Kiss of Midnight

She'd felt fascination.



She'd felt an incredible sort of... peace.



A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it frequently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound sense of calm.



She needed it now, when she was anxious and jumpy as a cat, her ears picking up every slight noise in the apartment and outside. Her head was pounding. Her breath was shallow, coming rapidly through her teeth.



Her thoughts were careening from the flash-bright memories of the night outside the club to the creepy asylum she'd taken pictures of the other morning, to the confusing, irrational, bone-deep fear she'd experienced this afternoon.



She needed a little peace from all of it.



Even just a spare few minutes of calm.



Gabrielle's gaze slid to the wooden block of knives sitting on the counter nearby. She reached over, took one in her hand. It had been years since she'd done this. She'd worked so hard to master the strange, shameful compulsion.



Had it truly ever gone away?



Her state-appointed psychologists and social workers eventually had been convinced that it had. The Maxwells, too.



Now, Gabrielle wondered as she brought the knife over to her bare arm and felt a surge of dark anticipation wash over her. She pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy part of her forearm, though not yet firm enough to break the skin.



This was her private demon - something she had never openly shared with anyone, not even Jamie, her dearest friend.



No one would understand.



She hardly understood it herself.



Gabrielle tipped her head back and took a deep breath. As she brought her chin back down on the slow exhale, she caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The face staring back at her was drawn and sorrowful, the eyes haunted and weary.



"Who are you?" she whispered to that ghostly image in the glass. She had to choke back a sob. "What's wrong with you?"



Miserable with herself, she threw the knife into the sink and backed away as it clattered against the stainless basin.



The steady percussion of helicopter rotors chopped through the quiet of the night sky above the old asylum. From out of the low cloud cover, a black Colibri EC120 descended, coming to a soft touchdown on a flat expanse of rooftop.



"Cut the engine," the leader of the Rogues instructed his Minion pilot after the craft had settled on its makeshift helipad. "Wait here for me until I return."



He climbed out of the cockpit, greeted at once by his lieutenant, a rather nasty individual he'd recruited out of the West Coast.



"Everything is in order, sire." The Rogue's thick brow bunched over his feral yellow eyes. His large bald head still bore the scars from electrical burns inflicted during a bout of Breed interrogation he'd undergone about a half a year ago. However, amid the rest of his hideous features, the numerous scorch marks were merely a footnote. The Rogue grinned, baring huge fangs. "Your gifts tonight have been very well-received, sire. Everyone eagerly awaits your arrival."



Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he was led into the building's top floor, then on toward an elevator that would take him into the heart of the facility. They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the Rogue lair.



As for the leader himself, he'd been based in private quarters elsewhere in Boston for the past month, privately reviewing operations, assessing his obstacles, and determining his strongest assets in this new territory he meant to control. This was to be his first public appearance - an event, as was fully his intention.



It wasn't often he ventured into the filth of the general population; vampires gone Rogue were a crude, indiscriminate lot, and he had come to appreciate finer things during his many years of existence. But an appearance was due, however brief. He needed to remind the beasts of whom they served, and so he had given them a taste of the spoils that would await at the end of their latest mission. Not all of them would survive, of course. Casualties tended to mount in the midst of war.



And war was what he was selling here tonight.



No more petty conflicts over turf. No more divisive in-fighting among the Rogues or pointless acts of individual retribution. They would unite and turn a page not yet imagined in the age-old battle that had forever split the vampire nation in two. For too long, the Breed had ruled, striking an unspoken treaty with the lesser humans while striving to eliminate their Rogue kin.



The two factions of the vampire race were not so different from each other, separated only by degrees. All that stood between a Breed vampire fulfilling his hunger for life and the Bloodlust addiction of the Rogue's unquenchable thirst for blood was a mere few ounces. The bloodlines of the race had diluted in the time since the Ancients, as new vampires grew to adulthood and paired with human Breedmates.



But no amount of human genetic corruption would completely obliterate the stronger vampire genes. Bloodlust was a specter that would haunt the Breed forever.



The way the leader of this budding war saw it, one could either fight the innate urge of his kind, or use it to one's best advantage.



He and his lieutenant guard had reached the end of the corridor now, where the pulsing drone of loud music reverberated through the walls and under their feet. Behind battered steel double doors, a party raged. In front of those doors, a Rogue vampire on watch sank down heavily on one knee as soon as his slitted pupils registered who waited before him.



"Sire." There was reverence in the gravel of his rough voice, deference in the way he did not glance up to meet the eyes shaded behind dark glasses. "My lord, you honor us."



He did, in fact. The leader gave a slight nod of acknowledgment as the watchman came to his feet. With a grimy hand, the guard pushed open the doors to permit his superior entry to the raucous assembly gathered within. The leader dismissed his companion, freeing himself to private observation of the place.



It was an orgy of blood and sex and music. Everywhere he looked, Rogue males groped and rutted and fed on a rich assortment of humans, both men and women. They knew little pain, whether or not they attended this event willingly. Most had been bitten at least once, drained enough to be riding a wave of lightheaded, sensual bliss. Some were further gone, slumped like pretty cloth dolls into the laps of wild-eyed predators who would not cease feeding until there was nothing left to devour.



But then, that was to be expected when one threw tender lambs into a pit of ravenous beasts.



As he strode into the thick of the gathering, his palms began to sweat. His cock tightened behind the carefully pressed fall of his tailored pants. His gums began to throb and ache, but he bit his tongue in an effort to keep his fangs from stretching long in hunger the way his sex had so greedily responded to the erotic barrage of sensory stimulation hitting him from all angles.



The mingled scents of sex and spilling blood called to him like a siren's song - one he knew well, though that was in his very distant past. Oh, he still enjoyed a good fuck and a juicy open vein, but those needs no longer owned him. It had been a hard road back from the place he'd once been, but in the end, he had won.



