Shades of Midnight (12 page)

Before he was inside his apartment for even as much as a minute, his mother started moving around upstairs, her muffled complaints echoing down to him beneath her bedroom. He knew she’d be storming down to bitch at him, and could hardly say that he was disappointed when she did.

“Stanley Elmer Arnold!” she screamed, banging on his door. “Do you have any idea what time it is? You worthless piece of shit! How dare you stay out all goddamn night, making me worry about you, only to drag your sorry ass back home at the crack of dawn and wake me out of a dead sleep! You’re nothing but a loser and a—”

Skeeter was at the door and in the hallway with her, his hand clamped punishingly around her throat and cutting her off before the words had a chance to shriek out of her mouth.

“Be quiet, bitch,” he told her harshly. “I’m working in here.”

If she’d uttered even one syllable as his hand peeled away from her, Skeeter would have killed her, right then and there. And she knew it, by God. She understood that things would be different now.

Soundless, she stepped back from him, wobbling just a little in her ratty slippers and matted terry housecoat. Slowly she turned around and walked carefully back up the hallway where she’d come from.

Skeeter Arnold cocked his head at her retreating bulk, then smiled as he returned to the more important tasks that awaited him in the shithole apartment he called home.

CHAPTER
Eleven

It was strange being back in his old quarters at his father’s Darkhaven, as though he’d somehow walked into a distant, remembered dream of home that no longer seemed to fit him quite the same way. True to her word, however, Kade’s mother had made sure nothing was out of place since he’d left a year ago. After the long night he’d had in Harmony, he could appreciate the thick, engulfing cushion of his leather mission-style recliner, which was perfectly situated in front of the massive, river-rock fireplace that roared with freshly laid logs.

Kade leaned back and chuckled into his satellite phone as Brock caught him up on everything he was missing in Boston the past couple of nights.

“I’m telling you, man, if we aren’t careful, these females around here are gonna show our asses up. The way they’ve been tackling daytime missions topside, they’re starting to make the rest of us look bad.”

Since Kade had phoned in to the Order’s compound headquarters a few minutes ago, Brock had been regaling him with stories about some of the other warriors’ Breedmates and their current efforts to assist in what had been, until very recently, something of an all-boys club. Now Order missions had become all-hands-on-deck kinds of operations—solely devoted to stopping a power-hungry Breed maniac named Dragos from unleashing his personal brand of hell on both humankind and Breed alike.

Dragos’s resources were as deep as his pockets and, so it happened, as black as his plans. His most heinous act had been the capture and imprisonment of an unknown number of Breedmates, whom he’d been collecting for decades and using to give birth to an army of savage assassins. With Dragos’s headquarters sacked by the Order just a few weeks ago, his operation had been disrupted—disassembled and diverted, the Order suspected.

Finding the captive Breedmates before he could harm any more of them was the Order’s primary objective now. Because timing could mean the difference between lives lost or saved, Lucan had agreed to utilize every weapon in the Order’s arsenal, which included the very special, uniquely gifted, females who’d taken some of the warriors as their mates.

There was Rio’s mate, Dylan, who had the ability to see the spirits of other Breedmates who’d passed and, when she was lucky, obtain critical information from them. There was Elise, who was mated to Tegan and who had a talent for hearing corrupt, dark human intentions. She accompanied Dylan to area shelters, private homes, and flophouses, her ability helping her assess the motives of the folks they met with along the way.

Gideon’s mate, Savannah, used her tactile skill for reading the history of an object, hoping to find traceable links to some of the missing. Nikolai’s mate, Renata, whose power to mind-blast even the strongest vampire made her a formidable ally on any mission, provided armed bodyguard service to the other Breedmates for their daytime missions.

Even Andreas Reichen’s mate, Claire, who’d only recently recovered from her own ordeal at the hands of Dragos and his associates, was apparently getting involved in Order business. Using her gift for dreamwalking, she’d been trying to make contact with some of the known Breedmates who’d been reported missing over the years.

“You know,” Brock added wryly, “when Niko recruited me for this gig a year ago, I was expecting it to be just a great excuse to kick some Rogue ass.”

Kade grinned, recalling their initial patrols around Boston, which typically involved taking out the city’s feral blood addicts and making things go
boom
. “Kind of makes you miss the simplicity of the first few months on the job, doesn’t it?”

