“Anything on the Hollow,” Nicholas said, Web pages opening and closing every two seconds. “Rumors on location, any off-the-radar vamp sites that might have some clue as to where to begin to look for the Order’s headquarters.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s because the Order would imprison or obliterate anyone who revealed their supersecret hiding place.” Lucian grinned with menace. “Pussies.”
Alexander released a weighty breath and backed away from the computer. “This will be resolved. I’ll leave at first dark.”
“Leave for where exactly?” Lucian asked. “Unless a map shows up on the wall in the next few seconds, I’d say we’re pretty much fucked.”
Alexander shook his head. “The one thing I know is the Order wants me to go before them. As is their way, they will make me search like a rat in a maze first, humble me to show me just who is in control, and when that is complete, they will make themselves possible to find.”
“And if they don’t?” Lucian asked.
“If it becomes necessary, I’ll contact the family.”
Nicholas’s head shot up, his normally sedate black eyes burning with sudden passion. “Family? As in your family?”
Alexander shrugged. “We have limited time. Theydon’s uncle used to be a member of the Order. It’s possible that he may know where this place is.”
“You’re just going to walk back into the credenti,” Nicholas continued, “find your mother’s mate, the paven who once wished for your death above all things, and ask him for directions?”
Alexander went cold, his tone like ice. “If I have to.”
Lucian cursed.
“You’re not going,” Nicholas said with a dead calm, rising from his chair.
“Try and stop me.”
“Oh, you know I will,” Lucian said, his features and massive frame tightening into pure aggressor mode. “That cage of yours is looking pretty damn perfect right about now.”
Alexander lifted his shoulders, looked from one brother to the other. “Either way I’m caged,” he said. “But the two of you are free, and I am going to make sure you remain that way.”
“I’m not afraid of morpho,” Lucian said fiercely.
Alexander stared him down. “You should be. You of all of us should be.”
The heat, the anger, the need that boiled in Lucian’s gaze said it all. He was the most like their father, the only albino Breeding Male. If any one of them carried the gene and would become a rutting, uncontrollable animal when he morphed, it would be Lucian.
Alexander walked back to the wall, his gaze moving over each letter, each cluster of words, the uncloaked command. “If this is not stopped, the two of you will be next, tracked by the Order for the rest of your days. The hunger—though it will ease somewhat—will become your number-one need, soon to be replaced by either the inescapable hunt for your true mate or the unstoppable desire to breed.” He paused. Breathing in, breathing out. “I’m in morpho. It’s done. But they will not turn the two of you.”
“We took an oath,” Nicholas reminded him, his tone devoid of emotion. “We left that life and everything in it. We cannot go back. For any reason.”
“You’re right,” Alexander said, watching as letter by letter the message scrawled into his library wall evaporated. “You will not go back.”
When the wall sat smooth before him, Alexander turned around and addressed Nicholas and Lucian in a way he hadn’t since their days on the battlefield. “While I am gone, Nicholas is on Tom’s trail. Lucian, you will find Sara, follow her, make sure she comes to no harm. Don’t let her see you, and don’t scare the shit out of her.”
Both brothers stood there: Lucian’s nostrils flaring with impatience, Nicholas’s expression impassive, though his eyes had gone as black as a starless night. For one moment, Alexander wondered if they were going to defy his orders. It was one thing to curse and chide, even to make brash statements of noncompliance, but the truth was in their guts, in their genetic makeup: They were the younger vampires. They could do nothing when given an order by their elder but nod and take action.
“Well?” Alexander said. “What say you?”
Lucian spoke first, his upper lip curling with bitterness. “Fine. I’ll follow her, but I can’t promise I won’t scare the shit out of her.”
Alexander’s gaze shot to the dark one, the black-eyed, cool-as-ice male. “And you?”
Nicholas shook his head. No.
For one moment, Alexander softened. “Nicky . . . Duro ...”
“Do not do this for us,” Nicholas said.
“It is done.” His jaw set, his mind resolute, Alexander headed for the door.
9
Euro-trance club music vibrated off the walls of the three-story town house in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill. It was what they liked—the humans—hot music and lethal sex with someone or some thing they never had to see again when the danger buzz wore off.
Ethan Dare walked the halls of the home his eighth wife had owned before her very fortunate passing three years ago. Internally renovated and historic, the late-1800s town house had all the original features, including a garden. But for the Impure, the only feature that mattered to him in the slightest was the eight large bedrooms he and his recruits used to fuck any and all humans as well as Pureblood and Impures who willingly crossed their path.
The scent of sex and sweat flooded Ethan’s nostrils, made his head, and the stiff rod in his pants, pulse. A new and exciting development, for it had been a long time since his cock had done anything but lay limp against his leg. More than two hundred years since the night the Eternal Order had blood castrated him—him and any other Impure they could find.
But things had changed. The Supreme One, the hidden benefactor of their cause, had given his blood—granting Ethan and his recruits new life, new power.
Ethan stopped at one bedroom door, then another, observing his work in progress. His recruits, male and female Impures—those like himself with incomplete blood—were stretched out on beds, pressed back against walls, on their hands and knees rutting like dogs. His cock twitched and his forked tongue, a disfigurement gifted by a gang of Purebloods back when he was just a balas enslaved in his credenti, slipped in and out of his mouth.
The Impures, the ones who had escaped their homes and their lives of servitude and impossible desire, had given their allegiance to him, and their trust. After all, he was a savior of sorts. He had been the one to find a cure for their castrated and powerless blood.
Yes, the Impures would spread their seed and their legs for Ethan and the good of the cause because they too yearned for the extinction of the illustrious and oh so pure Eternal Breed—they too wanted to see a new Order, a new, ruling Breed of Impures like themselves.
It wasn’t a quick or easy task. In the seven months of the program, only a few of the balas created had stuck to their hosts’ wombs—Ethan’s included. But if they could hang on, in two months’ time the seeds of infection would bloom in the heart of vampire society and the Impure revolution would be under way.
Ethan leaned against the door frame and watched his largest male recruit pound into the excited and willing human female. Eyes closed and legs splayed, the woman moaned and hissed, gripping the male’s shoulders. Ethan’s groin throbbed with need, with the power of what he was creating here.
“Commander?”
The soft sound landed close to Ethan’s ear and he turned away from the action to eyeball the male behind him. Alistair, a handsome Impure who had the look of an eighties surfer and a penchant for high school-age human females, inclined his head. “Forgive the disturbance, Commander.”
“Is my girl locked up nice and tight?” Ethan asked.