Deeper Than Midnight (16 page)

He didn’t have to hear the animal howl of one of the vampires in pursuit of these doomed humans to know he was standing in the midst of a game for the most depraved of his kind. Banned by Breed law for centuries, clubs that arranged the pursuit of humans as sport—and anything else a vampire could desire—had been condemned but not completely abolished. There were still those who defied the laws. There were still those closed social circles with their very exclusive memberships, catering to the Breed’s perverted elite.

Chase searched for the contempt that he should have felt for something so reprehensible. He felt the flicker of outrage, his old Agency ethics tingling with the impulse to intervene, but it wasn’t enough to keep his fangs from ripping farther from his gums as the coppery fragrance of spilling blood permeated the thicket. Hunger coiled inside him, making his pulse run hot and wild through his veins.

As the humans neared the unplanned blind where he crouched, he got to his feet.

His amber gaze burning his vision, he stepped out of his hiding place and directly into their path.

T
hey arrived at the airport in a low-riding purple El Camino that Hunter had commandeered off the street in New Orleans.

The man who’d left the vehicle idling at the curb had been involved in a heated argument with a couple of scantily clad young women on the corner—women he seemed to think owed him money. While he’d jumped out of the car to shout and curse at them, Hunter had put Corinne in the passenger side, then smoothly slid behind the wheel and sped off before the man had the chance to notice they were gone.

The Order’s jet awaited them in the private hangar as they drove the stolen vehicle into the cavernous space. Corinne glanced at Hunter, still trying to reconcile the tender touch that had held her in the jazz club with the lethally efficient violence that had taken two lives in the alley outside it. “Those guards back in the city,” she murmured as he put the car into park and cut the engine. “You snapped their necks like they were nothing more than twigs.”

His expression was unreadable, completely neutral. “We have to go now, Corinne. Gideon has already called ahead to alert the pilots. They’ll be waiting for us inside.”

She swallowed past the lump of ice that had been lodged in her throat since they fled the club. “You murdered those men, Hunter. In cold blood.”

“Yes,” he said levelly. “Before they had the opportunity to do likewise to us.”

I deal in death
.

That’s what he’d told her, just last night. Born into the role of assassin and trained very well to do unthinkable things. Before now, it was only words. Only the threat of danger. Now she was seated beside him, about to follow him out of their stolen car and onto the plane that would take her with him God-only-knew-where next.

And yet, when he got out from behind the wheel then walked around to open her door and hold out his hand to her, she took it.

She walked with him, across the concrete floor of the hangar toward the lowered staircase that led up to the cabin of the private jet. Hunter climbed the steps ahead of her, then gestured her toward the spacious cabin.

“The pilots must be in the cockpit,” he said as she walked past him to head toward one of the dozen large, leather reclining seats inside. “I will tell them we’re here.”

Corinne swiveled her head to nod in acknowledgment.

But as her attention swept back toward Hunter, everything seemed to go terribly silent around them. His eyes sparked with warning. He reached for her.

“Corinne, get out. Get out of here right n—”

Before she had the chance to react, something huge—a Breed male, easily as large as Hunter and garbed in head-to-toe black form-fitted clothing—exploded out from the closed cockpit area behind him.

Hunter pivoted with lightning speed, meeting his attacker and grabbing hold of the hand that gripped a nasty-looking black pistol. Shots rang out—one bullet lodging into the ceiling above Hunter’s head, two more blasting into the interior sides of the cabin. A window popped, its tempered glass spiderwebbing around the large hole the round left in its wake.

Corinne crouched behind the tall back of a leather seat, watching in a mix of terror and astonishment as Hunter chopped into his assailant’s wrist with the edge of his hand. The gun dropped to the floor of the cabin, kicked away by Hunter’s boot as he landed another series of similar bare-handed, cutting blows to the other male’s neck and jaw.

This one didn’t break like the pair of guards outside the jazz club. He was a match for Hunter in size, and as Corinne stared in frantic horror, she realized that he was also equally matched in deadly skill.

The other male grabbed Hunter by his neck and slammed him into the nearby wall. He battered Hunter with blindingly swift punches to his face and skull. Hunter managed to twist out of the punishing hold. With one hand clamped down on his attacker’s wrist, he wrenched the other male’s arm until Corinne heard the bones crunch under the strain.

