Kiss of Midnight

CHAPTER Twenty-six

From their observation point on the roof of one of the harbor buildings, Lucan and the other warriors watched as a small pickup truck, spitting gravel under its polished chrome wheels, roared up to the front of their target location. The driver was human. If his sweaty, slightly anxious scent didn’t announce him, the country music blaring out of his open window surely would. He got out of the vehicle carrying a stuffed brown-paper bag that reeked of steaming fried rice and pork lo mein.

“Looks like our boys are eating in tonight,” Dante drawled, while the unsuspecting delivery man checked the flapping white ticket stapled onto his order and looked around the desolated wharf with dawning wariness.

The driver approached the warehouse’s entry door, shot another nervous look around, then swore into the darkness and jabbed the buzzer. There were no lights on inside the building, only a pool of yellow shining down from the bare bulb over the door. The battered steel panel opened, revealing the dark behind it. Lucan could see the feral eyes of a Rogue staring out as the delivery man blurted the take-out order total and thrust the bag into the wedge of blackness in front of him.

“Whaddaya mean, trade for it?” the urban cowboy demanded in a thick Boston accent. “What the hell—”

A large hand seized him by the front of his shirt, jerking him off his feet. He screamed, and in his flailing panic somehow managed to rip away from the Rogue’s grasp.

“Oops,” Niko hissed from his position near the ledge, “guess he just realized it wasn’t Chinese on the menu.”

The Rogue flew at the human in a blur of shadows, taking him down from behind, tearing open his throat with savage efficiency. Death was bloody and instantaneous. When the Rogue leaped up and began to heft its kill onto its shoulder to drag it inside, Lucan got to his feet.

“Time to move. Let’s go.”

In concert, the warriors hit the ground and headed at blinding speed for the Rogues’ warehouse lair. Lucan, leading the way, was first to reach the vampire and his lifeless human burden. He slapped a hard hand onto the Rogue’s shoulder and spun him around, at the same time drawing one of his slayers’ blades from a sheath at his hip. He sliced hard and with unerring aim and severed the beast’s head in one clean stroke.

The Rogue immediately began a cellular meltdown, dropping its blood-soaked victim onto the gravel as the kiss of Lucan’s blade ran like acid through the vampire’s corrupted nervous system. A few seconds later, all that remained of the Rogue was a puddle of putrid blackness seeping into the dirt.

Up ahead at the door, Dante, Tegan, and the three other warriors were locked and loaded, braced to start the real action. On Lucan’s “go,” the six of them poured into the warehouse with weapons at the ready.

The Rogues inside had no idea what had hit them until Tegan let a dagger fly and nailed one through the throat. As the Rogue shrieked and writhed toward a smoldering disintegration, its enraged companions lunged for cover, grabbing up weapons as they scrambled to evade the barrage of bullets and razor-sharp steel that Lucan and his brethren were now raining down upon them.

Two Rogues bit it in the first few seconds of engagement, but the remaining pair had fled deep into the warehouse’s gloomy corners. One of the Rogues blasted gunfire at Lucan and Dante from behind an old pile of crates. The warriors dodged the attack and sent a little love back at the Rogue, driving him out into the open where Lucan finished him off.

At his periphery, Lucan spotted the last of the suckheads trying to make an escape through a maze of tumbled storage barrels and scattered metal pipes in the rear of the building.

Tegan hadn’t missed it, either. The vampire went after the fleeing Rogue like a freight train, vanishing into the bowels of the warehouse in deadly pursuit.

“We’re clear,” Gideon shouted from somewhere in the smoke- and dust-filled darkness.

But no sooner had he said it than Lucan sensed a new threat closing in on them. His ears picked up the quiet scramble of movement overhead. The dingy skylights above the exposed ventilation ducts and steel trusses of the warehouse were nearly opaque with grime, but Lucan was sure that something was advancing across the roof.

“Heads up!” he called to the others just as the ceiling shattered, and seven more Rogues dropped down with weapons blazing.

Where had they come from? The intel on the lair was solid: six individuals, probably turned Rogue only recently, and operating independently, without affiliation. So, who had called in the cavalry to back them up? How did they know about the raid?

“Fucking ambush,” Dante growled, voicing Lucan’s thoughts aloud.

No way in hell this fresh wave of trouble was coming in purely by chance, and as Lucan’s gaze settled on the largest of the Rogues coming at them now, he felt black fury rise to a boil in his gut.

It was the vampire who had eluded him the night of the slaying outside the dance club. The bastard out of the West Coast. The Rogue who might have killed Gabrielle, and might yet one day soon if Lucan didn’t take him out right now.

While Dante and the others returned fire on the descending group of Rogues, Lucan gunned for that one target alone.

Tonight, he would finish it.

The suckhead hissed as he approached, the hideous face stretching into a grin. “We meet again, Lucan Thorne.”

Lucan gave a grim nod. “For the last time.”

Shared hatred made both males discard their guns in favor of more personal combat. In a flash, blades were drawn, one in each hand, as the two vampires prepared to battle to the death. Lucan threw the first strike. And took a vicious slice in his shoulder as the Rogue evaded the blow with stealth speed, having moved in a blink and appearing on the other side of him now, jaws open in triumph at the spilling of first blood.

Lucan leaped around with equal agility, his blades slashing whisper close to the Rogue’s big head. The suckhead glanced down to where his right ear now lay, severed at his feet.

“Game on, asshole,” Lucan snarled.

With a vengeance.

They flew at each other in a swirl of rage and muscle and cold, deadly steel. Lucan was aware of the battle taking place around him, the other warriors holding their own against the second round of warfare. But his main focus—all of his hatred—was centered on his personal grudge with the Rogue in front of him.

He felt his fangs stretch with the force of his anger, his pupils sharpening, until he knew that there could be little difference between his face and the one snarling back at him. They were equally matched in strength, but Lucan’s blood burned hotter than his opponent’s.

All Lucan had to do was think of Gabrielle, and of the terror this beast would inflict on her, and he was on fire with rage.

He fed that fury, driving the Rogue back with blow after relentless blow. He didn’t feel the strikes he took on his own body, though there had been many. He forced his opponent down. Readied himself to deliver the final, killing blow.

With a roar, he sliced deep into the neck of the Rogue, liberating the huge head from its savaged body. Arms and legs spasmed as the vampire collapsed in a convulsing heap on the floor. Lucan’s fury was still hammering hard in his veins; he flipped his blade over in his hand and drove it hard into the suckhead’s chest, speeding the disintegration of the corpse.

“Holy hell,” Rio said from somewhere nearby, his voice wooden. “Lucan—above you, man! Got another one in the rafters!”

It happened in an instant.

Lucan wheeled around, battle fury tearing through every muscle in his body. He threw a glance up to where Rio had indicated. High above his head, another Rogue vampire was crawling through the trusses of the warehouse ceiling, holding something that looked like a small metal football under his arm. A small red light on the device blinked quickly, then began a steady burn.

“Get down!” Nikolai raised his customized Beretta and took aim. “Dude’s about to drop a fucking bomb!”

Lucan heard the sudden blast of the gunshot.

Saw the Rogue take Niko’s slug right between its glowing yellow eyes.

But the bomb was already airborne.

Half a second later, it blew.