"Stop," she murmured, her eyes rooted on him now, suddenly sick with dread. "Please... Lucan, stop."
And then the keening howl went silent, replaced by a new horror as Lucan brought the spasming body down before him and calmly sank his teeth into the flesh below the man's jaw. A jet of blood spurted from the deep puncture, crimson rendered black against the darkness of night that surrounded the terrible scene. Lucan remained fixed, holding the gushing wound to his mouth.
Feeding from it.
"Oh, my God," she moaned, her hands trembling as she brought them up to hold back a scream. "No, no, no, no... Oh, Lucan... no."
His head came up abruptly, as if he'd heard her quiet misery. Or maybe he'd suddenly sensed her presence not a hundred yards from where he stood, savage and terrifying, looking like nothing she'd ever seen before.
Not true, her stricken mind contradicted.
She had seen this brutality once before, and if reason had forbade her from giving a name to the horror then, it rose up within her now like a cold, bleak wind.
"Vampire," she whispered, staring at Lucan's bloodstained face and feral, glowing eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
The smell of blood wreathed him, pungent and metallic, his nose swamped with the sweet, coppery tanginess. Some of it was his own, he realized with a dull sense of curiosity, grunting as he looked down and noted the gunshot wound to his left shoulder.
He felt no pain, only the swelling energy that always filled him after he fed.
But he wanted more.
Needed more, came the answering cry of the beast within him.
That voice was rising. Demanding. Urging him toward the edge.
But then, hadn't he been heading there for a long time, anyway?
Lucan clamped his jaws together so hard his teeth should have shattered. He had to get a grip, had to get the hell out of there and back to the compound, where he might be able to pull his shit together.
He had been walking the darkened streets for two hours, and still his blood was drumming hard in his temples, rage and hunger still ruling all but a sliver of his mind. He was a danger to all in this condition, but his restless body would not be still.
He stalked the city like a wraith, moving without conscious thought even though his feet - his every sense - led him on a purposeful path toward Gabrielle.
She hadn't gone home. Lucan wasn't sure where she had run, until the unseen thread that connected him to her by scent and senses brought him in front of an apartment building in the city's North End. A friend of hers, no doubt.
A light was on in an upstairs window, that bit of glass and brick was all that separated him from her.
But he wasn't going to try to see her, and not merely because of the red Mustang parked outside with the police light propped on the dash. Lucan didn't have to see his reflection in the windshield to know that his pupils were still narrow in the center of his huge irises, his fangs still protruding behind the rigid set of his mouth.
He looked every bit the monster he was.
The monster Gabrielle had seen firsthand tonight.
Lucan growled, forced to remember her horrified expression again and again since he'd slain the Minion.
He could still see her take a faltering step backward, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion. She had seen him for what he truly was - had even flung the word at him in accusation the instant before she'd fled.
He hadn't tried to stop her, not with words or by force.
All he'd known in that moment was the pure rush of fury as he drained his prey dry. Then he'd dropped the body like the rubbish it was, feeling a further surge of rage when he considered what might have happened to Gabrielle had she fallen into Rogue hands. Lucan had wanted to tear the human apart - nearly had, he acknowledged, vividly recalling the savagery he had wrought.
He, the cool one, so fierce in his control.>But the sweating, sputtering cop glaring down on him now was insignificant in light of the duties entrusted to chosen ones like himself. The Minion simply blinked a few times, then turned to retrieve his cell phone and continue with his task at hand.
He only made it down two stairs before Carrigan was on him again, heavy fingers clamping down hard on his shoulder and forcibly wheeling him around. The Minion's eyes lit on a fancy ballpoint pen stuck into the shirt pocket of Carrigan's uniform. He recognized the commemorative service emblem on the clip as he took another hard knock to the skull.
"What are you, deaf and dumb? Get the hell outta my sight, or I'll - "