Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (19 page)

“Thanks for giving me something to smile about my last day on the job,” Carrigan taunted. He ran a fat finger around the front of his too-tight collar, then casually reached up to pat the sole remaining wisps of hair on his brow back down where they’d been pasted before. “Now, get your scrawny ass back up those stairs before I hand it to you on a platter. Ya get me?”

There was a time, before he’d met the one he called Master, that a challenge like that—particularly from a blowhard like Carrigan—would not have gone unmet.

But the sweating, sputtering cop glaring down on him now was insignificant in light of the duties entrusted to chosen ones like himself. The Minion simply blinked a few times, then turned to retrieve his cell phone and continue with his task at hand.

He only made it down two stairs before Carrigan was on him again, heavy fingers clamping down hard on his shoulder and forcibly wheeling him around. The Minion’s eyes lit on a fancy ballpoint pen stuck into the shirt pocket of Carrigan’s uniform. He recognized the commemorative service emblem on the clip as he took another hard knock to the skull.

“What are you, deaf
and
dumb? Get the hell outta my sight, or I’ll—”

The abrupt choke and wheeze of Carrigan’s voice snapped the Minion back to his senses. He saw his own hand clutching the officer’s pen as it came down for a second brutal plunge, the point of it burrowing deep into the fleshy skin of Carrigan’s neck.

The Minion struck again and again with the makeshift weapon, until the cop sank down to the floor in a savaged, lifeless heap.

He loosened his fist and the pen dropped into a pool of blood on the stairs, all but forgotten in the instant it took him to dash down and grab up his cell phone once more. He meant to place his crucial call immediately, but his eyes kept drifting to this new mess he’d made, something that wasn’t going to get swept away as easily as the pizza in the lobby.

This had been a mistake, and any approval won from informing his Master of the Maxwell woman’s whereabouts could be lost once it was discovered that he’d acted so impulsively here. Killing without sanction might negate everything.

But perhaps there was an even more certain path into his Master’s good graces—a path that could be paved by apprehending and delivering the woman to his Master in person.

Yes
, thought the Minion,
that was a prize bound to impress
.

Pocketing the cell phone, he turned back to extract Carrigan’s weapon from its holster. Then he stepped over the corpse and hurried out a back entrance to the station parking lot.

CHAPTER
Sixteen

H
e should let her go.

He’d screwed things up so badly, he didn’t think there would be any reasoning with Gabrielle tonight. Maybe not ever.

From the opposite curb, he watched her taking long strides down the other side of the street, heading God knew where. She looked ashen and stunned, like she’d just taken a sucker punch to the chest.

Which she had, he admitted darkly.

Maybe it was for the best that he let her run off thinking he was a liar and a dangerous lunatic. The assumption was not all that far from fact, after all. But her opinion of him wasn’t key here, anyway. Getting a Breedmate to safety was.

He could let her go home, give her a few days to cool off, take some time to come to terms with his deception. Then he could send Gideon to smooth things over and bring her calmly under Breed protection where she belonged. Gabrielle could choose a new life in any one of the Darkhavens secreted around the world. She could be happy, secure, and find a mate who would be a true partner for her.

She wouldn’t even have to see him again.

Yeah, he thought, that was the best course of action at this point.

But regardless, he found himself stepping off the curb and into the street after her, unable to just walk away from Gabrielle now, even if that’s what she needed most.

As he crossed the lanes of light evening traffic, his attention was wrenched to the squeal of car tires up ahead of him. A late model American rust bucket tore out of a side alley near the police station and careened into the middle of the street. The accelerator roared, laying rubber as the driver stomped on the gas and aimed the nose of the rumbling beast toward his target up the road.

Gabrielle.

Son of a bitch.

Lucan vaulted into a dead run. His boots chewed up the pavement, moving with all the speed he could summon.

The car launched up onto the curb a few feet in front of Gabrielle, blocking her path. She jolted to a stop. A low command came at her from the open window of the car. She shook her head violently, then screamed, her face going stark with recognition as the vehicle door opened and a human male jumped out.

“Jesus Christ. Gabrielle!” Lucan shouted, his mind grasping for a hold on her assailant and getting nothing but disconnect, unreachable, dead air.

Minion, he realized with contempt. Only the Rogue Master who owned this human could command his thoughts. And the mental effort Lucan had spent attempting to do so had slowed him physically. A few seconds lost, but too damned many.

