The growl that came out of her was anguished, pained…alien.
“Brynne, look at me. It’s Zael. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Go. Away.”
If he wasn’t looking at her with his own eyes now, he never would have believed the twisted, gravely rasp belonged to her. She kept her head down, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees. Her feet were bare, the skin on the tops of them covered with dermaglyphs. Deep colors surged and pulsed in furious, changeable hues on the backs of her hands too.
He looked closer, his gaze snagging on something peculiar about her fingers.
Her nails… They were black.
No, not fingernails, he realized now.
Talons.
Sharp as razors, the nails on the tips of her fingers gleamed as black as obsidian.
“Brynne,” he murmured. “Let me see you. Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” Anger lashed out at him with her reply. She gave a brief toss of her head, a moan leaking out of her. “Go away, Zael. Please.”
“No. Not this time. You’re not pushing me away when it’s obvious you’re in trouble and need help—”
“I said go away!”
Finally, her head came up. But it wasn’t Brynne glowering at him now. Zael gaped at the molten amber light that poured out of her eyes. Thin pupils locked on him in rage—in staggering deadly intent. Glyphs surged all over her face now, drawing attention to the sharpened angles of her cheekbones and brow, and the enormous lengths of her fangs.
Not Breed, because not even the eldest Gen One transformed like this in the throes of hunger.
Brynne was something else. Something other.
Something Zael and his people hadn’t seen up close for thousands of years.
The beautiful, tormented face staring back at him now in dangerous fury was the face of an Ancient.
CHAPTER 20
The Rogues were running through Georgetown like a pack of wild dogs.
Faces painted red with human blood, eyes blazing as bright as yellow coals in their feral faces, two more howling males bounded into the empty street where Lucan stood over the body of another he had just stopped a second ago with a titanium bullet to the head.
Like humans hopped up on heavy narcotics and adrenaline, Rogues didn’t go down easy. It took brute strength or a hell of a lot of lead—sometimes a combination of both. Titanium helped. The metal was highly corrosive poison to the diseased blood system of a Rogue, as evidenced by the sizzling mess that was growing near Lucan’s boots. The dead Rogue would be nothing but ash in a few minutes.
Lucan turned to deliver the same end to the pair of newcomers now closing in on him in the middle of the swanky Georgetown shopping district. He took the first one down with a single shot of titanium between the eyes—before realizing it was the last round left in his weapon.
Ah, fuck.
The second Rogue roared as his companion dropped into a puddle of melting flesh and bone. He charged at Lucan, head lowered and jaws snapping. Lucan drew his backup pistol and fired multiple times, but the lead rounds only pissed the Rogue off. The vampire vaulted at Lucan, leaving him no choice but to meet the threat up-close-and-personal.
They crashed together and tumbled onto the pavement.
Lucan scrambled to withdraw the titanium blade from its holster on his weapons belt as the Rogue’s gnashing fangs came at his face and throat in blinding speed. Finally, he worked the knife free.
With the Rogue struggling for any advantage, he left himself open to attack. It was a fatal mistake. Lucan drove the titanium blade into the vampire’s side. The resulting shriek was ear-splitting, purely animal. With the Rogue convulsing from the wound, Lucan shoved the body away from him and got up to his feet.
It wasn’t until he was standing that he heard the sawing breath of another Rogue at his back.
He turned to face it, seeing the Rogue poised to spring at him. But instead of lunging, the vampire abruptly stilled, then dropped to the ground as dead weight.
Dante stood a few feet away, one of his curved titanium daggers planted solidly in the Rogue’s spine.
Lucan gave him a nod. “Thanks.”
The warrior arched a dark brow. “Just like old times, eh?” He strode over and retrieved his weapon, cleaning it on the disintegrating Rogue’s jacket. “If this shit keeps up, Nikolai may have to go back to supplying us with titanium custom rounds from his command center in Montreal.”
Lucan grunted at the reminder of the Siberian-born warrior with a penchant for weapons and explosives. “Things were different for us then. It’s a hell of a lot easier to put a lid on isolated strikes by one or two enemies at a time. Opus is global. And they’re making damned sure we feel the pressure from all sides.”
As if the presence of Rogues in a major metropolitan city in the States wasn’t troubling enough, before the Order had rolled out of headquarters tonight, they had gotten more bad news. Gideon had received word that all three European commanders were reporting a spike in Rogue activity in their regions as well.
“The hits keep coming,” Dante remarked, a grim look in his eyes. “I hate to guess what Opus thinks they can do while they’re keeping us busy playing Whack-a-Mole with Rogues and lone wolf attacks on government and law enforcement organizations.”
Lucan didn’t want to guess either, but they had to if they meant to stay ahead of them enough to take the brotherhood down. “Unless Gideon cracks that encryption on their communications network, we don’t have many cards left to play.”
“We’ve got the Breedmate in custody with Rafe and Aric,” Dante pointed out. “If she can ID the men who killed Iona Lynch, we can start there and follow the trail back to Opus from that end.”
He had a point. But the panicked recollections of a shaken and injured eyewitness were hardly the kind of odds Lucan preferred. Still, Siobhan O’Shea was a better lead than nothing at all. Which is why he’d given instructions
