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"It should have been me." Lucan glanced between Tegan and Gideon, the warrior who'd been with him when he'd first founded the Order in Europe and the one who'd helped him establish the warriors' home base in Boston centuries later. "I'm the Order's leader. If there was a sacrifice to be made to spare everyone else, I should have been the one to step up."
Tegan eyed him grimly. "How long do you think Chase would have been able to keep his Bloodlust at bay? Whether he's in human custody or loose on the streets, his thirst owns him. He's lost and he knows that. He knew it when he walked out that door this morning. He had nothing left to lose."
Lucan grunted. "And now he's sitting in police custody somewhere, surrounded by humans. He might have spared us from discovery today, but what if his thirst gets the better of him and he ends up exposing the existence of all the Breed? One moment of heroism could undo centuries of secrecy."
Tegan's expression was coldly sober. "I guess we'll have to trust him." "Trust," Lucan said. "That's a currency he's come up short on more than once lately." Unfortunately, right now, they didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Dragos had demonstrated quite effectively just how far he was willing to take his enmity toward the Order. He had no regard for life, human or his own kind, and as of today, he'd shown that he would take their power struggle out of the shadows and into the open. It was dangerous ground, with impossibly high stakes.
And it was personal now. Dragos had crossed a line here, and there would be no going back. Lucan glanced at Gideon. "It's time. Hit the detonators. Let's get this done." The warrior gave a slight nod and turned his attention back to his handheld computer. "Ah, fuck me," he muttered, the traces of his British accent punctuating the curse. "Here we go then." The three Breed males stood side by side in the crisp, cold darkness. Above them the sky was clear and cloudless, endless black, pierced with stars. Everything was still, as if Earth and the heavens had frozen in time, suspended in that instant between the silence of a perfect winter night and the first low rumble of the destruction unfolding roughly three hundred feet beneath the warriors' boots. It seemed to carry on forever, not some great bombastic spectacle of furious noise and spewing fire and ash but a quiet yet thorough annihilation.
"The living quarters have been sealed," Gideon reported somberly as the thunder began to ebb. He touched the screen of his handheld device and another series of deep growls rolled from far below the snow-covered ground. "The weapons room, the infirmary ... both gone now."
Lucan didn't allow himself to dwell on the memories or the history that was housed in the labyrinth of rooms and corridors being systematically exploded with a touch of Gideon's finger on that tiny computer screen. It had taken more than a hundred years to build the compound into what it had become. He couldn't deny that it put a cold ache in his chest to feel it being pulled down so neatly.
"The chapel has been sealed," Gideon said, after pressing the digital detonator another time. "All that remains is the tech lab."
Lucan heard the slight catch in the warrior's low voice. The tech lab was Gideon's pride, the nerve center of the Order's operation. It was where they'd assembled and strategized before every night's mission. It took no effort at all for Lucan to see his brethren's faces, a fine group of honorable, courageous Breed males, gathered around the lab's conference table, each one ready to give his life for the other. Some of them had. And some likely would in the time still to come. As the soft percussion of explosives continued to rumble belowground, Lucan felt a weight settle on his shoulder. He glanced beside him, to where Tegan stood, the warrior's big hand remaining a steady presence, his cool green eyes holding Lucan's gaze in an unexpected show of solidarity, as the last of the thunder faded into silence.
"That's it," Gideon announced. "That was the last one. It's over now."
For a long while, none of them spoke. There were no words. Nothing to be said in the dark shadow of the now-vacant mansion and its ruined compound below.
Finally, Lucan stepped forward. His fangs bit into the edges of his tongue as he took one last look at the place that had been his headquarters - his family's home - for so many years. Amber light filled his vision as his eyes transformed in his simmering fury.
He pivoted to face his two brethren, and when he at last found the words to speak, his voice was harsh and raw with determination. "We may be done here, but this night doesn't mark the end of anything. It's only the beginning. Dragos wants a war with the Order? Then, by God, he's damn well got it."
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOLDING CELL at the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department reeked of mildew and urine and the pungent stench of human sweat, anxiety, and disease. Sterling Chase's acute senses recoiled as he cast a hooded glance at the trio of lowlifes currently handcuffed and parked along with him in the holding tank inside the Boston jail. Across the six-by-eight windowless room, the meth- head seated on the bench opposite him bounced his boot heels nervously on the scuffed white linoleum floor. His arms were restrained behind him, thin shoulders hunched forward under the wrinkled folds of a lumberjack-plaid flannel shirt. The junkie's dark-ringed eyes were sunk deep into the hollowed sockets of his strung-out face, his gaze darting back and forth, wall to wall, ceiling to floor, and back again. Yet all the while he was careful to avoid looking directly at Chase, like a trapped and terrified rodent with the instinctive understanding that a dangerous predator was nearby.
