Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [60]
Lucan paused, respectfully bowing his head low to the warrior’s widow as she passed him. Danika was clinging hard to Savannah, the latter’s strong, mocha-skinned arms seeming to be all that prevented Conlan’s tall blond Breedmate from collapsing in despair.
Savannah acknowledged Lucan where her weeping charge was unable. “They’re awaiting you inside,” she told him gently, her deep brown eyes glistening with tears. “They will need your strength and guidance.”
Lucan gave Gideon’s woman a sober nod, then took the few short strides that would bring him into the infirmary.
He entered in silence, unwilling to disturb the solemnity of the fleeting time that he and his brethren would have to spend with Conlan. The warrior had sustained staggeringly severe injuries; even from across the room, Lucan could smell terrible blood loss. His nostrils filled with the foul, mingled odors of gunpowder, electrical heat, twisted metal shrapnel, and melted flesh.
There had been an explosion, with Conlan caught in the center of it.
Conlan’s remains lay on a shroud-draped examination table, his body divested of clothing except for the wide strip of embroidered white silk that covered his groin. In the short while since he’d been returned to the compound, Conlan’s skin had been cleaned and annointed with a fragrant oil, all in preparation for the funeral rites that would take place with the next rising of the sun, not a few hours from now.
Around the table that held the warrior, the others had gathered: Dante, rigid in his stoic observation of death; Rio, head bent down, fingers clutching a string of rosary beads as he moved his lips silently to the words of his mother’s human religion; Gideon, attending cloth in hand, dabbing carefully at one of the many savage lacerations that had torn open nearly every inch of Conlan’s skin; Nikolai, who had been on patrol that night with Conlan, his face paler than Lucan had ever seen it, his wintry eyes stark, his skin marred with soot and cinder and small, bleeding cuts.
Even Tegan was there, paying respects, although the vampire stood just outside the circle of the others, his eyes hooded, sullen in his solitude.
Lucan strode up to the table to take his place among his brethren. He closed his eyes and prayed over Conlan in prolonged silence. Some longtime later, Nikolai broke the quiet of the room.
“He saved my life out there tonight. We’d just smoked a couple of suckheads outside the Green Line station and were heading back when I saw this dude get on the train. I don’t know what made me look at him, but he shot us this big, shit-eating grin, like he was daring us to come after him. He was packing some kind of gunpowder on him. He stank of that and some other shit I didn’t have time to get a read on.”
“TATP,” Lucan said, scenting the acrid stuff on Niko’s clothing even now.
“Turned out the bastard was carrying a belt of wired explosives on him. He jumped off the train just before we started rolling, and took off running down one of the old tracks. We chased him, Conlan cornered him. That’s when we saw the bombs. They were on a sixty-second clock, and it was counting down below ten. I heard Conlan roar at me to get back, and then he launched himself at the guy.”
“Christ,” Dante swore, raking a hand through his black hair.
“A Minion did this?” Lucan asked, figuring it to be a safe presumption.
The Rogues had no qualms about spending human lives like dust in order to carry out their petty turf wars or to settle matters of personal retribution. For a long time, human religious fanatics weren’t the only ones to employ the weak of mind as inexpensive, expendable, yet highly effective tools of terror.
But that didn’t make the ugly reality of what happened to Conlan any easier to swallow.
“This wasn’t a Minion,” Niko replied, shaking his head. “This was a Rogue, wired up with enough TATP to take out half a city block by the look and stench of it.”
Lucan wasn’t the only one in the room to grind out a savage curse at that bit of troubling news.
“So, they’re not content sacrificing just Minion