Brock grunted in agreement. Then, “Speaking of Rogues, how’s it going up there in the icebox? Been two days and counting. You got that situation swept up yet?”

“I’m following up on a few leads, but nothing solid right now. I’ll probably be here another few days, maybe a week.”

Brock’s exhaled curse told Kade what he thought of that prediction. “Better you than me, my man. Better you than me.” There was a pause before he asked, “You have a chance to see your family yet?”

“Yeah,” Kade said, tipping his head back to stare at the thick beam rafters of the cabin. “My arrival home went over about as well as I expected.”

“That good, huh?”

“Put it this way, I get a warmer reception stepping outside in the twenty-below darkness.”

“Harsh,” Brock said. “I’m sorry, man. Seriously.”

Kade shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t need to talk about my welcome homecoming. Just wanted to touch base and pass along another bit of info that Gideon might find interesting.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I found the asshole who posted the video clip of the attacked humans. His name is Skeeter Arnold, local burnout, probable small-time dealer. I watched him leave a bar and take off in a shiny new chauffeured Hummer. He was brought to some kind of mining company office out in the sticks. The name on the gate was Coldstream Mining Company. Put Gideon on that when he gets a chance. I’m curious to know what kind of business this loser might have with them.”

“You got it,” Brock said. “You take care out there. Don’t freeze off anything you might need later.”

Kade chuckled despite the unease he felt just thinking about this whole assignment. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and ended the call.

As he set the phone down on the lamp table beside him, a firm rap sounded on the cabin’s front door.

“Yeah, it’s open,” he said, expecting to see his father. He steeled himself for the disapproval that would follow. “Come on in.”

Maksim entered instead, sparking a relief Kade could hardly hide. He rose, smiling, and gestured for his uncle to join him in front of the fire.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Max said. “At least, not so soon. I hear it did not go well between you and my brother the other day. I wish he wasn’t so hard on you.”

Kade shrugged. “We’ve never seen eye to eye. I sure as hell don’t expect us to start now.”

“Now that you are one of the Order’s warriors,” Max said, his eyes lighting with eager conspiracy, his deep, slightly accented voice edged with unhidden admiration, “I am proud of you, nephew. Proud of the work you are doing. There is honor in it, just as there has always been honor in you.”

Kade wanted to dismiss the praise as unneeded, but hearing it—particularly from Max, who, although he was a couple centuries older than Kade, had always felt like a brother to him—felt too damn good to pretend it didn’t matter.

“Thanks, Max. It means a lot, coming from you.”

“No need to thank me. I speak the truth.” He stared at Kade for a long moment, then leaned forward, his elbows planted on his spread knees. “You’ve been gone a year. You must be doing important things for Lucan and his Order.”

Kade grinned, seeing Max’s angle from a mile away. Like him, Max craved adventure. Unlike him, Max had committed himself to serving as second banana to Kade’s father, the leader of the Fairbanks Darkhaven. Max’s loyalty had shackled him to this ten-thousand-acre prison, and although he would never shirk his duty or his promise to his rigid, uncompromising brother, Max appreciated the concept of risk and reward, courage and honor, every bit as much as Kade did.

Because of that, and because Kade knew Max’s loyalty extended to him, as well, he knew that trusting him with a few details of his experiences with the Order and their current mission would not be misplaced.

“I heard there was some upheaval in the Enforcement Agency out East some months back,” Max said, watching Kade eagerly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“There was,” he admitted, recalling one of the first missions he’d been involved with, and the beginning of the trouble the Order now had with the madman called Dragos. “Our intel uncovered a high-ranking director of the Agency who wasn’t what he seemed. This guy had been operating under an assumed name and seeding a secret rebellion for decades—longer, in fact. We’re still trying to figure out just how far the corruption goes, but it hasn’t been easy. Every time we get close to the bastard, he goes deeper to ground.”

“So, you pursue him harder,” Max said, talking like any one of the warriors back in Boston. “You keep hitting him, keep pounding him from all angles, until he’s too exhausted from running that he has no choice but to stand and fight. And then you destroy him, once and for all.”

Kade nodded grimly, hearing the wisdom in Max’s advice and wishing their pursuit of Dragos was as simple, as clean, as that.