Gabrielle made a fast break to her left, racing into a small playground with her pursuer right on her heels.

Lucan heard her cry out, saw the human that was chasing her suddenly throw out his hand and grab a fistful of the ponytail swinging behind her.

The bastard dragged her down to the ground. Fumbled a pistol out from the back waistband of his khakis.

Thrust the barrel of the weapon into Gabrielle’s face.

“No!” Lucan roared, coming right up on them and kicking the human off of her with one fierce blow of his booted foot.

The weapon went off as the guy rolled, a wild shot firing up into the trees. But Lucan smelled blood. The metallic odor of it clung to both Gabrielle and her attacker. Not hers, he determined quickly, and with relief, as he noted the absence of Gabrielle’s unique jasmine scent.

The spilled blood was fresh on the front of the Minion’s shirt, and hunger flared in that deadly part of Lucan that was still starving and trying to heal. His mouth throbbed in response to the feeding impulse, but rage burned hotter at the idea of Gabrielle being harmed by this scum. His stare locked in deadly heat on the Minion, Lucan offered Gabrielle his hand to help her up from the ground.

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head no, but a small sound caught in her throat, half sob, half hysterical moan. “He’s the one, Lucan—the one I saw watching me in the park the other day!”

“He’s a Minion,” Lucan said, growling the word through gritted teeth. He didn’t care who the human was. In a few minutes it would be history, anyway.

“Gabrielle, you need to get out of here, sweetheart.”

“W-what? You mean leave you with him? Lucan, he has a gun.”

“Go now, baby. Just run back out the way you came and get yourself home. I’ll make sure you’re safe there.”

The Minion was doubled over on the ground, still clutching the handgun, coughing in an effort to catch the breath Lucan had kicked out of him. He spat a mouthful of blood, and Lucan’s stare tightened on the crimson spray soaking into the dirt. His gums ached with the stretching of his fangs.

“Lucan—”

“Goddamn it, Gabrielle! Leave!”

The command rushed out of him in a furious snarl, but there was little he could do to contain the beast within him. He was going to kill again—his anger was so out of control, he
needed
to—and he refused to let her see it.

“Run, Gabrielle. Go now!”

She ran.

Head reeling, heart practically exploding, Gabrielle took off at Lucan’s bellowed command.

But she wasn’t about to go home like he said and leave him all alone. She fled the playground area, praying that the street and the station house full of armed cops, wouldn’t be far. Part of her hated leaving Lucan at all, but another part of her—a part that was desperate to do what she could to help him—sent her legs flying out beneath her.

As mad as she was at his deception, as frightened as she was of everything she didn’t understand about him, she needed him to be all right.

If anything were to happen to him—

The thought was cut short as a round of gunfire cracked behind her in the dark.

She froze, all the breath sucked out of her lungs.

She heard a strange, animal roar.

Another two shots rang out, rapid sequence, then…nothing.

Only a heavy, wrenching silence.

Oh, God.

“Lucan?” she screamed. Panic lodged in her throat. “Lucan!”

She was running once more, back where she’d come from. Back to where she feared her heart was going to shatter into a million pieces if Lucan wasn’t standing there unharmed when she reached him.

She felt a vague sense of worry that the kid from the police precinct—
Minion, that was the odd word Lucan had called him
—might be waiting for her, or already coming after her to finish her off as well. But concern for her own personal safety was shoved aside as she neared the little corner of the moonlit playground.

She just needed to know that Lucan was okay.

Above everything else in that moment, she needed to be with him.

She saw the silhouette of a dark figure on the grassy yard—Lucan, standing with legs braced apart, arms held down at his sides in a menacing angle. He stood over his assailant who was evidently ass-planted on the ground in front of him and attempting to scrabble out of Lucan’s reach.

“Thank God,” Gabrielle whispered under her breath, instantly relieved.

Lucan was all right, and now the authorities could deal with the deranged psychotic who might have killed them both.

She hurried a little closer.

“Lucan,” she called, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

Towering over the man at his feet, he bent at the waist and reached down to grab him. Gabrielle’s ears registered a queer strangling sound, and she realized with not a little shock that Lucan was holding the man by the throat.

Hauling him up off the ground with one hand.

Her steps slowed, but she couldn’t halt them altogether as her mind struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.

