Kiss of Midnight

Gabrielle frowned, staring at her surroundings. The red candle's flame wobbled as the air in the chapel stirred slightly. She heard soft footsteps, then a quietly indrawn breath as whomever walked in realized the chamber was occupied. Gabrielle turned and saw a tall blond in the open doorway. The woman gave Gabrielle an apologetic look, then started to turn away.



"I'm, ah... out of town right now," she told her friends in a hushed voice. "I might be gone for a few days. Maybe longer."



"Doing what?"



"Um, I'm on a commission job," Gabrielle lied, hating to do it, but seeing no other choice. "I'll give you guys a call as soon as I can. Take care of each other. I love you."



"Gabrielle - "



She clicked off the call before she was forced to say anything more.



"I'm sorry," the blond woman said as Gabrielle came toward her. "I didn't realize the chapel was in use."



"It's not. Please stay. I was just..." Gabrielle released a pent-up sigh. "I just lied to my friends."



"Oh." Gentle pale blue eyes settled sympathetically on her.



Gabrielle closed the phone and smoothed her finger over the polished silver case. "I left my apartment in a rush the other night to come here with Lucan. None of my friends know where I am, or why I had to leave."



"I see. Maybe one day you can explain everything to them."



"I hope so. I just don't want to put them in danger by telling them the truth."



The halo of long, golden hair shifted as the woman nodded with understanding. "You must be Gabrielle? Savannah told me that Lucan had brought a female here under his protection. I'm Danika. I am - I was - Conlan's mate."



Gabrielle accepted the slender hand Danika offered in greeting. "I'm very sorry about your loss."



Danika smiled, sadness swimming in her eyes. When she withdrew her hand from Gabrielle's grasp, it moved absently to cradle the nearly imperceptible swell of her abdomen. "I've been meaning to come and find you to say welcome, but I fear I'm not the best company right now. I haven't much had the desire to leave my quarters these past few days. It's still very hard for me, trying to make this... adjustment. Everything is so different now."



"Of course."



"Lucan and the other warriors have been very generous to me. On their own, they've each sworn their protection if I should ever need it, wherever I am. For me, and my child."



"You're pregnant?"



"Fourteen weeks. I'd hoped this would be the first of many sons for Conlan and me. We were so excited about our future. We'd waited a long time to start our family."



"Why did you wait?" Gabrielle winced as soon as the question left her lips. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to pry. I'm sure it's none of my business."



Danika dismissively clucked her tongue. "There's no need to apologize. I don't mind your questions, truly. It's good for me to talk about my Conlan. Come, let's sit awhile," she said, walking with Gabrielle to one of the chapel's long benches.



"I met Conlan when I was just a girl. My village in Denmark had been sacked by invaders, so we thought. It was actually a band of Rogues. They killed nearly everyone, slaughtered women and children, our village elders. No one was safe. A group of Breed warriors arrived in the middle of the attack. Conlan was one of them. They rescued as many of my people as they could. When my mark was discovered, I was taken into the nearest Darkhaven. It was there I learned all about the vampire nation and my place within it. But I couldn't stop thinking about my savior. As fate would have it, a few years later, Conlan came through the area again. I was so excited to see him. Imagine my shock to discover that he'd never forgotten about me, either."



"How long ago was this?"



Danika hardly paused to calculate the time. "Conlan and I shared four hundred and two years together."



"My God," Gabrielle whispered. "So long..."



"It passed in a blink, if you want to know the truth of it. I won't lie and tell you that it was always easy being the mate of a warrior, but I wouldn't have traded a single moment. Conlan believed totally in what he was doing. He wanted a safer world, for me, and for our children to come."



"And so you waited all this time to conceive?"



"We wouldn't start our family so long as Conlan felt he needed to remain with the Order. The front lines are not the best place for children, which is why you don't see families among the warrior class. The dangers are too great, and our mates need to be able to focus solely on their missions."



