Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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tention distracted truly now. “Tell me about your friend.
What is her interest in these places she photographs?”
He had been rolling that question over in his mind
since Gabrielle had first come to his attention as an incon-
venient witness to a killing carelessly perpetrated by some
of his new recruits. He’d been irritated, though not
alarmed, to hear about the Maxwell woman from the
Minion at the police station. Seeing her inquisitive face on
the asylum’s closed-circuit security feed hadn’t exactly
pleased him, either. But it was her apparent attention to
documenting vampire locations that piqued a dark sort of
interest in him.
He had, until now, been occupied with other, more cru-
cial things that required his attention. He’d been focused
elsewhere, and had been satisfied with merely keeping a
close eye on Gabrielle Maxwell. Perhaps her interest and
activities might bear closer scrutiny. She might, in fact,
warrant hard interrogation. Torture, if it pleased him.
“Let’s talk about your friend.”
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His tiresome playmate tossed her head, then flopped
back on the rug, throwing out her arms like a petulant
child being denied something she wanted. “No. . . don’t
talk about her,” she murmured, as her hips arched up off
the floor. “Come here . . . kiss me first . . . talk about me . . .
about us . . .”
He took a step toward the female, but his intentions
were hardly obliging. The slivering of his pupils might
have fooled her into thinking he desired her, but it was
anger pulsing through his body. There was contempt in his
hard grasp as he stood over her and hauled her to her feet
before him.
“Yes,” she sighed, nearly his to command already.
With the flat of his palm, he guided her head back onto
her shoulder, baring the pale column of skin that was still
scored and bleeding from his last taste of her. He lapped
roughly at the wound, his fangs surging with rage.
“You’ll tell me everything I want to know,” he whis-
pered, lethal in his control as he stared into her bleary
gaze. “From this moment forward, you, Nurse K. Delaney,
will do whatever I tell you to do.”
He bared his teeth, then struck as fiercely as a viper,
draining every last bit of her conscience and her feeble hu-
man soul in one savage bite.
Gabrielle made a perimeter check of her apartment, tak-
ing care that all the locks on her doors and windows were
secure. She had been back home since mid-afternoon,
having left Megan’s place in the morning after her friend
went to work. Meg had offered for her to stay as long as she
wanted, but Gabrielle couldn’t hide forever, and she hated
the idea that she might drag her friend any deeper into a
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situation that was becoming more terrifying and unex-
plainable by the hour.
At first, she’d avoided returning to her apartment and
had walked around the city in a paranoid haze, all but giv-
ing in to the rising hysteria. Instinct warned her to prepare
herself for a fight.
One that she knew would be coming sooner than later.
She worried that she’d find Lucan, one of his blood-
sucking friends, or something even worse waiting for her
when she arrived home. But it had been broad daylight,
and she’d returned, at last, to find her apartment empty,
not a thing out of place.
Now, as darkness settled outside, her anxieties returned
tenfold.
Wrapping her arms around her cocoon of an oversized
white sweater and jeans, she walked back into the kitchen
where her answering machine was blinking with two new
messages. They were both from Megan. She’d been phon-
ing for the past hour, since her original message about the
body recovered in the playground area where Gabrielle
had been assaulted the night before.
Megan was frantic, telling Gabrielle about the police
report she’d gotten from Ray, describing how her attacker
had apparently been mauled by animals not long after
he’d tried to hurt Gabrielle. And there was more. A police
officer had been murdered in the station; it was his weapon
recovered from the savaged body found on the grounds of
the children’s park.
“Gabby, please call me as soon as you get this. I know
you’re scared, honey, but the police really need your state-
ment. Ray’s about to go on break from duty. He says he
can come and pick you up, if you’d feel safer—”
Gabrielle hit the erase button.
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And felt the hairs at the back of her neck begin to rise.
She was no longer alone in the kitchen.
Heart lurching into overdrive, she whirled around to
face her intruder, not at all surprised to see that it was
Lucan. He stood in the door from the living room, watch-
ing her in thoughtful silence.
Or maybe he was just sizing up his next meal.
Curiously, Gabrielle realized she wasn’t so much afraid
of him as she was angry. He looked so normal, even now,
standing there in a dark trenchcoat, tailored black pants,
and an expensive-looking shirt that was a few shades
darker than the mesmerizing silver of his eyes.
