Kiss of Midnight mb-1 Read online

  Even if he was a vampire.

  God, it sounded ridiculous even to think it.

  “Gab, honey. You need to report what happened. The guy sounds seriously unhinged. The police need to hear about this, they need to get him off the street. Ray and I can take you. We’ll go downtown and find your detective friend—”

  “No.” Gabrielle shook her head, setting her cold tea onto the sofa table with only the slightest quiver in her hands. “I don’t want to go anywhere tonight. Please, Megan? I just need to rest for a little while. I’m so tired.”

  Megan took Gabrielle’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Okay. I’ll get you a pillow and another blanket. You don’t have to go anywhere until you’re ready, sweetie. I’m just so glad you’re all right.”

  “You were fortunate to get away,” Ray interjected as Megan picked up Gabrielle’s cup and carried it into the kitchen before heading to a linen closet down the hall. “Someone else might not be so lucky. Now, I’m off duty, and you’re Meg’s friend, so I’m not gonna force the issue, but you have a responsibility not to let this guy get away with what he did tonight.”

  “He’s not going to hurt anyone else,” Gabrielle whispered. And even though they were all talking about the man who’d pulled a gun on her, she couldn’t help thinking that they could have been saying the same things about Lucan.

  He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten back to the compound, or even how long he’d been there. Based on the sweat he’d worked up in the weapons room of the training facility, he had to guess it to be hours.

  Lucan hadn’t bothered with the lights. His eyes were killing him enough in the dark, anyway. All he needed was the burn of his muscles as he forced them to work, to regain control of his body as his system slowly came down from a high that had been perilously close to Bloodlust.

  Lucan reached for one of the daggers on the counter beside him, his fingers testing the razor-sharp edge as he turned back toward the alleylike corridor of the practice range. He could sense, more than see, the target at the end, and when he let the blade loose into the dark, he knew the hard thump meant a dead-center hit.

  “Hell, yeah,” he murmured, his voice still rough, his fangs not yet receded.

  His aim had much improved. He hadn’t been a hair off a killing strike in the past several tries with the blades. He wasn’t about to quit until he had shaken off the last of the effects of his feeding. That could take a while yet, he thought, still feeling ill from the near overdose of blood he’d consumed.

  Lucan strode down the length of the practice range to retrieve his weapon from the target. He pulled the dagger free, noting with satisfaction the deep set of the wound he would have delivered had the target been a Rogue or Minion, and not a practice dummy.

  As he turned to start back for another round, there was a soft click somewhere ahead of him in the range, then searing light flooded the length and breadth of the training facility.

  Lucan recoiled as his head exploded with the sudden assault. He tried to blink some of his daze away, squinting into the glare of light that bounced off the mirrored walls lining the defense and weapons training section adjacent to the practice range. It was there he saw the large form of another vampire, leaning a thick shoulder against the wall.

  One of the warriors had been watching him from out of the shadows.

  Tegan.

  Jesus. How long had he been standing there?

  “Feeling all right?” he asked, apathetic as ever in his dark tee-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “If the light is too much for you—”

  “It’s fine,” Lucan growled. Stars blinded him as he struggled to adjust to the harsh illumination. He lifted his head and forced himself to meet Tegan’s stare across the room. “I was just about to leave, anyway.”

  Tegan’s eyes stayed rooted on him, his gaze too knowing as he stared at Lucan. Tegan’s nostrils flared infinitesimally, and the wry twist of his mouth took on an edge of surprise. “You’ve been hunting tonight. And you’re bleeding.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not like you to take a hit. You’re too fast for that, usually.”

  Lucan exhaled a curse. “You mind not sniffing around my ass right now? I’m not in the mood for company.”

