by Lara Adrian
The piece of silvery crystal responded to his psychic request with a brilliant flare of light.
It flashed brighter, enveloping him in its power—and then Zael was no longer picturing the Georgetown intersection in his mind, he was standing there in the flesh.
The street was ghostly in its stillness, only the bleating cry of a vehicle alarm piercing the night. Zael started walking. Up ahead of him, a brutalized body lay broken and covered in gore next to the smashed hood of a car. Blood streaked the asphalt, which was also littered with items the terrorized people had lost in their haste to vacate the area.
He saw the glossy, black bulk of the Order’s SUV parked at the curb, just as Lucan had assured him it would be. But Zael’s lungs constricted as he realized the vehicle was empty, the passenger door ajar.
He wheeled around in the middle of the street, his gaze searching for any signs of life.
“Brynne!”
There was no answer. Only the nagging drone of the alarm. He silenced it with a sharp mental command.
“Brynne! Where are you?”
His feet started moving on their own. It wasn’t hard to tell which way the other people had gone. Personal effects, blood, even the savaged body of another victim lay in his path.
And then—a grim, but hopeful, sign.
A dead Breed male, his head twisted grotesquely as if by violent, monstrous strength.
One of Nathan’s kills, perhaps. Zael didn’t much care how the vampire met its end. One less Rogue was one less threat of danger to Brynne.
He shouted her name again, but still there was no answer.
Jogging now, he ran more than a block, then paused as he neared a narrow side alley. The sight—and smell—staggered him. He wasn’t Breed, but even he was rocked back on his heels by the coppery stench of pooled blood on the pavement inside the alleyway.
He approached the foulness, his eyes rooted to the pair of bodies that lay in crumpled heaps on the ground.
Relief washed over him when he saw that neither of the dead was Brynne. One was a Breed male, his corpse savaged beyond description. The other was a human of slight build, whose bloodless pallor made his skin glow milky white in the thin moonlight.
The horror of what had plainly taken place in the alley sickened him. Although the Rogue’s death had been brutal, the human had suffered horrifically as well. The front of his throat was torn away, no doubt by the Rogue. Another bite wound pierced his wrist—this one less violent, and certainly not the injury that killed him, but there was no mistaking the predation that had taken place.
Zael stared at the two large punctures, and something troubling nagged at his senses.
He wanted to call out to Brynne again, but the silence in the alley held his tongue.
He wasn’t alone.
He took a step forward and the prickle in his veins became a throb.
“Brynne?” He said her name in little more than a whisper as he tilted his head back and looked up, following the wall of old red bricks that rose on both sides of the narrow street.
And there she was.
Huddled in the corner of a rickety black iron fire escape four stories up.
“Ah, fuck… Brynne.”
The crystal at his wrist put him up there with her in that next instant. She flinched under the flash of pure white energy, drawing herself into a tight ball as far away from him as she could get. Her dark hair was a chaotic tangle that all but covered her face, many of the strands soaked and stiff with drying blood.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
The sound she made when he took a step forward and reached for her made the hair on the back of his neck rise in warning.
The growl that came out of her was anguished, pained…alien.
“Brynne, look at me. It’s Zael. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Go. Away.”
If he wasn’t looking at her with his own eyes now, he never would have believed the twisted, gravely rasp belonged to her. She kept her head down, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees. Her feet were bare, the skin on the tops of them covered with dermaglyphs. Deep colors surged and pulsed in furious, changeable hues on the backs of her hands too.
He looked closer, his gaze snagging on something peculiar about her fingers.
Her nails… They were black.
No, not fingernails, he realized now.
Talons.
Sharp as razors, the nails on the tips of her fingers gleamed as black as obsidian.
“Brynne,” he murmured. “Let me see you. Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” Anger lashed out at him with her reply. She gave a brief toss of her head, a moan leaking out of her. “Go away, Zael. Please.”
“No. Not this time. You’re not pushing me away when it’s obvious you’re in trouble and need help—”
“I said go away!”
Finally, her head came up. But it wasn’t Brynne glowering at him now. Zael gaped at the molten amber light that poured out of her eyes. Thin pupils locked on him in rage—in staggering deadly intent. Glyphs surged all over her face now, drawing attention to the sharpened angles of her cheekbones and brow, and the enormous lengths of her fangs.
Not Breed, because not even the eldest Gen One transformed like this in the throes of hunger.
Brynne was something else. Something other.
Something Zael and his people hadn’t seen up close for thousands of years.
The beautiful, tormented face staring back at him now in dangerous fury was the face of an Ancient.
CHAPTER 20
The Rogues were running through Georgetown like a pack of wild dogs.
Faces painted red with human blood, eyes blazing as bright as yellow coals in their feral faces, two more howling males bounded into the empty street where Lucan stood over the body of another he had just stopped a second ago with a titanium bullet to the head.
Like humans hopped up on heavy narcotics and adrenaline, Rogues didn’t go down easy. It took brute strength or a hell of a lot of lead—sometimes a combination of both. Titanium helped. The metal was highly corrosive poison to the diseased blood system of a Rogue, as evidenced by the sizzling mess that was growing near Lucan’s boots. The dead Rogue would be nothing but ash in a few minutes.
