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.
“My God,” more than one of the attendees gasped.
Dragos turned a deadly sober look on the group. “Behold…our revolution.”
* * *
Lex’s cell phone vibrated on the center console of the SUV. Renata picked it up and glanced at the digital display: Unknown Caller.
Shit.
She couldn’t be sure if the call was actually for Lex or if it was for Nikolai, since he’d been using the phone to call back and forth with the Order. She didn’t know how long he’d be out running reconnaissance, and she was about to lose her mind cooling her heels waiting for him. She needed to be doing something. At least feeling that they would be making some good progress toward finding Mira soon…
The cell phone kept buzzing in her hand. She hit the Talk button but didn’t say anything. Just opened the line and let the caller reveal himself first.
“Hello? Niko—you there, amigo?” The deep voice rolled with a Spanish-tinged accent, as warm and smooth as caramel. “It’s Rio, my man—”
“He’s not here,” Renata said. “We’re in position at the site north of the city, waiting for you guys to arrive. Nikolai’s out on recon. He shouldn’t be long.”
“Good,” said the warrior. “We’re almost there, ETA about forty-five minutes on the outside. You must be Renata.”
“Yes.”
“Gotta thank you for saving our boy’s ass up there. What you did was…well, he’s lucky to have you working on his side. We all are.” She could hear the genuine concern and gratitude in the vampire’s voice, and she found herself very curious to meet the other warriors whom Nikolai called friends. “Everything okay on that end? How about you? You doing all right, hanging in there?”
“I’m good. Just anxious to get this done tonight.”
“Understood,” Rio replied. “Niko told us about the little girl—Mira. I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, knowing that a sick individual like Fabien is holding her. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you waiting around all day to rendezvous with us either.”
“No, it hasn’t been. I just feel so helpless,” she confessed. “I hate the feeling.”
“I am sorry about that. We’re not going to let anything happen to her tonight when we go in there, Renata. I’m sure Nikolai explained to you that getting our hands on Edgar Fabien is critical to the Order, but we’re going to do our best so that the child comes out of this situation just fine—”
A sudden chill permeated her chest as Rio’s words sank in. “What did you say?”
“She’s going to be fine.”
“No…that you wouldn’t let anything happen to her tonight…in there…”
On the other end of the line, a long beat of silence ticked by. “Ah, Cristo. Niko didn’t tell you about the video feed we have from Fabien’s Darkhaven last night?”
The chill in her got colder now, ice spreading from her chest to her limbs. “A video feed…from last night,” she replied numbly. “What was on it? Did you see Mira? Oh, God. Has Fabien done something with her? Tell me.”
“Madre de Dios,” he said on a long exhale. “If Niko did not…I’m not sure it’s my place to tell you now—”
“Tell me, goddamn it.”
She heard a rumble of rapid conversation in the background before Rio finally relented. “The child is with Fabien and several others we haven’t yet identified. We picked up the intel from a security surveillance feed at Fabien’s Darkhaven. They left last night and we tracked them to the property where you are now.”
“Last night,” Renata murmured. “Fabien’s been holding Mira here…since last night. And what about Nikolai…Are you telling me that he knew this? When did he hear about this? When!”
“I have to ask you to just hang in there for a little while longer,” Rio said. “Everything’s going to be all right…”
Renata knew the warrior was still talking, still issuing reassurances to her, but his voice faded away from her consciousness as bone-deep anger and fear—a hurt so profound she thought it might shred her into pieces—engulfed her. She closed the phone, cutting off the call and dropping the device onto the floor at her feet.
Mira was here since last night, with Fabien.
All this time.
And Nikolai knew that.
He knew it, and he kept it from her. She could have been here hours ago—in the daylight hours—doing something, anything, to see Mira to safety. Instead, Nikolai had deliberately withheld the truth from her, and, as a result, she had done nothing.
Not totally nothing, she admitted, stricken with guilt for the pleasure she’d enjoyed with him while Mira was only about an hour out of her reach.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, feeling sick at the thought.
She was vaguely aware of footsteps approaching the vehicle, her senses lighting up before her mind could process the sound. The blood bond she now shared with Nikolai told her it was him well before his dark form appeared at the window. He opened the SUV door and climbed inside like hell was on his heels.
“It’s Dragos,” he said, searching the console, dashboard, and seat for the cell phone. “Holy shit, I don’t fucking believe it, but it was him. I just saw the son of a bitch inside the house with Fabien and the others. Dragos is here—right in our grasp. Where the hell is that phone?”
Renata stared at him, seeing a stranger as he leaned forward and reached for the cell phone where it lay near her feet on the floor of the vehicle. She hardly heard what he was saying. Hardly cared now.
“You lied to me.”
