Deeper Than Midnight (6 page)

“Altered,” Corinne replied. She dropped her chin, frowning over her right hand, the one that bore her distinctive Breedmate birthmark. “To convince my family the dead female was me, her killer or killers had also cut off her hands and feet. They even took her head.”

Bile rose from her stomach as she considered the cruelty—the utter depravity—it would take to do something like that to another person.

Of course, the things Dragos had done to her and the other Breedmates imprisoned in his laboratories had been only fractionally less heinous. Corinne closed her eyes tight on the barrage of memories that flew at her like bats from out of the darkness: Dank concrete cells. Cold steel tables outfitted with unforgiving, inescapable, thick leather cuffs. There had been many needles and probes. Tests and procedures. Pain and fury and utter hopelessness.

The terrible, soul-wrenching howls of the mad and the dying, and those who were lost somewhere between.

And blood.

So much blood—her own, and that which was regularly forced down her throat so that she, like the other females who’d been taken, would remain youthful and viable specimens for Dragos’s twisted purposes.

Corinne shuddered, wrapping her arms around the deep, cold void that seemed to blow through the center of her now. It was a hollow ache, one she had been trying to keep at bay for a very long time. It had only cracked open wider in the days since her rescue.

“It’s cold,” said her stoic escort from Boston. “You should return to the vehicle until I’ve seen you safely delivered to the house.”

She nodded, but her feet remained still. Now that she was standing there—now that the moment she’d prayed for for so long to come true was actually happening—she wasn’t sure she had the courage to face it. “They think I’m dead, Hunter. All this time, I haven’t existed to them. What if they’ve forgotten me? What if they’ve been happier without me?” Doubt pressed down on her. “Maybe I should have tried to contact them before I left Boston. Maybe coming here like this isn’t such a good idea.”

She pivoted around to face him, hoping to find some sense of reassurance that her fears were ungrounded. She wanted to hear him say that her sudden attack of nerves was nothing more than that—something comforting that Brock would have said if he’d been with her now. But Hunter’s expression was inscrutable. His hawklike golden eyes stared at her, unblinking. Corinne blew out a soft breath. “What would you do if it was your family up there in that house, Hunter?”

One bulky shoulder lifted slightly beneath his black leather trench coat. “I have no family.”

He said it as casually as he might remark that it was dark outside at the moment. A statement of the obvious. One that didn’t invite questions, yet only made her want to know more about him. It was hard to imagine him in any other way than the sober, almost grim, warrior who stood before her. Hard to picture him with the softly rounded face of a child instead of the bladed angles of his cheekbones and unforgiving, squared line of his jaw. He was impossible to imagine without the black combat attire and arsenal of blades and weaponry that glinted within the folds of his long coat.

“You must have parents,” she prodded, curious now. “Someone must have raised you?”

“There is no one.” He glanced past her then, a momentary flick of his gaze. His jaw went rigid, golden eyes narrowed and flinty. “We have been noticed.”

No sooner had he said it, security floodlights mounted around the estate came on one after the other, illuminating the yard and driveway. The glare was blinding, inescapable. Worry seeped into Corinne’s veins as half a dozen armed men poured out from somewhere behind the lights. The guards were Breed, of course, and coming at her and Hunter so fast and hard, Corinne could barely track them.

Hunter had no such problem.

He stepped in front of her in an instant, guiding her around to his back with a firm but gentle arm even as he moved into a ready combat stance. He didn’t draw any of his weapons as her father’s guards charged up to the gate with menace in their eyes, each of the six vampires brandishing a big black rifle, the barrels now trained on Hunter’s chest.

Corinne couldn’t help but notice that even without the threat of a gun in his hand, the sight of Hunter alone seemed to have taken her father’s guards more than a little aback. None of their own kind would mistake him for anything but Breed, and based on their collective looks of wariness as they took in his black fatigues and lethal coolness, it hadn’t taken them more than a second to figure out that he was also a member of the Order.

“Put down your arms,” Hunter said, his unnerving calm having never sounded so deadly. “I have no wish to harm anyone.”

“This is private property,” one of the guards managed to blurt out. “No one passes the gate unannounced.”

Hunter cocked his head. “Put. Down. Your. Arms.”

Two of them obeyed as though on instinct. As another started to lower his rifle too, a sharp
hiss
sounded from a device clipped to his collar. A detached male voice came out of nowhere: “What the devil is going on out there, Mason? Report in at once!”