  “No shit. Feeling a little tense, are we?” Tegan swaggered forward to peruse the weapons laid out for training. He wasn’t looking at Lucan now, but he read his torment as if it were spread before him on the table along with the collection of daggers, knives, and various other blades. “Got some aggression you need to work out? Hard to concentrate with all that buzzing in your head, I’ll bet. Blood gets running so fast, it’s all you can hear. All you can think about is the hunger. Next thing you know, it owns you.”

  Lucan tested the heft of another blade in his hand, trying to appreciate the tang and balance of the handcrafted dagger. His eyes couldn’t focus for longer than a second. His fingers itched to use the weapon for something more than target practice. With a snarl, he cocked his arm back and let the dagger fly down the range. It struck hard in the dummy at the other end, a direct chest shot, right through the heart.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Tegan. I don’t need the commentary. Or the audience.”

  “No, you don’t like anyone watching you too closely. I’m beginning to see why.”

  “You don’t know dick.”

  “No?” Tegan stared at him for a long moment, then slowly shook his head, exhaling a low curse. “Be careful, Lucan.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he spat harshly, turning on the vampire in a black rage. “You giving me advice, T?”

  “Whatever.” The male lifted his shoulders in a negligent shrug. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

  “A warning.” Lucan’s bark of laughter echoed into the cavernous space. “That’s fucking rich. Coming from you.”

  “You’re walking the edge, man. I can see it in your eyes.” He shook his head, tawny hair falling down around his face. “The pit is a deep one, Lucan. I’d just hate to see you fall.”

  “Spare me the concern. You’re the last person I need to hear it from.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got it all under control, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, Lucan. Maybe you’ll believe it. Because looking at you now, I sure as hell don’t.”

  The accusation spiked Lucan’s anger off the chart. In a blur of speed and fury, he fell on the other vampire, fangs bared in a vicious hiss. He didn’t even realize he had a blade in his hand until he saw the silver edge of it pressing hard into Tegan’s throat. “Get the fuck out of my face. You reading me clearly now?”

  “You wanna cut me, Lucan? You need to make me bleed? Do it. Fucking do it, man. I could give a rat’s ass.”

  Lucan threw the dagger down and roared, grabbing two fistsful of Tegan’s shirt. Weapons were too easy. He needed to feel flesh and bone under his hands, feel them tearing and cracking, bowing to the beast that was so close to ruling his mind.

  “Shit.” Tegan started chuckling, his insolent gaze latching onto the frenzied wildness that was surely flashing in Lucan’s eyes. “You’ve already got one foot in the hole. Don’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” Lucan growled to the vampire who had once, long ago, been a trusted friend. “I should kill you. I should have killed you then.”

  Tegan didn’t so much as flinch from the threat. “You’re looking for enemies, Lucan? Then take a look in the mirror. That’s the one son of a bitch who’s going to beat you every time.”

  Lucan hauled Tegan around and slammed him against the opposite wall of the training room. The mirrored glass crunched with the impact, shattering outward around Tegan’s shoulders and torso like a haloing starburst.

  Despite his efforts to deny the truth in what he was hearing, Lucan caught his own savage reflection, replicated a hundred times in the network of broken pieces. He saw the slivered pupils, the glowing irises—a Rogue’s eyes—staring back at him. His huge fangs were stretched lo
ng in his open mouth, his face contorted into a hideous mask.

  He saw everything he hated, everything he had pledged his life to destroy, just like Tegan said he would.

  And now, coming through the doors behind him and into the many reflections that had so transfixed him, Lucan saw Nikolai and Dante, their expressions wary as they strode into the training facility.

  “Nobody told us we’re having a party,” Dante drawled, even though the look he shot between the two would-be combatants was anything but casual. “What’s going on? Everything cool here?”

  A long, tense silence fell over the room.

  Lucan released Tegan from the punishing hold, slowly drawing away from him. He lowered his eyes, a knee-jerk reaction meant to shield their wildness from the other warriors. The shame he felt was something new to him. He didn’t like the bitter taste of it; he couldn’t speak for the bile that rose up from within him.

