Darker After Midnight (17 page)

He didn’t answer. He had no voice, now that his hunger was roaring to life again inside him. A mental command sent a braided silk drapery tie snaking into his palm from the nearby shuttered window. He secured it around her wrists, then set her down on a covered chair beside the fireplace.

“Please,” she said, her tone gone from fear and outrage to one of desperate bargaining. “Please, I won’t tell anyone what I’ve seen. I promise. Just let me go.”

He crouched down in front of her, their faces level. She was shivering and shaking, a sheen of perspiration breaking out on her tense brow. Looking at her now, he had to wonder if she’d been telling him the truth about her medical condition. She looked ill and pale since she’d bitten him, on the verge of fainting.

Chase didn’t feel so well himself. It was easily eight hours before nightfall. Eight hours before he could even entertain the idea of getting out of there to work off some of his aggression. Eight hours of being trapped in close quarters with a woman who tempted him on more levels than he wanted to consider.

His fingers shook with the force of his mounting blood hunger as he reached out to wipe away the scarlet stain from her lips. Her eyes implored him for mercy, but the beast raging to life inside him now had none.

He stood and strode away from her without a word.

“P
OLICE TODAY
had no comment when asked whether the incident that occurred last night at the Hyatt Regency downtown was in any way connected to the recent killing of Senator Robert Clarence. Channel 5 has unconfirmed reports that at least one body was recovered from the scene. However, law enforcement officials are not willing to disclose any further details pending a complete invest—”

Dragos silenced the large flat-screen TV and tossed the remote behind him onto the bed. Naked, his
glyph
-covered skin still glistening with sweat and spilled human blood, he retrieved his pants from where they’d hit the floor a few hours ago and stepped into them.

“Get dressed,” he told the pair of females who’d serviced his recent needs, basic and carnal both. The two humans were young and stupid, plucked from local stock on the mainland last night and brought the handful of miles offshore to his hidden island lair. They’d taken one look at his chauffeured car as it waited at a stoplight in their sorry little town and had climbed inside as soon as he curled his finger at them in invitation.

It would be their last mistake; as with all of his playthings, he
didn’t intend that either one of them would live to make it out of his lair in one piece.

Dismissing the thought of them already, he strode out of the room. Since relocating to the remote fortress off the coast of Maine more than a month ago, he’d managed to get most of his operation back online and functional. Systems had been in place on a contingency basis for years, and his Minion staff of technology and laboratory experts worked around the clock to see that everything continued to run smoothly.

He had other Minions as well, embedded around Boston and elsewhere, a veritable legion of human mind slaves whose eyes and ears—and sometimes their killing hands—were loyal solely to him. It was those Minions who’d reported last night’s hotel break-in to him, hours before the newshounds at the local television station started sniffing around the incident.

Dragos knew the cop who’d been killed inside the suite belonged to him. He also knew it was the work of the Order—specifically, Sterling Chase, who’d done the killing. The warrior’s escape from police custody had cost Dragos several Minion pawns already, not the least of whom was Senator Robert Clarence himself.

Not that Dragos hadn’t been making quick and prudent use of the upwardly mobile human’s political connections from the moment he’d written his first contribution check to the senator’s election campaign. In fact, the senator might prove even more useful in death than he had while he was breathing.

A pity to have to forfeit Tavia Fairchild this early in the game, however.

The news that she’d gone missing overnight hadn’t come as a complete surprise. She’d been under the watch of his Minion and the two federal agents at the hotel. With the raid of the suite by Sterling Chase, it seemed almost certain that the female was in the Order’s hands now.

Would they kill her when they realized what she was? he wondered idly.

No matter. She wasn’t the first of her kind, nor the last. And
once the Order figured that out, it would be too late for them to act on the knowledge anyway.

Dragos was smiling as he entered his command center. Ignoring the lowered heads of his Minion staff on his approach, he strode to the heart of the operations room and sat down in the seat hastily vacated by one of the technicians. He called up an encrypted file directory on one of the computers and watched with pride as the monitor filled with building schematics and security clearance codes for numerous government and infrastructure facilities. More intel loaded on-screen: layouts of power plants, military operations, and transportation control rooms both in the United States and abroad. Political and corporate organizational structures.

Top-secret documents that only a mole of consummate ability and years of dedicated effort could provide.

Dragos was looking at the means to topple mankind from the inside out. All that was left for him to do was open the door.

As he paused to admire the fruits of his own genius, his cell phone began to ring in his pants pocket. It was the line he used only for specific business—had, in fact, given the private number out to just two people. With Senator Clarence slaughtered two nights ago, that left just one other possible option.

“Drake Masters,” he announced as he answered, giving the name his caller would be expecting to hear.

The United States’ second in command cleared his throat. “Good morning, Mr. Masters. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“Not at all,” Dragos replied smoothly. Although his voice was calm and professional, his pulse spiked with the promise of a baited snare about to spring tight on unsuspecting prey. “And please, sir, call me Drake.”

