by Lara Adrian
Fuck. Not a good sign.
Nor was the fact that the Darkhaven stood as still and quiet as a tomb.
Aric motioned an all-clear to Mira and Kaya. They entered behind him, slipping into the house in silence.
“Everyone’s dead here,” he murmured in a low whisper.
They didn’t ask if he was sure. His Breed senses were far more acute than both of theirs put together. He jerked his chin in the direction of the foyer and the front door, which hung ajar, swaying faintly in the soft morning breeze.
“Holy shit.” Mira’s mouth flattened as she strode past him, her long blond braid thumping at her spine as she walked toward the human corpse near the entrance.
Kaya fell in beside Aric, silent, barely breathing. The trio paused just beyond the perimeter of the odd crime scene, no one saying a word for a moment as they each soaked in the details.
The dead man wore a delivery service uniform. Near the bulky shape of his crumpled, semi-prone body was a crushed package and a large spill of coarse black dirt. Blood leaked out from under the human’s corpse, coagulating in a dark puddle on the creamy rug and hardwood.
Mira toed the body with the tip of her combat boot, rolling the man onto his back. “Jesus Christ.”
His throat and chest had been slashed wide open. Four symmetric lacerations delivered with enough force it was a wonder he hadn’t lost his head.
Mira frowned as she glanced over at Aric and Kaya. “What do you guys think? Whatever was in that box must’ve really pissed off the owner of this Darkhaven.”
“No.” Kaya’s gaze drifted down to the smashed box. “There was nothing in it. Look closer. It’s an empty box.”
“She’s right,” Aric agreed. The pieces were starting to fall in place now, painting a picture of cowardice and deception. “The delivery was a setup. It was the only way to get the Darkhaven door open with a minimum of effort.”
Mira’s face blanched. “At this hour, with the sun blazing over the lawn, there are few Breed who would risk exposure by opening the door to anyone.”
“Right,” Aric said. “And this dead fuck right here was counting on that fact. He wanted Jonathon Champlain’s Breedmate to answer the door because he needed to overpower her in order to get inside.”
Mira nodded. “But he came down to protect her. He would’ve been here in an instant. Less than an instant. Those wounds on the body are evidence enough of that.”
“There’s a lot of blood on the stairs,” Kaya pointed out. “It goes all the way up to the second floor.”
Aric nodded grimly. “It’s hers. I can smell it from here.”
Mira stepped away from the dead man and the mess surrounding his corpse. “So, where is Jonathon Champlain?”
Aric’s gaze fell to the strange spill of black dirt at their feet. A chill washed over him, settling in his marrow. “Ah, fuck. No.”
He crouched on his haunches and reached for the empty package, moving it to the side so he could have a closer look at what his instincts were telling him but his brain refused to accept as reality.
An acrid odor rose up as he moved the box out of his way. The odd stench was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, yet every cell in his body recoiled as the smell of ashed Breed remains--not dirt--wafted into his lungs.
Something gleamed within the pile of black cinders. He retrieved it, holding the strange bullet casing up so he could examine it. The round was formed of silvery metal caged around a diamond-hard glass shell that would have contained something far more powerful than gunpowder. A specialized kind of round that served only one purpose.
Killing members of the Breed.
Mira gasped. “Is that what I think it is?”
“An ultraviolet bullet,” Aric answered woodenly. “Whoever came in behind the delivery man came in prepared to kill.”
Kaya’s gaze bounced between them, confused and stricken. “I don’t understand. A UV round? How can something like that exist? And since it obviously does, where the hell did it come from?”
“A few weeks ago, a scientist who pioneered major advances in ultraviolet technology was murdered by members of Opus Nostrum,” Aric explained. “Opus got their hands on his work and they quickly began developing it into weaponry.”
“Breed-killing weapons,” Kaya murmured, her hand coming up to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
“The Order has kept all of this under wraps,” Mira added. “You know about the UV bomb that Opus tried to detonate at the GNC peace summit earlier this month?”
