Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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moment. Conlan believed totally in what he was doing.
He wanted a safer world, for me, and for our children to
come.”
“And so you waited all this time to conceive?”
“We wouldn’t start our family so long as Conlan felt he
needed to remain with the Order. The front lines are not
the best place for children, which is why you don’t see fam-
ilies among the warrior class. The dangers are too great,
and our mates need to be able to focus solely on their
missions.”
“Don’t accidents happen?”
“Unplanned pregnancies are all but unheard of among
the Breed, because it takes something more sacred than
simple sex for us to conceive. The fertile time for blood-
bonded Breedmates revolves around the crescent moon.
During this crucial period, if we wish to create a child, our
bodies must have both our mate’s seed and his blood
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flowing within us. It is a sacred ritual that no mated pair
goes into lightly.”
The very image of sharing this profoundly intimate act
with Lucan made Gabrielle warm deep inside her core.
The thought of bonding in that way with anyone else,
growing large with anyone’s child but Lucan’s was a
prospect she refused to consider. She would rather be
alone, and likely would be.
“What will you do now?” she asked, filling the quiet
that made her imagine her own lonely future.
“I’m not sure yet,” Danika replied. “I do know that I
will never bond to another male.”
“Don’t you need a mate in order to stay young?”
“Conlan was my mate. With him gone, one lifetime will
be long enough. If I refuse to bond in blood with another
male, I will simply age normally from now on, like I did be-
fore I met Conlan. I will simply be . . . mortal.”
“You’ll die,” Gabrielle said.
Danika’s smile was resolved, but not entirely sad.
“Eventually.”
“Where will you go?”
“Conlan and I had been planning to retreat to one
of the Darkhavens in Denmark, where I was born. He
wanted that for me, but now I think I would rather raise his
son in Scotland instead, so that our child can know some-
thing of his father through the land he loved so much.
Lucan has already begun making arrangements for me, so
that I can go whenever I decide that I’m ready.”
“That was kind of him.”
“Very kind. I couldn’t believe it when he came to find
me and give me the news, along with his pledge that my
child and I would always have a direct line to him and the
rest of the Order if we ever need anything. It was the day
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of the funeral, just hours afterward, so his burns were still
extremely severe. Yet he was more concerned about my
welfare.”
“Lucan was burned?” Alarm snaked into her heart.
“When, and how?”
“Just three days ago, when he carried out the funeral
ritual for Conlan.” Danika’s fine brows lifted. “You don’t
know? No, of course, you wouldn’t. Lucan would never
mention a word of his act of honor, or the damage he suf-
fered in doing it. You see, the Breed’s funeral tradition calls
for one vampire to carry the body of the fallen to be re-
ceived by the elements outside,” she said, gesturing to a
shadowed corner of the chapel, where a dark stairwell was
located. “It’s a duty of great respect, and of sacrifice, be-
cause once topside, the vampire who attends his brethren
must remain with him for eight minutes as the sun rises.”
Gabrielle frowned. “But I thought their skin couldn’t
tolerate solar rays.”
“No, it can’t. They burn severely and quickly, but none
so much as the vampires who are first generation. The old-
est of the Breed suffer the worst, even under the briefest
exposure.”
“Like Lucan,” Gabrielle said.
Danika gave a solemn nod. “For him, the eight minutes
of dawn must have been beyond bearing. But he did it. For
Conlan, he willingly let his flesh burn. He might even have
died up there, but he would let no one else carry the bur-
den of laying my beloved Conlan to rest.”
Gabrielle thought back to the urgent phone call that
had taken Lucan out of her bed in the middle of the night.
He’d never said what it was about. Never shared any of his
loss with her.
Pain twisted in her stomach when she thought of what
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he had endured by Danika’s description. “I spoke to
him—that very day, in fact. From his voice, I knew some-
thing was wrong, but he denied it. He sounded so tired, be-
yond exhausted. You’re telling me that he was suffering
from extensive ultraviolet burns?”
“Yes, he was. Savannah told me that Gideon found him
not long afterward. Lucan was blistered from head to toe.
He couldn’t open his eyes for the pain and swelling, but he
refused any help in getting back to his quarters so that he
could heal.”
“My God,” Gabrielle gasped, astonished. “He never
told me, not any of this. When I saw him later that night—
just hours later—he seemed perfectly normal. Well, what I
mean is, he looked and acted like nothing was wrong with
him.”
