parking lot.
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He should let her go.
He’d screwed things up so badly, he didn’t think there
would be any reasoning with Gabrielle tonight. Maybe not
ever.
From the opposite curb, he watched her taking long
strides down the other side of the street, heading God
knew where. She looked ashen and stunned, like she’d just
taken a sucker punch to the chest.
Which she had, he admitted darkly.
Maybe it was for the best that he let her run off think-
ing he was a liar and a dangerous lunatic. The assumption
was not all that far from fact, after all. But her opinion of
him wasn’t key here, anyway. Getting a Breedmate to
safety was.
He could let her go home, give her a few days to cool
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off, take some time to come to terms with his deception.
Then he could send Gideon to smooth things over and
bring her calmly under Breed protection where she be-
longed. Gabrielle could choose a new life in any one of the
Darkhavens secreted around the world. She could be
happy, secure, and find a mate who would be a true part-
ner for her.
She wouldn’t even have to see him again.
Yeah, he thought, that was the best course of action at
this point.
But regardless, he found himself stepping off the curb
and into the street after her, unable to just walk away from
Gabrielle now, even if that’s what she needed most.
As he crossed the lanes of light evening traffic, his at-
tention was wrenched to the squeal of car tires up ahead of
him. A late model American rust bucket tore out of a side
alley near the police station and careened into the middle
of the street. The accelerator roared, laying rubber as the
driver stomped on the gas and aimed the nose of the rum-
bling beast toward his target up the road.
Gabrielle.
Son of a bitch.
Lucan vaulted into a dead run. His boots chewed
up the pavement, moving with all the speed he could
summon.
The car launched up onto the curb a few feet in front of
Gabrielle, blocking her path. She jolted to a stop. A low
command came at her from the open window of the car.
She shook her head violently, then screamed, her face go-
ing stark with recognition as the vehicle door opened and a
human male jumped out.
“Jesus Christ. Gabrielle!” Lucan shouted, his mind
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grasping for a hold on her assailant and getting nothing
but disconnect, unreachable, dead air.
Minion, he realized with contempt. Only the Rogue
Master who owned this human could command his
thoughts. And the mental effort Lucan had spent attempt-
ing to do so had slowed him physically. A few seconds lost,
but too damned many.
Gabrielle made a fast break to her left, racing into a
small playground with her pursuer right on her heels.
Lucan heard her cry out, saw the human that was chas-
ing her suddenly throw out his hand and grab a fistful of
the ponytail swinging behind her.
The bastard dragged her down to the ground.
Fumbled a pistol out from the back waistband of his
khakis.
Thrust the barrel of the weapon into Gabrielle’s face.
“No!” Lucan roared, coming right up on them and
kicking the human off of her with one fierce blow of his
booted foot.
The weapon went off as the guy rolled, a wild shot fir-
ing up into the trees. But Lucan smelled blood. The metal-
lic odor of it clung to both Gabrielle and her attacker. Not
hers, he determined quickly, and with relief, as he noted
the absence of Gabrielle’s unique jasmine scent.
The spilled blood was fresh on the front of the Minion’s
shirt, and hunger flared in that deadly part of Lucan that
was still starving and trying to heal. His mouth throbbed in
response to the feeding impulse, but rage burned hotter at
the idea of Gabrielle being harmed by this scum. His stare
locked in deadly heat on the Minion, Lucan offered
Gabrielle his hand to help her up from the ground.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head no, but a small sound caught in her
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throat, half sob, half hysterical moan. “He’s the one,
Lucan—the one I saw watching me in the park the other
day!”
“He’s a Minion,” Lucan said, growling the word
through gritted teeth. He didn’t care who the human was.
In a few minutes it would be history, anyway.
“Gabrielle, you need to get out of here, sweetheart.”
“W-what? You mean leave you with him? Lucan, he
has a gun.”
“Go now, baby. Just run back out the way you came and
get yourself home. I’ll make sure you’re safe there.”
The Minion was doubled over on the ground, still
clutching the handgun, coughing in an effort to catch the
breath Lucan had kicked out of him. He spat a mouthful
of blood, and Lucan’s stare tightened on the crimson spray
soaking into the dirt. His gums ached with the stretching of
his fangs.
