by Lara Adrian
“He’s dead.”
“Yes,” Marek agreed civilly. “Overdosed on Crimson, as you no doubt suspected when you went to see Herr Kuhn over here.”
Tegan’s gaze followed Marek’s casual gesture to the source of the death stench in the room. Director Kuhn’s headless torso lay on the floor next to a broad-bladed, blood-soaked sword.
Marek shrugged. “He outserved his purpose. All of the quivering, hapless sheep inhabiting the Darkhavens have outserved their purpose, wouldn’t you agree? They’ve forgotten their roots, if they really ever understood them. How many generations have been spawned since the illustrious first that you and I are both a part of? Too many, and each generation has grown weaker, their blood diluted with feeble homo sapiens genes. It’s time to start fresh, Tegan. The Breed needs to sever its atrophied branches and begin a new reign of Gen One power. I want to see the Breed thrive. I want us to be kings—the way it should be.”
“You’re insane,” Tegan growled. “And you only want power for yourself. You always did.”
Marek scoffed. “I deserved to rule. I was eldest, not Lucan. I had the clearer vision for how our race should evolve. The humans should be hiding from us, living to please us, not the other way around. Lucan didn’t see it that way. He still doesn’t. His humanity is his greatest weakness.”
“And yours has always been your arrogance.”
Marek grunted. “What was yours, Tegan?” His tone was a bit too light, too taunting in its casualness. “I remember her, you know … Sorcha.”
Tegan hated like hell to hear that innocent girl’s name on his enemy’s lips, but he swallowed the rage that was building inside him. Sorcha was gone. He’d finally let her go, and Marek would not be able to goad him with her memory.
“Yes, she was your weakness. I knew that when I went to her that night. You remember, don’t you? The night she was abducted from your home while you were out on patrol with my brother on one of his endless missions?”
Tegan lifted his gaze to Marek. “You…”
The vampire’s smile was cruel, full of amusement. “Yes, me. She and Dragos’s Breedmate bitch were thick as thieves, so I’d really hoped Sorcha might be able to tell me the secret Dragos took to his grave and what Kassia sought to cheat me out of when she took her own life before I could wrench the truth out of her. But Sorcha didn’t know anything. Well, not quite. She knew about a son Kassia had delivered in secret and sent away—an heir that Dragos himself had known nothing about.”
Ah, Christ. Tegan closed his eyes, understanding only just now what Sorcha must have endured—and at Marek’s hand.
“She broke easily, but then I knew she would. She was never strong. Just a sweet girl who trusted you to keep her safe.” Marek paused, as though reflecting. “It almost seemed a waste to turn her Minion since she’d given up all her secrets at the first bit of pain.”
“You son of a bitch,” Tegan snarled. “You sick, goddamn son of a bitch! Why, then? Why did you do it to her?”
“Because I could,” Marek replied.
Tegan’s roar echoed up into the rafters of the place, rattling the black-washed windows that were set high into the roof. He fought his bonds but the momentary burst of spent adrenaline only left him coughing and exhausted. The shackles cut into his wrists as his weight sagged once more, his thighs too weak to hold him.
“And because I can, Tegan,” Marek added, “I’m going to kill you and everyone you care about if you don’t tell me what that goddamn riddle means. Tell me where to find the Ancient!”
Tegan panted, suspended helplessly from his chains. The sedatives were pulling him under again, making his head spin. Marek watched with detached calm, yet standing well out of reach. Very casually, he walked to the door and motioned two of his Minion guards inside. He pointed to Kuhn’s desecrated body.
“Take that rotting corpse out of here and let it burn.”
With his servants rushing to carry out his orders, Marek turned his attention back to Tegan. “You look like you need some time to think about what I’ve asked you. So, you think, Tegan. You think hard. And we’ll chat some more when I get back.”
Elise took one look at Gideon’s face when he came to find her in Tegan’s quarters, and she knew something was terribly wrong.
