But contrary to Chase's assertion, there had been survivors. Two, to be exact. Both of them had been secreted away from the carnage of that night and were now safe in the protective custody of the Order at their private compound.
"I won't disagree that things could have ended better, for both the Agency and the civilians who lost their lives as well. Mistakes, although regrettable, do happen. Unfortunately, we may never be certain where to place the blame for last week's tragedy."
Chase chuckled under his breath. "Don't be so sure. I know you and Freyne went way back. Hell, I know half the men in this club traded favors with him on a regular basis. Freyne was an asshole, but he knew how to recognize opportunity when he saw it. His biggest problem was his mouth. If he was mixed up in something that can be tied back to the kidnapping of Kellan Archer or the attack that left the Archer's Darkhaven in rubble--and just for argument's sake, let's say I'm goddamned sure Freyne was involved--then the odds are good he told someone about it. I'm willing to bet he bragged to at least one loser sitting in this shithole of a club."
257
Murdock's expression had been tightening with every second that Chase spoke, his eyes beginning to transform in fury, dark irises sparking with amber light for every decibel that Chase's voice rose into the crowd.
Now half the room had paused to stare in their direction. Several males got up from their seats, human blood Hosts and half-drugged lap dancers pushed roughly aside as a growing horde of offended agents began to converge on Chase and Hunter.
Chase didn't wait for the mob to attack.
With a raw snarl, he leapt into the knot of vampires, nothing but a flash of swinging fists and gnashing teeth and fangs.
Hunter had no choice but to join the fray. He waded into the violent throng, his sole focus on his partner and the intent to pull him out of this in one piece. He threw off every comer with hardly any effort, disturbed by the feral way Chase was fighting. His face was drawn taut and wild as he landed blow after blow on the crush of bodies pressing in on him from all sides. His fangs were huge, filling his mouth. His eyes burned like coals in his skull.
"Chase!" Hunter shouted, cursing as a fountain of Breed blood shot airborne--his patrol partner's or another male's, he couldn't be sure.
Nor did he have much chance to figure it out.
A blur of movement on the other side of the club caught Hunter's eye.
He swung his gaze toward it and found Murdock staring back at him, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
An unmistakable panic bled into his features as their gazes locked over the brawling crowd. His guilt was obvious now, written in the whitening tension around his mouth and in the beads of perspiration that sprang up on his brow to glisten in the swirling lights of the empty stage.
The agent spoke swiftly into his phone now, his feet carrying him in an anxious rush toward the back of the place.
In the fraction of a second it took for Hunter to toss aside a charging agent, Murdock had vanished from sight.
"Son of a bitch." Hunter vaulted past the fracas, forced to abandon Chase to pursue what he knew to be the very lead they'd been hoping to find tonight.
He broke into a run, relying on his Gen One speed to carry him into the back of the club and through a door that was still ajar, swinging onto the narrow brick corridor where Murdock had fled. There was no sign of him either left or right in the alleyway, but the sharp echo of running footsteps on an adjacent side street carried on the frigid breeze.
Hunter took off after him, rounding the corner just as a big black sedan screeched to a halt at the curb. The back door was thrown open from 258
the inside. Murdock jumped in, slammed it tight behind him as the car's engine roared to life once more.
Hunter was already plowing toward it when the tires smoked on the ice and asphalt, then, with a leap of screaming metal and machinery, the vehicle swung into the street and sped off like a demon into the night.
Hunter wasted not so much as an instant. Leaping for the side of the nearest brick building, he grabbed hold of a rusted fire escape and all but catapulted himself up onto the roof. He ran, combat boots chewing up asphalt tiles as he hoofed it from one rooftop to another, keeping a visual track on the fleeing vehicle dodging late-night traffic on the street below.
When the car gunned it around a corner onto a dark bit of empty straightaway, Hunter launched himself into the air. He came down onto the roof of the sedan with a bone-jarring crash. The pain of impact registered, but for less than a moment. He held on, feeling only calm determination as the driver tried to shake him off with a side-to-side sawing motion of the wheels.
The car jerked and swerved, but Hunter stayed put. Splayed spread-eagle on the roof, the fingers of one hand digging into the top rim of the windshield, he swung his other hand down and freed his 9mm from its holster at the small of his back. The driver tried another round of zigzags on the street, narrowly missing a parked delivery truck in his attempt to shake off his unwanted passenger.
Semiauto gripped in his hand, Hunter heaved himself into a catlike flip off the roof and onto the hood of the speeding sedan. Lying flat, he took aim on the driver, finger coolly poised on the trigger, ready to blow away the bastard behind the wheel so he could get his hands on Murdock and wring the traitorous bastard of all his secrets.
