by Lara Adrian
Dragos dismissed the Hunter from his presence with a curt wave. “Go up to the house and wait for me. Speak to no one.”
As the Gen One killer strode ahead, Dragos paused to turn an impatient look on Fabien.
“My lord, I’d hoped—that is, I thought a gift might be in order,” he stammered. “To celebrate this important event.”
“A gift?” Before he could ask what Fabien thought Dragos could possibly need from him, Fabien snapped his fingers and an Enforcement Agent emerged from the shadows of the surrounding trees, guiding a young child in front of him. The girl seemed lost in the dark, her blond hair glowing like cornsilk, her tiny face dipped down. “What is the meaning of this?”
“A young Breedmate, sire. My gift to you.”
Dragos stared at the waif, on the whole unimpressed. Breedmates were a rare enough occurrence among human populations, that much was true, but he preferred his stock to be of fertile, childbearing age. This girl would not be ripe for several more years, which no doubt was what intrigued Fabien the most about her.
“You can keep her,” Dragos said, resuming his trek toward the gathering. “Have your man drive the boat back across the lake while we’re meeting. I will radio him when he is needed again.”
“Go,” Fabien ordered in response, then he was right back at Dragos’s side, as eager as a hound begging for scraps. “Sire, about the child… really, you must see for yourself. She is gifted with an extraordinary talent that I am certain you will appreciate. She is an oracle, my lord. I’ve witnessed it for myself.”
Against his will, curiosity pricked to attention. His steps slowed, then stopped. “Bring her.”
When he pivoted around, Fabien’s eager grin spread even wider. “Yes, sire.”
The child was ushered to him once more, her footsteps resisting, stubborn heels digging into the old pine needles and sand that littered the small slope up from the dock. She tried to fight off the vampire guard who held her, but it was useless effort. He simply shoved her forward until she was standing directly in front of Dragos. She kept her chin wrenched down, her eyes cast to the ground at her feet.
“Lift your head,” Fabien commanded her, hardly waiting for her to comply before he took her skull in both his hands and forced her to look up. “Now, open your eyes. Do it!”
Dragos didn’t know quite what to expect. He wasn’t at all prepared for the startling paleness of her gaze. The girl’s irises were as clear as glass—flawless mirrors that instantly mesmerized him. He was vaguely aware of Fabien’s hissed excitement, but all of Dragos’s attention was rooted on the child and the incredible glimmer of her eyes.
And then he saw it… a flicker of movement in the placid reflection. He saw a form moving through thick shadows—a body he thought he recognized as his own. The image became clearer the longer he stared, rapt and eager to see more of the gift Fabien had described.
It was him.
It was his lair as well. Even veiled in dark mist, the images reflecting back at him were intimately familiar. He saw the subterranean laboratory, the holding cells… the UV light cage that contained his greatest weapon in the war he’d been preparing for all these many centuries. It was all there, shown to him through this Breedmate child’s eyes.
But then, a moment of stunning alarm.
His pristine lab, so rigidly secured and orderly, was in ruins. The holding cells had been thrown open. And the UV light cage … it was empty.
“Impossible,” he murmured, struck with a grim, furious awe.
He blinked hard, several times, wanting to dislodge the vision from his head. When he opened his eyes again, he saw something new in the child’s damnable eyes … something even more unfathomable.
He saw himself, begging for his life. Weeping, broken.
Pitiful.
Defeated.
“Is this some kind of fucking joke?” His voice shook—both with anger and with something too weak for him to acknowledge. He tore his gaze away from the girl and fixed it on Fabien. “What the hell is the meaning of this?”
“Your future, sire.” Fabien’s face had gone quite pale. His mouth worked for a moment without sound, then he finally sputtered, “The child… you see, she is an oracle. She showed me standing here, at this very gathering, presenting you with a vision of your future that pleased you immensely. When I saw that, I knew I had to save her for you, my lord. I had to offer her to you, no matter what it cost.”
