by Lara Adrian
Jenna brought Dylan inside and guided her to the empty desk chair. “Tell me what this is about.”
“I just went through everything in that box. At the bottom, I found a sealed envelope. This was inside it.” She placed the piece of paper on the desk. Something was written in the upper right corner in loopy, buoyant handwriting: Zael. Mykonos, ’75. Dylan stared up at Jenna meaningfully. “I was born the following year.”
No question what she was getting at. “But your mom and dad were already married, I thought. You have two older brothers.”
Dylan nodded. “And in 1975, my mom left for a few months. She went to Greece all by herself, just picked up and left. She told me a few years ago that she’d wanted to divorce my dad, but he begged her to take him back. But she never told me about this. She never told me about him.”
Dylan flipped the piece of paper over. It was a close-up photograph of an impossibly beautiful man, bare-chested and tanned golden brown, sitting on a white sand beach. His sensual mouth curved in a knee-melting smile for the person who took the snapshot, presumably Dylan’s mother.
“You think she had an affair with this guy?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’d say the odds are pretty damn good.”
Jenna picked the photo up so she could look closer. Purely for clarification purposes, of course. She stared transfixed at the flawless, muscular body and the mane of copper-shot blond hair. His face was unlined, ageless. His dark-lashed eyes were piercing blue, the color of tropical, turquoise waters. Wise and unearthly.
And slung around his strong wrist was a tooled leather band with a hammered silver emblem affixed to it … a teardrop suspended over the cradle of a crescent moon.
TAVIA’S STOMACH LURCHED as the black helicopter swooped down over the sunlit water toward an isolated, tree-choked island several miles off the coast of Maine. Twenty minutes after the Minion at the police station had contacted Dragos, the dark-suited pilot, also Minion, arrived to take her to a private helipad at the top of a Boston high-rise.
She absorbed every detail of the journey, cataloging landmarks and locations in case she needed to pass the intel along to the Order. Although none of it would matter if her plan to kill Dragos failed and she ended up dead in the next few hours.
The pilot put the helicopter down on a slab of cleared concrete behind a fortresslike residence. It was the only building on the forbidding crag of granite and tall pines. No way off the island on her own, unless she wanted to swim a freezing Atlantic current or sprout wings.
“This way.” The Minion climbed out of the cockpit and waited for her to follow. They crossed the yard against a howling, brittle wind, and up toward the back of the sprawling house.
The door opened from within, and another Minion, this one bristling with a semiautomatic rifle in his hands, motioned for her to enter.
She thought she’d been prepared to face Dragos, but the sight of him waiting for her inside the house put ice in her marrow. “Miss Fairchild. This certainly is an unexpected pleasure.”
He was flanked by four Gen One assassins, dressed in head-to-toe black. They had weapons too, guns and knives at the ready, strapped across their hard chests and fastened to their muscled thighs. But it wasn’t the arms that gave them their lethal air, nor their severe, shaved heads and black UV collars clamped around their powerful necks. It was the lack of mercy in their eyes. The lack of any emotion whatsoever.
They were killing machines, and any hope she had of ending Dragos’s life swiftly on her arrival was stalled by the understanding that these four Hunters would see her dead in less than an instant after she made the first move.
As threatening as the group of them was, it was Dragos’s presence in front of her that put a shudder in her bones. Something about him had chilled her instinctively when she first met him at the senator’s office. Now, understanding the depth of his depravity and evil, she was physically repulsed. She used the faint convulsion to effect fear and relief. “I had nowhere else to go. Thank you for allowing me to see you.”
Dragos eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve been with the Order all this time.”
Not a question, an accusation. “I didn’t think I’d ever escape them.”
“And here I’d guessed you’d gone willingly,” he replied, guarded, scrutinizing. “I thought perhaps Sterling Chase had found a way to charm you.”
“Charm me?” She forced an affronted scoff. “He abducted me. Interrogated me. He … beat me.”