“Yes,” Kaya said. “If you and Kellan and the rest of the Order hadn’t killed the Opus member responsible for that bomb, hundreds of Breed diplomats and most of the Order would have been ashed in front of the entire world.”
Mira’s nod was understated, especially considering the magnitude of what she, along with her mate and the Order, had accomplished that night. “Killing Reginald Crowe and disabling his bomb only stopped one disaster from happening. By then, we’d also learned that Opus was manufacturing large caches of ultraviolet arms and ammunition.”
“The Order tracked down a large supply of both in Ireland,” Aric told Kaya. “We took out the Opus member who’d been stockpiling the shit and detonated all but a few samples of everything we found, but there was no guarantee that some of it hadn’t already leaked out to Opus operatives.”
Mira slanted a look at the dead human. “I guess we have an answer to that question now.”
Aric nodded, but his mind was already filling with further questions in need of answers. Opus Nostrum may have played some role in this killing, but the selection of a civilian Darkhaven seemed too random. Opus tended toward high-profile targets, not suburban families, Breed or otherwise.
Aric glanced at the stairs and the blood trail that Champlain’s Breedmate left behind. Although his senses told him he wasn’t going to like what he found up there, he headed in that direction, leading the way for Kaya and Mira.
His gut clenched at the sight of another pile of ashes at the top of the stairs. This one was considerably smaller than the one in the foyer. Aric tried not to picture a seven-year-old Breed boy racing out of his bedroom in terror as his parents struggled with the intruders downstairs.
Kaya’s strangled gasp behind Aric told him that she’d spotted the child’s remains too.
“Oh, God,” Mira whispered. “The mother’s bloody footprints lead all the way to the bedroom at the end of the hall.”
“Yeah,” Aric answered, his booted feet moving leaden beneath him as they approached the pastel-colored room that stood as silent as the grave ahead of him.
In his mind, the logical sequence of the attack played out in horrific detail. The morning delivery, used as a trap to lure Elena Champlain to the door alone. The first assailant pushes his way inside, dropping the ruse of a package and crushing it under his boot as he knocks the female down with his fist, splattering her blood on the wall.
Her mate flashes downstairs in that next instant, the blood bond and her likely screams alerting him to the danger. He kills the delivery man to give his Breedmate a chance to run for safety--but the assailant wasn’t alone. The others push inside now, at least one of them armed with ultraviolet weaponry. They ash Jonathon Champlain. Another ashes their young son, who would have been just old enough to be a threat to an unarmed human. To a man carrying an ultraviolet weapon? The child would be as inconsequential as a gnat.
Any Breed male allergic to sunlight, no matter his size or skills, would be no match for a tiny bullet filled with liquid UV.
As for the lady of the house, Aric had a sickening feeling that her death was far less merciful.
The door to the nursery was wide open. He entered, and it was all he could do not to stagger back on his heels.
The female lay on the floor, brutalized, her clothing torn off. Stab wounds and slashes all over her body. In the crib, her infant son had been reduced to a blackened scorch mark against the soft white sheets and smiling stuffed animals.
>
And on the walls, written in the Breedmate’s blood, were shocking messages of hate.
Breed whore!
Death to the bloodsuckers!
Ash them all!
There were dozens more, each more graphic and uglier than the next. Aric didn’t bother to read them all.
But Kaya and Mira were.
He saw their horror reflected in their eyes as the entirety of the slaying washed over them.
Kaya looked as though the slightest touch would knock her over. Her face was bloodless, shell-shocked. Her dark brown eyes were glazed and welling with unspilled tears.
Mira blew out a soft curse. When she spoke, her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Please collect all of the spent UV rounds, Aric. We should bring them back for Niko to analyze. I’m going to . . . I need to go outside for a minute.”
“All right.” He nodded once, accepting his grim task with total solemnity. “Kaya, you should go too.”