"Don't accidents happen?"



"Unplanned pregnancies are all but unheard of among the Breed, because it takes something more sacred than simple sex for us to conceive. The fertile time for blood-bonded Breedmates revolves around the crescent moon. During this crucial period, if we wish to create a child, our bodies must have both our mate's seed and his blood flowing within us. It is a sacred ritual that no mated pair goes into lightly."



The very image of sharing this profoundly intimate act with Lucan made Gabrielle warm deep inside her core. The thought of bonding in that way with anyone else, growing large with anyone's child but Lucan's was a prospect she refused to consider. She would rather be alone, and likely would be.



"What will you do now?" she asked, filling the quiet that made her imagine her own lonely future.



"I'm not sure yet," Danika replied. "I do know that I will never bond to another male."



"Don't you need a mate in order to stay young?"



"Conlan was my mate. With him gone, one lifetime will be long enough. If I refuse to bond in blood with another male, I will simply age normally from now on, like I did before I met Conlan. I will simply be... mortal."



"You'll die," Gabrielle said.



Danika's smile was resolved, but not entirely sad. "Eventually."



"Where will you go?"



"Conlan and I had been planning to retreat to one of the Darkhavens in Denmark, where I was born. He wanted that for me, but now I think I would rather raise his son in Scotland instead, so that our child can know something of his father through the land he loved so much. Lucan has already begun making arrangements for me, so that I can go whenever I decide that I'm ready."



"That was kind of him."



"Very kind. I couldn't believe it when he came to find me and give me the news, along with his pledge that my child and I would always have a direct line to him and the rest of the Order if we ever need anything. It was the day of the funeral, just hours afterward, so his burns were still extremely severe. Yet he was more concerned about my welfare."



"Lucan was burned?" Alarm snaked into her heart. "When, and how?"



"Just three days ago, when he carried out the funeral ritual for Conlan." Danika's fine brows lifted. "You don't know? No, of course, you wouldn't. Lucan would never mention a word of his act of honor, or the damage he suffered in doing it. You see, the Breed's funeral tradition calls for one vampire to carry the body of the fallen to be received by the elements outside," she said, gesturing to a shadowed corner of the chapel, where a dark stairwell was located. "It's a duty of great respect, and of sacrifice, because once topside, the vampire who attends his brethren must remain with him for eight minutes as the sun rises."



Gabrielle frowned. "But I thought their skin couldn't tolerate solar rays."



"No, it can't. They burn severely and quickly, but none so much as the vampires who are first generation. The oldest of the Breed suffer the worst, even under the briefest exposure."



"Like Lucan," Gabrielle said.



Danika gave a solemn nod. "For him, the eight minutes of dawn must have been beyond bearing. But he did it. For Conlan, he willingly let his flesh burn. He might even have died up there, but he would let no one else carry the burden of laying my beloved Conlan to rest."



Gabrielle thought back to the urgent phone call that had taken Lucan out of her bed in the middle of the night. He'd never said what it was about. Never shared any of his loss with her.



Pain twisted in her stomach when she thought of what he had endured by Danika's description. "I spoke to him - that very day, in fact. From his voice, I knew something was wrong, but he denied it. He sounded so tired, beyond exhausted. You're telling me that he was suffering from extensive ultraviolet burns?"



"Yes, he was. Savannah told me that Gideon found him not long afterward. Lucan was blistered from head to toe. He couldn't open his eyes for the pain and swelling, but he refused any help in getting back to his quarters so that he could heal."



"My God," Gabrielle gasped, astonished. "He never told me, not any of this. When I saw him later that night - just hours later - he seemed perfectly normal. Well, what I mean is, he looked and acted like nothing was wrong with him."



"Lucan's nearly pure bloodlines made him suffer the most, but they also helped him heal more quickly from the burns. Even then, it wasn't easy for him; he would have required a great deal of blood to replenish his system after so much trauma. By the time he was well enough to leave the compound to hunt, he would have been practically ravenous with hunger."



