by Lara Adrian
He took one step inside her little kitchen and pulled her into a hard, long embrace. His strong arms circled her, held her close, as though he never wanted to let her go.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pressing his mouth into her hair. “I hated to leave you alone.”
“I’m all right,” she said, drawing back to look at him when he finally released her from his hold. “I was more worried about you.”
“Don’t,” he said. Scowling, he stroked her cheek, swallowed hard. “Ah, Jesus. Don’t worry for me.”
“Kade, what the hell is going on? I need you to be honest with me.”
“I know.” He took her by the hand and led her back to the table. She dropped into her chair as he took the one next to her. “I should have explained everything to you earlier, as soon as I realized …”
Her heart sank a bit as his words trailed off. “As soon as you realized, what?”
“That you were part of this, Alex. A part of the world that belongs to me and those of my kind. I should have told you everything before you saw me kill that Minion. And before we made love.”
She heard the regret in his voice for the intimacy they’d shared, and weathered more than a little sting because of it. But the other part—the peculiar way he’d referred to himself and his kind, and the fact that he was somehow including her in that equation—was what made her mind stutter to attention. And then there was the odd word he’d used to describe Skeeter Arnold.
“A ‘Minion’? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Kade. I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean.”
“I know you don’t.” He raked his palm over his jaw, then exhaled around a vivid curse. “Someone got to Skeeter Arnold before I did. Someone bled him, almost to the point of killing him, before bringing him back so that he could serve. He wasn’t human anymore, Alex. He was something less than that. Someone had made him into a Minion, a mind slave.”
“That’s crazy,” she murmured, and as badly as she wanted to reject what she was hearing, she couldn’t dismiss Kade’s grim, sober demeanor. “You also said that I am a part of this. A part of this, how? And what did you mean back at the clinic, when you said there was something more I didn’t know about the attack on my family? What could you possibly know about the monsters that took my mom and Richie?”
“What they did was monstrous,” Kade said, his tone unreadable, too level for comfort. “But there is another name for them, too.”
“Vampire.” Alex had never voiced the word out loud, not in relation to the murders of her mom and little brother. It stuck to her tongue like bitter paste, foul even after she had spit it out. “Are you actually trying to tell me—my God, do you really expect me to believe they were vampires, Kade?”
“Rogues,” he said. “Blood addicted and deadly. But they were also part of a race separate from humans called the Breed. A very old race, not the undead or the damned, but a living, breathing society. One which has existed alongside mankind for thousands of years.”
“Vampires,” she whispered, sick with the thought that any of this could be real.
But it was real. Some part of her had known this truth all along, from the instant her family was shattered by the attack all those years ago.
Kade’s eyes remained steady on her. “In the simplest terms, to say that they were vampires is fair enough.”
Nothing seemed simple to her anymore. Not after everything she had seen. Not after everything she was hearing now. And definitely not when it came to Kade.
She felt some measure of retreat in him as he looked at her, some amount of hurt in his bleak gaze, and it gnawed at her. “You told me once that nothing is simple. Nothing in your world is simply good or bad, black or white. Shades of gray, you said.”
He didn’t blink, just held her in an unflinching look. “Yes.”
“Is this what you meant?” She swallowed, her voice cracking just a bit. “Is this the world that you live in, Kade?”
“We both do,” he replied, his voice so gentle it terrified her. “You and I, Alex. We’re both a part of it. I am, because my father is Breed. And you are, because you bear the same birthmark as my mother and a small number of other, very rare women. You are a Breedmate, Alex. Your blood properties and unusual cellular makeup connect you to the Breed on the most primal level.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She shook her head, recalling how tenderly he had touched the odd little scarlet mark on her hip when they were together in the cabin earlier today. Without trying, she could still feel the heat of his fingertips on that very spot. “A birthmark doesn’t make me anything. It doesn’t prove anything—”
“No,” he said carefully. “But there are other things that do. Have you ever been sick in your life? Have you always felt a little bit lost, a little bit detached, different from all the other people around you? Some part of you has always been searching, reaching for something you could never quite grasp. You’ve never truly found your place of belonging in the world. I’m right, aren’t I, Alex?”
She couldn’t speak. God help her, she could hardly breathe.
Kade went on. “You’re also gifted in some way that you can’t really explain—some innate ability that separates you from the rest of the mortal world.”
She wanted to tell him he was wrong about all of that. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Everything he said summed up her experience and her innermost feelings. It was as though he had known her all her life … as though he understood her on a level that even she herself had not.
Until this very moment, impossible as it seemed.
“Since I was a child, I have always had an instinct for knowing when someone was telling me the truth or a lie.” Kade nodded as she spoke, unsurprised. “I can read others,” she said, “but not you.”
“It’s possible that your talent only works on humans.”
Humans. Not him, because he was something … other.
A coldness swept her as the realization sank in fully.
“Are you—” Her voice cracked, almost wouldn’t come. “Are you telling me that you’re like them—the ones that killed my mother and Richie? The ones that killed the Tomses and Lanny and Big Dave?”