  Finally, Tegan broke the silence. “Yeah,” he said, his stare never leaving Lucan’s face. “We’re cool.”

  Lucan whirled away from Tegan and the others, his thigh smashing into the table of weapons and sending it into a metallic shudder as he stalked toward the exit.

  “Damn, he’s jacked up tonight,” Niko murmured. “Smells like a fresh kill, too.”

  As he stepped through the training facility’s doors to the hall outside, Lucan heard Dante’s quiet reply. “No, man. He smells like overkill.”

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  “ More,” the human female moaned, draping herself over his lap and arching her neck up under his mouth. She pulled at him with greedy hands at his nape, her eyes drooping as though drugged. “Please… take more of me. I want you to take it all!”

  “Perhaps,” he promised idly, already growing bored with his pretty toy.

  K. Delaney, R.N., had proven entertaining enough sport the first several hours he’d had her in his private quarters, but like all humans gripped by the power of a vampire’s draining kiss, she had eventually stopped fighting and now craved an end to her torment. Naked, she writhed against him like a feline in heat, rubbing her bare skin across his lips, whimpering when he refused to give her his fangs.

  “Please,” she said again, whining now, and beginning to annoy.

  He couldn’t deny the pleasure he’d taken with her, both in her willing body and the delicious, deeper fulfillment as she Hosted him at her sweet, succulent throat. But he was finished with that now. Finished with her, unless he meant to sap the last of the female’s humanity and make her one of his Minion servants.

  Not yet. He might decide to play again.

  But if he didn’t remove himself from her current needy grasping, he might be tempted to drain Nurse K. Delaney past that delicate tipping point and right into death.

  He dumped her off his lap without ceremony and rose to his feet.

  “No,” she complained, “don’t go.”

  He was already crossing the room. The sumptuous folds of his silk robe skated around his calves as he strode out of the bedchamber and into his study across the hall. This room, his secret sanctuary, was filled with every luxury he desired: exquisite furnishings, priceless art and antiques, rugs that had been woven by Persian hands at the height of Earth’s religious crusades. All mementoes of his own past, objects collected over countless ages for the pleasure they gave him, and recently brought here, to the New England base of his budding army.

  There was another recent artistic acquisition, too.

  This one—a series of contemporary photographs—did not please him at all. He stared at the black-and-white images of various Rogue lairs around the city and could not contain his snarl of fury.

  “Hey… those aren’t yours…”

  He flicked an irritated glance to where the female now sat, having crawled after him from the other room. She slumped on the palace rug behind him, her face screwed into a little-girl pout. Head lolling on her shoulders and blinking dully as if scarcely able to hold her focus, she was staring at the collection of photographs.

  “Oh?” he asked, not really interested in playing games, but curious enough to know what it was about the images that had managed to sink through her muddled head. “Whom do you think they belong to?”

  “My friend… they’re hers.”

  His eyebrows rose in response to the innocent revelation. “You know this artist, do you?”

  The young woman nodded sluggishly. “My friend… Gabby.”

  “Gabrielle Maxwell,” he said, turning around, his attention distracted truly now. “Tell me about your friend. What is her interest in these places she photographs?”

  He had been rolling that question over in his mind since Gabrielle had first come to his attention as an inconvenient witness to a killing carelessly perpetrated by some of his new recruits. He’d been irritated, though not alarmed, to hear about the Maxwell woman from the Minion at the police station. Seeing her inquisitive face on the asylum’s closed-circuit security feed hadn’t exactly pleased him, either. But it was her apparent attention to documenting vampire locations that piqued a dark sort of interest in him.

  He had, until now, been occupied with other, more crucial things that required his attention. He’d been focused elsewhere, and had been satisfied with merely keeping a close eye on Gabrielle Maxwell. Perhaps her interest and activities might bear closer scrutiny. She might, in fact, warrant hard interrogation. Torture, if it pleased him.