“Well, thank you, Drake,” said the former university professor who was currently just one heartbeat away from arguably the highest seat of power in the world. He had also been a longtime friend and mentor to Robert Clarence, and the weight of his grief was evident in the faint rasp of the aging human’s voice. “A terrible, terrible thing, what happened to Bobby. Our country lost a
true patriot, one of the best. And I think you should know that he spoke very highly of you.”

Dragos gave a mild chuckle before effecting a suitably sober tone as he spoke of his Minion. “The senator and I had a meeting of the minds, if you will. We shared a common dream for this country. Indeed, for all the world.”

“I don’t doubt that,” the vice president agreed. “I realize you didn’t know Bobby for very long, but you made quite an impression on him, Drake. You were practically all he talked about lately, especially in the last few days. He felt it was very important that you and I have the chance to sit down together and discuss how our interests for the country might mesh. Hell, the kid pretty much insisted that I make room for you on my calendar, so who was I to refuse?”

“Bobby could be quite persuasive when it came to campaigning for what he believed in,” Dragos said. “But then, wasn’t that part of his charm?”

The human chuckled. “Right you are, Drake. Right you are. Listen, I wanted to apologize that we weren’t able to connect last night as Bobby had arranged for us to do before he was …” The voice trailed off for a moment. “Obviously, a lot has changed over the past couple of days.”

“Of course. No need to apologize.” But Dragos wasn’t about to let the face-to-face meeting with the important politician slip through his fingers. “I wouldn’t think of imposing on your time, sir, especially after you’ve just lost a close friend.” He paused as if to compose himself. “You and I both have lost a good friend. Business can wait for another time.”

“Actually,” the human hedged, “I’m planning to be in Boston tomorrow afternoon for Bobby’s funeral. Perhaps you and I could find some time to talk following the service.”

“Certainly,” Dragos said, working to keep the eagerness from his voice. All he needed was a few minutes alone with the human and he would own him completely. Dragos’s lips parted with his growing smile, fangs filling his mouth in anticipation of the triumph soon to come. “Until tomorrow, sir.”

CHASE STOOD IN FRONT
of the bathroom sink in the Darkhaven’s master suite, sewing up the last of his gunshot wounds from the other night. Spent cotton balls and gauze littered the deep black basin of the sink, all of it soaked and reeking of antiseptic and blood. It had been roughly seventy-two hours since he’d been injured at the police station. The wounds should be healed by now. That they still lingered wasn’t a good sign at all.

Nor was the gnawing ache that rattled deep in his marrow, compelling him to hunt. To feed. To fill the void that would soon be endless, unquenchable.

His fingers shook around the drugstore sewing kit needle. His vision blurred at the edges of his sight, making it hard as hell to focus under the yellow glare of the bathroom lights. He blinked away the annoying jangle of his senses, gritting his teeth as he pushed the needle and quadrupled mending thread through the frayed skin above his left pectoral muscle. He tugged the last stitch tight, then made a rudimentary knot to tie the sutures off.

As he bit the tail of the thread free, he caught his reflection in the mirror. Haggard, dark-ringed eyes stared back at him in the glass. Sallow skin and gaunt cheeks aged him—not quite to the hundred-plus years of his true age, but easily a decade beyond the vibrant thirty that was his normal appearance as an adult member of the Breed. He looked tired and worn, on the verge of defeat.

Hell, he felt it too.

With a muttered curse, he tossed the needle into the sink with the rest of the rubbish. His breath was ragged as he pulled in a long breath, then pushed it out on a low growl. What the fuck was he doing, holing up in this godforsaken place, keeping a woman against her will in the other room? Even if she did prove to be something more than she seemed—even if she proved to be connected in some way to Dragos himself—who was he to be her judge and jury? He wasn’t a part of the Order anymore. He hadn’t been part of the Enforcement Agency in a long time either.

From where he stood now, it wasn’t that difficult to see himself
through Tavia’s frightened eyes. He was deranged, dangerous … a monster.

For what wasn’t the first time, his eyes strayed to the small silver vial that rested on the edge of the black granite countertop. He’d found it in the bedroom, lying on top of his old desk with a handful of printed snapshots from the time when he’d called this Darkhaven home. He’d been unable to resist picking up the slender container with its damnable contents sealed inside.

Even now his hand moved toward it as though drawn by an invisible tether.

Chase palmed the vial, the metal cold against his skin. The red wax that sealed the cork stopper felt smooth under the pad of his thumb. Inside the silver capsule was all that remained of a manufactured substance that had destroyed many lives the autumn before last—including that of his nephew, Camden.

The lab and the human who’d created the drug were long gone, but Chase had saved this last dose as a reminder to himself of the evil he’d helped destroy. And looking at it now, he had to acknowledge that he’d saved the poisonous sample for another reason too. It was his final out. His guarantee that if his struggle to resist Bloodlust became too much for him to bear, he could end it in a single moment.

A taste of Crimson was enough to turn him into a mindless, blood-crazed Rogue in an instant. Just as it had Camden and too many of the Breed youth’s innocent friends last year. But inside the innocuous, polished silver vial was a deadly dose of the drug. More than enough to kill.