Deeper Than Midnight (20 page)

“He’s all that matters to me,” Corinne replied quietly.

But even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. Someone else was coming to matter to her as well. Someone she wanted to trust with the truth. Someone she felt sick at having pushed away and lied to, when he’d shown her nothing but tenderness.

She hated the wall he was erecting between them. She wanted to tear it down before it got any higher, and that meant opening herself up to him completely. She wanted to trust him, and that meant giving him the power to prove her right … or wrong, if she turned out to be the fool.

All she knew was she had to give him that chance.

“Will you excuse me for just a moment, Amelie? I want to see what’s keeping Hunter.”

At the old woman’s nod of agreement, Corinne got up from the table and walked back through the front of the house. Before she even got out to the porch, she saw that Hunter and the purple car were gone.

He had left for his mission without even saying a word.

Murdock came back to consciousness on a choked scream.

Chase watched the vampire flail and struggle on the chain that held him suspended by his ankles from the central beam of an old, empty grain silo somewhere deep in podunk. Blood ran from the hours-old lacerations and contusions that riddled the Agent’s naked body. The air inside the silo was bitter cold, added torture for the son of a bitch who’d stubbornly refused to tell Chase what he needed to know.

For most of the daylight hours they’d spent within the rat-infested shelter, Chase had tried beating the intel out of Murdock. When that didn’t work, and when Chase’s thin patience had started to snap with the setting of the sun outside and the pricking of his thirst, he’d picked up Murdock’s own blade and tried slicing the truth from him.

At some point, the vampire had passed out. Chase hadn’t noticed until his own hand was bathed in the other male’s blood, the big body drooping limply, unresponsive to any amount of inflicted pain.

And so Chase had put down the blade and waited.

He watched Murdock struggle back to alertness, chains jangling in the enclosed shelter. The male coughed and spit blood onto the floor some six feet beneath his head. A large stain already lay on the filthy concrete, the congealing pool of blood and piss soaking into the moldy remnants of long-forgotten livestock feed and scattered, ice-encrusted vermin droppings. The glossy puddle of fresh red cells drew his eye like a beacon, making him yearn to forget this business that needed to get done and instead head out to hunt.

Murdock bucked and thrashed, hissing when his bleary eyes met Chase’s unblinking stare from across the floor of the silo. “Bastard!” he roared. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with!”

Chase wrapped his fist a bit tighter into the end of another long chain—this one slip-knotted around Murdock’s neck—and gave it a good, hard yank. “Does that mean you’re ready to tell me?” He stood up, slowly looping the chain’s slack around and around his fist as he approached. When there was only a couple of feet of space remaining, he paused. “What’s your connection to Dragos? And fair warning—if you continue to tell me the name means nothing to you, I’m going to pound your fucking face into a mashy pulp until you figure it out.”

Murdock let out a growl, his narrowed, blood-crusted eyes flaring with amber rage. “He’ll kill me if I talk to you.”

Chase shrugged. “And I’m going to kill you if you don’t. This here is what you’d call your classic rock and a hard place. Since I’m the one holding the chain and the blade that’s going to start cutting you up into bite-size pieces, I suggest you try not to piss me off any more than you already have.”

Murdock glared. His jaw was held tight, but there was a note of fear in his coal-bright eyes. “There are others who are closer to Dragos’s operation than me. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I’m not the one you want to talk to.”

“Unfortunately, you’re the only one I’ve got hanging around at the moment. So stop testing my patience and start talking.” To drive home his point, Chase wound another bit of chain around his fist.

Christ, he hated being so close to the male. Not only because of the strong urge to smash his brains out for his participation in the blood club, among his other repulsive sins, but also because of all the goddamned blood. Although Breed blood offered no nourishment to their own kind, the sight and scent of so much fresh, spilling hemoglobin made the feral part of Chase coil like a viper in the pit of his stomach.

Murdock would hardly be able to miss the fact that Chase’s fangs were filling his mouth. His own gaze mirrored the same amber fire that seared him from between the battered slits of Murdock’s eyes, though not from pain or fear or fury, but from the taloned grip of the hunger that had somehow begun to ride him nearly every waking moment.

That savage part of him snarled as he forced himself to get right up in Murdock’s face. “Tell me where to find Dragos.”

