Veil of Midnight (41 page)

“Away!” he ordered the boat’s driver, Edgar Fabien dismissed from his mind completely as the motor roared and the sleek watercraft sped out to the waiting seaplane at the far end of the lake.

* * *

He was too fucking late.

Niko took out a couple of agents on his way down to the lake, but by the time he got there, the speedboat making a bat-out-of-hell exit was little more than churning wake on the water. Nikolai fired a few shots after them, but he was only wasting rounds. Edgar Fabien’s corpse lay on the wooden dock. Dragos and the others were more than halfway across the lake now.

“Goddamn it.”

Fury and determination powering him, Nikolai started running along the shore, calling on the preternatural speed that all of his kind possessed when they needed it. The boat was fast, but the water was landlocked. At some point Dragos and his cronies would have to disembark and pick up another means of escape. With any luck, he could catch up to them before they totally got away.

He didn’t know how far he’d run—easily a mile—when all of a sudden his chest went cold with dread.

Renata.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He could feel her emotion course through him as if it were his own. She, his brave, unflappable Renata, was right now scared to death.

Ah, Christ.

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If anything happened to her…

No. He couldn’t even think it.

All thoughts of Dragos pushed aside, Nikolai wheeled around and kicked his feet into high gear, praying like hell he could reach her in time.

* * *

She hadn’t seen the huge vampire coming at all.

One minute she was tearing through the dark woods with Mira held fast in her arms, and the next she found herself staring into the unforgiving face and merciless golden eyes of an immense Breed male whose naked torso, shoulders, and arms were camouflaged by a thick pattern of dermaglyphs.

He was Gen One; Renata knew it instinctively. Her instincts also told her that this male was more lethal than most, stone cold.

A killer.

Terror rose up on her like a black tide. She knew that if she blasted him, she’d better be certain she could kill him swiftly, or else she and Mira both would be dead in that same instant. She didn’t dare attempt it when Mira might be made to suffer if she failed.

Mother Mary, to have come this far—to finally have Mira ensconced
in her arms, mere steps away from freedom…

“Please,” Renata murmured, desperate to appeal to even his slightest inkling of mercy. “Not the child. Let her go…please.”

His silence was unnerving. Mira tried to lift her head from Renata’s shoulder, but Renata gently eased her back down, not wishing her to be frightened by the messenger of death who’d no doubt been dispatched by Edgar Fabien or Dragos himself.

“I’m going to set her down now,” Renata told him, not even sure he comprehended, let alone would comply. “Just…let her go. I’m the one you want, not her. Just me.”

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The hawklike golden eyes followed her every movement as Renata carefully extricated Mira from her grasp and slowly placed the girl’s feet on the ground. Renata put herself between the killer and the child, praying her death would be enough to satisfy him and his evil master.

“Rennie, what’s going on?” Mira asked from behind her legs, her small hands gripping the pantlegs of Renata’s Enforcement Agency fatigues as she peered around her. “Who is that man?”

The vampire let his stony gaze travel down to the source of that tiny voice. He stared. His shaved head cocked slowly to the side. Then he scowled.

“You,” he said, in a voice so deep it rumbled all the way down to Renata’s marrow. Something dark passed across his face. “Let me see her.”

“No,” Renata pleaded, holding Mira behind her and blocking him from her like a shield. “She’s just a child. She’s done nothing against you or anyone else. She’s innocent.”

He hit Renata with a look so fierce it nearly knocked her back on her heels. “Let. Me. See. Her. Eyes.”

Before she could refuse again, before she could think of some way to grab Mira up and flee as fast and as far as they could get, Renata felt Mira take a step out from behind her.

“Mira, no—”

Too late to stop what was going to occur, Renata could only stare in dread as Mira walked right out and looked up, way up, into the hard gaze of the deadly Gen One vampire.

“You,” he said again, peering hard into Mira’s sweet face.

Renata could tell the moment he began to witness Mira’s gift. His golden eyes went stormy, and he stared, rapt, as the child showed him events certain to come to pass. He stepped closer—too close, when his massive arms could lash out and break Mira without a hint of warning.

“Do not—” she blurted, but he was already reaching for Mira.

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“It’s okay, Rennie,” Mira whispered, standing before him as innocent as a babe who’d wandered into the lion’s den.

And that was when Renata realized something extraordinary was about to happen.

“You saved me,” he whispered, his huge hands dwarfing Mira’s tiny shoulders. The vampire sank down to his knees, bringing himself to her level. When he spoke, that deep, deadly voice was quiet with awe and confusion. “You saved my life. I saw it, just now in your eyes. I saw it that night too…”

Thirty-three

Nikolai’s heart froze in his chest, a stricken, fear-filled lump of ice. With gunfire still erupting in the area, he had made it back through the woods, all the way to the place where his bonded blood had told him he’d find his terrified mate.

Renata was there. She stood in the moonlit darkness of the forest, as still as a statue and looking on as an immense Gen One vampire crouched before Mira, holding the child in his punishing hands.

Jesus Christ.

Niko moved in on soundless feet, creeping in closer and trying to find a position that he could shoot from that wouldn’t put either Renata or the girl in the crossfire.

Blast him away, Renata.

Take him the fuck down and get the hell out of there.

She didn’t open her mind’s power on him. She didn’t so much as twitch a finger toward any of her weapons, psychic or otherwise. No, to his horror, she didn’t even move. She just stood there, in the center of what could very quickly turn into a hellish storm of bloodshed and violence.

