Midnight Awakening (2 page)

Elise drew in her breath at the virulence of the unspoken threat. She knew the Minions lived only to serve the one who made them, but it was always a shock to hear the terrible depth of their allegiance. Nothing was sacred to their kind. Lives meant nothing, be they human or Breed. Minions were nearly as awful as the Rogues, the bloodthirsty, criminal faction of the vampire nation.

The Minion leaned over the counter, fists braced on either side of him. “I need that package, asshole. I’m not leaving without it.”

The clerk backed away, his expression suddenly gone wary. He grabbed the phone. “Look, man, as I’ve explained to you, there’s nothing more I can do for you on this. You’re gonna have to come back tomorrow. Right now, you need to leave before I call the police.”

Useless piece of shit,
the Minion growled inwardly.
I’ll come back tomorrow all right. Just you wait ’til I come back for you!

“Is there a problem here, Joey?” An older man came out from the back, all business.

“I tried to tell him that his stuff ain’t here yet on account of the storm, but he won’t give it up. Like maybe I’m supposed to pull it out of my a—”

“Sir?” the manager said, cutting off his employee and pinning the Minion with a serious look. “I’m going to ask you politely to leave now. You need to go, or the police will be called to escort you out of here.”

The Minion growled something indistinguishable but nasty. He slammed his fist down on the countertop, then whirled around and started stalking away. As he neared the door where Elise stood, he swept over a floor display, sending rolls of tape and bubble packs scattering to the floor. Although Elise stepped back, the Minion was coming too hard toward her. He glared down at her with vacant, inhuman eyes.

“Get out of my way, cow!”

She’d barely moved before he barreled past her and out the door, pushing so hard the glass panes rattled like they were going to shatter.

“Asshole,” one of the patrons still in line muttered once the Minion had gone.

Elise felt the wave of relief wash over the other customers at his departure. Part of her was relieved too, glad that no one met with harm. She wanted to wait for a while in the momentary calm in the store, but it was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. The Minion was storming across the street now, and dusk was coming fast.

She only had half an hour at best before darkness fell and the Rogues came out to feed. If what she did was dangerous in the daytime, at night it was nothing short of suicide. She could slay a Minion with stealth and steel—already had, in fact, more than once—but like any other human, female or not, she stood no chance against the blood-addicted strength of the Rogues.

Girding herself for what she had to do, Elise slipped out the door and followed the Minion up the street. He was angry and walking brusquely, slamming into other pedestrians and snarling curses at them as he passed. A barrage of mental pain filled her head as more voices joined the din already clanging in her mind, but Elise kept pace with her target. She hung a few yards behind, her eyes trained on the pale green bulk of his jacket through the light flurry of fresh snow. He swung left around the corner of a building and into a narrow alley. Elise hurried now, desperate not to lose him.

Midway down the side street, he yanked open a battered steel door and disappeared. She crept up to the windowless slab of metal, palms sweating despite the chill in the air. His violent thoughts filled her head—murderous thoughts, all the grisly things he would do out of deference to his Master.

Elise reached into her pocket to withdraw her dagger. She held it close to her side, poised to strike, but concealed behind the long drape of her coat. With her free hand, she grasped the latch and pulled open the unlocked door. Snowflakes swirled ahead of her into the gloomy vestibule that reeked of mildew and old cigarette smoke. The Minion stood near a bank of mail slots, one shoulder leaning against the wall as he flipped open a cell phone like the ones they all carried—the Minions’ direct line to their vampire Master.

“Shut the fucking door, bitch!” he snapped, soulless eyes glinting. His brows dropped into a scowl as Elise moved toward him with swift, deadly purpose. “What the hell is th—”

She drove the dagger hard into his chest, knowing that the element of surprise was one of her best advantages. His anger hit her like a physical blow, pushing her backward. His corruption seeped into her mind like acid, burning her senses. Elise struggled through the psychic pain, coming back to strike him again with the blade, ignoring the sudden wet heat of his blood spilling onto her hand.

The Minion sputtered, grasping out for her as he fell against her. His wound was mortal, so much blood she nearly lost her stomach at the sight and smell of it. Elise twisted out of the Minion’s heavy lean and leaped out of the way as he fell to the floor. Her breath was sawing out of her lungs, her heart racing, her head splitting in agony as the mental barrage of his rage continued in her mind.

The Minion thrashed and hissed as death overtook him. Then, finally, he stilled.

