But even more than that, something was happening between them that went beyond attraction. It went beyond the fact that they lived in two different worlds, from two races that had been enemies for longer than either of them had been alive. This connection he and Brynne had shouldn’t make sense and it damned sure wasn’t anything he’d planned on, but it was real.
It was genuine and powerful, and it wasn’t going away, no matter how much she wanted to convince both of them that it didn’t exist.
That alone should have been enough to make him bolt. Great sex was one thing. He’d never been the kind to walk away from physical pleasure. But this was something else. And for some idiotic reason, instead of taking Brynne’s rejection as the gift it should be, he felt compelled to get to the real reasons she was so determined to push him away.
And the longer he waited to get those answers from her, the more her silent treatment was going to drive him insane.
Making his excuses to Dylan and Rio, he slipped out of the kitchen and headed toward the Order’s command center, the direction she’d gone with Tavia a short while ago.
Gideon practically slammed into him, coming out of a room with his head down and tapping madly on a tablet screen.
“Oh, shit. Sorry, man.” The warrior glanced up distractedly. His spiky crown of blond hair was disheveled and intrigue lit his eyes behind the pale blue lenses of his glasses. “I’m working out a new protocol to see if I can find another way through Opus’s server encryption. Got no time to waste, especially now that our best lead on Crowe turned out to be a dead end.” He winced as he said it. “Bad choice of words.”
Zael paused. “What do you mean?”
“The woman in Ireland,” Gideon said. He tucked the tablet under his arm, his expression sobering. “Rafe and Aric called it in a few minutes ago. Crowe’s mistress was murdered in her home right before our team arrived to drop a net on her. Opus apparently knew we were on to her. Sounds like they made quite a statement in killing her.”
Zael didn’t want to ask what constituted making a statement, but having seen some of the other violence Opus Nostrum’s followers were capable of, he could easily imagine. “So, how were we able to confirm that this woman, Iona Lynch, was in fact Crowe’s mistress?”
“We have a witness who’s corroborated our hunch—Lynch’s roommate. Her name’s Siobhan O’Shea. She was in the house at the time of the attack earlier tonight. To make matters worse, the friend is a Breedmate.”
“Jesus. Was she harmed?”
“Got knocked on the head pretty hard by the two men who killed her friend, but she obviously wasn’t their main concern. She says Lynch knew the men. She let them in and things turned ugly pretty fast. When the roommate tried to intervene, they shoved her into the bathroom and knocked her out while they finished what they came to do.”
Zael exhaled a low curse. “She’s lucky they didn’t finish her too.”
“Extremely lucky,” Gideon agreed.
“That’s not to say this woman isn’t still in danger,” Zael considered. “From all I’ve heard and seen of Opus’s tactics, they don’t have a very good track record of leaving loose ends behind.”
Gideon nodded grimly. “She’d be in Order protective custody even if she wasn’t a Breedmate, but the fact that she is makes her safety a top priority. Not to mention we need her to tell us whatever she can about Crowe and Iona Lynch, and about the men who killed her.”
Gideon’s tablet chimed and he glanced at the screen. “Damn. So much for that brilliant idea. Whoever put the locks on Opus’s network is one shrewd son of a bitch. Looks like I’ve got more homework to do.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of the corridor. “If you were on your way to see Lucan, that’s where I’m heading now.”
Zael hedged. “Ah, actually, I was looking to talk with Brynne. She went this way with Tavia a few minutes ago.”
“Yes, she did.” Although he was already tapping on his tablet, Gideon’s brows rose with blatant interest over the rims of his glasses. “But you’re too late. Brynne’s gone now.”
“Gone?” The newsflash hit Zael like a blow. “You don’t mean back to London?”
“No. Gone to feed in Georgetown. Tavia sent one of the warriors out with her as an escort.”
Zael wasn’t happy to hear she’d left the safety of the command center, let alone that she’d done so with another male. If she needed someone to protect her, then damn it, she could have asked him to take her.
Of course, she’d probably rather swallow her own tongue than ask him for help.
He realized he must have been wearing his displeasure on his face, because Gideon froze for a moment, cocking his head at him. Then he chuckled.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” He reached out and cuffed Zael on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Atlantean. Happens to the best of us.”
“What does?”
The warrior smirked. “You’ll figure it out.”
With that, he resumed his tapping, leaving Zael to stare after him as Gideon headed back down the corridor, once again thoroughly engrossed in his work.
CHAPTER 18
“You really don’t have to wait for me to finish here,” Brynne told the big dark-haired Gen One warrior who’d been tasked as her personal driver and bodyguard for the evening. “I feel ridiculous that Tavia insisted I be schlepped around like a child in need of supervision.”
