The way his blood was raking him now, cold and acidic, Chase had little doubt that one round would probably be enough to smoke him on the spot. God help him, he was half tempted to test the idea right then and there.
Instead, with a curse, he started to lift his hands in a show of surrender.
He barely twitched before he felt the sudden jolt of lightning entering his skull. Renata. She'd opened up on him before he even knew what hit him. It was brief and only a warning shot; he knew that. Otherwise he wouldn't have wits enough to question it. But holy hell, did it feel like death. Chase let out a strangled roar as the psychic energy ricocheted in his skull and sent him down on one knee.
He didn't see Tavia coming.
None of them could have, she moved so fast and so stealthily. Materializing as though out of nowhere, she leapt over the second-floor rail of the hallway and dropped, catlike, to the tiled foyer below.
One second Chase was stooped brokenly on the floor. The next, he was pushed behind her sleek form, watching through pain-squeezed eyes as she faced off alone against three heavily armed, lethal Breed warriors and a Breedmate who could just as easily turn her staggering power away from Chase and blast it full force onto Tavia.
God, no.
If she took a bullet or a jolt of Renata's fury because of him - "Don't hurt her!" he roared, the words tearing out of his throat, wild and otherworldly. Commanding all his strength to push past the pain of Renata's mental blast, he scrambled to his feet and took his place at Tavia's side. "Don't any of you f**king hurt her!"
But none of them made an untoward move.
They wouldn't have, he realized only then. They hadn't come here to hurt anyone, not even him, except he'd forced their hand. They all stared, Mathias Rowan included, gaping wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Tavia Fairchild in all her transformed magnificence.
Crouched low, her long, jeans-clad legs were bent, bare feet ready to spring. Her loose hair swung around her shoulders like a caramel-colored mane, untamed waves barely concealing the amber blaze of her eyes. She hissed, lips peeled back to expose the twin fangs that gleamed as bright as diamonds and sharp as daggers. Between the deep V of her black sweater, her dermaglyphs were alive with furious color, churning like a tempest written on her smooth, pale skin.
There could be no mistaking what this female was: dangerous, stealthy, utterly lethal Gen One Breed.
And hotter than hell itself.
The three warriors from the Order seemed to shake themselves back to their senses all at once. They spoke in nearly perfect unison, Tegan, Niko, then Hunter, one after the other. "Holy - "
"Fucking - "
"Shit."
Renata was still staring, vaguely shaking her head in disbelief. Her fine jet brows lifted then and a smile began to twist the curve of her broad mouth. The sight of her relaxation - the wry humor in her shrewd gaze - diffused the tension in the room by huge degrees. She glanced from Tavia to Chase, then back again to Tavia in utter amazement. "Now, that's what I call making an entrance."
DRAGOS STROLLED into the video conference with his lieutenants more than forty-five minutes late.
His lack of punctuality accomplished a couple of things: First, it never hurt to remind his underlings that they served at his whim and convenience; more important was the fact that his tardiness gave each of the four remaining members of his original circle ample time to reflect on their slightest missteps and fret over whether one of their heads had landed on his chopping block.
That particular concern carried even more weight, considering the fact that each of his lieutenants on-screen was attended by one of Dragos's personally selected Hunters. If the lieutenants gave him reason to doubt, it would take less than a second for any one of the Gen One killers standing at their sides to dispatch the problem permanently.
But no one's head was in jeopardy here tonight.
Dragos's rage was centered wholly on the Order. It was because of them that he'd met one setback after another. Because of them that his operation was splintered and limping now, all his good work and promising experiments halted or destroyed. Because of them that he'd been forced to accelerate his plans where humankind was concerned.
Instead of waiting until he had all of his Minion players in position around the world - an objective that would only get more difficult with Lucan and his warriors breathing down his neck, driving him to ground at every opportunity - Dragos had decided the time for waiting was over.
He took his seat at the head of his long conference table, facing the wall of monitors mounted in front of him. Four screens showed the faces of his lieutenants: Arno Pike of the Enforcement Agency in Boston; Ruarke Louvell, longtime Agency director from Seattle; reporting in from Europe was Moric Kaszab of the Agency in Budapest; and, last, Nigel Traherne, a well- connected, well-heeled Darkhaven leader from London and the only one of Dragos's surviving circle not intimately associated with the Enforcement Agency.
There had been three others in this cadre at one time, ultimately unworthy males who'd met their ends in various violent ways. Dragos had personally seen to that. The names - Fabian, Roth, and Vachon - hardly registered to him now. They were dust under his boot heels, insignificant.
Gone and forgotten.
What the eight of them had shared in common, Dragos and his inner circle of seven loyal foot soldiers, was their second-generation bloodlines and, more crucially, the unshakable belief that it was the Breed - not humankind - that deserved to rule this orbiting clump of rock. For many long decades, they'd worked together, plotting and conspiring, secretly fueling the operation's vision with materiel, personnel and funding, intel and support. Everything Dragos asked for, including their unwavering allegiance.