by Lara Adrian
Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood. Not fresh at all, but several minutes old.
Following the metallic odor, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.
“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath as he tracked the individual.
Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.
Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.
“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides.
His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough: take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying. He didn’t really give a shit which came first.
But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.
The human in the bloodstained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for a kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one Bloodlusting suckhead, let alone a pack of three.
With a curse, Tegan advanced his position and jumped to a lower rooftop above the alleyway.
Just as the Rogue in front of the human lunged into action.
Tegan heard a sharp intake of breath—a female gasp of terror—as the Rogue grabbed for its prey. It seized the front of the woman’s hood and threw her down on the snow-covered pavement, letting loose a howl of savage amusement as she took the hard fall.
“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed, already drawing a large blade from the sheath at his hip.
With a running leap, he dropped down from the ledge of the building, landing smoothly on the ground in a low crouch. The two Rogues nearest him split up, one taking cover while the other shouted that they were under attack. Tegan silenced the warning in mid-sentence, slicing his length of titanium-edged steel across the suckhead’s throat.
A few yards ahead of him in the alleyway, the female was on her stomach, scrabbling to get away from her assailant. She had a weapon too, Tegan was surprised to see, but the Rogue noticed it at the same time and kicked it out of her hand. The Rogue planted the heavy sole of his boot on the center of her back, pinning her to the ground with his heel jammed hard into her spine.
Tegan was on him at once. He threw the Rogue off the woman, driving the snarling vampire into the side of the brick building and holding it there with his forearm wedged under the suckhead’s chin.
“Get out of here!” he shouted to the human as she started to drag herself up off the ground. “Run!”
She flung a frightened look over her shoulder—the first glimpse Tegan got of her face. His gaze locked on to a pair of huge, pale lavender eyes. The woman stared at him from over the top of a dark knit scarf that could hardly disguise the delicate beauty beneath it.
Holy shit.
He knew her.
And she wasn’t just a random human female; she was a Breedmate. A young widow from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries in the city. Tegan didn’t know her well. He hadn’t seen her for several months, not since the night he’d taken her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned her only son had gone Rogue.
It was the last he had seen of her, but it hadn’t been the last time he’d thought about her.
Elise.
What the hell was she doing here?
Tegan’s flat stare held Elise transfixed for a moment that seemed to stretch out endlessly. She saw a flash of recognition in the warrior’s unblinking gaze, felt the cold blast of his fury emanating toward her across the distance that separated them.
“Tegan,” she whispered, astonished to see that it was him coming to her rescue. She’d first met the terrifying warrior around the time that her son had gone missing. Tegan had been the one to take her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned Camden had fallen in with the Rogues. He’d shown her kindness in that late night ride back to her Darkhaven home, and although she hadn’t seen the warrior in the four months since, she hadn’t forgotten his unexpected compassion.
But none of that was present in him now. Battle rage had fully transformed his face to that of his true nature—a Breed vampire, with gleaming fangs and fierce eyes that were no longer their usual gem-green, but swamped with bright, glowing amber that burned like twin flames in his skull.
“Run!” he shouted, the deep, otherworldly growl of his voice cutting through the blare of music still pouring into her head from the earbuds she wore. “Get out of here—now!”
That brief inattention cost him. The Rogue he had pinned to the bricks in front of him twisted its big head, jaws wide, huge fangs dripping saliva. It bit down hard on Tegan’s forearm, ripping into the warrior’s muscled flesh. Without a sound of pain or anger, only chillingly swift efficiency, Tegan brought his other hand up and buried a blade in the Rogue’s neck. The diseased vampire dropped, lifeless, its corpse sizzling from the titanium that poisoned its corrupt bloodstream.
Tegan whirled around, his breath sawing out from between his lips, clouding in the chill air. “Goddamn it, woman—go!” he roared, just as the remaining Rogue vaulted into a further attack on him.
Elise jolted into movement.
She sped out of the alleyway and onto another street, running as fast as her legs would carry her. The small apartment she rented wasn’t far, just a few long blocks from the train station, but it seemed like miles. She was exhausted from her own ordeal that day, shaking from the violence she’d just witnessed in the alley.
She was worried for Tegan too, even though she was certain he didn’t need her concern. He was a member of the Order, probably the most lethal of them all, if his reputation was anything to go by. He was a killing machine according to all who knew his name. Seeing him here in action for herself, Elise didn’t doubt it for a second.
And now that she’d been discovered alone in the city, she could only hope that the warrior would take no interest in what she was doing. She couldn’t allow herself to be pushed back into the Darkhavens, not even by a male as fearsome as Tegan.