What Max didn’t know—what neither he nor anyone else could be permitted to know—was that Dragos was only the tip of a very treacherous iceberg. Dragos had a secret weapon, one he’d been holding for centuries. Around the same time that Kade had joined the Order, they had discovered the existence of a creature long thought to be dead. An Ancient. One of the bloodthirsty otherworlders who’d fathered the entire Breed race on Earth millennia ago.

Dragos was that creature’s grandson, and he’d been breeding his army of ruthless, unstoppable vampire assassins off him for longer than anyone wanted to contemplate.

If that news were to get out to the Breed communities in the United States and abroad, it would incite widespread panic.

If it were to leak to the human populations that not only did vampires walk among them, but one megalomaniac intended to put himself in power and enslave them all?

Armageddon.

Kade had to mentally shake himself out of that nightmare scenario. “While the rest of the Order is doing just what you said, I drew the short straw to come up to Alaska. I’ve been looking into an attack on some humans in the bush—a whole family settlement, wiped out in one night.”

Max frowned. “Rogues?”

“That’s our guess.” And Kade’s hope, although each minute of this assignment led him farther and farther away from that as a viable outcome. “You haven’t heard of any trouble in the Darkhavens, have you? Anyone rumored to be edging toward Bloodlust?”

Max gave a slow shake of his head. “Nothing like that. There was an incident at the Darkhaven in Anchorage about nine months ago. Some idiot kid nearly bled out a human at a party, but that was the only problem in the region lately.”

The news didn’t make Kade feel any better, certainly. Because if there were no Rogues on the loose, then that left only one reasonable place to lay the blame.

“I wonder if Seth has heard anything,” he murmured, trying to keep the dread and fury out of his voice. “Sure would hate to miss seeing him while I’m here.”

“He would hate to miss you, as well,” Max said, and Kade could see that he meant it sincerely.

He didn’t know about Seth. Like everyone else, he had no clue.

Only Kade knew.

And the burden of that knowledge was sitting heavier in his gut all the time.

Max sat back in his chair and softly cleared his throat. “There’s something I want to tell you, Kade. Something you need to understand … about your family, and about your father.”

“Go on,” Kade said, not entirely sure he wanted to hear how much his father adored Seth and wished Kade had been more like him.

“My brother, your father, does not find it easy to show his affection. Especially with you.”

“Funny, I hadn’t noticed.” Kade grinned with humor he didn’t feel.

“Our family has a dark secret,” Max said, and Kade felt his body go a little numb. “Kir and I had a younger brother. You never knew that, I’m sure. Not many do. His name was Grigori. Kir loved him very much. We all did. Grigori was a clever, charming boy. But he was also a bit wild. Even at his young age, he rebelled against authority and walked the razor’s edge of every situation without any fear.”

Kade found himself smiling, thinking that he might have liked Grigori, too.

“Despite his faults, Kir doted on the boy. But some years later, when it was learned that Grigori had gone Rogue, that in his Bloodlust he had killed, Kir wrote him off completely. Just like that,” Max said, giving a sharp snap of his fingers. “We never saw Grigori again. Kir never so much as spoke of him after we heard the news about Grigori turning Rogue, nor has he since. From that time forward, Kir was a changed man.”

Kade listened, reluctant to admit the pang of sympathy he had for his father and the loss he suffered.

“Perhaps your father worries that he could not shoulder that kind of pain again,” Max suggested. “Perhaps it’s just that he sees a bit too much of Grigori in you sometimes.”

And he’d apparently decided to write Kade off early, while pinning all of his fatherly hopes on Seth.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kade murmured, and he half meant it, too. He was too busy dealing with real life-and-death shit to worry about how low his father’s expectations might be for him. “I appreciate the information, Max. And the insight. I also appreciate that you came by.”

Max, perceptive as ever, took the gentle hint and stood up. “You have things to do. I should not delay you.”

When he stuck out his hand, Kade grabbed him into a brief embrace instead. “You’re a good man, Max. A good friend. Thank you.”

“Anything you need, Kade, you need only ask.”

They walked to the door together, and Kade opened it just as a pair of women, bundled in winter coats and each carrying a folded down-filled blanket, were walking past the cabin. One of them looked over and did a quick double-take.