Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (153 page)

He set the open box down on the floor in front of him and gave it a little push in Nikolai’s direction. Inside were two pristine semiautomatic pistols and a box of rounds.

“They’re yours if you want them, no questions asked.”

Niko picked up one of the .45s and inspected it with an appreciative eye. It was a beautiful, well-tended Colt M1911. Probably military-issued weapons from his service time in Vietnam. “Thank you, Jack.”

The old human warrior gave him a brief nod. “Just take care of her. Keep her safe.”

Nikolai held that steady stare. “I will.”

“Okay,” Jack murmured. “Okay then.”

As he started to get up, someone shouted his name from outside in driveway. A second later, footsteps were pounding up the wooden stairs to the garage apartment.

Niko shot Jack a sharp look. “Does anyone know we’re in here?”

“Nope. Anyway, that’s just Curtis, one of my newer kids. He’s fixing my dinosaur of a computer. Damn virus attack again.” Jack went over to the door. “He thinks I’m looking for a boot disk in here. I’ll get rid of him. Meantime, if you think of anything else you two might need, you just ask.”

“How about a phone?” Niko asked, replacing the pistol next to its mate.

Jack reached into his front pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He tossed it to Nikolai. “It should have a few hours of battery time. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll check in with you again later.” Jack grabbed the doorknob and Nikolai backed into the shadows, as much a reflex because of the daylight outside as it was an effort to stay out of sight from the unwanted visitor who’d arrived at the top of the stairs. “Well, I was mistaken, Curtis. I checked everywhere and there’s no disk in any of my boxes up here.”

Niko saw the other human’s head trying to peer around the edge of the door as Jack closed it firmly behind him. There was a clopping shuffle of feet on the steps as Jack escorted the other human away.

Once he was certain they were gone, Nikolai dialed a remote access number that was maintained by the Order’s Boston headquarters. He typed in Jack’s cell phone number and a code that would identify him to Gideon, then waited for the callback.

Midday in a compound that housed a bunch of vampires was generally a dead zone of inactivity, but none of the seven warriors gathered in the weapons room of the Order’s subterranean headquarters seemed to notice the time, not even the handful of them blessed enough to have loving Breedmates warming their beds. Since regrouping at the compound before daybreak, the warriors had kept themselves busy reviewing current mission statuses and laying out objectives for the night to come. Hashing out Order
business for hours on end was nothing new, but this time there had been none of the usual good-natured smacktalk or joking squabbles over who was grabbing up the best assignments.

Now, a few yards away, at the area used for target practice, a quintet of pistols were being fired one after the other, paper bull’s-eyes at the other end shredded into minuscule confetti. The compound’s shooting range was used more for entertainment than necessity, since all of the warriors had dead-on aim. Even so, that never stopped any of them from testing one another and busting asses just to keep things lively.

There was none of that today. Only the steady hail of all that thundering noise. The racket was oddly comforting, if only because it helped mask the silence, and the fact that the entire compound was vibrating with a low-level current of unrest. For the past thirty-six hours, the mood there had been sober, draped in a collective, if unspoken, dread.

One of their own was missing.

Nikolai had always tended to be something of a maverick, but that didn’t mean the male was unreliable. If he said he was going to do something—or be somewhere— you could damn well count on him to follow through. Every time, no exceptions.

And now, when he should have been back from Montreal a full day and a half ago as planned, Niko was off-grid and out of contact.

Not good,
Lucan thought, sensing he wasn’t alone in that sentiment as he looked at the other warriors who also waited for word of Nikolai and dreaded what it eventually might be.

As a Gen One Breed and the founder of the Order in
the Middle Ages, Lucan was the de facto leader of this cadre of modern-day vampire knights. His word was law in this compound. In times of crisis—for better or worse— it was his response that set the tone for the other warriors. He was well conditioned not to show worry or doubt, a skill that came naturally to that part of him that was virtually immortal, a powerful predator who’d been walking this Earth for some nine hundred years.

