Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (94 page)

CHAPTER
Twenty-nine

E
lise heard women’s voices as she strolled the corridor on her way out of Tegan’s quarters. The muffled laughter and easy conversation drew her, reminding her of the friendships she had enjoyed in the Darkhaven, when her life had seemed so full. Although she didn’t feel as empty as she had in recent months, there was still a space in her heart that was open—a small void that made her miss being part of a community.

She didn’t know what the other females would think of her. Although it seemed years ago to her, it was only a handful of days since the confrontation she’d had with Tegan in front of the Order—when he’d publicly suggested she find a willing male to be her blood Host without the sanctity of a vow. He’d only done it to push her away, but if the Breedmates here at the compound had heard about it, she was probably a subject of pity with them, if not scorn. There were few females in the Darkhavens who would be able to look her in the eye after something like that.

As she neared the open door of the room where the warriors’ mates had gathered, Elise prepared herself for cautious greetings and the quiet whispers that were sure to begin once she had passed.

“Elise, welcome back!” Gabrielle exclaimed the instant her kind brown eyes lit on her. “We heard you and Tegan had just come back. I was actually about to go and find you. Do you want to join us?”

The women had a nice little repast of fruits and cheeses spread out on the coffee table in the center of the cozy library. Tess was putting down small plates and there was already an extra one waiting for Elise. Savannah stood in front of a dark cherry sideboard, pulling a cork from a bottle of chilled white wine. She looked over at Elise and smiled as she began pouring into several long-stemmed glasses.

“Want some?” she asked.

“Okay.” Elise walked into the inviting chamber and accepted the glass from Savannah’s outstretched hand. “Thank you.”

The awkwardness she expected didn’t happen. As soon as she settled in with the women, Elise was bombarded with questions about the trip, about what she and Tegan were able to uncover, and about where things stood with regard to Petrov Odolf and the journal Marek had been so determined to get his hands on.

They weren’t interested in gossip or scandal, and Elise found herself falling into an easy conversation with all three of the intelligent, savvy women. She told them all she knew, relating the details of Tegan’s and her visits to the containment facility.

She had just begun to tell them about the writings Irina had given her when Tess put down her wineglass, her brows knit in a frown.

“What happened to your face? You’re bruised.”

Elise nodded, idly touching the tenderness that still lingered in her cheek and jaw. “Oh. A Minion did that.”

“My God,” Savannah gasped, her concern echoed by Gabrielle and Tess as well.

“Does it hurt?” Tess asked, moving around the table and kneeling next to Elise.

“It did at first. It’s not so bad now.”

“Let me see.” She carefully tilted Elise’s head. When her hand came to rest on the bruise, Elise felt a warm tingle spreading from the female’s palm to the tips of her fingers. Dante’s mate had worked her healing touch on Elise before, but that didn’t make her marvel at Tess’s talent any less. The trauma of the injury faded away, muting until not even the slightest twinge of discomfort remained.

Elise let herself sink into the peaceful sensation that swept over her as Tess drew her hand away. “Your skill is amazing.”

The pretty female shrugged her shoulder as if uncomfortable with the praise. “There are some things that are beyond my ability. I can’t take away scars or correct wounds that have already healed on their own. Some damage is irreversible. I’m learning that with Rio.”

Savannah reached over to squeeze Tess’s hand. “He’s doing a lot better since you’ve been working with him. The fact that he’s even out of bed at all is due mostly to you.”

“No, it’s pure rage that drives him,” Tess said. “My being able to heal some of his physical wounds is only incidental.”

“Rio was injured in a Rogue ambush last summer,” Gabrielle explained to Elise. “He got pretty messed up from exploding shrapnel, but the worst of it was when he found out that his Breedmate had set the Order up for the attack.”

Elise’s heart twisted at the very idea. “How awful.”

“Yeah, it was. Eva betrayed Rio and the others to Marek. In exchange, Lucan was to be the primary target of the explosion. Lucan was supposed to die that night, but the bomb only injured him. He and Rio were hit, but Rio took the worst of the impact.” Gabrielle took a sip of her wine, her gaze sober, reflective. “I was there when Eva confessed what she’d done…and when she proceeded to take her own life.”

