She nodded, gave a long sigh. "Yes, I'm perfectly fine. I'm sorry I worried you, Ben. I must have fallen asleep at my desk and bumped the phone."
"Well, I still say no good can come from you working such late hours. This isn't exactly the best part of town, you know."
"I've never had any problems here."
"There's always a first time," Ben said, his expression grim. "Come on, I'll take you home." "All the way to the North End? You don't have to do that. I'll just call a cab."
"Not tonight, you won't." Ben picked up her purse and held it out to her. "I'm wide awake, and my van is right outside. Let's go, Sleeping Beauty."
Chapter Six
Dante came off the elevator at the Breed warriors' compound, looking and smelling as foul as he felt. He'd been seething--mostly at himself--the entire ride down, some three hundred feet below one of Boston's most affluent addresses and the high-security gated mansion on street level that belonged to the Order. He'd made it inside with only a few minutes to spare before dawn crested over the city to put a nice toast on his UV-allergic skin.
Which would have been the perfect topper to a night that had FUBAR written all over it.
Dante headed down the stark white corridor that twisted and turned through the heart of the labyrinthine compound. He needed a hot shower and some shut-eye and looked forward to sleeping off the daylight hours alone in his private quarters. Maybe he'd sleep off the next twenty years, long enough to avoid dealing with the glorious mess he'd made topside tonight.
"Yo, D."
Dante muttered a curse under his breath when he heard the voice calling him from the other end of the corridor. It was Gideon, resident computer genius and right-hand man to Lucan, the Order's venerable leader. Gideon had the compound wired tight inside and out; he'd probably been on to Dante's arrival from the second he stepped onto the property.
"Where you been, man? You were supposed to call in your status hours ago."
Dante turned around slowly in the long hallway. "I guess you could say my status got a bit fucked up."
"No shit," the other vampire replied, taking him in with a shrewd glance over the top of square-cut pale blue shades. He chuckled, shaking his spiky crown of blond hair. "Gad, you look like hell. And you smell like toxic waste. What the devil happened to you?"
"Long story." Dante gestured to his shredded, bloodied, sodden clothing, which was rank with brine, sludge, and God knew what else from his trip down the Mystic River. "I'll fill everyone in later. Right now I need a shower."
"Industrial strength," Gideon agreed. "But cleanup is gonna have to wait awhile. We've got company in the lab." Annoyance sparked in Dante. "What kind of company?"
"Oh, you're gonna love this." Gideon gestured with his head. "Come on. Lucan wants you present for input."
Exhaling a long breath, Dante fell in step alongside Gideon. They walked up another twisting length of the corridor, heading for the tech lab, the surveillance and intel hub where the warriors held most of their meetings. As the glass wall of the lab came into view, Dante saw the three other vampire warriors who were like kin to him: Lucan, the Order's dark leader; Nikolai, the brash gearhead of the group; and Tegan, the eldest next to Lucan, and the deadliest inpidual Dante had ever known.
The Order was missing two other members of late. Rio, who had been severely injured by a Rogue ambush a few months ago and remained in the infirmary at the compound, and Conlan, who was killed by Rogues around the same time, in an explosion that took place on one of the city's train lines.
As Dante scanned the assembly of warriors, his gaze lit on one unfamiliar face. Evidently, this was the company Gideon had mentioned. The vampire male had the clean-cut looks of an accountant--right down to the dark suit and white shirt, crisp gray tie, and glossy black oxford shoes. His golden-brown hair was short, impeccably styled, not a strand out of place. Although the male was sizable beneath all that spit and polish, he brought to mind one of those chiseled pretty boys that you see in human magazine ads, hawking designer clothing or expensive cologne.
Scowling, Dante shook his head. "Tell me that's not one of the new warrior candidates."
"That," said Gideon, "is Agent Sterling Chase, of the Boston Darkhaven."
A Darkhaven law-enforcement agent. Well, that made some sense. Certainly explained the vampire's buttoned-up, useless-bureaucrat appearance. "What's he want with us?"
"Information. Some kind of alliance, from what I gather. The Darkhaven has sent him here in the hopes of obtaining the Order's help."
"Our help." Dante scoffed, skeptical. "You gotta be kidding me. It wasn't so long ago that the general population of the Darkhavens were condemning us as lawless vigilantes."
Walking beside him, Gideon glanced over with a smirk. "Dinosaurs who'd outlived their time and ought to be forced into extinction was, I believe, one of the more polite suggestions."
Ironic, considering the populations of those sanctuaries existed directly because of the warriors' continued efforts in fighting the Rogues. In the dark ages of man, long before Dante's eighteenth-century birth in Italy, the Order had acted as sole protector of the vampire race. Then, they were revered as heroes. In the time since, as the warriors hunted down and executed Rogues all over the globe, putting down even the smallest uprisings before they had a chance to take root, the Darkhavens had relaxed into a state of arrogant confidence. Rogue numbers had been few in modern times but were growing again. Meanwhile, the Darkhavens had adopted laws and procedures for dealing with Rogues as mere criminals, foolishly believing that incarceration and rehabilitation were viable solutions to the problem.
Those of the warrior class knew better. They saw the carnage up close and personal, while the rest of the population hid in their sanctuaries, pretending they were safe. Dante and the rest of the Order were the Breed's only true defense, and they chose to act independently--some might argue in defiance of-- impotent Darkhaven law.
"Now they're asking for our help?" Dante fisted his hands at his side, in no mood to deal with Darkhaven politics or the fools who peddled them. "I hope Lucan's called this meeting so we can prove we're savages and kill their friggin' messenger."
Gideon chuckled as the glass doors of the lab whisked open in front of them. "Try not to scare Agent Chase away before he's had a sporting chance to explain why he's here, will you, D?"