Son of a bitch.
It was supposed to be a recon mission, nothing more. Now Trygg was cooling his heels in an alleyway across from an old three-story house near the train station, waiting for the two assholes he’d been tailing to wrap up their apparent breaking and entering so he could resume his surveillance of them.
Or, rather, he had been waiting.
Until the moment one of the windows on the second floor lit up with what appeared to be a cosmic explosion of pure white energy. Followed by gunfire.
A lot of gunfire.
“Fuck it.”
He emerged out of the shadows and headed for the house.
The Order had specifically instructed him not to do anything to alert Roberto Santino or his crew to his presence during this intel-gathering mission. Trygg had been following Santino’s muscle, a Breed male named Franco, for the better part of a week now. In the process, Trygg had two of the three set points pinned into the triangulation formula he’d mapped out and was only a couple more data points from being able to nail Santino’s lair down to a quarter-mile radius.
Which meant the Order was as close as they’d ever been to locating and taking down one of the most dangerous drug kingpins of Europe.
That mission was a must-do. There were thousands of garden variety narcotics dealers in the world, both human and Breed, and although the Order would never be able to stop them all, Santino was different. The human made no secret of his hatred for the Breed, and he was indulging in that sentiment by dealing in Red Dragon, the worst thing to hit Trygg’s kind since its predecessor, Crimson, some twenty years ago.
Secretly manufactured and only effective on the Breed, Red Dragon was a problem nobody needed. Not when relations with the human population in general were already strained. Add in persistent, growing problems with terror groups like Opus Nostrum, and more recent conflicts with the Atlanteans and their unpredictable queen, Selene, and the dead last thing the Order wanted was an epidemic of blood-crazed Breed civilians raising hell—and inciting panic—in all corners of the globe.
In a word, this situation with Santino was war. And collateral damage was to be expected in any war. Not what the Order wanted, but there were times it couldn't be helped. Trygg knew his mission. His commander, Lazaro Archer, had spelled out the rules of engagement for him in no uncertain terms: Anything that jeopardized the prime objective was verboten.
Too bad following rules wasn’t Trygg’s strong suit.
He stalked across the street, certain this was a bad fucking idea. The cries of a baby that had been faint even with his preternaturally sharp hearing intensified tenfold as he leapt to a small wrought-iron balcony on the second story of the house. Over the wailing of the infant in the next room, sounds of a struggle continued. And as troubling as the racket was, the putrid stench of a Breed male high on Red Dragon made Trygg’s own blood boil with rage.
The point of entry he stood at was equipped with a remarkably sophisticated alarm system, but it was no match for his Breed ability. With a silent command, he disabled the sensors and cut the heat registers on the glass before mentally freeing the lock on the balcony doors.
It was the same method Santino’s Breed thug had used to let himself and his human companion inside a few minutes ago.
What the hell business did they have here?
And where had that blast of white light come from?
He’d have to sort all of that out later. Right now, he needed to neutralize the situation inside the house before things went any further sideways.
A fresh chorus of screams went up as he pushed open the glass doors and slipped inside what he realized now was another bedroom in the house. One occupied by three women of varying ages, all of them clad in nightshirts or robes, huddled together and shrieking at him in terror.
He scowled at the fearful gaggle of females, a response that only made them scream louder. Shit. He knew he was a frightful sight just based on his size and width alone. With his shaved head and the jagged scar that dug deep into the flesh of his left cheek from below his eye to his squared jaw, his looks bordered on nightmarish.
His fangs didn’t help, he was sure. The points dug into his tongue as he glowered at the trembling women. “Be quiet. I’m not here to hurt you.”
It was a feeble attempt to reassure them, but they were beyond reasoning anyway. And he had neither the skill nor the time to try.
On a snarl, he touched the forehead of the woman nearest to him. “Sleep,” he commanded her, putting her into an instant trance.
The two others went down just as swiftly.
Of all the weapons at his disposal, using his Breed ability to manipulate someone’s mind was the one he employed the least. In fact, he hated having to use it. As a former Hunter, raised in captivity and trained to kill by a madman named Dragos, Trygg knew what it was like to be controlled, to be forced into doing something at another’s will.
For the first fourteen years of his life, he’d been enslaved to the brutal program, compelled to obey through ruthless conditioning and an ultraviolet collar that would have obliterated him if he’d refused any command.
But Dragos was only the first of Trygg’s masters.
The last of them had sliced his face wide open—just before he killed her.
Trygg shook off the old memories as an animal roar shook the walls from the room next door. Franco was a sadistic individual in general, but if the Breed male was hopped up on Red Dragon tonight, Trygg hated to think of the violence he was capable of now.
