Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (221 page)

Skeeter could not remember much after that moment of pure terror.

Everything slowed down, went black.

But he hadn’t died.

He’d woken up a short while ago and all of his confusion—all of his fear—was gone.

Now he belonged to the powerful individual seated beside him, the vampire who had made him into something more than human tonight, as well. Skeeter’s loyalty was ensured by blood, his very life tied to that of his Master.

“You will report to me with any and all information you can gather,” said the voice that commanded him in all things now.

“Yes, Master,” Skeeter replied, and when he was given a nod to go, he climbed out of the Hummer and waited as it eased away from the side of the road and departed.

When it was gone, Skeeter walked across Pete’s parking lot to the lone snowmachine that still sat parked outside. He hopped on and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried again with the same result, then swore roundly when he realized he’d forgotten to buy gas for the damned thing last night.

“Morning,” a familiar voice greeted him as chain-encased snow tires crunched in the frozen road. “Need a hand?”

Skeeter shook his head without looking at Zach Tucker. Of all the shitty luck, he had to run into Harmony’s sole cop today.

Tucker didn’t accept his refusal. The Blazer rolled up next to Skeeter’s sled and idled while the trooper got out and went around back to grab a red can of gasoline out of the back of the truck.

“Late night, huh?” he asked as he walked over and unscrewed the cap on the Yamaha’s fuel tank. “Looking a bit ragged this morning, Skeeter. Must have been out partying with new friends from out of town or something. Nice Hummer, by the way.”

Skeeter offered no explanation, watching the red can empty into his snowmachine.

“No charge this time,” Tucker said as he finished. But when Skeeter thought the cop might simply move on, instead he got in his face with a tight whisper. “I thought I told you to lay low for a while—quit the goddamn dealing and partying until we get this thing cleaned up around here. And for the record, posting that fucking cell phone video on that death fetish website was just about the stupidest thing you could do. Now I’ve got those assholes in Fairbanks busting my balls about losing control of a crime scene!”

Tucker was furious, and ordinarily that might make Skeeter worry.

But not today.

“Do I need to remind you that our little operation stands a damn good chance of getting blown up in our faces? I’ve got Staties coming up here later this week to crawl all over this investigation. I won’t have you giving
them added reasons to stick around and see what else is going on out here. You got that?”

Skeeter ignored him, moving around him to take a seat on the sled.

“Are you that fucking stupid,” Tucker scoffed, “or are you just stoned?”

“I have never been clearer in my life,” Skeeter replied.

“I want to know who you were partying with last night. Where did you go? Jesus Christ, were you idiot enough to tell them anything about me or our arrangement?”

“None of that is any of your concern. What you want no longer matters. I have other priorities.”

When Skeeter turned the engine over, Tucker’s hand came down hard on his shoulder. “If you fuck with me on this, don’t think I won’t throw you under the bus. You’ll go down faster than you can say felony possession with intent to distribute. Cross me now and I swear to God I will bury you.”

Skeeter held the flinty gaze of his recent silent business partner. “That would not be wise, Officer Tucker.” He saw the momentary flinch of shock in the cop’s eyes and felt a small sense of triumph that he had put it there. “Thanks for the gas, though.”

Skeeter gave the sled some juice and tore out of the parking lot. By the time he reached his mother’s house at the end of the block, he was full of his newfound power and twitchy with the need to carry out his Master’s orders. He parked the snowmachine and ran into the back door of the house, aware, but not caring, that his heavy boots clomped loudly on the old wooden floor of the hallway.

Before he was inside his apartment for even as much as a minute, his mother started moving around upstairs, her
muffled complaints echoing down to him beneath her bedroom. He knew she’d be storming down to bitch at him, and could hardly say that he was disappointed when she did.

