Veil of Midnight (Midnight Breed 5)

"Is it always this quiet?"

"Never," Renata said, shooting him a grave look. She reached behind the seats to pick up some of the Agency weapons. She looped the strap of an automatic rifle over her head, then handed Nikolai one for himself. "Lex only had two guards left, but it doesn't look like anyone is here at all."

And even from this distance, Niko detected the scent of spilled blood. Breed blood, coming from more than one source. "Wait here while I go check things out."

She gave him an insubordinate scoff that he might have predicted was coming.

They both climbed out of the vehicle and moved in tandem toward the dark main house. The front door was wide open.

Fresh tire tracks were laid out in the gravel drive, wide, deep-set tracks like the kind an oversized SUV would leave behind. Niko had a feeling the Enforcement Agency had been here too.

The lodge was utterly silent, reeking with the stench of recent vampire deaths. He didn't need to turn on the lights to see the carnage. His keen vision spotted the two dead males just inside, both shot point-blank in the head with several rounds. He guided Renata around the corpses, following his nose to the back of the place, to Yakut's private quarters. He knew what he was going to find in here as well. Even still, he stepped into the room and let out a furious curse.

Lex was dead.

And with him, so was their best hope of locating Edgar Fabien tonight.

Chapter Twenty-four

Renata's breath seized up at the sound of Nikolai's muttered curse. She reached for the light switch near the open door of Yakut's bedroom. Slowly flipped it on.

She couldn't speak as she stared down at Lex's lifeless body, his eyes vacant and clouded over with death, three large bullet holes bored into the front of his head. She wanted to scream. God in heaven, she wanted to drop to her knees, fist her hands in her hair, and howl to the rafters - not with grief or shock, but complete and thorough rage.

But her lungs were constricted in her breast.

Her limbs were weighted down, arms and legs too heavy to move.

What hope she'd been harboring - as small as it was - that they might come here and get a solid lead on Mira's location seeped out of her, as surely as Lex's blood had seeped into the floorboards of his father's room.

"Renata, we'll find another way," Nikolai said from somewhere near her. He bent down over the body and removed a cell phone from the pocket of Lex's suit coat, flipped it open and pressed some of the keys. "We've got Lex's call history now. One of these numbers might be Fabien's. I'll contact Gideon and have him chase them down. We're gonna have something on Fabien very soon. We'll get him, Renata."

She couldn't answer; she had no words. Turning slowly, she walked out of the room, hardly conscious that her feet were moving. She drifted through the dark lodge, past the bodies lying in the great room and down a hallway...unsure where she was heading, yet unsurprised when she found herself standing in the center of the tiny room where Mira had slept.

The small bed was just as she'd left it, as if waiting for its occupant's return. Over on the squat little nightstand was a wildflower Mira had picked earlier in the week, on one of the rare times Sergei Yakut had permitted the child to venture outside. Mira's flower was wilted now, the fragile white petals drooping and lifeless, green stem as limp as a piece of string. "Oh, my sweet mouse," Renata whispered into the darkened, empty room. "I'm sorry...I'm so sorry I'm not there for you right now..."

"Renata." Nikolai stood in the hallway outside the room. "Renata, don't do this to yourself. You are not to blame. And this isn't over, not yet."

His deep voice was soothing, a comfort just to hear him, and to know that he was there with her. She needed that comfort, but because she didn't deserve it, Renata refused to run into his arms as she so desperately wanted to do. She stayed where she was, rigid and unmoving. Wishing she could reverse all her failings.

She couldn't bear to remain in the lodge for another minute. There were too many dark memories here.

Too much death all around her.

Renata let the dead flower fall out of her fingers and onto the bed. She pivoted around toward the doorway. "I have to get out of this place," she murmured, guilt and anguish twisting in her chest. "I can't...I'm suffocating in here...can't...breathe." She didn't wait for him to reply - couldn't wait in there, not one more second. Pushing past him, she ran out of Mira's vacant room. She didn't stop running until her feet had carried her out the back of the main house and into the surrounding forest. And still her lungs squeezed as though they were caught in a vise.

In the back of her skull, she could feel a headache blooming. Her skin wasn't aching yet, but she was bone weary and she knew it wouldn't be long before reverb took her down. At least her shoulder was feeling decent. The gunshot wound was still there, still a dull throb deep in her muscles, but Nikolai's blood had worked some kind of magic on the infection.

Renata felt strong enough that when she glanced over and saw the locked barn - the outbuilding where she and so many others had been brought as bait for Yakut's sick blood sport - she didn't think twice about stalking over to it and pulling the Enforcement Agency rifle around from where it had shifted to her back. She shot the heavy lock until it broke off and fell to the ground. Then she flung open the door and let loose with more shots inside, peppering the large holding pen, the walls and rafters - all of it - with an obliterating hail of bullets.

She didn't let up on the trigger until the magazine was empty and her throat was raw from her screams. Her shoulders heaved, chest sawing like a bellows.

"I should have been here," she said, hearing Nikolai come up behind her outside. "When Lex turned her over to Fabien, I should have stopped him. I should have been there for Mira. Instead I was in bed, too weak with reverb...useless."

He made a small noise, a wordless dismissal of her guilt. "You couldn't have known she was in danger. You couldn't have prevented any of what occurred, Renata."

"I should never have left the lodge!" she cried, self-contempt searing her like acid. "I ran away, when I should have stayed here the whole time and worked on getting Lex to tell me where she was."

"You didn't run away. You went to look for help from me. If you hadn't done that, I would be dead." His footsteps moved closer, coming up gently behind her. "If you had stayed here all this time, Renata, then you would have been killed tonight along with Lex and the other guards. What happened here was a coldly planned execution, and it's got Fabien's name all over it." He was right. She knew he was right, on all points. But it didn't make her hurt any less.