Veil of Midnight (2 page)

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

He reached for her, an easy, nonthreatening move of his hand. He sensed the jolt of adrenaline that shot into her bloodstream—he could smell the citrusy tang of it in the air, in fact—but he didn’t see the roundhouse kick coming at him until he took the sharp heel of her boot squarely in his chest.

Goddamn.

He rocked back, more surprised than unfooted.

It was all the break she needed. The woman leapt for the door again, this time managing to disappear into the darkened building before Niko could wheel around and stop her. He gave chase, thundering in behind her.

The place was empty, just a lot of naked concrete beneath his feet, bare bricks and exposed rafters all around him. Some fleeting sense of foreboding prickled at the back of his neck as he raced deeper into the darkness, but the bulk of his attention was focused on the female standing in the center of the vacant space. She stared him down as he approached, every muscle in her slim body seeming tensed for attack.

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Nikolai held that sharp stare as he drew up in front of her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know.” She smiled, just a slight curve of her lips. “You won’t get that chance.”

Her voice was velvety smooth, but the glint in her eyes took on a cold edge. Without warning, Niko felt a sudden, shattering tightness in his head. A high-frequency sound cranked up in his ears, louder than he could bear. Then louder still. He felt his legs give out beneath him. He dropped to his knees, his vision swimming while his head felt on the verge of exploding.

Distantly, he registered the sound of booted feet coming toward him—several pairs, belonging to sizable males, vampires all of them. Muted voices buzzed above him as he suffered out the sudden, debilitating assault on his mind.

It was a trap.

The bitch had led him there deliberately, knowing he’d follow her.

“Enough, Renata,” said one of the Breed males who’d entered the room. “You can release him now.”

Some of the pain in Nikolai’s head subsided with the command. He glanced up in time to see the beautiful face of his attacker staring down at him where he lay near her feet.

“Strip him of his weapons,” she said to her companions. “We need to get him out of here before his strength returns.”

Nikolai sputtered a few ripe curses at her, but his voice strangled in his throat, and she was already walking away, the thin spikes of her heels clicking over the field of cold concrete underneath him.

10

Two

Renata couldn’t get out of the warehouse fast enough. Her stomach roiled. A cold sweat popped out along her forehead and down the back of her neck. She craved the fresh night air like her last breath, but she kept her stride even and strong. Her fisted hands held rigidly at her sides were the only outward indicator that she was anything but calm and collected.

It was always like this for her—the aftermath of using her mind’s crippling power.

Outside now, alone in the alley, she gulped in a few quick mouthfuls of air. The rush of oxygen cooled her burning throat, but it was all she could do not to double over from the rising pain that was coursing like a river of fire through her limbs and into the center of her being.

“Damn it,” she muttered into the empty darkness, rocking a bit on her tall heels. Taking a few more deep breaths, she stared at the black pavement under her feet and focused simply on holding herself together.

Behind her came the swift, heavy shuffle of booted feet from out of the warehouse. The sound drew her head up sharply. Forced a look of cool apathy over the hot tightness in her face.

“Careful with him,” she said, glancing at the slack bulk of the big, nearly unconscious male she’d disabled, and who was now being carried like felled game by the four guards working with her. “Where are his weapons?”

“Catch.”

A black leather duffel bag came sailing at her with barely a warning, heaved toward her by Alexei, the appointed leader of tonight’s detail. She didn’t miss the smirk on his lean face as the heavy duffel full of metal crashed into her chest. The impact felt like the pounding of a thousand nails into her sensitive skin and muscles, but she caught the bag and swung the long strap up over her shoulder without so much as a grunt of discomfort.

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But Lex knew. He knew her weakness, and he never let her forget it.

Unlike her, Alexei and her other companions were vampires—

Breed, all of them. As was their captive, Renata had no doubt. She’d sensed as much when she’d first seen him in the club, a suspicion confirmed by the simple fact that she was able to take him down with her mind. Her pyschic ability was formidable, but not without its limitations. It only worked on the Breed; the more simplistic human brain cells were unaffected by the high-frequency blast she was able to mentally project with little more than a moment’s concentration.

She herself was human, if born slightly different from basic
Homo
sapiens
stock. To Lex and his kind, she was known as a Breedmate, one of a small number of human females born with unique extrasensory skills and the even rarer capability to successfully reproduce with those of the Breed. For women like Renata, ingesting Breed blood provided even greater strength. Longevity too. A Breedmate could live for some long centuries with regular feedings from a vampire’s nourishing veins.

Until two years ago, Renata had no idea why she was different from everyone else she knew, or where she might belong. Crossing paths with Sergei Yakut had quickly brought her up to speed. He was the reason that she and Lex and the others were on guard tonight, prowling the city and looking for the individual who’d been asking around for the reclusive Yakut.

The Breed male Renata found at the jazz club had been so careless with his inquiries all night, she had to wonder if he was trying to provoke Sergei Yakut into coming to him. If so, the guy was either an idiot or suicidal, or some combination of both. She’d have her answer to that question soon enough.

Renata took her cell phone out of her pocket, flipped it open, and speed-dialed the first number on file. “Subject retrieved,” she announced when the call connected. She gave their location, then snapped the phone closed and put it away. Glancing over to where Alexei and the other guards had paused with their limp captive, she said, “The car’s on the way. Should be here in about two minutes.”

