Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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should go home first, at least take a quick shower, change
my clothes. . . .”
“Wow! I mean, really, wow.” Megan’s eyes went wide
and bright with amusement. “You’re afraid to go down
there, aren’t you? Oh, you want to, but you probably have
a million excuses ready for why you can’t. Admit it, you
really like this guy.”
It wasn’t as if she could deny it, even if her sudden
smile didn’t give her away. Gabrielle met her friend’s
knowing look and shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I do. I
like him. A lot.”
“Then what are you waiting for? The station is three
blocks away, and you look gorgeous as always. Besides, it’s
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not like he hasn’t seen you a little sweaty before. He might
actually prefer this look on you.”
Gabrielle laughed along with Megan, but inside, her
stomach was twisting. She really did want to see Lucan—
didn’t want to wait another minute, in fact—but what if he
had been trying to let her down gently when they spoke
that afternoon? How ridiculous would she look then,
traipsing into the police station like she thought she was his
girlfriend? She would feel like an idiot.
No more so than if she got the news secondhand from
his friend Gideon, sent to see her on some pity mission.
“Okay. I’m going to do it.”
“Good for you!” Megan slung the strap of her rolled
yoga mat up on her shoulder, beaming. “I’m meeting Ray
at my place after his shift, but call me first thing in the
morning and tell me how it went, you hear me?”
“All right. Tell Ray I said hi.”
As Megan dashed off to make the 9:15 train, Gabrielle
headed for the police station. Along the way, she re-
membered Megan’s advice and made a quick pit stop,
picking up a sweet roll and a cup of coffee: full-strength
black, since she had a hard time thinking Lucan would be
the type to wuss his down with cream, sugar, or decaf-
feination.
With these gifts in hand as she reached the door of the
precinct house, Gabrielle took a courage-building breath,
then stepped over the threshold and strode casually inside.
The worst of his burns had begun to heal by nightfall.
New skin grew firm and healthy beneath the feathery peels
of the old as the outward damage sloughed away. His eyes,
still hypersensitive to even artificial light, registered no pain
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in the cool darkness topside. Which was good, because he
needed to be out here to quench the searing thirst of his
recuperating body.
Dante stared at him as the two of them emerged from
out of the compound and prepared to part company for a
night of recon and hell’s own retribution on the Rogues.
“You don’t look so good, man. You say the word, I’m
out there hunting for you, bring you back something
young and strong. You sure as shit need it. And no one has
to know you didn’t score the sustenance on your own.”
Lucan swung a grim look at the male and bared his
teeth in a sneer. “Fuck you.”
Dante chuckled. “Had a feeling you’d say that. You
want me to ride shotgun for you, at least?”
The slow shake of his head sent a knife of pain lancing
through his head. “I’m good. Be better, once I feed.”
“No doubt.” The vampire was silent for a long mo-
ment, just looking at him. “You know, that was pretty frig-
gin’ impressive, what you did for Conlan today. He
wouldn’t have seen that coming in a hundred years, but
damn, I wish he knew you were the one walking those final
steps with him. Way to honor him, man. Truly.”
Lucan absorbed the praise without letting it warm him.
He’d had his reasons for performing the funeral rite, and
winning the admiration of the other warriors wasn’t one of
them. “Give me an hour to hunt, then contact me back
here with your location so we can deal some death to our
enemies tonight. In Conlan’s memory.”
Dante nodded, and rapped his knuckles against
Lucan’s fist. “You got it.”
Lucan hung back as Dante retreated into the dark, his
long-legged stride cocky in anticipation of the battles that
awaited him on the streets. He drew his twin weapons
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from their sheaths and raised the curved malebranche blades
high over his head. The gleam from those claws of pol-
ished steel and Rogue-slaying titanium sparked in the thin
glow of moonlight overhead. With a low whoop of a battle
cry, the vampire vanished into the shadows of the night.
Lucan followed not long after, taking a similar path into
the lightless arteries of the city. His stealthy gait held less
bravado than purpose, less eager arrogance than stone-
cold need. His hunger was worse than it ever had been,
and the roar he sent up into the canopy of stars above was
filled with feral rage.
“Can you spell that last name again, please?”