Elise ran the last block to her apartment and raced up the concrete steps. The main door used to be keyed access, but someone broke the lock five weeks ago and the building super hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. Elise pushed the door open and dashed down the first floor hallway to her unit. She unlocked the dead bolt and slipped inside, immediately flipping on all the lights.
The stereo and television went on next—tuned to nothing in particular, but both playing loudly. Elise pulled off the MP3 player and set it down on the chipped yellow kitchen counter, along with the dead Minion’s cell phone. She ditched her ruined parka on the floor next to her treadmill, her stomach turning as the bare bulb hanging from the combination dining-living room ceiling washed over the dark red stains from the Minion’
s blood. It was on her hands too; her fingers were sticky with gore.
And her head was still pounding, the usual vicious migraine that came in the wake of any prolonged period of using her skill. It wasn’t as bad right now as it would be soon. She still had time to clean up and try to get herself to bed before the worst of it hit her.
Elise dragged herself into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her fingers were trembling as she unfastened the leather knife sheath from her thigh and placed it on the sink. The sheath was empty. She’d lost the titanium blade in the snow when the Rogue kicked it out of her grasp. She had others to replace it. A lot of the money she’d left the Darkhavens with had gone into weapons and training equipment—things she had never wanted to know anything about but now considered necessities.
Lord, how drastically her life had changed in just four months.
She could never go back to what she was. In her heart, she knew there could be no going back now. The person she had been all the time she’d lived under the protection of the Breed was gone now—dead, like her beloved mate and her son. The pain of those losses had been a furnace that devoured her old life, reduced it to cinder. She was what was left—the phoenix that rose out of the ash.
Elise glanced up into the fogging mirror and met her own haunted gaze in the glass. Blood smeared her cheek and chin, grime smudged her brow, all of it like warpaint. There was a feral glint in the weary eyes staring back at her.
God, she was tired … so tired. But so long as she could stand, she could fight. So long as her heart still ached for vengeance, she would use the psychic gift that had for so long been her greatest weakness. She would endure any hardship, face any risk. She would sell her everlasting soul if she must. Whatever it took to have justice.
CHAPTER
Three
Tegan wiped his bloodied blade on the dead Rogue’s jacket and idly observed the swift disintegration of the last body in the alley. The postmortem cleanup was courtesy of Tegan’s titanium weapons, a metal that acted as poisonous acid to the diseased cellular makeup of Breed vampires gone Rogue. The three bodies dissolved in the snow, reducing flesh, bone, and clothing to nothing but dark spots of ash against the pristine white.
Tegan blew out a curse, his senses still quivering with the heat of combat. Battle-sharpened eyes lit on the knife Elise had lost in her struggle with the Rogue who’d attacked her. Tegan walked over and retrieved the weapon.
“Christ,” he muttered, picking the blade up from the snow. It wasn’t some dainty dagger a lady might carry for protection but a serious-looking bit of hardware. Seven inches long, serrated near the upward jut of the tip, and, unless he missed his guess, the metal was not your basic carbide steel but Rogue-eating titanium.
Which only begged the question again: what the hell was the Darkhaven female doing out on the streets alone, covered in blood, and toting warrior-grade weapons on her person?
Tegan lifted his head and sniffed at the air, searching for her scent. It didn’t take long to find it. His senses were always sharp, predatorially acute; combat lit them up like laser beams. He pulled the heather-and-roses scent of the Breedmate into his lungs, and let it guide him deeper into the city.
The scent trailed off at a shit-hole apartment building in one of the seedier sections of the low-rent area of town. Not at all the kind of place he’d expect to find a genteel Darkhaven-raised female like Elise. But without a doubt, she was inside the graffiti-tagged, brick-and-concrete eyesore; he was certain of that.
He stalked up the steps and scowled at the feeble door with its broken lock. Inside the vestibule his boots scuffed on ratty, stained carpeting that reeked of urine, filth, and decades of neglect. A battered wooden staircase rose to the left of him, but Elise’s scent was coming from the door at the end of the first-floor hall.
Tegan moved past another apartment door on his right, the thump of music vibrating the floor and walls. He could hear a television too, a deafening barrage of background noise that seemed to swell as he neared Elise’s place. He rapped on the door and waited.
No response.
He knocked again, dropping his knuckles hard on the scarred metal. Nothing. Not that she could hear anything inside the place with all the racket going on in there.