Yet Hunter’s attacker uttered nothing more than a grunt as he pivoted around to face him, working to get the advantage once more. Hunter didn’t seem willing to let him have it. He smashed his boot heel into the side of the other male’s kneecap, then delivered another hard blow to his midsection, then the side of the black-clad skull. The assailant went down to the floor, the knit head covering slipping off with the impact, baring his face.

Corinne inhaled a startled gasp.

While Hunter’s thick hair was cropped close to his skull, this vampire’s head was shaved totally bald. An intricate pattern of Gen One
dermaglyphs
tracked up around his ears and across the top of his domed head. Their color was muted, showing none of the fury and pain that would have made another Breed male’s skin markings livid with deep, turbulent colors. Beneath the dark slashes of the intruder’s brows, fierce gray eyes were as flat and cold as steel.

He was as calm and cool as Hunter. And every bit as lethal.

Although the two of them looked different from each other, they were also the same.

Both of them born assassins.

Both of them trained to kill on Dragos’s command.

In the instant it took for her to realize that, Hunter had his foot aimed to come down on the other male’s face. As his thigh muscles flexed and the boot heel started its hard descent, the other male rolled out of the way and launched himself toward the jet’s small galley between the cabin and the wrecked cockpit door.

With his surely broken arm dangling useless at his side, the intruder reached out and pulled down a cabinet full of glassware. He whirled on Hunter, brandishing a long, glittering shard of crystal like a blade. He made a swipe, a strike evaded only narrowly as Hunter dodged aside then plowed his fist into his attacker’s lower abdomen. The blow staggered him, the glass blade shattering under their feet as the struggle pushed farther into the galley.

Corinne could have run out. She should have, probably. But the thought of leaving Hunter to contend with this seemingly unstoppable killer was out of the question. She crept out from behind the cabin seat, looking for some means to help him. Her talent was useless to her here. Without the aid of a steady sound wave, her ability to warp the volume of audio energy could not be summoned.

But if she could get her hands on the gun that lay only a few yards between her and the combat zone …

She saw it too late.

Hunter’s attacker was already jockeying toward it himself, fending Hunter off while he grappled with his foot to bring the weapon within reach.

They pivoted and strained, alternating blows that would have knocked lesser males unconscious. And then, in a moment that passed so quickly Corinne could hardly register the motion, Hunter’s assailant made a grab for the gun and came up with it aimed squarely at his face.

“No!” Corinne’s feet were moving even before she could take a breath and shout once more. She raced up behind the other male and flung herself onto his back. Holding on with one hand, she raked the fingernails of the other into the soft flesh of his face and eyes. She gouged as hard as she could, animalistic in her need to prevent one of Dragos’s beasts from harming someone she cared about.

The trained assassin didn’t so much as gasp at her attack. His elbow came back hard against the side of her face, crushing her lips against her teeth. She tasted blood in her mouth. Felt it trickle down her chin as her lip split open.

And then she was flying backward, tossed off his broad back like she was nothing at all.

Failed or not, her attempt to distract had given Hunter just enough opportunity to knock the gun off its aim as the intruder squeezed off another round. Hunter bowed his head and rammed into the other male with the full force of his body, thick shoulder plowing the other male backward on his heels.

Hunter shoved him toward the open door at the top of the lowered staircase. They both tumbled out of the plane together. Corinne got up and ran to the opening, watching as the two landed hard on the concrete below.

Hunter sent a quick glance up at her—just enough to ascertain that she was all right. She felt the heat of his golden eyes as they lit on her face, on the thin trail of blood that she now wiped from her chin.

She heard his low growl, the first sound he’d uttered during the entire length of his punishing struggle. When he turned back to the semiconscious assassin who lay pinned beneath him on the ground, Hunter’s movements were precise and unflinching. He took the gun from the slackened hand of his attacker and rose to his feet. Straddling the large, black-clad body, Hunter aimed the nose of the weapon at the hairless,
glyph
-covered head.

No, that wasn’t quite right, Corinne noticed now.

He wasn’t aiming at the assassin’s head exactly, but rather at the peculiar ring of hard black material that circled his neck like some kind of collar.