There was no trace of the monster she had witnessed
last night. Just a man. The dark lover she only thought she
knew.
She found herself wishing that he would have shown
up with fangs bared and fury sparking in his strangely
transformed eyes, as the terror he’d betrayed himself to be
last night. It would have been more fair than this outward
semblance of normalcy that made her want to pretend
everything was all right. That he was actually Detective
Lucan Thorne of the Boston Police, a man pledged to pro-
tect the innocent and uphold the law.
A man she might have been able to fall in love with—
perhaps already was.
But everything about him had been a lie.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to come here tonight.”
Gabrielle swallowed hard. “I knew you would. I know
you followed me last night, after I ran from you.”
Something flickered within his penetrating gaze, which
held her too intensely. Too much like a caress. “I wouldn’t
have hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, now.”
“Then leave.”
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He shook his head. Took a step forward. “Not until
we’ve talked.”
“You
mean, not until you’ve made sure I won’t talk,”
she replied, trying not to be lulled into complacency sim-
ply because he looked like the man she had trusted.
Or because her body—even her idiot heart—
responded to him on sight.
“There are things you need to understand, Gabrielle.”
“Oh, I do understand,” she said, amazed that her voice
held no tremor. Her fingers came up near her neck, feeling
for the cross pendant she hadn’t worn since her first com-
munion. The delicate talisman seemed like ridiculously
flimsy armor now that she was standing in front of Lucan,
with nothing to separate them except a few strides of his
long, muscular legs. “You don’t have to explain anything to
me. It’s taken me a while, granted, but I think I finally un-
derstand it all.”
“No. You don’t.” He came toward her, pausing to no-
tice the knot of chalky white bulbs tied above his head in
the door of the kitchen. “Garlic,” he drawled, and exhaled
an amused chuckle.
Gabrielle retreated a pace from him, her Keds squeak-
ing on the kitchen tiles. “I told you, I was expecting you.”
And she’d done a bit of other prep work before he ar-
rived. If he looked around, he would find the same thresh-
old decoration in every room of the apartment, including
the front door. Not that he seemed to care.
Multiple locks hadn’t stopped him and neither had this
further attempt at a security measure. He walked under
Gabrielle’s homemade vampire repellant unfazed, his eyes
dark and fixed on her intently.
As he stepped closer, she backed up farther into the
kitchen, until the counter came up behind her. A trial-sized
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mouthwash bottle lay on the polished granite top. It no
longer contained Scope but a little something else she had
picked up on her way home that morning, when she’d
stopped in at St. Mary’s for a long overdue confession.
Gabrielle grabbed the plastic bottle off the counter and
held it close to her chest.
“Holy water?” Lucan asked, coolly meeting her gaze.
“What are you going to do with that, throw it on me?”
“If I have to.”
He moved so quickly, she saw only a dizzying blur in
front of her as he reached out and snatched the small vial
out of her grasp and emptied it into his hands. He
smoothed his dripping fingers over his face and into his
glossy black hair.
Nothing happened.
He tossed the useless container aside and took another
step toward her.
“I’m not what you think, Gabrielle.”
He sounded so reasonable, she almost believed him. “I
saw what you did. You murdered a man, Lucan.”
He calmly shook his head. “I killed a human who was
no longer a man—hardly human at all, in fact. What had
once been human in him was bled out by the vampire who
made him into a Minion slave. He was as good as dead al-
ready. I merely finished the job. I regret that you had to see
it, but I cannot apologize. And I won’t. I would kill anyone,
human or otherwise, who means to do you harm.”
“Which makes you either dangerously overprotective,
or just plain psychotic. To say nothing of the fact that you
sliced that guy’s throat open with your teeth, and drank his
blood!”
She waited for another composed reply. Some other ra-
tional explanation that might make her consider that even
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something as unbelievable as vampirism could actually
make sense—could actually exist—in the real world.
But Lucan didn’t give her any such response.