“Those were some dark days,” Savannah said. “It was really hard losing Eva like that. I thought she was a friend. What she did to Rio and to the others is unforgivable.”

“Rio certainly won’t let it go,” Tess added. “Dante and I are really concerned about him. I wonder sometimes if he’s too far gone—you know, on the inside. When I work with him, there are times I feel like I’m looking at an armed grenade that’s just waiting for an excuse to go off.”

Savannah exhaled a wry laugh. “Pretty bad when Rio makes Tegan look like a poster boy for normal and well-adjusted.”

Elise glanced down, feeling her cheeks heat up at the mention of Tegan. When she looked up again, it was to find Gabrielle watching her. “He wasn’t too terrifying in Berlin, was he? Tegan doesn’t make it easy for anyone to be around him.”

“No. No, he was fine, actually,” Elise said, rising to his defense. “He was kind and protective…well, and frustratingly complicated. He’s the most intense man I’ve ever known. And he is…so much more than people might think.”

She felt the room go quiet. Three pairs of female eyes were rooted on her now, each of the warriors’ mates staring at her as fire shot into her face.

“Elise,” Gabrielle said slowly, her eyes brightening with understanding. “You and Tegan…really?”

Before she could stammer out an admission, she was pulled into the female’s happy embrace. The two other Breedmates took turns congratulating her as well, making her tear up at the instant circle of sisterhood that they were so willing to accept her into.

It was through a moist, bleary gaze that Elise got her first glimpse of the tapestry that hung on the far corner wall of the library. The colors of the medieval setting were dazzling, depicting a knight on horseback as richly as if it were paint on canvas.

The intricacy of the needlework was extraordinary…familiar.

And unmistakable.

She’d seen a similarly intricate piece when she’d met with Irina Odolf. The embroidery that had been wrapped around the stack of letters Irina had found.

“That weaving,” she said, hardly able to breathe. “Where did it come from?”

“It’s Lucan’s,” Gabrielle said. “It was made for him in the 1300s. A long time ago, when the Order was still new.”

Elise’s pulse kicked into an excited tempo. “Who made it, do you know?”

“Um, a woman named Kassia,” Gabrielle said. “She was a Breedmate to one of the Order’s original members. Lucan says her talent with needle and thread was unmatched, which you can see from the detail in this piece alone. According to him, this was the last weaving Kassia made, and her most stunning work. That’s Lucan on the warhorse—”

“May I look at it?” Elise asked, standing up and walking over to see it up close.

On a distant hill behind the knight on the rearing stallion, a castle smoldered under a thin sliver of a moon. A crescent moon.

And beneath the horse’s hooves lay a trampled field, rutted with deep tracts of earth.

castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon

The strange riddle played through her mind, carried there in Petrov Odolf ’s tormented voice.

It couldn’t be…could it?

Elise ran her hand over the delicate stitches of the tapestry’s detailed border. All of it had been woven with such deliberate care. And in the lower right corner was the weaver’s mark—a Breedmate symbol, just like the one she’d seen on the embroidery Irina showed her—sewn into the design.

Was there a message hidden somewhere in here?

Hidden here all this time?

“What is it, Elise?” Gabrielle came up behind her. “Is something wrong?”

Elise’s heart was racing. “Would it be all right if we took this down from the wall?”

“I guess so…yeah, sure.” She got up on the cushioned chair situated next to the tapestry and reached up to lift the piece from its hanging mount on the wall. Gabrielle held the tapestry gingerly in her hands. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Lay it flat, please.”

“I’ll clear the table,” Savannah said, and she and Tess went to work quickly removing the food and dishes to make space. “Okay, here you go.”

Elise trailed Gabrielle as she spread the tapestry out. She studied the piece in silence for a moment, remembering the rest of the cryptic verse:

to the borderlands east turn your eye

at the cross lies truth

“I’d like to try something. I will need to fold the cloth, but I promise I’ll be very careful.”

At Gabrielle’s agreeing nod, Elise brought the top of the tapestry toward the center of the design, then lifted the bottom of the piece and folded them so that the castle and the field below Lucan’s mount met.

