"Now that you are one of the Order's warriors," Max said, his eyes lighting with eager conspiracy, his deep, slightly accented voice edged with unhidden admiration, "I am proud of you, nephew. Proud of the work you are doing. There is honor in it, just as there has always been honor in you." Kade wanted to dismiss the praise as unneeded, but hearing it--particularly from Max, who, although he was a couple centuries older than Kade, had always felt like a brother to him--felt too damn good to pretend it didn't matter.
"Thanks, Max. It means a lot, coming from you."
"No need to thank me. I speak the truth." He stared at Kade for a long moment, then leaned forward, his elbows planted on his spread knees. "You've been gone a year. You must be doing important things for Lucan and his Order."
Kade grinned, seeing Max's angle from a mile away. Like him, Max craved adventure. Unlike him, Max had committed himself to serving as second banana to Kade's father, the leader of the Fairbanks Darkhaven. Max's loyalty had shackled him to this ten-thousand-acre prison, and although he would never shirk his duty or his promise to his rigid, uncompromising brother, Max appreciated the concept of risk and reward, courage and honor, every bit as much as Kade did.
Because of that, and because Kade knew Max's loyalty extended to him, as well, he knew that trusting him with a few details of his experiences with the Order and their current mission would not be misplaced.
"I heard there was some upheaval in the Enforcement Agency out East some months back," Max said, watching Kade eagerly, waiting for him to elaborate.
"There was," he admitted, recalling one of the first missions he'd been involved with, and the beginning of the trouble the Order now had with the madman called Dragos. "Our intel uncovered a highranking director of the Agency who wasn't what he seemed. This guy had been operating under an assumed name and seeding a secret rebellion for decades--longer, in fact. We're still trying to figure out just how far the corruption goes, but it hasn't been easy. Every time we get close to the bastard, he goes deeper to ground."
"So, you pursue him harder," Max said, talking like any one of the warriors back in Boston. "You keep hitting him, keep pounding him from all angles, until he's too exhausted from running that he has no choice but to stand and fight. And then you destroy him, once and for all." Kade nodded grimly, hearing the wisdom in Max's advice and wishing their pursuit of Dragos was as simple, as clean, as that.
What Max didn't know--what neither he nor anyone else could be permitted to know--was that Dragos was only the tip of a very treacherous iceberg. Dragos had a secret weapon, one he'd been holding for centuries. Around the same time that Kade had joined the Order, they had discovered the existence of a creature long thought to be dead. An Ancient. One of the bloodthirsty otherworlders who'd fathered the entire Breed race on Earth millennia ago.
Dragos was that creature's grandson, and he'd been breeding his army of ruthless, unstoppable vampire assassins off him for longer than anyone wanted to contemplate.
If that news were to get out to the Breed communities in the United States and abroad, it would incite widespread panic.
If it were to leak to the human populations that not only did vampires walk among them, but one megalomaniac intended to put himself in power and enslave them all?
Armageddon.
Kade had to mentally shake himself out of that nightmare scenario. "While the rest of the Order is doing just what you said, I drew the short straw to come up to Alaska. I've been looking into an attack on some humans in the bush--a whole family settlement, wiped out in one night." Max frowned. "Rogues?"
"That's our guess." And Kade's hope, although each minute of this assignment led him farther and farther away from that as a viable outcome. "You haven't heard of any trouble in the Darkhavens, have you?
Anyone rumored to be edging toward Bloodlust?"
Max gave a slow shake of his head. "Nothing like that. There was an incident at the Darkhaven in Anchorage about nine months ago. Some idiot kid nearly bled out a human at a party, but that was the only problem in the region lately."
The news didn't make Kade feel any better, certainly. Because if there were no Rogues on the loose, then that left only one reasonable place to lay the blame.
"I wonder if Seth has heard anything," he murmured, trying to keep the dread and fury out of his voice. "Sure would hate to miss seeing him while I'm here."
"He would hate to miss you, as well," Max said, and Kade could see that he meant it sincerely. He didn't know about Seth. Like everyone else, he had no clue.
Only Kade knew.
And the burden of that knowledge was sitting heavier in his gut all the time. Max sat back in his chair and softly cleared his throat. "There's something I want to tell you, Kade. Something you need to understand ... about your family, and about your father."
"Go on," Kade said, not entirely sure he wanted to hear how much his father adored Seth and wished Kade had been more like him.
"My brother, your father, does not find it easy to show his affection. Especially with you."
"Funny, I hadn't noticed." Kade grinned with humor he didn't feel.
"Our family has a dark secret," Max said, and Kade felt his body go a little numb. "Kir and I had a younger brother. You never knew that, I'm sure. Not many do. His name was Grigori. Kir loved him very much. We all did. Grigori was a clever, charming boy. But he was also a bit wild. Even at his young age, he rebelled against authority and walked the razor's edge of every situation without any fear." Kade found himself smiling, thinking that he might have liked Grigori, too.
"Despite his faults, Kir doted on the boy. But some years later, when it was learned that Grigori had gone Rogue, that in his Bloodlust he had killed, Kir wrote him off completely. Just like that," Max said, giving a sharp snap of his fingers. "We never saw Grigori again. Kir never so much as spoke of him after we heard the news about Grigori turning Rogue, nor has he since. From that time forward, Kir was a changed man."
Kade listened, reluctant to admit the pang of sympathy he had for his father and the loss he suffered.
"Perhaps your father worries that he could not shoulder that kind of pain again," Max suggested.
"Perhaps it's just that he sees a bit too much of Grigori in you sometimes." And he'd apparently decided to write Kade off early, while pinning all of his fatherly hopes on Seth.