Death and gun smoke clung to the air in the hallway. There was something else in the air too. Something peculiar, like the scent of a recent thunderstorm.
The door to the neighboring bedroom had been smashed off its hinges. From inside, the infant continued to cry. Trygg leapt over the broken panel and into the midst of a scene he never would have imagined.
Three unmoving bodies lay on the floor. A human woman, crumpled like a broken doll beside the narrow bed. Another human, a scrawny male with greasy hair and the sallow face of a crack addict, sprawled in a dead slump inside the open closet as if a great gale force had blown him there.
And the third—the biggest shock of all—Santino’s man Franco, lying prone on the floor where he’d been taken down by the woman who stood over him, her long legs straddling his body from behind. The tall, slender blonde held the immense Breed male’s head gripped between her hands, giving his neck a final crunching twist just as Trygg stepped inside the room.
“Holy fuck.”
She whirled around at the sound of his low voice, her beautiful face a mask of fury, sky-blue eyes fierce with killing fire that all but dared him to test her. A bullet had grazed her shoulder during the struggle, opening a tear in the thin material of her light gray T-shirt. Bright red blood stained the fabric, making his fangs throb in Pavlovian response as he watched the wound slowly heal itself.
His stunned gaze traveled downward, to where the centers of her palms held an unearthly glow. Energy pulsed there, banked but unmistakably strong. He supposed that explained the lightning blast he’d witnessed from outside.
Trygg’s mind reeled at the evidence of her unleashed power. But equally astonishing was the fact that he knew this woman.
“Ah, Christ,” he snarled as his irritated gaze lifted once again to her face. “You gotta be shitting me.”
Tamisia the Atlantean.
Her expression registered recognition too. And plenty of haughty disdain. “What are you doing here?”
He grunted. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I work at the shelter. I live here.”
This was where she’d ended up? Working at a women’s shelter in one of the roughest areas of the city? Trygg wouldn’t have guessed that of the elegant, icy immortal in a million years.
She looked different from when he’d last seen her. Slimmer, her golden skin more pale than luminescent. Her eyes, despite being filled with battle rage, seemed even more haunted than before. Most of her white-blonde hair had come loose from a long braid at her back. It hung in a wild tangle around her, its distinctive single streak of iridescent gold along the left side of her face hanging limp and dulled.
Not that any of these changes diminished Tamisia’s otherworldly beauty.
Trygg hadn’t cared enough to ask for details about her at the time she’d arrived in Rome, but rumor had it that she’d betrayed her own kind, causing the death of a fellow Atlantean council member. A month and a half ago, he’d helped Lazaro Archer bring Tamisia to the command center as some kind of diplomatic gesture between the Order and her people, but that was as far as Trygg’s interest in her had gone.
Or so he’d told himself for the two weeks the female had been underfoot at headquarters.
She’d been a distraction to him from the moment he first set eyes on her. A nuisance he’d been eager to lose when she abruptly left the Order’s safekeeping a month ago to make her own way in the city. Trygg hadn’t asked where she had gone. He hadn’t wanted to know.
He sure as fuck didn’t want to be standing in front of the female now, in the middle of a surveillance mission gone all to hell.
Thanks mostly to her.
She seemed anything but concerned with the fact that he was even in the room. Hurrying over to the crib, she collected the squalling baby into her arms. Holding her like precious, fragile glass, she quieted the worst of the infant’s cries with soft murmurs and gentle strokes along the child’s trembling back.
Trygg ran a hand over the stubble on his shaved head, then exhaled a gruff curse as he assessed the damage to his night’s objective. Franco was as dead as he could be. Trygg should have forgone the tail tonight and simply squeezed the Breed male for information. Now Franco was useless to anyone. The Order would have to start all over with a new mark inside Santino’s operation. It could take weeks, even months.
“Do you have any idea what you just did, female?”
“Yes.” When he glanced at Tamisia, her chin hiked up a notch. “I dispensed justice. Unfortunately, not quickly enough to save Rosa.”
Trygg followed her sober gaze to the strangled female near the bed. Rosa looked to be barely out of her teens and no threat to anyone, least of all the pair of assholes who’d broken into the house tonight. He could hear the grief in the Atlantean’s soft voice when she spoke about the young woman, but Tamisia didn’t shed a tear. In fact, she straightened her shoulders, looking even more determined as she gently stroked the baby’s back.
“Tell me what happened.”
“The human male was searching her belongings when I kicked in the door. The other one, the bloodsucker, had a hold of her by the throat. He’d already wrenched the life from her in front of her child by the time I got up here. Then he threw her down over there as if she were rubbish.”