When the answer didn’t come fast enough, Chase hauled his arm back and swung the chain-wrapped hammer of his fist into the side of Murdock’s skull. The vampire howled, a tooth shooting out of his mouth in a stream of dark red blood.

Chase’s gut clenched, a hideous, wild thrill soaring through his veins as he watched Murdock spew a scarlet river onto the concrete below. A sick, rabid glee urged him to throw another punch, to tear the wailing piece of shit apart like he so richly deserved.

It took him aback, how powerful the darkness inside him was becoming. How demanding the savagery, how deep-seated the madness felt now that it had him in its grasp.

In truth, it terrified him.

He pushed it down—as far down as he could force it to go—and reached out to grab Murdock by his chin. It was a struggle to find his voice amid the churning roar of the battle taking place inside him. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravel, scraping in the back of his throat. His lips peeled away from his teeth and fangs on a snarl. “Where. Is. Dragos?”

“I don’t know,” Murdock gasped. Chase raised the ball of chain to strike again. “I don’t know! I don’t know—I swear to you! All I can tell you is he wants to see the Order destroyed—”

“No shit,” Chase interjected tightly. “Now tell me something I don’t know, before I end you right here and now.”

Murdock sucked in a few quick breaths. “Okay, okay … he has a plan. He wants to get rid of all of you—the entire Order. He says he has to, if he stands any chance of seeing his grand scheme through to its fruition.”

“Grand scheme,” Chase repeated, feeling like maybe he was finally getting somewhere. “What the fuck is Dragos up to?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not part of the inner circle. I reported to a lieutenant of his who came up to Boston from Atlanta. Freyne reported to him too.”

“What’s this lieutenant’s name?” Chase demanded.

“Tell me where I can find him.”

“Don’t bother,” Murdock replied. “No one’s heard from him since last week, so odds are he pissed Dragos off and got himself killed. Dragos doesn’t give anyone the chance to fuck up twice.”

Chase growled a low curse. “Okay, then tell me some more about his inner circle. Who else is in it?”

Murdock shook his head, scattering raindrops of blood onto Chase’s boots. “No one knows who’s got that kind of access to him. He’s very careful like that.”

“How does he plan to take out the Order?”

“I don’t know. Something big. Something he’s been working toward for a while, from what I’ve heard. He’s been trying to find out where the compound is. Before Freyne was killed, he mentioned something about a decoy. Some kind of Trojan horse—”

“Ah, fuck,” Chase muttered.

A sick suspicion snaked through him when he considered how Dragos might go about doing something like Murdock just described. Through the haze of his gnawing hunger, he thought about the night of Kellan Archer’s rescue. The annihilation of Lazaro Archer’s Darkhaven—an attack that had left the Order with little choice but to bring the two surviving members of that family into the compound for protection.

Had the whole thing played out the way Dragos had intended it to? Could the son of a bitch have used the incident to somehow expose the Order’s headquarters? And to what end? The possibilities were numerous, every one of them driving into his gut like an iron stake.

Chase mentally jerked his focus back to the interrogation. “What else do you know about his plans?”

“That’s it. That’s all I know.”

Chase narrowed a look on the vampire, anger flaring along with suspicion. He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. Maybe you need something to help jog your memory.”

He smashed his fist into Murdock’s head again. A gash ripped open on the vampire’s cheek, and Chase could not contain the animal growl that erupted from him at the sight and scent of still more blood.

“Speak, goddamn you,” he hissed, the bare thread of his humanity being devoured by the beast that was snapping at its bit. “I won’t ask you again.”

Murdock seemed convinced now. He coughed, a wet, broken sound. “He’s using humans in law enforcement to be his eyes and ears. He’s been making Minions, lots of them. I heard he’s been talking about a politician recently—that new senator that just got elected.”

It had been a long time since Chase gave a shit about human politics, but even he wasn’t so far removed that he wasn’t aware of the promising young Ivy Leaguer who had come fresh out of Cambridge and seemed destined for a fast rise to the national stage. “What’s any of this got to do with him?” Chase demanded.

“You’ll have to ask Dragos,” Murdock sputtered through a split lip and swelling jaw. “Whatever his plans are, there’s a good chance they involve this Clarence guy in some way.”

Chase considered it for a moment, staring at the Agent in contempt. “You sure that’s all you can tell me? I’m not going to find out something more interesting if I knock a hole in the other side of your fucked-up skull?”