Even from the top of the stairs, she could see the assassin’s eyes go wide with understanding as Hunter leveled the gun on that ring of thick, dull black. Now she saw fear in the other male. Now, finally, she saw his acknowledgment of defeat.

Hunter fired.

A flash of light answered the
crack
of gunfire, so piercingly bright Corinne had to shield her eyes from its sudden blast. When it cleared an instant later, thin smoke rose up from the place where the assassin lay, his large body lifeless on the concrete, his head cleanly severed.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, unsure what she’d just witnessed.

Hunter came out from behind the lowered staircase as she reached the bottom step. “Are you all right?”

She nodded her head, then shook it weakly, trying to understand what had happened here. “How did you … What did you do to him?”

Stoic once more, except for the amber sparks that glittered darkly as his gaze dropped to her split lip, Hunter steered her away from the carnage on the ground. He walked over and retrieved the thick black ring from the charred neck of the assassin. “The pilots were dead before we arrived. Dragos must have eyes all over the city now. He may send more like this one after us. We have to go now.”

She stole an incredulous glance over her shoulder as he guided her away from the body. “Are you just going to leave him there?”

Hunter gave a grim nod. “The hangar doors are open. Come morning, the sun will destroy what’s left of him.”

“And if it doesn’t?” she pressed. “What if Dragos or his men get here first and they realize what you’ve done? What if they come after you?”

“Then they will know what awaits them if they try.” He put his hand out to her, palm up, waiting for her to take it. “Let’s get out of here, Corinne.”

She hesitated, uncertainty gnawing at the edges of her conscience. But then she slipped her hand into his and let him lead her away from the carnage.

T
he human female screamed when she saw Chase emerge from behind the cover of the large oak. Her face bathed in the amber light of his transformed gaze, she sent up another blood-curdling shriek and veered sharply in an attempt to avoid him. He could have felled her easily.

He might have, but in that next instant the woods erupted with the oncoming rush of the blood club in pursuit of their fleeing game. From out of the darkness at the humans’ heels, a vampire descended from a great, airborne leap to tackle one of the running men. As he sank his fangs into his prey’s throat, three more Breed males emerged from the shadows at great speed, all of them converging on the terrified humans like a pack of slavering wolves.

That’s when Chase spotted a face he recognized.

Murdock.

The son of a bitch.

Chase had heard rumors of the male’s perverse interests during his time in the Enforcement Agency, so he supposed it should come as no surprise to see Murdock bounding out of the gloom to grab hold of the little boy in the bloodied shirt.

But it did surprise Chase. It diverted his attention from his own blood thirst more effectively than a good hard dose of midday sun. It enraged him to see Murdock after the altercation a couple of nights ago in Chinatown—time that seemed a hundred years past to him now.

And it repulsed him to watch Murdock seize a hank of the child’s hair in his fist as he threw him to the ground, prepared to wrench the delicate neck into a better angle for him to feed.

Chase flew at the vampire with a savage roar.

He knocked Murdock off the struggling, weeping boy. As the young human made a frantic escape, Chase tumbled with Murdock into the snow and bramble. He drove his fist into the vampire’s jaw, reveling in the vicious
crack
of shattering bone beneath his knuckles.

One of Murdock’s blood club pals noticed the intrusion. He dropped the human he had caught and leapt onto Chase’s back. Chase bucked him off. The vampire crashed hard into a nearby tree.

Murdock started struggling, about to get away. Before he could get the chance, Chase grabbed a fallen branch of jagged oak and smashed it into Murdock’s kneecap. He howled in agony, rolling away to cradle the shattered limb while Chase turned his attention to the other vampire, who was coming right back at him, hissing through bared, bloodied fangs.

Chase pivoted up from the ground with the hard length of oak gripped tightly in his hand just as Murdock’s companion was charging up on him. Chase thrust the jagged branch out in one swift, furious motion—staking the bastard through flesh and sternum, right into the heart.

The remaining two blood club participants seemed to lose interest in their sport when they saw one of their own fall deadweight to the ground, blood gushing from the gaping wound in his chest, and another writhing in anguish in the frozen bracken nearby. They froze where they were, slackened grasps letting their horrified prey loose to escape.

Chase swung toward them, his eyes shooting feral amber beams into the dark woods, his gore-slickened weapon clutched in his hand, ready to do more damage.

