Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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ing as she ran her finger around the edge of her teacup.
She knew that what Savannah was telling her had a certain
logic, despite its surrealism, but accepting it was not going
to be easy. “It terrifies me to think about what he really is,
how he lives. I should despise him for it, Savannah.”
“But you don’t.”
“No,” she confessed quietly.
“You care for him, don’t you?”
Gabrielle nodded, reluctant to speak the words.
“And you’re intimately involved with him.”
“Yes.” Gabrielle sighed, and shook her head. “And
really, how stupid is that? I don’t know what it is about him
that makes me want him like I do. I mean, he’s lied to me
and deceived me on so many levels I can’t begin to count
them, but even still, just thinking about him makes my
knees weak. I’ve never known this kind of need with an-
other man.”
Savannah was smiling over the rim of her cup. “They
are more than men, our warriors.”
Gabrielle took a sip of her tea, thinking that it probably
wasn’t wise to consider Lucan as her anything, unless she
planned to put her heart under his boot heels and watch as
he ground it to dust.
“These males are passionate in all they do,” Savannah
added. “And there is nothing that can compare to the giv-
ing and receiving of the blood-bond, especially while mak-
ing love.”
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Gabrielle shrugged. “Well, the sex is amazing, I won’t
even try to deny that. But I haven’t shared any kind of a
blood-bond with Lucan.”
Savannah’s smile faltered slightly. “He hasn’t bitten
you?”
“No. God, no.” She shook her head, wondering if she
should feel more appalled than she did. “He hasn’t even
tried to take my blood, as far as I know. Just tonight he
swore to me that he never would.”
“Oh.” Savannah carefully set down her teacup.
“Why? Do you think he will?”
Gideon’s mate seemed to consider that for a moment,
then gave a slow shake of her head. “Lucan has never
made a promise lightly, nor would he about something like
this. I’m sure he means exactly what he told you.”
Gabrielle nodded, relieved, yet curious why Savannah’s
assurance sounded almost like a condolence.
“Come,” she said, rising from the table and indicating
for Gabrielle to follow. “I’ll show you the rest of the com-
pound.”
“Anything come back yet on those glyphs we spotted on
our West Coast subject?” Lucan asked, tossing his leather
jacket over one of the chairs next to Gideon.
It was just the two of them alone in the lab now, the
other warriors having gone to chill out for a few hours
before Lucan gave orders for the night’s sweep of the city.
He was glad for the relative privacy. His head was begin-
ning to pound with the onslaught of another splintering
headache.
“I got squat, sorry to say. Nothing came up on the crim-
inal check, or the census search. Apparently our boy’s not
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in the system, but that’s not so unusual. The IID records
are vast, but far from perfect, especially when it comes to
you Gen Ones. There are only a few of you around any-
more, and for various reasons, most have never volun-
teered to be processed or catalogued—yourself included.”
“Shit,” Lucan hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose
but feeling no relief from the pressure building in his head.
“You feeling all right, man?”
“It’s nothing.” He didn’t look at Gideon, but he could
sense the vampire watching him with concern. “I’ll get
over it.”
“I, ah . . . I heard about what happened the other night
between you and Tegan. The guys said you came back off
a hunt, looking a bit ragged. Your body’s still recovering
from those solar burns, you know. You’ve got to take things
easy, feed the healing—”
“I said, I’m fine,” Lucan snapped, feeling his eyes flash
anger, his lips curled back off his teeth in a snarl.
Between the prey he’d taken in the street and the
Minion he’d drained in the park, he’d had more than
enough blood to sustain him through his recovery. The fact
was, despite his physical satiation, he still craved more.
He was on damned slippery ground, and he knew it.
Bloodlust was just a careless stumble away.
Keeping a lid on his weakness was getting harder all the
time.
“Got a present for you,” Lucan said, anxious to change
the subject. He slapped the two memory sticks down on
the Lucite workspace in front of Gideon. “Load them up.”
“Really? A gift for me? Darling, you shouldn’t have,”
Gideon said, back to his jovial self. He was already pop-
ping one of the portable drives into a USB port of the ma-
chine nearest to him. A folder opened onscreen, displaying
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a long list of file names on the monitor. Gideon turned and
shot Lucan a pensive look. “These are image files. Gads, a
friggin’ lot of them.”