He came back up, Lex’s phone gripped in his hand. The adrenaline crackle that had been lighting his eyes dimmed a bit when he met her gaze. “What?”
“I trusted you. You told me I could trust you—that I could count on you—and I did. I believed you, and you betrayed me.” She swallowed past the terrible lump in her throat and forced herself to spit the words out. “Mira is here. She’s been here with Fabien since last night. You knew that…you kept it from me.”
He went quiet, but he didn’t even attempt to deny what she was saying. He looked at the phone in his hand as if he just now realized how it was that she had discovered his deception.
“I could have been here, Nikolai. Hours ago, I could have been here, doing something to get Mira out of that monster’s hands!”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he said gently.
She scoffed, heartbroken. “You betrayed me.”
“I did it to protect you. Because I love—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head to keep from being played for a fool again. “No. Don’t say that to me. How
can you say that when you used those very words to keep me distracted—to make me believe that you actually cared about me while you and your buddies in the Order made plans of your own around me?”
“It’s not like that at all. Nothing that happened between us today—nothing I said to you—had anything to do with the Order. Today was about you and me…it was about us.”
“Bullshit!” He reached for her and she drew back, out of his grasp. She opened the door and got out of the SUV. He was out of the vehicle and around to her side, blocking her with his body, all of it happening so fast she couldn’t even begin to track his movements. “Get away from me, Nikolai.”
“Where are you going?” he asked gently.
“I can’t sit here any longer and do nothing.” She took a step around him but he was right there again. The gentleness in him was fading fast, replaced by a firmness that said he would keep her there in shackles if he thought he needed to.
“I can’t let you do this, Renata.”
“That’s not your choice to make,” she fired back, trembling with fear and outrage. “Damn it, that was never your choice to make for me!”
He growled a curse and lunged for her.
Renata hardly knew what she had done until he froze in midstep, clutching the sides of his head in his hands. He hissed, his eyes throwing off amber sparks as he pinned her in a shocked, furious gaze. “Renata. Do not—”
She blasted him again, all of her fear for Mira and her pain at his betrayal pouring out of her in a punishing stream of mental heat. Nikolai crashed down onto his knees, groaning and writhing from the jolt of pain she’d unleashed on him.
Renata bolted away from him, into the forest, before she allowed herself to be deterred by the regret already swelling up in her.
CHAPTER
Thirty
The house was under heavily armed, guarded watch on all sides. Impossible to breach without being noticed by at least one of the Enforcement Agents staked out like the vampire equivalent of an antiterrorist SWAT team. Every one of them carried a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude, from their dark-visored black helmets and combat gear, to the bone-shredding automatic rifles they held at the ready.
Thanks to the agents who’d raided Jack’s place the other night, Renata and Nikolai had come away with transportation, uniforms, and weapons. She didn’t think she would be lucky enough to fake her way into the building, but on first glance, garbed as they were, the agents on watch might think her one of their own.
She put on the helmet she’d taken with her from the SUV and dropped the tinted visor. Adopting as much of a soldier’s swagger as she could manage, Renata stepped out of the woods and approached the vampire guarding the west side of the house.
The agent spotted her immediately. “Henri? What the fuck are you doing out there?”
Renata shrugged, lifted her good arm in a hell if I know gesture. She couldn’t risk speaking to him—no more than she could risk using her gun to mow this obstacle down. If she let off a bunch of rounds, she would have the whole security detail on her ass. No, she had to keep her cool and just continue walking toward him with the hope that he wouldn’t open fire out of raised suspicion alone.
“What’s the matter with you, idiot?”
Renata shrugged again. Getting closer.
Her fingers itched to let her blades fly—he made an easy target standing as still as a stump—but the slightest whiff of spilled blood would call every vampire in the vicinity to attention. Renata knew she had to get close enough to reach him with her mind. Her only option was to hit him with a swift, solid blast.
“You fucking ingrate, Henri, get back to your post,” the agent growled. He reached for a small communication device clipped to his belt. “I’m calling Fabien to report you. If you want to piss him off, go ahead, but I don’t want any part of—”
Using all the power at her command, Renata unleashed a savage bolt of energy from her mind and sent it crashing into the vampire standing before her. His words choked off with a grunt and he went down like a stone. She kept blasting him until he was silent. When she was certain he was dead, she bent down and liberated him of both his weapon and his comm device.
Renata opened the side entrance door a bare sliver and did a quick glance of the area just inside. It was clear. She slipped inside, heart hammering in her chest, breath steaming against the closed visor of her helmet.
For all her fury at Nikolai for not telling her that Mira was here with Fabien, now she knew only gratitude that the Order had visual proof of the child’s location. It was too late to second-guess how she’d left things with Nikolai. Too late to worry that maybe she should have waited for him and his brothers-in-arms to be there to back her up. Part of her knew that she’d been unfair, but she’d gone too far to take it back.