“It’s Lucan,” he said. “He needs to talk to you.”
She took the cell phone and swallowed hard before answering. “What’s happened to him?” she said into the receiver, not bothering with a greeting when every cell in her body went suddenly still. “Lucan, tell me he’s okay.”
“I’m, ah … not sure about that, Elise. Something’s gone down over here.”
She listened woodenly as Lucan explained Tegan’s disappearance. They hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard from him, for several hours. Lucan was going to send the rest of the Order out to Prague with Reichen at dusk, but he was staying behind to begin searching for Tegan. He wasn’t sure where to begin, or even how long it might take to scour the city for any sign of where he might be. Suspecting that she and Tegan shared a blood bond, their best means of tracking him would be Elise.
“We can’t be certain,” Lucan said, “but it’s a fair guess that Marek might have him. If that’s the case, there won’t be a lot of time before—”
“I’m on the way.” She glanced at Gideon, who was waiting just outside. “Can you get me a flight out right away?”
“The Order’s jet is still in Berlin, but I can see about chartering another one.”
“There’s no time,” she said. “What about commercial air?”
He frowned, concerned. “You really want to sit on a plane for half a day with a couple hundred humans? You think you’re up for that?”
She wasn’t sure, actually, but she damn well wasn’t going to let that stop her. If she had to hitch a ride with a plane full of convicted killers, she’d do it, if that’s what it would take to make sure Tegan was all right.
“Just do it, Gideon. Please. The first flight you can get me on.”
He nodded and took off at a jog up the corridor to handle the details.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Lucan.”
She heard his low exhalation, and the caution in his voice. Lucan wasn’t convinced that they would be able to do anything for Tegan, even if they managed to find him.
“Okay,” he said. “A car will be there to pick you up and bring you to Reichen’s estate. We’ll start searching as soon as you get here.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-three
The flight to Berlin was long and taxing. Elise took each hard minute, every hour, as it came, determined that she would be stronger than the ability that had owned her for so long. She had Tegan to thank for helping her overcome the worst of it—not only his showing her how to manage the psychic talent, but also the love she had for him, which drove her forward even as the familiar, vicious migraine began to pound in her temples barely an hour into the flight.
Elise got through it because she had to. Because Tegan’s life might very well depend on her now.
God, she could not fail in this.
She could handle anything except losing him.
As soon as the jet’s wheels touched ground that evening, Elise’s determination to find Tegan—and bring him home safely—redoubled. She ran out of the terminal and met Lucan outside at the curb, where he waited with one of Reichen’s vehicles.
“You realize that if we do find him, Tegan’s going to kill me for bringing you in on this,” Lucan said as she approached the car. He said it kind of jokingly, but she didn’t miss the fact that there was no humor at all in his gray eyes.
“When we find him, Lucan. There can’t be any ifs.” She tossed her carry-on bag into the back and climbed into the passenger seat. “Let’s get started. I don’t want to rest tonight until we cover every street in this city.”
Dante, Reichen, and the rest of the Order pulled the two SUVs to a stop just off a moonlit, wooded stretch of road an hour outside Prague.
The forest was thick here, only the smallest light from a few remote homes glowing in the darkness. They got out, all seven of them garbed in black fatigues and armed to the teeth with guns, thousands of titanium rounds, and a healthy cache of C-4 explosives.
Each Breed male also carried a sheathed broadsword strapped on his back—unconventional weaponry for modern warfare, but totally necessary hardware when you were dealing with something as nasty and powerful as the creature they were intending to rouse out of its slumber.
“That’s got be the place,” Dante said, pointing to the jagged silhouette of the mountains ahead of them. “The outline is a perfect match for the design in Kassia’s tapestry.”
“Probably take us a couple of hours to make the hike up there,” Niko put in. His cheeks dimpled with his eager grin, the white glint of his teeth bright against the cover of night. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go bag the motherfucker.”
