Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

"I saw her spirit, I guess you'd say. She led me to a hidden cave. I didn't know it, but Rio was inside. She - Eva - led me there and asked me to save him."

"My God." Tess slowly shook her head. "Does he know this?"

Dylan glanced meaningfully at the destruction lying at her feet. "Yeah, he knows. When I told him, that's when he really lost it."

Tess's look was apologetic. "He has a lot of anger where Eva's concerned."

"Understandably," Dylan replied. "Is he okay, Tess? I mean, considering what he's gone through, is Rio going to be...okay?"

"I hope so. We all hope so." Tess cocked her head slightly, studying her somehow. "You're not afraid of him."

No, she wasn't. She was curious about him absolutely, and uncertain of his intentions where she was concerned, but she wasn't afraid of him. Crazy as it was, even after seeing him as he'd been a short while ago in this very room, Dylan wasn't afraid. In fact, just thinking about Rio did a lot of things to her, none of them scary. "Do you think I should be afraid of him?"

"No," Tess said without hesitation. "What I mean is, this can't be easy on you. God knows I didn't take it very well when I first heard all of this talk of blood and fangs and war."

Dylan shrugged. "I write for a quasi-tabloid newspaper. Believe me, I've heard a lot of bizarre things. I don't shock easily."

Tess smiled, but she didn't hold Dylan's gaze for long. The words she didn't say were clear as a bell in those quickly averted eyes: This wasn't just a bizarre tabloid story. This was real.

"What was in that cave, Tess? It was apparently some kind of crypt - a hibernation chamber, I heard Rio call it. But what the hell was in there? Did something get loose up there on the mountainside?"

Tess lifted her eyes, but only gave a small shake of her head. "I don't think you really want to know."

"Yes, I do," Dylan insisted. "Whatever it was, it's obviously important enough that Rio felt he had to kidnap me and lock me up to keep me quiet about what I saw."

Tess's silence put a knot of dread in Dylan's gut. The Breedmate knew what was in that cave, and the knowledge of it clearly terrified her.

"Tess, something was sleeping in that hidden tomb - from the look of it, I'd say it had been holed up there for a very long time. What kind of creature was it...or is it?"

Tess stood up and dropped some broken glass into a wastebasket beside the bureau. "Let me take a look at your cut. We should clean it up and get a bandage on it so you don't scar."

Confined within the UV light cell, the Ancient threw his head back and let out a hellish roar. Blood dripped off the huge fangs and onto the broad, naked chest that was livid with the pulsing color of the vampire's glyphs .

"Lock down those damn restraints," barked his keeper, speaking to his Minions through a small microphone in the observation room outside the cell. "And for crissake, clean up that mess in there."

The robotic shackles snaked out sharply and caught the Ancient's thick arms and legs. With a programmic command, they seized up tight, yanking him nearly off his feet. He struggled against the bonds, but he wasn't going anywhere. Thrashing futilely, he peeled back his lips and bellowed again. The wordless howl was one of unmistakable fury as his immense body was dominated by industrial-grade titanium and steel.

He was still erect from the breeding that had gone so violently wrong, still lusting for blood and for the body of the lifeless female that was being hastily - and posthumously - evacuated from the cage.

The Breedmate had been savaged. Hard nails and fangs left their mark all over her, and before the Ancient could be pulled off her, the female was dead. She wasn't the first, not even close. Over the nearly five decades since the Ancient had been awakened from his hibernation and brought under his keeper's control, feeding him - and breeding him - had proven to be a very costly, frustrating endeavor.

For all the technology and money at his disposal, there was no science in existence that could replace the kind of base rutting that had taken place in the prisoner's cell a short while ago. Flesh on flesh coupling was the only viable means of conception when it came to the Ancient, and the rest of the Breed as well. But sex was only part of the process. It took ejaculation, along with a simultaneous exchange of blood at that precise moment, for vampire life to take root in a Breedmate female's body.

Normally, bonded couples looking to conceive reveled in the deliberate, sensual act of creating life. Not so in this place. Down here, with the savage, alien creature rendered insane from starvation, pain, and confinement, conception was a life-and-death gamble. Casualties like the one today were part of the equation. Deaths were to be expected.

But there had been successes, and that made all the risk worthwhile. For every Breedmate killed in this process, two others made it out alive...with the seeds of a powerful new generation planted deep in their wombs.

The Ancient's keeper smiled privately despite the day's loss.

That powerful new generation was already growing, coming of age in secret.

And its allegiance belonged entirely to him.

Chapter Eighteen

Rio killed the last couple of hours before dawn topside in the estate's back courtyard with Dante, then headed below to the compound for some alone time in the chapel. The quiet little sanctuary where the Order carried out their most important and personal ceremonies had always been a haven for him. Not now. All he saw in the candlelit space were reminders of Eva's deception.

Because of her, over a year ago they'd had to anoint and shroud one of the Order's most noble members in funeral white and place him on the altar at the front of the rows of pews. Conlan's death in a subway tunnel last summer had been unintentional - the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - but his blood was on Eva's hands.