“I’ve told you everything now. I don’t know anything more, I give you my word.”

“Your word,” Chase muttered low under his breath. “You expect me to take the word of a pedophile blood clubber who would sell out his own kind to a twisted piece of shit like Dragos?”

Murdock’s eyes took on a cautious, worried gleam. His southern drawl seemed thicker for the blood that was leaking from the side of his mouth. “You said you wanted information, and I gave it to you. Fair’s fair, Chase. Cut me loose. Let me go.”

Chase smiled, genuinely amused. “Let you go? Oh, I don’t think so. It ends for you right here. The world will be a hell of a lot better place without the likes of you in it.”

Murdock’s answering giggle had a maniacal edge to it, as though he understood he had no hope of walking away from the situation and meant to go out swinging. “Oh, that is rich, Sterling Chase. Your self-righteousness knows no bounds, does it? The world will be a better place without me in it. Have you looked in a mirror lately, my boy? I may be all the things you called me, but you’re no prize either.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chase growled.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice the fact that your eyes have been throwing off amber like a furnace this whole time. How long has it been since your fangs weren’t filling your mouth?”

“I said shut up, Murdock.”

But he didn’t. Damn him, he wouldn’t. “How desperate would an addict like you have to be not to be tempted to get down on your hands and knees and lap up the blood that’s spilling out of me onto that shitty floor below? Wouldn’t your holier-than-thou buddies back at the Order love to see you like this—like the fucked-up Rogue you truly are? Do the world a favor and take yourself out of it.”

Chase couldn’t tolerate any more. He couldn’t stand to hear the truth, especially coming from scum like Murdock. He swung his chain-reinforced fist into the vampire’s face, sending him swinging by the length of chain at his ankles. Chase yanked Murdock back and hammered him again, blow after punishing blow. He pounded until there was little left to hit.

Until Murdock’s body hung lifeless, the awful truth silenced at last.

Chase dropped the chain from around his throbbing fist. Then he released the one holding Murdock aloft. The body hit the floor of the old silo in a heavy
thump
of flesh and bone, the chain rattling down behind it.

Chase turned around and walked out, leaving the door open for the other predators of the night to feed on the carcass and tomorrow’s sun to take whatever remained.

F
or once, it seems luck is on our side, Lucan.”

Gideon stood in the center of the cavernous bomb shelter hidden beneath Lazaro Archer’s Cold War–era Darkhaven a couple hours north of Augusta, Maine. As Archer had warned, the place wasn’t anywhere close to the size and complexity of the Order’s compound, but Lucan had to agree with Gideon: It seemed to be the best option—the only immediate option—they had at the moment.

Nestled on a remote, two-hundred-acre plot of virgin forest that had likely seen more moose and black bear than humans in the past couple of centuries, the property was nothing if not private. The residence itself was a sprawling ten-bedroom, eight-thousand-square-foot fortress of stone and thick timber. Rugged, compared to the elegant mansion back in Boston or the sophisticated brownstone where Lazaro Archer and his family had lived before Dragos’s act of mass destruction. The land surrounding it was impenetrable and forbidding, a natural perimeter wall made of soaring pines and thorn-spangled bracken.

“I wish I had more to offer you,” Archer said from beside Lucan. His rugged face was limned in pale light from the fluorescent security lamp that hung overhead in the concrete tunnel leading back up to the house. “I cannot fully express how deeply I regret my family’s role in Dragos’s plans. That he used Kellan as an unwitting pawn—”

“Forget it,” Lucan replied. “None of us would be in this situation if it weren’t for Dragos. As for this holding, like Gideon says, it’s an advantage we sure as hell need right now.”

Archer nodded as the three of them resumed their walk up the long, underground tunnel. “Although the house has been unoccupied all these years, a local property management company has been responsible for the maintenance and upkeep—”

“Let them know their services are no longer required,” Lucan replied. “If the contract needs to be paid out, let me know and arrangements will be made to take care of any expenses or incidentals.”

“Very well,” Archer said. “How soon do you expect to begin the relocation?”

Lucan slanted a look at Gideon. “Can you be ready to roll out the first wave of equipment by tomorrow night?”