Lucan turned to deliver the same end to the pair of newcomers now closing in on him in the middle of the swanky Georgetown shopping district. He took the first one down with a single shot of titanium between the eyes—before realizing it was the last round left in his weapon.
Ah, fuck.
The second Rogue roared as his companion dropped into a puddle of melting flesh and bone. He charged at Lucan, head lowered and jaws snapping. Lucan drew his backup pistol and fired multiple times, but the lead rounds only pissed the Rogue off. The vampire vaulted at Lucan, leaving him no choice but to meet the threat up-close-and-personal.
They crashed together and tumbled onto the pavement.
Lucan scrambled to withdraw the titanium blade from its holster on his weapons belt as the Rogue’s gnashing fangs came at his face and throat in blinding speed. Finally, he worked the knife free.
With the Rogue struggling for any advantage, he left himself open to attack. It was a fatal mistake. Lucan drove the titanium blade into the vampire’s side. The resulting shriek was ear-splitting, purely animal. With the Rogue convulsing from the wound, Lucan shoved the body away from him and got up to his feet.
It wasn’t until he was standing that he heard the sawing breath of another Rogue at his back.
He turned to face it, seeing the Rogue poised to spring at him. But instead of lunging, the vampire abruptly stilled, then dropped to the ground as dead weight.
Dante stood a few feet away, one of his curved titanium daggers planted solidly in the Rogue’s spine.
Lucan gave him a nod. “Thanks.”
The warrior arched a dark brow. “Just like old times, eh?” He strode over and retrieved his weapon, cleaning it
on the disintegrating Rogue’s jacket. “If this shit keeps up, Nikolai may have to go back to supplying us with titanium custom rounds from his command center in Montreal.”
Lucan grunted at the reminder of the Siberian-born warrior with a penchant for weapons and explosives. “Things were different for us then. It’s a hell of a lot easier to put a lid on isolated strikes by one or two enemies at a time. Opus is global. And they’re making damned sure we feel the pressure from all sides.”
As if the presence of Rogues in a major metropolitan city in the States wasn’t troubling enough, before the Order had rolled out of headquarters tonight, they had gotten more bad news. Gideon had received word that all three European commanders were reporting a spike in Rogue activity in their regions as well.
“The hits keep coming,” Dante remarked, a grim look in his eyes. “I hate to guess what Opus thinks they can do while they’re keeping us busy playing Whack-a-Mole with Rogues and lone wolf attacks on government and law enforcement organizations.”
Lucan didn’t want to guess either, but they had to if they meant to stay ahead of them enough to take the brotherhood down. “Unless Gideon cracks that encryption on their communications network, we don’t have many cards left to play.”
“We’ve got the Breedmate in custody with Rafe and Aric,” Dante pointed out. “If she can ID the men who killed Iona Lynch, we can start there and follow the trail back to Opus from that end.”
He had a point. But the panicked recollections of a shaken and injured eyewitness were hardly the kind of odds Lucan preferred. Still, Siobhan O’Shea was a better lead than nothing at all. Which is why he’d given instructions for Rafe and Aric to keep her close for the time being.
The group was currently en route from Ireland to the command center in London. They needed to keep Iona Lynch’s roommate safe, and that meant ensuring Opus didn’t discover she was in Order hands.
And while Lucan hoped things wouldn’t get bad enough to demand it, the Order also had another card to play against Opus if they had to.
The Atlantean crystal.
After witnessing its power with Zael and Jenna the other day, Lucan could not deny that he’d been thinking of little else. If two crystals had been used by the Ancients to destroy the entire realm of Atlantis, then nothing—and no one—would be able to stop the Order if they had another in their possession.
Zael had divulged when they met for the first time that a group of Atlanteans who fled the realm and formed their own hidden colony had taken a crystal with them. The Order had Zael’s alliance, but Lucan dreaded that there might come a day—and soon—that they would also need his help in building a weapon capable of ending any war before it even had a chance to start.
As the thought churned in his mind, Chase emerged from out of the shadows of a side street and headed their way.
“Any sign of Brynne?” Lucan asked.
Chase shook his head. “Found the SUV where Nathan said it would be, but it’s empty. Looks like she got out on her own and fled on foot. No sign of her anywhere, from what I could find.”
Dante shrugged, smirking. “The way Zael poofed out of headquarters at the mention of her, I have a feeling when we find him, we’ve located Brynne too. Also, where do I sign up to get one of those cool Atlantean transporter bracelets?”
Chase chuckled, but Lucan had a hard time feeling the humor. “Whatever is going on between Zael and Brynne, they picked a damned lousy time for it. We can’t afford distractions like this at headquarters when everything is going to shit around us.”
Dante quirked a brow. “Talk about old times. I recall you saying that to more than a few of us back in the day. No doubt you told yourself that same shit when it came to Gabrielle too.”
