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"I don't know. Something big. Something he's been working toward for a while, from what I've heard. He's been trying to find out where the compound is. Before Freyne was killed, he mentioned something about a decoy. Some kind of Trojan horse - "
"Ah, fuck," Chase muttered.
A sick suspicion snaked through him when he considered how Dragos might go about doing something like Murdock just described. Through the haze of his gnawing hunger, he thought about the night of Kellan Archer's rescue. The annihilation of Lazaro Archer's Darkhaven - an attack that had left the Order with little choice but to bring the two surviving members of that family into the compound for protection.
Had the whole thing played out the way Dragos had intended it to? Could the son of a bitch have used the incident to somehow expose the Order's headquarters? And to what end? The possibilities were numerous, every one of them driving into his gut like an iron stake. Chase mentally jerked his focus back to the interrogation. "What else do you know about his plans?"
"That's it. That's all I know."
Chase narrowed a look on the vampire, anger flaring along with suspicion. He shook his head. "I don't believe you. Maybe you need something to help jog your memory."
He smashed his fist into Murdock's head again. A gash ripped open on the vampire's cheek, and Chase could not contain the animal growl that erupted from him at the sight and scent of still more blood.
"Speak, goddamn you," he hissed, the bare thread of his humanity being devoured by the beast that was snapping at its bit. "I won't ask you again."
Murdock seemed convinced now. He coughed, a wet, broken sound. "He's using humans in law enforcement to be his eyes and ears. He's been making Minions, lots of them. I heard he's been talking about a politician recently - that new senator that just got elected."
It had been a long time since Chase gave a shit about human politics, but even he wasn't so far removed that he wasn't aware of the promising young Ivy Leaguer who had come fresh out of Cambridge and seemed destined for a fast rise to the national stage. "What's any of this got to do with him?" Chase demanded.
"You'll have to ask Dragos," Murdock sputtered through a split lip and swelling jaw.
"Whatever his plans are, there's a good chance they involve this Clarence guy in some way."
Chase considered it for a moment, staring at the Agent in contempt. "You sure that's all you can tell me? I'm not going to find out something more interesting if I knock a hole in the other side of your fucked-up skull?"
"I've told you everything now. I don't know anything more, I give you my word."
"Your word," Chase muttered low under his breath. "You expect me to take the word of a pedophile blood clubber who would sell out his own kind to a twisted piece of shit like Dragos?"
Murdock's eyes took on a cautious, worried gleam. His southern drawl seemed thicker for the blood that was leaking from the side of his mouth. "You said you wanted information, and I gave it to you. Fair's fair, Chase. Cut me loose. Let me go."
Chase smiled, genuinely amused. "Let you go? Oh, I don't think so. It ends for you right here. The world will be a hell of a lot better place without the likes of you in it."
Murdock's answering giggle had a maniacal edge to it, as though he understood he had no hope of walking away from the situation and meant to go out swinging. "Oh, that is rich, Sterling Chase. Your self-righteousness knows no bounds, does it? The world will be a better place without me in it. Have you looked in a mirror lately, my boy? I may be all the things you called me, but you're no prize either."
"Shut the fuck up," Chase growled.
"Don't think I didn't notice the fact that your eyes have been throwing off amber like a furnace this whole time. How long has it been since your fangs weren't filling your mouth?"
"I said shut up, Murdock."
But he didn't. Damn him, he wouldn't. "How desperate would an addict like you have to be not to be tempted to get down on your hands and knees and lap up the blood that's spilling out of me onto that shitty floor below? Wouldn't your holier-than-thou buddies back at the Order love to see you like this - like the fucked-up Rogue you truly are? Do the world a favor and take yourself out of it."
Chase couldn't tolerate any more. He couldn't stand to hear the truth, especially coming from scum like Murdock. He swung his chain-reinforced fist into the vampire's face, sending him swinging by the length of chain at his ankles. Chase yanked Murdock back and hammered him again, blow after punishing blow. He pounded until there was little left to hit. Until Murdock's body hung lifeless, the awful truth silenced at last. Chase dropped the chain from around his throbbing fist. Then he released the one holding Murdock aloft. The body hit the floor of the old silo in a heavy thump of flesh and bone, the chain rattling down behind it.
Chase turned around and walked out, leaving the door open for the other predators of the night to feed on the carcass and tomorrow's sun to take whatever remained.
Chapter Twenty-one
"For once, it seems luck is on our side, Lucan."
Gideon stood in the center of the cavernous bomb shelter hidden beneath Lazaro Archer's Cold War - era Darkhaven a couple hours north of Augusta, Maine. As Archer had warned, the place wasn't anywhere close to the size and complexity of the Order's compound, but Lucan had to agree with Gideon: It seemed to be the best option - the only immediate option - they had at the moment.
Nestled on a remote, two-hundred-acre plot of virgin forest that had likely seen more moose and black bear than humans in the past couple of centuries, the property was nothing if not private. The residence itself was a sprawling ten-bedroom, eight-thousand-square-foot fortress of stone and thick timber. Rugged, compared to the elegant mansion back in Boston or the sophisticated brownstone where Lazaro Archer and his family had lived before Dragos's act of mass destruction. The land surrounding it was impenetrable and forbidding, a natural perimeter wall made of soaring pines and thorn-spangled bracken.
"I wish I had more to offer you," Archer said from beside Lucan. His rugged face was limned in pale light from the fluorescent security lamp that hung overhead in the concrete tunnel leading back up to the house. "I cannot fully express how deeply I regret my family's role in Dragos's plans. That he used Kellan as an unwitting pawn - "
"Forget it," Lucan replied. "None of us would be in this situation if it weren't for Dragos. As for this holding, like Gideon says, it's an advantage we sure as hell need right now."
