Darker After Midnight (6 page)

How good it felt to know this sense of relaxation, of pure, predatory power. It had been too long since he’d been able to move about in public this freely, without the Order forever breathing down his neck, disrupting him at nearly every turn. He was finished running from Lucan Thorne and his warriors. The blow he delivered to them today should have been signal enough of that. Now it was their turn to go to ground. Their turn to wonder where he might strike next, and how deeply.

Right now, he was in charge.

He owned this moment and everything that would take place within it.

And he wasn’t satisfied, not yet.

He sent the redhead up on the table with a command whispered into her ear. She disrobed as he’d instructed her, gyrating in time to the hard bass thumping from the club’s sound system and trailing her slender fingers through the twin rivulets of blood that streaked down from the open bite wound in her neck.

The ranks tightened, sharks gathering for the kill. Only a few
seconds passed before the first vampire broke from the crowd to leap up onto the table with her.

As he took her throat in his teeth, Dragos nodded his approval. “Drink,” he said, then stood to address the crowd. “Take as much as you want, all of you! There are no laws here tonight. No one to stop us from being what we truly are.”

With an assenting roar, another male vaulted up onto the table to drink from the redhead’s wrist. Then another, fastening his mouth around her other one.

In a far corner of the club, a woman’s scream ripped loose then fell abruptly silent as someone else took his fill in the shadows. More and more feedings began, punctuated here and there by the shrieked alarm of the humans who were being savaged by the suddenly ravenous pack of thirsting Breed vampires.

Dragos observed it all with the satisfaction of a barbarian king at home in his arena.

The coppery fragrance of spilling human blood rose up from everywhere, turning the club into an orgy of sex and savagery and unchecked madness.

Dragos savored the raw, violent energy vibrating all around him. This was power. This was freedom, at last.

And in this moment—this perfect, terrible moment—not even the Order could take it from him.

Let them learn what he’d done here and seethe that they hadn’t been there to stop him. Let them tear apart the Enforcement Agency in a furious quest to find his secret allies. They could dismantle the entire organization for all he cared. His operation would only benefit from any distraction on the Order’s part. And soon enough, nothing they did would matter anymore.

He would own them, the same way he would own the rest of the peasants of this insignificant, unsuspecting world.

With triumph surging through his veins, Dragos threw his head back and roared like the beast he’d been born to be.

“D
O YOU THINK
they killed him?”

“Hmm?” Senator Clarence grunted from his seat beside Tavia in the back of the FBI’s fast-moving black Suburban. He hadn’t spoken for most of the drive out of the city, except to insist that he and the federal agents personally ensured she’d make it home safely. Now he glanced over at her, his expression oddly bland, considering what had happened back at the police station.

Maybe it was shock. God knew, she was still in a state of disbelief herself. “There was so much gunfire as they took us out of that room … I just wondered if you think the police shot and killed that man.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.” The senator gave a casual shrug. “I wouldn’t care either. Nor should you, Tavia. There’s no room in our world for someone like him. If it had been up to me, I would have pumped the bastard’s brain full of lead myself.”

The coldness of the remark disturbed her. She had known Bobby Clarence for nearly three years, first as an intern for him when he was assistant district attorney, then as his personal assistant from the time he decided to run for a seat in the Senate. She knew he drew a hard line when it came to national security and fighting terrorism; he’d built his entire campaign on his commitment
to that platform. But she’d never heard him speak so callously about the life—or the presumed death—of another person.

Tavia turned away, watching the snowy landscape zoom past the dark-tinted window as the vehicle raced north along the highway, leaving the city proper miles behind them. “Who is Dragos?”

Because he was so quiet, at first she thought the senator hadn’t heard her. But when she glanced back at him once more, he was staring right at her. Right
through
her, it seemed. A strange prickle edged its way up the back of her neck, there and gone, as her boss’s handsome face relaxed into a look of mild confusion. “I don’t know what you mean, Tavia. Should I know the name?”

“He seemed to think you did—that man back at the station.” She searched the senator’s face for some sign of recognition but saw none there. “Before you came into the room, he told me you were in danger from someone called Dragos. He said we both could be in danger. He wanted to warn you—”

Senator Clarence’s eyes narrowed. “He said all of this to you? You spoke to this man? When?”

“I didn’t speak to him. Not exactly.” She was still trying to make sense of everything that had occurred tonight. “He saw me through the window in the viewing room. He started talking, saying a lot of strange things.”

The senator slowly shook his head. “Paranoid, crazy things from the sound of it, Tavia.”

“Yes, except he didn’t seem crazy to me. He seemed disturbed and volatile, but not crazy.” She stared at her boss, watching as he rubbed idly at his wrist—the same wrist that had been crushed in the punishing hold of the man who’d broken free of his handcuffs and breached a supposedly secure witness room before half a dozen police officers and federal agents could contain the situation. All so he could get his hands on Senator Clarence. “When he saw you, he said he was already too late. He said this person, Dragos, owned you. What did he mean by that? Why did he think you know this person, or where to find him?”