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Niko’s own fear in that moment was fathomless. All he knew was the terror shredding him from within, his bones chilled, a desperation so savage and complete it set his heart banging like a drum in his chest.

He drew twin 9mm pistols from their holsters at his sides and stalked forward. Although he was moving at a pace only one of the Breed could manage, Renata glanced up. She felt him there, stirring the very air around her, even if her eyes couldn’t quite register his speed. Her blood told her that he was near, just as his would always find her.

He was too consumed with rage to fully notice that she was looking up at him in alarm—alarm directed more at him than the enemy vampire who faced her.

Nikolai charged forward as a flash of movement, totally prepared to kill. He drew to a halt just behind the big Gen One, both barrels held up tight against the glyphs that tracked up the back of the vampire’s shaved skull.

Everything happened in a blink of time, but it played out in maddening slow-motion frames in Nikolai’s consciousness.

He cocked the nines, his fingers on the triggers.

Renata’s

eyes

went

wide.

She

shook

her

head.

“Niko…wait…don’t!”

The Gen One let go of Mira, letting his big hands fall down at his sides. He didn’t even react to the guns trained on his head. His chest expanded as he took in a long breath, then let it out on a resigned sigh.

He wasn’t going to fight his death.

He didn’t care if he died.

And then Mira was screaming, her child’s voice pitched high with fear. “No! Don’t hurt him!”

Nikolai watched in stunned disbelief—in total amazement—as Mira lunged forward and threw her arms around the Gen One’s broad shoulders.

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“Please, don’t hurt him!” she cried, staring up at Niko pleadingly as she attempted to protect the hulking vampire with her tiny body.

* * *

“Nikolai.” Renata caught his gaze as he looked up, disbelieving, two large pistols still cocked and ready, leveled at the Gen One’s head.

“Nikolai…please, it’s okay. Just wait a second.”

He frowned in question, but his warrior stance relaxed somewhat.

“Get up,” he ordered the vampire. “Stand up, and get away from the child.”

The Gen One complied without comment, slowly un-fastening Mira’s arms from around his neck and setting her away from him as he rose to his feet.

Niko moved around to face him, weapons still held on him as he guided both Renata and Mira to stand behind him. “Who the hell are you?”

Sober, expressionless eyes stared at the ground. “I am called Hunter.”

“You’re not Enforcement Agency,” Nikolai said cautiously.

“No. I am a Hunter.”

Renata brought Mira close, holding her as the chaos of the ongoing disruption in the woods and at the house slowly died down around them.

“His eyes, Nikolai,” she said, understanding now. “He is the golden-eyed assassin who tried to kill Sergei Yakut that night. He’s the one Mira witnessed at the lodge.”

Nikolai’s expression darkened. “Is this true? You are a hired killer?”

“I was.” The Hunter gave a grim nod and finally lifted his gaze.

“The child saved me. Something…changed in me after I saw the vision in her eyes that night. I saw her saving my life, precisely as it happened a moment ago.”

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In that next instant, the surrounding forest came alive with armed men moving in on them from all directions. Nikolai had his weapons at the ready, but he made no move to fire on the newcoming threat. Renata’s pulse spiked in panic. “Oh, shit. Niko—”

“It’s all right.” He calmed her with a reassuring look and a few gentle words. “These are the good guys, my friends from the Order.”

She watched in relief as four of Nikolai’s fellow warriors stepped into the area. All of them were formidable in size and attitude, a cadre of muscle and might that seemed to suck all of the air out of the woods by their presence alone.

“How you doing, amigo? Everything okay here?” asked the smooth caramel voice Renata now recognized as belonging to Rio.

Nikolai nodded, his eyes and weapons still trained on the Gen One in their midst. “I’ve got this under control, but the situation at the house is all fucked up. Edgar Fabien is dead, and Dragos and the others slipped out the back. They went by boat to the other side of the lake. I tried to track them, but…” He glanced at Renata. “I had to make sure everything was okay on this end first.”

“We heard a small-engine aircraft buzzing overhead as we arrived,”

Rio said.

“Shit,” Nikolai hissed. “That’ll be them, no doubt. They’re gone. Goddamn it, Dragos was right here and we lost the bastard.”

“Let me help you find him.”

All eyes turned to the vampire still held in Nikolai’s crosshairs.

“Why should we trust you?” Nikolai asked, his gaze narrowing.

“Why would you be willing to help us get Dragos?”

“Because he is the one who created me.” There was no warmth in the golden hue of the Gen One assassin’s eyes as he responded to the question, only cold hatred. “He made me what I am. Me, and all the other Hunters bred to kill for him.”

“Oh, my God,” Renata breathed. “You mean there are more of you?”

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The shaved head nodded soberly. “I don’t know how many, or where they are all located, but Dragos told me himself that I am not the only one of my kind. There are others.”

“Why should we believe you?” asked another of the warriors, this one almost as dark as the night around them, his teeth and fangs gleaming like pearls against his brown skin.

Another warrior stepped in then, his eyes quick and shrewd, as cunning as a wolf’s under the ebony spikes of his cropped hair. “Let Tegan tell us if we can trust him.”

Renata watched in astonishment and not a little dread as the largest of the group—a warrior who’d held back from the rest like a ghost stalking the shadows—took a few steps forward. Immense, with tawny hair peeking out from under the black knit skullcap he wore, he was a broad, towering slab of muscle and dark energy. Easily as big as the Gen One who stood before him, waiting his judgment.