And he had been. Gabrielle understood now. The memory of him feeding from the Minion he'd killed flashed through her mind, but it had a different context now, no longer the monstrous act it had appeared on the surface, but a means of survival. Everything was taking on a different context since she'd met Lucan.



In the beginning, she would have considered the war between the Breed and their enemies to be nothing more than one evil versus another, but now she couldn't help feeling that it was her war, too. She had a stake in its outcome, and not just because her future was apparently linked to this strange otherworld. It was important to her that Lucan won not only the war against the Rogues, but also the equally devastating, very personal war he was struggling with in private.



She worried for him, and couldn't dismiss the niggling fear that had been crawling up her spine since he and the other warriors left the compound for the raid.



"You love him very much, don't you?" Danika asked as Gabrielle's anxious silence stretched between them.



"I do, yes." She met the other woman's gaze, seeing no reason to hide the truth when it was probably written all over her face. "Can I tell you something, Danika? I have this awful feeling about what he's doing tonight. And to make it worse, Tegan said he didn't think Lucan was going to be alive much longer. The longer I sit here, the more afraid I am that Tegan might be right."



Danika frowned. "You spoke with Tegan?"



"I ran into him - literally - a short while ago. He told me not to get too attached to Lucan."



"Because he thought Lucan was going to die?" Danika let out a long breath and shook her head. "That one seems to enjoy putting others on edge. He probably said those things only because he knew it would upset you."



"Lucan has said there is some bad blood between them. Do you think Tegan can be trusted?"



The blond Breedmate seemed to consider it for a moment. "I can tell you that loyalty is a large part of the warriors' code. It means everything to these males, down to a one. Nothing in this world could make them violate that sacred trust." She rose now, and took Gabrielle's hand in hers. "Come on. Let's go find Eva and Savannah. The wait will pass more quickly for all of us if we don't spend it alone."



Chapter Twenty-six



From their observation point on the roof of one of the harbor buildings, Lucan and the other warriors watched as a small pickup truck, spitting gravel under its polished chrome wheels, roared up to the front of their target location. The driver was human. If his sweaty, slightly anxious scent didn't announce him, the country music blaring out of his open window surely would. He got out of the vehicle carrying a stuffed brown-paper bag that reeked of steaming fried rice and pork lo mein.



"Looks like our boys are eating in tonight," Dante drawled, while the unsuspecting delivery man checked the flapping white ticket stapled onto his order and looked around the desolated wharf with dawning wariness.



The driver approached the warehouse's entry door, shot another nervous look around, then swore into the darkness and jabbed the buzzer. There were no lights on inside the building, only a pool of yellow shining down from the bare bulb over the door. The battered steel panel opened, revealing the dark behind it. Lucan could see the feral eyes of a Rogue staring out as the delivery man blurted the take-out order total and thrust the bag into the wedge of blackness in front of him.



"Whaddaya mean, trade for it?" the urban cowboy demanded in a thick Boston accent. "What the hell - "



A large hand seized him by the front of his shirt, jerking him off his feet. He screamed, and in his flailing panic somehow managed to rip away from the Rogue's grasp.



"Oops," Niko hissed from his position near the ledge, "guess he just realized it wasn't Chinese on the menu."



The Rogue flew at the human in a blur of shadows, taking him down from behind, tearing open his throat with savage efficiency. Death was bloody and instantaneous. When the Rogue leaped up and began to heft its kill onto its shoulder to drag it inside, Lucan got to his feet.



"Time to move. Let's go."



In concert, the warriors hit the ground and headed at blinding speed for the Rogues' warehouse lair. Lucan, leading the way, was first to reach the vampire and his lifeless human burden. He slapped a hard hand onto the Rogue's shoulder and spun him around, at the same time drawing one of his slayers' blades from a sheath at his hip. He sliced hard and with unerring aim and severed the beast's head in one clean stroke.