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  LARA ADRIAN AND CHRISTOPHER RICE

  THRILLERS COME IN ALL FORMS. The number of subgenres is staggering, and this story is representative of one of the most popular.

  Paranormal.

  Lara Adrian has made a name for herself in this world where her books are huge bestsellers. True to his namesake (as the son of Anne Rice), Christopher Rice cut his teeth on dark suspense, before shifting to romance. Teaming these two together seemed like an exciting idea, but it also posed a few challenges. The timeline of Lara’s long-running Midnight Breed series spans twenty-five years in the future. Chris sets his stories and characters in the present. So, right away, the clock had to be turned back to a time when Lara’s vampires were unknown inside her imagined world.

  But that played right into their hands.

  Chris’s initial idea was to have his Desire Exchange series character, Lilliane, attacked by someone on her home turf of New Orleans where Lara’s character, Lucan Thorne, could witness both the altercation and Lilliane’s extraordinary powers.

  From there, everything fell right into place.

  Lara wrote the first draft, then Chris rewrote and edited. The title is a bit of an inside thing. Midnight from Lara’s long-running series. Flame from the candles that symbolically form a huge part of Chris’s fictional world.

  The result is a gem.

  Midnight Flame.

  MIDNIGHT FLAME

  THUNDER SHOOK THE TINY FRENCH quarter bookshop as Lucan Thorne handed his cash to the young woman behind the register. Rain had been hammering New Orleans since he arrived from Boston a couple of days ago. As the evening crept toward midnight, the deluge showed no signs of letting up anytime soon either. He didn’t mind getting wet. Besides, this last-minute stop for a special gift before returning home would be worth the trouble and then some.

  The perky blond clerk made change for him and handed it over along with his purchase. “You sure picked a bad night to be out shopping. The city’s a lot more fun when the weather’s nice and everyone’s out having a good time.” When he reached for the paper gift bag, she brushed her fingers over his. “You gonna be in town for a while? I’d love to show you what I mean.”

  Under the fall of his damp black hair, Lucan smiled, baring just the tips of his fangs. “I’m not really a people person.”

  The human sucked in a sharp breath.

  She let go of the bag as if it burned her fingers, blinking fast, her mortal brain no doubt struggling to process what she imagined she’d just seen.

  “Thanks for your help, Krystal,” he said, his fangs now retracted as he slipped the bag into a large inside pocket under his black trench coat.

  “Uh, sure.”

  She gave him a befuddled wave as he left the store.

  As he stepped out to the wet street, he heard the locks on the shop door tumble closed behind him. Revealing himself, or his kind’s, existence to the humans living alongside the Breed wasn’t something Lucan chanced often. As one of the eldest members of his kind, he knew better than anyone how critical it was for the vampire nation to maintain its secret from mankind.

  As commander of the Order, a cadre of Breed warriors who’d pledged their arms and their lives to protecting the fragile peace with their mortal neighbors, there was nothing Lucan wouldn’t do to ensure the security of both man and Breed alike. And if he thought for one second that the clerk inside the bookstore was any kind of threat to those goals, he’d have mind-scrubbed her on the spot.

  Right now, all he wanted to do was get back to the Order’s headquarters in Boston, where the rest of his team, and his new Breedmate, Gabrielle, awaited his return. After two days in New Orleans, smoothing the ruffled feathers of Breed civilian leaders worried that recent problems in Boston might spill over into other major cities unless the Order got them under control, he was eager to be done with his diplomatic duties. He itched to be back in combat with his warriors. More than that, he couldn’t wait to be back in bed with his sweet Gabrielle.

  The book he’d bought was a present for her. A signed first-edition novel by one of her favorite authors whose bestselling books had proclaimed New Orleans the vampire capital of the world and ignited a global obsession. Hell, decades later, women were still swooning over that certain French bloodsucker who was as sinister as he was sophisticated and seductive.

  Personally, Lucan didn’t understand the appeal.

  And, yeah, maybe he didn’t particularly appreciate competing with that fictional fantasy where Gabrielle was concerned either. But if the book made his mate happy, who was he to disagree?

  Still, his ego needed some reassurance that his fangs were the only ones his Breedmate wanted at her neck.

  Not to mention elsewhere.

  Smiling as he pictured all the ways he and Gabrielle would celebrate his homecoming, he set out to find a lingerie shop to buy her something skimpy. Maybe something with tiny buttons he could bite off one by one as he undressed her.

  Tilting his head down against the sluicing rain, he pushed deeper into the Quarter. He didn’t have much company tonight. The storm had driven all but the most stalwart or inebriated tourists indoors. The restaurants and bars were packed and lively, but the streets outside were practically empty. Only a few shops remained open. Lucan walked past half a dozen T-shirt stalls and several more boutiques hawking everything from gourmet foods to sex toys. He wandered without a plan, trusting he’d eventually spot a window full of the frilly lace things Gabrielle liked.