She’d made an impulsive, emotional decision based on wounded feelings. It was a decision that might cost her the friendship she had with Nikolai—maybe even his love—but as much as she regretted that already, she couldn’t undo it now. Nikolai might never forgive her for jeopardizing his mission; she would understand if he couldn’t.
Now she could only pray that Mira didn’t end up paying the price.
* * *
Niko roused to the nagging buzz of a cell phone going off next to his head. He was on the ground next to the vehicle. No idea how long he’d been there. The cell phone vibrated again, jiggling in the grass and old leaves that littered the forest floor. It took nearly all his effort to move his hand up to grab the damned thing. Clumsily he flipped it open. Tried to say something, but only managed a dry croak.
“Yeah,” he said once more, forcing his limbs to drag himself up off the ground into a seated slump against the front wheel of the SUV.
“Niko?” Rio’s voice came through the receiver, heavy with concern. “You sound like shit, amigo. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Renata,” he said, holding his banging head in his hands. “Pissed off…”
Rio cursed. “Yeah, I gathered that. My fault, man. I didn’t realize she wasn’t clued in about the girl being moved last night—”
“She’s gone,” Niko said. When he thought of that, all his senses started coming back online like a switch on a backup generator had been thrown inside him. “Ah, fuck, Rio…I pissed her off and now she’s gone in after Mira on her own.”
“Madre de Dios.”
On the other end of the line, he heard Rio give Tegan and the others a quick rundown of the situation. “That’s not the worst, my man,” Nikolai added, ignoring the shooting pain in his head as he got up from the ground and made a staggering run for the back of the SUV. “This gathering of Fabien’s? It’s bigger than we realized…Dragos is up here too.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I saw the bastard with my own eyes. He’s here.” Nikolai was grabbing automatic weapons out of the back as fast as his sluggish arms could move. He draped his body with the rifles, stuffed a pistol in the back of his stolen Enforcement Agency uniform and another one in an ankle holster. “The house is surrounded by guards, so when you get here, come in on foot and split up.”
“Niko, what are you doing?”
He didn’t reply to that; didn’t think his old friend was going to like his answer. Instead, he pulled extra magazines and clips from the vehicle and loaded up with as much ammo as he could carry. “You’ve got two men at the halfway point on the drive and three at the front of the place. Take them out first and you’ll have the cleanest way in.”
“Nikolai.” Rio’s voice was low with warning. “Amigo, whatever you’re thinking right now…don’t.”
“She’s in there, Rio. Inside with Dragos and Fabien, and God knows who else…and she’s alone. I’m going in after her.”
Rio bit out something nasty in Spanish. “Stay put. We’re not even ten minutes away from you and we’re hauling ass, my man.”
Niko closed up the back of the SUV. “I’m gonna rig some kind of perimeter diversion�
�”
“Goddamn it, Nikolai, if this female wants to kill herself, it’s not your problem. We’ll help her however we can, but—”
“She’s my mate, Rio.” Nikolai blew out a ripe curse. “We’re blood-bonded…and I love her. I love her more than life itself.”
The warrior’s answering sigh sounded heavy with understanding, and defeat. “I suppose there’s no point in telling you that you’re defying Lucan’s direct orders if you go in there right now. If Dragos is on site, that makes this shit even more critical and you know it. We need you to stay put and wait for backup.”
“Can’t do that,” Nikolai replied.
He closed the phone and tossed it into the open driver’s-side window. Then he headed out to go find his woman.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Dragos permitted himself to revel in the awe of his underlings as they gaped at the Ancient trapped in its UV prison cell onscreen. From the wonder on their faces—the rapt incredulity—one would think he’d managed to catch lightning in a bottle. In truth, what he had achieved these past long decades was something even greater than that.
The seven Breed males gathered with him in the room now looked upon him like a god, and rightfully so. He was the architect of a revolution that would turn the entire planet on its head. Tonight they were witnessing history, and the start of a future he had personally designed.
“How can this be?” someone murmured. “If that truly is one of the Ancients who fathered our race, how did he survive the war with the Order?”
Dragos smiled as he walked closer to the screen. “My father was an original member of the Order…but he was, first and foremost, this creature’s son. During the bloodshed perpetrated by the Order when Lucan declared war on the Ancients, my father and his alien sire made a pact. In exchange for shared power in the future, my father would hide him away until the hysteria died down. Unfortunately, after making good on his promise, my father did not survive the war. But the Ancient did, as you can see.”
“So, you intend to carry on your father’s agreement with that…thing?” Fabien asked, his expression drooping like a lapdog who’d just lost his bone to a feral wolf.
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