Chapter One
The club was private, very much off the beaten path, and for damned good reason. Located at the far end of a narrow, ice-encrusted back alley of Boston's Chinatown district, the place catered to an exclusive, if discriminating, crowd. The only humans permitted inside the old brick building were the stable of attractive young women - and a few pretty men - kept on hand to satisfy the late-night clientele's every craving.
Concealed within the shadows of an arched vestibule at street level, the unmarked metal door gave no indication of what lay behind it, not that any local or tourist in their right mind would pause to wonder. The thick slab of steel was shielded by a tall iron grate. Outside the entrance, a big guard loomed like a gargoyle in a knit skullcap and black leather. The male was Breed, as was the pair of warriors who emerged from the gloom of the alleyway. At the sound of their combat boots crunching in the snow and frozen filth of the pavement, the guard on watch lifted his head. Under a thick, bulbous nose, thin lips curled away from crooked teeth and the sharp tips of the vampire's fangs. Eyes narrowed at the uninvited newcomers, he exhaled a low snarl, his warm breath steaming from his nostrils to plume into the brittle December night air.
Hunter registered a current of tension in his patrol partner's movements as the two approached the vampire on guard. Sterling Chase had been twitchy ever since they'd left the Order's compound for tonight's mission. Now he walked at an aggressive pace, taking the lead, his fingers flexing and contracting where they rested none too subtly on the large-caliber semiautomatic pistol holstered on his weapons belt.
The guard took a step forward too, putting himself directly in their path. Large thighs spread, boots planted wide in warning on the pitted pavement as the vampire's big head lowered. The eyes that had been narrowed on them before in question now went tighter with recognition as they hit and settled on Chase. "You gotta be kidding me. What the hell do you want out here on Enforcement Agency turf, warrior?"
"Taggart," Chase said, more growl than greeting. "I see your career has been in no danger of improving since I quit the Agency. Reduced to playing doorman for the local sip-and-strip, eh?
What's next for you - security detail at the shopping mall?"
The agent pursed his lips around a ripe curse. "Takes some kind of balls to show your face, especially around here."
Chase's answering chuckle was neither threatened nor amused. "Try looking in a mirror sometime, then let's talk about who's got balls showing his face in public."
"This place is off-limits to all but the Enforcement Agency," the guard said, crossing beefy arms over a barrel chest. A barrel chest sporting the broad leather strap of a weapons holster, with still more hardware bristling around his waist. "The Order's got no business here."
"Yeah?" Chase grunted. "Tell that to Lucan Thorne. He's the one who will have your ass if you don't move it out of our way. Assuming the two of us standing here cooling our heels for no good reason don't decide to remove you ourselves."
Agent Taggart's mouth had clamped shut at the mention of Lucan, the Order's leader and one of the longest-lived, most formidable elders of the Breed nation. Now the wary gaze strayed from Chase to Hunter, who lingered behind his fellow warrior in measuring silence. Hunter had no quarrel with Taggart, but he had already calculated no less than five different ways to disable him - to kill him swiftly and surely, right where he stood - should the need arise. It was what Hunter had been trained to do. Born and bred to be a weapon wielded by the merciless hand of the Order's chief adversary, he was long accustomed to viewing the world in logical, unemotional terms.
He no longer served the villain called Dragos, but his deadly skills remained at the core of who, and what, he was. Hunter was lethal - unfailingly so - and in that instantaneous connection of his gaze and Taggart's, he saw that grim understanding reflected in the other male's eyes. Agent Taggart blinked, then took a step back, removing himself from Hunter's stare and clearing the path to the door of the club.
"I thought you might be willing to reconsider," Chase said, as he and Hunter strode to the iron grate and entered the Enforcement Agency hangout.
The door must have been soundproof. Inside the dark club, loud music thumped in time with multicolored, spinning lights that lit a central stage made of mirrored glass. The only dancers were the trio of half-naked humans gyrating together in front of an audience of leering, hot-eyed vampires seated in booths and at tables on the floor below the stage. Hunter watched the long-haired blonde in the center wind herself around a Lucite pole that climbed up from the floor of the stage to the ceiling. Swiveling her hips, she lifted one of her enormous, unnaturally round breasts up to meet her snakelike tongue. As she toyed with the pierced nipple, the other dancers, a tattooed woman with spiked purple hair and a dark-eyed young man who barely fit inside the shiny red vinyl pouch slung around his hips, moved to opposite sides of the mirrored stage and began their own solo routines. The club reeked of stale perfume and sweat, but the musty tang couldn't mask the trace scent of fresh human blood. Hunter followed the olfactory trail with his gaze. It led to a far corner booth, where a vampire in the standard-issue Enforcement Agency dark suit and white shirt fed judiciously from the pale throat of a naked, moaning woman sprawled across his lap. Still more Breed males drank from other human blood Hosts, while some in the vampire-run establishment seemed intent on satisfying more carnal needs.
