The realization raked through her as startling as a blade against her skin. He smiled then, beautiful and terrifying, baring the pearly tips of razor-sharp fangs ... "No!" Tavia jolted to full wakefulness at the sight of them, her horrified scream raw in her throat. She sat up, panting and shaken, even while her body still thrummed from release. A knock on her bedroom door had her scrambling to cover herself.
"Tavia, are you all right?" the older woman's voice called through the closed door. "Is anything wrong?"
"I'm fine, Aunt Sarah. Nothing's wrong."
There was a hesitation, but only for a moment. "I heard you cry out in your sleep. Not another night terror, was it?"
No, something even worse, she thought. The night terrors had never started out so pleasantly, only to turn so hideous in the end. "It was nothing, really." She somehow managed to keep the distress from her voice. "I'm okay. Please don't worry. Go back to bed."
"You're sure? Can I get you anything?"
"No, thank you." Tavia closed her eyes in the darkness of her room, trying to forget the disturbing dream that was still ripe in her mind, still alive on her skin and in the pounding rhythm of her pulse. "Good night, Aunt Sarah. See you in the morning."
More silence as her worried aunt and caretaker waited outside her room. Then, finally, "All right. If you say so. Good night, sweetheart."
Tavia sat there for a long moment, listening to the sound of retreating footsteps and the soft creak of her aunt's bedroom door down the hall.
She swung her feet to the floor. Padded across the carpet to the cold tiles of her bathroom. Her face was pale and stricken in the medicine cabinet mirror. She slid the glass panel open and took out one of the monstrous pill bottles - the one Dr. Lewis prescribed to combat the anxiety attacks that had plagued her most of her life.
Tavia shook out one of the big white capsules and tossed it into her mouth, washing it down with a quick swig of water from the bathroom tap. Better make it a double. She'd never had a better reason to take the maximum dose. She swallowed the medicine and another mouthful of water, then headed back to bed.
Twenty minutes and she'd be under a heavy, medicated drowse. She climbed under the covers and waited for the powerful meds to obliterate all thought of the man who'd invaded her dreams like the dangerous criminal he'd proven himself to be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ENFORCEMENT AGENCY hangout in Chinatown looked like the aftermath of a war zone. Mathias Rowan, current director of the region for the Agency, struggled to ignore the dull throb of his emerging fangs as he stepped farther inside the private club to survey the carnage. Blood covered everything, from the floors and walls, seats and tabletops, to the raised platform of the stage - even the damn ceiling was foul with the stuff.
"Hell of an hour to call you down here like this, Director Rowan, but I thought you needed to see for yourself," said the Agent beside him.
It would be dawn soon, no time for any of their kind to be away from their Darkhavens with the sun about to rise. But a thing like this could not wait. A thing like this - such reckless, unspeakably savage anarchy - jeopardized all of their kind.
"I contacted you as soon as my team and I arrived to discover the situation, sir." The Agent's polished shoes crunched in broken glass and scattered debris as he came to a pause beside Rowan in the silent, corpse-littered establishment. "The humans were all dead and the place was already vacated when we got here. By the look and smell of the place, I'm guessing it's been over for several hours now."
Rowan's glance traveled over the evidence of the violence and death that had gone on unchecked in the club earlier that night. That it was perpetrated by members of the Breed was obvious, but never in his hundred-plus years of life had he seen such brutal disregard for human life. The fact that the slayings had almost certainly been carried out by his fellow Enforcement Agents sickened him to his soul.
"And no one has come forward as a witness to what went on here?" he confirmed. "What about Taggart; isn't he usually manning the door most nights? He had to have seen something. Or any one of the other dozen Agents who frequent this place like it's going out of style?" "I don't know, sir."
Furious over all of it, Rowan wheeled on the Agent. "You don't know if they were here tonight, or you don't know if they're responsible for slaughtering these humans in the middle of goddamn Boston?"
"Um, neither, sir." The Agent's face blanched a bit under his superior's glare. "I wasn't sure where to begin with a situation like this. You were the first call I made."
Rowan blew out a frustrated sigh. The Agent was young, new to his post. Freshly promoted from the general ranks, he was afraid to step out of line or make a mistake. And he was devoted to justice, a rarity within the Agency these days, Rowan had to admit. He wondered how long the kid would maintain his sheen.
"It's okay, Ethan." He clapped the youth lightly on the shoulder. "You did the right thing here. Let's call in your team and start cleaning this mess up."
The Agent gave a brisk nod. "Yes, sir."
As he strode out to summon the others, Mathias Rowan took another long look at the bloodshed and death that surrounded him. It was heinous, what happened here. It was inexcusable. And he couldn't help feeling that the carnage bore the stamp of a villain he was coming to know all too well.
Dragos.
During the several months that Rowan had been covertly allying himself with the Order, he'd learned firsthand what Dragos was capable of - from the abduction and abuse of scores of innocent Breedmate females, to the recent attack on a local Darkhaven that took the lives of nearly everyone in that prominent Breed family.
And then there was the breach of the Order's secret headquarters by human law enforcement less than twenty-four hours ago.
More havoc instigated by Dragos.
Now this.