“This isn’t how I wanted things to go between us,
Gabrielle. God knows, you deserve better.” He muttered
something low under his breath, in a language she could
not understand. “You deserve to be brought into this gen-
tly, by a male who will say the right words, and do the right
things for you. That’s why I wanted to send Gideon—” He
raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustra-
tion. “I am no emissary for my race. I am a warrior. At
times, an executioner. I deal in death, Gabrielle, and I am
not accustomed to making excuses to anyone for my ac-
tions.”
“I’m not asking you for excuses.”
“What, then—the truth?” He gave her a wry smile.
“You saw the truth last night when I killed that Minion and
drained him dry. That was truth, Gabrielle. That is who I
truly am.”
She felt a keen sickness in her belly that he hadn’t even
tried to deny the horror of what he was telling her. “You’re
a monster, Lucan. My God, you’re something out of a
nightmare.”
“According to human superstitions and folklore, yes.
Those same stories would tell you to fight my kind with
garlic or holy water—all farce, as you’ve just seen for your-
self. In fact, our races are very closely intertwined. We are
not so different from each other.”
“Really?” she scoffed, hysteria clutching at her as he
took a step closer, forcing her to retreat again. “Last time I
checked, cannibalism wasn’t high on my to-do list. Then
again, neither was screwing the undead, but I seem to be
doing that with a bit of regularity lately.”
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He exhaled a humorless laugh. “I assure you, I am not
undead. I breathe, like you. I bleed, like you. I can be
killed, though not easily, and I have been living for a long,
long time, Gabrielle.” He came toward her, closing the
small distance that separated them in the kitchen. “I am
every bit as alive as you are.”
As if to prove it, his warm fingers closed around hers.
He brought her hand up between their bodies and pressed
her palm against his chest. Through the soft fabric of his
shirt, his heart pounded strong and steady. She felt his
breath flowing in and out as his lungs expanded and con-
tracted, the warmth of his body seeping into her fingertips,
permeating her weary senses like a soothing balm.
“No.” She pulled away from him. “No, damn you! No
more tricks. I saw your face last night, Lucan. I saw your
fangs, your eyes! You said that was who you truly are, so
what is this? Everything you present yourself to be now—
everything I feel when I am near you—are they illusions?”
“I am real, as I stand here now . . . and as you saw me
last night.”
“Then show me. Let me see the other you again instead
of this one. I want to know what I’m really dealing with,
it’s only fair.”
&
nbsp; He scowled as though her mistrust wounded him. “The
change cannot be forced. It is a physiological one that
comes on with hunger, or during times of intense emo-
tion.”
“So, how much of a head start will I have before you
decide to rip open my jugular and go for broke? A couple
of minutes? A few seconds?”
His eyes flashed at her provocation, but his voice re-
mained level. “I will not hurt you, Gabrielle.”
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“Then why are you here? To fuck me again, before you
turn me into something awful like you?”
“Jesus,” he ground out harshly. “That’s not how it—”
“Or are you going to make me your personal vampire
slave, like that one you killed last night?”
“Gabrielle.” Lucan’s jaw went rigid, as if his teeth were
clenched hard enough to shatter steel. “I came here to pro-
tect you, goddamn it! Because I need to know that you are
safe. Maybe I’m here because I see that I’ve made mistakes
with you, and I want to try to fix this somehow.”
She stood immobile, absorbing his unexpected can-
dor, and watching the play of emotion on his harsh fea-
tures. Anger, frustration, desire, uncertainty . . . she read
all of it in his penetrating gaze. God help her, but she felt
all of that and more churning like a tempest within herself
as well.
“I want you to leave, Lucan.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I never want to see you again!” she cried, desperate for
him to believe her. She raised her hand to slap him, but he
caught her easily, before she could strike. “Please. Just get
out of here, now!”
Ignoring her completely, Lucan took the hand that
would have lashed out at him, and brought it tenderly to
his mouth. His lips parted slowly as he pressed her palm
into his hot, sensual kiss. She felt no bite of fangs, only the
tender heat of his mouth, the moist caress of his tongue as
it teased the sensitive flesh between her fingers.
Her head swam with the delicious feel of his lips on her
skin.
Her legs weakened beneath her, her limbs, and her re-
sistance, beginning a slow meltdown that started at her
core.
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“No,” she said, hurling the word at him as she pulled