“Oh, my God,” Corinne whispered. She recognized that booming baritone the instant she heard it, even when raised in uncharacteristic anger. Hope soared through her as though on wings, scattering all of her earlier fears and uncertainty. Peering from behind Hunter, she practically screamed her relief. “Daddy!”

The company of guards couldn’t have looked more stunned. But when she tried to move around Hunter and step forward, one of them raised the long barrel of his gun. Hunter was up against the gate in a second—even less than that, Corinne had to guess. She watched in astonishment as the warrior placed himself in front of her like a living shield of muscle and bone and pure, deadly intent.

She couldn’t tell how he’d been able to grab on to the guard’s rifle so effortlessly, but one moment the black steel snout was pointed at her and the next it was bent at a severe angle, wrenched between the iron bars of the gate. Hunter sent a warning look at the rest of her father’s men, none of whom seemed eager to test him.

Victor Bishop’s voice came over the communication device again. “Someone tell me what the hell is going on. Who’s out there with you?”

The guard named Mason was someone Corinne recognized now. He had been a part of the Bishop household for as long as she could remember, a kind-hearted but serious Breed male who’d been a friend of Brock’s and used to like jazz music almost as much as she did. Back then, he’d worn his coppery-golden hair stylishly slicked back with pomade. Now it was cut shorter, a bright orange cap that made his widening eyes seem even larger.

“Miss Corinne?” he asked hesitantly, gaping at her in obvious disbelief. “But … how? I mean, good lord … is it—can it really be you?”

At her mute nod, a smile broke over his face. The guard whispered a soft curse as he grasped the communication device on his coat’s lapel and brought it closer to his mouth. “Mr. Bishop, sir? This is Mason. We’re down at the front gate, and, uh … well, sir, you are not going to believe this, but I am looking at a miracle out here.”

T
he female was safe and his job here was done.

That’s what Hunter told himself as Corinne Bishop was taken into the hands of her father’s security detail. The guards immediately opened the gates to her amid repeated apologies for the inadvertently hostile way she had been met. The one named Mason had moist eyes as he stared at her, his voice cracking with barely restrained emotion as he rubbed a hand over his face and murmured his disbelief at seeing her standing before him. Waving the other guards ahead, Mason wrapped a protective arm around Corinne’s petite shoulders and started to walk her up the cobbled drive.

Hunter hung back just inside the gate, watching her make her way toward the mansion ahead.

The task of seeing her safely delivered home was met, which left him free to return to the airport where the Order’s private plane waited to take him back to Boston. In a moment, Corinne Bishop would be ensconced inside her family’s Darkhaven, and in just a few short hours, he could resume the more urgent business of pursuing Dragos and the army of Gen One killers who served him.

Yet there was still the matter of Mira’s vision …

Corinne turned around to look at him as she was led farther up the driveway by her father’s guards. Her long ebony hair caught in the cold breeze, whipping dark strands across her pale cheek and brow. Her lips parted as though she meant to speak, but the words were lost, clouding as her breath caught on the wind and flew away. Her gaze lingered on him. He felt that prolonged, haunted glance reach out to him across the distance, as palpable as a touch.

As he watched Corinne Bishop being guided away from him, he saw instead the tear-stained face and wild desperation of the woman in Mira’s precognitive vision. He heard her voice, wrenched with fear and anguish.

Please, I’m begging you …

I love him …

You have to let him live …

Beneath the logic that reminded him the child seer’s gift had never been wrong yet, something unfamiliar tugged at Hunter from inside. The stealth tactician in him was quick to suggest that the vision was a puzzle demanding to be resolved. The assassin in him cautioned that Mira’s precognition might lead him to an enemy to be discovered and destroyed.

But there was another part of him that looked at Corinne Bishop in that moment, with her tender beauty and the steely resilience that had carried her out of Dragos’s dungeons with her spine held straight, and he couldn’t fathom being the one to finally crush her as he had in Mira’s vision.

He felt an odd respect for her, for what she might have suffered at Dragos’s hands. Odder to him still, he realized that he didn’t want to be the one to cause Corinne Bishop’s pain and tears.

It was that illogical, far-too-human part of him that made him glance away from her and begin to pivot back toward his waiting vehicle at the end of the drive. If he left now, the chances were good that he might never cross paths with the female again.

He could go back to Boston, and the vision be damned.

As he took the first steps, the front door of the mansion was flung open on a keening feminine wail. “Corinne! I have to see her! I want to see my daughter!”