He was Master now, of himself, and, soon, much, much more.



A new war was beginning, and he was poised to deliver Armageddon itself. He was cultivating his army, perfecting his methods, aligning allies who would later be sacrificed without hesitation on the altar of his personal whim. He would wreak a bloody vengeance on the vampire nation and the human world that existed only to serve his kind. When the great battle was over, the dust and ash finally cleared, there would be none to stand in his way.



He would be a goddamned king. As was his birthright.



"Mmm... hey, handsome... come in and play with me."



The husky invitation reached his ears over the din of noise. From out of the writhing pit of slick, naked bodies, a female hand had risen to grasp at his thigh as he walked past. He paused, glancing down at her with open impatience. There was a faded beauty under her smeared dark makeup, but her mind was utterly lost to the delirium of the orgy. Twin rivulets of blood ran down her pretty throat and over the tips of her perfect breasts. She had other open bites elsewhere as well: at her shoulder, on her belly, and on her inner thigh, just below the narrow strip of hair that shadowed her sex.



"Join us," she begged, pulling herself out of the twisting jumble of arms and legs and rutting, howling Rogue vampires. The woman was all but drained, a scant few ounces this side of dead. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her movements were languid, as if her bones had turned to rubber. "I have what you want. I'll bleed for you, too. Come, taste me."



He said nothing, merely pried the pale, bloodstained fingers from the fine weave of his expensive silk pants.



He frankly wasn't in the mood.



And like any successful dealer, he never touched his own product.



With his large hand flat against her chest, he pushed the woman back into the churning fray. She squealed as one of the Rogues caught her in a rough hold, then savagely flipped her over his arm to bear her down beneath him and enter her from behind. She shrieked and moaned as he rammed into her, but choked silent an instant later, when the Bloodlusting vampire sank his huge fangs into her neck and sucked the last drop of life from her depleted body.



"Enjoy these spoils," said the one who would be king, his deep voice ringing out magnanimously over the animal roars and the skull-battering blast of the music. "Night is on the rise, and you will soon earn all of the rewards I see fit to give you."



Chapter Eleven



Lucan rapped on Gabrielle's apartment door again.



Still no response.



He had been standing on her front stoop in the dark for about five minutes, waiting for her either to open the damn door and invite him in, or curse him as a bastard from behind the perceived safety of her multiple locks and tell him to get lost.



After the hard-core moves he'd put on her the night before, he wasn't sure which reaction he deserved. Probably the irate kiss-off.



He dropped his knuckles onto the door once more, hard enough that the neighbors likely heard it, but there was no movement from within Gabrielle's apartment. Only quiet. Too much stillness on the other side.



She was in there, though. He could sense her through the layers of wood and brick that stood between them. And he smelled blood, too - not a lot, but trace amounts somewhere near the door.



Son of a bitch.



She was inside, and she was hurt.



"Gabrielle!"



Concern ran like acid through his arteries as he calmed his mind enough to focus his mental powers on the chain lock and double bolts that were set on the other side of the door. With effort, he turned one lock, then the other. The chain slid free of its channel, swinging loose against the doorjamb with a metallic scrape.



Lucan threw open the door, his boots pounding over the tiled foyer. Gabrielle's camera bag lay directly in his path, likely fallen where she dropped it in her haste. The jasmine-sweet scent of her blood slammed into his nostrils just an instant before an erratic trail of small crimson splatters caught his eye.



A bitter tang of fear laced the air of the apartment as well. Its odor had faded, some hours old, but lingering like fog.



He strode through the living room, about to head for the kitchen where the blood droplets continued. As he stalked farther inside, his gaze snagged on a stack of photos lying on the sofa table.



They were rough cuts, an odd assortment of images. Some he recognized from Gabrielle's work-in-progress, the one she was calling Urban Renewal. But there were a few shots he hadn't seen before. Or maybe hadn't looked close enough to notice.



He noticed them now.



Goddamn, did he ever.



An old warehouse near the wharf. An abandoned paper mill just outside the city. Several other forbidding-looking structures that no human - let alone an unsuspecting woman like Gabrielle - ought to be getting anywhere near.



Rogue lairs.



Some of them were defunct now, forced into that status by Lucan and his warriors, but a few others were active cells. He spotted several that Gideon currently had under surveillance. Sifting through the others, he wondered how many other photos she had here of Rogue locations not yet on the Breed's radar.



"Jesus Christ," he whispered tightly, fingering through a couple more images.



She even had some exterior shots of local Darkhavens, obscure entryways and masking signage meant to conceal the vampire sanctuaries from easy detection, whether from nosy humans or the enemy Rogues.



Yet Gabrielle had found all of these places. How?



It sure as hell wasn't by chance. Her extraordinary visual sense must have led her to them. She had already proven to be all but immune to the regular tricks of vampire guile - mass hypnotic illusion, mind control... now this.



With a curse, Lucan shoved a few pictures into the pocket of his leather jacket, then tossed the rest back onto the table.



"Gabrielle?"



He moved into the kitchen, where something even more disturbing waited for him.



The scent of Gabrielle's blood grew stronger here, drawing him to the sink. He froze in front of it, something cold clamping down around his chest as he stared into the basin.



It looked like someone had tried to clean up a crime scene, and had done a piss-poor job of it. More than a dozen waterlogged, bloodstained paper towels were clumped in the sink along with a paring knife that had been removed from the wooden block on the counter.



He picked up the sharp blade and gave it a quick inspection. It hadn't been used, but all the blood in the sink and spattered on the floor from the foyer to the kitchen belonged solely to Gabrielle.



And the torn clothing that lay in a discarded heap near his foot carried her scent, too.