Kiss of Midnight (Midnight Breed 1)

"A Minion did this?" Lucan asked, figuring it to be a safe presumption.

The Rogues had no qualms about spending human lives like dust in order to carry out their petty turf wars or to settle matters of personal retribution. For a long time, human religious fanatics weren't the only ones to employ the weak of mind as inexpensive, expendable, yet highly effective tools of terror.

But that didn't make the ugly reality of what happened to Conlan any easier to swallow.

"This wasn't a Minion," Niko replied, shaking his head. "This was a Rogue, wired up with enough TATP to take out half a city block by the look and stench of it."

Lucan wasn't the only one in the room to grind out a savage curse at that bit of troubling news.

"So, they're not content sacrificing just Minion pawns anymore?" Rio remarked. "Now the Rogues are moving bigger pieces on the board?"

"They're still pawns," Gideon said.

Lucan glanced to the quick-witted vampire and understood what he was getting at. "The pieces haven't changed. But the rules have. This is a new brand of warfare, not the minor firefighting we've been dealing with in the past. Someone within Rogue ranks is bringing a degree of order to the anarchy. We're coming under siege."

He turned his attention back to Conlan, the first casualty of what he feared was to be a new dark age. In his aged bones, he felt the violence of a long ago past rising up to repeat itself. War was brewing again, and if the Rogues were making moves to organize, to go on the offensive, then the entire vampire nation would find itself on the front lines. The humans, too.

"We can discuss this more at length, but not now. This time is Conlan's. Let us honor him."

"I've said my goodbyes," Tegan murmured. "Conlan knows I respected the hell out of him in life, as I do in death. Nothing's ever gonna change on that score."

A heavy wave of anxiety swept the room as everyone waited for Lucan to react to Tegan's abrupt departure. But Lucan wasn't about to give the vampire the satisfaction of thinking he'd pissed him off, which he had. He waited for the retreat of Tegan's boot falls to fade down the corridor, then he nodded to the others to resume the rite.

One by one, Lucan and each of the four other warriors sank down on their knee to pay further respects. They spoke a single prayer, then rose together, and began to withdraw to await the final ceremony that would put their fallen comrade to rest.

"I will be the one to carry him up," Lucan announced to the departing vampires.

He caught the exchange of looks between them, and knew what it meant. Elders of the vampire race - Gen Ones, especially - were never asked to bear the burden of the dead. That obligation fell to the later generation Breed who were further removed from the Ancients, and who, as such, could better withstand the burning rays of the rising sun for the time required to lay a vampire to proper rest.

For a Gen One like Lucan, the funeral rite would be a torturous eight minutes of exposure.

Lucan stared at the lifeless form on the table, unwilling to look away from the damage Conlan had suffered.

Damage suffered in his place, Lucan thought, sick with the knowledge that it should have been him on patrol with Niko, not Conlan. Had he not sent the Highlander out at the last minute as his own replacement, Lucan might have been lying on that cold metal slab, his limbs and face and torso charred from hellish fire, his gut blasted open with shrapnel.

Lucan's need to see Gabrielle tonight had trumped his duty to the Breed, and now Conlan - his grieving mate, as well - had paid the ultimate price.

"I will take him topside," he repeated sternly. He slid a bleak scowl at Gideon. "Summon me when the preparations are completed."

The vampire inclined his head, granting Lucan more respect than he was due in that moment. "Of course. It won't be long."

Lucan spent the next couple of hours alone in his private quarters, kneeling in the center of the space, head dropped in prayer and somber reflection. Gideon arrived at the door, as promised, nodding to indicate that it was time to remove Conlan from the compound and surrender him to the dead.

"She's pregnant," Gideon said grimly as Lucan rose. "Danika is three months with child. Savannah just told me. Conlan had been trying to work up the courage to tell you that he was leaving the Order once the baby arrived. He and Danika were planning to withdraw to one of the Darkhavens to raise their family."

"Christ," Lucan hissed, feeling even worse for the happy future Conlan and Danika had been robbed of, and for the son who would never know the man of courage and honor who had been his father. "Everything is in preparation for the ritual?"

Gideon inclined his head.

"Then let's do this."

Lucan strode forward. His feet and head were bare, as was the rest of his body beneath a long black robe. Gideon was robed as well, but wearing the formal belted tunic of the Order, as were the other vampires who awaited them in the chamber set aside for all manner of Breed ritual - from marriages and births, to funerals, like this one. The three females of the compound were present as well, Savannah and Eva in ceremonial hooded black gowns, Danika garbed in the same manner, but in deepest scarlet, to signify her sacred blood-bond with the departed.

At the front of the gathering, Conlan's body lay on an ornate altar, cocooned in a thick shroud of snowy silk wrappings.

"We begin," Gideon announced simply.

Lucan's heart was heavy as he listened to the service, to the symbolism of infinity in each of the ceremony's rites.