But the part of him that was human—the part of him who had come to appreciate life all the more for having met his Breedmate, Gabrielle, just a summer ago—could not pretend that the potential loss of one more soldier in this private war within the vampire nation would be anything but catastrophic. To say nothing of the fact that the warriors of the Order, both the ones who had been with him from the start and the newer members who’d joined the fight in the past year, had become like family to him. So much had changed in that time. Now there were several females living in the compound too, and for one of the warriors and his mate—Dante and Tess—a baby several months on the way.

The stakes were higher than ever for the Order now, one evil defeated only to see another, even more powerful, rise in its place. In just a year’s time, the warriors’ primary mission had gone from hunting down Rogues in an effort to keep the peace, to pursuing a dangerous enemy who’d been hiding in plain sight for many long decades. An enemy who had been patiently constructing his strategy while concealing a deadly secret and waiting for the opportunity to unleash it. If he were to succeed, it wouldn’t be just the Breed populations in peril, but all of humankind as well.

It didn’t take much for Lucan to recall the savagery of
the Old Times, when the night was ruled by a handful of bloodthirsty creatures from another world, creatures who dealt in wide-scale terror and death. They fed like locusts and wreaked destruction like the deadliest marauders. Lucan had made it his life’s mission to eradicate the beasts from existence, even though it had meant slaying the Ancient who was his own father.

The Order had declared war, had wielded swords and ridden into battle to take them all out… or so they’d believed. The idea that one had survived put a deep chill in Lucan’s immortal bones.

He looked at the warriors who served alongside him and couldn’t help feeling some of his age. He couldn’t help feeling that they had all been handed a test last year— perhaps their first true test since the Order’s formation— and the worst of it was still to come.

Lost in dark thoughts as he paced the back of the weapons room, Lucan didn’t realize the training area’s doors were sliding open until Gideon came rushing through them. The blond vampire’s vintage Chucks skidded to a squeaking halt on the white marble in front of Lucan.

“Niko’s back on grid,” he announced, visibly relieved. “His ID just came up on a cell phone with a Montreal exchange.”

“About fucking time,” Lucan said, the snarled reply betraying none of his concern. “You got him on the line?”

Gideon nodded. “He’s on hold back in the tech lab. I thought you’d want to talk to him personally.”

“Damn straight I do.”

The gunfire at the range came to an abrupt stop as one of the other warriors, the Order’s only other Gen One member, Tegan, jogged back and delivered the news of
Niko’s contact to the five males shooting at targets. The warriors at the range—Dante and Rio, longtime members; Chase, who’d left the Enforcement Agency to join the Order last summer; and the two newest recruits, Kade and Brock, both brought in by Niko—put down their weapons and strode forward behind Tegan, all of them a knot of muscle and grim purpose.

Rio, one of the warriors who was tightest with Nikolai, was the first to speak. His scarred face was taut with concern. “What happened to him up there?”

“He’s only given me the
Reader’s Digest
version so far,” Gideon said. “But it’s all sorts of fucked up, starting with Sergei Yakut’s murder two nights ago.”

“Holy hell,” Brock muttered, raking his dark fingers over his skull-trimmed black hair. “This Gen One assassination shit is getting way out of hand.”

“Well,” Gideon added, “that’s not exactly the worst of it. Niko was arrested for the killing and taken into Enforcement Agency custody.”

“Ah, shit,” Kade replied, his pale silver eyes narrowing. “You don’t suppose he—”

“No way,” Dante said without a second’s hesitation. “I doubt he shed a tear for blood-clubbing scum like Yakut, but there’s no way Nikolai had a hand in his death.”

Gideon shook his head. “Nope. And it wasn’t the work of an assassin, either. Niko says Yakut’s own son brought in a Rogue to kill his father. Unfortunately for Nikolai, Yakut’s son has some kind of alliance with the Enforcement Agency. They hauled Niko in and threw him into a containment facility.”