Dante held him back with a firm hand, scowling at the young warrior’s zeal. “Hold up, all of you. This is not a fucking game. It’s not like any other mission we’ve done. That thing that was sealed away in this mountain is not your garden-variety vampire. You take Lucan and Tegan and put them together—shit, throw Marek in there too—and you still aren’t coming close to what this creature can do. He’s Gen One times a hundred.”
“But his head can be separated from his body, same as any one of us,” Rio pointed out in a low, deadly voice. “The fastest way to kill a vampire.”
Dante nodded. “And we’re gonna have one shot at him, no more. Once we find the crypt and get inside, first priority is putting three feet of razor-sharp steel through the bastard’s neck.”
“And we’ll need to do it before it has a chance to get up,” Chase added. “If we let this thing rouse before we’re in place and ready to kill it, there’s very good odds we won’t all make it out of there.”
“Someone remind me why I didn’t want to be an accountant when I grew up,” Brock drawled.
Niko chuckled. “Because accountants don’t get to make things go boom.”
“They don’t get to smoke many suckheads either,” Kade added, sharing in the joke.
Brock’s answering grin was big and bright white. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember.”
Dante let everyone settle in to the plan, the younger males blowing off nervous energy with humor and smacktalk. But as the team of them started up the wooded side of the rocky incline, they fell silent and serious. None of them were certain what lay at the end of this journey, but they were all prepared to meet it together.
Elise wasn’t sure how long they’d been driving. Easily hours. They navigated through each section of the city, the affluent and the derelict, stopping at regular intervals to let her listen to the darkened streets and alleyways. Waiting for her veins to prickle with the awareness—the fervent hope—that Tegan was near.
She didn’t want to give up.
Not even as the night began to wane toward dawn.
“We can make another circuit through town,” Lucan said, the Gen One warrior no more inclined to abandon Tegan than she was. Even though the coming daylight was as much a threat as any deadly enemy.
Elise reached over and touched the large hand that turned the steering wheel onto yet another street. “Thank you, Lucan.”
He nodded. “You love him a great deal, do you?”
“Yes, I do. He is … everything to me.”
“Then we’d better not lose him, eh?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, we’d better not … oh, my God … Lucan. Slow down. Stop the car!”
He braked at once, and pulled over near a tree-lined, elegant residential street. As the vehicle came to a halt, Elise put down her window. A cold February breeze rushed inside.
“Down here,” she said, her veins tingling.
She focused on the sensation, pulling it into her, trying to divine its source. It was Tegan; she had no doubt. And the heat that traveled her bloodstream was not a pleasant warmth, but an acid burn.
The searing heat of pain.
“Oh, God. Lucan, he’s being held somewhere on this street—I’m sure of it. And he’s hurting. He’s hurting … very badly.” She closed her eyes, feeling it even more now that the car was turning onto the pleasant drive. “Hurry, Lucan. He’s being tortured.”
She felt queasy, both with the idea of Tegan being abused, and with the twisting anguish coursing through every cell in her body. But she held on, searching for any sign that they were getting close. The white-hot spike of pain that hit her as they drew up on an old stone-and-timber manor house told her they had found him.
The house was set back from the street, quiet, but well tended. Obviously lived in. A white Audi sedan was parked at the carriage house garage. There was birdseed in the feeder hanging from a pine bough in the center of the yard. A kid’s sled lay on the snowy front walk.
“Right here,” she told Lucan. “He’s in that house.”
Lucan frowned as he took in the same details she had, but he cut the headlights and killed the engine. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. Tegan is being held inside.”
She watched as Lucan armed himself. He was already wearing an arsenal of weapons—two large handguns and a pair of sheathed daggers—but he grabbed a leather satchel from behind the passenger seat and unzipped the bag to reveal even more.
He glanced up at her and muttered a ripe curse. “I’m not sure it would be safe for you to wait—”
“That’s good,” she said, “because I don’t plan to. I can help you find him once we get in.”