  “Let’s talk about your friend.”

  His tiresome playmate tossed her head, then flopped back on the rug, throwing out her arms like a petulant child being denied something she wanted. “No… don’t talk about her,” she murmured, as her hips arched up off the floor. “Come here… kiss me first… talk about me… about us…”

  He took a step toward the female, but his intentions were hardly obliging. The slivering of his pupils might have fooled her into thinking he desired her, but it was anger pulsing through his body. There was contempt in his hard grasp as he stood over her and hauled her to her feet before him.

  “Yes,” she sighed, nearly his to command already.

  With the flat of his palm, he guided her head back onto her shoulder, baring the pale column of skin that was still scored and bleeding from his last taste of her. He lapped roughly at the wound, his fangs surging with rage.

  “You’ll tell me everything I want to know,” he whispered, lethal in his control as he stared into her bleary gaze. “From this moment forward, you, Nurse K. Delaney, will do whatever I tell you to do.”

  He bared his teeth, then struck as fiercely as a viper, draining every last bit of her conscience and her feeble human soul in one savage bite.

  Gabrielle made a perimeter check of her apartment, taking care that all the locks on her doors and windows were secure. She had been back home since mid-afternoon, having left Megan’s place in the morning after her friend went to work. Meg had offered for her to stay as long as she wanted, but Gabrielle couldn’t hide forever, and she hated the idea that she might drag her friend any deeper into a situation that was becoming more terrifying and unexplainable by the hour.

  At first, she’d avoided returning to her apartment and had walked around the city in a paranoid haze, all but giving in to the rising hysteria. Instinct warned her to prepare herself for a fight.

  One that she knew would be coming sooner than later.

  She worried that she’d find Lucan, one of his bloodsucking friends, or something even worse waiting for her when she arrived home. But it had been broad daylight, and she’d returned, at last, to find her apartment empty, not a thing out of place.

  Now, as darkness settled outside, her anxieties returned tenfold.

  Wrapping her arms around her cocoon of an oversized white sweater and jeans, she walked back into the kitchen where her answering machine was blinking with two new messages. They were both from Megan. She’d been phoning for the past hour, since her original message about the body recovered in the playground area where Gabrielle had
been assaulted the night before.

  Megan was frantic, telling Gabrielle about the police report she’d gotten from Ray, describing how her attacker had apparently been mauled by animals not long after he’d tried to hurt Gabrielle. And there was more. A police officer had been murdered in the station; it was his weapon recovered from the savaged body found on the grounds of the children’s park.

  “Gabby, please call me as soon as you get this. I know you’re scared, honey, but the police really need your statement. Ray’s about to go on break from duty. He says he can come and pick you up, if you’d feel safer—”

  Gabrielle hit the erase button.

  And felt the hairs at the back of her neck begin to rise.

  She was no longer alone in the kitchen.

  Heart lurching into overdrive, she whirled around to face her intruder, not at all surprised to see that it was Lucan. He stood in the door from the living room, watching her in thoughtful silence.

  Or maybe he was just sizing up his next meal.

  Curiously, Gabrielle realized she wasn’t so much afraid of him as she was angry. He looked so normal, even now, standing there in a dark trenchcoat, tailored black pants, and an expensive-looking shirt that was a few shades darker than the mesmerizing silver of his eyes.

  There was no trace of the monster she had witnessed last night. Just a man. The dark lover she only thought she knew.

  She found herself wishing that he would have shown up with fangs bared and fury sparking in his strangely transformed eyes, as the terror he’d betrayed himself to be last night. It would have been more fair than this outward semblance of normalcy that made her want to pretend everything was all right. That he was actually Detective Lucan Thorne of the Boston Police, a man pledged to protect the innocent and uphold the law.

  A man she might have been able to fall in love with—perhaps already was.

  But everything about him had been a lie.

  “I told myself I wasn’t going to come here tonight.”