Tempted by Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (12 page)

Derek now sported a number of tattoos on his broad back and shoulders. Unusual-looking stars, crossed swords, some kind of black beetle—a scarab, she realized, confused by the body art that hadn’t been there the last time she saw her brother. He must have gotten the tattoos after he’d moved overseas a year ago.

“It should be in your hands tomorrow, Mr. Rior—” Derek’s voice dried up.

He realized he wasn’t alone now. Disconnecting the call without a word of excuse, he smoothly slipped the phone into his pants pocket.

When he pivoted around, his face was slack with shock...with stark disbelief.

“Melena. My God.” He frowned, gave a vague shake of his head. But he didn’t rush over to embrace her. He didn’t react the way she would have expected at all from a sibling who loved her, worried for her. “I don’t understand. The news reports said there were no survivors. I thought you were...”

“Dead,” she replied, only understanding in that instant why her brother seemed less than relieved to see her.

He hadn’t expected to see her again at all.

His sickening aura told the truth. It hovered around him, oily with corruption. Foul with deceit.

“It was you, Derek.” She could hardly form the words, could hardly reconcile what her senses were telling her. “You were the faceless, hidden betrayer he feared. Oh, my God...it was you who arranged for our father’s death.”

* * * *

Lazaro boarded the Order’s private jet in a hellish mood.

He hadn’t expected the conversation to go well with Melena, but damn if he anticipated the kind of pain that had lodged itself in his chest from the moment she stormed away from him. That ache was still there, cold and gnawing, creating a vacuum behind his sternum that he didn’t imagine would ever be filled.

She was gone.

He’d made certain of that—for her, he wanted to reassure himself. But Melena’s words still echoed in his mind. Her condemning, all-too-accurate accusation.

He was a coward.

As the jet began to taxi toward the runway, Lazaro couldn’t dismiss the feeling that he was walking away from the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

And why?

Because of exactly what Melena said. He was afraid. Afraid to his marrow that he might let himself fall in love with her and risk cutting his heart open again should anything happen to her.

The truth was, he was already falling. Letting her go cut him open, and as he rubbed at the empty ache in his chest, he realized only then what a fucking idiot he was.

Pushing Melena away had been the most cowardly act of his long life.

He’d lived more than a thousand years. He had loved a woman deeply, fearlessly, for several centuries before he lost her. He knew what real love felt like. He knew himself well enough to understand that time, for him, was immaterial. Time could last forever, or it could be gone in the blink of an eye.

He loved Melena. And whether it had happened in a matter of days, or over the span of a hundred years, it was all the same to him. He wanted her beside him. Starting right now, if she would have it in her heart to forgive him.

On a snarl, he punched the call button next to his seat.

“Yes, sir?”

“Turn it around.”

The pilot went silent for a moment. “Sir, we’re next on the runway to taxi and—”

“Turn this goddamned plane around. Now.” On second thought, he couldn’t wait that long. He unbuckled his seat belt and stood up. “Never mind. I’m getting off right here.”

“But, sir—”

He unlocked the hatch and leapt down from the fuselage onto the dark tarmac. Then he was running. Heading for the Order fleet vehicle he’d parked in the private hangar when he’d arrived.

It was just as he neared the black sedan that his senses suddenly seized up, gripped by something powerful and horrifying. His veins lit up with a piercing dread.

Not his emotions.

Melena’s.

He could feel her terror rising in his blood through his bond to her.

Holy hell.

She was in danger.

She was in fear for her very life.

CHAPTER 12

Melena tried to run.

She wasn’t even halfway into the hall before Derek yanked her off her feet. His hand wound tight in her hair. Pain raked her scalp as he hauled her face backward to meet his furious sneer.

“You’re supposed to be dead, sister dear,” he hissed against her cheek. “You and Father both in one fell swoop. I’ve been planning it since he confided in me about his meeting with Turati.”

“You killed him, you bastard!” Melena could hardly contain her contempt or her fear. “You killed more than a dozen innocent people that night, Derek. My God, did you hate us that much or are you simply out of your mind?”

