Kiss of Midnight

Footsteps pounded at a steady clip as whoever was on guard started coming for her. Gabrielle turned back into the stairwell and took off sprinting down the steps, her gear bouncing against her hip. As she descended, light grew scarce. She gripped the flashlight in her hand, but hated to use it for fear of creating a beacon for security to follow. She hit the last stair, pushed open the metal door, and plunged into the dark of the lower-level corridor.



Back on the stairs, she heard the monitored door swing open with a bang as her pursuer thundered down behind her, running hard and gaining on her fast.



Finally, she reached the service door at the end of the corridor. Throwing herself against the cold steel, she rushed into the dank basement, and raced for the small window that was open to the outside. A blast of fresh air gave her strength as she slapped her hands onto the casement and hoisted herself up. She vaulted through the window and tumbled onto the pebbled earth outside.



She couldn't hear her pursuer now. Maybe she had lost him in the dark twisting hallways. God, she hoped so.



Gabrielle shot to her feet and ran for the breached corner of the perimeter fence. She found it quickly. Diving to her hands and knees, she scrambled under the snipped section of wire, heart pounding in her ears, adrenaline jetting through her veins. She was too panicked: in her haste to flee, she scraped the side of her face on a rough edge of wire. The cut burned her cheek and she felt the hot trickle of blood running near her ear. But she ignored the searing sting and the bruising crush of her camera case as she wriggled on her belly through the fence and out toward freedom.



Once clear of the fence, Gabrielle leaped up and made a mad dash across the wide, rough lawn of the outer grounds. She spared only the barest glance behind her - long enough to see that the huge security guard was still there, having exited from somewhere on the ground floor and was now bounding after her like a beast straight out of hell. Gabrielle swallowed a knot of sheer panic at the sight of him. The guy was built like a tank, easily 250 pounds and all of it muscle, capped off by a large square head, his hair buzzed military style. The big man ran up to the tall fence and stopped at last, smashing his fist against the links as Gabrielle sped into the thick cover of trees separating the property from the road.



Her car was on the side of the quiet stretch of pavement, right where she had left it. With trembling hands, Gabrielle fumbled with the locked door, petrified that G.I. Joe on steroids might catch up to her yet. Her fear seemed irrational, but that didn't stop the adrenaline from pouring through her. Dropping down into the leather seat of the Mini, Gabrielle slammed the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. Heart racing, she threw the little car into drive, stomped on the gas pedal, and ripped out onto the road, making her escape in a screech of spinning tires and burning rubber.



Chapter Six



At midweek in the height of the summer tourist season, Boston's parks and avenues were clotted with humanity. Commuter trains sped people in from the suburbs, to workplaces and museums, and to the countless historic sites located around the city. Camera-toting gawkers clambered onto excursion buses and horse-drawn carriages to putter around town, while others lined up to board over-priced, overcrowded charter tours that would haul them by the hundreds out to the Cape.



Not far from the daytime bustle, secreted some three-hundred feet beneath a heavily secured mansion outside the city, Lucan Thorne leaned over a flat-panel monitor in the Breed warriors' compound and muttered a ripe curse. Vampire identification records scrolled up the screen's display with machine-gun speed as a computer program searched a massive international database for matches against the photos Gabrielle Maxwell had taken.



"Anything yet?" he asked, slanting an impatient look at Gideon, the machine's operator.



"Zip, so far. But my search is still clocking. IID's got a few million records to scan." Gideon's sharp blue eyes flashed over the rims of sleek silver shades. "I'll get a lock on your suckheads, don't worry."



"I never do," Lucan replied, and meant it. Gideon had an IQ that was off the charts, compounded by a streak of tenacity that ran a mile wide. The vampire was as much relentless bloodhound as he was flat-out genius, and Lucan was damned glad to have him on his side. "If you can't flush them out, Gideon, no one can."



Beneath his crown of cropped, spiky blond hair, the Breed's computer guru bared a cocky, confident grin. "That's why I get the big bucks."



"Yeah, something like that," Lucan said, drawing away from the screen's nonstop roll of information.