Without a single word, the pair of law-breaking Agents bolted in opposite directions, disappearing into the night.

The woods fell silent once again, except for Murdock’s pained groans.

Chase drew in a cleansing breath. Intellect and reason slowly filtered in through the dark fog of his fury and the nagging thirst that still rode him. The situation he now found himself in was hardly ideal. One dead Agent bled out on the ground. Two more on the loose, certain to identify him as having attacked them unprovoked. Given his reputation lately, there would be few who’d believe him if he said he’d stumbled upon an illegal blood hunt and only did what he had to in order to break it up.

And then there was the problem of the escaped humans, the runners. He knew as well as any of his kind how dangerous it was to allow humans back into the general population without first scrubbing their memories of all knowledge of the Breed. Centuries of careful coexistence could be wiped out in an instant if enough hysterical humans were to scream the word “vampire.”

Chase snarled, torn between responsibility for his race and the deeper, more personal need to wring Murdock for any information on Dragos.

Chase knew the right thing to do. He took a step away from Murdock, ready to fall in behind the escaped humans and contain the situation.

The wail of distant sirens, growing louder by the second, gave him pause. He could be too late already.

He glared down at Murdock.

With a muttered curse, he hefted the injured vampire up onto his shoulder, then bounded off into the thicket with him.

There was enough gas in the tank of the pimp’s purple El Camino to carry them a good distance out of the city. This far from New Orleans’s revived central hub, the homes were small and sparse, many still in disrepair or derelict from the ravages of the hurricane that had blown through years prior.

As Hunter drove, he kept a calculating eye on the eastern horizon where day was soon to break. Already the deep blue quiet on the other side of midnight was giving way to the pastel shades of morning. He glanced at Corinne, who sat silent in the passenger seat. Her split lip was swollen and bruised. Her eyes were trained on the empty road ahead. She seemed weary, her delicate shoulders trembling from either shock or chill; he wasn’t sure which.

“We will stop soon,” he said. “You need to rest, and dawn is coming.”

Her nod was vague, little more than a tremor of acknowledgment. She inhaled a shaky breath. Blew it out slowly. “Did you know him?”

Hunter didn’t have to ask who she was referring to. “I’d never seen him before tonight.”

“But you and he …” She swallowed, then ventured a sidelong look at him. “You fought the same way. Neither one of you would have stopped until the other was dead. You were both so vicious, so relentless. So unemotional as you went about it.”

“We were both trained to kill, yes.”

“At Dragos’s command.” He felt her stare fixed on him as she spoke, saw her stricken expression in his peripheral vision. “How many are there?”

Hunter shrugged, uncertain. “I could only guess at our numbers. We were never told about each other. Dragos kept us isolated, with only a Minion handler to look after our basic needs. When we were called into service, our work was always done alone.”

“Have you killed many people?”

“Enough,” he replied, then scowled and shook his head. “No, it won’t be enough until I see Dragos dead and gone. Even if I have to take down every one of the others like me in order to get to him. Then it will be enough.”

She turned her gaze back to the road, quiet and contemplative. “What was the thing you used to kill the assassin back at the airport? He was wearing some kind of collar. You took it when we left, and I saw that you were aiming for it when you shot him. The explosion from it was blinding.”

Hunter could still see the piercing blast of light in his mind. There were times when he could still feel the confining bite of his own collar, the one he’d shed the night he joined the Order. “It’s an obedience device of Dragos’s design. Inside, the collar houses concentrated ultraviolet light. It cannot be tampered with or removed without triggering the detonator. Only Dragos can deactivate the sensor.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You mean it’s a shackle. A lethal one.”

“Effective, certainly.”

“What about you?” Corinne asked. “You don’t wear a collar like that.”

“Not anymore.”

She watched him carefully, her eyes rooted on him as he turned off the main road and followed a side street toward what looked to be an abandoned row of houses. “If you used to wear that awful device too, how did you manage to get free?”

“Dragos had little choice but to release me. He’d assembled a meeting of his allies last summer at a private location outside Montreal. The Order discovered what he was up to and moved in to attack. Dragos commanded me to provide the sole cover while he and his men fled out the back.”

He felt Corinne’s grave understanding in the quiet way she listened. “He was sending you out alone against how many of the Order? He meant for you to die.”