“Lucan’s nearly pure bloodlines made him suffer the
most, but they also helped him heal more quickly from the
burns. Even then, it wasn’t easy for him; he would have re-
quired a great deal of blood to replenish his system after so
much trauma. By the time he was well enough to leave the
compound to hunt, he would have been practically raven-
ous with hunger.”
And he had been. Gabrielle understood now. The
memory of him feeding from the Minion he’d killed
flashed through her mind, but it had a different context
now, no longer the monstrous act it had appeared on the
surface, but a means of survival. Everything was taking on
a different context since she’d met Lucan.
In the beginning, she would have considered the war
between the Breed and their enemies to be nothing more
than one evil versus another, but now she couldn’t help
feeling that it was her war, too. She had a stake in its out-
come, and not just because her future was apparently
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linked to this strange otherworld. It was important to her
that Lucan won not only the war against the Rogues, but
also the equally devastating, ver
y personal war he was
struggling with in private.
She worried for him, and couldn’t dismiss the niggling
fear that had been crawling up her spine since he and the
other warriors left the compound for the raid.
“You love him very much, don’t you?” Danika asked as
Gabrielle’s anxious silence stretched between them.
“I do, yes.” She met the other woman’s gaze, seeing no
reason to hide the truth when it was probably written all
over her face. “Can I tell you something, Danika? I have
this awful feeling about what he’s doing tonight. And to
make it worse, Tegan said he didn’t think Lucan was going
to be alive much longer. The longer I sit here, the more
afraid I am that Tegan might be right.”
Danika frowned. “You spoke with Tegan?”
“I ran into him—literally—a short while ago. He told
me not to get too attached to Lucan.”
“Because he thought Lucan was going to die?” Danika
let out a long breath and shook her head. “That one seems
to enjoy putting others on edge. He probably said those
things only because he knew it would upset you.”
“Lucan has said there is some bad blood between
them. Do you think Tegan can be trusted?”
The blond Breedmate seemed to consider it for a mo-
ment. “I can tell you that loyalty is a large part of the war-
riors’ code. It means everything to these males, down to a
one. Nothing in this world could make them violate that
sacred trust.” She rose now, and took Gabrielle’s hand in
hers. “Come on. Let’s go find Eva and Savannah. The
wait will pass more quickly for all of us if we don’t spend it
alone.”
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C H A P T E R
Twenty-six
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From their observation point on the roof of one of the
harbor buildings, Lucan and the other warriors watched as
a small pickup truck, spitting gravel under its polished
chrome wheels, roared up to the front of their target loca-
tion. The driver was human. If his sweaty, slightly anxious
scent didn’t announce him, the country music blaring out
of his open window surely would. He got out of the vehi-
cle carrying a stuffed brown-paper bag that reeked of
steaming fried rice and pork lo mein.
“Looks like our boys are eating in tonight,” Dante
drawled, while the unsuspecting delivery man checked the
flapping white ticket stapled onto his order and looked
around the desolated wharf with dawning wariness.
The driver approached the warehouse’s entry door,
shot another nervous look around, then swore into the
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darkness and jabbed the buzzer. There were no lights on
inside the building, only a pool of yellow shining down
from the bare bulb over the door. The battered steel panel
opened, revealing the dark behind it. Lucan could see the
feral eyes of a Rogue staring out as the delivery man
blurted the take-out order total and thrust the bag into the
wedge of blackness in front of him.
“Whaddaya mean, trade for it?” the urban cowboy de-
manded in a thick Boston accent. “What the hell—”
A large hand seized him by the front of his shirt, jerking
him off his feet. He screamed, and in his flailing panic
somehow managed to rip away from the Rogue’s grasp.
“Oops,” Niko hissed from his position near the ledge,
“guess he just realized it wasn’t Chinese on the menu.”
The Rogue flew at the human in a blur of shadows,
taking him down from behind, tearing open his throat with
savage efficiency. Death was bloody and instantaneous.
When the Rogue leaped up and began to heft its kill onto
its shoulder to drag it inside, Lucan got to his feet.
“Time to move. Let’s go.”