On the other end of the long bench, a balding middle-age man sat as still as stone, sweating profusely, a pitifully sparse comb-over drooping onto his greasy forehead as he quietly murmured under his breath. He was praying in a barely audible whisper that Chase heard word for word, a plea to his God for absolution of his sins and bargaining for mercy with the fervor of a man facing the gallows. Not an hour earlier, this same man had been wailing about his innocence, swearing to the cops who'd arrested him that he had no idea how hundreds of pictures of him posed with naked children had ended up on his computer. Chase could hardly stand to breathe the same air as the pedophile, let alone look at him.
But it was the third man in the holding tank, the heavy-browed bruiser who'd arrived ten minutes ago, fresh off an arrest for domestic battery, that had Chase's molars clamped together as tight as a vise. Loose jeans sagged under the pregnant swell of a beer gut cloaked in a Patriots sweatshirt from a few Super Bowls past. The gray shirt was torn at the shoulder seam, its red- white-and-blue logo on the front stained with the smeared remnants of a pot roast and mashed potatoes meal. Judging from the knot riding the bridge of the guy's busted-up nose and the bleeding fingernail tracks skating down the left side of his face, it looked like his female victim hadn't gone down without a fight. Chase's nostrils flared, throat tickled, as his eyes rooted on the four long, bloodied gashes raking the human's cheek.
"Bitch fuckin' broke my nose," Man of the Year complained as he leaned back against the white-glazed brick wall of the holding cell. "You believe that shit? I give her a little smack for dropping my dinner in my lap, tell her to watch where the fuck she's goin', for crissake, and she hauls off and cold-cocks me. Big mistake." He grunted, mouth curling in a sneer. "She won't be stupid enough to try a stunt like that again, though. And the friggin' cops, man! Shoulda known they'd take that bitch's word over mine. Just like last time. I'm supposed ta let a judge wave a piece of paper at me sayin' I gotta stay away from my own wife? I gotta stay outta my own damn house? Fuck that. And fuck her too. I've sent her to the hospital more 'an once. Next time I see her, I'm gonna fix that bitch so good, she'll never be able to sic the cops on me again." Chase said nothing, merely listening in silence and trying not to fixate too intensely on the bright red rivulets that were making a liquid slide down onto the wife-beater's jaw. The sight and scent of fresh blood was enough to wake the predator in any member of the Breed, but all the worse for Chase.
Head tipped down toward his chest, he drew in a shallow breath and caught a whiff of something even more disturbing beneath the stale foulness of the room and the coppery tang of coagulating red cells - something raw and feral, verging on rabid.
Him.
The realization made his mouth quirk, but it was hard to appreciate the irony when his gums were throbbing with the need to feed.
Thanks to the fierce thirst that had been his constant companion for longer than he cared to admit, his sensory inputs were locked in overdrive. He felt every minute shift in the air around him. Saw every twitch and tic in the movements of his restless cellmates. He heard every anxious breath taken and expelled, every rhythmic heartbeat, every rush of blood pulsing through the veins of all three humans, who were little more than arm's reach from him inside the room. His mouth watered feverishly at the thought. Behind his flattened upper lip, the points of his fangs pressed like twin daggers into the cushion of his tongue. His vision started to tighten, burning amber as his pupils narrowed to thin slits under his closed lids.
Fuck. This was a bad place for him to be, especially in his condition.
Bad place, bad idea. Bad damned odds of walking away from this whole situation in any way, shape, or form.
Not that he'd given a shit about bad ideas and doomed outcomes when he'd offered himself up to the police on the front lawn of the Order's estate earlier that day. His only concern had been protecting his friends. Giving them the opportunity - very likely their only prayer of a chance - to avoid discovery by human law enforcement and, he hoped, find a way to clear out of the compound and get to someplace safe.
And so he hadn't resisted when the cops clamped handcuffs on him and hauled him into the station. He'd cooperated during the seven hours of interrogation, doling out just enough information to the local boys and the feds to satisfy their endless questioning and keep them focused solely on him as the kingpin and mastermind of the violence that had taken place in the city over the last couple of days. Violence that had begun a few nights ago with a holiday party shooting at an up-and-coming young politician's swank North Shore home.
The botched assassination attempt had been Chase's doing, but the intended target wasn't the golden-boy senator or even his highprofile guest of honor, the United States vice president, as the cops and federal agents were inclined to believe. Chase had been gunning for a vampire named Dragos that night. The Order had been hunting Dragos for more than a year, and suddenly Chase had found the bastard rubbing elbows with influential, well-connected humans, passing himself off as one of them. To what end, Chase could only imagine, and none of it was good. Which is why, when he saw the opportunity to act, he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the son of a bitch. But he'd failed. Not only had Dragos apparently walked away from the assault, but Chase found himself the focus of every media outlet in the country in the hours that followed. He'd been spotted at the senator's party, and the eyewitness had given law enforcement a nearly photographic description of him.
Couple that with a bombing the next day at Boston's United Nations and a police pursuit of the suspects - a carload of heavily armed backwoods malcontents who led the cops right to the Order's front door - and Boston's finest were sure they had uncovered a major domestic terrorist cell.
A misconception Chase was happy to indulge, at least for the time being.