“Stanley Elmer Arnold!” she screamed, banging on his door. “Do you have any idea what time it is? You worthless piece of shit! How dare you stay out all goddamn night, making me worry about you, only to drag your sorry ass back home at the crack of dawn and wake me out of a dead sleep! You’re nothing but a loser and a—”

Skeeter was at the door and in the hallway with her, his hand clamped punishingly around her throat and cutting her off before the words had a chance to shriek out of her mouth.

“Be quiet, bitch,” he told her harshly. “I’m working in here.”

If she’d uttered even one syllable as his hand peeled away from her, Skeeter would have killed her, right then and there. And she knew it, by God. She understood that things would be different now.

Soundless, she stepped back from him, wobbling just a little in her ratty slippers and matted terry housecoat. Slowly she turned around and walked carefully back up the hallway where she’d come from.

Skeeter Arnold cocked his head at her retreating bulk, then smiled as he returned to the more important tasks that awaited him in the shithole apartment he called home.

CHAPTER
Eleven

I
t was strange being back in his old quarters at his father’s Darkhaven, as though he’d somehow walked into a distant, remembered dream of home that no longer seemed to fit him quite the same way. True to her word, however, Kade’s mother had made sure nothing was out of place since he’d left a year ago. After the long night he’d had in Harmony, he could appreciate the thick, engulfing cushion of his leather mission-style recliner, which was perfectly situated in front of the massive, river-rock fireplace that roared with freshly laid logs.

Kade leaned back and chuckled into his satellite phone as Brock caught him up on everything he was missing in Boston the past couple of nights.

“I’m telling you, man, if we aren’t careful, these females around here are gonna show our asses up. The way they’ve been tackling daytime missions topside, they’re starting to make the rest of us look bad.”

Since Kade had phoned in to the Order’s compound headquarters a few minutes ago, Brock had been regaling him with stories about some of the other warriors’ Breedmates and their current efforts to assist in what had been, until very recently, something of an all-boys club. Now Order missions had become all-hands-on-deck kinds of operations—solely devoted to stopping a power-hungry Breed maniac named Dragos from unleashing his personal brand of hell on both humankind and Breed alike.

Dragos’s resources were as deep as his pockets and, so it happened, as black as his plans. His most heinous act had been the capture and imprisonment of an unknown number of Breedmates, whom he’d been collecting for decades and using to give birth to an army of savage assassins. With Dragos’s headquarters sacked by the Order just a few weeks ago, his operation had been disrupted—disassembled and diverted, the Order suspected.

Finding the captive Breedmates before he could harm any more of them was the Order’s primary objective now. Because timing could mean the difference between lives lost or saved, Lucan had agreed to utilize every weapon in the Order’s arsenal, which included the very special, uniquely gifted, females who’d taken some of the warriors as their mates.

There was Rio’s mate, Dylan, who had the ability to see the spirits of other Breedmates who’d passed and, when she was lucky, obtain critical information from them. There was Elise, who was mated to Tegan and who had a
talent for hearing corrupt, dark human intentions. She accompanied Dylan to area shelters, private homes, and flophouses, her ability helping her assess the motives of the folks they met with along the way.

Gideon’s mate, Savannah, used her tactile skill for reading the history of an object, hoping to find traceable links to some of the missing. Nikolai’s mate, Renata, whose power to mind-blast even the strongest vampire made her a formidable ally on any mission, provided armed bodyguard service to the other Breedmates for their daytime missions.

Even Andreas Reichen’s mate, Claire, who’d only recently recovered from her own ordeal at the hands of Dragos and his associates, was apparently getting involved in Order business. Using her gift for dreamwalking, she’d been trying to make contact with some of the known Breedmates who’d been reported missing over the years.

“You know,” Brock added wryly, “when Niko recruited me for this gig a year ago, I was expecting it to be just a great excuse to kick some Rogue ass.”

Kade grinned, recalling their initial patrols around Boston, which typically involved taking out the city’s feral blood addicts and making things go
boom
. “Kind of makes you miss the simplicity of the first few months on the job, doesn’t it?”