Hunter paused to look over his shoulder as an attractive brunette female raced out of the house. She hadn’t stopped to grab a coat, had apparently left whatever she’d been doing and run outside in just a white satiny blouse and a narrow, dark skirt. Her high-heeled shoes clicked and skidded as she flew over the cobbled drive, sobbing as she hurried toward the guards and Corinne in the center of the long driveway.

Corinne broke away from the others and rushed to meet her. “Mother!”

The two women fell into a fierce embrace, both of them weeping and laughing, clutching each other tightly as they each spoke in a rush of whispered words punctuated by joyful tears.

Victor Bishop was only a moment behind his relieved mate. The Darkhaven’s head of household came up in silence, his face pallid and slack in the moonlight, black brows lowered over unblinking dark eyes. A choked cry snagged in the Breed male’s throat. “Corinne …”

She glanced up as he said her name, nodding as he tentatively approached her. “It’s really me, Daddy. Oh, God … I never thought I’d see any of you again!”

Hunter observed the continued reunion, listening as Corinne’s stricken father tried to make sense of everything that was happening. “I don’t understand how any of this can be,” Bishop murmured. “You’ve been gone so long, Corinne. You were dead …”

“No,” she assured him, stepping out of his arms to meet his stunned gaze. “I was taken away that night. You were made to believe I was dead, but I wasn’t. All this time, I was kept like a prisoner. But none of that matters now. I’m just so glad to be home again. I never thought I’d be free.”

Victor Bishop’s head shook slowly. His brows sank lower, deepening his look of confusion. “I can hardly believe it. After all these years … How is it possible that you’re standing here in front of us now?”

“The Order,” Corinne replied. Her gaze found Hunter through the cluster of Bishop’s guards. “I owe my life to the warriors and their mates. They found the place I was being held. Last week they rescued me and several other captives and brought us to a safe house in Rhode Island.”

“Last week,” Bishop murmured, sounding both surprised and disturbed. “And no one thought to tell us? We should have been informed that you were all right—we should have been told that you were alive, for crissake.”

Corinne gently took his hands in hers. “I couldn’t let you hear it from anyone but me, in person. I wanted to be able to see your faces and put my arms around you when I told you what happened to me.” Her expression went solemn, almost mournful, a look that did not escape Hunter’s notice. “Oh, Daddy … there’s so much I need to tell you and Mother both.”

While Corinne’s mother hugged her tight and stifled another sob, Victor Bishop’s jaw was growing increasingly taut. “And what of your abductor? Good God, please tell me the bastard who stole you from us is dead—”

“He will be,” Hunter replied, his interruption drawing the eyes of everyone gathered there. “The Order pursues him as we speak. Soon the one who did this will be no more.”

Bishop’s narrow look scanned Hunter from head to toe. “Soon isn’t good enough when it’s my family at risk, warrior.” He gestured to his men. “Shut that gate and arm the perimeter sensors. We shouldn’t stay out here any longer. Regina, take Corinne into the house. I’ll be right behind you.”

Bishop’s guards hurried to carry out his commands. As Corinne’s mother steered her toward the house, Corinne broke away and walked back to where Hunter stood. She held out her hand to him. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

He stared for a moment, torn between her strong, steady gaze and the pale, delicate hand that reached out to him, waiting for his acknowledgment.

Hunter took her slender fingers into his grasp. “You are welcome,” he murmured, careful not to crush her as his large hand devoured her much smaller one.

He wasn’t used to physical contact, and he’d never known any need for gratitude. Still, it was impossible not to notice how soft Corinne’s skin was against his palm and fingertips. Like warm velvet against the rough scrape of his hard, weapon-callused hand.

It shouldn’t have meant anything at all, but somehow the idea of touching this female piqued all kinds of interest within him. Unwanted, unwarranted interest, a point made all the more clear as Corinne’s anguished pleas from Mira’s vision echoed in the back of his mind.

Let him go, Hunter …

Please, I’m begging you … Don’t do this!

Can’t you understand? I love him! He means everything to me …

He released her from his loose hold, but even after the contact was broken, her warmth stayed nestled in the cradle of his palm as he fisted his hand and brought it back down to his side.

Corinne quietly cleared her throat, folding her arms across herself. “Please tell everyone in the Order—Andreas Reichen and Claire too—that I will be eternally grateful for all they’ve done.”

