Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [629]
“Lucan is one of my brothers-in-arms. He’s also the leader of the Order, so yeah, he’s earned the right to call the shots when it comes to Order business.” Nikolai stood up, crossing his arms over his chest. “Something big is going down, Renata. Yakut’s murder was only a small part of it, and he wasn’t the first. There’ve been several other Gen One assassinations that have taken place in the States and abroad. Someone’s been quietly taking out the oldest, most powerful members of the Breed.”
“What for?” She looked up at him, curious against her will.
“We’re not sure. But we believe it all ties back to one individual, a very dangerous second-generation Breed male named Dragos. The Order flushed him out of hiding a few weeks ago, but he managed to get away from us. Now he’s gone underground again. Son of a bitch has been lying real low. Any lead we can grab to get close to him is critical. He has to be stopped.”
“Sergei Yakut killed dozens of human beings—just for sport,” Renata pointed out. “Why didn’t you and the rest of the Order put a stop to him?”
“Until recently, we didn’t know where to find him, let alone know about his extracurricular activities. Even if we had, he was Gen One, and as much as we hated it, the Order wouldn’t have been able to move on him without a lot of bureaucratic bullshit standing in our way.”
Renata’s thoughts grew dark, spinning back across the time she’d spent under Yakut’s control. “There were times when Sergei drank from me … when he used me for blood, that I saw something monstrous in him. I mean, I know what he was—what all of your kind is—but once in while, I would look in his eyes and I swear there was no humanity in him. All I could see in his gaze was something truly evil.”
“He was Gen One,” Nikolai said as though that should explain it. “Only half of their genes are human. The other half are something… else.”
“Vampire,” she murmured.
“Otherworlder,” Nikolai corrected.
He stared at her as he said it and Renata had the abrupt impulse to laugh. But she couldn’t, not when his expression was so completely serious. “Lex loves to boast that he is grandson to a conquering king from another world. I always assumed he was full of shit. Are you telling me what he said is actually true?”
Nikolai scoffed. “A conqueror, yes, but not a king. The eight Ancients who arrived here thousands of years ago and fathered their young on human women were bloodthirsty savages, rapists… deadly creatures that decimated entire communities. Most of them were wiped out by the Order in the Middle Ages. Lucan led the charge against them after his mother was killed by the creature who fathered him.”
Renata just listened now, too astonished to ask all the questions churning in her head.
“As it turns out,” Nikolai added, “one of the Ancients survived the Order’s war on them. He’d been placed in hiding by one of his sons—a Gen One vampire named Dragos. We have good reason to believe the Ancient is still alive today and that Dragos’s last surviving son, his namesake and the bastard we intend to shut down, is just waiting for his chance to unleash him on the world.”
“Two years ago I was sure that vampires didn’t really exist. Sergei Yakut changed my mind. He proved to me that vampires not only existed, but they were scarier and more dangerous than anything I’d seen in books or movies. Now you’re saying there’s something even worse than him out there?”
“I’m not trying to scare you, Renata. I just think you should have the facts. All of them. I’m trusting you with that.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to understand,” he said, the words too gentle.
As if he were apologizing to her in some way.
Renata lifted her chin, a coldness settling in her chest. “You want me to understand… what? That the life of one missing child means nothing in light of all this?”
He cursed softly under his breath. “No, Renata—”
“It’s okay. I get it now, Nikolai.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, not even when she was still