He studied her bruises and the lacerations that were already healing. Nostrils flaring, he sniffed slightly, testing the scent of her against what she was telling him. “Did he seduce you?”
She couldn’t hope to deceive him completely. He could smell the truth on her skin, she knew that much without a doubt. She hung her head as if in shame. “He used my body against me. He made me drink his blood.”
“Hmm.” He sounded satisfied with her answer but displeased with the facts. “That is unfortunate, Tavia. The bond is unbreakable.”
“Only by death,” she replied, the words catching in her throat, though not out of regret as she hoped he would be tempted to believe. He lifted her chin and she forced a cold hatred into her eyes—not so hard when the hatred was reserved for the vampire standing before her. “Why didn’t you tell me who I was? Why did you keep the truth of my origins a secret from me?”
He backed away, out of her reach. His icy eyes narrowed in calculation, that spark of suspicion visiting them again. His Gen One guards inched forward, ready to protect their creator.
Tavia’s heart rate sped as she fought to keep Dragos engaged, to keep him intrigued enough to trust her. This was her only chance; she couldn’t give him any room for doubt.
“Why did you keep me weak when I could have served you so much better if I was strong?” The vehemence of her determination to win him over made her eyes flash with hot amber. “I could have been something more to you if you’d only allowed me the truth.”
His dark brows rose slightly. A slow smile put a faint twist to his mouth. “You served me very well, Tavia. You were more than useful. And I would have told you everything—I would’ve freed this glorious part of you—when the time was right.”
“Instead you left me defenseless. You didn’t give me any chance.” She played to his ego, and to the obvious attraction she felt radiating from him as her disgust for him made her Breed nature spike to life inside her. “You had to know the Order held me. You had to know they would question me about you, abuse me. They refused to believe me when I told them I didn’t know who you were or where they could find you.”
“And if they’d known the truth about you, they would have killed you for it,” he replied evenly. “I would have, if I’d been them.”
Cold words from a cold, black heart. She believed him, and it took all her strength of will to force the next words from her lips. “You were the first person I thought of after I escaped. I sought you out because you’re my creator. The only one I can turn to. You are the only one strong enough to defeat the Order.”
“And so I have,” he answered, smiling with self-satisfaction. He considered her long and hard now, his obvious interest making her skin crawl. “I’ve been fascinated with you from the time you were a child, Tavia. You’re so lovely. My homegrown, personally designed Eve.” He shrugged. “Oh, the others have their charms as well, but I find I am particularly attracted to you.”
The others, he said. Not past tense, but present. She thought back to Dr. Lewis’s files—the ones detailing deceased patients and the ones she hadn’t had the chance to read before the clinic was destroyed. So, there were other lab-created Breed females who’d survived the prolonged medical trials and treatments? She had to be sure. If she had sisters, she had to find a way to help them.
Dragos was still studying her, his chilling eyes like dead fingers on her skin. “When I am king and all the humans and Breed alike bow to me—very soon now,” he added, grinning with arrogant certainty, “I
will require a suitable queen.”
Tavia swallowed the bile that crept into her throat at the very idea.
“I think I would enjoy having you at my side, in my bed.” He grunted, amused by something. “My gift to you will be the Order in chains. You can kill Sterling Chase personally if you like.”
The words—the very thought of Chase or the others in the Order falling into Dragos’s hands—hit her like a slap. He reached out, lightly stroked her cheek. She struggled not to gag, aware of the Gen One assassins watching her like hawks.
She could chew Dragos’s hand off in an instant, but she needed to kill him. And for that, she needed to get close. God help her, intimate, if necessary.
“Come,” he told her. “It’s past sundown overseas. I was just about to sit down and watch the news coverage. You will join me, Tavia, and witness the kingdom that is soon to be ours.”
