Ah, Christ.
Meanwhile, Dragos was almost out of sight with the senator and the vice president. Chase flashed across the distance to the Secret Service man positioned on the gallery balcony. In less than a second, he'd knocked him out cold and grabbed the pistol from his side holster. Chase fired a single shot into the air. Plaster dust rained down as the bullet sank into the vaulted ceiling. In the ballroom below, chaos erupted.
People screamed and scattered, everyone running for cover.
Everyone except Ms. Fairchild. She stood stock-still in the center of all that madness, looking right at him, her eyes locked on to him like bright green lasers. Chase quickly turned his attention on Dragos. He met the furious glower with equal hatred and fired the agent's pistol before Dragos had a chance to dodge out of the way. The shot hit him dead-on, knocking the vampire off his feet.
Gunfire returned on Chase, exploding around him from every direction. On the ballroom floor below, Dragos went down bleeding. Dead or dying, Chase hoped to hell, but he couldn't be sure.
He ran to the nearest window, then dived through it in a soaring leap. As he sailed into the darkness outside, he felt a shredding blast of pain tear into his thigh and shoulder. He shook it off, dropping down to the snow-covered lawn below.
He heard the pound of footsteps rumbling through the house and over the grounds of the estate. The jangle of weapons, all of them ready to blow the dangerous intruder to kingdom come. Chase vaulted to his feet and took off running.
* * *
Dragos fumed where he lay, bleeding from his gut on Senator Bobby Clarence's ballroom floor. Moments after the gunshot wound that had knocked him flat, screams and chaos still filled the air of the estate. Terrified human party guests scattered like little birds while Secret Service agents swooped en masse to whisk the senator and the vice president out of the room to safety. Damn the Order.
How had they found him? How could they possibly have known to look for him here, of all places?
Dragos held his hands to his stomach as the hysteria continued to swell around him. Although his wound was bad, he had no doubt that he'd survive. The bullet had passed through his body. Already the bleeding was lessening, his Breed genetics well on the way to repairing the damage to his skin and organs.
A pair of black suits and several police officers pushed through the fleeing crowd to reach him. One of the government men spoke low and urgently into the comm device hooked around his ear. The other knelt down beside Dragos, joined by a couple of anxious-looking uniformed cops.
Dragos attempted to sit up, but the Secret Service agent stuck out his splayed palm to discourage him. "Sir, just try to remain calm now, all right? Everything's under control here. We've got help coming for you in just a few minutes."
He didn't wait for compliance. Confident he'd be obeyed, he went back to join his companion, leaving the two local cops to sit on watch. A few straggling party guests shuffled past, hands pressed to their mouths as they glimpsed the spilled blood on their rush to get out of the ballroom.>"What?" Corinne stared at him as if he'd just punched her in the stomach. Although she was clearly taken aback, there was an edge of grim understanding in her soft, level voice. "Tell me what's going on, Hunter. Did Mira see something since we've been gone from the compound?"
"No. It was months ago," he admitted. "Long before I met you."
When he glanced at her now, she looked ill to him. A paleness came over her face in the dim light of the truck's dashboard. The accusation in her eyes sliced at him like a blade. "What are you saying? What do you know about Nathan? Do you know whether or not we'll find him?
Did Mira predict how this will end tonight?"
Hunter's answering silence seemed more than she could bear. "Stop this vehicle," she demanded. "Stop it right now."
He eased off the northbound, three-lane highway, gravel crunching under the tires as he slowed on the shoulder of the straightaway. He put the truck into park and turned to face Corinne beside him. She wouldn't look at him. He didn't need to see her eyes to know that they would be filled with hurt - with disbelief and confusion.
"You've had knowledge of my son all this time - even before you took me home to Detroit?"
"I didn't know the vision concerned your child, Corinne. When I first saw the premonition in Mira's eyes, I didn't even know who you were. None of it had any meaning to me at the time."
Corinne stared at him now, her eyes bleak. "What exactly did you see, Hunter?"
"You," he said. "I saw you, weeping, pleading with me to spare a life that meant everything to you. You begged me to stay my hand."
She swallowed hard, her throat clicking softly as the buzz of speeding vehicles rushed past on the road beside them. "And what did you do ... in this vision?"
The words came slowly, bitterly. As awful on his tongue as their truth would feel in his hands. "I did what had to be done. You had asked the impossible."
She sucked in a sharp breath and scrambled for the door handle. Hunter could have stopped her. He could have frozen the locks with a thought and kept her trapped inside with him. But her sorrow raked him. He leapt out after her, right behind her as she staggered out onto the moonlit, grassy shoulder.
"Corinne, please try to understand."
She was furious and wounded, shaking all over. "You lied to me!" The roar of the passing traffic grew as she railed at him, her talent gathering the sound waves and stirring them like a tempest. "You knew this ... all this time we've spent together, and you withheld this from me?
How could you?"
"I didn't know who you were trying to protect. I didn't know when the prophesied events were supposed to occur. It could have been years in the future. It could have meant anything. Before I said anything to you, I needed to understand what I saw."