“T-H-O-R-N-E,” Gabrielle told the station reception-
ist, who had already come up empty on her first search of
the directory. “Detective Lucan Thorne. I don’t know
what department he works in. He came to my house after
I was in here reporting an attack I witnessed last week-
end—a murder.”
“Oh, so you want homicide, then?” The young
woman’s long manicured fingernails clacked over the key-
board in rapid strokes. “Hmm . . . nope, sorry. He’s not
listed in that department, either.”
“That can’t be right. Could you check again for me?
Doesn’t that system let you search on just the name?”
“It does, but I have no listing anywhere for a Detective
Lucan Thorne. You sure he works out of this precinct?”
“I’m certain of it, yes. Your computer system must be
out of date or—”
“Oh, hold on! There’s someone who can help you out,”
the receptionist interjected, gesturing toward the entrance
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doors of the station. “Officer Carrigan! You got a sec-
ond?”
Officer Carrigan, Gabrielle registered miserably. The
aging cop who had given her such a hard time last week-
end, all but calling her a liar and a cokehead as he refused
to believe her statement about the nightclub slaying. At
least now, with Lucan having processed her cell phone pic-
tures with the police lab, she could take comfort in know-
ing that, regardless of this man’s input, the case was
moving forward in some fashion.
Gabrielle had to fight to contain her groan as she
turned her head and saw the rotund officer taking his
sweet time to strut over. When he saw her standing there,
the expression of arrogance that seemed so natural on his
fleshy face took on a decidedly contemptuous edge.
“Ah, Jay-zuss. You again? Just what I don’t need, my
last day on the job. I’m retiring in four more hours, darlin’.
You’ll have to tell it to someone else this time.”
Gabrielle frowned. “Excuse me?”
“This young lady is looking for one of our detectives,”
said the receptionist, sharing a sympathetic look with
Gabrielle at the officer’s dismissive demeanor. “I can’t find
him in the system, but she thinks he might be one of yours.
Do you know Detective Thorne?”
“Never heard of him.” Officer Carrigan started to
walk away.
“Lucan Thorne,” Gabrielle said with force, setting
Lucan’s coffee and bagged danish down on the reception
counter. She took an automatic step after the cop, nearly
reaching for his arm when it seemed he was simply going
to leave her standing there. “Detective Lucan Thorne—
you must be familiar with him. You folks sent him to my
apartment earlier this week to get some additional infor-
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mation on my statement. He brought my cell phone pho-
tos into the lab for analysis—”
Carrigan was chuckling now, having paused to look at
her as she blurted out the details of Lucan’s arrival at her
home. She didn’t have the patience to deal with the offi-
cer’s belligerence. Not when her nape was crawling with
the feeling that things were about to get weird.
“Are you telling me that Detective Thorne hasn’t
shared any of this with you?”
“Lady. I’m telling you that I don’t know what the hell
you’re talking about. I’ve been working out of this station
for thirty-five years, and I’ve never heard of any Detective
Thorne, let alone sent him out to your place.”
A knot began to form in her stomach, cold and tight,
but Gabrielle refused to process the dread that was taking
shape beneath her confusion. “That’s not possible. He
knew about the murder I witnessed. He knew I’d been
here, at the station, filing a statement about it. I saw his ID
badge when he came to my house. I just talked to him to-
day, he said he was working tonight. I have his cell phone
number. . . .”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. If it will get you outta my hair
any faster, let’s give your Detective Thorne a call,”
Carrigan said. “That ought to clear things right up, eh?”
“Yes. I’ll call him now.”
Gabrielle’s fingers were trembling a little as she dug her
cell phone out of her pocketbook and punched in Lucan’s
number. It rang, unanswered. She tried again, waiting for
an agonizing eternity while her call rang and rang and
rang, and Officer Carrigan’s expression smoothed from
dubious impatience to a tentative, sympathetic look she’d
seen on more than one social worker’s face when she was
a kid.
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“He’s not there,” she murmured as she brought the
phone away from her ear. She felt awkward and confused,
made all the worse for the careful expression on Carrigan’s
face. “I’m sure he’s just tied up with something. I’ll try him
again in a minute.”
“Ms. Maxwell, do you have anyone else we can call?
Family, maybe? Someone who can help us make sense of
what you might be going through?”
“I’m not going through anything.”