CHAPTER FORTY
THE ROGUE HAD a woman cornered in the stairwell of her posh apartment building when Chase smashed into the vestibule and ashed the suckhead. The titanium blade raked across the feral vampire’s throat sent him sputtering to the floor, dropping in an oozing, sizzling heap of melting flesh and bone.
Chase stood over the dead Rogue, his fingers sticky on the blade’s handle, his black fatigues and combat boots awful with blood and gore from the other kills he’d already made in the couple of hours since the sun set that night. He stared down at the fright-stricken woman who huddled in the far corner of the stairwell. The amber glow of his eyes cast her face in fiery color. Her brown hair was in disarray, fallen out of its conservative twist at her nape. Her dark, skirted business suit and frothy white blouse were disheveled, torn in places and smudged with the filthy handprints of the suckhead who’d attacked her.
“You’re okay,” he assured her as he cleaned the edge of his blade on his pants. “The Rogue can’t hurt you now.”
She gaped up at him in horror. Shook her head frantically as she shrank farther back, eyes wide and mistrusting. “You—oh, God, you’re one of them too!”
“No,” he said, then blew out a curse when he considered how close he truly was to being the same ravenous beast as the ones cutting a bloody swath through the night. “I mean you no harm. Get up.”
She pulled in a hitching breath. “I don’t understand.”
“No time to explain,” he growled. “Now get the fuck inside your apartment and bolt the door. Don’t come out until daybreak, you understand? Go. Now!”
She scrambled away from him in a clumsy rush, one high-heeled pump lost during her attack. As she hurried toward her apartment, she found the wherewithal to fumble her cell phone out of her purse and snap a quick picture of him in all his vampy glory. Wonderful. Not like he didn’t already have enough photos on file with human law enforcement.
He stalked outside and took a cleansing breath. Or rather, it should have been cleansing. But the wintry air was ripe with the undercurrent of spilled red cells, some of it fresh, some of it coagulating in ice-crusted puddles on the streets and sidewalks.
The presence of so much blood, for so many hours at a time, was making him crazy.
But he pushed through it anyway, his mind centered on his responsibility to the Order. His heart was grounded in his love for Tavia.
It troubled him that he couldn’t feel her near anymore.
He wanted to see her, touch her. Have irrefutable proof that she was safe. And he wanted her to know that he loved her. More than anything, he wanted her to know that.
Damn Dragos. And damn this war that had finally exploded in the Order’s face. They were doing their best to get the situation cleaned up, but the battle had only just begun. With Boston’s streets having come under some degree of control earlier that night the Order had since moved on to New York City, where there’d been reports of vicious attacks in Manhattan and every surrounding borough. Between the Order and Rowan’s guys, they’d smoked upward of thirty Rogues the past two nights. A lot more to go. And a lot more cities still under heavy siege, in the States and abroad.
“Harvard.” Dante’s deep voice cut through the darkness. He jogged up, curved daggers in his hands, his face smeared with the grit of recent combat. “You get the suckhead that came this way?”
“He’s dead,” Chase replied. His vision was still flooded with amber, fangs thick in response to the stench of blood that permeated the night. “Ashed the bastard just as he was moving in for the kill. Victim walked away with her carotid intact—and a picture of me standing over the smoked body.”
It wasn’t the first time the humans the Order were trying to spare had stopped to take snapshots or cell phone videos of the warriors attempting to sweep up this mess. Nor would it be the last.
Dante raked a hand over his begrimed face. “Fucking modern technology. Inconvenient as hell sometimes, eh? Well, it’s not like the Breed has to be concerned with keeping a low profile anymore. We’re about as out as we can be.”
Chase nodded and absently rubbed at the center of his chest.
“You okay?” Dante asked, studying him.
“Yeah. It’s just …”
“Tavia,” the warrior said when Chase’s voice trailed off.
“I hate that I’m not with her right now.” Their blood bond thrummed through him, but her physical distance from him left a hollowness in his chest. “I hate that I can’t feel her close.”
Dante nodded, sympathetic. “If she’s in trouble, you’ll know. And if that time comes, I’ll have your back. All of the Order will have your back.”