Finally, there was silence.

With trembling fingers, Elise retrieved the cell phone from where it lay at her feet and slipped it into her pocket. The slaying had drained her, the combined physical and psychic exertion almost too much to bear. Each time seemed to weigh more heavily on her, take longer for her to recover. She wondered if the day would come that she might slide so deep into the abyss that she’d not rebound at all. Probably, she guessed, but not today. And she would keep fighting so long as she had breath in her body and the pain of loss in her heart.

“For Camden,” she whispered, staring down at the dead Minion as she clicked on the MP3 player in preparation of her return home. Music blared from the tiny earbuds, muting the gift that gave her the power to hear the darkest secrets of a human’s soul.

She’d heard enough for now.

Her day’s sober mission complete, Elise pivoted around and fled the carnage she’d wrought.

CHAPTER
Two

T
he scent of blood carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was faint, fresh, a coppery tickle in the nostrils of the vampire warrior who leaped soundlessly from the roof of one dusk-shadowed building to another. Snowflakes fell around him like floating white ash, blanketing the city that spread out beneath him some six stories down.

Tegan crouched at the ledge and surveyed the tangle of bustling streets and alleyways. As one of the Order—a small cadre of Breed vampires engaged in war against their savage brethren, the Rogues—Tegan’s primary nightly objective was dealing death to his enemies. It was something he did with a cold efficiency, a skill perfected during his more than seven centuries of existence. But down to his marrow, he was Breed, and there were none among his kind who could ignore the call of newly spilled human blood.

He curled back his lips and dragged the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingled, an ache blooming where his canines began to stretch into fangs. His vision sharpened beyond its preternatural acuity, pupils narrowing into thin vertical slits in the center of his green eyes. The urge to hunt—to feed—rose up in him swiftly. It was an automatic response that even he, with his disciplined, iron self-control, could do little to suppress.

All the worse for him, being of the first generation of vampires spawned on Earth. Gen One appetites—physical, carnal, and otherwise—burned the strongest.

Tegan crept along the edge of the building, then leaped down onto the roof of another, his eyes rooted on the movement of people below, searching for the weak member in the herd. But he didn’t comb the crowds merely to satisfy his own needs: find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any Rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.

Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood. Not fresh at all, but several minutes old.

Following the metallic odor, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.

“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath as he tracked the individual.

Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.

Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.

“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides.

His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough: take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying. He didn’t really give a shit which came first.

But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.

The human in the bloodstained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for a kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one Bloodlusting suckhead, let alone a pack of three.

With a curse, Tegan advanced his position and jumped to a lower rooftop above the alleyway.

Just as the Rogue in front of the human lunged into action.

Tegan heard a sharp intake of breath—a female gasp of terror—as the Rogue grabbed for its prey. It seized the front of the woman’s hood and threw her down on the snow-covered pavement, letting loose a howl of savage amusement as she took the hard fall.

“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed, already drawing a large blade from the sheath at his hip.

With a running leap, he dropped down from the ledge of the building, landing smoothly on the ground in a low crouch. The two Rogues nearest him split up, one taking cover while the other shouted that they were under attack. Tegan silenced the warning in mid-sentence, slicing his length of titanium-edged steel across the suckhead’s throat.

A few yards ahead of him in the alleyway, the female was on her stomach, scrabbling to get away from her assailant. She had a weapon too, Tegan was surprised to see, but the Rogue noticed it at the same time and kicked it out of her hand. The Rogue planted the heavy sole of his boot on the center of her back, pinning her to the ground with his heel jammed hard into her spine.

Tegan was on him at once. He threw the Rogue off the woman, driving the snarling vampire into the side of the brick building and holding it there with his forearm wedged under the suckhead’s chin.

“Get out of here!” he shouted to the human as she started to drag herself up off the ground. “Run!”

She flung a frightened look over her shoulder—the first glimpse Tegan got of her face. His gaze locked on to a pair of huge, pale lavender eyes. The woman stared at him from over the top of a dark knit scarf that could hardly disguise the delicate beauty beneath it.

Holy shit.

He knew her.

And she wasn’t just a random human female; she was a Breedmate. A young widow from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries in the city. Tegan didn’t know her well. He hadn’t seen her for several months, not since the night he’d taken her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned her only son had gone Rogue.

It was the last he had seen of her, but it hadn’t been the last time he’d thought about her.

Elise.

What the hell was she doing here?