“‘Castle and croft shall come together under the crescent moon,’” she murmured, watching as the two meeting portions of the design formed a new picture.

“It looks like some kind of mountain range,” Tess said, as a distinctly shaped rock formation became visible within the stitches. “How did you know to do that?”

“The Odolf journal contained odd scribblings—the same weird phrases that Petrov Odolf became obsessed with in the weeks before he went mad with Bloodlust and turned Rogue. The same phrases that his brother had written before he went Rogue. My God…it seemed like a puzzle we were never going to solve.”

Gabrielle’s eyes were wide. “You mean this tapestry is somehow linked to all of that?”

“I think it must be,” Elise whispered. She looked back down at the folded design. “‘To the borderlands east turn your eye…’ Maybe if we turn the tapestry to the left?”

She pivoted the weaving ninety degrees, so that the top border was facing east. The folded center was running vertical now. And within the design emerged another—one that hadn’t been obviously visible until held at this new angle. The faint outline of a cross was stitched into the tapestry, and in the center of it was a single word spelled out in the threads.

“‘Praha,’” Elise read aloud, astonished that a voice from so long ago was suddenly speaking through the silk and canvas of her work. “The secret, whatever it is, is in Prague.”

“That’s incredible,” Savannah gasped.

She reached out and ran her fingertips over the hidden text. No sooner had they skimmed the stitches when the female drew her hand back as if she’d been burned.

“Oh, my God.” Her dark brown eyes were stricken and wide. She pressed her hand down onto the fabric again, holding it there in grave silence.

“Savannah, what do you feel?”

When she finally spoke, her voice was airless with dread. “This tapestry has a few more secrets to tell.”

CHAPTER
Thirty

T
he warriors were gearing up for patrol when the glass doors to the tech lab whisked open and four beautiful women rushed inside. Elise and Gabrielle were carrying the tapestry from Lucan’s library; Tess and Savannah walked behind them with serious looks on their faces. Savannah seemed especially grim, her mouth drawn into a flat line, her hands flexing and fisting at her sides as she walked.

Tegan met Elise’s anxious gaze. “What’s going on?”

“The tapestry,” she said as she and Gabrielle spread it out on the meeting table. “I think we’ve figured out what the Odolf riddle refers to.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah.” Her sober expression told him that it wasn’t going to be good news.

Tegan and the other warriors gathered around the women. “Okay. Let’s see what you have.”

He watched, astonished and proud, as she recited each puzzling verse and folded the design accordingly. It was incredible, and so obvious now that Elise was putting it together for them. The tapestry correlated exactly to each seemingly nonsensical phrase. When Elise was finished, she stepped back and revealed an entirely new design—one that Kassia had hidden in the threads as she sewed the piece all those years ago.

Elise met Tegan’s curious look. “When I was at Irina’s place, she showed me some needlework that was incredibly detailed. It also had a secret design woven into it. When I saw this tapestry on the wall just now, I knew it had to have been made by the same hand. The more I looked at it, I wondered if there might be something more to it.”

Tegan smiled. He didn’t care one bit that everyone saw him bring her under his arm and lovingly kiss her brow. “Good work.”

“I know that mountain range,” Lucan said as he inspected the weaving.

Tegan nodded, also recognizing the distinctive formation that lay northeast of Prague. “It’s not far from the region where most of the Breed was living at the time.”

“So, this is meant to be some kind of map?” Rio asked. “If so, what are we looking for?”

“It’s not what, but who.” Savannah’s soft voice drew everyone’s attention. “The tapestry points to a location where Dragos helped hide someone. The vampire who fathered him.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Tegan didn’t know which of the warriors muttered the curse, but each one of them had to understand the weight of what Savannah had just said.

“Dragos’s Breedmate wove this piece specifically for me,” Lucan put in with a dark scowl. “Are you saying Kassia deliberately hid this message in here? Why? And why the hell wouldn’t she come to me and tell me about this?”

“Because she was afraid,” Savannah said. “She’d been entrusted with a terrible secret, and she feared what might happen if she let it out.”

Gideon glanced over at his mate. “You felt all that in the cloth, babe?”

