Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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Savannah’s been showing me around the compound.”
He grunted, his scowl still in place as he pinched the
bridge of his nose.
“We had some tea together, and talked a bit,” Gabrielle
added. “Eva joined us, too. They’re both very nice. And
this place is really impressive. How long have you and the
other warriors lived here?”
She could tell he had little interest in conversation, but
he answered, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug.
“Gideon and I established this location in 1898 as a head-
quarters for hunting Rogues who had moved into the re-
gion. From there, we recruited a team of the best warriors
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to fight alongside us. Dante and Conlan were the first.
Nikolai and Rio joined us later. And Tegan.”
This last name was completely unfamiliar to Gabrielle.
“Tegan?” she said. “Savannah didn’t mention him. He
wasn’t there when you introduced me to the others, ei-
ther.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
When he didn’t elaborate, curiosity got the best of her.
“Is he one you’ve lost, like Conlan?”
“No. Not like that.” Lucan’s voice was clipped when he
spoke of this last member of his cadre, as if the topic was a
sore one that he preferred not to open.
He was still staring intently at her, still standing close
enough that she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he
breathed, the bands of hard muscle expanding beneath his
fitted black shirt, the warmth of his body radiating toward
her in waves.
Behind him on the wall, his needleworked likeness
stared out from the tapestry with fervent purpose, the
young knight grimly determined, sure to conquer what-
ever prize lay in his path. Gabrielle saw a darker shade of
that determination in Lucan now, as his gaze slowly took
her in from head to toe.
“This weaving is amazing.”
“It’s very old,” he said, staring at her as he came nearer.
“But I guess you know that, now.”
“It’s beautiful. And you look so fierce, like you were
ready to take on the world.”
“I was.” He glanced at the wall hanging, scoffing
lightly. “I had the piece made a few months after the death
of my parents. That castle burning in the background be-
longed to my father. I razed it to ash after I took his head
for killing my mother in a fit of Bloodlust.”
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Gabrielle gasped. She hadn’t been expecting anything
like that. “My God. Lucan . . .”
“I found her lying in a pool of gore in our great hall,
her throat savaged. He didn’t even try to fight me. He
knew what he’d done. He’d loved her, as much as one of
his kind could, but his thirst was stronger. He couldn’t
deny his nature.” Lucan shrugged. “I did him a favor by
ending his existence.”
Gabrielle looked at his cool expression, feeling as
stricken by what she’d just heard as she was by the blasé
tone in which he relayed it. Any romantic appeal she had
imagined in the tapestry just a minute ago dimmed under
the weight of the tragedy it truly depicted.
“Why would you want to have a beautiful reminder of
such a terrible thing?”
“Terrible?” He shook his head. “My life began that
night. I never had much of a purpose until I stood up to
my ankles in my family’s blood and realized I had to
change things—for myself, and for the rest of my race.
That night, I declared war on the last remaining Ancients
of my father’s alien kind, and on all the members of the
Breed who had served them as Rogues.”
“That’s a long time to be fighting.”
“I should have started a lot sooner.” He pierced her
with a steely stare. Gave her a chilling smile. “I’ll never
stop. It’s what I live for—dealing death.”
“Someday you’ll win, Lucan. Then all the violence can
finally be over.”
“You think so,” he drawled, a trace of mockery in his
tone. “And you know this to be certain, based on what? A
short twenty-eight years of life?”
“I base it on hope, for one thing. On faith. I have to be-
lieve that good will always come out on top. Don’t you?
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Isn’t that why you and the others here do what you do?
Because you have hope that you can make things better?”
He laughed. Actually looked straight at her, and
laughed. “I kill Rogues because I enjoy it. I’m damn good
at it. I won’t speak for anyone else’s motives.”
“What’s going on with you, Lucan? You seem . . .”—
Pissed off ? Confrontational? A tad psychotic? —“You’re acting
different here than you were with me before.”
He pinned her with a scathing glare. “In case you
hadn’t noticed, sweetheart, you’re in my domain now.
Things are different here.”
The callousness she was seeing in him now took her
aback, but it was the rage burning in his eyes that really put
her on edge. They were too bright, hard as crystals. His
skin was flushed, too tight across the stark cut of his cheek-
bones. And now that she was looking closer, she could see a
thin sheen of sweat on his brow.
