“Assassins,” he confirmed grimly.
Brynne knew the basics. The same Breed madman who tinkered with DNA to create Tavia and her and a rumored dozen or more Breed females like them had also bred a race of Gen One boys from the Ancient he kept imprisoned in the lab and a cage full of Breedmates abducted from their families and used like chattel for his experiments and twisted pleasures.
Hunters like Nathan had been raised by handlers, as Brynne and her half-sisters had been. But where Brynne and the other Breed females were shackled by lies and abuse and genetic-stunting chemical therapies, the Hunters were kept obedient by the use of even crueler tactics.
Nathan looked at her finally, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that touched her. Not because she pitied him, but because she admired how normal his life seemed now, with Jordana. With the Order. With his mother, Corinne, and Hunter, her Gen One mate who was also a product of Dragos’s madness.
“No one who survived those damned labs did it unscathed,” Nathan said.
Brynne nodded. “I know.”
“Yeah, I know you do. But you look like you need someone to say it out loud for you now.”
She stared at him in the dim light of the dashboard. Although he had no idea how deep her wounds had gone, or how hideous her reality was even years and miles away from the torture of the labs, his compassion moved her.
She swallowed on an arid throat. “Thank you, Nathan.”
He gave a curt nod. “Go do what you have to do and take care of your needs. I’ll wait for you here.”
Certain she misheard him, or at least misunderstood his meaning, Brynne’s breath caught.
Did he know she dreaded walking into that parlor?
Holy shit. Was he giving her permission to go feed on her own terms?
“Nathan, I—”
She didn’t get the chance to say another word.
Without warning, something big fell from the roof of a nearby building and smashed onto a parked car about a block up the street. Metal crunched. Glass exploded. Alarm lights and sirens split the darkness.
People started screaming, pointing up at the roof of the nearby parking deck.
“What the fuck?” Nathan killed the engine. “Stay in the vehicle!”
He leaped out and vanished into the night before Brynne even realized he was moving.
She sucked in a gasp as she peered through the windshield.
Another body pitched to the street, plummeting down like a stuffed dummy freefalling off the parking garage rooftop. Except they weren’t dummies. They were humans—brutalized, broken, their clothing shredded and blood-soaked.
Savaged.
Nausea swamped Brynne as she realized what she was seeing. “Oh, my God.”
Something else descended to the street now. A Breed youth, his chin and the whole front of his body painted red from his crime. The young male dropped into a crouch next to his kill and howled like the animal he had become, his fangs enormous, his face feral with Bloodlust.
Holy shit.The male was Rogue.
And he wasn’t alone. Another descended to the rooftop of a parked van, wearing more evidence of the slaughter.
Brynne instinctively reached for her JUSTIS-issued firearm, but her fingers came away empty. Dammit. She’d lost her service weapon the same day she’d lost her job with the agency.
Panic swept the street as swiftly as a flash fire.
The humans who’d stopped to stare in dazed confusion now bolted blindly away from the scene. One after another, they streamed past Brynne in the SUV, shrieking as they raced for cover.
It was just what the pair of predators wanted.
They vaulted airborne, leaping over Brynne’s vehicle and several others in one fluid bound. The fleeing humans in their sights didn’t stand a chance.
But that didn’t mean Brynne wasn’t going to try to save at least some of them.
She was Breed too—something even deadlier than that, thanks to the genetic cocktail that had spawned her. Whether armed with weapons or her bare hands, she was a nightmare neither of these two fucks would be expecting.
Jumping out of the SUV, she had her fists full of the first Rogue’s shirt in a split second. She took him down to the asphalt. Her knee planted firmly in the center of his spine, the Bloodlusting male went wild, snarling and struggling in an effort to shake her off. Brynne seized the vampire’s skull and gave it a sharp twist, snapping bone and tendons.
She released the dead Rogue, her eyes already piercing the night to track her next target.
There he was. While she’d paused to deal with his companion, the other Rogue had enough time to pluck one of the stragglers from the herd. Snatching a rangy human male under his arm, the vampire dodged into a side alley to enjoy his spoils.
“Shit.”
Brynne was rounding the corner in a heartbeat, but she was already moments too late.
The Rogue had the human down on the pavement, his fangs sunk deep in the front of the man’s throat, greedily taking his fill while his victim convulsed and sputtered wetly under the assault.
Brynne’s bile rose at the sight.
“Get off him.”
Her voice was an airless growl of sound, nothing like she’d heard before. It was her own hunger clawing at her, making her mouth feel desert dry and her vision burn hot with amber light. Twined with her battle rage, she was something beyond formidable now.
The Rogue grunted, swinging his head around to look for the source of the intrusion.
And although his mind was gone, his senses owned by the Bloodlust that made him Rogue, he apparently still had some small spark of sanity—enough to make his own glowing eyes go a bit wider in his skull as he registered what he was up against.
But the madness in him overruled everything else.
Still in his crouch, the Rogue let go of the dying human and swiveled on his bare heels, ready to face off with Brynne to defend his prey.
Brynne braced for the attack she knew was coming. On a roar, the feral vampire flew at her.
Instead of letting his greater weight and unhinged fury catapult her backward, she took hold of him and spun, using his forward momentum to pivot them together in midair. Then she shoved hard, slamming the Rogue into the wall of the brick building at his back.
The wall shook, old mortar crumbling with the impact. The Rogue was dazed from the crushing strike, but he wasn’t down. He came at her again, another ferocious leap and crash that hurtled them both across the narrow alley to the wall on the other side.
She grunted in sharp pain as her back collided into the bricks. The Rogue dropped her, letting her sag to the ground. He rocked back on his heels as if to ready himself for the killing blow. As if he’d won.