None of the Breed warriors who had signed on to protect the race from the scourge of the Rogues did so for any kind of payback. They never had, not from the first forming of their alliance in what was mankind's medieval era to now. Each warrior had his reasons for choosing this dangerous way of life, and some of them were, admittedly, more noble than others. Like Gideon, who had worked the field independently until seeking out Lucan after his twin brothers - little more than children - were killed by Rogues outside the London Darkhaven. That was three centuries ago, give or take a few decades.



Even then, Gideon's skill with a sword had been rivaled only by his rapier-sharp mind. He had slain many Rogues in his time, but much later, devotion and a private pledge to his Breedmate, Savannah, had made him give up combat in exchange for wielding the weapon of technology in service to the Breed.



Each of the six warriors who currently fought beside Lucan had their personal talents. They had their own personal demons as well, though none of them were the touchy-feely types looking to have Dr. Phil crawl up their ass with a flashlight. Some things were better left to the dark, and probably the only one of them who felt that more than Lucan himself was the Breed warrior called Dante.



Lucan acknowledged the young vampire as he strode into the tech lab from one of the compound's numerous chambers. Dante, wrapped in his standard basic black attire, was wearing biker's leathers and a fitted tank that showcased both his inked tattoos and his more elaborate Breed markings. His thick biceps were banded with intricate scrollwork, which, to human eyes would seem oddly abstract, a series of interlocking symbols and geometric designs rendered in deep henna hues. Vampire eyes would see the symbols for what they truly were: dermaglyphs, naturally occurring marks inherited from the Breeds' forebears, whose hairless skin had been covered in the changeable, camouflaging pigments.



Glyphs typically were a source of pride for the Breed, unique indications of lineage and social rank. Gen Ones like Lucan bore the marks in greater numbers and deeper saturation. His own dermaglyphs covered his torso, front and back, stretched down onto his thighs and along his upper arms, with still more running up the back of his neck and onto his scalp. Like living tattoos, the glyphs changed hues according to a vampire's emotional state.



Dante's were currently deep russet-bronze, indicating satiation from a recent feeding. No doubt, once he and Lucan had parted company after hunting Rogues the night before, Dante had gone on to find the bed - and the ripe, juicy vein - of a willing female Host topside.



"How goes it?" he asked, dropping into a chair and putting one large booted foot up on the desk in front of him. "Figured you'd have those bastards bagged and tagged for us already, Gid."



Dante's voice held the trace accent of his eighteenth-century Italian ancestry, but tonight the cultured tone bore a rough edge that said the vampire was restless and itching for action. As if to make the point, he drew one of his ever-present signature curved blades from the sheath at his hip and began idly toying with the polished claw of steel.



Malebranche, he called the arced blades, a reference to demons inhabiting one of the nine levels of hell, though sometimes Dante wryly adopted the word as a surname for himself when he was out among humankind. That was about all the poetry the vampire had in his soul; everything else inside of him was unapologetic, cold, dark menace.



Lucan admired that about him, and had to admit watching Dante in combat with those ruthless blades was a thing of beauty, enough to put any artist to shame.



"Nice work last night," Lucan said, well aware that praise from him was rare, even when it was deserved. "You saved my ass out there."



He wasn't talking about the confrontation with the Rogues, but what had happened afterward. Lucan had gone too long without feeding, starvation being something almost as dangerous to their kind as the addictive overindulgence that plagued the Rogues. Dante's look said he understood the meaning, but he let the fact slide with his usual cool nonchalance.



"Shit," he replied, drawing the word out around a deep chuckle. "After all the times you've had my back? Forget it, man. Just returning the favor."



The lab's glass entry doors slid open with a smooth hiss as two more of Lucan's brethren strode in. They were quite a pair. Nikolai, tall and athletic, with sandy hair, strikingly angular features, and piercing ice-blue eyes a shade colder than the winter of his Siberian homeland. The youngest of the group by far, Niko had come of age during the height of the humans' so-called Cold War. A gearhead right out of the cradle, he was a high-octane thrill-seeker and the Breed's first line of defense when it came to things like guns, gadgets, and everything in between.