Dragos’s blood was lava scorching his veins. He should kill the idiot here and now, just because of this insult. “You obviously misread what you saw.”
“No!” Fabien cried, grabbing hold of the girl and wheeling her around. He gave her a hard shake. “Show me again! Prove to him that I am not mistaken, damn you!”
Dragos watched as still as stone while Fabien peered into her eyes. The Darkhaven leader’s horrified gasp told him all he needed to know. He reeled back, as white as a sheet. As stricken as if he’d just witnessed his own murder.
“I don’t understand,” Fabien muttered. “It’s all changed. You have to believe me, sire! I don’t know how she’s changed the vision, but the little witch is lying now. She has to be!”
“Get her out of my sight,” Dragos growled to the Enforcement Agency guard who held her. “I’ll take her with me when I leave, but until then, I don’t want to see hide nor hair of her.”
The guard gave a nod and removed the child, practically dragging her up to the house.
“Sire, I beg you,” Fabien pleaded. “Forgive me for this … unfortunate mistake.”
“I will deal with you later,” Dragos said, not bothering to couch the threat that rode undercurrent of his words.
He resumed his progress toward the gathering, more determined than ever to make his authority—his unmatched power—understood to all.
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
It was fully dark when Niko and Renata arrived at the coordinates Gideon had supplied for Edgar Fabien’s property up north. The Darkhaven leader evidently owned a sizable chunk of wooded land, far enough out of Montreal that the surrounding area remained widely undeveloped: acre after acre of huge conifers and evergreens, not a living soul in sight except for the occasional deer or moose that bolted at the first scent of the heavily armed vampire creeping through their unspoiled sanctuary.
Nikolai had been running solo reconaissance on the area for the past few minutes. A two-story house made of logs and stone was tucked into a thick corner of the forest. A narrow, unpaved drive, barely wide enough for one vehicle, cut a meandering path through the trees to the front of the house. Niko skirted that driveway from the cover of the woods, taking note of the two SWAT-garbed Enforcement Agents posted near the halfway mark and the three large black Humvees parked in single-file formation just outside the front door of the place. Three more vampire guards, M16 rifles at the ready, covered the entrance. The east and west sides were each also under watch by an armed sentry.
Although he didn’t figure they’d leave the back of the place vulnerable to infiltration, Niko moved around that way to get the lay of the land. He heard the soft lap of water even before he saw the quiet lake and the empty dock at the shore some three hundred yards behind the house. Off the rear of the place another Enforcement Agency duo stood guard.
Damn it.
Getting into the site to nab Fabien wasn’t going to be easy. Unless he and the Order dropped in from above, if they wanted to pull Dragos’s associate out of there, they were going to have to mow down a few Agency guards in the process. And that wasn’t even factoring in the unknown group of Breed males who had accompanied the Montreal Darkhaven leader here last night. Yanking Fabien tonight without a lot of civilian casualties might be verging on the impossible. Double that estimate when the problem of rescuing Mira was added to the mix. So, basically the net of his recon was that shit was likely to get very messy in here, no two ways about it.
And then there was the situation with Renata.
One
of the hardest things Nikolai had ever done was spend the entire day with her, knowing that he had deceived her. He wanted to tell her—after they’d made love, after she’d honored him with the gift of her blood and the completed bond that now joined them eternally. He’d wanted to tell her a dozen times over, in a dozen different moments, but selfishly, he held the truth back from her for her own protection. He still held on to the hope that she would understand his caution—that she might even be grateful that he made her wait to learn of Mira’s location until he and the other warriors had a chance to iron out a solid evac strategy.
Yeah, he was going to keep telling himself that, because he didn’t want to consider any other alternatives.
Shaking off the regret that dogged his steps and the dread that kept threatening to crawl up the back of his neck, Nikolai moved to a better vantage point in the cover of the woods. He peered through the brushy pine branches, watching several of the house’s occupants as they passed a window on the ground floor. He took a quick headcount of the hooded Breed males as they strode as a group toward another area of the place. Five, six, seven… and then another, this one without the black head covering.