“No way, Elise. It’s too fucking dangerous. I can’t take you in there. I won’t.” He slapped a clip into one of his guns and holstered it. Then he pulled another knife and a coil of wire from the duffel and stuffed both into a pocket of his combat jacket. “As soon as I head for the house, I want you to slide over and take the wheel. Drive out to the—”
“Lucan.” Elise met his stern gray gaze and held it firmly. “Four months ago I thought my life had ended. My heart was ripped out by Marek and the Rogues who serve him. Now, by some miracle of fate, I’m happy again. I never dreamed I could be. I’ve never known this kind of love—the love I have for Tegan. So, if you think I’m going to sit out here and wait, or run out of harm’s way when I know he’s in trouble—when I know he’s in pain—well, I’m sorry, but you can forget it.”
“If my brother is the one holding him—and let’s be goddamn clear about this, we both know it’s got to be Marek—then there’s no telling what we’re going to find in there. Or what might come out of there when the dust finally settles. Tegan could already be lost.”
“I need to know, Lucan. I’d rather die trying to help him than stand by or walk away.”
A slow grin spread over the face of the Order’s fearsome leader. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re one stubborn female?”
“Tegan might have said so once or twice,” she admitted wryly.
“Then I guess he’ll have to understand what I was up against when he sees you with me.” He handed her a sheathed dagger attached to a leather belt.
Elise strapped the weapon around her waist and cinched the buckle. “I’m ready when you are, Lucan.”
“Okay,” he said, shaking his head in defeat. “Let’s go get our boy.”
They exited the car and swiftly, cautiously approached the human residence. As they neared the place, Elise was assaulted with both the pain of Tegan’s suffering and the growing awareness of Minions on the property. Her mind filled with a concert of corrupt thoughts, ugly voices pounding into her consciousness.
“Lucan,” she whispered, mouthing a warning to him. “Minions inside—more than one.”
He nodded, and motioned for her to come up near him. He gripped a wooden trellis that climbed up the side of the house, testing its strength. “Can you climb it?”
She took hold of the makeshift ladder and started pulling herself up. Lucan met her at the top; all it took f
or him to reach the level roof of the second-floor terrace was a powerful flex of his legs. He landed soundlessly from his fluid leap and thrust his hand down to help pull her up the rest of the way.
A pair of French doors were open onto the tiled patio, the wispy white curtains riffling out like ghosts. Elise could see a woman in a nightgown lying motionless on the floor inside the room. Her arm was outstretched, unmoving, the wrist savaged and resting in a pool of spilled blood.
“Marek,” Lucan said softly, in explanation of the carnage. “Will you be all right walking through there?”
Elise nodded. She followed him in through the scene of recent violence, past the dead human woman and the husband who had evidently tried without success to fend off the vicious vampire attack. Bile rose in Elise’s throat as they stepped out into the hallway and found the body of a young boy.
Oh, God.
Marek had broken in and killed them all.
Lucan ushered her past the child, taking her wrist and holding her behind him as he made a quick visual check of the hallway. She felt the sudden blast of mental pain, but had not seen the Minion coming until he was on them, having come out of another room just as they approached. Lucan silenced Marek’s mind slave before the human had a chance to scream a warning. With a dagger slicing deeply across the Minion’s throat, it sputtered in shock, then dropped in a lifeless heap to the floor. Lucan gave it no pause at all. He stepped over the corpse, waiting for Elise to do the same.
As they neared a stairwell that led to an upper floor of the house, Elise’s veins lit up with an electric kind of intuition. She could almost feel Tegan’s heart beating inside her own body, his labored breath a constriction in her own lungs.
“Lucan,” she whispered, pointing to the open door. “It’s Tegan. Up there.”
He moved into the unlit well and peered up the stairs. “Stay close, and stay behind me.”
Together they climbed the steep, narrow steps. At the top was a barred door. Lucan lifted the metal lock. He glanced back at her, and even in the darkness she could see the expression that seemed to caution her to brace herself for whatever they might find on the other side.