“Arranging for that rocket strike was the sanest thing I’ve ever done. Killing Father and Turati? Doing it while they were secreted away for a covert meeting to broker their precious fucking peace? Let’s just say it won me all the respect I deserve with the people who really matter.”

Melena’s heart sank even further. “Opus Nostrum.”

He chuckled. “I was a mere lieutenant for this past year. They barely knew my name. Now I’ve got a direct line to the inner circle. I’ll be a part of that circle soon. This was my proof of allegiance, my demonstration of worth.” Derek’s eyes flashed with vicious intent as she fought against his ruthless, unyielding hold. “As for you, Melena, I couldn’t very well let you see me after I joined the organization. Your irritating gift would’ve sniffed me out right away.”

“You plotted to kill me all this time?” she asked, hating that his duplicity hurt her so deeply.

Derek shrugged, his crackling amber eyes roaming over her terrified, miserable face with a cold disregard. “At first, I thought I could just avoid you. But then Father confided in me that he’d been having premonitions of a betrayal, and I knew it was only a matter of time before one or both of you discovered my alliance with Opus Nostrum. When he later told me about the meeting and the fact that you’d be accompanying him, I knew it was my chance to act.”

Bile rose in her throat as he spoke. “You’re a cold-blooded murderer, Derek. You’re a sick, backstabbing fuck!”

“Careful, little sister. I’m the only thing standing between you and your grave.” He snagged a cord from the table lamp on the desk, sending the thing crashing to the floor. Then he quickly bound her wrists behind her back. “Don’t rush me to put you in it.”

With that, he wrenched her into a more punishing hold and shoved her forward. He guided her out of their father’s study and down the opposite end of the hallway. Melena had no choice but to shuffle ahead of him, panicking when she realized he was taking her outside.

He walked her toward their father’s GNC-issued silver SUV parked in the drive.

“What are you doing, Derek?”

He opened the back door. Shoved her into the farthest seat.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, hysteria bubbling up as he calmly climbed behind the wheel. “If you’re going to kill me, then just do it, damn you!”

“I’m not going to kill you, Melena.” His cold eyes met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’m going to take you to my comrades in the organization. They’re not nice people, I’m afraid. You’re going to wish you died in that fucking explosion.”

He started the engine. Then he backed away from the Darkhaven and started speeding for the highway.

* * * *

Lazaro gunned the black sedan through the late-night traffic on the highway, speeding like a bat out of hell for Baltimore. He didn’t know what had Melena so terrified, but her fear was visceral. And it was eating him alive from the inside.

“Hang on, baby,” he muttered as he dodged one lagging car and nearly sideswiped another. “Ah, God, Melena...know that I’m coming for you.”

He was just about to veer toward the exit he needed when all of his instincts lit up like fireworks.

She was somewhere close—right now.

Possibly on the same stretch of highway, by the way his veins were clanging with alarm bells.

He scanned both sides of the divided lanes, a chaos of headlights and commuting vehicles. She might as well be a needle in a goddamned haystack.

And then—holy shit.

His Breed senses pulled his attention toward a light-colored SUV that had just merged on to the opposite side of the highway. The vehicle was speeding almost as fast as he’d been. In a big fucking hurry to get somewhere.

Melena.

She was inside the silver SUV. He knew it with total, marrow-chilling certainty.

And whoever had her was going to have bleeding hell to pay if she’d been harmed in any way.

Lazaro yanked the steering wheel and sent the sedan roaring into the median. Grass and mud flew in all directions as he tore across the divider and launched his car into the traffic on the other side. He floored the pedal, tearing up the pavement as he tried to catch the bumper of the vehicle that held his woman.

Flashing his lights, laying on the horn, he tried to get the attention of the vehicle bearing GNC diplomatic plates. It belonged to Byron Walsh, but Lazaro wasn’t certain who the Breed male was behind the wheel. But then, as he ran up alongside it briefly, he caught a glimpse of the driver. A cold, sickening recognition set in.

Son of a bitch.

Derek Walsh.

And judging from the vampire’s murderous glower, he had no intention of giving up Melena without a fight. The SUV lurched into a more reckless speed. It careened behind a semitrailer, dodging between a car of teens and a commuter bus. Lazaro could only follow, negotiating the traffic and keeping his focus trained on his quarry.