Hunter inclined his head. “Live a good life, Corinne Bishop.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then gave him a faint nod and pivoted to rejoin her mother. As the two females started for the house together, Victor Bishop stepped into Hunter’s line of vision, his head turned to watch the women walk back up the driveway. When they were well out of earshot, he exhaled a low curse.

“I never dreamed this moment would come,” he murmured as he looked back at Hunter once more. “We buried that girl decades ago. Or, as it turns out, what we thought was that girl. It took a long time for Regina to give up hope that there had been some mistake and the body my men pulled out of the river months later wasn’t actually her daughter.”

Hunter listened in silence, watching Bishop’s face twist and redden with emotion as he spoke.

“It nearly destroyed Regina, losing Corinne. She kept hoping for a miracle. She held on to that hope for longer than I imagined could be possible. Eventually, she did let go.” Bishop ran his palm over his creased brow and slowly shook his head. “And now … thanks to God and the Order, tonight she finally has her miracle. We all do.”

Hunter did not acknowledge the praise, nor the outstretched hand of the Darkhaven vampire in front of him. He kept his eyes trained on Corinne’s retreating form as she and her mother walked the remainder of the long driveway, then entered the open front door of the warmly lit house up ahead. He watched until the door was closed behind them and he was assured that his temporary ward was fully transferred to the shelter of her family’s arms.

In the lengthening quiet, Victor Bishop cleared his throat as he let his hand drift back down to his side. “How can I ever repay the Order for what you’ve done here tonight?”

“Keep her safe,” Hunter said, then he turned away from Bishop and walked to his waiting vehicle at the street.

A furious throb was drumming in Lucan’s veins as he sat with several members of the Order in the compound’s tech lab. His elbows planted on the edge of the long conference table, he and the others listened in disgust as Gideon reviewed his findings concerning Murdock, the Enforcement Agent who’d fled the scene last night at the private club in Boston and had yet to surface anywhere.

“In addition to the sip-and-strip clubs he tends to frequent, our boy Murdock also seems to prefer his blood Hosts on the rare side—as in very young. There’s more than one blemish in his records with the Agency for solicitation of an underage human, and not just solicitation with intent to feed. Also some citations for excessive force among both Darkhaven civilian populations and humankind. Keep in mind, this is just the shit in his general file. If I dig any deeper than the surface, there’s bound to be a whole other pile of nasty on this guy.”

Gideon had hacked in and pulled up the vampire’s records from the IID, the information database that logged nearly every known Breed individual in existence. There were exceptions, of course, namely Lucan and an untold number of other early-generation Breed born centuries before any kind of technology had been in place. Lucan glanced at the flat-panel monitor where a photograph of a prissy brown-haired male with an oily, too-smug smile filled the screen.

“What about family? Anyone we can squeeze for intel on this asshole’s possible whereabouts?”

Gideon shook his head. “Never took a Breedmate, and there is no recorded kin on file anywhere. Another thing, Murdock’s only been local for the past fifty-odd years. Before that, back around the time of his documented problems with kids and violence, he was part of the Agency in Atlanta. Looks like the director of that region personally recommended Murdock for transfer and promotion to his position up here.”

Across the table, seated in black fatigues and patrol gear like the gathered male warriors, Nikolai’s mate, Renata, scoffed. Her chin-length brunette hair swung around her jaw line as she leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “What easier way to get rid of a problem than packing it up and shipping it somewhere else? I saw plenty of that going on among the orphanage staffs in Montreal.”

“Sounds like this scumbag Murdock needs to be put down,” Rio said from the other side of Niko and Renata. His topaz eyes smoldered with contempt, making the web of combat scars that riddled the left side of his face look all the more savage.

Another of the warriors, Kade, gave a nod of his spiky-haired dark head. “Too bad Hunter and Chase didn’t finish him off at the club last night. Might’ve done the world a favor.”

“Murdock is scum,” Lucan agreed, “but if there’s any chance he might be connected to Dragos or his operation—even remotely connected—then we need to make sure he keeps breathing long enough to lead us there.”

“What about Sterling?” It was Elise who spoke, her voice tentative as she turned to look at Lucan from her seat between him and her mate, Tegan. While the rest of the assembled group had been occupied with talk of their missions and the new priority of locating Agent Murdock, Elise had been quiet, pensive. Now she wore her worry in the flat press of her mouth and in the stormy lavender of her eyes. “He’s been gone for nearly twenty-four hours. Has there been any word from him at all?”