Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

Based on how fast he bolted out of the room, she didn't expect she would ever have those answers. And really, she shouldn't feel so empty at the thought.

What she needed to do was get herself out of this place - wherever she was - and get back to her own life. Back to being there for her mom, who was probably going crazy with worry now that Dylan had been out of touch for three full days.

The next three incoming calls had been from the runaway shelter, all received yesterday and last night. There were no messages, but the close timing of them seemed to indicate some urgency.

Dylan hit the speed-dial button for her mom's house and waited as the phone rang unanswered on the other end. No answer on her mom's cell phone either. With her heart in her throat, Dylan brought up the number for the shelter. Janet picked up her mom's extension.

"Good morning. Sharon Alexander's office."

"Janet, hi. It's Dylan."

"Oh...hi, honey. How are you doing?" The question sounded oddly careful, as if Janet already knew - or thought she knew - that Dylan was probably not having a good day. "Are you at the hospital?"

"The what - no." Dylan's stomach sank. "What's going on? Is it Mom? What's wrong?"

"Oh, Lord," Janet breathed softly. "You mean, you don't know? I thought Nancy was going to call you...Where are you, Dylan - are you back home yet?"

"No," she said, hardly aware she was talking for the cold ache opening up her chest. "No, I'm, ah...I'm still out of town. Where's my mom, Janet? Is she okay? What's happened to her?"

"She'd been feeling a little run-down after the river cruise the other night, but yesterday afternoon she collapsed here at the shelter. Dylan, honey, she's not doing well right now. We took her to the hospital and they admitted her."

"Oh, God." Dylan's whole body felt numbed out, frozen in place. "Is it a relapse?"

"They think so, yes." Janet's voice was the quietest it had ever been. "I'm so sorry, honey."

Lucan hadn't been happy to be roused out of bed with Gabrielle in the middle of the day, but as soon as he heard the reason for the interruption, the Order's leader was all business, instantly snapped to attention. He'd thrown on a pair of dark jeans and an unbuttoned silk oxford, and came out to the corridor where Rio, Nikolai, and Chase waited.

"We're going to need Gideon to run some record checks," Lucan said, flipping out his cell phone and speed-dialing the warrior's quarters. He murmured a greeting and an abrupt apology for the intrusion, then gave Gideon the same news Rio and the others had just shared with him. As the four of them headed down the hallway toward the tech lab, Gideon's personal command center, Lucan finished up the short conversation and snapped the cell phone shut. "He's on the way. I sure hope like hell you're wrong about this, Rio."

"So do I," he said, no more eager than anyone else to consider the possibility.

It didn't take Gideon more than a couple of minutes to join the impromptu meeting. He came into the lab in gray sweats and a white muscle shirt, sneakers unlaced like he'd just shoved his feet into them and ran. He dropped ass into the wheeled swivel chair at his computer command center and started launching programs from several of the machines.

"Okay, we're sending feelers out to every reporting agency and Darkhaven resident bank, including the International Identification Database," he said, watching the monitors as data slowly began to scroll up on the screens. "Huh. That's odd. You said one of the two dead Gen Ones was out of Seattle?"

Nikolai nodded.

"Well, not according to this. Seattle came back with zip - no recent deaths reported. No record of a Gen One in their population at all, although that alone isn't completely unheard of. The IID's only been around for a few decades, so it's by no means thorough. We have a few of the Breed's eldest members catalogued, but the majority of the twenty or so Gen Ones still breathing tend to be a bit protective of their privacy. Rumor has it that more than a couple of them are bona fide recluses who haven't been near a Darkhaven for a century or more. I guess they feel they've earned some autonomy after about a thousand or more years of living. Ain't that right, Lucan?"

Lucan, himself aged around nine hundred and not in the IID register, only grunted in response, his gray eyes narrowed on the computer monitors. "What about Europe? Anything coming back on the Gen One that Reichen mentioned?"

Gideon banged out a lightning-fast sequence on his keyboard, burrowing into yet another secured software system like it was child's play. "Shit. Nope, nothing showing up there either. I gotta tell you, this level of silence is eerie as hell."

Rio had to agree. "So, if no one's reporting Gen One deaths, there could actually be more than just the two we know of so far."

"That's something we need to find out," Lucan said.

"How many Gen Ones are registered in the IID across all Breed locations, Gideon?"

The warrior ran a quick search. "I've got seven between the States and Europe. I'm sending the report of names and Darkhaven affiliations to the printer now."

When the single-page listing came off the laser, Gideon swiveled around and handed it to Lucan. He looked it over. "Most of these names are familiar to me. I know of a couple more that aren't listed. Tegan can probably come up with a couple more too." He put the list of data down on the meeting table so that Rio and the others could have a look. "Any Gen One names you see missing from that list?"

Rio and Chase shook their heads.

"Sergei Yakut," Niko murmured. "I saw him once in Siberia when I was a kid. He was the first Gen One I ever knew - hell, the only one, until I came to Boston and met Lucan and Tegan. Yakut's name is not on this list."

"You think you could find him if you had to?" Lucan asked. "Assuming he's not already some long years dead, that is."