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It hardly seemed coincidental that this kind of disaster was coming so quickly on the heels of two other shocking strikes against public confidence and security.
“You think Opus is behind this?”
“They haven’t confirmed yet, but I don’t think there’s any question. This has Opus written all over it.” Lucan practically spat the words.
“There have been isolated Rogue attacks in other locations recently,” Tegan added. “Apparently, Opus got its hands on a chemical substance that makes bloodthirsty killers out of anyone who takes it.”
“Fucking déjà vu all over again,” Sterling Chase snarled as he fastened an arsenal of firearms around his hips.
“Yeah, it is,” Dante agreed. “We grabbed a bunch of the shit and torched the rest when we took down Riordan, but there was already some of it in play.”
“And now it’s here in D.C.,” Lucan said, his tone bleak. He motioned for the warriors to start rolling out. “Nathan took out three Rogues so far, but they’re cutting a bloody path through Georgetown as we speak.”
Zael’s stomach clenched. “Ah, fuck.” The alarm he’d felt upon entering the weapons room a moment ago now turned to ice-cold dread. “Brynne’s in Georgetown.”
Lucan gave him a curt nod as the commanders and other warriors began filing out to the corridor. “She’s with Nathan. He left her in the vehicle while he went to check things out. If she stays put, she should be okay until we reach her.”
“Where?” Despite the assurances, Zael’s pulse kicked hard and didn’t let up. “Tell me exactly where she is.”
Darion Thorne was the first to speak. “Nathan was taking her to a blood Host parlor. It’s on Wisconsin Avenue, near M Street.”
Zael knew the area. Not well, but enough for his needs right now. The Order and everything else pushed from his thoughts, he put an image of the intersection in his mind’s eye. Then he glanced at the Atlantean emblem that dangled from the leather thong around his wrist.
The piece of silvery crystal responded to his psychic request with a brilliant flare of light.
It flashed brighter, enveloping him in its power—and then Zael was no longer picturing the Georgetown intersection in his mind, he was standing there in the flesh.
The street was ghostly in its stillness, only the bleating cry of a vehicle alarm piercing the night. Zael started walking. Up ahead of him, a brutalized body lay broken and covered in gore next to the smashed hood of a car. Blood streaked the asphalt, which was also littered with items the terrorized people had lost in their haste to vacate the area.
He saw the glossy, black bulk of the Order’s SUV parked at the curb, just as Lucan had assured him it would be. But Zael’s lungs constricted as he realized the vehicle was empty, the passenger door ajar.
He wheeled around in the middle of the street, his gaze searching for any signs of life.
“Brynne!”
There was no answer. Only the nagging drone of the alarm. He silenced it with a sharp mental command.
“Brynne! Where are you?”
His feet started moving on their own. It wasn’t hard to tell which way the other people had gone. Personal effects, blood, even the savaged body of another victim lay in his path.
And then—a grim, but hopeful, sign.
A dead Breed male, his head twisted grotesquely as if by violent, monstrous strength.
One of Nathan’s kills, perhaps. Zael didn’t much care how the vampire met its end. One less Rogue was one less threat of danger to Brynne.
He shouted her name again, but still there was no answer.
Jogging now, he ran more than a block, then paused as he neared a narrow side alley. The sight—and smell—staggered him. He wasn’t Breed, but even he was rocked back on his heels by the coppery stench of pooled blood on the pavement inside the alleyway.
He approached the foulness, his eyes rooted to the pair of bodies that lay in crumpled heaps on the ground.
Relief washed over him when he saw that neither of the dead was Brynne. One was a Breed male, his corpse savaged beyond description. The other was a human of slight build, whose bloodless pallor made his skin glow milky white in the thin moonlight.
The horror of what had plainly taken place in the alley sickened him. Although the Rogue’s death had been brutal, the human had suffered horrifically as well. The front of his throat was torn away, no doubt by the Rogue. Another bite wound pierced his wrist—this one less violent, and certainly not the injury that killed him, but there was no mistaking the predation that had taken place.
Zael stared at the two large punctures, and something troubling nagged at his senses.
