Screams and roars mixed with the staccato crack of gunfire as the battle raged. People streamed out of the bus in hysterics. It was pandemonium, blood-drenched and savage. When the dust finally settled, only four human victims lay dead inside the bus, another two dropped broken and lifeless in the street nearby. The Rogues' losses had been greater: The oozing remains of nearly a score of smoked blood addicts pooled like black oil on the pavement.
No sooner had they contained the situation than Lucan's cell phone hummed with an incoming call. The Order's leader paced away from the bloody fallout to answer. His deep voice was serious, hushed. When he slid the phone back in his coat pocket and turned to look at Chase, his stern, gore-spattered face was grave.
"What's up?" Dante asked from where he stood beside Chase. Archer drew to a pause beside the other warriors then too.
"That was Rowan." Lucan gave a sober shake of his head. "He received a text with intel for Gideon. Apparently we've got the IP address for Dragos's command center."
"Holy shit," Dante breathed. "From whom?"
Lucan's sober gaze swung to Chase and stayed there, making his heart take a swift, cold drop into his gut. "It was from Tavia. She sent it from Dragos's headquarters. He's got Tavia."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE WHITE-BRICK, Queen Anne - style mansion and parklike grounds occupied a large, dedicated section of the circular United States Naval Observatory property in the heart of Washington, D.C.
Tavia knew it on sight, had been inside its thirty-three-room splendor more than once during her employment as Senator Clarence's aide. As the blades of Dragos's Minion-piloted helicopter chopped the night sky above the vice president's residence, she peered out the window to the snowy, tree-filled ground below and felt some of the air leave her lungs on a gasp of heartsick astonishment.
Military and Secret Service vehicles sat vacant at their posts around the property. Dark shapes lay unmoving on the ground, the obvious signs of struggle - of armed conflict and unanimous human losses - grimly evident as the aircraft slowly descended into a clearing several hundred feet from the house.
Dragos's assassins had already been here.
She understood that even before a pair of them came out from the cover of the trees to meet their arriving commander. "Everything is secured," one of the massive Gen Ones in head-to-toe black informed him. "The human awaits you inside."
"Excellent," Dragos replied. With the two Hunters leading the way, Dragos took Tavia by the arm in a none-too-gentle grip as they exited the helicopter. Following close behind was the assassin who'd made the trip with them, watching her every move.
If the scene outside the mansion made her heart catch with sick dread, the reality of what had taken place inside hit her even harder. The vice president sat at gunpoint on the ivory-colored sofa in the tastefully appointed living room. Behind him on the wall, the celadon and cream palette of an oversize abstract painting was sprayed with blood, no doubt belonging to the dead Marine who sprawled on the floor just a few paces away.
"Tell me what you want from me, damn it!" the graying government official shouted to his emotionless captors. "Please, let me at least see my wife and family. Let them go."
"Relax," Dragos replied smoothly, catching the vice president's full attention as he strolled into the room. "Your family is upstairs, unharmed, with some of my men. I have no need of them."
The man's face sagged into a visibly incredulous stare. "Drake Masters? For God's sake ... and Tavia?" He moved as though he meant to stand up, but the assassin standing beside him persuaded him otherwise with a nudge of his semiautomatic pistol. "What is this about, Drake? I demand to know what the hell is going on!"
Dragos chuckled. "You no longer demand anything. And you can call me Dragos. In a few minutes you'll be calling me Master."
"I don't understand," the vice president murmured. "I don't understand anything that's been happening these past couple of days - "
"Don't you?" Dragos mused darkly from beside Tavia. He strode forward, radiating a cold menace. "Don't you finally understand how powerful I am? Now that you've seen what I can do - now that the entire world has seen the magnitude of my wrath - perhaps mankind will finally realize that they control nothing. This world belongs to us now. To me."
Stricken eyes went a bit wider. "What are you saying, that all of this madness is somehow your doing?"
Dragos's reply was a low growl of sound that made Tavia's veins turn to ice. "The Breed has lived in the shadows long enough. I am resetting the order of things. I am putting the Breed on the top of the food chain where we belong. And you are going to help me do that."
Tavia's fists clenched at her sides. Anxiety spiked through her like acid as she felt Dragos's mood go from mildly amused to dangerously determined.
"Tonight, I am seizing my rightful place as master of all mankind and Breed alike," Dragos went on. "For your part, you will make the call to help me begin my ascent to power. You will deliver the president to me right here and now."
A look from Dragos prompted one of the guarding assassins to wrest the human's cell phone from his suit coat pocket. The Gen One held it out to the vice president, who merely stared at it in abject refusal. "You're insane," he said sharply. "You may have found a way past my security outside and killed my staff, but more will come. They're on the way now, I can guarantee that. You've just brought down the entire United States military on your head."
Dragos laughed. The air around him vibrated with ominous cold before his eyes flashed bright amber and his fangs erupted from his gums. "Make. The. Call."
"I can't," the human protested. "I won't do this - "
In the fraction of an instant between those damning words and Dragos's leap forward like a viper ready to strike, Tavia sprang into action. With superspeed motion, she placed herself between Dragos and his intended victim, the vial of Crimson retrieved from its concealment on her person and uncorked in her hands.
She held a bunch of the red powder in her palm - all the weapon she had in that moment. She exhaled the breath that would blow the massive dose into his face, praying it would be enough to disable him, if not kill him in a blast of writhing agony.
But she never got the chance.