At first, she didn’t move. Didn’t so much as blink.
Aric reached out for her, his touch landing lightly on her shoulder. She flinched, a bone-deep jerk of movement that seemed to startle her out of the horrified daze that gripped her. Her gaze lifted to his, bleak and unreadable. He couldn’t resist cupping her trembling jaw in his palm.
“Go on with Mira,” he gently instructed her. “You don’t need to see any more of this.”
She gave him a wobbly nod. Then, unspeaking, she pivoted and left him to finish his work.
CHAPTER 15
Kaya hung her head over the sink in her quarters’ en suite bathroom and splashed a handful of cold water over her face. Her stomach heaved, threatening to revolt for the second time since she had returned with Aric and Mira from the Darkhaven in Pointe-Claire.
They’d been back at the command center for a couple of hours and she still couldn’t purge the horrific scene from her mind. The blood and death and hatred. The unimaginable cruelty of the ones who’d perpetrated the slaughter of that innocent family in their home.
But her stomach turned for another reason too.
One that put a coldness in her veins as she gathered her shower-damp hair into a long ponytail, then donned running gear and headed out of her room to the mansion corridor outside.
She had to get away from the confinement of the command center’s walls, if only for a short while. She needed space and time to process everything that had happened, not only today but ever since Aric showed up in Montreal.
More than anything, she needed to look for some clarity . . . no matter where that search might lead her.
Aric was coming out of a guest room at the other end of the hallway as she headed for the central staircase that led to the large foyer. He held a tablet in one hand, his comm unit in the other.
“Hey,” he said, his deep voice soothing with just that simple greeting. “I was on my way to check on you. Thought I’d head down to the war room to dig back into the reception images and look for Mercier’s Opus contact.”
“Oh. Right.” It seemed like a week had passed since they’d begun that task together. If only it felt so long since she’d lain naked and pleasured in Aric’s arms. She could hardly look at him now without reliving the bliss of his touch . . . and the erotic power of his body as he moved inside her. She cleared her throat. “I was, um, just going out for a little bit. After this morning, I could use a long run.”
“You want some company?”
“No.” She only hoped her reply didn’t sound as abrupt as it felt on her lips. “I won’t be gone long. If anyone asks for me, will you let them know I’ve gone out?”
“Sure.” He nodded. “When you get back, come down and join me. We need to nail this Opus bastard now more than ever.”
She wouldn’t deny the importance of excising a cancer like Opus Nostrum. If they had supplied the UV ammunition used in today’s slayings--and there seemed to be zero doubt about that--then the Order should show no mercy to anyone with ties to the terror group or their sympathizers. On that, she and Aric were agreed.
But it was the idea of teaming up with him again in close quarters that made a knot of reluctance form in her breast. It had been a mistake letting her guard down around him. An even bigger mistake making love with him, no matter how incredible it had been.
She couldn’t allow herself to make that mistake again. She needed to keep her head on straight. Stay focused on the things that mattered. If she had let her priorities slip since meeting Aric Chase, what she witnessed at the Darkhaven today had been a stark wakeup call.
And that meant keeping her distance from the Breed male as much as possible between now and the time that he would be returning to his life in D.C.
“Kaya.” He said her name softly, concern etched on his handsome face. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She nodded. Forced all of her misgivings and regrets deep down in order to give him a casual shrug. “I’m fine. I’ll see you when I get back from my run.”
She stepped around him, feeling his gaze at her back as she jogged down the stairs and exited the mansion. Outside, the summer afternoon was bright and warm and clear. She soaked in every bit of it as she set off at a comfortable pace, through the command center’s main gate and out to the private road that descended from the peak of the broad, highly secured hill to the main street below.
Ordinarily, her route might have taken her around the base of the hill on Summit Circle. But today, instead of taking the familiar path, Kaya turned away from it and jogged in another direction. About half a mile down was a large boulevard that would eventually take her into the heart of Montreal. She followed the divided stretch of pavement for several blocks, until she spotted a taxi heading her way.