Savannah nodded. “There’s more too. And it’s not good.”

“Tell us,” Lucan said grimly. “Whatever you can read in this thing, we need to know.”

The room went still as Savannah reached out and put her hands on the tapestry. The Breedmate’s unique gift of psychometry had been useful to the Order in the past, but everyone watching as she began to absorb the emotional history of the piece fell into total silence, well aware that they’d never needed Savannah’s special talent more than now.

“Kassia was tormented by what she knew, but Dragos kept a close eye on her and she knew that if she told the secret, her mate would find out. He might move what he was hiding, and then there would be no hope of fixing what he had done.” Savannah closed her eyes in concentration. “Kassia had no one to share her burden with—not even her dearest friend, Sorcha.”

Tegan felt his jaw go rigid at the mention of the sweet girl who met such a terrible end because of his failings. As if to say she understood what he was feeling, Elise’s hand came to rest gently on his arm. Her touch was caring and compassionate, her soft gaze tender.

Savannah went on. “When Lucan asked Kassia to make this tapestry, she realized that maybe there was a way to warn him of what Dragos had done. So, as she stitched the remembrance for Lucan, she added clues and prayed one day he’d discover them before it was too late.”

“What did Dragos do?” Lucan asked, his deep voice booming in the quiet of the lab. “How the hell did he begin this deception?”

For a long time, Savannah didn’t speak. She slowly withdrew her hands, and when she turned to face the Order’s leader, her pretty features were bleak.

“When you declared war on the last of the Ancients—only a few months before this tapestry was made—Dragos and the alien creature who fathered him forged a pact. Dragos helped his father escape into the mountains rather than stand and fight you and the rest of the Order.”

Lucan’s scowl was dark, anger building in his tense stance. “Dragos and several others battled the one who sired him. Dragos was the only one to come out of the skirmish alive. He was severely wounded—”

“All part of his ruse,” Savannah said. “After they killed the others, Dragos helped hide his father in a protective crypt he’d built specifically for him in the mountains outside Prague. Dragos’s wounds were from his father, but only to help conceal the truth of what actually happened. The plan had been to leave the Ancient in a state of hibernation until things settled down with the Order. Then the Ancient would be awakened to feed again, and to start a new generation of his Breed offspring.”

“Holy hell,” Gideon muttered, ripping off his pale-blue glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Did Kassia know if Dragos ever got the chance to go back and free the bastard?”

Savannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not picking up anything to indicate that she knew the outcome. Dragos told her where the crypt was located, and that’s what she stitched into the tapestry. She wanted Lucan to have the clues in case anything were to happen to her.”

“Oh, Lucan,” Gabrielle said, wrapping her arms around him.

“There is…something more,” Savannah said. “There was a child. Kassia was pregnant when she made this tapestry. Dragos was away on a mission for nearly a year—so long that she had her son in secret and sent him away to live with another Breed family before Dragos returned. She refused to let her only child be a victim of her mate’s dangerous alliance, so she took steps to protect the baby and give him a safer future.”

“Let me take a wild-ass guess about the name of the family Kassia turned to,” Gideon drawled.

Savannah nodded. “Odolf.”

“You know,” Kade interjected, “I’ve heard that under the right conditions, the Ancients were capable of hibernating for generations.”

“Try centuries,” Tegan said, reflecting on the savage otherworlders who spawned him and the rest of the Breed’s first generation progeny. “For all we know, that last remaining Ancient is still out there, holed up near Prague and waiting to be unleashed.”

“Christ,” Dante hissed. “The world would be a very different place if an evil like that was turned loose again.”

Niko clucked his tongue. “And if someone thought to ally himself with that kind of deadly power? Somebody like Marek…”

“We can’t afford that risk,” Lucan said. “So, it looks like we need to haul ass to Prague and see what we can find.”

“Reichen’s only a few hours away from there in Berlin,” Tegan said. “He’s offered us his help in whatever way we can use him.”

Lucan narrowed his eyes, considering the idea. “Can he be trusted?”

“Yeah,” Tegan said, nodding in certainty. “I can vouch for him.”

