Another image slammed into his mind. This time it was Vachon supervising the removal of heavy lab equipment into the back of several large freight carriers under the cover of deep night. Crate after crate loaded into the waiting trucks, with Dragos giving his sober approval from where he stood nearby.
Holy hell.
These were Vachon's memories.
Memories carried on his blood.
Hunter could still taste the awful tang of it on his tongue. He felt his talent stir to life inside him, making itself known to him for the very first time. The blood - Breed blood - gave him the power to look inside another's memories.
Jesus Christ.
This was the gift that had eluded him all his life? He felt sick with the knowledge. He wanted to spit the bitter taste of Vachon's blood from his mouth. Instead he latched on to the vampire's shredded throat and drank some more.
Chase punched the number into the city payphone's keypad for the third time. Then, for the third time, he blew out a curse and slammed the receiver back onto its cradle before the line had a chance to ring on the other end.
"Fuck," he muttered, raking his fingers over the top of his head where a migraine had been pounding for most of the night.
He knew the source of the headache. The same piercing pain was boring into his stomach, urging him to forget the phone call he seemed incapable of making and turn his sights toward something more productive.
His body shook with the need to feed. He tried to ignore the cold jangle of his veins, the knocking deep inside him that had his nerves on edge, restless and twitchy. At least his fangs had receded. His gaze wasn't casting amber light on the filth of the dark inner-city corner where he stood, nor reflecting back at him like slitted cat's eyes in the chipped chrome trim of the payphone box.
He wasn't totally lost, at least. Racked with searing, unabating hunger or not, he hadn't fallen to Bloodlust. He wasn't Rogue, not yet.
Still, he was in a bad way and he knew it.
Not so far gone that he wasn't revisiting everything Murdock confessed and chilled with the ramifications of what it could mean to the Order.
He picked up the receiver again and pounded out the number he knew would somehow route him to the secured line Gideon had set up at the compound. He held his breath as the call connected and started to ring. Halfway through the second tone, the line was picked up.
"Yeah."
Chase frowned, caught off guard by the deep voice that didn't carry Gideon's familiar tinge of a British accent. He started to reply, but the word came out all rusty, his throat parched and burning from the thirst he needed to ignore. He swallowed past the sawdust feeling and tried again. "Tegan ... that you?"
"Harvard" came the Gen One warrior's flat reply. It wasn't a greeting. Not even playing at friendly. "What the hell do you want?"
The attitude wasn't undeserved, but it stung nevertheless. Chase drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "Surprised to hear you on dispatch duty, Tegan," he said, hoping to break some of the ice on the other end of the line. "Gideon usually doesn't like anyone playing with his toys down there in the tech lab."
"I'll say it again, Harvard. What do you want?"
So, the ice wasn't going anywhere. He should have figured that, he supposed. After all, he was the one who walked out on the Order. Nothing said they had to take him back or, hell, even acknowledge that he existed. Chase cleared his dry throat. "I need to talk to Lucan. It's important."
Tegan grunted. "Too bad. I'm all you got right now. So, start talking or stop wasting my time."
"I found Murdock," he blurted.
"Where?"
"Doesn't matter now. He's dead." A few yards up the street, a late-night hooker stepped up onto the curb and started rambling toward Chase on spiked red stilettos. Her short winter jacket was unzipped, baring a whole lot of leg and cle**age and too much bare throat for his shaky state of mind. Chase tore his gaze away from the potential meal on heels and dropped his forehead against the cool metal of the payphone box. "Murdock gave me some information that Lucan's going to want to hear. It's not good, Tegan."
The warrior exhaled a ripe curse. "Didn't think it would be. Tell me what you know."
"Dragos is stepping up his game. He's made Minions inside local law enforcement agencies, according to Murdock. Apparently he's also got a hard-on for some local politicians. Murdock mentioned something about that new senator who just got elected."
"Christ," Tegan said. "I don't like the sound of any of this."
"Right," Chase agreed. "But that's not the worst of what I learned. Murdock told me Dragos has his sights set on taking out the Order. He said Dragos talked about using some kind of Trojan horse. I've got a bad feeling it has something to do with the Archers coming into the compound last week."
"You don't say," Tegan remarked, sounding bored now. "News flash for you, Harvard.
After you pulled your disappearing act a few nights ago, the kid coughed up a tracking device. He has no recollection of where it came from or how it got inside him. Since his abductors beat him unconscious soon after they took him, it was probably force-fed to the kid while he was out cold."
"Shit," Chase hissed. "So Murdock was right. And now Dragos knows the location of the compound."
"So it would appear," Tegan replied.
"What's the plan, then? How does Lucan want to handle the situation over there? You can't just sit back and wait for Dragos to make his move ..."
Chase realized there was a lot of silence on the other end of the line. Tegan was listening, but his lack of response seemed too deliberate to be misconstrued. "What we do about it is Order business, my man."