by Lara Adrian
Corinne spent only a minute or two in the restroom, standing with her back resting against the wall opposite the nicked-up porcelain sink and chipped mirror. Just long enough to catch her breath, to collect her thoughts as best she could. Her one cocktail with dinner really had gone straight to her head. Why else would she have been sitting at the table with Hunter, talking about music and reminiscing about her past, when she should have been quizzing him about whatever information he and the Order had gathered on Henry Vachon?
If Hunter hadn’t brought up her scars, or the none-too-subtle reminder that he’d seen them and a lot more back at the hotel, she might still be sitting there, losing herself in the simple pleasures of good food and drink and the music she’d loved so much as a girl. She had even been enjoying Hunter’s stiff company, which only emphasized how badly the little bit of alcohol had affected her.
She stepped out of the restroom, back into the smoke-wreathed cavern of the restaurant. Standing up, without the restroom wall to keep her steady, her head was light, her legs loose as she drifted toward the three-piece band that was serenading a dance floor crowded with slowly swaying couples.
Corinne stood at the edge of the small square of worn wood flooring and watched the people move among the candlelight and shadows. Bodies pressed close together, arms wrapped around one another as the music enveloped the entire club. She smiled wistfully, unable to keep the smile from her lips as she recognized the sultry but defiant lyrics.
Another Bessie Smith song. Another pull toward the past, back to a time when she was innocent, unaware of just how cruel and ugly evil could be.
She closed her eyes and felt the familiar old music wash over her, tempting her toward its safe harbor. It was only illusion; she knew that. She couldn’t run away from where she stood now, no matter how much she longed to erase everything she’d been through. She couldn’t ignore where she’d been, what she’d lost … what she still needed to do.
She knew all of this, but with the singer’s voice lulling her into a gentle sway at the edge of the dance floor, she couldn’t resist the sweeping pull. It was only for a minute, a brief indulgence that she savored, eyes closed, senses adrift, floating on a tranquil tide.
When she lifted her lids a moment later, Hunter was standing right in front of her.
He didn’t say anything, just towered over her, a looming wall of muscle and dark energy, the heat of his presence making the scant few inches that separated them seem like nothing at all. His harshly sculpted, handsome face was inscrutable as ever. But his eyes glowed with the embers of a banked, but slow, smoldering fire.
It was the same look she’d seen in his eyes back at the hotel, only now there was no door to close between them. There was no place for her to hide from the heated gaze of this dangerous, deadly man. But it wasn’t fear that flooded her veins as Hunter looked at her now. It wasn’t anything like that at all.
Something electric, something unbidden and powerful, passed between them in that instant. It was the only way she could explain how her hands reached out to him, her palms coming to rest on his broad shoulders. The only way she could fathom the impulse that made her rest her cheek on his strong chest and whisper, “Dance with me, Hunter. Just for a moment?”
Holding on to him, she rocked slowly to Bessie’s lyrics, her ear pressed against the heavy thump of Hunter’s heart. He wasn’t dancing, but she didn’t mind. His heat surrounded her, made her feel safe even though he was likely the most dangerous person in the room.
His arms went around her after a long moment, his big hands resting lightly, tentatively at the base of her spine. He was stiff, almost awkwardly so. She couldn’t hear him breathing anymore, only the rising drum of his heartbeat, so heavy and intense it nearly drowned out all other sound.
She lifted her head and glanced up at him, her hands still braced on his thick shoulders. His golden eyes were throwing off amber sparks, his pupils narrowing toward catlike slits. Desire rolled off him, unmistakable and hot. She moved back a hesitant step, putting fractional space between them, even though her own pulse was clattering with a sudden, intense awareness.
And need.
It startled her, how deeply it pierced her. Desire was something foreign to her after all she’d been through. After what she’d endured, she thought she would never crave a male’s touch. But she did now. Unbelievably, perhaps stupidly, she craved this stony, lethal warrior’s touch more than anything else in that moment.
