Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [281]
Read on for a preview of
Lara Adrian’s next novel
in her pulse-pounding
Midnight Breed series…
Midnight Awakening
by
Lara Adrian
On Sale
December 2007
Midnight Awakening
On sale December 2007
CHAPTER One
The scent of blood carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was faint, fresh, a coppery tickle in the nostrils of the vampire warrior who leaped soundlessly from the roof of one dusk-shadowed building to another. Snowflakes fell around him like floating white ash, blanketing the city that spread out beneath him some ten stories down.
Tegan crouched at the ledge and surveyed the tangle of bustling streets and alleyways. As one of the Order—a small cadre of Breed vampires engaged in war against their savage brethren, the Rogues—Tegan’s primary nightly objective was dealing death to his enemies. But down to his marrow, he was Breed, and there were none among his kind who could ignore the call of newly spilled human blood.
He curled back his lips and dragged the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingled, an ache blooming where his canines began to stretch into fangs. His vision sharpened beyond its preternatural acuity, pupils narrowing into thin vertical slits in the center of his green eyes. The urge to hunt—to feed—rose up in him swiftly, an automatic response that even he, with his disciplined, iron self-control, was powerless to suppress.
All the worse for him, being of the first generation of vampires spawned on Earth. Gen One appetites—physical, carnal, and otherwise—burned the strongest.
Tegan crept along the edge of the building, then leaped down onto the roof of another, his eyes rooted on the movement of people below, searching for a weak member in the herd. But he didn’t comb the crowds merely for his own needs: find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any Rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.
Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood, not fresh at all, but several minutes old.
Following the metallic odor of it, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long, hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.
“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath.
Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.
Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.
“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides. His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough. Take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying.
But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.
The human in the blood-stained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for the kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one