Gideon’s eyes were sharp and determined over the rims of his light blue shades. “Layout is tight but workable. May have to go with a combo of hardwire and coax instead of wireless based on the material and thickness of the walls down here, but yeah … I can make it happen as soon as tomorrow night.”

Lucan nodded. “Sounds like we’re in business.”

Gideon stepped over to walk on the other side of Archer. “Before we go, I’d like to take another look at the security system you have in place, Lazaro.”

“Yes, of course.”

Lucan’s cell phone vibrated in his coat pocket as Gideon and Archer continued discussing the property’s finer points. “Yeah, babe?” Lucan said as he connected to Gabrielle’s call. “Is everything good back home?”

“Ah, yes and no,” she answered. Even if her hesitant voice hadn’t given her away, he would have known something was up. Through the blood bond he shared with his Breedmate, Lucan felt the mix of excitement and anxiety spiking in her veins like it was his own.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Tess,” she said. “Lucan, she’s having contractions. The baby’s on the way.”

Hunter ditched the stolen El Camino in the swamp several miles away from Amelie Dupree’s house and made the rest of the trek into New Orleans on foot. He’d found no activity at the first of Henry Vachon’s residences and had gone on to stake out the other Darkhaven address Gideon had given him.

For more than an hour, his reconnaissance had netted him nothing except the knowledge that Henry Vachon enjoyed a princely lifestyle in a mansion big enough for a dozen people but inhabited by just himself and a small cadre of rank-and-file Breed guards. Hunter reduced that number by three as he stole up to the back of the house and efficiently slit the throats of the men posted at the door.

He crept inside what appeared to be an old servants’ quarters, then swiftly, soundlessly, took the stairs leading up to the second floor of the estate.

A Gen One assassin waited for him at the top of the stairwell. Hunter still had the blade in his hand. He threw it, but the other male’s reflexes knew the assault was coming, and quick, well-trained hands batted the dagger away. Hunter braced his hands on either side of the stairwell wall and lifted himself into a kick as his opponent launched himself toward him.

They connected in midflight, coming down hard on the steps and rolling for a few before Hunter managed to get the upper hand. He had another blade sheathed on his weapons belt. He drew it and sliced in an instant, one swipe of his hand cutting cleanly across the Gen One’s throat, the return sweep ripping through black nylon combat clothing, skin, muscle, and bone. The assassin went limp, bleeding out on the stairs while Hunter got back to his feet and climbed the rest of the way to the living quarters on the floor above.

He heard movement behind a closed door down the hallway. He stalked toward it and kicked the thing in, smashing it off its hinges. As the splintering wood showered down onto the richly hued rug of a sumptuous bedroom, he caught a glimpse of a retreating figure disappearing into an adjacent bathroom. Hunter followed, flashing there in less than an instant.

Henry Vachon cowered on the marble floor between the gold-trimmed toilet and a deep, sunken tub. He had a cell phone in his hand, fingers typing madly over the tiny keypad. Hunter let the bloodied blade in his fist fly, taking off one of Vachon’s fingers in the process.

The vampire hissed in pain, eyes wild with surprise and fear. The cell phone slipped from his hand, smashing into pieces against the unforgiving polished stone floor.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Vachon demanded, his voice shrill and grating. “What do you want from me?”

Hunter cocked his head. “I’m sure you know. I want information.”

“You’re a fool if you think I’ll give anything to you,” he shot back, cradling his ruined hand. Blood bloomed like an opening flower against his chest, staining the front of his white silk shirt and tailored gray trousers. “My loyalty won’t be broken by the likes of you. I’ll take it to my grave.”

Hunter took a step forward, unfazed by the challenge. “I know more than a hundred ways to inflict maximum pain on a body short of killing it. A hundred more will make you wish for death. One of them is sure to loosen your tongue.”

Vachon clumsily rose to his feet in the corner, his socks sponging up blood, sliding on the glasslike surface of the floor. “Is the Order worth the price you will pay for crossing Dragos? You’re putting a very large target on your back by betraying the one who created you, assassin.”

Hunter shook his head. “Dragos is no creator. He is a destroyer. He is a coward and a madman, one who murders innocents and tortures helpless women and children. Dragos and all those loyal to him will soon be dead. As for you, Henry Vachon, I will take more than a little satisfaction in personally ending your worthless life.”

