Shades of Midnight (Midnight Breed 7)

Chapter Two

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Heat blasted out of the Range Rover's dashboard vents as Brock upped the temperature another few degrees. "Damn, it's cold tonight." The big male from Detroit cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew into his palms. "I hate winter, man. Feels like goddamn Siberia out there."

"Not even close," Kade replied from behind the wheel of the parked SUV, his gaze fixed on the decrepit brownstone they'd been surveilling for the past couple of hours. Even in the postmidnight darkness, with a fresh blanket of snow masking everything in pristine white, the place looked like total shit from the outside. Not that it mattered. Whatever they were peddling inside--drugs, sex, or a combination of both-was bringing a fairly steady stream of human traffic to the door. Kade watched as a trio of frat boys wearing university colors and a couple of bundled-up young women climbed out of a piece-of-crap Impala and went inside.

"If this was Siberia," Kade added once the street got quiet again, "our balls would be jingling like sleigh bells and we'd be pissing ice cubes. Boston in November is a picnic."

"Says the vampire born on a friggin' Alaskan glacier," Brock drawled, shaking his head as he held his dark hands in front of the vents and tried to rub off the chill. "How much longer you think we need to wait out here before our man decides to show his ugly face? I need to start moving before my ass freezes to this seat."

Kade grunted more than chuckled, as impatient as his partner on tonight's patrol of the city. It wasn't the humans that brought Brock and him to this address in one of Boston's roughest areas, but the inpidual purported to be behind the illegal activity. And if their intel proved valid--that the vampire who ran the place was also dealing in another forbidden commodity--then the night was going to end on a very unpleasant, probably bloody, note.

Kade could hardly wait.

"Here he is now," he said, watching as a pair of headlights swung around the corner and a pimpedout black Mercedes with gold trim and gilded hubcaps prowled to a stop at the curb. out black Mercedes with gold trim and gilded hubcaps prowled to a stop at the curb.

"You have got to be kidding me," Brock said, smirking as the spectacle continued. Music throbbed from within the sedan, the rhythmic bass and punching lyrics vibrating impossibly louder as the driver got out and went around to open the back passenger-side door. A pair of leashed white pit bulls were the first to exit the car, followed by their master, a tall Breed male trying hard to look badass even though he was wrapped in a long fox-fur coat and had gone about ten pounds beyond the respectable limits of bling and guyliner.

"Forget about the shit Gideon turned up on this asshole," Kade said. "We'd be in the right to waste him just for going out in public dressed like that."

Brock grinned, showing the very tips of his fangs. "You ask me, I think we ought to waste him just for making us freeze our stones off waiting for him out here."

At the curb, the vampire gave his dogs a harsh yank of their studded leather leashes when they dared to take a step ahead of him. He kicked the one nearest to him as he strode toward the door of the brownstone, chuckling at the dog's sharp yelp of pain. When he and his driver and his pair of hellhounds had all disappeared inside the building, Kade killed the Rover's auxiliary power and opened his door.

"Come on," he said. "Let's find a way in through the back while Homeboy's busy making an entrance."

They moved in behind the building and located a ground-level window half obscured by snow and street rubbish. Squatting on his haunches, Kade brushed away the ice and crusted-over filth, then lifted the hinged panel of glass and peered into the darkened space on the other side. It was a brick cellar, littered with a couple of rotted mattresses, spent condoms, used syringes, and a combined stench of piss, vomit, and various other expelled bodily fluids that assaulted Kade's acute senses like a sledgehammer blow to his skull.

"Jesus Christ," he hissed, lips curling back off his teeth and fangs. "Homeboy's housekeeper is so fired."

He slipped inside, landing soundlessly on the rough concrete floor. Brock followed, 280-plus pounds of heavily armed vampire lighting as quietly as a cat beside him. Kade motioned past the revolting mess on the floor to a pitch-black corner of the room, where a short length of chain and a pair of shackles lay. A strip of silver duct tape had been cast off nearby, with several strands of long, light blond hair stuck to it.

Brock met Kade's hard stare in the dark. His deep voice was more growl than words. "Skin trader." Kade nodded grimly, sickened by the evidence of all that had taken place in this dank, dark basement prison. He was about to head for the stairs and crash the party above when Brock's low curse made him pause.

"We're not alone down here, my man." Brock indicated a barred door all but obscured by shadows and the rusted skeleton of an old box spring that leaned too neatly against it. "Humans," he said. "Females, just on the other side of that door."

Hearing the quiet, broken breathing now, and feeling the current of pain and suffering that rode on the fetid air, Kade moved with Brock toward the lightless corner of the cellar. They pushed aside the old box spring, then Kade lifted the thick metal bar that locked the door from the outside.

"Holy hell," Brock whispered into the darkness. He stepped inside the small room where three young women sat huddled together in the corner, shivering and terrified. When one of them started to scream, Brock moved faster than any of the drugged humans could track him. Reaching down, he brushed his hand over the female's brow, trancing her into silence with his touch. "It's all right. You're safe now. We aren't going to hurt you."

"Have any of them been bled?" Kade asked, watching as Brock willed the other two captives into similar states of quiet.

"They've been beaten recently, so there's bruising. But I don't see any bite wounds. Don't see any Breedmate marks, either," he added, doing a quick check of the women's exposed skin and extremities, looking for the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark that differentiated mortal females from their more genetically extraordinary sisters. Brock gently released the pale arm he held, then stood up. "At least none of these three is a Breedmate."

A small mercy, and one that hardly exonerated the vampire scum who'd been making a business out of trafficking women to the highest bidder.

"Give me a minute to scrub their memories of what they've been through and get them safely out of here," Brock said. "I'll be right behind you."

here," Brock said. "I'll be right behind you."

Kade gave him a tight nod and a flash of fang. "Meanwhile, I'm going to head upstairs and have a little private chat with Homeboy."

With aggression burning like acid in his veins, Kade crept up the steps to the noise-filled main floor of the building, bypassing the orgy taking place under a cloud of narcotic smoke, trippy industrial music, and flashing strobe lights.

In a back office down the hall, he heard the thin rasp of the scumbag he was looking for.

"Fetch me the female who just came in with those Ivy League losers--no, not the blonde, the other one. If she's a true redhead, she's worth twice as much to me."