Beside him near the door, Chase had gone as still as stone. A low, rumbling growl leaked from the back of his throat. Hunter spared the feeding and onstage spectacle little more than an assessing glance, but Chase's gaze was fixed and hungry, as openly riveted as any of the other Breed males gathered there. Perhaps more so.
Hunter was far more interested in the handful of heads that were now turning their way within the crowd of Enforcement Agents. Their arrival had been noticed, and the simmering looks from every pair of eyes that landed on them now said the situation could get ugly very quickly.
No sooner had Hunter registered the possibility, one of the glaring vampires reclined on a nearby sofa got up to confront them. The male was large, as were his two companions who rose to join him as he cut a clean path through the crowd. All three were visibly armed beneath their finely cut, dark suits.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in," drawled the agent in the lead, a trace of the South in his slowly measured words and in his refined, almost delicate, features. "How many decades of service with the Agency, yet you never would have deigned to join any of us in a place like this."
Chase's mouth curved, barely concealing his elongated fangs. "You sound disappointed, Murdock. This shit was never my speed."
"No, you always held yourself above temptation," the vampire replied, his gaze as shrewd as his answering smile. "So careful. So rigidly disciplined, even in your appetites. But things change. People change, don't they, Chase? If you see something you like in here, you need only say so. For old times' sake, if nothing else, hmm?"
"We've come for information about an Agent named Freyne," Hunter interjected when Chase's reply seemed to take longer than necessary. "As soon as we have what we need, we'll leave."
"Is that so?" Murdock considered him with a curious tilt of his head. Hunter saw the vampire's gaze drift subtly away from his face to note the dermaglyphs that tracked up the sides of his neck and around his nape. It took only a moment for the male to discern that Hunter's elaborate pattern of skin markings indicated he was Gen One, a rarity among the Breed. Hunter was nothing close to the ages of his fellow Gen One warriors, Lucan or Tegan. However, sired by one of the race's Ancients, his blood was every bit as pure. Like his Gen One brethren, his strength and power was roughly that of ten later-generation vampires. It was his rearing as one of Dragos's personal army of assassins - a secret upbringing known by the Order alone - that made him far more lethal than Murdock and these couple dozen Agents in the club combined.
Chase seemed to snap out of his distraction at last. "What can you tell us about Freyne?"
Murdock shrugged. "He's dead. But then, I expect you already know that. Freyne and his unit were all killed last week while on a mission to retrieve a kidnapped Darkhaven youth." He gave a slow shake of his head. "Quite the pity. Not only did the Agency lose several good men, but their mission objective proved less than satisfactory as well."
"Less than satisfactory," Chase scoffed. "Yeah, you could say that. From what the Order understands, the mission to rescue Kellan Archer was fucked six ways from Sunday. The boy, his father, and grandfather - hell, the entire Archer family - all of them wiped out in a single night."
Hunter said nothing, letting Chase bait the hook as he saw fit. Most of what he charged was true. The night of the rescue attempt had been a blood-soaked one that had ended with too much death, the worst of it being dealt to the members of Kellan Archer's family. But contrary to Chase's assertion, there had been survivors. Two, to be exact. Both of them had been secreted away from the carnage of that night and were now safe in the protective custody of the Order at their private compound.
"I won't disagree that things could have ended better, for both the Agency and the civilians who lost their lives. Mistakes, although regrettable, do happen. Unfortunately, we may never be certain where to place the blame for last week's tragedy."
Chase chuckled under his breath. "Don't be so sure. I know you and Freyne went way back. Hell, I know half the men in this club traded favors with him on a regular basis. Freyne was an asshole, but he knew how to recognize opportunity when he saw it. His biggest problem was his mouth. If he was mixed up in something that can be tied back to the kidnapping of Kellan Archer or the attack that left the Archer Darkhaven in rubble - and just for argument's sake, let's say I'm goddamned sure Freyne was involved - then the odds are good he told someone about it. I'm willing to bet he bragged to at least one loser sitting in this shithole of a club."
Murdock's expression had been tightening with every second that Chase spoke, his eyes beginning to transform in fury, dark irises sparking with amber light for every decibel that Chase's voice rose into the crowd.