Lucan gave a slight nod. He was pacing now, growing
edgy and too warm in the bright lights of the room. “I
need you to go through each one, compare it against every
known Rogue location in the city—past, present, and sus-
pected.”
Gideon clicked open a random image and blew out a
low whistle. “This is the Rogue lair we took out last
month.” He opened two more, tiling them on the moni-
tor’s display. “And the warehouse we’ve been watching for
a couple of weeks . . . Jesus, is this other one a shot of the
building that fronts the Quincy Darkhaven?”
“There’s more.”
“Son of a bitch. Most of these images are of vampire
locations—both Rogue and Breed.” Gideon scrolled
through a dozen more photos. “She took all of these?”
“Yeah.” Lucan paused to look at the screen. He
pointed to a number of files with date stamps from the cur-
rent week. “Go to this group.”
Gideon brought up the photos with a series of fast
clicks. “You gotta be kidding me. She’s been out to the asy-
lum, too? That place might house hundreds of suck-
heads.”
Lucan’s gut clenched at the idea, dread mixing with the
acid burn already swimming in the pit of his stomach. His
insides were cramping up, gnarled with the need to feed.
He mentally forced the hunger down, but his hands were
trembling, and a sheen of sweat was breaking out on his
brow.
“A Mini
on found her, chased her off the property,” he
said, his voice rough gravel in his throat, and not just
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because his body was under full assault. “She was damned
lucky to get away.”
“I’ll say. How did she find this location? How did she
find any of them, for that matter?”
“She says she doesn’t know why she’s drawn to them.
It’s a unique instinct of some sort. Part of the same
Breedmate ability she has that exempts her from vampire
mind control, and lets her see us move where other hu-
mans don’t.”
“Call it what you will, skills like hers could be damned
useful to us.”
“Forget it. We’re not going to involve Gabrielle any-
more than she already is. She’s not a part of this, and I
won’t put her in any further danger. She won’t be staying
here long, anyway.”
“You don’t think we can protect her?”
“I won’t have her sitting on the front lines while there’s
a war brewing just outside our gates. What kind of life
would that be?”
Gideon shrugged. “Seems to be working out all right
for Savannah and Eva.”
“Yeah, and it’s been a fucking laugh riot for Danika
lately, too.” Lucan shook his head. “I don’t want Gabrielle
anywhere near this violence. She’s going to go to one of
the Darkhavens as soon as possible. Someplace far away,
remote, where the Rogues won’t ever get to her.”
And where she would be safe from him, as well. Safe
from the beast that was churning inside of him, even now.
If Bloodlust finally claimed him—and lately, he felt it was
more a question of when than if—he wanted Gabrielle as
far away from the fallout as possible.
Gideon was very still as he looked at Lucan. “You care
for her.”
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Lucan glared at him, feeling like he wanted to punch
something. Destroy something. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean, she’s beautiful, and clearly she’s as courageous
as she is creative, so it’s not hard to see why anyone would
be attracted to her. But . . . damn. You really care about her,
don’t you?” Evidently, the vampire didn’t know when to
give it a rest. “Never thought I’d see the day that you’d let a
female get under your skin like this—”
“Do I look like I want to join the same pathetic hearts-
and-flowers club that you and Rio did? Or Conlan, with
his fatherless whelp on the way? Trust me, I have no inter-
est in binding myself to this woman or any other one.” He
ground out a furious curse. “I’m a warrior. My first— my
only duty—has always been to the Breed. There’s never
been room for anything else. As soon as I secure a place for
her at one of the Darkhavens, Gabrielle Maxwell is gone.
Forgotten. End of story.”
Gideon was quiet for a long while, just watching him
pace and fume and roar with an uncharacteristic lack of
control.
Which only spiked Lucan’s temper further into the red.
“You got something else to add, or can we get off this
dead topic now?”
The vampire’s wise blue eyes held him in a madden-
ingly level stare. “I’m just wondering who it is you need to
convince more. Me or yourself ?”
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Gabrielle’s tour of the warriors’ labyrinthine compound
took her past private living quarters, meeting facilities, a
training room outfitted with an astounding assortment of
weaponry and combat equipment, a banquet room, some
sort of chapel, and countless other hidden chambers of
various purposes that had since begun to blur in her mind.