Pure, white-hot anger rolled off of him in waves. Like
he wanted to tear something apart with his bare hands.
And, as it happened, the only thing in his path at the
moment was her.
He walked past her in silence, toward a closed door
near one of the tall bookcases. It opened without him
touching the latch. Inside, it was so dark, she thought it was
a closet. But then he stepped into the gloom and she heard
his hard footsteps falling on a stretch of hardwood as he
strode down what was apparently a hidden corridor of the
compound.
Gabrielle stood there, feeling like she’d just missed be-
ing trampled by a brutal storm. She released a pent-up
breath. Maybe she should let him go. Count herself lucky
just to be out of his way right now. He sure didn’t seem to
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want her company, and she wasn’t all that sure she wanted
his when he was like this.
But something was up with him—something was seri-
ously wrong—and she needed to know what it was.
Swallowing past her own prickling of fear, she followed
after him.
“Lucan?” There was no light at all in the space beyond
the door. Only blackness, and the steady clip of Lucan’s
boot heels. “God,
it’s so dark in here. Lucan, wait a second.
Talk to me.”
There was no change in his brisk pace ahead of her. He
seemed more than eager to ditch her. Desperate to get
away from her.
Gabrielle navigated the lightless path as best she could,
hands extended out at her sides to help her follow the
snaking corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“What for?”
“I told you.” A latch clicked open from where his voice
now sounded. “I’ve got a job to do. Been lax as hell about
doing it lately.”
Because of her.
He didn’t say it, but there was no mistaking his meaning.
“I need to get out of here,” he tossed back at her curtly.
“High time I add a few more suckheads to my tally.”
“The night’s already half over. Maybe you should get
some rest instead. You don’t seem well to me, Lucan.”
“I need to fight.”
She heard his footsteps stop, heard a shift of fabric
somewhere ahead of her in the dark, as if he’d paused and
was stripping out of his clothes. Gabrielle kept moving
toward the sound of him, her hands searching, trying to
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get her bearings in what was an endless pitch blackness.
They were in another chamber now; there was a wall to
her right. She used it as a guide, sidling along with careful
steps.
“In the other room, your face looked flushed. And your
voice is . . . strange.”
“I need to feed.” The words were low and deadly, an
unmistakable threat.
Did he sense that she shrank back as he said it? He
must have, because he chuckled, brittle with wry humor, as
though amused by her unease.
“But you did feed,” she reminded him. “Just last night,
in fact. Didn’t you take enough blood when you killed that
Minion? I thought you said you only needed to feed every
few days?”
“An expert on the subject already, are you? I’m im-
pressed.”
Boots hit the floor with a careless thump, one, then the
other.
“Can we turn on some lights in here? I can’t see you—”
“No lights,” he snapped. “I can see you just fine. I can
smell your fear.”
She was afraid, not so much for herself right now, but
for him. He was worse than on edge. The air around him
seemed to pulse with raw fury. It came at her through the
dark, an unseen force pushing her back.
“Have I done something wrong, Lucan? Should I not
be here at the compound? Because if you’ve changed your
mind about that, I have to tell you that I’m not sure it was
a good idea for me to come here, either.”
“There is no other place for you right now.”
“I want to go back home to my apartment.”
She felt a blast of heat skating up her arms as if he had
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just turned a deadly look on her. “You just got here. And
you can’t go back there. You’ll stay until I decide other-
wise.”
“That sounds an awfully lot like a command.”
“It is.”
Okay, now he wasn’t the only one bristling with anger.
“I want my cell phone, Lucan. I need to call my friends
and make sure they’re okay. Then I’m going to call a cab,
and I’m going to go home, where I can try to make sense
out of the mess my life has become.”
“It’s out of the question.” She heard the metallic clink
of weaponry, the rough scrape of a drawer opening.
“You’re in my world now, Gabrielle. I am law here. And
you are under my protection until I deem it is safe to re-
lease you from it.”
She sucked in the curse that raced to the tip of her
tongue. Barely. “Look, the benevolent overlord attitude
might have gone a lot further for you back in the day, but
don’t even think you can use it on me.”
