Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

Gideon met the three returning warriors in the corridor outside the lab, wrinkling his nose at the Rogue stench that Nikolai carried in with him.

"I take it the hunting was decent tonight."

Niko grinned. "It ended on a good note at any rate. Tracked and smoked a suckhead out of the city after he attacked a woman walking her dog in Beacon Hill."

"My man here tracked the Rogue thirty-five miles - on foot," Brock added, giving a roll of his dark brown eyes. "Had the Rover gassed up and waiting on the corner. We could have run the son of a bitch to the ground in three minutes flat, but Jackie Joyner decides to hoof it instead."

Niko chuckled. "Hey, might as well make it interesting. Besides, it was a slow night up until then."

"Been a slow month," Kade replied, his tone not complaining so much as stating fact.

Things around the city had become considerably quieter since last February, when the Order had finally killed the vampire responsible for a rash of violence in and around Boston. Marek was no more, and following his death the warriors had been hunting down and eliminating all those who'd served him. As far as that went, Marek's human Minions were no problem - the blood-depleted mind slaves could not survive without their Master; wherever they were, they simply stopped breathing at the same time he did, and dropped dead of what would appear to be abrupt, yet perfectly natural, causes.

Marek's personal retinue of Rogues, on the other hand, were not as accommodating as their human counterparts. The blood-addicted vampires who'd been recruited, and sometimes forced, under Marek's command as his bodyguards and lieutenants were now left to their own misrule. Without Marek around to keep them in line and provide the victims required to slake their Bloodlust, the Rogue vampires had dispersed into the surrounding human populations to hunt like the insatiable predators they were.

Since the winter, the Order had smoked ten of the suckheads between Boston and Marek's last known headquarters in the Berkshires region two hours to the west. Eleven Rogues, counting the one Niko took out tonight.

And although what Kade had said about the current state of quiet was true, Gideon had lived long enough to know that a calm like the one they knew now wasn't meant to last. It was often just the lull preceding a hellish storm.

Given what the Order had uncovered on that Bohemian mountain last February, there was little question that a storm of epic proportions was on the rise. An ancient evil had been sleeping in the crypt on that mountain - a vampire unlike any in existence today. Now that powerful, alien creature was loose somewhere, and the Order's newest, most critical mission was to find it and destroy it before its terror was unleashed on the world.

That job was going to prove a lot harder if the secret realm of the Breed - and the escalating trouble within it - were suddenly exposed to humankind by way of a curious reporter who'd somehow wandered into the middle of all this.

"Got an interesting call from Prague tonight," Gideon said. "Rio's back on grid."

Nikolai's tawny brows crashed together. "He's not in Spain? When did he get back to Prague?"

"Doesn't sound like he ever left. He ran into some trouble there, in the form of an American reporter. She knows about the cave. She's been inside the Ancient's hibernation chamber. Took a bunch of pictures too, evidently."

"What the fuck? When did all this go down?"

"I don't have all the details yet. Rio's working on getting the situation secured. He and the woman are on their way to Reichen's place in Berlin as we speak. He's going to report in once he arrives so we can determine how to best contain this potential disaster."

"Shit." Brock exhaled, running a hand over his dark brow. "Rio's actually still breathing, eh? Gotta say, I'm surprised. Since he's been AWOL for so long, I kind of expected he wasn't coming back, you know what I'm saying? Edgy guy like that, seemed to me like a prime candidate to off himself."

"Maybe he should have," Kade put in, chuckling. "I mean, hell, we've got Chase and Niko to contend with already. Does the Order really need another raving lunatic in the ranks?"

Nikolai sprang on the other warrior like a viper. There was no warning, no hint that Niko was going to grab Kade's throat in his hand and slam the big male up against the wall of the corridor. He was seething with defensive anger as he held Kade in a near death grip.

"Jesus Christ!" Kade hissed, clearly as shocked as anyone else by the unexpected reaction. "It was just a joke, man!"

Nikolai snarled. "Do you see me laughing? Do I look like I'm fucking laughing?"

Kade's sharp silver eyes narrowed but he didn't say anything else to provoke him.

"I could give a damn what you say about me," Niko growled, "but if you know what's good for you, lay the hell off Rio."

Gideon might have guessed this wasn't about Kade unintentionally insulting Nikolai. It was about Niko's friendship with Rio. The two warriors had been as close as true brothers in the time before the warehouse explosion that left Rio scarred and broken. Afterward, it was Niko who made sure Rio fed, Niko who dragged Rio's ass out of the infirmary to train in the compound's weapons facility as soon as the wounded warrior was able to stand up.

It had been Nikolai who argued the most vehemently every time Rio announced that he was too far gone to be useful and he was pulling out of the Order. In the nearly five months that Rio had been currently off grid, not a week passed that Niko didn't ask if there had been any word from him.

"Niko, damn, buddy," Brock said. "Ease up."

The huge black warrior moved in, looking like he was about to peel him off Kade, but Gideon held him back with a look. Although Nikolai relaxed his grip, his anger was still a palpable force filling the hallway.

"You don't know dick about Rio," he told Kade. "That warrior has more honor than the both of us combined. So this is the last time I want to hear you talking shit about him. Understand?"

Kade nodded tightly. "Yeah. Like I said, it was just a damn joke. I didn't mean any offense."