“Seems to me like you are. I think you’re confused. You
know, sometimes people invent things to help them cope
with other problems.”
Gabrielle scoffed. “I’m not confused. Lucan Thorne is
not a figment of my imagination. He’s real. These things
that have been happening around me are real. The mur-
der I saw last weekend, those . . . men . . . with their bloody
faces and sharp teeth, even that kid who was watching me
the other day at the Common . . . he works here at the sta-
tion. What did you do, send him to spy on me?”
“Okay, Ms. Maxwell. Let’s see if we can work this out
together.” Evidently, Carrigan had finally found a scrap of
diplomacy underneath the crust of his boorish nature. But
there was still a big dose of condescension in the way he
took her by the elbow and tried to guide her toward one of
the lobby benches for a seat. “Let’s just take a few deep
breaths, here. We can get you some help.”
She shook him off, pulling away. “You think I’m crazy. I
know what I saw—all of it! I’m not making this up, and I
don’t need any help. I just need the truth.”
“Sheryl, honey,” Carrigan said to the receptionist who
was staring at them with apprehension in her eyes. “You
wanna give Rudy Duncan a quick call for me? Tell him I
could use him down here.”
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“Meds?” she inquired lightly, the phone already
hugged between her ear and shoulder.
“Nah,” Carrigan replied, looking back to Gabrielle.
“No cause for alarm just yet. Ask him to come down to the
lobby, nice and easy, have a little talk with Ms. Maxwell
and me.”
“Forget it,” Gabrielle said, rising off the bench. “I’m
not staying here another second. I have to go.”
“Look, whatever you’re going through, there are peo-
ple who can help you—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish, simply gathered what
was left of her dignity, then strode over to the receptionist
desk to retrieve the cup and bag from the countertop, and
pitched both into the trash on her way out the door.
The night air was crisp against her flushed cheeks,
soothing her somewhat. But her head was still spinning.
Her heart was still pounding hard with confusion and dis-
belief.
Had the whole world gone mad around her? What the
hell was going on?
Lucan had been lying to her about being a cop, that
was pretty much a no-brainer. But just how much of what
he’d told her—God, how much of what they’d done to-
gether—had been part of that deception?
And why?
Gabrielle paused at the bottom of the concrete steps
leading out of the precinct house and took deep lungfuls of
air. She blew it out slowly, then looked down to find her cell
phone still clutched in her hand.
“Shit.”
She had to know.
This strange ride she was on h
ad to stop right now.
The Redial button brought up Lucan’s number. She
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sent the call, then waited, uncertain what she was going
to say.
It rang six times.
Seven.
Eight. . .
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Fifteen
Lucan grabbed his cell phone from out of his leather
jacket, a curse rolling hard off his tongue.
Gabrielle . . . again.
She had called him earlier as well, but he’d had to let it
go unanswered. He’d been stalking a drug dealer whom
he’d first spotted selling crack to a teenaged streetwalker
outside a seedy tavern. Lucan had mentally steered his
prey down a quiet back alley, and was just about to lunge in
attack when Gabrielle’s first call of the night had rung like
a car alarm going off in his pocket. He had clicked the de-
vice into silent mode, berating himself for the uncustom-
ary lack of sense that had made him carry the damned
thing on his hunt in the first place.
Hunger and injury had made him careless. But the
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sudden bark of noise in the darkened street had proved a
benefit to him in the end.
His strength was subpar and the cagey dealer had
scented danger on the wind, even though Lucan had kept
to the shadows, trailing his quarry unseen. The guy had
been twitchy, anxious. He’d drawn a handgun halfway
down the narrow street, and while bullet wounds were sel-
dom fatal to Lucan’s kind—unless you were talking a head
shot, delivered at pointblank range—he wasn’t sure his
compromised, recovering body would be able to absorb
the impact of a further injury today.
Not to mention the fact that it just would have pissed
him off, and he was already in a seriously foul mood.
So, when the ring of the cell phone sent the dealer into
a startled left-right-left spin as he tried to determine the
source of the noise behind him, Lucan had sprung on him.
He had taken the guy down fast, sinking his fangs into the
vein in the human’s neck, which bulged tautly in that in-
stant before terror forced breath enough through the
man’s lungs for him to scream.