Taken by Midnight (42 page)

Only a couple of days since she and Brock had promised to spend their future together as lovers, mates ... partners.

"Are you sure you're ready to do this?" he asked her, wrapping his strong arm around her shoulders.

She knew he hated the cold of this place, yet he'd been the one to suggest the trip north. He'd been patient and understanding, and she knew he would stand out here with her forever if he thought she needed the extra time. His breath steamed in the frigid night air, his handsome face solemn, yet reassuring within the deep hood of his parka.

"I'm ready," she said, turning a misty glance onto the small cemetery that stretched out sleepily before her. Twining her gloved fingers through his, she walked with him toward the far corner of the plot, to where a pair of tall granite markers stood side by side in their thick blanket of snow.

She'd been prepared for the wave of emotion that swamped her as she and Brock approached Mitch and Libby's graves for the first time, but it still took her breath away. Her heart clenched, her throat constricted, and for a moment, she wasn't sure that she'd have the strength to see this through, after all.

"I'm scared," she whispered.

Brock squeezed her hand, his deep voice gentle. "You can do it. I'm gonna be right here next to you the whole time."

She looked up into his steady, dark eyes, feeling his love enfold her, lending her his strength. She nodded, then continued walking, her wet gaze rooted on the etched lettering that made everything seem so irrefutable.

So very raw and real.

The tears started falling the moment she stepped onto the ground in 251

front of the headstones. She let go of Brock's hand and moved closer, knowing she had to make it through this part on her own.

"Hi, Mitch," she murmured quietly, kneeling down into the snow. She placed one of the two red roses she'd brought with her at the base of his marker. The other one--fastened with a pink ribbon to a small, stuffed teddy bear--she laid carefully near the smaller gravestone. "Hello, sweetpea."

For a long moment, she remained there, listening to the wind as it blew through the boreal pines, her eyes closed on her tears as she remembered happy times with her husband and daughter.

"Oh, God," she whispered, choked with emotion. "I'm so sorry. I miss you both so much."

She couldn't hold back the pain. It poured out of her in great, ugly sobs--all the pent-up anguish and guilt that she'd been holding locked inside her since the night of the accident.

She'd never been able to feel this purge before. She'd been too afraid.

Too angry with herself to give into the grief and finally let it go.

But she couldn't stop it now. She felt Brock's steady presence behind her--her lifeline, her safe haven in the midst of the storm. She felt stronger now, safe.

She felt loved.

Even more miraculous to her, she felt worthy of being loved.

With a few more murmured words of good-bye, she touched each of the gravestones, then slowly rose to her feet.

Brock was right there, his open arms waiting to catch her in a tender embrace. His kiss was sweet and soothing. He looked down into her eyes, his fingers light and gentle as he swept away her tears. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, feeling lighter despite the lump that still rose in her throat. She felt ready to begin a new chapter in her life. Ready to start her future with the extraordinary Breed male she loved with all the mending pieces of her heart.

Gazing into Brock's warm eyes, she reached out for him, slipping her hand into his. "I'm ready to go home now."

252

Thirsty for more?

Don't miss the next novel in Lara's

hot and thrilling

Midnight Breed series

Deeper Than

Midnight

BY

LARA ADRIAN

Coming soon from Dell Books

253

The club was private, very much off the beaten path, and for damned good reason. Located at the far end of a narrow, ice-encrusted back alley of Boston's Chinatown district, the place catered to an exclusive, if discriminating, crowd. The only humans permitted inside the old brick building were the stable of attractive young women--and a few pretty men--kept on hand to satisfy the late-night clientele's every craving.

Concealed within the shadows of an arched vestibule at street level, the unmarked metal door gave no indication of what lay behind it, not that any local or tourist in their right mind would pause to wonder. The thick slab of steel was shielded by a tall iron grate. Outside the entrance, a big guard loomed like a gargoyle in a knit skullcap and black leather.

The male was Breed, as were the pair of warriors who emerged from the gloom of the alleyway. At the sound of their combat boots crunching in the snow and frozen filth of the pavement, the guard on watch lifted his head. Under a thick, bulbous nose, thin lips curled away from crooked teeth and the sharp tips of the vampire's fangs. Eyes narrowed at the uninvited newcomers, he exhaled a low snarl, his warm breath steaming from his nostrils to plume into the brittle December night air.

Hunter registered a current of tension in his patrol partner's movements as the two of them approached the vampire on guard. Sterling Chase had been twitchy ever since they'd left the Order's compound for tonight's mission. Now, he walked at an aggressive pace, taking the lead, his fingers flexing and contracting where they rested none-too-subtly on the large-caliber semiautomatic pistol holstered on his weapons belt.

The guard took a step forward, too, putting himself directly in their path. Large thighs spread, boots planted wide in warning on the pitted pavement as the vampire's big head lowered. The eyes that had been narrowed on them before in question now went tighter with recognition as they hit and settled on Chase. "You gotta be kidding me. What the hell do you want out here on Enforcement Agency turf,
warrior?
"

"Taggart," Chase said, more growl than greeting, "I see your career has been in no danger of improving since I quit the Agency. Reduced to playing doorman for the local sip-and-strip, eh? What's next for you--security detail at the shopping mall?"

The agent pursed his lips around a ripe curse. "Takes some kind of balls to show your face, especially around here."

Chase's answering chuckle was neither threatened nor amused. "Try looking in a mirror sometime, then let's talk about who's got balls showing his face in public."

254

"This place belongs to the Enforcement Agency," the guard said, crossing beefy arms over a barrel chest. A barrel chest sporting the broad leather strap of a weapons holster, with still more hardware bristling around his waist. "The Order's got no business here."