Maybe he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t get involved in whatever it was that brought the female to this place in her life. Tegan knew she’d had a rough time since the disappearance and later death of her son. The Order had learned that Camden was killed by Elise’s brother-in-law, Sterling Chase, when the kid showed up at the Darkhaven in full-on Bloodlust. From the account Tegan heard, Camden had been about to attack Elise when Chase gunned him down with several titanium rounds—right in front of her.
God only knew what witnessing her son’s death might have done to the female.
Not his concern, though.
Yeah, not his fucking problem at all. So why was he standing in this rank tenement house with his dick in his hand, waiting for her to come around and let him in?
Tegan eyed the array of locks on the apartment door. At least these were in working order and she’d had the good sense to set them once she got inside. But for a Breed vampire of Tegan’s power and lineage, tripping the locks with his mind took all of two seconds.
He slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. The decibel level in the small studio was enough to make his head shatter. He glanced around the place with narrowed eyes, taking in the odd decor. The only furniture was a futon and a bookcase, which housed a quality stereo system and a small flat-panel television—both on and blaring.
Next to the futon, in a space that might have held a table and chairs, was a treadmill and a resistance-training machine. Elise’s bloodstained parka lay on the floor there, and on the sorry-looking yellow kitchen counter was a cell phone and an MP3 player. Elise’s decorating style left a lot to be desired, but it was her choice of wall covering that Tegan found most peculiar.
Crudely nailed to all four walls of the one-room living space were acoustic foam panels—soundproofing material. Yards of the stuff, covering every square inch of the walls, windows, and the back of the door too.
“What the fu—”
In the adjacent bathroom, there was a metallic squeak as the shower abruptly cut off. Tegan turned to face the door as it opened a moment later. Elise was pulling a thick white terry-cloth robe around herself as she glanced up and met his gaze. She gasped, startled, one slender hand coming up near her throat.
“Tegan.” Her voice was barely audible over the din of the music and TV. She made no move to turn them down, just came out of the bathroom and stood as far away from him as was possible in the cramped apartment. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Tegan let his eyes drift around the meager living quarters, if only to quit looking at her in her state of near undress. “Shitty place you have here. Who’s your decorator?”
She didn’t answer him. Her pale amethyst eyes stayed fixed on him as though she didn’t quite trust him, nervous to find herself alone with him. And who could blame her?
Tegan knew that by and large Darkhaven residents held little affection for members of the Order. He’d been called a stone-cold killer by more than one of the sheltered class of civilians that Elise was a part of—not that he cared. His personal reputation was simply stated fact. But while he could give a shit what others thought of him, it irked him that Elise looked at him now in fear. The last time he’d seen the female, he’d shown her nothing but kindness, deference paid the young Darkhaven widow out of respect for what she was going through. It hadn’t hurt that she was a breathtaking beauty, as fragile as a frost flower.
Some of that fragility was gone now, Tegan noted, seeing the lines of muscle definition in her bare calves and arms. Her face remained lovely, but not as full as he remembered. Her eyes were still alive with intelligence but their sheen was somehow brittle, a characteristic made more pronounced by the trace shadows
beneath the generous fringe of her lashes.
And her hair … Jesus, she’d shorn off the long blond waves. The cascade of pale spun gold that used to fall to her hips was now a crown of thick, silky spikes that rose around her head in pixie-like disarray and framed the lean oval of her face.
She was still stunning, but in an entirely different way than Tegan ever would have imagined.
“You forgot something back in the alley.” He held out the wicked hunting blade. When she moved to take it from him, he drew it back out of her reach. “What were you doing out there tonight, Elise?”
She shook her head, said something too softly to be heard over the din filling the apartment. Impatient, Tegan mentally shut the stereo down. He glanced to the television, about to silence that device as well.
“No!” Elise shook her head, wincing, her fingers clutching her temple. “Wait—leave it on, please. I need … the noise soothes me.”
Tegan scowled his doubt, but left the TV alone. “What happened to you tonight, Elise?”
She blinked, shuttering her gaze and tipping her head down in silence.
“Did someone hurt you out there? Were you attacked before the Rogues discovered you in the alley?”
Her answer was long in coming. “No. I wasn’t attacked.”
“You want to explain all that blood on your coat over there? Or why you’re living in a part of town where you feel the need to carry around this kind of hardware?”
She held her head in her hands, her voice a rough whisper. “I don’t want to explain anything. Please, Tegan. I wish you hadn’t come here. Just, please … you have to leave now.”
He exhaled a sharp laugh. “I just saved your sweet little ass, female. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you tell me why I had to.”