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"You don't think so."
"Not that I've ever seen or heard. If you ask me, those facilities are nothing more than cold storage for a population of locusts just waiting for the chance to swarm and devour everything in their path."
Tavia shuddered at the horrific image he painted. "Nothing can stop a Rogue?"
"Only a bullet or blade forged of titanium. The metal acts like poison on a Rogue's diseased blood system. Failing that, a long, hot sunbath will also do the job."
She studied him, seeing the anguish written in the tense lines of his face. "It must've been awful, losing your brother to one of those monsters."
"Yeah. It was." He nodded grimly, his expression distant and pensive, a thousand miles away. It seemed to take a moment for his focus to return. "I hardly remember the days and nights that followed. I had so much rage and grief inside me ... it's all I knew for a long time afterward." Shadows filled his eyes as he spoke, and Tavia sensed that he was holding something back, a secret he wasn't ready to share with her. Maybe not with anyone. And it was clear that the things he'd done at that time still haunted him now, despite his claims that he'd left the memories behind.
"It was unthinkable that Quent could be taken down so suddenly. Elise was destroyed, of course. So was their son, Camden. The boy was barely a teen. He'd already been making plans to attend private, specially arranged night classes at Harvard, the same as Quentin and I both did, and our father before us. Cam had been so excited. The whole world was ahead of him." The photograph of Chase and Elise and the smiling boy came back to her in full detail. Even without her genetic gift of flawless memory, Tavia would have recalled the covetous look in Chase's eyes in that candid shot. "What happened to Elise and her son after your brother was killed?"
Chase's expression clouded again, shadows filling his eyes. "They lived under my care for a while. My father had been killed on patrol before Quent died, so that left me as the leader of my kin's Darkhaven. Elise and Cam moved in to my Back Bay brownstone immediately after Quent's death. To be honest, I thought I could just step in and pick up the pieces Quent's death had left behind. I thought maybe I could finally know what it was like to be him - just once. But I could still feel the chill of his shadow, even after he was gone."
"What about Elise?" Tavia asked, wishing she could deny the twinge of dread that was needling her already, expecting to hear that he might still feel something for the woman beyond familial bonds. "How was it for you, suddenly having her in your house, under your protection?" "It was like living with two ghosts - my brother's and hers. She withdrew from everyone after Quent died. No one but Camden mattered to her." His exhaled sigh was deep, edged with a thick kind of remorse. "None of us could've known that soon he would be dead too, gone Rogue himself and shot to death in front of her like a rabid dog."
Tavia's hand came up to her mouth. She could feel the grief tearing through him like a fresh wound. "My God, Chase. That's awful."
"Yeah," he said, nodding in sober agreement. His silence stretched, cold and heavy. "She may never forgive me for pulling that trigger."
Tavia couldn't help it - she gaped at him, stricken speechless at his confession. But before she could ask him what could have brought him to do such a terrible thing, the sound of muffled voices carried up from the floor below.
Male voices, deep and rolling, filling the mansion's foyer. A female was down there too. Tavia heard Mathias Rowan greet them all like old friends.
"What's going on? Who is that downstairs?"
Beside her on the bed, Chase had gone tense and still. "The Order has arrived."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHASE CLOSED Tavia's bedroom door behind him without making a sound. He'd gotten dressed as soon as he heard the warriors' voices, reassuring Tavia there was no cause for alarm and that she should wait upstairs until he or Rowan came to fetch her.
To his amazement, she didn't try to debate it with him. No doubt she had enough on her mind already, after he'd unloaded his whole inglorious past on her. Or most of it, that is. He hadn't gone so far as to divulge the worst of his shame. If he could help it, she'd never know how dubious his honor truly was.
Not that he let that stand in the way of seducing her here tonight, despite his good intentions. He knew too well where good intentions usually led him, but damn if he could describe making love to Tavia as anything close to hell.
His pulse simmered at the thought of her, and it didn't help matters that he could still smell her on his skin and taste her on his tongue. He could still feel the heat of her body clenched around him. His cock responded with an eager twinge, already on notice and up to a repeat performance.
Ah, shit.
Maybe this was hell after all.
Chase tugged his dark shirt over the growing bulge in his black jeans and headed out to face his former brothers in arms. Downstairs in the Darkhaven's foyer entryway, Tegan's voice rumbled with its typical menacing cool.
"Appreciate the call, Mathias, and the interception of both the female and Chase. Wish we'd gotten here sooner to provide some backup tonight. I would've liked to get a look at those clinic records myself."
"That's right." Nikolai was down there with Tegan too. Chase knew the Siberian-born vampire by his quicksilver chuckle and his airless, icy growl. "Personally, I would've liked nothing more than to help you smoke a couple of brain-rotted Minions and one of Dragos's Terminator freaks of nature."
Chase walked the length of the second-floor hallway and paused at the top of the stairs. Down below, Niko had cocked a sidelong grin at the third warrior accompanying them on this retrieval mission to Boston. "No offense intended by the freak-of-nature crack, Hunter."
The former assassin didn't even blink. "None taken."
Standing with Rowan and the three members of the Order was Niko's Breedmate, Renata. The dark-haired beauty in head-to-toe black leather glanced up as Chase arrived. Pale jade-green eyes skewered him. "Guys," she murmured, alerting them to his presence with a subtle lift of her chin.
Chase started down the stairs without any acknowledgment.
Tegan was first to break the tense silence. "Speak of the devil. Gotta say, I'm surprised to find you waiting here for us, Harvard. Figured you for a quick cut and run. That's more your style these days."
