Edge of Dawn

Lara Adrian
lives with her husband in coastal New England, where she is surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts and the endless inspiration of the dark Atlantic ocean.

The Midnight Breed series

Kiss of Midnight
Kiss of Crimson
Midnight Awakening
Midnight Rising
Veil of Midnight
Ashes of Midnight
Shades of Midnight
Taken by Midnight
Deeper Than Midnight
Darker After Midnight
Edge of Dawn

A Taste of Midnight (ebook novella)

E
DGE
of
D
AWN

Lara Adrian

Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the United States by Delacorte Press,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 2013

First published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright © Lara Adrian, 2013

The right of Lara Adrian to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78033-576-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-47210-444-1 (ebook)

Printed and bound in the UK

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Cover design by JoeRoberts.co.uk

For my readers

Come along with me. The adventure continues . . .

Acknowledgments

With thanks, as always, to my family, friends, and staff for all of the love, support, and patience (OMG, the patience!) while I am checked out from real life and happily immersed in my writing.

To my readers in the States and around the world, thank you so very much for your incredible enthusiasm for my books! I am continuously amazed and humbled by your kindness, friendship, and support. (((HUGS)))

To my worldwide publishing teams and support staffs, thank you for helping my books reach their audience, and for the care and effort you put forth to ensure my work is the best it can be.

Special thanks to reader Candice Brady, who generously contributed to a fundraiser held to assist a dear member of the romance community who suffered a tragic loss in her family. Candice’s winning bid scored a special “guest spot” in this novel.

JOURNAL ENTRIES

From the private history archives of the Order Washington, D.C., headquarters

December 26   

The year no longer matters; neither does the date. After what’s happening right now around the world, my guess is history will soon be explained simply in terms of Before and After. Before mankind realized vampires were real, and
after.
After a power-crazed vampire named Dragos freed scores of the most deadly members of the Breed—savage, blood-addicted Rogues—turning the incarcerated monsters loose on an unsuspecting, and obviously unprepared, human public. Even as I write this, I can hardly believe what I’m seeing.

The carnage is unspeakable. The terror unprecedented. It’s hard to look away from the terrible news broadcasts and Internet video pouring into the Order’s temporary compound in Maine. Every report brings footage of screaming men, women, and children, hysterical crowds stampeding on darkened streets, none of them fast enough to elude the predators in pursuit. Cities glowing bright with flames, vehicles abandoned and smoking in the ruins, gunfire and misery filling the air. Everywhere, there is bloodshed and slaughter.

Lucan and the rest of the warriors of the Order have mobilized for Boston to combat the violence, but they are barely a dozen Breed soldiers against hundreds of Rogues flooding into major cities all over the globe. By the time dawn rises to send the Rogues back into the shadows, the cost in innocent lives could number easily in the thousands. And the damage left in the wake of all this blood-soaked chaos—the mistrust between the humans and the Breed—may never be repaired.

Centuries of secrecy and careful peace, undone in a single night . . .

Day 345,
A.F.D.

It’s been almost a year since First Dawn. That’s what everyone calls it now—the morning after the Rogue attacks that changed the world forever. First Dawn. What a hopeful, innocuous term for such a horrific moment in time. But the need for hope is understandable. It’s critical, especially when the wounds from that awful night and the uncertain day that followed are still so fresh.

No one knows the need for hope better than the Order. The warriors have been fighting for twelve hard months to win back some sense of calm, some semblance of peace. Dragos is no more. The Rogues he used as his personal weapons of mass destruction have all been destroyed. The months of carnage and terror have ended. But too much hatred and suspicion still festers on both sides. It’s a volatile time, and even the slightest spark of violence could explode into catastrophe.

In two weeks, Lucan is scheduled to speak on behalf of the Breed before all the nations of the world. Publicly, he will call for peace. Privately, he’s warned all of us in the Order that he dreads man and Breed may instead find themselves swept into war . . .

August 4, 10
A.F.D.

Sometimes it feels as if there’s been a hundred years of spilled blood and lives during the decade that’s passed since First Dawn. The wars continue. Violence escalates around the world. Anarchy reigns in many major cities, spawning criminal activity from bands of rebels and other militants in addition to the relentless killing on both sides of the conflict.

Every day, the Order’s headquarters in D.C. receives sobering reports from the leaders of its district command centers now situated around the world. The war grows worse. Blame for the bloodshed is slung from both directions, deepening the unrest and adding fuel to an already raging fire. Our hope for peace between man and Breed has never seemed further out of reach.

And if this is the state of things ten years into this conflict, I am afraid to guess at what that could mean for the future . . .

1

HUMANS.

The night was thick with them.

They choked the dark sidewalks and intersections of Boston’s old North End, overflowed from the open doorways of dance clubs, sim-lounges, and cocktail bars. Strolling, loitering, conversing, they filled the near-midnight streets with too many voices, too many bodies shuffling and sweating in the unseasonable heat of the early June evening.

And damned too little space to avoid the anxious sidelong looks—those countless quick, darting glances from people pretending they hadn’t noticed, and weren’t the least bit terrified, of the four members of the Order who now strode through the middle of the city’s former restricted sector.

Mira, the lone female of the squad of off-duty warriors, scanned the crowd of
Homo sapiens
civilians with a hard eye. Too bad she and her companions were wearing street clothes and discreetly concealed weapons. She’d have preferred combat gear and an arsenal of heavy firearms. Give the good citizens of Boston a real excuse to stare in mortal terror.

“Twenty years we’ve been outed to mankind, and most of them still gape at us like we’ve come to collect their carotids,” said one of the three Breed males walking alongside her.