danika now turned to meet Gideon, her hands ex-
tended, palms upturned. He unsheathed a slim golden
dagger and placed it in her hands. Danika’s hooded head
dipped down in acceptance, then she turned to stand over
Conlan’s wrapped form. She murmured soft, private
words meant only for the two of them. Her hands came up
near her face, and Lucan knew that the Breedmate widow
was now scoring her lower lip with the edge of the blade,
drawing blood that she would then press to Conlan’s
mouth from over the shroud as she kissed him one final
time.
Danika bent toward her lover and remained there for a
long while, her body shaking with the force of her grief.
She came away from him sobbing into the back of her
hand, her scarlet kiss glowing fiercely on Conlan’s mouth
amid the field of white that covered him. Savannah and
Eva brought her into a joined embrace, leading her away
from the altar so that Lucan could continue with the one
task that yet remained.
He approached Gideon at the fore of the assembly and
pledged to see Conlan depart with all the honor that was
due him, the vow spoken by all of the Breed who walked
the same path that awaited Lucan now.
Gideon stepped aside to grant Lucan access to the
body. Lucan took the massive warrior into his arms and
turned to face the others as was required.
“You honor him well,” murmured the low chorus of
voices.
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Lucan progressed solemnly and slowly across the cere-
monial chamber to the stairwell leading up and out of the
compound. Each long flight, each of the hundreds of steps
he took, bearing the weight of his fallen brother, was a
pain he accepted without complaint.
This was the easiest part of his task, after all.
If he were going to break, it would be in a few minutes
from now, on the other side of the exterior door that
loomed ahead of him just a dozen more paces.
Lucan shouldered the steel panel open and drew the
crisp air into his lungs as he walked to the place where he
would lay Conlan to rest. He went to his knees on a patch
of crisp green grass, slowly lowering his arms to place
Conlan’s body down on terra firma before him. He whis-
pered the prayers of the funeral ritual, words he’d only
heard a scant few times over centuries long passed, yet
cal
led up now by rote.
As he spoke them, the sky began to glow with the com-
ing of dawn.
He bore the light in reverent quiet, training all thought
on Conlan and the honor that had marked his long life.
The sun continued to stretch over the horizon, less than
halfway through the ritual. Lucan dropped his head down,
absorbing the pain as Conlan surely would have done for
any one of the Breed who fought alongside him. Searing
heat washed over Lucan as dawn rose, ever stronger.
His ears filled with the repeated words of the old
prayers, and, before long, the faint hiss and crackle of his
own burning flesh.
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Thirteen
Police and transportation officials still aren’t certain what
caused the apparent explosion last night. However, I spoke
with a representative for the T just a few moments ago
who assured me that the incident was isolated to one of the
old, unused tracks, and that no injuries were reported. Stay
tuned to Channel Five for more news on this breaking
story as it—”
The dusty, late-model television mounted to a wall rack
clicked off abruptly, cowed into silence solely by the force
of the vampire’s supreme irritation. Behind him, across
the length of a bleak, dilapidated room that had once been
the asylum’s basement cafeteria, two of his Rogue lieu-
tenants stood, fidgeting and grunting, as they awaited their
next orders.
There was little patience in the pair; Rogues, by their
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addictive natures had puny attention spans, having aban-
doned intellect to pursue the more immediate whims of
their Bloodlust. They were wanton children, little better
than hounds in need of regular whippings and spare re-
wards to keep them obedient. And to remind them of
whom they currently served.
“No injuries reported,” sniggered one of the Rogues.
“Maybe not to the humans,” added the other, “but the
Breed took a damn big hit. I hear there wasn’t much left of
the dead one for the sun to claim.”
More chuckling from the first idiot, followed by an ex-
pulsion of foul, blood-soured breath as he mimicked the
detonation of the explosives that had been set off in the
tunnel by the Rogue bomber assigned to the task.