Conlan, by contrast, was soft-spoken and serious, a consummate tactician. He was as graceful as a big cat next to Niko's brash swagger, a wall of bulky muscle, his copper hair shorn beneath the black triangle of silk that wrapped his skull. The vampire was late generation Breed - a youth by Lucan's standards - his human mother the daughter of a Scottish chieftain. The warrior carried himself with a bearing that was nothing short of regal.



Hell, even his beloved Breedmate, Danika, affectionately referred to the highlander as My Lord a lot of the time, and the five-eleven female was hardly the subservient type.



"Rio's on the way," Nikolai announced, his mouth widening into a sly grin that put twin dimples in his lean cheeks. He gave Lucan a nod of his head. "Eva said to tell you we can have her man only after she's done with him."



"If there's anything left," Dante drawled, holding out his hand to greet the others with a smooth grazing of palms, then a knock of briefly connected knuckles.



Lucan met Niko and Conlan with like respect, but he settled in with mild annoyance at Rio's delay. He didn't begrudge any vampire his chosen Breedmate, but Lucan personally saw no point in strapping himself down with the demands and responsibilities of a blood-bonded female. It was expected of the general population of the Breed to take a woman to mate and bear the next generation, but for the warrior class - those select few males who willingly shunned the sanctuary of the Darkhavens in favor of a life of combat - Lucan saw the process of blood-bonding as sentimental at best.



At its worst, it was an invitation to disaster if a warrior was tempted to put feelings for his mate above his duty to the Breed.



"Where's Tegan?" he asked, his thoughts leading naturally to the last of their number at the compound.



"Not yet returned," Conlan answered.



"Has he called in his location?"



Conlan exchanged a look with Niko, then gave a slight shake of his head. "No word."



"This is the longest he's been MIA," Dante remarked to no one in particular, running his thumb over the curved edge of his blade. "What's it been - three, four days?"



Four days, going on five.



But who the hell was counting?



Answer: they all were, but no one spoke up to voice the concern that had been running through their ranks of late. As it was, Lucan had to work hard to stifle a surge of venom that rose in him when he thought about the most reclusive member of their cadre.



Tegan had always preferred to hunt alone, but his secretive nature was beginning to wear on the others. He was a wild card, more and more lately, and Lucan, frankly, was finding it hard to trust the guy, not that mistrust was anything new when it came to Tegan. There was bad blood between the two of them, no question, but that was ancient history. It had to be. The war they had both pledged themselves to so long ago was more important than any animosity they held for each other.



Still, the vampire bore close watching. Lucan knew Tegan's weaknesses better than any of the others could; he wouldn't hesitate to make a move if the male stepped so much as a toe out of line.



The lab's doors whisked open again and in came Rio at last, tucking the loose tail of a sleek, white, designer shirt into tailored black pants. Some of the buttons were missing from the crisp silk, but Rio wore his postsex dishevelment with the same air of cool that hung over him in everything he did. Under the hank of thick dark hair that swung over his brow, the Spaniard's topaz-colored eyes danced. When he smiled, the tips of his fangs glimmered, not yet receded after the passion with his lady had drawn them out. "I hope you saved a few Rogues for me, my friends." He rubbed his hands together. "I'm feeling good, ready to party."



"Have a seat," Lucan drawled, "and try not to bleed all over Gideon's computers."



Rio's long fingers went up to the crimson rosebud mark at his throat where Eva had apparently bitten him with her blunt human teeth and sipped from his vein. Even though she was a Breedmate, she was still genetically Homo sapiens. Despite the long years that she and others like her would share through the blood-bond with a mate, none of her kind would grow fangs or take on any other traits of the vampire males. It was a widely accepted practice that a vampire would feed his mate from a self-inflicted gash on his wrist or forearm, but passions ran wild in the ranks of the Breed warriors. And in their chosen women. Sex and blood were a potent combination - sometimes, too much so.



Grinning, unrepentant, Rio threw himself into a loose sprawl in one of the swivel chairs and leaned back, propping his big bare feet on the clear Lucite console. He and the other warriors began reviewing the previous night's tallies, exchanging laughs as they one-upped one another and discussed the finer techniques of their profession.