“Give him a call then. But keep the details to a minimum. Let him know we’re on the way and we’re going to need transportation. We can rendezvous with him on arrival at Tegel Airport.”

“Shouldn’t we head straight for Prague instead and meet up with him there?” Brock asked.

Tegan shook his head, picking up on Lucan’s tactic. “Reichen may be trustworthy, but we don’t know about anyone else around him. Marek’s already aware that we’ve got an interest in Berlin. No sense tipping our hand about Prague.”

Lucan nodded. “We’ll fill Reichen in once we arrive.”

“Right,” Gideon said. “I’ll get clearance for a flight out tonight.”

There was none of the usual bravado as the lab emptied out and the warriors each went to prepare for the mission ahead of them. Tegan normally would have gone off to suit up by himself and think in peace. He thought he probably should now, but then Elise linked her fingers through his as the two of them paused in the vacant corridor.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her gaze as sober as his must have been. “If you want to be alone, or if you have something you need to do…”

“No. I don’t.”

He thought about calling the denial back and feeding her some line of bullshit that he was needed somewhere else right then, but the words wouldn’t come. And he found he couldn’t let go of her hand.

He’d be leaving in a few hours, and the odds were pretty damn good that he wasn’t coming back.

He was going in this time with one goal: to personally take out Marek. Even if he had to take himself out in the process. Tegan was more than ready to bring the war to Marek, and, one way or another, that son of a bitch was going down.

“Come on,” he said to Elise, tipping her chin up to meet his kiss. “There’s only one place I want to be right now.”

Elise and Tegan spent the rest of the day in his quarters, making love, and, it seemed, avoiding talk of what the future might bring them. She knew the secrets the tapestry had revealed weighed heavily on him—on all of the Order—but Tegan seemed especially remote as dusk drew near and the group of them prepared to head out. He had withdrawn in some way, as if he were already gone, fighting the ghost of an enemy that had haunted him for too long and had to finally be exorcised.

His call to Reichen earlier that day had brought troubling news: Petrov Odolf had slipped further into Bloodlust and was not doing well. The word out of the containment facility was that the Rogue had become increasingly unstable in the hours after Tegan and Elise left him that last time. At some point overnight, he lapsed into violent seizures and attacked one of his handlers, nearly killing the attendant in a fit of rage.

As for Tegan, he seemed skeptical of Director Kuhn’s report to Reichen. He didn’t trust the facility director, and, as he hung up with Reichen, he left the Darkhaven male with a mission to get more answers about the Rogue’s condition.

“Be careful,” Elise told him as they walked out of his quarters to meet the others who were gathering in the main area of the compound.

Tegan paused and kissed her passionately, but there was a distance in his eyes.

“I love you,” she said, stroking his strong jaw and trying to tamp down the worry that was beating like a caged bird in her chest. “You’d better come back to me soon, you understand? Promise me.”

The sounds of the other warriors talking in the hallway up ahead drew his attention. Weapons and gear jangled, deep male voices rumbling against the marble walls. That was his world calling him, the duty he’d been sworn into for longer than she’d been alive.

“Tegan, promise me,” she said, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t do anything heroic.”

The corner of his mouth quirked into a wry grin. “Me, heroic? Not a chance.”

She smiled with him, but her feet felt leaden as they walked the rest of the way up the corridor to where the Order, and Tegan’s role among them, waited.

Everyone else was already gathered. Elise met the serious faces of the other Breedmates, Tess and Gabrielle holding on to their mates as the departure time drew near. It had been agreed that Gideon would stay behind at the compound where he could monitor the operation from base and be a touch point for the others while they were in the field.

The biggest surprise was Rio. The recuperating warrior was dressed in combat gear and waiting with the rest of them, the look in his topaz eyes nothing short of fury. His muscled body radiated pure malice—white-hot and volatile—and Elise suddenly understood Tess’s concerns about him. He was terrifying, even simply standing still.

Elise resisted the urge to hold on a little tighter to Tegan’s hand when she felt his arm flex as he prepared to join his brethren.

God, but she didn’t want to let him go.

Not when they’d just found each other.

“All right,” Lucan said, his gaze steady as it lit on each of the warriors in turn. “Let’s do this.”