  How he ended up near a small, tucked-away courtyard filled with banana trees and a babbling fountain at its center he had no idea. Inside the courtyard, a coffee shop employee was just closing up for the night, dodging past the tarp-covered cast-iron tables and chairs outside. Of the handful of businesses that called the courtyard home, only one appeared to be open. Through the relentless curtain of pelting rain, Lucan’s acute Breed vision caught the hand-painted wooden sign above the door.

  FEU DE COEUR.

  A candle shop, he guessed, noting the small gold flame etched above the logo on the weathered wood. Even through the rain he could smell flame-warmed wax. His keen nose seemed to detect something more, but it was impossibly delicate.

  Elusive.

  And now that he was staring closer at the small shop, even the storefront seemed hard to define. It wobbled in a peculiar way, seeming to fade in and out of his sight as if it wasn’t completely solid.

  Or not quite real?

  Curious, Lucan started toward the shop.

  He didn’t get far.

  Before he could cross the small courtyard, he heard the sound of rushing footsteps somewhere on the street outside.

  “There she is. Let’s get her.”

  A male voice, issuing orders in a low tone that only one of Lucan’s kind could pick up from such a sizable distance.

  “You knock the bitch down, Danny. I’ll grab the case.”

  The two pairs of footsteps sped up now, heavy boots running hard through the downpour and coming his way.

  Lucan didn’t like any of it. In a blink, he was out of the courtyard and back on the street, just in time to see a pair of rangy human males beating feet behind a tall, full-figured, and elegantly dressed black woman who was making her way up the street toward
the courtyard.

  She toted a briefcase in her right hand.

  The case her pair of fast-approaching attackers were intent on taking unless he stopped them.

  Hadn’t he just been thinking how ready he was to be back on patrol?

  Dispatching a couple of idiot mortal thieves was child’s play, but he’d gladly take it.

  Except he didn’t get the chance.

  No sooner had he moved to take action, intending to leapfrog the woman and position himself between her and the two assailants, than she pivoted on her heels and faced off against the pair.

  Was she crazy?

  One of the two rushed her.

  She tossed him aside with a sweep of her free hand. She was superstrong. Inhumanly so. A spray of gold dust shot out of her fingertips, trailing after her dispatched attacker like an arc of delicate glitter.

  Who, or what, the hell was she?

  Still, there were two assailants and only one of her. And despite the fact that she was something Lucan had never seen before, she was still a woman and he wasn’t about to stand by and let her take on these hoods alone. Calling upon his Breed genetics, he moved in front of her faster than any human eye could track. Combat instinct raged through his veins. His fangs punched out of his gums, firing his dark-gray irises to coal-bright amber behind his narrowing, cat’s-eye pupils. He grabbed the second attacker by the collar and held the man aloft, his boots several inches off the ground. The man screamed when he saw Lucan’s face, making a frantic, but futile, attempt to scramble loose from his hold. Across the street, his buddy staggered to his feet and stared slack-jawed. Then he bolted, leaving his comrade to face the music alone.

  “Let me go. Please. I don’t wanna die.”

  Lucan ignored his struggling, whimpering quarry and turned his head to look at the woman behind him. She was beautiful, with an ageless face and deep brown eyes that seemed fathomless in the darkness.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, studying him in guarded silence.

  “Please, let me go,” the human whined. “I’s only doin’ a job, that’s all. Me and my friend were hired to jump the lady and see what happened. I swear, we weren’t gonna hurt her.”

  The woman scowled.

  Her lovely face held an unearthly, dangerous rage. “Who told you to do this? Who wanted to see what would happen?”

  The answer came a moment later, though not from the hired thug swinging at the end of Lucan’s grasp.

  Headlights blinked on from down an alley across the street.

  The twin high beams cut through the rain as a dark van rocketed out of the side street and swung past them in a scream of burning rubber.

  The lone driver held a video camera in his hand, its tiny red recording light trained on Lucan’s face as the vehicle sped away.

  • • •

  LILLIANE’S FAMOUS TEMPER SMOLDERED AS she watched the van disappear into the rain-filled night, its taillights swallowed up by the darkness. She cut a glance at the vampire standing next to her.

  “Where did you come from?”

  He grunted, sounding as displeased as she was. “I might ask you the same thing. What’s your name? How did you end up on the radar of this fool and his friend with the camera?”

  Her would-be assailant had since fainted dead away and now hung limp in the big vampire’s grasp. She pursed her lips, her fingers curling tighter around the jeweled handle of her briefcase.

  “Only a few people know about the kind of business I do around here and this guy’s not one of ’em. Trust me.”

  “Trust is earned.”

  He released the unconscious human, letting the man slump to the wet pavement. Gray eyes, shot with amber sparks, met her gaze through the relentless deluge. As she watched, his pupils transformed from narrow vertical slits to rounded pools of black. Behind his lips the points of the big male’s fangs gleamed diamond-bright.

  “Your name,” he said again, more demand than inquiry.

  “Lilliane.”

  “Your last name?” he asked, bearing his fangs slightly.

  “Smith,” she lied, summoning a swell of emotion she knew would fill her eyes with a brief shimmer of gold.