Lucan was strong, there was no doubting that, and the kid from the police station probably weighed only about fifty pounds more than she did, but to lift him with the power of one arm alone…she could hardly imagine it.

She watched in peculiar detachment as Lucan raised his arm higher, letting the man squirm and fight the clawing grip that was slowly cutting off his air. A terrifying roar began to fill her ears, building slowly, until everything else faded away.

In the moonlight, she saw Lucan’s mouth. It was open, teeth bared. His mouth, making that terrible, otherworldly noise.

“Stop,” she murmured, her eyes rooted on him now, suddenly sick with dread. “Please…Lucan, stop.”

And then the keening howl went silent, replaced by a new horror as Lucan brought the spasming body down before him and calmly sank his teeth into the flesh below the man’s jaw. A jet of blood spurted from the deep puncture, crimson rendered black against the darkness of night that surrounded the terrible scene. Lucan remained fixed, holding the gushing wound to his mouth.

Feeding from it.

“Oh, my God,” she moaned, her hands trembling as she brought them up to hold back a scream. “No, no, no, no…Oh, Lucan…
no
.”

His head came up abruptly, as if he’d heard her quiet misery. Or maybe he’d suddenly sensed her presence not a hundred yards from where he stood, savage and terrifying, looking like nothing she’d ever seen before.

Not true
, her stricken mind contradicted.

She had seen this brutality once before, and if reason had forbade her from giving a name to the horror then, it rose up within her now like a cold, bleak wind.

“Vampire,” she whispered, staring at Lucan’s bloodstained face and feral, glowing eyes.

CHAPTER
Seventeen

T
he smell of blood wreathed him, pungent and metallic, his nose swamped with the sweet, coppery tanginess. Some of it was his own, he realized with a dull sense of curiosity, grunting as he looked down and noted the gunshot wound to his left shoulder.

He felt no pain, only the swelling energy that always filled him after he fed.

But he wanted more.

Needed more
, came the answering cry of the beast within him.

That voice was rising. Demanding. Urging him toward the edge.

But then, hadn’t he been heading there for a long time, anyway?

Lucan clamped his jaws together so hard his teeth should have shattered. He had to get a grip, had to get the hell out of there and back to the compound, where he might be able to pull his shit together.

He had been walking the darkened streets for two hours, and still his blood was drumming hard in his temples, rage and hunger still ruling all but a sliver of his mind. He was a danger to all in this condition, but his restless body would not be still.

He stalked the city like a wraith, moving without conscious thought even though his feet—his every sense—led him on a purposeful path toward Gabrielle.

She hadn’t gone home. Lucan wasn’t sure where she had run, until the unseen thread that connected him to her by scent and senses brought him in front of an apartment building in the city’s North End. A friend of hers, no doubt.

A light was on in an upstairs window, that bit of glass and brick was all that separated him from her.

But he wasn’t going to try to see her, and not merely because of the red Mustang parked outside with the police light propped on the dash. Lucan didn’t have to see his reflection in the windshield to know that his pupils were still narrow in the center of his huge irises, his fangs still protruding behind the rigid set of his mouth.

He looked every bit the monster he was.

The monster Gabrielle had seen firsthand tonight.

Lucan growled, forced to remember her horrified expression again and again since he’d slain the Minion.

He could still see her take a faltering step backward, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion. She had seen him for what he truly was—had even flung the word at him in accusation the instant before she’d fled.

He hadn’t tried to stop her, not with words or by force.

All he’d known in that moment was the pure rush of fury as he drained his prey dry. Then he’d dropped the body like the rubbish it was, feeling a further surge of rage when he considered what might have happened to Gabrielle had she fallen into Rogue hands. Lucan had wanted to tear the human apart—nearly had, he acknowledged, vividly recalling the savagery he had wrought.

He, the cool one, so fierce in his control.

What a fucking joke.

His carefully held mask had been slipping from the moment he had first met Gabrielle Maxwell. She made him weak, exposed his flaws.

Made him want things he could never have.

He stared up at that second-floor window, chest heaving as he battled a fierce urge to leap up there, smash his way in, and take Gabrielle someplace where he could keep her all to himself.

Let her fear him. Let her despise him for what he was, so long as he could press her warm body down beneath him, easing his pain as only she could do.

Yes,
the beast within him snarled, knowing only want and need.