“I’m not sure who’s to blame for the killings here recently, but I’m nothing like that. And only the sickest, most heinous members of my kind would do what was done to your family, Alex.” He reached out and took her hand in his, brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed them with aching tenderness. His quicksilver eyes held her gaze with an intensity that seared her, deep inside. “I am Breed, Alex. But I will never harm you, or anyone you love. Never. My God, I sure didn’t see you coming—didn’t see any of this coming. I never expected I’d end up caring like this.”
“Kade,” she whispered, not knowing what she wanted to say to him after all the things he’d just told her. She was filled with questions and uncertainty, overwhelmed with a confusion of emotions, all of it centered on the man—the Breed male—who held her hand right now, and her heart.
As though he understood the torment she was feeling, he leaned around the small table and gathered her into his arms. Alex went to him, letting him pull her onto his lap.
“I don’t know what to think of all this,” she murmured. “I have so many questions.”
“I know.” He drew her away from him and smoothed the backs of his fingers along the side of her face, the curve of her neck. “I’ll answer anything you ask me. When I come back, you can ask me everything you need to know.”
“When you come back?” The thought of him leaving, now, when her head—hell, her whole life—was turned upside-down, was unthinkable. He stood up, easing her up with him. “Where are you going?”
“Something has been bothering me about Skeeter Arnold. I saw him with someone the other night, outside Pete’s tavern. They took him to a mining company several miles from here.”
“What was the name of it?”
“Coldstream.”
Alex frowned. “That pla
ce shut down about twenty years ago, but I heard new management moved in recently. They’re keeping things pretty private out there. Put up a bunch of surveillance equipment and security fences around the perimeter.”
“New management, eh?” Kade’s dark expression spoke volumes.
“You don’t think …”
“Yeah, I do. But I need to be sure.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
His dark brows crashed together. “Absolutely not. It could be dangerous—”
“Exactly why I’m not about to wait around and worry. I am going with you.” She walked over and grabbed her parka, pretending she didn’t hear his muttered curse behind her. “Well, are you coming, or what?”
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Since his snowmachine was still parked at Alex’s house from earlier that morning, they had each taken a sled and rode out together, heading for the Coldstream Mining Company several miles out of town. Rather than draw undue attention, they’d ditched the noisy machines about a half mile from the secured site and walked the rest of the way on snowshoes.
The reconnaissance would have gone a lot faster if he’d been able to do it alone, but Kade was inwardly relieved to have Alex with him. At least this way she was in sight and within arm’s reach. Back in town by herself left her vulnerable, a concept that made his heart squeeze a bit tighter in his chest as he navigated the dark, frozen tundra at her side.
Up ahead of them several hundred yards, floodlights washing over the snow, the mining company’s compound was alive with activity. As had been the case when Kade first surveilled the location, tonight a handful of uniformed workers continued to empty one of the two parked cargo containers outside the mouth of the mine itself. Guards with automatic rifles patrolled the barricade out front; mounted security cameras were trained on the land surrounding the tall chain-link perimeter fence.
Kade paused, putting his gloved hand on Alex’s arm. “This is as far as we go.”
“But we need to get much closer to see what’s going on in there,” she whispered, her breath clouding as it penetrated the fleece mask that protected her face.
“Too dangerous for you to get any closer, and I’m not about to leave you here without me.”
“Then let’s go back to Harmony and get my plane. We can fly over for a better look.”
“And risk letting them identify you from the ground?” Kade gave a curt shake of his head. “Not even if Harmony had a hundred pilots who owned little red single-engines. No, there is another way.”
He inhaled deeply, letting a low howl build slowly in his throat. Then he sent it skyward in a long, searching summons. It took only a moment for a wilder reply to answer from somewhere not far off toward the west. Kade sought the lupine voice with his mind, then, with a wordless command, he called the wolf out from the night.
Alex startled when the silver-furred animal stepped into view from the woods and walked directly into their path.
“It’s okay,” Kade told her. He glanced at her, his mouth curving at her open astonishment. “You have your talent; I have mine.”
“Yours is way better,” she murmured on a breathless whisper.
He smiled, then fixed his gaze on the wolf’s bright, intelligent eyes. It listened to the silent instructions he gave, then it dashed off in stealth motion to carry them out.
Alex gaped at him. “What did you just do? And, um … how?”
“I asked the wolf to help us. She’ll get closer to the site than we can, and through the link she and I now share, she will show me everything she sees.”
Alex got quiet as Kade focused on the temporary connection that put him inside the wolf’s senses. Kade closed his eyes, feeling the rhythmic fall of its paws in the snow, hearing the soft huffs of its lungs, the steady, rapid beat of its heart. And through the keen night-sharp vision, he saw the webbed fence and heavy-security outbuildings, the workers—Minions, all of them, he realized now—shuffling in and out of the mine’s cavernous entrance, wheeling crated equipment and large, unmarked cartons of God knew what kinds of supplies.