The moment slowed, and there was an instant--just the barest flicker of time--when surprise took him aback.
The driver wore a thick black collar around his neck. His head was shaved bald, most of his scalp covered with a tangled network of
dermaglyphs
.
He was one of Dragos's assassins.
A Hunter, like him.
A Gen One, born and raised to kill, like him.
Hunter's surprise was swiftly eclipsed by duty. He was more than willing to eradicate the male. It had been his pledge to the Order when he joined them--his personal vow to wipe out every last one of Dragos's homegrown killing machines.
Before Dragos had the chance to unleash the full measure of his evil 259
on the world.
The tendons in Hunter's finger contracted in the split-second it took for him to realign the business end of his Beretta with the center of the assassin's forehead. He started to squeeze the trigger, then felt the car clamp up tight beneath him as the driver drove the brake pedal into the floor.
Rubber and metal smoking in protest, the sedan stopped short.
Hunter's body kept moving, sailing through the air and landing several hundred feet ahead on the cold pavement. He rolled out of the tumble and was on his feet like nothing happened, pistol raised and firing round after round into the unmoving car.
He saw Murdock slide out of the backseat and dash for his escape into a shadowed back alley, but there was no time to deal with him before the Gen One was out of the car as well, the barrel of a large-caliber pistol locked and loaded, trained squarely on Hunter. They faced off, the assassin's weapon raised to kill, eyes cold with the same emotionless determination that centered Hunter in his stance on the iced-up patch of asphalt.
Bullets exploded from the two guns at the same time.
Hunter dodged out of harm's way in what felt to him like calculated slow motion. He knew his opponent would have done the same as Hunter's round sped toward him. Another hail of gunfire erupted, a rain of bullets this time as both vampires unloaded their magazines on each other. Neither of them took anything more than a superficial hit.
They were too evenly matched, trained in the same methods. They were both hard to kill, and prepared to take the fight to their final breath.
In a blur of motion and lethal intent, the pair of them ditched their empty firearms and took their battle hand-to-hand.
Hunter deflected the rapid-fire upper torso blows that the assassin led with as he roared up on him. There was a kick that might have connected with his jaw if not for a sharp tilt of his head, then another strike aimed at his groin, but diverted when Hunter grabbed the assassin's boot and twisted him into a midair spin.
The assassin regained his footing with little trouble, coming right back for more. He threw a punch and Hunter grabbed his fist, crushing bones as he tightened his grip then came around to use his body as a lever while he wrenched the outstretched arm backward at the elbow. The joint broke with a sharp crack, yet the assassin merely grunted, the only indication he gave of the certain pain he was feeling. The damaged arm hung useless at his side as he pivoted to throw another punch at Hunter's face. The blow connected, tearing the skin just above his right eye and hitting so hard, Hunter's vision filled with stars. He shook off the momentary daze, just in time to intercept a 260
second assault--fist and foot coming at him in the same instant.
Back and forth it went, both males breathing hard from the exertion, both bleeding from various places where the other had managed to get the upper hand. Neither would ask for mercy, no matter how long or bloody their combat became.
Mercy was a concept foreign to them, the flipside of pity. Two things that had been beaten out of their lexicon from the time they were boys.
The only thing worse than mercy or pity was failure, and as Hunter took hold of his opponent's broken arm and drove the big male down to the ground with his knee planted in the middle of the assassin's spine, he saw the acknowledgment of imminent failure flicker like a dark flame in the Gen One's cold eyes.
He had lost this battle.
He knew it, just as Hunter knew it when a clear shot at the thick black collar around the assassin's neck presented itself to him in that next instant.
Hunter reached out with his free hand to grab one of the discarded pistols from its place on the pavement. He flipped it around in his hand, wielding the metal butt like a hammer, then brought it down on the collar that ringed the assassin's neck.
Again, and harder now, a blow that put a dent in the impenetrable material that housed a diabolical device. A device crafted by Dragos and his laboratory for a single purpose: to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the deadly army he'd bred to serve him.
Hunter heard a small hum as the tampered casing triggered the coming detonation. Dragos's assassin reached up with his good hand--whether to ascertain the threat or to attempt to stop it, Hunter would never be sure.
He rolled away ... just as the ultraviolet rays were released from within the collar.
There was a flash of searing light--there and gone in an instant--as the lethal beam severed the assassin's head in one clean motion.
As the street was plunged back into darkness, Hunter stared at the smoldering corpse of the male who had been like him in so many ways. A brother, though there was no kinship among any of the killers in Dragos's personal army.
He felt no remorse for the dead before him, only a vague sense of satisfaction that there was one less assassin to carry out Dragos's twisted schemes.
He would not rest until there were none.
261
262