Before the impulse to have her could win out, Lucan fisted his hand and brought it down hard on the hood of the off-duty police officer’s car. The vehicle alarm howled, and as curtains parted in every nearby window at the disturbance, Lucan leaped off the curb and jogged into the shadows of the waning night.

“Everything’s okay,” Megan’s boyfriend said, coming back into her apartment after he’d gone out to investigate the sudden trip of his car alarm. “Damn thing’s always had a hair trigger. Sorry ’bout that. Not like we needed any added tension tonight, eh?”

“Probably just kids causing trouble,” Megan added from beside Gabrielle on the sofa.

Gabrielle nodded in vague agreement at her friend’s attempt to soothe her, but she didn’t believe it for a second.

It was Lucan.

She had felt him outside with an inner sense she couldn’t begin to describe. It wasn’t fear or dread, just a marrow-deep awareness that he was close by.

That he needed her.

Wanted her.

God help her, but she had actually been hoping he’d come to the door, haul her out of there, and help her make sense of the horror she had witnessed a short while ago.

He was gone now, however. She felt his absence as strongly as she’d known he had followed her to Megan’s.

“Are you warm enough, Gabby? Would you like more tea?”

“No, thanks.”

Gabrielle held on to the tepid cup of chamomile with two hands, feeling a chill inside of her that no amount of blankets or hot water could chase away. Her heart was still racing, her head still reeling from confusion and stark disbelief.

Lucan had torn open that guy’s throat.

With his teeth.

He’d put his mouth to the wound and drank the blood that gushed out over his face.

He was a monster, like something out of a nightmare. Like those same fiends who attacked and killed the punker outside the nightclub—something that seemed so far in her past now that she could hardly believe it happened.

But it had, just as tonight’s slaying had happened, too: this time with Lucan at the center of it.

Gabrielle had gone to Megan’s out of desperation, needing to be somewhere familiar, yet too afraid to go to her own apartment in case Lucan’s friend might be waiting for her there. She had told Megan and her boyfriend, Ray, how she’d been accosted on the street by the psycho from the police station. She’d relayed the facts that he’d also been spying on her a few days earlier, and when he’d confronted her tonight, he did so with a gun in his hand.

She wasn’t sure why she’d left Lucan entirely out of the story, crucial as his presence was. She supposed it was partly because regardless of his methods, he had killed tonight in order to protect her, and she felt a need to offer some of the same consideration to him.

Even if he was a vampire.

God, it sounded ridiculous even to think it.

“Gab, honey. You need to report what happened. The guy sounds seriously unhinged. The police need to hear about this, they need to get him off the street. Ray and I can take you. We’ll go downtown and find your detective friend—”

“No.” Gabrielle shook her head, setting her cold tea onto the sofa table with only the slightest quiver in her hands. “I don’t want to go anywhere tonight. Please, Megan? I just need to rest for a little while. I’m so tired.”

Megan took Gabrielle’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Okay. I’ll get you a pillow and another blanket. You don’t have to go anywhere until you’re ready, sweetie. I’m just so glad you’re all right.”

“You were fortunate to get away,” Ray interjected as Megan picked up Gabrielle’s cup and carried it into the kitchen before heading to a linen closet down the hall. “Someone else might not be so lucky. Now, I’m off duty, and you’re Meg’s friend, so I’m not gonna force the issue, but you have a responsibility not to let this guy get away with what he did tonight.”

“He’s not going to hurt anyone else,” Gabrielle whispered. And even though they were all talking about the man who’d pulled a gun on her, she couldn’t help thinking that they could have been saying the same things about Lucan.

He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten back to the compound, or even how long he’d been there. Based on the sweat he’d worked up in the weapons room of the training facility, he had to guess it to be hours.

Lucan hadn’t bothered with the lights. His eyes were killing him enough in the dark, anyway. All he needed was the burn of his muscles as he forced them to work, to regain control of his body as his system slowly came down from a high that had been perilously close to Bloodlust.

Lucan reached for one of the daggers on the counter beside him, his fingers testing the razor-sharp edge as he turned back toward the alleylike corridor of the practice range. He could sense, more than see, the target at the end, and when he let the blade loose into the dark, he knew the hard thump meant a dead-center hit.

“Hell, yeah,” he murmured, his voice still rough, his fangs not yet receded.

