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He and his lieutenant guard had reached the end of the corridor now, where the pulsing drone of loud music reverberated through the walls and under their feet. Behind battered steel double doors, a party raged. In front of those doors, a Rogue vampire on watch sank down heavily on one knee as soon as his slitted pupils registered who waited before him.
"Sire." There was reverence in the gravel of his rough voice, deference in the way he did not glance up to meet the eyes shaded behind dark glasses. "My lord, you honor us."
He did, in fact. The leader gave a slight nod of acknowledgment as the watchman came to his feet. With a grimy hand, the guard pushed open the doors to permit his superior entry to the raucous assembly gathered within. The leader dismissed his companion, freeing himself to private observation of the place.
It was an orgy of blood and sex and music. Everywhere he looked, Rogue males groped and rutted and fed on a rich assortment of humans, both men and women. They knew little pain, whether or not they attended this event willingly. Most had been bitten at least once, drained enough to be riding a wave of lightheaded, sensual bliss. Some were further gone, slumped like pretty cloth dolls into the laps of wild-eyed predators who would not cease feeding until there was nothing left to devour.
But then, that was to be expected when one threw tender lambs into a pit of ravenous beasts.
As he strode into the thick of the gathering, his palms began to sweat. His cock tightened behind the carefully pressed fall of his tailored pants. His gums began to throb and ache, but he bit his tongue in an effort to keep his fangs from stretching long in hunger the way his sex had so greedily responded to the erotic barrage of sensory stimulation hitting him from all angles.
The mingled scents of sex and spilling blood called to him like a siren's song - one he knew well, though that was in his very distant past. Oh, he still enjoyed a good fuck and a juicy open vein, but those needs no longer owned him. It had been a hard road back from the place he'd once been, but in the end, he had won.
He was Master now, of himself, and, soon, much, much more.
A new war was beginning, and he was poised to deliver Armageddon itself. He was cultivating his army, perfecting his methods, aligning allies who would later be sacrificed without hesitation on the altar of his personal whim. He would wreak a bloody vengeance on the vampire nation and the human world that existed only to serve his kind. When the great battle was over, the dust and ash finally cleared, there would be none to stand in his way.
He would be a goddamned king. As was his birthright.
"Mmm... hey, handsome... come in and play with me."
The husky invitation reached his ears over the din of noise. From out of the writhing pit of slick, naked bodies, a female hand had risen to grasp at his thigh as he walked past. He paused, glancing down at her with open impatience. There was a faded beauty under her smeared dark makeup, but her mind was utterly lost to the delirium of the orgy. Twin rivulets of blood ran down her pretty throat and over the tips of her perfect breasts. She had other open bites elsewhere as well: at her shoulder, on her belly, and on her inner thigh, just below the narrow strip of hair that shadowed her sex.
"Join us," she begged, pulling herself out of the twisting jumble of arms and legs and rutting, howling Rogue vampires. The woman was all but drained, a scant few ounces this side of dead. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her movements were languid, as if her bones had turned to rubber. "I have what you want. I'll bleed for you, too. Come, taste me."
He said nothing, merely pried the pale, bloodstained fingers from the fine weave of his expensive silk pants.
He frankly wasn't in the mood.
And like any successful dealer, he never touched his own product.
With his large hand flat against her chest, he pushed the woman back into the churning fray. She squealed as one of the Rogues caught her in a rough hold, then savagely flipped her over his arm to bear her down beneath him and enter her from behind. She shrieked and moaned as he rammed into her, but choked silent an instant later, when the Bloodlusting vampire sank his huge fangs into her neck and sucked the last drop of life from her depleted body.
"Enjoy these spoils," said the one who would be king, his deep voice ringing out magnanimously over the animal roars and the skull-battering blast of the music. "Night is on the rise, and you will soon earn all of the rewards I see fit to give you."
Chapter Eleven
Lucan rapped on Gabrielle's apartment door again.
Still no response.
He had been standing on her front stoop in the dark for about five minutes, waiting for her either to open the damn door and invite him in, or curse him as a bastard from behind the perceived safety of her multiple locks and tell him to get lost.
After the hard-core moves he'd put on her the night before, he wasn't sure which reaction he deserved. Probably the irate kiss-off.
He dropped his knuckles onto the door once more, hard enough that the neighbors likely heard it, but there was no movement from within Gabrielle's apartment. Only quiet. Too much stillness on the other side.
She was in there, though. He could sense her through the layers of wood and brick that stood between them. And he smelled blood, too - not a lot, but trace amounts somewhere near the door.
Son of a bitch.
She was inside, and she was hurt.
"Gabrielle!"
Concern ran like acid through his arteries as he calmed his mind enough to focus his mental powers on the chain lock and double bolts that were set on the other side of the door. With effort, he turned one lock, then the other. The chain slid free of its channel, swinging loose against the doorjamb with a metallic scrape.
Lucan threw open the door, his boots pounding over the tiled foyer. Gabrielle's camera bag lay directly in his path, likely fallen where she dropped it in her haste. The jasmine-sweet scent of her blood slammed into his nostrils just an instant before an erratic trail of small crimson splatters caught his eye.