Her voice shook a bit, not with fear or shock, but with loathing. Trygg only had to look at Franco’s big, broken body and snapped neck to understand that her fury tonight must have been off the charts. The Breed and the Atlanteans had been enemies for the longest time, and this brutal attack on a young woman only seemed to fortify Tamisia’s animosity toward Trygg and all of his kind.
But Tamisia’s feelings were none of his concern. He was more interested in what she’d just divulged about the attack. He glanced at the closet and the upturned drawers and emptied backpack.
“What were they looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Trygg walked over and moved some of the scattered clothing and other personal effects with his boot. He didn’t see anything of interest. Whatever Franco and his companion were searching for, it didn’t appear that they’d found it.
And now Trygg had another wrinkle to smooth in his already fucked-up mission.
No. Make that two.
Sirens sounded in the streets outside, growing louder by the moment. The distinctive whine signaled the pending arrival of the Joint Urban Security Taskforce Initiative Squad, a police force comprised of humans and Breed officers.
“You called JUSTIS?”
She nodded, still cradling the baby in her arms. “My friend who runs the shelter called them. I told her to when we realized someone had broken into the house.”
“Fuck.” Bad enough his best chance of getting a firm lock on Santino was currently sprawled on the floor with his head nearly twisted off like a bottle cap. Lazaro Archer would be plenty pissed off to hear that newsflash. Hell, Trygg would probably have to answer to D.C. headquarters and the Order’s founder, Lucan Thorne, too. About the only thing that would make the night any worse was having to explain to JUSTIS what a member of the Order was doing standing in the middle of a multiple murder scene.
He and his fellow warriors already had a reputation as merciless vigilantes with a habit of enforcing law and order whenever and however they saw fit. Relations with mankind in the past twenty years since the Breed had been outed to them were strained enough without the situation here adding fuel to the fire.
And besides, rumor had it that Roberto Santino had a fair share of the city’s police force on his payroll.
He could trance the human officers as soon as they showed up and scrub their minds of all memory of what they found here, but that wouldn’t work on the Breed members of the squad. Nor could he erase the record of the emergency call for help that had come from this house. The wheels were already in motion here, and Trygg was going to have to deal with the fallout as best he could.
He looked at Tamisia, standing there with a self-healed gunshot wound and palms still pulsing like embers as she held the quieted infant in her arms. Her regal, ethereal beauty called attention under normal circumstances. After what she’d done tonight, there would be no mistaking her for anything as mundane as human.
Which meant he wasn’t the only one who’d have a lot of explaining to do once the law arrived on the scene.
“The cops will be here soon. You’d be wise to avoid them. I doubt this is the way you or any other Atlantean would want to go public to the humans for the first time.”
Her face blanched. She looked at the carnage she’d left—carnage no mere mortal was capable of—and true worry flickered in her brilliant blue eyes. “What shall I do?”
“For starters, lose those ruined clothes. There’s going to be a lot of questions about what went down in here. Aside from the fact you took out two intruders single-handedly without any trace of a weapon, it’d be damn hard to explain the blood and the lack of a bullet wound where you’ve obviously been shot tonight.”
“Then what are we going to tell the officers when they get here?”
“Not we, Tamisia.” Trygg bared his fangs in a smile he knew was far from friendly. “You’re going to stay out of my way and let me handle this. That’s not a request.”
The flat line of her lips said she didn’t appreciate him telling her what to do, but he gave her points for not arguing with him. In fact, despite his general distaste for females and all the trouble that followed them, the memory of Tamisia standing over Franco’s dead body like an unearthly, avenging angel made his cock buck hard behind his zipper.
Not gonna happen.
He ground his molars against the desire that stirred, unwelcome, inside him. “Go. Take the baby out of here and keep the other women away too. I’ll go down and wait for the police.”
Tamisia stared at him, her head tilted with growing suspicion. “Tell me what’s really going on. You knew those men, didn’t you?”
“Go, Tamisia. Far as you or anyone else is concerned, this is the Order’s business now.”
At first he thought she would ignore him. But as the sirens blared in the street outside the house and flashing red and blue strobes lit up the darkness, some of her resistance ebbed.
Finally her ice-blue eyes released him. Tucking the baby against her, she strode out of the room, her spine as straight and stubborn as a queen’s.
Trygg made a focused effort not to watch the way her hips and curved backside swayed with each long stride. Ignoring the kick of his veins and the pulse that throbbed in both his emerging fangs and the stiffness at his groin was more struggle than he wanted to admit.
When Tamisia’s light footsteps retreated out of earshot, he exhaled the curse he’d been holding and rubbed his palm over his clenched jaw.
Time to get to work.