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And he had been. Gabrielle understood now. The memory of him feeding from the Minion he'd killed flashed through her mind, but it had a different context now, no longer the monstrous act it had appeared on the surface, but a means of survival. Everything was taking on a different context since she'd met Lucan.
In the beginning, she would have considered the war between the Breed and their enemies to be nothing more than one evil versus another, but now she couldn't help feeling that it was her war, too. She had a stake in its outcome, and not just because her future was apparently linked to this strange otherworld. It was important to her that Lucan won not only the war against the Rogues, but also the equally devastating, very personal war he was struggling with in private.
She worried for him, and couldn't dismiss the niggling fear that had been crawling up her spine since he and the other warriors left the compound for the raid.
"You love him very much, don't you?" Danika asked as Gabrielle's anxious silence stretched between them.
"I do, yes." She met the other woman's gaze, seeing no reason to hide the truth when it was probably written all over her face. "Can I tell you something, Danika? I have this awful feeling about what he's doing tonight. And to make it worse, Tegan said he didn't think Lucan was going to be alive much longer. The longer I sit here, the more afraid I am that Tegan might be right."
Danika frowned. "You spoke with Tegan?"
"I ran into him - literally - a short while ago. He told me not to get too attached to Lucan."
"Because he thought Lucan was going to die?" Danika let out a long breath and shook her head. "That one seems to enjoy putting others on edge. He probably said those things only because he knew it would upset you."
"Lucan has said there is some bad blood between them. Do you think Tegan can be trusted?"
The blond Breedmate seemed to consider it for a moment. "I can tell you that loyalty is a large part of the warriors' code. It means everything to these males, down to a one. Nothing in this world could make them violate that sacred trust." She rose now, and took Gabrielle's hand in hers. "Come on. Let's go find Eva and Savannah. The wait will pass more quickly for all of us if we don't spend it alone."
Chapter Twenty-six
From their observation point on the roof of one of the harbor buildings, Lucan and the other warriors watched as a small pickup truck, spitting gravel under its polished chrome wheels, roared up to the front of their target location. The driver was human. If his sweaty, slightly anxious scent didn't announce him, the country music blaring out of his open window surely would. He got out of the vehicle carrying a stuffed brown-paper bag that reeked of steaming fried rice and pork lo mein.
"Looks like our boys are eating in tonight," Dante drawled, while the unsuspecting delivery man checked the flapping white ticket stapled onto his order and looked around the desolated wharf with dawning wariness.
The driver approached the warehouse's entry door, shot another nervous look around, then swore into the darkness and jabbed the buzzer. There were no lights on inside the building, only a pool of yellow shining down from the bare bulb over the door. The battered steel panel opened, revealing the dark behind it. Lucan could see the feral eyes of a Rogue staring out as the delivery man blurted the take-out order total and thrust the bag into the wedge of blackness in front of him.
"Whaddaya mean, trade for it?" the urban cowboy demanded in a thick Boston accent. "What the hell - "
A large hand seized him by the front of his shirt, jerking him off his feet. He screamed, and in his flailing panic somehow managed to rip away from the Rogue's grasp.
"Oops," Niko hissed from his position near the ledge, "guess he just realized it wasn't Chinese on the menu."
The Rogue flew at the human in a blur of shadows, taking him down from behind, tearing open his throat with savage efficiency. Death was bloody and instantaneous. When the Rogue leaped up and began to heft its kill onto its shoulder to drag it inside, Lucan got to his feet.
"Time to move. Let's go."
In concert, the warriors hit the ground and headed at blinding speed for the Rogues' warehouse lair. Lucan, leading the way, was first to reach the vampire and his lifeless human burden. He slapped a hard hand onto the Rogue's shoulder and spun him around, at the same time drawing one of his slayers' blades from a sheath at his hip. He sliced hard and with unerring aim and severed the beast's head in one clean stroke.
The Rogue immediately began a cellular meltdown, dropping its blood-soaked victim onto the gravel as the kiss of Lucan's blade ran like acid through the vampire's corrupted nervous system. A few seconds later, all that remained of the Rogue was a puddle of putrid blackness seeping into the dirt.
Up ahead at the door, Dante, Tegan, and the three other warriors were locked and loaded, braced to start the real action. On Lucan's "go," the six of them poured into the warehouse with weapons at the ready.
The Rogues inside had no idea what had hit them until Tegan let a dagger fly and nailed one through the throat. As the Rogue shrieked and writhed toward a smoldering disintegration, its enraged companions lunged for cover, grabbing up weapons as they scrambled to evade the barrage of bullets and razor-sharp steel that Lucan and his brethren were now raining down upon them.
Two Rogues bit it in the first few seconds of engagement, but the remaining pair had fled deep into the warehouse's gloomy corners. One of the Rogues blasted gunfire at Lucan and Dante from behind an old pile of crates. The warriors dodged the attack and sent a little love back at the Rogue, driving him out into the open where Lucan finished him off.
At his periphery, Lucan spotted the last of the suckheads trying to make an escape through a maze of tumbled storage barrels and scattered metal pipes in the rear of the building.
Tegan hadn't missed it, either. The vampire went after the fleeing Rogue like a freight train, vanishing into the bowels of the warehouse in deadly pursuit.
"We're clear," Gideon shouted from somewhere in the smoke- and dust-filled darkness.
But no sooner had he said it than Lucan sensed a new threat closing in on them. His ears picked up the quiet scramble of movement overhead. The dingy skylights above the exposed ventilation ducts and steel trusses of the warehouse were nearly opaque with grime, but Lucan was sure that something was advancing across the roof.
"Heads up!" he called to the others just as the ceiling shattered, and seven more Rogues dropped down with weapons blazing.
Where had they come from? The intel on the lair was solid: six individuals, probably turned Rogue only recently, and operating independently, without affiliation. So, who had called in the cavalry to back them up? How did they know about the raid?