Brock grunted in agreement. Then, “Speaking of Rogues, how’s it going up there in the icebox? Been two days and counting. You got that situation swept up yet?”

“I’m following up on a few leads, but nothing solid right now. I’ll probably be here another few days, maybe a week.”

Brock’s exhaled curse told Kade what he thought of that prediction. “Better you than me, my man. Better you
than me.” There was a pause before he asked, “You have a chance to see your family yet?”

“Yeah,” Kade said, tipping his head back to stare at the thick beam rafters of the cabin. “My arrival home went over about as well as I expected.”

“That good, huh?”

“Put it this way, I get a warmer reception stepping outside in the twenty-below darkness.”

“Harsh,” Brock said. “I’m sorry, man. Seriously.”

Kade shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t need to talk about my welcome homecoming. Just wanted to touch base and pass along another bit of info that Gideon might find interesting.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I found the asshole who posted the video clip of the attacked humans. His name is Skeeter Arnold, local burnout, probable small-time dealer. I watched him leave a bar and take off in a shiny new chauffeured Hummer. He was brought to some kind of mining company office out in the sticks. The name on the gate was Coldstream Mining Company. Put Gideon on that when he gets a chance. I’m curious to know what kind of business this loser might have with them.”

“You got it,” Brock said. “You take care out there. Don’t freeze off anything you might need later.”

Kade chuckled despite the unease he felt just thinking about this whole assignment. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and ended the call.

As he set the phone down on the lamp table beside him, a firm rap sounded on the cabin’s front door.

“Yeah, it’s open,” he said, expecting to see his father. He steeled himself for the disapproval that would follow. “Come on in.”

Maksim entered instead, sparking a relief Kade could hardly hide. He rose, smiling, and gestured for his uncle to join him in front of the fire.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Max said. “At least, not so soon. I hear it did not go well between you and my brother the other day. I wish he wasn’t so hard on you.”

Kade shrugged. “We’ve never seen eye to eye. I sure as hell don’t expect us to start now.”

“Now that you are one of the Order’s warriors,” Max said, his eyes lighting with eager conspiracy, his deep, slightly accented voice edged with unhidden admiration, “I am proud of you, nephew. Proud of the work you are doing. There is honor in it, just as there has always been honor in you.”

Kade wanted to dismiss the praise as unneeded, but hearing it—particularly from Max, who, although he was a couple centuries older than Kade, had always felt like a brother to him—felt too damn good to pretend it didn’t matter.

“Thanks, Max. It means a lot, coming from you.”

“No need to thank me. I speak the truth.” He stared at Kade for a long moment, then leaned forward, his elbows planted on his spread knees. “You’ve been gone a year. You must be doing important things for Lucan and his Order.”

Kade grinned, seeing Max’s angle from a mile away. Like him, Max craved adventure. Unlike him, Max had committed himself to serving as second banana to Kade’s father, the leader of the Fairbanks Darkhaven. Max’s loyalty had shackled him to this ten-thousand-acre prison, and although he would never shirk his duty or his promise to his rigid, uncompromising brother, Max appreciated the concept of risk and reward, courage and honor, every bit as much as Kade did.

Because of that, and because Kade knew Max’s loyalty extended to him, as well, he knew that trusting him with a few details of his experiences with the Order and their current mission would not be misplaced.

“I heard there was some upheaval in the Enforcement Agency out East some months back,” Max said, watching Kade eagerly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“There was,” he admitted, recalling one of the first missions he’d been involved with, and the beginning of the trouble the Order now had with the madman called Dragos. “Our intel uncovered a high-ranking director of the Agency who wasn’t what he seemed. This guy had been operating under an assumed name and seeding a secret rebellion for decades—longer, in fact. We’re still trying to figure out just how far the corruption goes, but it hasn’t been easy. Every time we get close to the bastard, he goes deeper to ground.”