Bloodlust was just a careless stumble away.
Keeping a lid on his weakness was getting harder all the time.
"Got a present for you," Lucan said, anxious to change the subject. He slapped the two memory sticks down on the Lucite workspace in front of Gideon. "Load them up."
"Really? A gift for me? Darling, you shouldn't have," Gideon said, back to his jovial self. He was already popping one of the portable drives into a USB port of the machine nearest to him. A folder opened onscreen, displaying a long list of file names on the monitor. Gideon turned and shot Lucan a pensive look. "These are image files. Gads, a friggin' lot of them."
Lucan gave a slight nod. He was pacing now, growing edgy and too warm in the bright lights of the room. "I need you to go through each one, compare it against every known Rogue location in the city - past, present, and suspected."
Gideon clicked open a random image and blew out a low whistle. "This is the Rogue lair we took out last month." He opened two more, tiling them on the monitor's display. "And the warehouse we've been watching for a couple of weeks... Jesus, is this other one a shot of the building that fronts the Quincy Darkhaven?"
"There's more."
"Son of a bitch. Most of these images are of vampire locations - both Rogue and Breed." Gideon scrolled through a dozen more photos. "She took all of these?"
"Yeah." Lucan paused to look at the screen. He pointed to a number of files with date stamps from the current week. "Go to this group."
Gideon brought up the photos with a series of fast clicks. "You gotta be kidding me. She's been out to the asylum, too? That place might house hundreds of suckheads."
Lucan's gut clenched at the idea, dread mixing with the acid burn already swimming in the pit of his stomach. His insides were cramping up, gnarled with the need to feed. He mentally forced the hunger down, but his hands were trembling, and a sheen of sweat was breaking out on his brow.
"A Minion found her, chased her off the property," he said, his voice rough gravel in his throat, and not just because his body was under full assault. "She was damned lucky to get away."
"I'll say. How did she find this location? How did she find any of them, for that matter?"
"She says she doesn't know why she's drawn to them. It's a unique instinct of some sort. Part of the same Breedmate ability she has that exempts her from vampire mind control, and lets her see us move where other humans don't."
"Call it what you will, skills like hers could be damned useful to us."
"Forget it. We're not going to involve Gabrielle anymore than she already is. She's not a part of this, and I won't put her in any further danger. She won't be staying here long, anyway."
"You don't think we can protect her?"
"I won't have her sitting on the front lines while there's a war brewing just outside our gates. What kind of life would that be?"
Gideon shrugged. "Seems to be working out all right for Savannah and Eva."
"Yeah, and it's been a fucking laugh riot for Danika lately, too." Lucan shook his head. "I don't want Gabrielle anywhere near this violence. She's going to go to one of the Darkhavens as soon as possible. Someplace far away, remote, where the Rogues won't ever get to her."
And where she would be safe from him, as well. Safe from the beast that was churning inside of him, even now. If Bloodlust finally claimed him - and lately, he felt it was more a question of when than if - he wanted Gabrielle as far away from the fallout as possible.
Gideon was very still as he looked at Lucan. "You care for her."
Lucan glared at him, feeling like he wanted to punch something. Destroy something. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I mean, she's beautiful, and clearly she's as courageous as she is creative, so it's not hard to see why anyone would be attracted to her. But... damn. You really care about her, don't you?" Evidently, the vampire didn't know when to give it a rest. "Never thought I'd see the day that you'd let a female get under your skin like this - "
"Do I look like I want to join the same pathetic hearts-and-flowers club that you and Rio did? Or Conlan, with his fatherless whelp on the way? Trust me, I have no interest in binding myself to this woman or any other one." He ground out a furious curse. "I'm a warrior. My first - my only duty - has always been to the Breed. There's never been room for anything else. As soon as I secure a place for her at one of the Darkhavens, Gabrielle Maxwell is gone. Forgotten. End of story."
Gideon was quiet for a long while, just watching him pace and fume and roar with an uncharacteristic lack of control.
Which only spiked Lucan's temper further into the red.
"You got something else to add, or can we get off this dead topic now?"
The vampire's wise blue eyes held him in a maddeningly level stare. "I'm just wondering who it is you need to convince more. Me or yourself?"
Chapter Twenty-two