"Yeah?" Chase grunted. "Tell that to Lucan Thorne. He's the one who will have your ass if you don't move it out of our way. Assuming the two of us standing here cooling our heels for no good reason don't decide to remove you ourselves."

Agent Taggart's mouth had clamped shut at the mention of Lucan, the Order's leader and one of the longest-lived, most formidable elders of the Breed nation. Now, the wary gaze strayed from Chase to Hunter, who lingered behind his fellow warrior in measured silence. Hunter had no quarrel with Taggart, but he had already calculated no less than five different ways to disable him--to kill him swiftly and surely, right where he stood--should the need arise.

It was what Hunter had been trained to do. Born and bred to be a weapon wielded by the merciless hand of the Order's chief adversary, he was long accustomed to viewing the world in logical, unemotional terms.

He no longer served the villain called Dragos, but his deadly skills remained at the core of who, and what, he was. Hunter was lethal--unfailingly so--and in that instantaneous connection of his gaze and Taggart's, he saw that grim understanding reflected in the other male's eyes.

Agent Taggart blinked, then took a step back, removing himself from Hunter's stare and clearing the path to the door of the club.

"I thought you might be willing to reconsider," Chase said, as he and Hunter strode to the iron grate and entered the Enforcement Agency establishment.

The door must have been soundproof. Inside the dark club, loud music thumped in time with multicolored, spinning lights that lit a central stage made of mirrored glass. The only dancers were a trio of half-naked humans gyrating together in front of an audience of leering, hot-eyed vampires seated in booths and tables on the floor below the stage.

Hunter watched the long-haired blond in the center wind herself around a metal pole that climbed up from the floor of the stage to the ceiling.

Swiveling her hips, she lifted one of her enormous, unnaturally round breasts up to meet her snakelike tongue. As she toyed with the pierced nipple, the other dancers, a tattooed woman with spiked purple hair and a dark-eyed young man who barely fit inside the shiny red vinyl pouch slung around his hips, moved to opposite sides of the mirrored stage and began their own solo routines.

255

The club reeked of stale perfume and sweat, but the musty tang couldn't mask the trace scent of fresh human blood. Hunter followed the olfactory trail with his gaze. It led to a far corner booth, where a vampire in the standard-issue Enforcement Agency dark suit and white shirt fed judiciously from the pale throat of a naked, moaning woman sprawled across his lap. Still more Breed males drank from other human blood Hosts, while some in the vampire-run establishment seemed intent on satisfying more carnal needs.

Beside him near the door, Chase had gone as still as stone. A low, rumbling growl leaked from the back of his throat. Hunter spared the feeding and on-stage spectacle inside the place little more than an assessing glance, but Chase's gaze was fixed and hungry, as openly riveted as any of the other Breed males gathered there. Perhaps more so.

Hunter was far more interested in the handful of heads that were now turning their way within the crowd of Enforcement Agents. Their arrival had been noticed, and the simmering looks from every pair of eyes that landed on them now said the situation could get ugly very quickly.

No sooner had he registered the possibility than one of the glaring vampires reclining on a nearby sofa got up to confront them. The male was large, as were his two companions who rose to join him as he cut a clean path through the crowd. All three were visibly armed beneath their finely cut, dark suits.

"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in," drawled the agent in the lead, a trace of the South in his slowly measured words and in his refined, almost delicate, features. "How many decades of service with the Agency, yet you never would have deigned to join any of us in a place like this."

Chase's mouth curved, barely concealing his elongated fangs. "You sound disappointed, Murdock. This shit was never my speed."

"No, you always held yourself above temptation," the vampire replied, his gaze as shrewd as his answering smile. "So careful. So rigidly disciplined, even in your appetites. But things change. People change, don't they, Chase? If you see something you like in here, you need only say so.

For old times' sake, if nothing else, hmm?"

"We've come for information about an agent named Freyne," Hunter interjected when Chase's reply seemed to take longer than necessary. "As soon as we have what we need, we'll leave."

"Is that so?" Murdock considered him with a curious tilt of his head.

Hunter saw the vampire's gaze drift subtly away from his face to note the
dermaglyphs
that tracked up the sides of his neck and around his nape. It took only a moment for the male to discern that Hunter's elaborate pattern of 256

skin markings indicated he was Gen One, a rarity among the Breed.

Hunter was nothing close to the ages of his fellow Gen One warriors, Lucan or Tegan, however, sired by one of the race's Ancients, his blood was every bit as pure. Like his Gen One brethren, his strength and power was roughly that of ten later-generation vampires. It was his rearing as one of Dragos's personal army of assassins--a secret upbringing known by the Order alone--that made him far more lethal than Murdock and these couple dozen agents in the club combined.

Chase seemed to snap out of his distraction at last. "What can you tell us about Freyne?"

Murdock shrugged. "He's dead. But then, I expect you already know that. Freyne and his unit were all killed last week while on a mission to retrieve a kidnapped Darkhaven youth." He gave a slow shake of his head.

"Quite the pity. Not only did the Agency lose several good men, but their mission objective proved less than satisfactory as well."

"Less than satisfactory," Chase scoffed. "Yeah, you could say that.

From what the Order understands, the mission to rescue Kellan Archer was fucked six ways from Sunday. The boy, his father, and grandfather--hell, the entire goddamned Archer family--all of them wiped out in a single night."

Hunter said nothing, letting Chase bait the hook how he saw fit. Most of what he charged was true. The night of the rescue attempt had been a blood-soaked one that had ended with too much death, the worst of it being dealt to the members of Kellan Archer's family.