The male’s expression faltered a bit, a crease pressing into the center of his brow. “Me? What have I done to you?”

“Not to me but to her,” Hunter replied, finding it strangely difficult to keep the anger from his voice.

“The Bishop chit?” Vachon seemed genuinely taken aback, but only for a moment. His smile was perverted, a profane twist of his mouth. “Ah, yes. Been sniffing around her skirts, have you? A male would have to be blind and dumb not to crave a sample of that. Even a male like you, raised to be more machine than flesh.”

Hunter felt a hot flare shoot into his bloodstream but he refused to be baited. Let Vachon think what he would about him; his opinion, like his very existence, was meaningless. “Dragos is intending a strike against the Order. You will tell me when and where and how this attack is to be carried out.”

Vachon only stared at him, a disturbing glint in his dark eyes. “Have you fucked her, assassin? Or do you merely long to?”

“There was a beacon forced into the stomach of a civilian,” Hunter went on, ignoring the jabs even though the idea of this offal speaking about Corinne so crudely set his jaw on edge. “If Dragos means to use this beacon to lead him to the Order’s headquarters, does he intend to invade the compound or execute some manner of destruction?”

“She’s a fine piece of ass, that one,” Vachon purred. “Believe me, I can understand how a female like that might scramble a male’s head, make him forget who—and what—he truly is. How much discipline would it take to resist crawling inside something so hot and tight and—”

“Do not speak of her,” Hunter snapped, astonished by the surge of rage that was arrowing up his spine. His eyes were hot in his skull, his vision burning with amber fury. He tried to speak and was surprised to feel the full presence of his fangs, the tips like razors against his tongue. He glared with murderous rage at Henry Vachon. “You are far beneath her. Too far to even mention her name, you disgusting son of a bitch.”

“Beneath her?” Hunter didn’t like the amused chuckle that spilled from between Henry Vachon’s thin lips. “I’ve been on top of her and behind her. More than once. Dragos and I both took our turns the night we grabbed her out of that club in Detroit. Spirited little hellion. She fought like a demon. Fought as hard as she could for years after he locked her up with the others, for all the good it did her.”

The ugly words—the hideous truth of what he was hearing—snapped the fragile, last thread of Hunter’s control. He leapt on Henry Vachon, knocking the male against the wall and cracking the polished marble with the force of their impact. He didn’t realize how blind with hatred he was in that moment.

He didn’t realize how lost he was to the explosion of his rage until he tasted blood on his tongue and saw that he had Vachon’s neck caught between his teeth and fangs.

With a raw cry, Hunter sank his jaws deeper around the vulnerable flesh and tendons. He shook his head, tearing out the vampire’s throat and silencing his offending words for good.

Blood was everywhere—in his eyes, in his hair. Running down his chin. He tasted it like bitter poison sliding down his esophagus.

He stared down at the desecration, at the savaged horror of Vachon’s twitching, dying body, still held upright in his bloodied hands. His head went a bit hazy for a second. Images flashed into his mind.

Vachon, with his hand caught tight and fisted in Corinne’s long dark hair, holding her down as he raped her. It was so vivid, so goddamned real.

Fury roared up on Hunter. He tipped his head back on his shoulders and bellowed as a fresh round of images crowded into his vision: Vachon and Dragos, observing the Ancient who was restrained and drugged on a long laboratory table. Not far away, there was a cage of roughly two dozen women, all of the imprisoned Breedmates screaming and weeping as one of them was dragged out by a Minion and walked toward the table like a sacrifice heading for the altar.

Hunter groaned, sick with the realization of what he was witnessing.

But how was it possible?

Another image slammed into his mind. This time it was Vachon supervising the removal of heavy lab equipment into the back of several large freight carriers under the cover of deep night. Crate after crate loaded into the waiting trucks, with Dragos giving his sober approval from where he stood nearby.

Holy hell.

These were Vachon’s memories.

Memories carried on his blood.

Hunter could still taste the awful tang of it on his tongue. He felt his talent stir to life inside him, making itself known to him for the very first time. The blood—Breed blood—gave him the power to look inside another’s memories.

Jesus Christ.

This was the gift that had eluded him all his life? He felt sick with the knowledge.

He wanted to spit the bitter taste of Vachon’s blood from his mouth. Instead he latched on to the vampire’s shredded throat and drank some more.