The promise—the renewed bond of friendship, and kinship with the Order—made Chase’s throat go dry. It humbled him, knowing that Dante and the others were ready to accept him again. Willing to bleed for him, the same as he would do for any of them.
He’d found his family in these good, brave men.
He wouldn’t risk losing that for anything.
And he couldn’t know his true home until he had Tavia standing at his side.
Just then, Dante’s cell phone began to vibrate with an incoming call. He picked up, greeted Niko, then swore low under his breath. “You gotta be shitting me. Yeah, we can bounce. Harvard and I are five minutes away from you. Be right there.” He ended the call and shot Chase a grave look. “Rock and roll time. Order’s moving out, ASAP.”
“Problem?” Chase asked, rhetorically, when they were surrounded by little else.
“Fresh wave of Rogues just swept into D.C. They’re torching the place, smashing up the foreign embassies and dragging people out of their homes. Human fallout is off the charts.”
Chase snarled a raw curse, then fell in alongside Dante to meet their brethren for the next round of battle.
SHE WAS NEVER GOING to get near enough to kill him.
Dragos kept his Hunters close at all times. Yet as cautious as he was, he didn’t seem to view her as much of a threat. How could she be, when getting to him would first require that she simultaneously disable four highly trained soldiers?
Right now, he was behind closed doors in his private study, conferring with his lieutenants. No doubt they were gloating over the most recent terror they’d unleashed—setting loose even more Rogues into thickly populated areas, including a massive attack on Washington, D.C. Dragos had been giddy with the prospect of more death and destruction to come.
And Tavia had been forced to bite back her horror as the body counts began to soar for the second night in a row.
In the hours since she’d arrived at his lair, she’d resolved in her mind that there was likely only one place that she would have the opportunity to be alone with Dragos. It turned her stomach to think of letting him touch her, of putting herself anywhere near him, let alone in his bed, but she would do it if that proved the only way.
She sat on a sofa in his beautifully appointed living room, listening to his sadistic laughter and animated conversation on the other side of the closed door. The Minion posted in the room kept an eagle eye on her, the dull glint of his s
oulless gaze sending a ripple of contempt crawling up her spine. The inaction and sense of powerlessness over everything Dragos had accomplished was driving her crazy. She had to do something to thwart him, if her plan to kill him would have to wait any longer.
She stood up abruptly, sending the Minion across the room into stiff alertness. “I’ve been sitting here for more than an hour. I need to use the bathroom.”
The Minion hesitated, then gestured toward a powder room just outside in the hallway. Tavia walked over at a nonchalant pace, sagging against the door as she closed it behind her. She felt inside her bra for the item she’d been carrying with her since she’d left Chase’s Darkhaven earlier that morning.
The silver vial of Crimson was warm from her skin, the wax-sealed cork stopper still snugly in place on top of the deadly dose. All she needed was the chance to put the powder down Dragos’s throat. The fact that the drug would deliver a writhing, agony-filled death probably shouldn’t have given her so much satisfaction. But she wanted him to suffer. For all the evil he’d enacted during his too-long lifetime, she wanted Dragos to die slowly and horrifically.
She tucked the vial back into her bra and carefully opened the door, peering around it to the living room. The Minion hadn’t moved. Genetically speaking, he was only human, so he didn’t so much as blink with notice when she flashed out of the bathroom and down the hall with swift Breed agility.
Tavia followed the electronic vibration of computer equipment emanating from the stairwell at the far end of the hallway. Dragos’s operation command center, she guessed.
Someone typed on a keyboard, machinery humming nearly imperceptibly from below. Tavia took the steps silently, faster than the Minion technician could track her. Her strength was gaining every day now, along with her inhuman speed and dexterity. She grabbed both sides of his head and gave his neck a hard, lethal twist. She eased his dead bulk down without a sound, then stowed his body in a nearby supply closet.