She forced herself to take another hitching step backward. “Thank you for the dance,” she murmured, confusion clashing with the warmth that was spiraling through her. “Thank you for this. For bringing me here tonight. I thought I’d forgotten what it was like to feel … normal.” She glanced down, away from the searing heat of his eyes. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel … anything anymore.”
His answering touch was light but firm beneath her chin. He lifted her face on the edge of his fingertips, until their gazes were locked once more. He lowered his head toward hers.
And then he was kissing her.
Gently, unhurried, he brushed his lips across hers. His kiss was almost tentative, as though he didn’t know how to take more than what she was willing to give him. As intoxicating as his mouth felt against hers, it was also sweet, the first time she’d ever been touched so carefully, so full of tenderness. That a formidable male like Hunter could possess such patience and restraint astonished her.
It wasn’t easy for him. She saw that truth a moment later, as their lips parted and she glanced up into golden eyes transformed into twin fires that seared her with their amber heat. His head bowed toward hers, only a breath between their mouths in the hazy gloom that surrounded them. The tips of his fangs gleamed bright white behind his upper lip. Color flushed the dermaglyphs that tracked in graceful arcs and flourishes along the sides of his neck and around to his nape.
He wanted her.
The thought should have terrified her, not drawn her closer. She gazed up at him, yearning against all reason for another taste of his sensual mouth. His hands trembled against the small of her back where he still held her from their brief dance. When he brought one up to stroke her cheek, his touch was feather light, as gentle as his kiss, despite the callused roughness of his weapon-hardened fingers.
Corinne exhaled shallowly as he caressed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. Her chin lifted on the edge of his fist, he bent his head down toward hers once more …
And then he froze.
Tension swept him in an instant—a new tension, this one cold and battle-wary. His eyes flicked up to take in the crowded club. “We have trouble,” he said, snapping back into warrior mode. “It’s not safe now. I need to take you out of here.”
“What is it, Hunter?” She tried to follow the direction of his focus, but he was more than head and shoulders taller than she. “What do you see?”
“Vampires,” he said, his voice low, discreet. “A group of them just came in from the front of the restaurant. There’s a Gen One among them. One of Dragos’s assassins.”
Corinne’s heart slammed hard against her rib cage. “Are you sure?”
“There can be no doubt.”
His reply was so grave, she had to struggle to catch her breath. “Do you still see them? What are they doing?”
“Searching the crowd.” His hand found hers and wrapped around it tightly. “My guess is they’re looking for us.”
He pulled her deeper into the crowd on the dance floor, weaving through the oblivious couples, his gaze never leaving the presumed area of the incoming threat.
“Why would they be looking for us?” she asked as she hurried along at his side, panic fluttering on dark wings in her breast. “How would Dragos know we were in New Orleans?”
“Because someone told him where to look,” Hunter answered tersely. “Someone I should have killed when I had the chance.”
Victor Bishop.
Oh, God. He had betrayed her once aga
in.
What a stupid mistake to think he wouldn’t. Even worse, she had made it possible by persuading Hunter to spare him. Now she could only hope it wouldn’t cost either one of them their lives.
Sick with the thought, furious with regret, Corinne held tightly to Hunter’s hand as he hauled her through the crowd toward the darkened rear of the establishment.
They burst out the back door of the place, Hunter’s sole objective to get Corinne Bishop to safety. As the steel door swung open onto the rear alleyway, a pair of Breed males wearing Enforcement Agency suits scrambled to attention at their post outside.
Too late.
Hunter had them sized up and dismissed as insignificant obstacles even before the first one had a chance to reach for the firearm holstered at his side. Releasing Corinne’s hand, Hunter grabbed the head of the male in front and gave it a violent twist. The spinal column cracked like muffled gunfire as the body dropped lifelessly to the ground.
The second guard went down just as swiftly.
Hunter glanced back at Corinne, who stood behind him, stricken into silence. “Come,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”
Hunter pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket as they raced along a maze of narrow back alleys. He called Boston and relayed to Gideon what was happening.
