Kiss of Midnight

CHAPTER Two

Vampires.

The night was thick with them. He had counted more than a dozen in the dance club, most of them trolling the half-dressed, undulating crowds, selecting—and seducing—the women who would Host their thirst that night. It was a symbiotic arrangement that had served the Breed well for more than two millennia, a peaceful cohabitation that depended on the vampires’ ability to scrub the memories of the humans on whom they fed. Before the sun came up, a good deal of blood would be spilled but in the morning, the Breed would be returned to their Darkhavens in and around the city, and the humans they had enjoyed tonight would be none the wiser.

But that was not the case in the alley outside the nightclub.

For the six blood-gorged predators there, their unsanctioned kill would be their last. They were careless in their hunger; they hadn’t detected that they were being watched. Not when he was observing them in the club, nor when he had trailed them outside, surveilling them from the ledge of a second-story window of the converted church.

They were lost to the high of Bloodlust, the disease of addiction that had once been epidemic among the Breed, causing so many of their kind to turn Rogue. Like these, who fed openly and indiscriminately from the humans who lived among them.

Lucan Thorne had no particular affinity for humankind, but what he felt for the Rogue vampires before him was even less. To see one or two feral vampires in a single night’s patrol of a city the size of Boston was not uncommon. To find several working in tandem, feeding in the open as these did, was more than a little troubling. The Rogues were growing in numbers again, becoming more bold.

Something had to be done.

For Lucan and several others of the Breed, every night was a hunting expedition aimed at routing out the diseased few who would jeopardize all that the vampire race had worked so hard to achieve. Tonight, Lucan tracked his prey alone, not caring that he was outnumbered. He had waited until the opportunity to strike was prime: once the Rogues had greedily fed the addiction that ruled their minds.

Drunk on more blood than they could safely consume, they had continued to savage and fight over the body of the young man from the club, snarling and snapping like a pack of wild dogs. Lucan had been poised to dispatch quick justice—and would have, if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of a ginger-haired female in the darkened corridor. In an instant, she had thrown the entire night off course: following the Rogues to the alley, then unwittingly drawing their attention away from their kill.

As the light from her cell phone’s flash exploded in the dark, Lucan descended from the shadowed ledge of the window and landed on the pavement without a sound. Like the Rogues, Lucan’s sensitive eyes were partially blinded from that sudden spark of light amid the dark. The woman fired a series of piercing flashes as she fled the carnage, those few panicked clicks likely all that spared her from the wrath of his savage kin.

But where the other vampires’ senses were clouded and sluggish with Bloodlust, Lucan’s were ruthlessly clear. From beneath his dark trenchcoat, he drew his weapons—twin blades wrought of titanium-edged steel—and swung to claim the head of the nearest Rogue.

Two more followed, the bodies of the dead thrashing as they began their swift cellular decomposition from oozing acidic pulp to incinerated ash. Animal shrieks filled the alleyway as Lucan severed the head of one more, then swung around to impale another Rogue through the torso. The Rogue hissed through bared, bloody teeth, its fangs dripping gore. Pale-gold eyes held Lucan in contempt, the huge irises swelled in hunger, swallowing up pupils that were narrowed to thin vertical slits. The creature spasmed, long arms reaching for him, its mouth stretched into a hideous, alien sneer as the specially forged steel poisoned its Rogue blood and reduced the vampire to smoldering stain on the street.

Only one remained. Lucan whirled to meet the large male, both blades raised to strike.

But the vampire was gone—fled into the night before he could slay it.

Damn.

He’d never let one of the bastards escape his justice before this. He shouldn’t now. He considered chasing the Rogue down, but it would mean leaving the scene of the attack unsecured. That was the greater risk here, letting the humans know the full measure of the danger that lived among them. Because of the savagery of the Rogues, Lucan’s kind had been persecuted and hunted by humans throughout the Old Times; the race might not survive a new age of retribution, now that man had technology on his side.

Until the Rogues were suppressed—better yet, eliminated entirely—humankind could know nothing of the existence of the vampires living all around them.

As he set about cleaning the area of all traces of the killing, Lucan’s thoughts kept returning to the woman with the sunlit hair and sweet, alabaster beauty.

How was it she had been able to find the Rogues in the alley?

