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Dante held his disbelief inside, certain that Lucan would shut the agent down with the power of his level glare alone. But Lucan didn't reject the idea outright. He stood up, his fists braced on the edge of the conference table.

"Leave us," he told Chase. "My brethren and I will discuss your request privately. Our business here is finished for now, Agent Chase. You may return to the Darkhaven to await our decision. I will be in contact with you."

Dante and the rest of the warriors stood too; then, after a long moment, so did the Darkhaven agent, retrieving his polished leather case from the floor beside him. Dante took a step out from the table. When Chase tried to move past him, he got the edge of Dante's thick shoulder blocking his path. Given no choice, he paused.

"Folks like you call us savages," Dante said harshly, "yet here you are, all posh and shiny in your suit and tie, asking for our help. Lucan speaks for the Order, and if he says we're going to bail your ass out on this little problem, then that's good enough for me. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. Doesn't mean I have to like you either."

"I'm not hoping to win any popularity contests. And if you have misgivings about my proposed role in this investigation, by all means, state them."

Dante chuckled, surprised by the challenge. He didn't think the guy had it in him. "Well, now, I don't mean to stand on ceremony, Special Investigative Agent Chase--'scuse me, Senior Special Investigative Agent--but what I do, what all of us in this room do, each and every night, is some dirty fucking work. We fight. We kill. We sure as shit don't run some kind of tourist program for Darkhaven agents looking to build their political careers on our blood and sweat."

"Nor is that my intention, I assure you. All that matters to me is my charge to locate and recover the inpiduals who've gone missing from my community. If the Order can stop the proliferation of Crimson in the process, so much the better. For all of the Breed."

"And how is it you feel you're even remotely qualified to go out on patrols with us?" Agent Chase glanced around the room, possibly looking for support from any one of the warriors standing around the table. The room was quiet. Not even Lucan spoke on his behalf. Dante narrowed his gaze and smiled, half-hoping the silence would drive the agent away. Send him running back to his quiet little sanctuary with his tail between his legs.

Then Dante and the rest of the Order could get back to the business of dealing death to the Rogues-- preferably without an audience and a goddamn scorecard.

"I hold a BA in Political Science from Columbia University," Chase finally said. "And, like my brother and my father before me, I have a law degree from Harvard, where I graduated at the top of my class. In addition, I am trained in three schools of martial arts and have an expert-marksman rating in a shooting range of eleven hundred feet. That measure being without the aid of a scope."

"Is that right?" The r?sum? was impressive, but Dante hardly flinched in reaction. "So, tell me, Harvard, how many times have you used your training--martial arts or weapons--outside of a classroom? How much of your blood have you spilled? How much have you taken from your enemies in the heat of battle?"

The agent held Dante's flat stare, the clean-shaven, square chin climbing up a notch. "I'm not afraid to be tested on the street."

"That's good," Dante drawled. "That's real good, because if you're thinking about going to the dance with any of us, you sure as hell will be put to the test."

Chase bared his teeth in a tight smile. "Thanks for the warning."

He brushed past Dante, murmured his good-byes to Lucan and the others, then strolled out of the lab with his briefcase clutched hard in his hand.

When the glass doors slid closed behind the agent, Niko ground out a curse in his native Siberian tongue. "That's some messed-up shit, Darkhaven pencil-pusher thinking he's got balls enough to ride with us."

Dante shook his head, sharing the same opinion, but his thoughts were churning on something else equally troubling. Maybe more so.

"I got jumped downtown tonight," he said, meeting the tense faces of his brethren. "I thought it was a Rogue stalking prey outside a club. I fought with the son of a bitch, but he wasn't going down easy. Ended up pursuing him down to the riverfront, where I ran into a whole new mess of trouble. A group of heavily armed suckheads came at me hard."

Gideon slanted a narrowed gaze on him. "Damn, D. Why didn't you call in for support?"

"There wasn't time to do anything but try to save my own ass," Dante said, recalling the viciousness of the attack. "The thing is, that suckhead I chased down there fought like a demon. Virtually unstoppable, like a Gen One Rogue--maybe worse. And titanium didn't affect him."

"If he was Rogue," Lucan said, "the titanium should have smoked him on the spot."

"Right," Dante agreed. "He showed all the signs of advanced Bloodlust, but he hadn't actually turned Rogue. And there's more. That dried pink foam you can see in Chase's morgue shots? That suckhead had it too."

"Shit," Gideon said, picking up the photographs and showing them to the other warriors. "So, in addition to dealing with the continuing problem of the Rogues, now we're coming up against Breed vampires hopped up on Crimson too. In the heat of the fight, how're we going to know what we've got in our crosshairs?"

"We won't," Dante said.

Gideon shrugged. "Suddenly things don't seem so black and white."

Tegan, his expression placid and cool, exhaled a wry laugh. "As of a few months ago, our problem with the Rogues became a war. Not a lot of room for gray in that picture."

Niko nodded his head in agreement. "If a suckhead wants to get in my shit--Crimson eater or Rogue --he's got one thing to look forward to: death. Let the Darkhavens sort through the rubble once it's all over."

Lucan turned his attention to Dante. "What about you, D? Care to weigh in on this?"

Dante crossed his arms over his chest, more than ready for that shower now and an end to a night that had only proceeded to go downhill since he got out of bed. "From what little we know of Crimson, it doesn't sound good. All these missing civilians, with more all the time, is bound to start a panic in the Darkhaven populations in general. Bad enough we've got this new complication of Crimson users to deal with, but can any of you imagine the clusterfuck situation of having the streets overrun with a bunch of Darkhaven agents trying to ID missing persons and apprehend them on their own?"

Lucan nodded. "Which brings us back to Agent Chase and his request to participate in this operation. He's come to us with the same concerns, not wanting to cause widespread panic yet needing to recover the missing and find a swift solution to the problem Crimson seems to be causing among the Breed. I think he could be a benefit to us, not only in the operation itself but down the road as well. It might be good for the Order to have an ally in the Darkhavens."

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