A tendon ticked in the lean, chiseled jaw. “I’m sure I don’t know, Tavia. Politicians make a lot of enemies—some of them harmless crackpots, others destructive sociopaths who crave attention
and think that violence and terror are the best ways to get it. Who knows what sins this lunatic thinks I’m guilty of. All I know is, he came to my house to commit murder, and when he failed in that, he and his militant pals decided to blow up a government building and take several innocent lives in the process. The only clear danger any of us seemed to be in tonight was coming from him and him alone.”

Tavia acknowledged those sober facts with a grim nod. She couldn’t argue with any of it, and she didn’t know why she felt compelled to dissect and examine any of what she had heard in the police station viewing room. She didn’t know why she couldn’t get the man and every bizarre word he said out of her mind.

And his eyes …

She could still see their steely blue color, and the intensity with which he held her in his unflinching—undeniably sane—stare.

She could still feel the peculiar heat that seemed to radiate out from those stormy irises in that instant when their gazes clashed and held, mere seconds before the Tasers’ probes bit into him and the bullets began to fly.

She was so deep in her thoughts, she jumped a little when the senator lightly smacked his palm against his knee. “Ah, damn. I knew I was forgetting something.”

“What is it?” she asked, turning to look at him as the SUV exited the highway to begin the couple-mile stretch of rural blacktop that would lead to her house.

He gave her a sheepish look, the one he usually reserved for those times when he was about to ask her to work the entire weekend or help him find a last-minute gift for some society function hostess whom it was crucial he impress. “Tomorrow morning is the charity breakfast for the children’s hospital.”

Tavia nodded. “Eight o’clock at Copley Place. I sent your dry cleaning to your house and emailed your speech to both your mobile and your home computer before I left the office for the police station tonight.”

She’d covered all the bases for him, as usual, but he didn’t look satisfied. He winced a bit. “I was thinking of making some changes to the speech. Actually I was hoping you might help me rewrite it
completely. With everything that’s been going on lately, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about it. I’m sorry, Tavia. And I know you’re probably exhausted, but can you spare me an hour or so tonight yet? We can work at my house, since we’re halfway to Marblehead already—”

“I can’t,” she replied, the words tumbling out even before she realized she was going to say them. She’d never refused any task he gave her, but something about tonight—something about Bobby Clarence himself—made her instincts stir with an odd wariness. She shook her head, even as his look of surprise turned to one of disappointment, then cool disapproval. “I wish I could help, but my aunt is very sick. I have her medicine right here.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a prescription bottle full of white pills. “I’m afraid if I’m not there to make sure she takes it and has a proper meal …”

“Of course. I understand,” the senator replied. He was aware of her general living situation—the fact that her aunt Sarah had raised her alone for most of Tavia’s life. She was the only family Tavia had ever known, and the fact that Tavia would drop everything to take care of the older woman was no stretch. At least that much was true.

The Suburban slowed, crunching ice and snow under its tires, as they approached the little gray Cape with its neat black shutters, Christmas wreath on the front door, and cheery yellow light glowing from nearly every window. Tavia met the senator’s watchful gaze from across the wide bench seat. “I’m sorry I can’t help this time. I’m sure your changes will be just fine.”

He nodded. “Give your aunt Sarah my best. Tell her I hope she feels better soon.” His mouth curved into a smile that might have looked sympathetic if not for the dark gleam of doubt in his eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning, Tavia. We can talk more then.”

She opened the SUV door and started to climb out.

Perhaps she should have bitten her tongue, but a question had been riding the tip of it since the moment they left the police station—a question that disturbed her almost as much as the ones now swirling in her head about the senator himself. In fact, it was
something that had been nagging at her even longer than that … from sometime last week, and the instant she first laid eyes on one of Bobby Clarence’s most generous supporters.

She paused outside the vehicle, pivoting to peer in at the senator. “How well do you know Drake Masters?”

She saw it then. The slip in an otherwise careful facade.

“Drake Masters,” he said, less a question than a demand. The senator cleared his throat and attempted to school his features into a mask of mild befuddlement, but Tavia had already seen past it. “What does Drake Masters have to do with anything?”

She let the question linger and stretch out. She didn’t have an answer for it. Not yet.

But she fully intended to find out.

“I have to go now,” she said, and turned to make the short walk up to the house.

Aunt Sarah met her at the door, dressed in a red velour track suit with a green Christmas-themed apron tied around her hips. Holiday music poured out into the night, along with the aroma of fresh-baked bread and cinnamon and something meaty simmering on the stove. “There you are, at last,” the older woman exclaimed. “Why haven’t you been answering your cell phone? I’ve been trying to reach you all evening.”

“I’m sorry. I must have the ringer turned off.” Tavia stepped inside the house and watched as the black SUV slowly rolled away from the curb. “It’s been a long day, Aunt Sarah. I should have called. I hope you didn’t worry.”

“Of course I worried. I love you.” Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked Tavia over. “How was your visit with Dr. Lewis? Did you tell him about the night terrors and headaches you’ve been having lately? Did you pick up your medicine?”

“The appointment went fine, same as the last ten thousand of them. Got my new drug supply right here.” Tavia shook her purse, making the pill bottle rattle as she met her aunt’s welcoming gaze. She smiled at the older woman and all her questions and worry. It was the first real sense of comfort, of normalcy, she’d had all day. “I love you too, Aunt Sarah. What’s for dinner?”