Darker After Midnight (Midnight Breed 10)

"Son of a bitch." Rowan was inside the server room now. He had his weapon raised, aimed at the back of the human's head. "Get up before I decorate this room with your gray matter." The man came up slowly, hands raised in surrender. Rowan wasn't surprised at all to find himself staring into the dull gaze of a Minion.

Behind Dragos's mind slave, the countdown clock on the bomb's detonator was speeding in fractions of seconds. Not even ten minutes to go.

"Shut it off," Rowan snarled. He put the gun right up in the Minion's face, already feeling the points of his fangs emerging with his anger. "Do it now, asshole."

The Minion just stared, unblinking. Unmoving. Unfazed. "Pull the trigger now or watch this place erupt around us in less than nine minutes. It makes no difference to me, vampire. Either way, my Master's orders are fulfilled."

Rowan's lips peeled back from his fangs on a growl. He wanted nothing more than to waste this soulless bastard and wipe the smug look from his face with a whole lot of gunpowder and lead.

He wanted it so fiercely, he didn't hear the other Minion creep up behind him until it was too late to fend off the coming blow. Something hard and cold smashed across the side of his head. Stunned, he felt his legs go out from under him.

Dropped on all fours, he turned his head and saw the length of steel pipe swinging down at him again, a direct hit aimed at the center of his face.

MOTHER OF GOD, Chase thought as he stared at the massive Gen One male in front of them. "Back the way we came," he ordered Tavia. "Find Rowan. Get out of here."

But before she took the first step, even as he told her to go, he knew it was too late for any of them to run and hope to get away. Too late to open fire on the Hunter, a highly specialized weapon, born and bred in Dragos's labs for a single purpose: to kill.

The assassin saw the gun in Chase's hand and sent it flying from his grasp with the power of his mind. It hurtled into a framed watercolor on the near wall, pistol and painting crashing to the reception area floor.

Not good.

Chase glanced past the bulk of the assassin in front of him, gauging the odds of getting Tavia out through the shattered window, their only viable exit. They'd never make it. And behind them in the clinic was nothing but silence. For all he knew, Mathias could already be dead, whether from more Hunters like this one or some other threat, Chase could only guess.

He knew one thing for certain: There would be no mercy here, only unfailing execution of Dragos's orders.

The assassin's dark gaze skimmed past Chase to settle and lock on Tavia. There was pure menace in those unfeeling eyes, clear and cold, unswerving. A sniper's sights trained on its target. Chase understood the message at once. It was Tavia this Hunter had come for; Chase was merely standing in the way.

The assassin took a bold step forward, broken glass crunching under his black combat boots. "Release the female."

Chase snorted at the command. "Like hell I will." He tightened his hold on Tavia's wrist, feeling her tendons go taut against his fingers as he wheeled her behind him. No way would this laboratory-raised killing machine get anywhere near her so long as Chase was breathing. He felt the feral stirrings of Bloodlust coming to life inside him, and instead of fighting the savage part of him, he welcomed it. "You want her," he growled at Dragos's homegrown killer, "then you're gonna have to come through me first."

The assassin didn't so much as blink at the threat. Nor did he reach for his own weapon. No, these killers were trained to disarm and end an opponent even more swiftly using bare hands and brute Gen One strength. Chase had seen more than one of them in action before, knowledge that made his own muscles twitch with instant battle-readiness as the Hunter lowered his chin and strode forward.

The assassin made a grab for Tavia, a long-armed swing that Chase blocked with a downward thrust of his elbow. As the Hunter's reach fell away - a moment's distraction that was all they could hope for - Chase turned a wild look on Tavia behind him.

"Run!" he shouted, his transformed irises gilding her stricken face in a fiery amber glow. "Get out of here, any way you can!"

The words were barely out of his mouth before the assassin's hands took hold of him. Suddenly he was airborne. He smashed into the sliding, opaque windows that separated the waiting room from the receptionist's workspace on the other side of the wall. Beaded safety glass exploded all around him with the impact.

As he dropped to the floor amid the raining debris, he saw the Hunter stalking toward Tavia. The punishing hands came down on her shoulders, yanking her into the killer's grasp.

"No!" Chase's rage poured out of him on a roar. He got to his feet and vaulted through the air in one furious leap.

The assassin staggered as Chase plowed into him. He lost his grasp on Tavia, snarling as she jumped out of his reach. But the Gen One bastard didn't go down. Chase slammed his fist into the side of the male's jaw, a repeated assault that cracked bone and teeth, yet hardly registered in the cold nonreaction of Dragos's trained Hunter.

And damn it, Tavia wasn't running as he'd ordered her. She had precious little chance of getting away as it was, and every second mattered. If this fight ended him here and now, she was finished too.

He started to bark another command at her to get the hell out of there, but her raised voice interrupted the thought.

"Chase, watch out!"

Her warning drew his attention to the assassin's free hand, which was coming up with a nasty-looking blade. He dodged the swift slice of the weapon, but the defensive move cost him. Still clinging to the Hunter, still landing blow after blow as the Gen One heaved beneath him like a wild horse, Chase didn't have time to react before the blade came at him again. This time it connected - a stunning blast of cold and pain stabbing into the side of his rib cage.

Agony exploded behind his eyelids. His punctured lung wheezed out a sharp gasp, the edges of his vision going gray and murky. The assassin threw him off like the dead weight he'd suddenly become, then pivoted around to finish him off.

"Chase!" Tavia screamed. She started running toward him, even as the Hunter raised his huge dagger over Chase's body, poised for the killing strike.

Ah, fuck.