The new management had moved in, all right, and from the looks of it, they wanted to make damned sure that no one got too close to see what they were about.
And speaking of the mining company’s new management …
The wolf’s ears pricked to attention, self-preservation instincts pushing her down into a low crouch as a large male with fair hair and expensive taste in suits strode from within the mine. Although Kade had never seen him before, he didn’t miss for an instant that the male was Breed. If his size and demeanor hadn’t given him away, the extensive network of dermaglyphs would have. The markings tracked out from the rolled-up cuffs and open throat of his white dress shirt, in patterns that clearly declared him an elder of the Breed.
Easily powerful enough to turn a human like Skeeter Arnold into his Minion.
And flanking him like an obedient hound was another Breed male. If the one dressed like a Wall Street banker was formidable simply for the purity of his bloodline, then the individual standing with him trumped him by roughly a mile. Armed to the fangs and dressed from head to toe in black combat gear, his head shaved bald, covered with dense glyphs, this was a new enemy that Kade and the rest of the Order had only recently become familiar with.
Through the wolf’s eyes, he saw the gleaming black collar that ringed the assassin’s neck—an electronic collar rigged with an explosive device that ensured the vampire’s loyalty to his creator’s deviant initiatives.
“Ah, fuck,” Kade muttered aloud as he remotely observed the scene from his lupine helper’s eyes. “Dragos has sent one of his assassins here.”
“Who?” Alex whispered from beside him. “Assassins? Oh, my God. Kade, tell me what you see.”
He shook his head, unable to explain things adequately while his gut was churning with sudden dread and suspicion.
Why would Dragos send a lieutenant of his operations and one of his personal stock of born-and-bred Gen One killers to the middle of the frigid Alaskan interior?
What the hell were they doing here?
Once the vampires were gone inside another building, Kade directed the wolf to change position, to find a safe, concealed spot to dig beneath the perimeter fence and creep inside. He needed a better look at the cargo containers, particularly the one that the Minion workers seemed to take little interest in—the one, he noticed now, that bore huge dents in its sides and smashed, twisted hinges on the double doors at its rear.
He waited, heart pounding in time with the wolf’s as she dug her claws into the snow and burrowed deep, then wedged her body beneath the fence. She pulled herself through and began a stealthy crawl, knowing instinctively to keep to the shadows. As she neared the freight containers, Kade’s muscles tensed.
He had guessed he would find bad news inside the wrecked cargo hold. He’d been more than right about that. As the courageous wolf poked her head into the gaping ruin of the doors, peering into what had been a refrigerated space, Kade made instant, grim sense of the objects that held little meaning to her.
He saw the smashed, large steel-and-concrete box that sat inside, its lid torn off and reduced to broken rubble. He saw the bloodstains that had dried nearly black on the floor and walls of the hold—bloodstains that reeked of his own kind as the wolf drew the trace scent into her sensitive nostrils. He saw the titanium restraints that had once encircled the thick wrists and ankles of a creature that most of the Breed population believed had been driven to extinction centuries ago … a creature that the Order knew firsthand did, in fact, still live.
The Ancient.
One of the alien forefathers who’d sired the entire Breed race on Earth.
The powerful, savage otherworlder that Dragos had been using to further his insane goals.
Had Dragos and his associates moved it north after the Order’s recent strike on Dragos’s hidden lair? Had they thought to relocate the Ancient as far from the Order’s rea
ch as possible, transferring it to the old mine?
Or had that been the plan, until the Ancient somehow found a way to escape his captivity?
Kade thought back on the recent killings in the bush and on today’s brutal attack on the two men from Harmony.
Neither Seth nor Rogues had been to blame.
Now he knew that with the gravest certainty. It had been something much worse.
“Jesus Christ,” Kade hissed. “It’s out here somewhere. On the loose.”
He commanded the wolf to abandon her prowl at once, and stayed with her as she made a quick escape from the mining company grounds. As her dark silver shadow vanished into the nearby forest, Kade broke their mental connection and reached for Alex’s hand.
“We have to get out of here. Now.”
She nodded at his urgent tone and ran with him, wasting no precious time on questions. He would explain everything to her, but first, he needed to contact the Order in Boston. Lucan and the others needed to know what he’d discovered here, and just how far his mission had veered off course.
Zach Tucker knocked the carbide handle of his state-issued Maglite against the rickety doorjamb a few more times and waited, not with any kind of patience, on the back steps of Skeeter Arnold’s run-down apartment.
Since the asshole had been ignoring his cell calls and text messages for the past twenty-four hours, Zach saw little choice but to make an in-person inquiry at the house Skeeter shared with his mother. Five minutes standing in the cold, freezing his balls off while he banged on the door with no reply, but he wasn’t going anywhere until he got some answers out of the cocky piece of shit.
Answers, and the five hundred dollars cash that Skeeter owed him from their most recent deal.