The livid snarl that lashed out of him made the hairs
on the back of her neck rise. “You won’t survive a night out
there without me, do you understand? If not for me, you
wouldn’t have survived your first goddamned year!”
Standing there in the dark, Gabrielle went utterly still.
“What did you say?”
Only a long silence answered.
“What do you mean I wouldn’t have survived. . . .”
He swore through gritted teeth. “I was there, Gabrielle.
Twenty-seven years ago, when a helpless young mother
was attacked by a Rogue vampire at a Boston bus station, I
was there.”
“My mother,” she murmured, her heart thudding
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hollowly in her chest. She felt for the wall behind her, and
leaned against it for support.
“She’d already been bitten. He was draining her when
I smelled blood and found them outside the terminal. He
would have killed her. Would have killed you, too.”
Gabrielle could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“You saved us?”
“I gave your mother a chance to get away. She was too
far gone from the bite. Nothing was going to save her. But
she wanted to save you. She ran away with you in her
arms.”
“No. She didn’t care about me. She left me. She put me
in a trash bin,” Gabrielle whispered, her throat burning as
she spoke the words, felt the old hurt of abandonment all
over again.
“The bite would have put her in a state of shock. It’s
likely she was disoriented, thinking that she was putting
you someplace safe. Sheltering you from danger.”
God, how long had she wondered about the young
woman who’d given birth to her? How many scenarios
had she concocted to explain, to herself at least, what
might have happened the night she was recovered on the
street, as an infant. Never had she imagined this.
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care. She was just another victim
of the Rogues. I hadn’t thought about any of it until you
mentioned your mother tonight at your apartment.”
“And me?” she asked, trying to put everything together.
“When you first came to see me after the killing I’d wit-
nessed, did you know I was the baby you saved?”
He exhaled a dry laugh. “I had no idea. I came to you
because I smelled your jasmine scent outside the nightclub
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and I wanted you. I needed to know if your blood would
taste as sweet as the rest of you.”
Hearing those words made her think of all the pleasure
; Lucan had given her with his body. Now she wondered
how it would have felt to have him suckling from her neck
as he thrust inside of her. To her shock, she realized she
was a lot more than curious. “But you didn’t. You
haven’t . . .”
“And I won’t,” he replied, his words clipped. Another
curse came from his direction in the dark, this one a
pained hiss. “I never would have touched you at all, if I’d
known . . .”
“If you’d known what?”
“Nothing, forget it. Just . . . Christ, my head is pounding
too much for me to talk. Just get out of here. Leave me
alone now.”
Gabrielle stayed right where she was. She heard him
moving again, a stiff shuffling of feet. Another rumbling,
animal growl.
“Lucan? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he snarled, sounding anything but. “I
need . . . ah, fuck.” He was breathing harder now, almost
panting. “Get out of here, Gabrielle. I need to be . . . by
myself.”
Something heavy hit the carpeted floor with a dull
thud. He sucked in a sharp breath.
“I don’t think you need to be alone right now at all. I
think you need help. And I can’t keep talking to you in the
dark like this.” She smoothed her hand over the wall,
blindly searching for a light. “I can’t see any—”
Her fingers brushed a switchplate, flipped it on.
“Oh, my God.”
Lucan was doubled over on the floor near a king-sized
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bed. His shirt and boots were off, and he was writhing as
though in extreme pain, the markings on his bare back and
torso livid with color. The intricate swirls and arcs changed
from deep purples to reds to black as he spasmed, clutch-
ing his abdomen.
Gabrielle raced to his side and kneeled down beside
him. His body contracted savagely, pulling him into a tight
ball.
“Lucan! What’s going on?”
“Get out.” He snarled when she tried to touch him,
lashing out like a wounded animal. “Go! Not your . . . con-
cern.”
“The hell it’s not!”
“Get . . . aagh! ” A convulsion gripped him again, worse
than the last. “Just get away from me.”
Panic flooded her to see him thrashing with such pain.
“What is happening to you? Tell me what to do!”
He flipped onto his back like invisible hands had tossed
him over. The tendons in his neck were stretched taut as