“What the fuck?” This time it was Sterling Chase who spoke up. Being a former Agent himself, he was as aware as any of the warriors in the room how unpleasant a visit
to one of those Agency-managed Rogue holding tanks could be. “Since he’s conscious enough to phone in, I assume he’s not still being held there.”

“He escaped somehow,” Gideon said, “but I don’t have all the details yet. I can tell you that there’s a female involved, a Breedmate who was a member of Yakut’s household. She’s with Niko now.”

Lucan didn’t comment on that troublesome newsflash, although his dark expression probably spoke plainly enough for him. “Where are they?”

“In the city somewhere,” Gideon replied. “Niko wasn’t sure of the exact location, but he says they’re secure for now. Are you ready for the real kicker?”

Lucan arched a brow. “For fuck’s sake. There’s more?”

“Afraid so. The guy who tossed Niko’s ass in the containment facility and personally oversaw his torture? Apparently during one of his chattier moments, the son of a bitch admitted a connection to Dragos.”

CHAPTER
Twenty

N
ikolai was in the middle of a cell phone conversation when Renata carne out of the bathroom from her long, much-needed soak. She’d evidently fallen asleep in the tub at some point because the last thing she remembered was hearing Jack’s voice in the garage apartment after Nikolai had gone out to meet him, and there was no sign of him now. She stepped into the room, her hair damp at the ends and clinging to her neck, her body wrapped in the towel Nikolai had set out for her.

She was groggy and achy, still overly warm, but the cool-water bath had been just what she’d needed. Nikolai’s kiss hadn’t been half bad either.

Speaking in low, confidential tones, he glanced over at
her from where he sat straddling a folding chair near the card table in the center of the room, his pale blue eyes doing a quick but thorough head-to-toe scan of her body. There was an unmistakable heat in that brief gaze, but he was all business on the phone with what she could only assume was the Order back in Boston. Renata listened as he provided an efficient run-through of the circumstances of Yakut’s murder, Lex and Fabien’s apparent alliance, Mira’s disappearance, and the containment facility escape that had brought Nikolai and Renata to Jack’s place for temporary shelter.

From the sound of it, the male on the other end of the line—Lucan, she’d heard Nikolai call him—was concerned for their safety and glad they were both in one piece, although not at all pleased to hear that they were holed up at the mercy of a human. Nor did Lucan seem enthused about the fact that Nikolai was talking about helping Renata locate Mira. She could hear the deep voice on the other end of the line growl something about “Breedmate’s problems” and “current mission objectives” as though the two were mutually exclusive.

The cursed response when Nikolai added that Renata was nursing a gunshot wound was audible all the way across the room.

“She’s tough,” he said, glancing her way now, “but she took a pretty hard hit in the shoulder and it’s not looking too healthy. It might be a good idea to arrange a pickup, take her into the Order’s protection until everything shakes down up here.”

Renata glared her disapproval and gave a shake of her head. Big mistake. Even that slight jostle made her vision swim, and it was all she could do to position her backside at the edge of the bed before her legs gave out beneath her.
She dropped down onto the mattress, fighting off a vicious wave of cold sweats.

She tried to hide her misery from Nikolai, but the look he gave her said it was no use pretending she wasn’t in bad shape.

“Has Gideon turned up anything on Fabien yet?” he asked, getting up to pace the floor. He listened for a minute, then exhaled a low sigh. “Fuck. Can’t say I’m surprised about that. He had the arrogant stink of a politician all over him, so I had a feeling the bastard was well connected. What else do we have?”

Renata held her breath in the silence that stretched out. She could see that the news on the other end of the line wasn’t good.

Nikolai blew out a long sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “How long does Gideon think it will take him to dig into those restricted files and turn up an address? Shit, Lucan, I’m not sure we should wait that long, considering— yeah, I hear you. Maybe while Gideon’s hacking on that end I should go pay Alexei Yakut a visit. I’d bet my left nut that Lex knows where to find Fabien. Hell, I wouldn’t doubt it if Lex has been there a time or two himself. I’d be glad to squeeze the information out of him, then go deal with Fabien personally.”