In concert, the warriors hit the ground and headed at
blinding speed for the Rogues’ warehouse lair. Lucan,
leading the way, was first to reach the vampire and his life-
less human burden. He slapped a hard hand onto the
Rogue’s shoulder and spun him around, at the same time
drawing one of his slayers’ blades from a sheath at his hip.
He sliced hard and with unerring aim and severed the
beast’s head in one clean stroke.
The Rogue immediately began a cellular meltdown,
dropping its blood-soaked victim onto the gravel as the kiss
of Lucan’s blade ran like acid through the vampire’s
corrupted nervous system. A few seconds later, all that
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remained of the Rogue was a puddle of putrid blackness
seeping into the dirt.
Up ahead at the door, Dante, Tegan, and the three
other warriors were locked and loaded, braced to start the
real action. On Lucan’s “go,” the six of them poured into
the warehouse with weapons at the ready.
The Rogues inside had no idea what had hit them until
Tegan let a dagger fly and nailed one through the throat.
As the Rogue shrieked and writhed toward a smolder-
ing disintegration, its enraged companions lunged for
cover, grabbing up weapons as they scrambled to evade the
barrage of bullets and razor-sharp steel that Lucan and his
brethren were now raining down upon them.
Two Rogues bit it in the first few seconds of engage-
ment, but the remaining pair had fled deep into the ware-
house’s gloomy corners. One of the Rogues blasted
gunfire at Lucan and Dante from behind an old pile of
crates. The warriors dodged the attack and sent a little love
back at the Rogue, driving him out into the open where
Lucan finished him off.
At his periphery, Lucan spotted the last of the suck-
heads trying to make an escape through a maze of tum-
bled storage barrels and scattered metal pipes in the rear of
the building.
Tegan hadn’t missed it, either. The vampire went after
the fleeing Rogue like a freight train, vanishing into the
bowels of the warehouse in deadly pursuit.
“We’re clear,” Gideon shouted from somewhere in the
smoke- and dust-filled darkness.
But no sooner had he said it than Lucan sensed a new
threat closing in on them. His ears picked up the quiet
scramble of movement overhead. The dingy skylights
above the exposed ventilation ducts and steel trusses of the
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warehouse were nearly opaque with grime, but Lucan was
sure that something was advancing across the roof.
“Heads up!” he called to the others just as the ceiling
shattered, and seven more Rogues dropped down with
weapons blazing.
Where had they co
me from? The intel on the lair was
solid: six individuals, probably turned Rogue only recently,
and operating independently, without affiliation. So, who
had called in the cavalry to back them up? How did they
know about the raid?
“Fucking ambush,” Dante growled, voicing Lucan’s
thoughts aloud.
No way in hell this fresh wave of trouble was coming in
purely by chance, and as Lucan’s gaze settled on the largest
of the Rogues coming at them now, he felt black fury rise
to a boil in his gut.
It was the vampire who had eluded him the night of
the slaying outside the dance club. The bastard out of the
West Coast. The Rogue who might have killed Gabrielle,
and might yet one day soon if Lucan didn’t take him out
right now.
While Dante and the others returned fire on the de-
scending group of Rogues, Lucan gunned for that one tar-
get alone.
Tonight, he would finish it.
The suckhead hissed as he approached, the hideous
face stretching into a grin. “We meet again, Lucan
Thorne.”
Lucan gave a grim nod. “For the last time.”
Shared hatred made both males discard their guns in
favor of more personal combat. In a flash, blades were
drawn, one in each hand, as the two vampires prepared to
battle to the death. Lucan threw the first strike. And took a
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vicious slice in his shoulder as the Rogue evaded the blow
with stealth speed, having moved in a blink and appearing
on the other side of him now, jaws open in triumph at the
spilling of first blood.
Lucan leaped around with equal agility, his blades
slashing whisper close to the Rogue’s big head. The suck-
head glanced down to where his right ear now lay, severed
at his feet.
“Game on, asshole,” Lucan snarled.
With a vengeance.
They flew at each other in a swirl of rage and muscle
and cold, deadly steel. Lucan was aware of the battle tak-
ing place around him, the other warriors holding their
own against the second round of warfare. But his main
focus—all of his hatred—was centered on his personal
grudge with the Rogue in front of him.
He felt his fangs stretch with the force of his anger, his
pupils sharpening, until he knew that there could be little
difference between his face and the one snarling back at