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"And so I have," he answered, smiling with self-satisfaction. He considered her long and hard now, his obvious interest making her skin crawl. "I've been fascinated with you from the time you were a child, Tavia. You're so lovely. My homegrown, personally designed Eve." He shrugged. "Oh, the others have their charms as well, but I find I am particularly attracted to you." The others, he said. Not past tense, but present. She thought back to Dr. Lewis's files - the ones detailing deceased patients and the ones she hadn't had the chance to read before the clinic was destroyed. So, there were other lab-created Breed females who'd survived the prolonged medical trials and treatments? She had to be sure. If she had sisters, she had to find a way to help them.
Dragos was still studying her, his chilling eyes like dead fingers on her skin. "When I am king and all the humans and Breed alike bow to me - very soon now," he added, grinning with arrogant certainty, "I will require a suitable queen."
Tavia swallowed the bile that crept into her throat at the very idea.
"I think I would enjoy having you at my side, in my bed." He grunted, amused by something. "My gift to you will be the Order in chains. You can kill Sterling Chase personally if you like." The words - the very thought of Chase or the others in the Order falling into Dragos's hands - hit her like a slap. He reached out, lightly stroked her cheek. She struggled not to gag, aware of the Gen One assassins watching her like hawks.
She could chew Dragos's hand off in an instant, but she needed to kill him. And for that, she needed to get close. God help her, intimate, if necessary.
"Come," he told her. "It's past sundown overseas. I was just about to sit down and watch the news coverage. You will join me, Tavia, and witness the kingdom that is soon to be ours."
CHAPTER FORTY
THE ROGUE HAD a woman cornered in the stairwell of her posh apartment building when Chase smashed into the vestibule and ashed the suckhead. The titanium blade raked across the feral vampire's throat sent him sputtering to the floor, dropping in an oozing, sizzling heap of melting flesh and bone.
Chase stood over the dead Rogue, his fingers sticky on the blade's handle, his black fatigues and combat boots awful with blood and gore from the other kills he'd already made in the couple of hours since the sun set that night. He stared down at the fright-stricken woman who huddled in the far corner of the stairwell. The amber glow of his eyes cast her face in fiery color. Her brown hair was in disarray, fallen out of its conservative twist at her nape. Her dark, skirted business suit and frothy white blouse were disheveled, torn in places and smudged with the filthy handprints of the suckhead who'd attacked her.
"You're okay," he assured her as he cleaned the edge of his blade on his pants. "The Rogue can't hurt you now."
She gaped up at him in horror. Shook her head frantically as she shrank farther back, eyes wide and mistrusting. "You - oh, God, you're one of them too!"
"No," he said, then blew out a curse when he considered how close he truly was to being the same ravenous beast as the ones cutting a bloody swath through the night. "I mean you no harm. Get up."
She pulled in a hitching breath. "I don't understand."
"No time to explain," he growled. "Now get the fuck inside your apartment and bolt the door. Don't come out until daybreak, you understand? Go. Now!"
She scrambled away from him in a clumsy rush, one high-heeled pump lost during her attack.
As she hurried toward her apartment, she found the wherewithal to fumble her cell phone out of her purse and snap a quick picture of him in all his vampy glory. Wonderful. Not like he didn't already have enough photos on file with human law enforcement.
He stalked outside and took a cleansing breath. Or rather, it should have been cleansing. But the wintry air was ripe with the undercurrent of spilled red cells, some of it fresh, some of it coagulating in ice-crusted puddles on the streets and sidewalks.
The presence of so much blood, for so many hours at a time, was making him crazy.
But he pushed through it anyway, his mind centered on his responsibility to the Order. His heart was grounded in his love for Tavia.
It troubled him that he couldn't feel her near anymore.
He wanted to see her, touch her. Have irrefutable proof that she was safe. And he wanted her to know that he loved her. More than anything, he wanted her to know that.
Damn Dragos. And damn this war that had finally exploded in the Order's face. They were doing their best to get the situation cleaned up, but the battle had only just begun. With Boston's streets having come under some degree of control earlier that night the Order had since moved on to New York City, where there'd been reports of vicious attacks in Manhattan and every surrounding borough. Between the Order and Rowan's guys, they'd smoked upward of thirty Rogues the past two nights. A lot more to go. And a lot more cities still under heavy siege, in the States and abroad.
"Harvard." Dante's deep voice cut through the darkness. He jogged up, curved daggers in his hands, his face smeared with the grit of recent combat. "You get the suckhead that came this way?"
"He's dead," Chase replied. His vision was still flooded with amber, fangs thick in response to the stench of blood that permeated the night. "Ashed the bastard just as he was moving in for the kill. Victim walked away with her carotid intact - and a picture of me standing over the smoked body."
It wasn't the first time the humans the Order were trying to spare had stopped to take snapshots or cell phone videos of the warriors attempting to sweep up this mess. Nor would it be the last.
Dante raked a hand over his begrimed face. "Fucking modern technology. Inconvenient as hell sometimes, eh? Well, it's not like the Breed has to be concerned with keeping a low profile anymore. We're about as out as we can be."
Chase nodded and absently rubbed at the center of his chest.
"You okay?" Dante asked, studying him.
"Yeah. It's just ..."
"Tavia," the warrior said when Chase's voice trailed off.