“Lucan—”
“Goddamn it, Gabrielle! Leave!”
The command rushed out of him in a furious snarl, but
there was little he could do to contain the beast within him.
He was going to kill again—his anger was so out of con-
trol, he needed to—and he refused to let her see it.
“Run, Gabrielle. Go now!”
She ran.
Head reeling, heart practically exploding, Gabrielle
took off at Lucan’s bellowed command.
But she wasn’t about to go home like he said and leave
him all alone. She fled the playground area, praying that
the street and the station house full of armed cops,
wouldn’t be far. Part of her hated leaving Lucan at all, but
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another part of her—a part that was desperate to do
what she could to help him—sent her legs flying out be-
neath her.
As mad as she was at his deception, as frightened as she
was of everything she didn’t understand about him, she
needed him to be all right.
If anything were to happen to him—
The thought was cut short as a round of gunfire
cracked behind her in the dark.
She froze, all the breath sucked out of her lungs.
She heard a strange, animal roar.
Another two shots rang out, rapi
d sequence, then . . .
nothing.
Only a heavy, wrenching silence.
Oh, God.
“Lucan?” she screamed. Panic lodged in her throat.
“Lucan!”
She was running once more, back where she’d come
from. Back to where she feared her heart was going to
shatter into a million pieces if Lucan wasn’t standing there
unharmed when she reached him.
She felt a vague sense of worry that the kid from the
police precinct— Minion, that was the odd word Lucan had called
him—might be waiting for her, or already coming after her
to finish her off as well. But concern for her own personal
safety was shoved aside as she neared the little corner of
the moonlit playground.
She just needed to know that Lucan was okay.
Above everything else in that moment, she needed to
be with him.
She saw the silhouette of a dark figure on the grassy
yard—Lucan, standing with legs braced apart, arms held
down at his sides in a menacing angle. He stood over his
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assailant who was evidently ass-planted on the ground in
front of him and attempting to scrabble out of Lucan’s
reach.
“Thank God,” Gabrielle whispered under her breath,
instantly relieved.
Lucan was all right, and now the authorities could deal
with the deranged psychotic who might have killed them
both.
She hurried a little closer.
“Lucan,” she called, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
Towering over the man at his feet, he bent at the waist
and reached down to grab him. Gabrielle’s ears registered
a queer strangling sound, and she realized with not a little
shock that Lucan was holding the man by the throat.
Hauling him up off the ground with one hand.
Her steps slowed, but she couldn’t halt them altogether
as her mind struggled to make sense of what she was
seeing.
Lucan was strong, there was no doubting that, and the
kid from the police station probably weighed only about
fifty pounds more than she did, but to lift him with the
power of one arm alone . . . she could hardly imagine it.
She watched in peculiar detachment as Lucan raised
his arm higher, letting the man squirm and fight the claw-
ing grip that was slowly cutting off his air. A terrifying roar
began to fill her ears, building slowly, until everything else
faded away.
In the moonlight, she saw Lucan’s mouth. It was open,
teeth bared. His mouth, making that terrible, otherworldly
noise.
“Stop,” she murmured, her eyes rooted on him now,
suddenly sick with dread. “Please . . . Lucan, stop.”
And then the keening howl went silent, replaced by a
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new horror as Lucan brought the spasming body down be-
fore him and calmly sank his teeth into the flesh below the
man’s jaw. A jet of blood spurted from the deep puncture,
crimson rendered black against the darkness of night that
surrounded the terrible scene. Lucan remained fixed,
holding the gushing wound to his mouth.
Feeding from it.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned, her hands trembling as
she brought them up to hold back a scream. “No, no, no,
no . . . Oh, Lucan . . . no.”
His head came up abruptly, as if he’d heard her quiet
misery. Or maybe he’d suddenly sensed her presence not a
hundred yards from where he stood, savage and terrifying,
looking like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Not true, her stricken mind contradicted.
She had seen this brutality once before, and if reason
had forbade her from giving a name to the horror then, it
rose up within her now like a cold, bleak wind.
“Vampire,” she whispered, staring at Lucan’s blood-
stained face and feral, glowing eyes.