“Drop this sack of shit,” Lex ordered his men. They all released their grasps on the Breed male, and his body hit the asphalt with a jarring thud. Hands on his hips, fists framing his holstered pistol and a large hunting knife sheathed on his belt, Lex peered down into the unconscious face of

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the vampire at his feet. He pulled in a sharp, disapproving breath, then spat, narrowly missing the blade-sharp cheek below. The foamy white glob of his saliva landed with a wet
splat
on the dark pavement not an inch away from the man’s blond head.

When Alexei glanced up again, there was a hard glint in his dark eyes. “Maybe we should kill him.”

One of the other guards chuckled, but Renata knew that Lex wasn’t joking. “Sergei said to bring him in.”

Alexei scoffed. “And give his enemies another chance to take his head?”

“We don’t know that this man had anything to do with the attack.”

“Can we be certain he didn’t?” Alexei turned to stare unblinkingly at Renata. “From now on, I trust no one. I would think you’d be as unlikely to risk his safety as I am.”

“I follow orders,” she replied. “Sergei said to find whoever was in town asking about him and bring him in for questioning. That’s what I intend to do.”

Lex’s eyes narrowed under the severe brown slashes of his brows.

“Fine,” he said, his voice too calm, too level. “You’re right, Renata. We have our orders. We’ll bring him in, like you say. But what are we going to do while we wait out here for pickup?”

Renata stared at him, wondering where he was heading now. Lex strolled around to the side of the unconscious Breed male and gave an experimental jab of his boot into the unprotected ribs. There was no reaction at all. Only the soft rise and fall of the male’s chest as he breathed.

Alexei peeled his lips back and grinned, jerking his chin toward the other men. “My boots are dirty. Maybe this useless baggage will clean them off while we wait, ah?”

At the encouraging chortles of his companions, Lex lifted one of his feet and let it hover over the unresponsive face of their captive.

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“Lex—” Renata began, knowing he would ignore her if she tried to persuade him to stop. But it was at that precise moment that she noticed something strange about the blond male lying on the ground. His breathing was steady and shallow, his limbs unmoving, but his face…he was holding himself too still, even if he truly was unconscious. He wasn’t.

In a split second of clarity, Renata realized without a shred of doubt that he was very much awake. Very much aware of everything that was happening.

Oh, Christ.

Alexei chuckled now, lowering his leg as he started to bring the thick sole of his boot down onto the man’s face.

“Lex, wait! He’s not—”

Nothing she could have said would have changed the resulting explosion of chaos.

Lex was still in motion as the man brought his hands up and caught him at the ankle. He clamped down and twisted hard, sending Lex flying off him and howling in agony on the ground nearby. Not a second passed before the man rolled up onto his feet, fluid and strong, like nothing Renata had ever seen in a fighter before.

And holy shit—he had Lex’s pistol.

Renata dropped the cumbersome duffel and grappled for her own gun, a .45 concealed in a holster at her back. Her fingers were still sluggish from her earlier mental exertion, and one of the other guards responded before she could free her weapon. He squeezed off a hasty round, missing his target by half a foot.

And faster than any of them could track him, the former captive returned fire, putting a bullet squarely in the front of the guard’s skull. One of Sergei Yakut’s hand-picked, longest-serving bodyguards went down on the pavement in a lifeless heap.

Oh, Jesus,
Renata thought in mounting worry as the situation rapidly headed south. Could Alexei have been right? Was this Breed male the same assassin who had tried to strike here before?

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“Who’s next?” he asked, one foot planted on the center of Lex’s spine while he coolly swung the pistol from the other two guards to Renata. “What, no takers now?”

“Kill this son of a bitch!” Lex roared, writhing like a trapped bug under the heavy heel that held him down. His cheek mashed against the pavement, fangs emerging in his rage, Lex threw a slivered glare at Renata and his men. “Blow his head off, goddamn it!”

Before the command was totally out of Alexei’s mouth, he was yanked up onto his feet. He screamed as his weight shifted to his injured ankle, but it was the sudden presence of his own pistol nuzzled behind his ear that really made his amber eyes go wild with panic. His captor, on the other hand, was as calm and steady as could be.

Oh, sweet Mother Mary.

Just who the hell were they dealing with?

“You heard him,” Lex’s captor said. His voice was low and unrushed, his gaze piercing even in the dark. He stared straight at Renata.

“Bring it on, if any of you are man enough. Then again, if you’d rather not see his brain splattered all over this building wall, then I suggest you drop your weapons. Down on the pavement, nice and easy.”

Beside her in the alley, Renata registered the low grunts and snuffles of transformed Breed males. Individually, any one of the vampires was physically far stronger than she was; as a pair, they might be stronger than Lex’s attacker, although neither of them seemed willing to find out. A soft
clack
of metal sounded as a weapon was placed carefully on the asphalt. That left only one guard on backup with her. A second later, he surrendered his gun too. Both vampires retreated a couple of slow paces, surrendering in wary silence.

And now Renata stood alone against this unexpected threat.

He gave her a half smile in acknowledgment, baring his teeth and the tips of his emerging fangs. He was angry; those lengthening canines were evidence of that. As was the amber light that was beginning to fill his eyes as they too began to transform with his Breed features. His smile broadened, twin dimples appearing beneath his razor-sharp cheekbones.