Although it was widely held among human folklore that vampires could disappear at will, the truth was only slightly less remarkable. Gifted with great agility and speed, they could simply move faster than human eyes could register, an ability that was augmented by the vampires’ advanced hypnotic power over the minds of lesser beings. Oddly, this woman seemed immune to both.

Lucan had seen her in the club, he realized now. His gaze had been drawn away from his quarry by a pair of soulful eyes and a spirit that seemed nearly as lost as his own. She had noticed him, too, staring at him from where she sat with her friends. Even through the crowd and the stale odor of the club, Lucan had scented the trace notes of perfume on her skin—something exotic, rare.

He smelled it now as well, a delicate note that clung to the night, teasing his senses and calling to something primitive within him. His gums ached with the sudden stretching of his fangs, a physical reaction to need—carnal, or otherwise—that he was powerless to curb. He scented her, and he hungered, little better than his Rogue brethren.

Lucan tipped his head back and dragged the essence of the woman deeper into his lungs, tracking her across the city with his keen sense of smell. The sole witness to the Rogues’ attack, it was more than unwise to let her keep the memory of what she had seen. Lucan would find the female and take whatever measures were necessary to ensure the protection of the Breed.

And in the back of his mind, an ancient conscience whispered that whoever she was, she already belonged to him.

“I’m telling you, I saw the whole thing. There were six of them, and they were tearing at the guy with their hands and teeth—like animals. They killed him!”

“Miss Maxwell, we’ve been over this numerous times already tonight. Now, we’re all tired and the night is only getting longer.”

Gabrielle had been at the police station for more than three hours, trying to give her account of the horror she witnessed outside La Notte. The two officers she spoke with had been skeptical at first, but now they were getting impatient, almost adversarial. Soon after she had arrived, the cops had sent a squad car around to the club to check out the situation and recover the body Gabrielle had reported seeing. The call had come up empty. No reports of a gang altercation and no evidence whatsoever of anyone having met with foul play. It was as if the entire incident had never happened—or had been miraculously swept clean.

“If you would just listen to me… if you would just look at the pictures I took—”

“We’ve seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you’ve said tonight checks out—not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone.”

“I’m sorry if the quality is lacking,” Gabrielle replied, acidly. “The next time I’m witnessing a bloody slaughter by a gang of psychos, I’ll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses.”

“Maybe you want to rethink your statement,” suggested the elder of the two officers, his Boston accent tinged with the Irish brogue of a youth spent in Southie. He stroked a chubby hand over his thinning brow, then slid her cell phone back across the desk. “You should be aware that filing a false police report is a crime, Miss Maxwell.”

“This is not a false report,” she insisted, frustrated and not a little angry that she was being treated like the criminal here. “I stand by everything I’ve said tonight. Why would I make this up?”

“That’s something only you can answer, Miss Maxwell.”

“This is unbelievable. You have my 911 call.”

“Yes,” agreed the officer. “You did, indeed, make a call to emergency dispatch. Unfortunately, all we have is static on the recording. You didn’t say anything, and you didn’t respond to the dispatcher’s requests for information.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to find the words to describe seeing someone get their throat ripped out.”

He gave her another dubious look. “This club—La Notte? It’s a wild place, I hear. Popular with the goths, the ravers…”

“Your point being?”

The cop shrugged. “Lotta kids get into some weird shit these days. Maybe all you saw was a little fun getting out of hand.”

Gabrielle exhaled a curse and reached for her cell phone. “Does this look like fun getting out of hand to you?”

She clicked the picture recall button and looked again at the images she had captured. Although the snapshots were blurry, diffused by the flash, she could still plainly see a group of men surrounding another on the ground. She clicked forward to another image and saw the reflective glow of several eyes staring back at the lens, the vague outlines of facial features peeled back in animal fury.

Why didn’t the officers see what she did?

“Miss Maxwell,” interjected the younger police officer. He strolled around to the other side of the desk and sat on the edge before her. He had been the quieter of the two men, the one listening in careful consideration where his partner spewed nothing but doubt and suspicion. “It’s obvious that you believe you saw something terrible at the club tonight. Officer Carrigan and I want to help you, but in order for us to do that, we have to be sure we’re all on the same page.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Now, we have your statement, and we’ve seen your pictures. You strike me as a reasonable person. Before we can go any further here, I need to ask if you would be willing to submit to a drug test.”

