Up ahead of them several hundred yards, floodlights washing over the snow, the mining company's compound was alive with activity. As had been the case when Kade first surveilled the location, tonight a handful of uniformed workers continued to empty one of the two parked cargo containers outside the mouth of the mine itself. Guards with automatic rifles patrolled the barricade out front; mounted security cameras were trained on the land surrounding the tall chain-link perimeter fence. Kade paused, putting his gloved hand on Alex's arm. "This is as far as we go."
"But we need to get much closer to see what's going on in there," she whispered, her breath clouding as it penetrated the fleece mask that protected her face.
"Too dangerous for you to get any closer, and I'm not about to leave you here without me."
"Then let's go back to Harmony and get my plane. We can fly over for a better look."
"And risk letting them identify you from the ground?" Kade gave a curt shake of his head. "Not even if Harmony had a hundred pilots who owned little red single-engines. No, there is another way." He inhaled deeply, letting a low howl build slowly in his throat. Then he sent it skyward in a long, searching summons. It took only a moment for a wilder reply to answer from somewhere not far off toward the west. Kade sought the lupine voice with his mind, then, with a wordless command, he called the wolf out from the night.
Alex startled when the silver-furred animal stepped into view from the woods and walked directly into their path.
"It's okay," Kade told her. He glanced at her, his mouth curving at her open astonishment. "You have your talent; I have mine."
"Yours is way better," she murmured on a breathless whisper. He smiled, then fixed his gaze on the wolf's bright, intelligent eyes. It listened to the silent instructions he gave, then it dashed off in stealth motion to carry them out. Alex gaped at him. "What did you just do? And, um ... how?"
"I asked the wolf to help us. She'll get closer to the site than we can, and through the link she and I now share, she will show me everything she sees."
Alex got quiet as Kade focused on the temporary connection that put him inside the wolf's senses. Kade closed his eyes, feeling the rhythmic fall of its paws in the snow, hearing the soft huffs of its lungs, the steady, rapid beat of its heart. And through the keen night-sharp vision, he saw the webbed fence and heavysecurity outbuildings, the workers--Minions, all of them, he realized now--shuffling in and out of the mine's cavernous entrance, wheeling crated equipment and large, unmarked cartons of God knew what kinds of supplies.
The new management had moved in, all right, and from the looks of it, they wanted to make damned sure that no one got too close to see what they were about.
And speaking of the mining company's new management ...
The wolf's ears pricked to attention, self-preservation instincts pushing her down into a low crouch as a large male with fair hair and expensive taste in suits strode from within the mine. Although Kade had never seen him before, he didn't miss for an instant that the male was Breed. If his size and demeanor hadn't given him away, the extensive network of dermaglyphs would have. The markings tracked out from the rolled-up cuffs and open throat of his white dress shirt, in patterns that clearly declared him an elder of the Breed.
Easily powerful enough to turn a human like Skeeter Arnold into his Minion. And flanking him like an obedient hound was another Breed male. If the one dressed like a Wall Street banker was formidable simply for the purity of his bloodline, then the inpidual standing with him trumped him by roughly a mile. Armed to the fangs and dressed from head to toe in black combat gear, his head shaved bald, covered with dense glyphs, this was a new enemy that Kade and the rest of the Order had only recently become familiar with.
Through the wolf's eyes, he saw the gleaming black collar that ringed the assassin's neck--an electronic collar rigged with an explosive device that ensured the vampire's loyalty to his creator's deviant initiatives.
"Ah, fuck," Kade muttered aloud as he remotely observed the scene from his lupine helper's eyes.
"Dragos has sent one of his assassins here."
"Who?" Alex whispered from beside him. "Assassins? Oh, my God. Kade, tell me what you see." He shook his head, unable to explain things adequately while his gut was churning with sudden dread and suspicion.
dread and suspicion.
Why would Dragos send a lieutenant of his operations and one of his personal stock of born-andbred Gen One killers to the middle of the frigid Alaskan interior?
What the hell were they doing here?
Once the vampires were gone inside another building, Kade directed the wolf to change position, to find a safe, concealed spot to dig beneath the perimeter fence and creep inside. He needed a better look at the cargo containers, particularly the one that the Minion workers seemed to take little interest in--the one, he noticed now, that bore huge dents in its sides and smashed, twisted hinges on the double doors at its rear. He waited, heart pounding in time with the wolf's as she dug her claws into the snow and burrowed deep, then wedged her body beneath the fence. She pulled herself through and began a stealthy crawl, knowing instinctively to keep to the shadows. As she neared the freight containers, Kade's muscles tensed. He had guessed he would find bad news inside the wrecked cargo hold. He'd been more than right about that. As the courageous wolf poked her head into the gaping ruin of the doors, peering into what had been a refrigerated space, Kade made instant, grim sense of the objects that held little meaning to her. He saw the smashed, large steel-and-concrete box that sat inside, its lid torn off and reduced to broken rubble. He saw the bloodstains that had dried nearly black on the floor and walls of the hold-bloodstains that reeked of his own kind as the wolf drew the trace scent into her sensitive nostrils. He saw the titanium restraints that had once encircled the thick wrists and ankles of a creature that most of the Breed population believed had been driven to extinction centuries ago ... a creature that the Order knew firsthand did, in fact, still live.
The Ancient.
One of the alien forefathers who'd sired the entire Breed race on Earth. The powerful, savage otherworlder that Dragos had been using to further his insane goals. Had Dragos and his associates moved it north after the Order's recent strike on Dragos's hidden lair?
Had they thought to relocate the Ancient as far from the Order's reach as possible, transferring it to the old mine?
Or had that been the plan, until the Ancient somehow found a way to escape his captivity?
Kade thought back on the recent killings in the bush and on today's brutal attack on the two men from Harmony.
Neither Seth nor Rogues had been to blame.
Now he knew that with the gravest certainty. It had been something much worse.
"Jesus Christ," Kade hissed. "It's out here somewhere. On the loose." He commanded the wolf to abandon her prowl at once, and stayed with her as she made a quick escape from the mining company grounds. As her dark silver shadow vanished into the nearby forest, Kade broke their mental connection and reached for Alex's hand.