Oh, Christ.
Nikolai knew him. He’d seen the son of a bitch up close and personal only a few weeks prior, when a mission for the Order had sent Niko to meet with one of the highest-ranking officials in the Enforcement Agency. At the time, the male was going by a long-standing alias—one of two false names the Order had uncovered not long afterward. Now they knew the bastard by his true name, the one his traitorous Gen One father before him had carried as well.
Dragos.
Holy … skit.
For weeks the Order had been searching exhaustively for even the most minute lead on Dragos, all without success. Now here he was, plunked down right in front of them like a fish in a barrel. Motherfucker was here. And goddamn it, he was going down—tonight.
Niko eased back into the thicket, then hauled ass in a southerly direction, where he’d left Renata with their purloined Agency SUV. He couldn’t wait to call Tegan and Rio and give them this good news.
Edgar Fabien’s confusion and distress over the debacle of his botched gift for Dragos haunted him like a wraith as he and the others followed their newly arrived leader into the conference room of the northern retreat. He knew it was dangerous, generally deadly, to displease Dragos, something he’d avoided very well until recently. But he also knew—as he assumed the rest of the Breed males gathered here for this meeting did—that Dragos had brought them all together tonight for a specific purpose. This was to be a historic night. A reward, Dragos had promised, for their years of covert partnership and loyalty toward a common goal.
After so much time and effort spent currying Dragos’s favor these past decades, Fabien only prayed he hadn’t thrown it away in that one unfortunate instant down near the dock.
“Be seated,” Dragos instructed them as they filed in and he took his place at the front of the meeting room. He watched as Fabien and the six others, all still concealed behind their black hoods, filled the chairs that were gathered around the slab of polished granite that served as the conference table. “Each of us assembled here in this room shares a common interest—that being the current and future state of our race.”
Fabien nodded in agreement beneath his hood, as did several others at the table.
“We share a common resentment for the corruption of our bloodlines by the stain of humanity and for the craven way those in power within the Breed have chosen to govern us with regard to the inferior mankind. Since the first seeds of the race were sown on this planet, vampirekind has degenerated into a fat, complacent disgrace. With each new generation born, our bloodlines grow more and more diluted with humanity. Our leaders prefer us to skulk in hiding from the Homo sapiens world, all of them fearful of being found out, and masking that cowardice with laws and policies put in place supposedly to protect the secret of our very existence. We have been weakened by fear and secrecy. It is high time that changed, and a new, powerful leadership is required.”
Now the nods became more vigorous, the murmured agreements more fervent.
Dragos began a leisurely pace at the front of the room, his hands clasped loosely at his back. “Not everyone shares our desire to reverse the past failings and restore the Breed to a position of power. Not everyone sees the future that we do. Some would say the price is too steep, the risks too great. A thousand excuses for why the Breed should maintain its status quo and not take the bold steps required to seize the kind of future to which we are entitled.”
“Hear, hear,” Fabien interjected, greed for that future licking at him like a flame.
“I am pleased that those of you in this room understand the fact that bold steps must be taken,” Dragos said. “Each of you individually has played a part in advancing our vision to its next level. And you have done it all without question, without knowledge of one another… until now. Our own time of secrecy is over. Please,” he said, “remove your hoods, and let us begin the newest phase of our alliance.”
Fabien reached up for the black cloth that covered his head, uncertainty making his fingers hesitate. He paused until a couple of the other attendees had pulled their hoods off before he found the courage to remove his own.
For a moment, none of the Breed males said a word. Glances passed around the table, some smug with recognition of known peers, others wary of the strangers who had now, with this admission of willful treason, become their most intimate allies. Fabien knew several of the half dozen faces who stared back at him—all of them high-ranking Darkhaven or Enforcement Agency officials, some from the United States and others from abroad.