“Shit,” the warrior muttered on the other end. “If Dragos is worried enough to send assassins down to New Orleans, I guess it’s safe to assume that the connection between Dragos and Vachon is a valid one.”
“Which means the connection between Bishop and Dragos remains as well,” Hunter replied as he navigated past a voodoo shop selling chicken’s feet and other animal parts down one particularly strange alley. “That’s an issue I will take up with Bishop later.”
Gideon blew out a sharp exhalation. “No need, my man. Victor Bishop was killed this afternoon in his Darkhaven. The report filed with the Agency in Detroit stated that he’d attacked his Breedmate and might have done much worse if he hadn’t been stopped by one of his security staff at the estate.”
“Who killed him?”
“Guy named Mason, according to the reports.”
Hunter grunted in acknowledgment, recalling the protective manner of the Darkhaven guard who’d been at the gates when he and Corinne arrived. He glanced at her now and saw the look of understanding creep over her pale features as she struggled to keep up with his long strides. At least Victor Bishop had wounded her for the last time. Some irrational part of him wished it had been his hands that ended the duplicitous bastard for all he’d done to her. “We need someplace to go,” he told Gideon.
“You’re not at the hotel?”
“No. The maps and my weapons were left in the room.”
“Well, consider them gone. You can’t go back there now, my man. Too damned risky.”
An obvious conclusion, Hunter thought. If Dragos’s men had been sweeping the city for some sign of them, he had to assume they would also be checking area hotels.
“Listen,” Gideon said. “You just lost the advantage of surprise with Vachon. Lucan’s here with me now and he agrees. Taking this mission on solo right now is too risky. Plus, you’ve got the female to think about. Lucan says it’s time to abort. Head back to the plane. I’m gonna see about getting you the hell out of there right now.”
Hunter felt an argument rising to the tip of his tongue. It tasted odd to him, he, who’d been raised to follow commands, to never question his orders. But part of him wanted to see this out—wanted to see Henry Vachon and Dragos both punished for what had been done to Corinne and the others. It grated to think this lead would go cold simply because he’d forfeited one tactical advantage.
Before he could make that point to his brethren in Boston, Gideon came back on the line. “I just spoke to the pilots. They’ll be gassed up and waiting for you to arrive. How far are you from the airport?”
Hunter navigated out of their current alleyway and found a street he recognized that would lead to one of the main thoroughfares through the French Quarter. “We’re on foot now, but twenty minutes at the most by vehicle.”
“Get there,” Gideon said. “Call in once you’re airborne. Then we’ll find someplace for you both to lay low until the shit settles down up here. We can’t afford to take any more hits to our ranks. Bad enough we’re down one man already.”
“Down one?” The remark caught him unaware. Something cold and tight clutched in his belly at the thought of losing one of his fellow warriors. “Has there been a death in the field?”
“Shit, you haven’t heard. It’s Harvard. He’s gone—walked out the night before you left for Detroit and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Dante and Kade found his cell phone down by the river in Southie. Hate to say it, but it looks like Chase stepped off the ledge and has no intention of coming back.” Gideon went quiet, contemplative for a moment. “You asked if there’s been a death in the Order? I’ll tell you what, that’s exactly how it feels around here right now. About the only thing that’ll feel worse is when, somewhere down the line, someone reports in from patrol that they’ve smoked a Rogue and it turns out to be Harvard.”
“I hope that night will not come,” Hunter said, struck by how deeply he meant it.
“You and all the rest of us back at the ranch,” Gideon replied. “In the meantime, let’s hope nothing else goes to hell, right? So, get your asses to the airport ASAP. Report back once you and the female are safe.”
“Consider it done,” Hunter answered grimly.
He slid the phone back into his pocket and ran with Corinne to search for a means of transportation out of the city.
He didn’t notice the humans until they were nearly upon him.
