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While hunting their enemies gave some of the Breed pleasure, Lucan's own drive was based in hatred, pure and simple. He didn't try to hide it. He despised everything that the Rogues were and had vowed, long ago, that he would eradicate their kind, or die trying. Some days, he didn't really care what came first.
"Here we go," Gideon said finally, when the records scrolling on his monitor came to a stop. "Looks like we hit pay dirt."
"What've you got?"
Lucan and the others turned their attention to an oversized flat-screen panel above the lab's bank of microprocessors. The faces of the four Rogues slain by Lucan outside the nightclub came up on the display next to those of Gabrielle's cell phone images of the same individuals.
"IID records have all of these down as missing persons. Two from the Connecticut Darkhaven last month, another out of Fall River, and the last one is local. They're all current generation, the youngest wasn't even thirty years old."
"Shit," Rio said, whistling low. "Stupid kids."
Lucan said nothing, felt nothing, for the loss of young lives gone Rogue. They weren't the first, and they sure as hell wouldn't be the last. Living in the Darkhavens could seem pretty dull to an immature male with something to prove. The allure of blood and conquest was deeply in-grained, even in the later generations, who were the furthest removed from their savage forebears. If a vampire went looking for trouble, particularly in a city the size of Boston, he generally found it in spades.
Gideon punched a quick series of commands on his computer keyboard, bringing up more photos from the database. "Here are the last two records. This first individual is a known Rogue, repeat offender here in Boston, although he's apparently been keeping low under the radar for more than three months. That is, he was, until Lucan smoked him in the alley over the weekend."
"And what about him?" Lucan asked, eyeing the last remaining image, that of the only Rogue who'd managed to elude him outside the club. His photo record came up in the form of a video still, presumably captured during some sort of interrogation session, based on the restraints and electrodes the vampire was wearing. "How old is this image?"
"About six months," Gideon replied, calling up the date stamp. "Came out of one of the West Coast operations."
"L.A.?"
"Seattle. But according to the file, L.A.'s got a warrant for him, too."
"Warrants," Dante scoffed. "Fucking waste of time."
Lucan had to agree. For most of the vampire nation in the United States and abroad, enforcement of the law and apprehension of individuals gone Rogue was governed by specific rules and procedures. Warrants were written, arrests were made, interrogations were conducted, and, given ample evidence and due process, convictions were handed down. It was all very civilized. And rarely effective.
While the Breed and its Darkhaven populations were organized, motivated, and mired in layers of bureaucracy, their enemies were rash and unpredictable. And unless Lucan's gut was wrong, after centuries of anarchy and general chaos, the Rogues were gearing up to recruit.
If they weren't already months into the process.
Lucan stared at the image on screen. In the video still, the captured Rogue was strapped to an upright metal table, stripped naked, his head shaved bald to better accommodate the currents that were likely being sent into his skull during his questioning. Lucan felt no sympathy for the torture the Rogue had undergone. Interrogations of that nature were often necessary, and like a human jacked up on heroin, a vampire afflicted with Bloodlust could take ten times the pain of his Breed brethren without breaking.
This Rogue was big, with a heavy brow and thick, primitive features. He was snarling in the video frame, his long fangs gleaming, his amber eyes wild around the elliptical slashes of his fixed pupils. He was draped with wires from the top of his huge head and corded neck to his muscle-girded chest and hammerlike arms.
"Assuming ugly's not a crime, what did Seattle bust him for?"
"Let's see what we've got." Gideon spun back to his bank of computers and brought a record up on another screen. "Picked him up for trafficking - weapons, explosives, chemicals. Oh, this guy's a bloody charmer. Into some real nasty shit."
"Any idea whose arms he's been running?"
"Nothing listed here. They didn't get that far with him, evidently. The record states he broke out of containment right after these images were taken. He killed two of his guards during the escape."
And now he'd escaped again, Lucan thought grimly, wishing to hell he had popped the SOB when he had him in his sights. He didn't tolerate failure well, least of all in himself.
Lucan glanced to Niko. "You ever run across this guy?"
"No," said the Russian, "but I'll check him out with my contacts, see what I can find."
"Get on it."
Nikolai gave a curt nod and headed out of the tech lab, already dialing someone on his cell phone.
"These are damning pictures," Conlan said, peering over Gideon's shoulder at the photos Gabrielle had taken during the slaying outside the nightclub. The warrior blew out a curse. "Bad enough humans have witnessed some of these Rogue slayings over the years, but now they're pausing to take snapshots?"
Dante put his feet down with a thump, stood up, and started pacing, as if he was growing restless with the inactivity of the meeting. "Whole world up there thinks they're friggin' paparazzi."
"The guy who took these shots must've pissed himself real good when he saw two-hundred pounds of Breed warrior gunning for him," Rio added. Grinning, he looked at Lucan. "Did you bother to scrub his memory first, or did you just take the sucker out on the spot?"