His aim had much improved. He hadn’t been a hair off a killing strike in the past several tries with the blades. He wasn’t about to quit until he had shaken off the last of the effects of his feeding. That could take a while yet, he thought, still feeling ill from the near overdose of blood he’d consumed.

Lucan strode down the length of the practice range to retrieve his weapon from the target. He pulled the dagger free, noting with satisfaction the deep set of the wound he would have delivered had the target been a Rogue or Minion, and not a practice dummy.

As he turned to start back for another round, there was a soft click somewhere ahead of him in the range, then searing light flooded the length and breadth of the training facility.

Lucan recoiled as his head exploded with the sudden assault. He tried to blink some of his daze away, squinting into the glare of light that bounced off the mirrored walls lining the defense and weapons training section adjacent to the practice range. It was there he saw the large form of another vampire, leaning a thick shoulder against the wall.

One of the warriors had been watching him from out of the shadows.

Tegan.

Jesus. How long had he been standing there?

“Feeling all right?” he asked, apathetic as ever in his dark tee-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “If the light is too much for you—”

“It’s fine,” Lucan growled. Stars blinded him as he struggled to adjust to the harsh illumination. He lifted his head and forced himself to meet Tegan’s stare across the room. “I was just about to leave, anyway.”

Tegan’s eyes stayed rooted on him, his gaze too knowing as he stared at Lucan. Tegan’s nostrils flared infinitesimally, and the wry twist of his mouth took on an edge of surprise. “You’ve been hunting tonight. And you’re bleeding.”

“So?”

“So, it’s not like you to take a hit. You’re too fast for that, usually.”

Lucan exhaled a curse. “You mind not sniffing around my ass right now? I’m not in the mood for company.”

“No shit. Feeling a little tense, are we?” Tegan swaggered forward to peruse the weapons laid out for training. He wasn’t looking at Lucan now, but he read his torment as if it were spread before him on the table along with the collection of daggers, knives, and various other blades. “Got some aggression you need to work out? Hard to concentrate with all that buzzing in your head, I’ll bet. Blood gets running so fast, it’s all you can hear. All you can think about is the hunger. Next thing you know, it owns you.”

Lucan tested the heft of another blade in his hand, trying to appreciate the tang and balance of the handcrafted dagger. His eyes couldn’t focus for longer than a second. His fingers itched to use the weapon for something more than target practice. With a snarl, he cocked his arm back and let the dagger fly down the range. It struck hard in the dummy at the other end, a direct chest shot, right through the heart.

“Get the fuck out of here, Tegan. I don’t need the commentary. Or the audience.”

“No, you don’t like anyone watching you too closely. I’m beginning to see why.”

“You don’t know dick.”

“No?” Tegan stared at him for a long moment, then slowly shook his head, exhaling a low curse. “Be careful, Lucan.”

“Jesus Christ,” he spat harshly, turning on the vampire in a black rage. “You giving me advice, T?”

“Whatever.” The male lifted his shoulders in a negligent shrug. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

“A warning.” Lucan’s bark of laughter echoed into the cavernous space. “That’s fucking rich. Coming from you.”

“You’re walking the edge, man. I can see it in your eyes.” He shook his head, tawny hair falling down around his face. “The pit is a deep one, Lucan. I’d just hate to see you fall.”

“Spare me the concern. You’re the last person I need to hear it from.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it all under control, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Lucan. Maybe you’ll believe it. Because looking at you now, I sure as hell don’t.”

The accusation spiked Lucan’s anger off the chart. In a blur of speed and fury, he fell on the other vampire, fangs bared in a vicious hiss. He didn’t even realize he had a blade in his hand until he saw the silver edge of it pressing hard into Tegan’s throat. “Get the fuck out of my face. You reading me clearly now?”

“You wanna cut me, Lucan? You need to make me bleed? Do it. Fucking do it, man. I could give a rat’s ass.”

Lucan threw the dagger down and roared, grabbing two fistsful of Tegan’s shirt. Weapons were too easy. He needed to feel flesh and bone under his hands, feel them tearing and cracking, bowing to the beast that was so close to ruling his mind.

“Shit.” Tegan started chuckling, his insolent gaze latching onto the frenzied wildness that was surely flashing in Lucan’s eyes. “You’ve already got one foot in the hole. Don’t you?”