To make matters worse, her sister had assigned Jordana’s warrior mate, Nathan, to the job. If Brynne had harbored even the slimmest hope of slipping her collar tonight in order to feed the way she needed to, she stood little chance of getting away from this warrior’s watchful eye.
“It could take a while,” she pointed out. “I’ll have to register and sign the contract before they even admit me.”
Nathan sat behind the wheel of the SUV as he parked at the curb, his expression unreadable. “Take whatever time you need.”
He wasn’t much of a talker, Brynne had gathered, but she wasn’t feeling particularly chatty herself. She’d been too busy calculating possible excuses for why she wasn’t going in to the blood Host parlor, and trying to guess how much longer she would be able to stave off the worst of her hunger if she didn’t get some relief tonight.
By the acid burn of her veins and the increasing throb of all her pulse points, she was perilously close to the edge already.
“You know, I’m a child of the labs too, Brynne.”
She glanced at him, startled by the unsolicited confession. “Yes. Tavia had mentioned it to me at one time. You were part of the Hunter program.”
“Assassins,” he confirmed grimly.
Brynne knew the basics. The same Breed madman who tinkered with DNA to create Tavia and her and a rumored dozen or more Breed females like them had also bred a race of Gen One boys from the Ancient he kept imprisoned in the lab and a cage full of Breedmates abducted from their families and used like chattel for his experiments and twisted pleasures.
Hunters like Nathan had been raised by handlers, as Brynne and her half-sisters had been. But where Brynne and the other Breed females were shackled by lies and abuse and genetic-stunting chemical therapies, the Hunters were kept obedient by the use of even crueler tactics.
Nathan looked at her finally, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that touched her. Not because she pitied him, but because she admired how normal his life seemed now, with Jordana. With the Order. With his mother, Corinne, and Hunter, her Gen One mate who was also a product of Dragos’s madness.
“No one who survived those damned labs did it unscathed,” Nathan said.
Brynne nodded. “I know.”
“Yeah, I know you do. But you look like you need someone to say it out loud for you now.”
She stared at him in the dim light of the dashboard. Although he had no idea how deep her wounds had gone, or how hideous her reality was even years and miles away from the torture of the labs, his compassion moved her.
She swallowed on an arid throat.
“Thank you, Nathan.”
He gave a curt nod. “Go do what you have to do and take care of your needs. I’ll wait for you here.”
Certain she misheard him, or at least misunderstood his meaning, Brynne’s breath caught.
Did he know she dreaded walking into that parlor?
Holy shit. Was he giving her permission to go feed on her own terms?
“Nathan, I—”
She didn’t get the chance to say another word.
Without warning, something big fell from the roof of a nearby building and smashed onto a parked car about a block up the street. Metal crunched. Glass exploded. Alarm lights and sirens split the darkness.
People started screaming, pointing up at the roof of the nearby parking deck.
“What the fuck?” Nathan killed the engine. “Stay in the vehicle!”
He leaped out and vanished into the night before Brynne even realized he was moving.
She sucked in a gasp as she peered through the windshield.
Another body pitched to the street, plummeting down like a stuffed dummy freefalling off the parking garage rooftop. Except they weren’t dummies. They were humans—brutalized, broken, their clothing shredded and blood-soaked.
Savaged.
Nausea swamped Brynne as she realized what she was seeing. “Oh, my God.”
Something else descended to the street now. A Breed youth, his chin and the whole front of his body painted red from his crime. The young male dropped into a crouch next to his kill and howled like the animal he had become, his fangs enormous, his face feral with Bloodlust.
Holy shit.
The male was Rogue.
And he wasn’t alone. Another descended to the rooftop of a parked van, wearing more evidence of the slaughter.
Brynne instinctively reached for her JUSTIS-issued firearm, but her fingers came away empty. Dammit. She’d lost her service weapon the same day she’d lost her job with the agency.
Panic swept the street as swiftly as a flash fire.
The humans who’d stopped to stare in dazed confusion now bolted blindly away from the scene. One after another, they streamed past Brynne in the SUV, shrieking as they raced for cover.
It was just what the pair of predators wanted.
They vaulted airborne, leaping over Brynne’s vehicle and several others in one fluid bound. The fleeing humans in their sights didn’t stand a chance.
But that didn’t mean Brynne wasn’t going to try to save at least some of them.
She was Breed too—something even deadlier than that, thanks to the genetic cocktail that had spawned her. Whether armed with weapons or her bare hands, she was a nightmare neither of these two fucks would be expecting.