She’d met Eva as well, who was everything Savannah
said she’d be. Vivacious, charming, and as beautiful as a
supermodel. Rio’s Breedmate had insisted on hearing all
about Gabrielle and her life topside. Eva was from Spain,
and talked one day of returning there with Rio where the
two of them might raise a family in time. It had been a
pleasant introduction, interrupted only by the arrival of
Rio himself. Once he showed up, Eva was lost to her mate
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and Savannah had steered Gabrielle on toward other parts
of the compound.
It was impressive, how immense yet efficient the head-
quarters were. Any notions she might have had about
vampires living in cavernous, musty old crypts were blown
away by the time she and Savannah had concluded their
casual stroll.
These warriors and their mates were living in high-tech
style, with virtually every luxury one could want, although
none appealed to Gabrielle as much as the chamber where
she and Savannah were now. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases
lined two of the room’s tall walls, the polished dark wood
containing easily thousands of volumes. No doubt, most of
them were rare, given the number of heavily tooled leather
bindings, and the gold inlay on their spines, which
gleamed in the soft light of the library chamber.
“Whoa,” she gasped, walking into the center of the
room and turning around to admire the staggering collec-
tion of books.
“You like it?” Savannah asked, lingering at the open
door.
Gabrielle nodded, too busy taking it all in to speak. As
she pivoted, her gaze landed on a lush tapestry that cov-
ered the back wall. It was a nighttime depiction of a huge
knight in black and silver chain mail, seated on a dark,
rearing horse. The knight’s head was uncovered, leaving
his long ebony hair flying in the wind, like the pennants
snapping at the tip of his bloodied lance and on the para-
pet of the smoldering hilltop castle in the background.
The needlework was so intricate and precise, Gabrielle
could make out the man’s piercing, pale gray eyes and
lean, angular cheekbones. There was a familiar twist to his
cynical, almost contemptuous mouth.
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“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Is that supposed to
be—”
Savannah answered with a shrug of her shoulder and
an amused little laugh. “Would you like to stay in here for
a while? I need to check on Danika, but that doesn’t mean
you have to leave, if you’d rather—”
“Sure. Yes. I’d love to hang out in here, are you kid-
ding? Please, take your time, and don’t worry about m
e.”
Savannah smiled. “I’ll be back shortly, then we’ll see
about making up a guest room for you.”
“Thanks,” Gabrielle replied, in no rush at all to be
taken out of this unexpected haven.
As the other woman stepped away, Gabrielle didn’t
know what to look at first: the treasure trove of literature,
or the medieval work of art starring Lucan Thorne, circa
what appeared to be the fourteenth century.
Both, she decided, plucking a gorgeous—and, presum-
ably, first edition—volume of French poetry from the shelf
and carrying it over to a leather reading chair arranged be-
neath the tapestry. She set the book down on a delicate an-
tique table, and for a minute, all she could do was stare up
at Lucan’s likeness, woven so expertly in silk threads. She
reached out, but didn’t dare touch the museum-quality
piece.
My God, she thought, awed, as the incredible reality of
this strange other world sank in fully.
All this time, they had existed alongside the human
world.
Incredible.
And how small her own world felt in light of this new
knowledge. Everything she thought she knew about life
had been eclipsed in a matter of hours by the long history
of Lucan and the rest of his kind.
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A sudden stirring of the air around her sent a clamor of
alarm through Gabrielle’s limbs. She whirled away from
the tapestry, startled to find the real, flesh-and-bone Lucan
standing behind her at the room’s threshold, one massive
shoulder leaning against the doorjamb. His hair was
shorter than the knight’s, his eyes perhaps a bit more
haunted now, not as mercilessly eager as they had been
rendered by the artist’s needle.
Lucan was far more handsome in person, radiating an
innate power even in stillness. Even scowling at her in
broody silence, as he was now.
Gabrielle’s heart accelerated with a mix of anticipation
and fear as he moved away from the door frame and
walked into the room. She looked at him, really looked at
him, for what he was: ageless strength, wild beauty, unfath-
omable power.
A dark enigma, both seductive and dangerous.
“What are you doing in here?” There was a note of ac-
cusation in his tone.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly. “Well, to be honest, I
couldn’t help admiring some of these beautiful things.