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Seventeen
The smell of blood wreathed him, pungent and metallic,
his nose swamped with the sweet, coppery tanginess. Some
of it was his own, he realized with a dull sense of curiosity,
grunting as he looked down and noted the gunshot wound
to his left shoulder.
He felt no pain, only the swelling energy that always
filled him after he fed.
But he wanted more.
Needed more, came the answering cry of the beast within
him.
That voice was rising. Demanding. Urging him toward
the edge.
But then, hadn’t he been heading there for a long time,
anyway?
Lucan clamped his jaws together so hard his teeth
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should have shattered. He had to get a grip, had to get the
hell out of there and back to the compound, where he
might be able to pull his shit together.
He had been walking the darkened streets for two
hours, and still his blood was drumming hard in his tem-
ples, rage and hunger still ruling all but a sliver of his mind.
He was a danger to all in this condition, but his restless
body would not be still.
He stalked the city like a wraith, moving without con-
scious thought even though his feet—his every sense—led
him on a purposeful path toward Gabrielle.
She hadn’t gone home. Lucan wasn’t sure where she
had run, until the unseen thread that connected him to her
by scent and senses brought him in front of an apartment
building in the city’s North End. A friend of hers, no
doubt.
A light was on in an upstairs window, that bit of glass
and brick was all that separated him from her.
But he wasn’t going to try to see her, and not merely be-
cause of the red Mustang parked outside with the police
light propped on the dash. Lucan didn’t have to see his re-
flection in the windshield to know that his pupils were still
narrow in the center of his huge irises, his fangs still pro-
truding behind the rigid set of his mouth.
He looked every bit the monster he was.
The monster Gabrielle had seen firsthand tonight.
Lucan growled, forced to remember her horrified ex-
pression again and again since he’d slain the Minion.
He could still see her take a faltering step backward,
her eyes wide with terror and revulsion. She had seen him
for what he truly was—had even flung the word at him in
accusation the instant before she’d fled.
He hadn’t tried to stop her, not with words or by force.
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br />
All he’d known in that moment was the pure rush of
fury as he drained his prey dry. Then he’d dropped the
body like the rubbish it was, feeling a further surge of rage
when he considered what might have happened to
Gabrielle had she fallen into Rogue hands. Lucan had
wanted to tear the human apart—nearly had, he acknowl-
edged, vividly recalling the savagery he had wrought.
He, the cool one, so fierce in his control.
What a fucking joke.
His carefully held mask had been slipping from the mo-
ment he had first met Gabrielle Maxwell. She made him
weak, exposed his flaws.
Made him want things he could never have.
He stared up at that second-floor window, chest heav-
ing as he battled a fierce urge to leap up there, smash his
way in, and take Gabrielle someplace where he could keep
her all to himself.
Let her fear him. Let her despise him for what he was,
so long as he could press her warm body down beneath
him, easing his pain as only she could do.
Yes, the beast within him snarled, knowing only want
and need.
Before the impulse to have her could win out, Lucan
fisted his hand and brought it down hard on the hood of
the off-duty police officer’s car. The vehicle alarm howled,
and as curtains parted in every nearby window at the dis-
turbance, Lucan leaped off the curb and jogged into the
shadows of the waning night.
“Everything’s okay,” Megan’s boyfriend said, coming back
into her apartment after he’d gone out to investigate the
sudden trip of his car alarm. “Damn thing’s always had a
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hair trigger. Sorry ’bout that. Not like we needed any
added tension tonight, eh?”
“Probably just kids causing trouble,” Megan added
from beside Gabrielle on the sofa.
Gabrielle nodded in vague agreement at her friend’s at-
tempt to soothe her, but she didn’t believe it for a second.
It was Lucan.
She had felt him outside with an inner sense she
couldn’t begin to describe. It wasn’t fear or dread, just a
marrow-deep awareness that he was close by.
That he needed her.
Wanted her.
God help her, but she had actually been hoping he’d
come to the door, haul her out of there, and help her make
sense of the horror she had witnessed a short while ago.
He was gone now, however. She felt his absence as
strongly as she’d known he had followed her to Megan’s.
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