Head down, Chase had his mouth fastened to the neck of a blood Host he’d followed out of a crack house in the bowels of the city a short while ago. Now he grunted in irritation as the approaching vehicle’s headlight beams bounced off the brick walls of the narrow side street where he crouched with his prey.
The police cruiser prowled slowly between the old apartment buildings, the side-mounted spotlight flicking on as it neared the halfway mark.
Chase hunkered down, pulling his limp Host deeper into the shadows of the boxy Dumpster that would shield him only until the cops were right in front of it. The straw-haired blonde moaned, whether from the lull of his suckling at her carotid or the buzz of the cocaine that tainted her blood with its sickly sweet tang, he wasn’t sure. She tried to move, but he held her down, not quite sated even though he knew he had taken more than his fill already.
The police car crept farther along, edging ever nearer to where he greedily fed.
Some shred of sanity warned him to reach for the shadows. He grabbed at them with his mind, tried to bend them to his will, to gather the gloom around him in order to hide from the threat of the human law enforcement that was mere seconds away from turning their obnoxious light in his direction.
Chase scrabbled to bend the shadows, but his talent was too hard to hold. It wobbled weakly—there and gone, there and gone—lasting no more than mere seconds at a time.
He snarled, frustrated by the loss of control.
How much longer before his ability slipped from his grasp completely? He’d seen the effects of Bloodlust on others. He knew its destructive power. The addiction would eat away his Breed-born talent, then his sanity, his humanity … and eventually his soul.
The thought seeped through the haze of his avaricious feeding, as bitter as the drug-laced blood that coursed down his throat. With a growl, he tore his mouth from the wound and licked it sealed, repulsed by himself and the human he might have drained dry if not for the interruption of the approaching police.
He dragged her barely conscious body farther behind the large trash container. She would recover in a short while, recalling nothing of the past few minutes. She’d shake off her strange lethargy and get up, free to return to the addiction that had brought her to this squalid street in the first place.
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As for him?
Chase grunted, his head still buzzing as he wiped the blood from his chin where he squatted in the filth of the alleyway. The slow creep of the police cruiser kept him cowered at the edge of the Dumpster for much longer than he liked. He waited, watched, wary as the car came to a halt in front of where he crouched, brakes squeaking. The vehicle’s siren gave a short whoop before the blue strobes lit up, bathing the alleyway in pulsating light. One of the doors opened, then closed with a soft thump.
“Someone back theh?” A firm voice, all business in the heavy Boston accent. Hard-soled boots crunched on the frozen pavement. A sharp hiss of static came from the cop’s radio as he moved in closer. “No loiterin’ allowed out here, ’specially you degenerate crackheads and junkies.” Another step closer. Two more and the human would be right in front of him. “Ya gonna hafta gitcha stoner ass gone, unless you’d rather we bring you down to the sta—”
Chase sprang out of his hiding spot like something out of a bad dream.
In one great leap, he launched himself up and over the head of the confounded cop. He came down onto the hood of the parked cruiser as light as a cat, then kicked off just as neatly and tore away on foot before either of Boston’s finest had a chance to register what they’d just witnessed.
Chase ran with all the speed he possessed through his Breed genetics. He still had that, still had the strength and stamina of his wilder nature. If anything, the overfill of blood he’d consumed amplified the beast in him. It drove him on, sent him deeper and deeper into the night, farther and farther out of the bright lights and bustling holiday traffic of the main thoroughfares.
He didn’t know how long he’d been running.
He wasn’t sure where he was when he finally slowed enough to notice that he was far out of the city. No longer tearing through streets, parking lots, or neighborhoods but plunging through snow-covered open fields and thick copses of suburban woodland. Ahead of him, not far in the distance, a broad granite hill bristling with pines swelled from out of the surrounding countryside. It registered dimly, one of the humans’ sprawling forest preserves. One of the few remaining patches of natural terrain held sacrosanct from the threat of urban sprawl that choked it from all sides.
