A Touch of Midnight (Midnight Breed 0.5)

Gideon's growl of rage was animalistic, lethal. "Where did they take her? What did these men look like?"

Amelie sagged forward, her head in her hands. "I don't know, I don't know! Oh, God, somebody gotta help her. I gotta call the police!"

Gideon took the woman's shoulders in a firm grasp, compelling her to look at him. "Listen to me, Amelie. You have to stay put, call no one. You have to trust me. I'm not going to let anything happen to Savannah."

She stared at him, doubt swimming in her anguished eyes. "Are you the one? Are you the one who broke her heart back there in Boston, sent her back here last night like her whole world was falling apart?"

He didn't answer to that, even though the blame settled heavily on him. "I'm the one who loves her. More than life itself."

"Don't let them hurt her," she cried. "Don't let those men kill my sweet Savannah."

Gideon gave a solemn shake of his head. "I won't. I swear my life on that."

No sooner had he said it, a vehicle approached, pulling up alongside the house outside. The dull rumble of the engine went silent, followed by the crisp thump of two car doors closing a moment later.

Gideon lifted his head, every battle instinct coming alive inside him. He whirled around to head out the front door, his gun at the ready.

There she was.

Standing on her sister's front lawn in the darkness, caught in a headlock by a human man--a Minion, Gideon realized at once. The big thug held the nose of his pistol jammed up against Savannah's temple. She'd been crying, her face streaked with tears, lips ashen from terror.

All the blood rushed out of Gideon's head, started pounding hard in the center of his chest.

It was then he noticed the second man, a Breed male, standing at ease in the shadows of a cypress tree nearby. He was dressed in a tailored navy wool overcoat, his brown hair impeccably cut, and swept back elegantly from his face. Held in a loose grasp in front of him stood a gleaming length of polished steel. The long blade glittered in the moonlight.

Gideon didn't need to see the hilt to know there would be a bird of prey--a falcon--tooled into the handcrafted grip.

Hugh Faulkner's blade.

But this was not the Gen One sword smith Gideon killed back in London all those centuries ago. He'd never seen this vampire before, he was certain.

"Drop your weapons, warrior."

Gideon glanced from the Breed male to the Minion holding Savannah, calculating which of the two he should kill first to give her the best odds of getting away unharmed. Neither was a guarantee, and he was loath to risk making a mistake that carried such a high cost.

"Put them down now," the vampire drawled. "Or my man will blow her pretty head off."

Gideon relaxed his hold on the pistol, then stooped to set it down.

"All of them. Slowly."

He took off his weapons belt and put it on the ground at his feet. The bandaged gash on his thigh was bleeding again, seeping through his pant leg.

The other vampire sniffed the air dramatically, lips peeling back in an amused smirk. "Not so untouchable, after all."

Gideon watched the Breed male turn Faulkner's sword on its tip in the moist earth of Amelie Dupree's front yard. "Do I know you?"

The vampire chuckled. "No one did. Not back then."

Gideon tried to place him, tried to figure out if, or when, their paths might have crossed.

"You wouldn't have noticed me. He hardly did, either." There was an acid resentment in the tone, but something else too. An old, bitter hurt. "His unacknowledged bastard. The only kin he had."

Gideon narrowed his gaze on the other male. "Hugh Faulkner had a son?"

A thin, hate-filled smile stretched the polished facade of his face into an ugly sneer. "A teenage son who watched him die at your hand, slaughtered in the open with less regard than might be shown common swine. A son who vowed to avenge him, even thought he had no use for me in life." Hugh Faulkner's bastard smiled a true smile now. "A son who decided to take from my father's killer the only family he had left too."

Gideon bristled, fury spiking in his veins. "My brothers were innocent children. You arranged for those three Rogues to go in and murder them?"