She signaled to the driver, glancing anxiously around her as the car slowed in front of her. “I need to go to Dorval, please.”
At his nod, she climbed in. Twenty minutes later, the driver had delivered her to a depressed section of the city southwest of Montreal’s downtown. The area hadn’t been a stellar place to be at any point in history, but during the wars that followed First Dawn, this patch of urban sprawl had become a magnet for gangs and rebels of all stripes. Now the ruins of old warehouses and factories long vacated stood drab and dilapidated on either side of the street. Panhandlers and addicts camped at nearly every intersection, including the one where Kaya instructed the taxi driver to drop her off.
“You sure you wanna be down here, miss?” The middle-aged man ran his palm over his grizzled jaw. “If you want me to wait for ya, in this section of town, I gotta add twenty bucks surcharge for every five minutes I risk my vehicle standing at the curb.”
Kaya shook her head as she handed him the fare for the drive. “I can find my own way back. Keep the change.”
He took her money and wasted no time pulling away after she got out of the car. Not that she could blame him. There were few people who chose to spend time in this area of the city. And usually, if they were lucky enough to get out, they made a point never to come back.
Kaya should know. She’d been one of them.
She walked up the street toward a rat hole bar with a sagging roof and a facade of weathered brown wood scarred with old gunshots and tagged with layers of painted gang graffiti. There was no signage on the door or visible from the street.
Then again, no one who belonged anywhere near this place needed to be told who owned it.
Those who didn’t belong were never given a chance to make the mistake twice.
Kaya counted herself in the latter camp, especially now that she had pledged herself to the Order. Nevertheless, she reached for the black iron latch on the door and pulled it open.
The place was empty and dank. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke and spilled liquor. In the light shining in from behind Kaya as she entered, she saw a dark-haired woman hunched over behind the bar with a mop and bucket.
“We ain’t open yet.”
The young woman’s weary voice held a rasp that made her
sound as derelict and forsaken as her surroundings. Kaya disregarded the unwelcome greeting and walked inside anyway.
As the door thumped closed at her back, the woman behind the bar huffed out a curse and swung around with a scowl. “I said we ain’t--”
Her words cut short the instant her eyes met Kaya’s. Astonishment flashed in her gaze, followed by disbelief . . . then a cold, hard suspicion.
Kaya felt all of those things as she looked at her too.
She hadn’t seen this woman’s face in years, since she was sixteen.
But no, that wasn’t quite right.
She saw this face every time she looked in the mirror.
Her twin sister had aged considerably since then, her dark brown eyes narrowing on Kaya as if she were the enemy. And maybe she was.
“Hello, Leah.”
“What are you doing here?” No trace of warmth in that accusing question. Only mistrust. Animosity, even.
Kaya steeled herself to the twinge of hurt she felt at her sibling’s glower. “I need to talk to you.”
Leah glanced nervously over her shoulder, toward the swinging door that led to the back of the bar and the kitchen. She stayed right where she stood, with the bar between her and Kaya like an impenetrable wall. “We’ve had nothing to say to each other for the past four years. How the hell did you know where to find me?”
“I ran into someone who knows you--or did, anyway. His name was Jacob Portman. He was working security at the Rousseau-Mercier wedding.”
Leah’s glare morphed into a confused frown. “You spoke to Red?”
“We exchanged a few words,” Kaya replied, feeling no emotion for the human who had opened fire on Aric after attempting to attack her too.
She’d read his mind in those frantic moments and knew the hatred he had for Aric on sight, simply because he was Breed. She had registered his alliance to violent rebel gangs like the ones who frequented this bar, and the ones who’d carried out this morning’s slayings just a few miles here.
“Portman’s dead,” she told her sister. “I killed him.”
Leah gaped. “Are you insane? Red was one of Angus’s men from back in the day.”
