Darker After Midnight (Midnight Breed 10)

"Got time for a chat, Detective?" Chase was already in the passenger seat of the vehicle by the time the human had opened the driver's door and plopped down behind the wheel.

"Jesus Christ!" He jumped, panic flooding his jowly face. His cop instincts kicked in at the same time, sending his hands scrambling to the service revolver holstered at his hip.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Chase cautioned.

Apparently thinking better of it, the officer lunged for the door handle beside him. As if he stood any chance of escape. He hauled on the lever but it didn't release, even after repeated tries to work the electronic locks with his other hand. "Damn it!"

Chase stared at him, unfazed. "That'll do you no good either."

Nevertheless, Avery went another round on the locks and door handle, unaware that Chase was holding them closed by force of his Breed will. Then the aging cop suddenly got desperate and dropped his elbow on the horn. The cheery Japanese bleat shot loose like a scream before Chase seized the human's arm and wrenched him to full attention. "That was unwise."

"What're you gonna do? Fucking kill me right here in the parking lot?"

"If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be sitting here about to piss yourself, Detective." "Oh, Jesus," Avery moaned. "What the hell is going on? What the hell is wrong with your face?"

In the reflection shining back at him from the glass of the driver's side window, Chase saw the twin coals of his eyes glowing fiery amber in the dark of the vehicle. He looked monstrous, feral. Unhinged. Nothing close to human. He ground his jaws together, feeling the tips of his fangs graze sharply against his tongue.

The glimpse of his reflection sent his mind careening back to another, similar moment from his recent past. Back then, little more than a year ago, Chase had been sitting in a darkened vehicle, eyes glowing and fangs drawn for the kill, as he stared into the terrified face of a human drug peddler who'd sent his nephew Camden into a narcotic-induced, tailspin addiction for blood.

Chase had been so self-righteous then, so certain he could be the one - perhaps the only one - able to save Camden. Instead he'd been the one who destroyed him. His mind echoed with the blast of gunfire that had opened up the boy's chest that night. He could still feel the unforgiving chill of metal in his hand, the reverberation of his biceps in the sudden silence that followed. The stench of spent bullets and spilling blood rank in the air as the raw, grief-stricken scream of a woman he'd once wanted for his own split the night.

And now it was Chase who was the afflicted, the doomed. Not because of a reckless taste of Crimson - the substance that had ruined the lives of young Cam and some of his friends the autumn before last - but because of his own negligence and weakness. The culmination of a lifetime of failings. His selfish, insatiable, damning need to fill a void that gaped deep inside him was finally swallowing him whole.

He felt sick with it as the police detective gaped at his transformed face in abject terror. The human's eyes were wide as saucers, mouth hanging open in mute stupor before a choked groan erupted from his throat. "My God, what are you? What the hell do you want from me?"

Chase blew out a harsh curse. This wasn't how he'd intended it to go down here, letting the human cop see him for what he truly was, but it was too late for that. He'd deal with it after he got the information he sought.

"Where is she?" Chase leaned in close, the beast in him snapping at the scent of raw fear. "I need to find Tavia Fairchild."

Despite the fear and confusion swamping the detective's gaze, a spark of protectiveness flared. "You think I'll tell you that so you can kill her too? Fuck you."

Chase had to respect the man for that. Cop or not, there weren't many of his species who'd show that kind of allegiance to someone they hardly knew. Especially when they were staring into the face of a walking nightmare. In Chase's experience, only Minions could be counted on for that depth of loyalty, and theirs came at the price of their own souls. Detective Avery here was very much alive and very afraid, yet he was glaring back at Chase with what he could only assume was some inviolable sense of honor.

Chase had known that feeling once himself. So long ago he barely recognized it anymore.

Didn't really matter now. The man he truly was was the one sending this decent human being into a cower before him. "I saw you with her this morning," Chase said. "You were with another cop - a uniform. Dark hair, nasty scar running into one of his eyebrows. What's his name? I need to find him too. Start talking, Detective."

"I'm not gonna tell you anything. Least of all where Murphy took her."

Holy hell. So she was still with the Minion. "Where is she, goddamn it?" "Someplace safe." Avery practically spat the words.

Chase bore down on the man. "Safe from what?"

"From you, ya son of a bitch!" The detective started shaking, clutching at the collar of his rumpled white dress shirt and half-unhitched tie. "God almighty ... you can't be real. You can't be human. That's how you survived all those gunshots. That's how you were able to walk out of the infirmary last night ..."

Chase felt the terror rolling off the man as comprehension finally, fully, took root in the human's stricken face. He gaped now, as if he expected to be torn to pieces any second by the beast that Chase was.

This was the reason the Breed had protected the secret of their existence all this time. This bone-deep fear, fueled by myth and grim folklore - not all of it completely untrue - was the reason the Breed could never expect any kind of peaceful cohabitation with man. Humankind's fear of things that went bump in the night was too ingrained. Too dangerous to be trusted. Chase wasn't above using that terror to his advantage now. Nor would he hesitate to hurt this man in order to get the answers he came for. If Avery knew the kind of evil that was keeping company with Tavia Fairchild now, he'd need no coercion.

Then again, if this human or any other understood even half of the threat that Dragos and his followers presented to mankind's way of life, there might be no reasoning with any of them. Still, Chase opted for the unvarnished truth.

In frank, unsparing terms, he told Detective Avery everything.

When he was through, and after the aging officer wearily divulged Tavia Fairchild's location, Chase spared him the burden of carrying his awful knowledge beyond that moment.

He scrubbed the man's memory clean of it all and left him sitting alone, mentally numb but unharmed, in the dark cockpit of his Toyota.

TAVIA LINGERED in the hotel suite shower, unwilling to let go of the decadent, undisturbed solitude. It didn't bother her too much that she wasn't exactly alone. The pair of federal agents and the uniformed officer who'd brought her there that day were down the short hallway, in the living room of the spacious quarters.