“A drug test.” Gabrielle shot out of her chair. She was beyond pissed off now. “This is ridiculous. I am not some tripped out crackhead, and I resent being treated like one. I’m trying to report a murder!”

“Gab? Gabby!”

From somewhere behind her in the station, Gabrielle heard Jamie’s voice. She had called her friend soon after she arrived, needing the comfort of familiar faces after the horror she had witnessed.

“Gabrielle!” Jamie dashed up to her and surrounded her in a warm hug. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but I was already home when I got your message on my cell. Jesus, sweetie! Are you all right?”

Gabrielle nodded. “I think so. Thanks for coming.”

“Miss Maxwell, why don’t you let your friend here take you home,” said the younger officer. “We can continue this at another time. Maybe you’ll be able to think more clearly after you get some sleep.”

The two policemen rose, and gestured for Gabrielle to do the same. She didn’t argue. She was tired, bone weary, and she didn’t think even if she stayed at the station all night she’d be able to convince the cops of what she witnessed outside La Notte. Numbly, Gabrielle let Jamie and the two officers escort her out of the station. She was halfway down the steps to the parking lot when the younger of the men called her name.

“Miss Maxwell?”

She paused, looking back over her shoulder to where the officer stood beneath the floodlight of the station.

“If it will make you rest any easier, we’ll send someone around to check in on you at your home, and maybe talk to you a bit more, once you’ve had some time to think about your report.”

She didn’t appreciate his coddling tone, but neither could she find the anger to refuse his offer. After what she had seen tonight, Gabrielle would gladly take the security of a police visit, even a patronizing one. She nodded, then followed Jamie out to his waiting car.

From a quiet corner desk in the precinct house, a file clerk hit the print key on his computer. A laser printer whirred into action behind him, spitting out a single page report. The clerk drained the last swallow of cold coffee from his chipped Red Sox mug, rose from his rickety, putty-colored chair, and casually retrieved the document from the printer.

The station was quiet, emptied out for the midnight shift break. But even if it had been hopping with activity, no one would have paid any attention to the reserved, awkward intern who kept very much to himself.

That was the beauty of his role.

It was why he’d been chosen.

He wasn’t the only member of the force to be recruited. He knew there were others, though their identities were kept secret. It was safer that way, cleaner. For his part, he couldn’t recall how long it had been since he first met his Master. He knew only that he now lived to serve.

With the report clutched in his hand, the clerk shuffled down the hallway in search of privacy. The break room, which was never empty no matter the time of day, was currently occupied by a couple of secretaries and Carrigan, a fat, loud-mouthed cop who was retiring at the end of the week. He was bragging about the primo deal he had gotten on some backwater Florida condo while the women basically ignored him, the two females lunching on day-old, frosted yellow party cake and washing it all down with Diet Coke chasers.

The clerk ran his fingers through his pale brown hair and walked past the open doorway, toward the restrooms at the end of the corridor. He paused outside the men’s room, his hand on the battered metal handle, as he casually glanced behind him. With no one there to see him, he moved to the next door down, the station’s janitorial supply closet. It was supposed to be kept locked, but seldom was. Nothing much worth stealing in there anyway, unless you had a thing for industrial-grade toilet paper, ammonia cleanser, and brown paper towels.

He twisted the knob and pushed the old steel panel inward. Once inside the dark closet, he clicked the pushbutton lock from within and retrieved his cell phone from the front pocket of his khakis. He pressed speed dial, calling the sole number that was stored in the untraceable, disposable device. The call rang twice, then fell into an ominous silence as his Master’s unmistakable presence loomed on the other end of the line.

“Sire,” the clerk breathed, his voice a reverent whisper. “I have information for you.”

He spoke quickly and quietly, divulging all of the details of the Maxwell woman’s visit to the station, including the specifics of her statement about a gang killing downtown. The clerk heard a growl and the soft hiss of breath skating across the cell phone’s receiver as his Master absorbed the news in silence. He sensed fury in that slow, wordless exhalation, and it chilled him.

“I ran her personal data for you, Sire—all of it,” he offered; then using the dim glow of the cell’s display, he recited Gabrielle’s address, unlisted phone number, and more, the servile Minion so very eager to please his dreaded and powerful Master.