The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been paring an apple at one of her foster homes when the knife slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn't felt panic or fear.
She'd felt fascination.
She'd felt an incredible sort of... peace.
A few months after that surprising discovery, Gabrielle cut herself again. She did it deliberately, secretly, never with the intent to harm herself. Over time, she did it frequently, whenever she needed to feel that same profound sense of calm.
She needed it now, when she was anxious and jumpy as a cat, her ears picking up every slight noise in the apartment and outside. Her head was pounding. Her breath was shallow, coming rapidly through her teeth.
Her thoughts were careening from the flash-bright memories of the night outside the club to the creepy asylum she'd taken pictures of the other morning, to the confusing, irrational, bone-deep fear she'd experienced this afternoon.
She needed a little peace from all of it.
Even just a spare few minutes of calm.
Gabrielle's gaze slid to the wooden block of knives sitting on the counter nearby. She reached over, took one in her hand. It had been years since she'd done this. She'd worked so hard to master the strange, shameful compulsion.
Had it truly ever gone away?
Her state-appointed psychologists and social workers eventually had been convinced that it had. The Maxwells, too.
Now, Gabrielle wondered as she brought the knife over to her bare arm and felt a surge of dark anticipation wash over her. She pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy part of her forearm, though not yet firm enough to break the skin.
This was her private demon - something she had never openly shared with anyone, not even Jamie, her dearest friend.
No one would understand.
She hardly understood it herself.
Gabrielle tipped her head back and took a deep breath. As she brought her chin back down on the slow exhale, she caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The face staring back at her was drawn and sorrowful, the eyes haunted and weary.
"Who are you?" she whispered to that ghostly image in the glass. She had to choke back a sob. "What's wrong with you?"
Miserable with herself, she threw the knife into the sink and backed away as it clattered against the stainless basin.
The steady percussion of helicopter rotors chopped through the quiet of the night sky above the old asylum. From out of the low cloud cover, a black Colibri EC120 descended, coming to a soft touchdown on a flat expanse of rooftop.
"Cut the engine," the leader of the Rogues instructed his Minion pilot after the craft had settled on its makeshift helipad. "Wait here for me until I return."
He climbed out of the cockpit, greeted at once by his lieutenant, a rather nasty individual he'd recruited out of the West Coast.
"Everything is in order, sire." The Rogue's thick brow bunched over his feral yellow eyes. His large bald head still bore the scars from electrical burns inflicted during a bout of Breed interrogation he'd undergone about a half a year ago. However, amid the rest of his hideous features, the numerous scorch marks were merely a footnote. The Rogue grinned, baring huge fangs. "Your gifts tonight have been very well-received, sire. Everyone eagerly awaits your arrival."
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he was led into the building's top floor, then on toward an elevator that would take him into the heart of the facility. They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the Rogue lair.
As for the leader himself, he'd been based in private quarters elsewhere in Boston for the past month, privately reviewing operations, assessing his obstacles, and determining his strongest assets in this new territory he meant to control. This was to be his first public appearance - an event, as was fully his intention.
It wasn't often he ventured into the filth of the general population; vampires gone Rogue were a crude, indiscriminate lot, and he had come to appreciate finer things during his many years of existence. But an appearance was due, however brief. He needed to remind the beasts of whom they served, and so he had given them a taste of the spoils that would await at the end of their latest mission. Not all of them would survive, of course. Casualties tended to mount in the midst of war.
And war was what he was selling here tonight.
No more petty conflicts over turf. No more divisive in-fighting among the Rogues or pointless acts of individual retribution. They would unite and turn a page not yet imagined in the age-old battle that had forever split the vampire nation in two. For too long, the Breed had ruled, striking an unspoken treaty with the lesser humans while striving to eliminate their Rogue kin.
The two factions of the vampire race were not so different from each other, separated only by degrees. All that stood between a Breed vampire fulfilling his hunger for life and the Bloodlust addiction of the Rogue's unquenchable thirst for blood was a mere few ounces. The bloodlines of the race had diluted in the time since the Ancients, as new vampires grew to adulthood and paired with human Breedmates.
But no amount of human genetic corruption would completely obliterate the stronger vampire genes. Bloodlust was a specter that would haunt the Breed forever.
The way the leader of this budding war saw it, one could either fight the innate urge of his kind, or use it to one's best advantage.