Walsh drove erratically for several miles with Lazaro chewing up his bumper. More than once, there was the opportunity to ram the bastard and send the SUV rolling, or to draw one of his semiautomatics and blast a hole in the Breed male’s skull...but not with Melena inside. Not when Lazaro’s heart was tied to her and every breath in his body was devoted to keeping her safe.

He hissed when Walsh narrowly avoided a collision with a car drifting into his lane. And when another near-miss snapped off the SUV’s passenger side mirror, Lazaro shouted a furious curse. He saw a break up ahead—a chance to get in front of Walsh and force him into the median. Lazaro buried the gas pedal and flew past.

But Walsh saw the maneuver coming.

Instead of letting himself catch up to Lazaro, he hung a hard right and gunned it for an upcoming exit.

An exit that was under construction, littered with barrels and an obstacle course of concrete barriers.

Walsh was going too fast, too frantically.

Lazaro stomped on his brake and was whipping around to give chase again when the SUV clipped one of the barriers and went airborne, rolling into a hard crash.

All the breath seemed to suck out of Lazaro’s lungs in that instant. The entire world seemed to stop breathing. Dust went up in the darkness, the haze illuminated by the beams of passing vehicles on the road.

Then, a spark of flame.

“No,” Lazaro moaned, his blood screaming for Melena. “Goddamn it, no!”

He threw his vehicle in park on the shoulder and hit the ground running.

Even with his preternatural speed, he’d barely gotten within arm’s reach of the wreck before the ruptured gas tank ignited. A blinding wall of flames shot skyward, heat blasting his face.

“
Melena, no!
”

* * * *

She couldn’t breathe.

Heat all around her. Splitting pain in her skull, ringing in her ears. She opened her eyes and saw a churning, thickening cloud of gray smoke. And flames.

Oh, God. Fire everywhere.

Melena tried to move, but her arms wouldn’t work. Her wrists were tied. She remembered now, awareness coming back to her. Derek had bound her. He’d driven away with her.

He and his Opus Nostrum comrades were going to kill her.

“No,” she gasped, choking on smoke and heat. “Oh, my God...no!”

She started kicking, screaming, trying frantically to get free of the restraints. She couldn’t loosen them. And something was crushing her in the back of the SUV. She looked up and saw the floor. Beneath her, the roof of her father’s GNC vehicle.

The smoke was rolling in front of her eyes, burning them. She couldn’t keep her lids open. Hurt to see, to breathe...

“Melena.” The deep voice penetrated the fire and sooty air that surrounded her. She wanted to reach for it—for him—but she was trapped, unable to move. “Melena, I’m going to get you out of here, sweetheart. You stay with me, damn it!”

There was a great, groaning howl as the vehicle rocked where it had fallen. A gust of cool air, followed by a rush of hot, intensifying flame.

“I’m coming in to get you,” Lazaro said.

She couldn’t see him, but she felt him climbing inside the inferno. Crawling all the way to the back, where she lay broken and half-conscious.

And then she felt his strong hands make contact with her.

“Ah, Christ,” he hissed, and she knew what he saw couldn’t be good.

Another metallic roar filled the air, then the crushing weight that had pinned her down was lifted. Tenderly, Lazaro took hold of her. Started pulling her free of the wreckage.

“I’ve got you now, Melena. I’ve got you.”

She didn’t let the first sob go until she felt the warmth of his chest against her cheek. She buried her face in that comforting strength, breathed in the scent of him even as her throat screamed with pain from the smoke that choked her lungs.

And then he scooped her up in his arms and he was running. Away from the smoke. Away from the heat and the fire and the horror.

Cool night air enveloped her, filled her nose as she braved a cleansing breath. And circled around her were Lazaro’s strong arms, holding her close, keeping her safe—carrying her away from certain death.

He set her down in the crisp, moist grass, while behind them came a jarring roll of thunder as a plume of fire and smoke shot up into the moonlit sky. Horns blared out on the highway. Tires screeched as traffic came to a halt at the scene of the accident.