Yeah, he did and he had. It was an argument he wouldn’t win now, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Keep an eye out for both of them,” he instructed the two warriors. As he spoke, his comm unit buzzed his ear with an incoming call from Tegan, who was commanding another of the patrol teams that had fanned out to cover more ground. “What’ve you got?”
“Six Rogues ashed between the park and the university,” Tegan said. “We’re all clear here. Rio and Kade are with Nathan near the government center and they’ve spotted another gang of Rogues over there.”
Lucan swore under his breath. At this rate, it was going to be another long night.
“I’m with Chase and Dante. We’re on our way there now.”
CHAPTER 21
If she needed confirmation of how hideous she was now—a monster—she had it.
Zael went utterly still the instant his eyes locked on her transformation. He cursed something low under his breath, something in a language that she didn’t understand.
“Brynne,” he murmured. “My God…”
Her heart twisted at the stunned tone of his deep voice. She knew what he was seeing. She knew what she was—the flawed, imbalanced result of a DNA experiment that never should have happened.
An anomaly.
A mistake.
An abomination.
She slowly pulled herself up from her crouch in the corner of the old fire escape. Zael watched her move, caution in his stance and in his confused expression. The predator in her took great satisfaction in seeing a powerful being like Zael on guard as she rose to her feet. It was that part of her that worried her, too, because once the monster took hold of her, not even she could fully rein it in.
“Stay away, Zael. I’m warning you.”
“Tell me what happened. It’s okay, Brynne. I only want to understand.”
She scoffed, certain the softness that crept into his tone was based on pity or revulsion. The inhuman part of her preferred his wariness over this tender attempt to put her at ease.
She took a sideways step, following the railing of the fire escape.
“Are you hurt?” he asked gently. “Tell me what’s wrong with you so I can try to help you.”
She couldn’t contain the miserable moan that leaked out of her at the sincerity of his plea.
He couldn’t help her, and she couldn’t stay near him. Not when she was like this.
Not ever again, now that he knew the ugly secret she could no longer hide from him.
“Brynne, please.” His brows drew together over tender, determined eyes. “Are you injured? Did those Bloodlusting fucks… Did they do this to you somehow?”
A laugh burst out of her, caustic, coarse as gravel in her throat. “Those Rogues couldn’t harm me if they tried. Can’t you see that?”
She didn’t want to throw his concern back in his face, but the predator in her was never stronger than in the grips of blood thirst or battle rage. Right now, Brynne was swamped by both. Fueled by hunger and adrenaline, she was a deadly creature.
As much as the woman in her yearned for Zael’s comfort—for his compassion—the part of her that was nearly pure Ancient saw only another obstacle in front of her. An enemy it recognized on a primal, instinctual level.
One that needed to be destroyed.
“Go away, Zael.” Her stare bathed his handsome face in amber light. The care she saw in his expression, in the way he unflinchingly held her transformed gaze, tore at her heart the way nothing in her life ever had before. She snarled, forcing herself to look away from him. “I said, leave me the fuck alone.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. That’s not happening.” He took a step toward her on the narrow ironwork platform. “You think I’m going to walk away and leave you here like this? Come on, Brynne. Let me help you.”
He reached out to her. Brynne dodged him, catapulting herself off the fire escape in one fluid leap.
She landed in a crouch on the street below, ready to bolt on foot.
But Zael was there in that next instant. She barely registered his motion, yet there he stood, blocking her path in the alleyway. His scowl knit his brows. “Don’t do this, damn it. Don’t shut me out, Brynne.”
His gentle tone made the beast in
her bristle. “Get away from me, Atlantean.”
He shook his head, obstinate. Immovable. So dangerously foolish. “This is why you’ve been pushing me away? Because you were afraid I’d see you like this?” He swore softly, his scowl deepening. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Brynne.”
“Afraid of you?” The predator in her all but spat the words. “Never.”
Her vitriol didn’t seem to faze him at all. Zael held her stare, even took another step toward her. “You’re not alone. Don’t you see that?”
“You’re wrong. I am alone. It’s you who can’t see that.” A hot breath gusted out of her, shaky, uneven. “I’ve been alone all my life. It’s the only way I’ve survived.”
He gently shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Not anymore.”
She eyed him warily as he closed more distance between them. Her senses filled with him, from the deliciously warm scent of his skin to the heat that radiated off his muscular body. Her head filled with the awareness of him as a man, as the one man she desired more than any before him.
“Let me in, Brynne. You can trust me.”
She tossed her head in automatic response, torn between wanting to believe him and wanting him as far away from her as possible. Her vision locked on his throat as he moved in closer. The drum of his pulse echoed in her skull, in her temples, in her marrow. She stared, riveted to that hard ticking of his heartbeat, as she had been when they’d lain together, naked in her bed.
God help her, but the hunger with which she ached for him felt less about the monster and its cravings and more about the need to feel Zael inside her, comforting her with his body and his blood.
On a groan, she stepped around him. Or, rather, she tried to. Zael stopped her, his body planted in front of her, physically barring her from getting past.
“Dammit, Zael. Get out of my way and let me go.”
He ignored all of her warnings. He ignored the unearthly rasp of her voice, which should have told him just how close she was to the edge.