“We are a council of eight,” Dragos announced. “Just like the Ancients who arrived here so long ago. We are, all of us, second-generation sons to those powerful otherworlders. Soon, once the last Gen One vampire is eliminated, we will be among the eldest and most powerful of our race. Each of you has helped with that effort, either by providing the locations of the remaining members of our first generation or by supplying the cause with Breedmates to carry the seeds of our revolution.”
“What about the Order?” asked one of the European attendees, his German accent sharp as a razor blade. “There are two Gen One warriors we’ve yet to contend with.”
“And we will,” Dragos said smoothly. “I will be planning direct assaults on the Order very soon. After their recent strike against me, it will be my personal pleasure to bury their operation and see the warriors—and their mates—meet their demise.”
An Enforcement Agency director from the West Coast of the United States leaned back in his chair and arched his dark brows. “Lucan and his warriors have survived other attacks before. The Order has been in existence since the Middle Ages. They won’t go down without a fight—a very hard, bloody one.”
Dragos chuckled. “Oh, they will bleed. And if I have my way, they’ll beg for mercy and be given none. Not from the powerful army I’ll have at my command.”
“When will we begin building this army?” someone else in the group asked.
Dragos’s smile went broad with malice. “We began fifty years ago. In truth, this revolution began even longer ago than that. Much longer.”
All eyes were trained on him as he strode over to a laptop computer he’d instructed Fabien to have ready in the room. As he typed a command on the keyboard, the conference room’s large flat-panel monitor rose up from the floor. Dragos entered more instructions and soon that dark monitor blinked on, displaying what appeared to be a research laboratory.
“A satellite link to one of my strongholds,” he explained, using the touchpad to remote-control the camera on the other end of the connection. “It is here that I’ve been putting the pieces in place.” The camera’s eye roamed toward a wall of coded, cryogenic drums, then past a fleet of microscopes, computers, and DNA storage beakers lined up on rows of tables. In the midst of all this scientific equipment were several Minions dr
essed in masks and white lab coats.
“It looks like a genetics lab,” said the German.
“So it is,” Dragos replied.
“What kind of experiments are you conducting?”
“All kinds.” Dragos went back to the keyboard and typed in another string of commands. The laboratory camera went dark, only to be replaced with another view, this one a panoramic angle of a long corridor lined with prison cells. Although from the camera’s position it was difficult to make out anything but the most rudimentary shapes, it was obvious that the cells contained women, some of them heavy with child.
“Breedmates,” Fabien breathed. “There must be twenty or more of them in there.”
“They don’t always survive the procedures and testing, so the numbers tend to fluctuate,” Dragos said in a conversational tone. “But we have had our successes with the breeding process. These females and the ones who went before them are giving birth to the greatest army this world will ever know. An army of Gen One killers who are at my complete command.”
A hush as thick as a winter cloak fell over the gathering.
“Gen One?” asked the director from the West Coast. “That can’t be possible. You would need one of the Ancients in order to produce a first-generation Breed vampire. All of those otherworlders were exterminated by the Order some seven hundred years ago. Lucan himself declared war on all of the Ancients and saw to it that none survived.”
“Did he?” Dragos grinned, baring just the tips of his fangs. “I think… not.”
With a few more keystrokes, he brought up still another camera view on the satellite connection. This time the focus homed in on a large, heavily secured room, which had in its center a cylindrical cell constructed of light beams. The ultraviolet rays emitting from that cage of tight vertical bars was nearly blinding, even onscreen.
And contained inside that UV cell crouched a hairless, naked creature who would stand likely seven feet tall. His nude body was immense, every inch of him covered in dermaglyphs. He looked up as the camera lens zoomed in on him from somewhere across the room. Amber eyes, pupils all but devoured by the fire blazing out of the sockets, narrowed with lethal awareness. The creature came out of its crouch and lunged to attack, only to be thrown back by the searing heat of the UV bars that held it prisoner. It opened its mouth and let out a furious roar that didn’t need to be heard in order to be understood.