Lara Adrian - Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel

Darker After Midnight is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by Lara Adrian, LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.

D ELACORTE P RESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.,
and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Adrian, Lara.
Darker after midnight : a midnight breed novel / Lara Adrian.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52929-9
I. Title.
PS3601.D74D37 2012
813.6dc23 2011036545

www.bantamdell.com

Cover credits:
Jacket design: Jae Song & Scott Biel
Jacket photograph: Christoph Rosenberger/Photographers Choice/Getty Images
Author photograph: Jessica Hills

v3.1

T HE CHARGES ARE SET , Lucan. Detonators are ready whenever you say the word. On your go, it all ends right here.

Lucan Thorne stood silent in the dusk-filled, snow-covered yard of the Boston estate that had long served as a base of operations for himself and his small cadre of brothers in arms. For more than a hundred years, on countless patrols, they rode out from this very spot to guard the night, maintaining a fragile peace between the unwitting humans who owned the daytime hours and the predators who moved among them secretly, sometimes lethally, in the dark.

Lucan and his warriors of the Order dealt in swift, deadly justice and had never known the taste of defeat.

Tonight it was bitter on his tongue.

Dragos will pay for this, he growled around the emerging points of his fangs.

Lucans vision burned amber as he stared across the expansive lawn at the pale limestone facade of the Gothic mansion. A chaos of tire tracks scarred the grounds from the police chase that had crashed the compounds tall iron gates that morning and come to a bullet-riddled halt right at the Orders front door. Blood stained the snow where law enforcement gunfire had mowed down three terrorists whod bombed Bostons United Nations building then fled the scene with a dozen cops and every news station in the area in close pursuit.

All of itfrom the attack on a human government facility, to the media-covered police chase of the suspects onto the compounds secured groundshad been orchestrated by the Orders chief adversary, a power-mad vampire called Dragos.

He wasnt the first of the Breed to dream of a world where humankind lived to serve and served in fear. But where others before him with less commitment had failed, Dragos had demonstrated astonishing patience and initiative. Hed been carefully sowing the seeds of his rebellion for most of his long life, secretly cultivating followers within the Breed and making Minions of any humans he felt could help carry out his twisted goals.

For the past year and a half, since their discovery of Dragoss plans, Lucan and his brethren had kept him on the run. They had succeeded in driving him back, thwarting his every move and disrupting his operation.

Until today.

Today it was the Order pushed back and on the run, and Lucan didnt like it one damn bit.

Whats the ETA at the temporary headquarters?

The question was aimed toward Gideon, one of the two warriors whod remained behind with Lucan to wrap things up in Boston while the rest of the compound went ahead to an emergency safe house in northern Maine. Gideon glanced away from the small handheld computer in his palm and met Lucans gaze over the rims of silvery blue shades. Savannah and the other women have been on the road for nearly five hours, so they should be at the location in about thirty minutes. Niko and the other warriors are just a couple hours behind them.

Lucan gave a nod, grim but relieved that the abrupt relocation had come together as well as it had. There were a few loose ends and details yet to be managed, but so far everyone was safe and the damage Dragos had intended to inflict on the Order had been minimized.

Movement stirred on the other side of Lucan as Tegan, the other warrior whod stayed behind, returned from the latest perimeter check. Any problems?

None. Tegans face showed no emotion, only grim purpose. The two cops in the unmarked stakeout vehicle near the gates are still tranced and sleeping. After the hard memory scrub I gave them earlier today, theres a good chance they wont wake up until next week. And when they do, itll be with one hellacious hangover.

Gideon grunted. Better a mind scrub on a couple of Bostons finest than a very public bloodbath involving half the citys precincts and the feds combined.

Damn straight, Lucan said, recalling the swarm of cops and reporters who had filled the estate grounds that morning. If the situation had escalated and any of those cops or federal agents had decided to come banging on the mansion door Christ, Im sure I dont need to tell either of you how fast or how far things would have gone south.

Tegans eyes were grave in the rising darkness. Guess weve got Chase to thank for that.

Yeah, Lucan replied. Hed lived a long timenine hundred years and then somebut for however long hed walk this Earth, he knew he would never forget the sight of Sterling Chase strolling out of the mansion and squarely into the aim of a lawn full of heavily armed cops and federal agents. He could have died several ways in that moment. If the adrenaline-fueled panic of any one of the armed men assembled in the yard hadnt killed him on the spot, spending longer than half an hour under the full blast of morning sunlight would have.

But Chase apparently hadnt cared about any of that as hed allowed himself to be cuffed and led away by the human authorities. His surrenderhis personal sacrificehad bought the Order precious time. He had diverted attention from the mansion and what it concealed, giving Lucan and the others the chance to secure the subterranean compound and mobilize the evacuation of its residents once the sun set.

After a string of bad calls and personal fuck-ups, most recently a failed strike against Dragos that had inadvertently landed Chases face on the national news, he was the last of the warriors Lucan would have turned to for answers. What he had done today was nothing short of astonishing, if not suicidal.

Then again, Sterling Chase had been on a self-destructive path for some time now. Maybe this was his way of nailing that coffin shut once and for all.

Gideon raked a hand over the top of his spiky blond hair and exhaled a curse. Fucking lunatic. I cant believe he actually did it.

It should have been me. Lucan glanced between Tegan and Gideon, the warrior whod been with him when hed first founded the Order in Europe and the one whod helped him establish the warriors home base in Boston centuries later. Im the Orders leader. If there was a sacrifice to be made to spare everyone else, I should have been the one to step up.

Tegan eyed him grimly. How long do you think Chase would have been able to keep his Bloodlust at bay? Whether hes in human custody or loose on the streets, his thirst owns him. Hes lost and he knows that. He knew it when he walked out that door this morning. He had nothing left to lose.