Jumping out of the SUV, she had her fists full of the first Rogue’s shirt in a split second. She took him down to the asphalt. Her knee planted firmly in the center of his spine, the Bloodlusting male went wild, snarling and struggling in an effort to shake her off. Brynne seized the vampire’s skull and gave it a sharp twist, snapping bone and tendons.
She released the dead Rogue, her eyes already piercing the night to track her next target.
There he was. While she’d paused to deal with his companion, the other Rogue had enough time to pluck one of the stragglers from the herd. Snatching a rangy human male under his arm, the vampire dodged into a side alley to enjoy his spoils.
“Shit.”
Brynne was rounding the corner in a heartbeat, but she was already moments too late.
The Rogue had the human down on the pavement, his fangs sunk deep in the front of the man’s throat, greedily taking his fill while his victim convulsed and sputtered wetly under the assault.
Brynne’s bile rose at the sight.
“Get off him.”
Her voice was an airless growl of sound, nothing like she’d heard before. It was her own hunger clawing at her, making her mouth feel desert dry and her vision burn hot with amber light. Twined with her battle rage, she was something beyond formidable now.
The Rogue grunted, swinging his head around to look for the source of the intrusion.
And although his mind was gone, his senses owned by the Bloodlust that made him Rogue, he apparently still had some small spark of sanity—enough to make his own glowing eyes go a bit wider in his skull as he registered what he was up against.
But the madness in him overruled everything else.
Still in his crouch, the Rogue let go of the dying human and swiveled on his bare heels, ready to face off with Brynne to defend his prey.
Brynne braced for the attack she knew was coming. On a roar, the feral vampire flew at her.
Instead of letting his greater weight and unhinged fury catapult her backward, she took hold of him and spun, using his forward momentum to pivot them together in midair. Then she shoved hard, slamming the Rogue into the wall of the brick building at his back.
The wall shook, old mortar crumbling with the impact. The Rogue was dazed from the crushing strike, but he wasn’t down. He came at her again, another ferocious leap and crash that hurtled them both across the narrow alley to the wall on the other side.
She grunted in sharp pain as her back collided into the bricks. The Rogue dropped her, letting her sag to the ground. He rocked back on his heels as if to ready himself for the killing blow. As if he’d won.
Brynne’s smile was not her own. It belonged to the beast inside her. The one whose power surged inside her now, more lethal than anything this lowly blood addict would ever know.
She rose like a wraith in front of the Rogue. He had no chance to react, no chance to stop the violence that exploded out of her.
She lashed out, lightning-quick. Her fingers ripped through clothing, flesh, and bone. The Rogue roared as she opened his chest with slashing strikes of her hands, his agony only feeding her power.
His chest cavity shredded, the Rogue shrieked and convulsed on his feet. But that wasn’t enough for the monster raging within her now.
Grabbing a fistful of the vampire’s mangy hair, she bellowed with battle fury as she drove the vampire’s head into the bricks at her back. The skull caved in with a sickening crunch.
She smashed it again and again, lost to an unearthly violence that seethed through her veins like poison. She didn’t know what finally made her head clear enough to realize her opponent was dead.
But no, that wasn’t right.
She did know.
The scent of fresh blood lifted her chin from the revolting carnage she’d wrought.
On the ground nearby, the human was shuddering in a growing pool of red. He was dying. Easily only moments from the grave already.
But his blood was still alive.
And it called to her.
It called to the beast who’d been pacing its cage for too long—since the last time she’d finally broken down and fed. She hungered now. So severely she could hardly stand the agony of it.
Brynne drifted over to the man. His gaping, sightless eyes probably didn’t register the inhuman face looking down at him.
But Brynne saw what she looked like now.
In the scant light of the street, she saw her face reflected in the glossy surface of the dying man’s blood.
It made her want to weep, that reflection of who—and what—she truly was.
Instead, she knelt down beside her dying blood Host…and she fed.
CHAPTER 19
Zael sensed the sudden shift of energy in the Order’s headquarters even before he heard the heavy drum of boots on marble floors and the jangle of weapons. Following the sound down to the central artery of the command center, he found all of the warriors suited up and rolling out for patrols.
Or, rather, for battle.
“What’s going on?”
Lucan cut him a stark glance. “Rogues. We’ve got upwards of a dozen of them on the loose right now.”
Zael knew the derogatory term for a blood-addicted member of the Breed. In fact, there probably wasn’t a person alive
in the past twenty years—mortal and immortal alike—who hadn’t at least heard of the violence and carnage Rogues had inflicted on the human population. But it had been a long time since they had posed any kind of threat¸ thanks in most part to the work of the Order.
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.