  He seemed dazed by this display for a second, then he introduced himself.

  “Lucan Thorne.”

  She smirked. “Your kind isn’t the only thing that goes bump in the night, Mr. Thorne.”

  He frowned, clearly taken aback. “You’re not Breed.”

  “No.”

  “But you are immortal.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  In truth, she was uncertain just how to classify what she and the twenty-three other Radiants like her actually were. On some days she felt special. Blessed by her ability to leap several stories into the air, to send would-be attackers flying backward with just a flick of her wrist. She didn’t age. She didn’t get sick. All wonderful things, right?

  But on other days, she felt cursed by the fact that a decision she’d made decades before had robbed her of the ability to feel anything close to romantic love for another being, mortal or immortal. She wasn’t alone in this struggle. There were twenty-three others just like her, extraordinary creatures with extraordinary powers. She served as their mentor and mother, even though she played no role in their creation. But none of them could agree on what to call their condition, just that the exact same chain of events had made each one of them what they were now.

  Lucan stared at her in silent contemplation before glancing down at the unconscious human at his feet. “Lilliane Smith, whoever or whatever you are, it’s obvious that you and I have a big problem here. We need to talk.”

  As much as she wanted to deny it, the Breed warrior was right. “Come with me. Let’s get out of the rain.”

  She stepped into the small courtyard, Lucan Thorne walking behind her, carrying the fainted human over his shoulder.

  “This way,” she said, leading him to the candle shop nestled in the corner of the square.

  The vampire cleared his throat. “I’d rather we go somewhere a bit more discreet, Lilliane. Someplace secure.”

  “We won’t find anywhere more discreet or secure in all the city,” she assured him. “Or all the world, probably.”

  She’d been coming to this place when the pair of men assaulted her. And while the shop’s enigmatic proprietor, Bastian Drake, wasn’t likely to welcome this late-night intrusion, the fact that the store’s light was still burning in the window, the fact that the shop itself hadn’t disappeared from sight altogether by way of his powerful magic, was signal enough that she and her unwanted new acquaintance could take shelter inside for a while.

  She opened the door and led Lucan Thorne inside. Shrugging out of her soaked raincoat, she indicated an empty wooden chair and watched as the vampire dumped the human onto the seat.

  “Are we alone here?” he asked.

  “Alone enough.”

  She noticed how his shrewd gaze surveyed the cramped space with its rug-covered, old wood floors and the dozens of thick candles on display in unusual burnt-umber glass containers. “I know the owner of this shop. We won’t be disturbed.”

  “Considering how the rest of this evening’s gone already, you’d better be damned sure of that.”

  She laid down her briefcase. “Suffice to say, the proprietor isn’t exactly what you’d call a people person.”

  The remark earned a cryptic smirk from the massive Breed male.

  “Strange place,” he said, strolling over to a collection of candles shelved on the far wall. He brought one to his nose and sniffed shallowly. Then he jerked his head away, as if his preternatural senses told him he wasn’t merely smelling poured wax and some added fragrance, but something else.

  Something primal, raw. Otherworldly.

  “Smells terrible, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “That and then some.” He returned the candle to its shelf. “The presentation had me fooled.”

  “That’s because
it’s not for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The candle. It’s not meant for you. So to your nose it probably smells like pond water or something worse.”

  “And the one it’s meant for? What will it smell like to them?”

  Her eyes glazed over but held their natural color. “Ever been in love?”

  “I am now.”

  “Ah, you’re sweet.”

  “I’m not talking about you.”

  “And I wasn’t remotely serious, so sheathe those fangs, big boy. Is the love of your life a he or a she?”

  “She.”

  “She’s got a smell, right? A special smell. Not just the smell of her skin, but the way her skin smells when she’s flushed and ready for you, beckoning to you. It’s a smell that makes you feel like you’re in her arms no matter where you are when you smell it.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “If that candle was meant for you, that’s what it would smell like to you. Only none of these candles are meant for you, because you’re already with the love of your life. Or at least it sounds like it. But if you weren’t, and the love of your life was in your life, but you weren’t man enough to step up and try to make a move, or you had a hundred excuses why it wasn’t going to work and you shouldn’t even try, eventually, you might find yourself here, smelling her smell in one of those candles.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? Or are you just humoring me? I’m not really sure how to handle skepticism from a vampire, so you’ll have to bear with me for a second.”

  “I’ve got a question. If there isn’t a candle for me here, why’d this place appear to me at all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the guy who runs it wanted me to help you. Maybe that’s why I wound up in this courtyard right as you were attacked.”

  His words gave a tense set to her jaw. “Let’s stop speculating and get back to the business at hand.”

  “Fine. You going to tell me what’s in that fancy case of yours, or am I going to have to open it and see for myself?”

  She saw no reason to lie. After all, as he’d pointed out, they shared a common problem tonight. Namely, both of them being revealed to the world as something other than human. She lifted the glossy leather briefcase and flipped the jeweled locks open. Holding the open case in her arms, she presented the contents to him.