Hunter shrugged. “It only showed me the measure of his desperation, and his contempt for me. He and I both knew that if I didn’t charge out to confront the warriors in those next few moments, he and his associates stood no chance of escaping. I told him I would go, but only if he released me from my bond.”

It had been a long while since he’d thought about that night in the forests outside Montreal. In truth, his journey toward freedom had begun even earlier that summer—the night he’d stolen into the private lodge of a Gen One vampire named Sergei Yakut on orders to kill from Dragos and found himself staring into the mesmerizing, mirrorlike eyes of an innocent little girl.

“It was Mira who gave me the courage to demand my freedom,” he said, a warmth opening in the center of his chest at just the thought of the child. “She is a seer. She has the gift of precognition. It was in her eyes that I saw myself released from Dragos’s control. If not for her, I might never have known it was possible to live any other way.”

“She saved your life,” Corinne murmured. “No wonder you care for her like you do.”

“I would lay down my life for her,” he answered, as automatic as breathing.

And it was true. The observation jolted him on some level, but he couldn’t deny the fondness he had for the little girl. He had become fiercely protective of her, just as he was coming to feel protective of the beautiful woman seated beside him now.

But where his affection for Mira was a soft warmth, his regard for Corinne Bishop was something altogether different. It went deeper, burned with an intensity that only seemed to grow stronger every moment they were together. He desired her; that much had become evident when they’d kissed earlier. He wanted to kiss her again, and that was a problem.

As for the other feelings she stirred in him, he didn’t know what to make of that. Nor did he want to know. His duty was to the Order, and there was no room for distractions. No matter how tempting they might be.

It took Corinne a long while before she responded. “Every child deserves to have someone willing to do whatever it takes to keep them safe, to ensure their happiness. That’s what family is supposed to be, isn’t it?” When she looked at him now, her expression seemed troubled, haunted somehow. “Don’t you think that’s true, Hunter?”

“I would not know.” He slowed in front of a dark little shotgun house with boarded windows and a sagging front porch. It looked abandoned, as did the rest of the meager homes that still stood after the waters had receded years earlier. Cracked, weed-choked cement foundations marked the places where other houses had been. “This one should suffice,” he told Corinne as he put the vehicle in park.

She was still staring at him oddly from across the wide bench seat of the El Camino. “You never had anyone at all—not even when you were a child? Not even your mother?”

He killed the engine and took out the key. “There was no one. I was taken away from the Breedmate who bore me in Dragos’s laboratory when I was still an infant. I have no memory of her. The Minion handler assigned to me by Dragos was responsible for my rearing. Such as it was.”

Her face had gone pale and slack. “You were born in the lab? You were … taken away from your mother?”

“We all were,” he replied. “Dragos engineered our lives from the instant we were conceived. He controlled everything, to ensure we became his perfect killing machines loyal only to him. We were born to be his assassins. His Hunters, and nothing more.”

“Hunters.” The word sounded wooden on her tongue. “I thought Hunter was your name. Is it your name?”

He could see her confusion. Her frown furrowed deeper as she quietly processed all that she was hearing. “Hunter is the only thing I’ve been called from the day I was born. It is what I am. What I will always be.”

“Oh, my God.” Her soft exhalation trembled a bit. Something else flickered across her face in that moment, something he could not place. It looked like sorrow. It looked like fresh, dawning horror. “All the infants born in Dragos’s labs were taken away. They’ve all been raised like you were? All those innocent baby boys. That’s what became of them all …”

It wasn’t asked as a question, but he answered her with a frank, solemn nod.

Corinne closed her eyes, saying nothing more. She turned her head away from him, toward the dark glass of the passenger window.

In the suddenly awkward and lengthening silence, Hunter reached down and opened the driver-side door. “Wait here. I’ll go check the house and make sure it’s suitable shelter.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at him, her face now tucked into her right shoulder. As he walked away, he thought he noticed tears sliding down her cheek.

Corinne all but vaulted out of the vehicle as soon as Hunter had gone into the house. The prolonged drive in the confining space would have been enough to spike her anxiety, all the more so considering what she’d witnessed at the airport tonight. But it was something far worse that sent her fleeing the car for the dank, predawn outdoors.