He struck her, reaching across the desk to cuff her with a closed hand, hard across the face.

She dropped to the floor from the force of the blow. He came around and glared down at her, seething with anger now, his fangs filling his mouth. She didn't cower. Lifting her head, she stared him narrowly in the eyes, not even flinching at the sight of his transformed irises, which bathed her face in an amber glow. Her tongue went to the corner of her mouth, testing the small gash that bled a scarlet trickle onto her chin.

"Do you have any idea what was done to her all these years?" she challenged him sourly.

"She was raped, Victor. Beaten and tortured. Experimented upon like some kind of animal. She had a baby in that prison. That's right, Corinne has a son of her own. They took him away from her. She actually thought you might help her find him, bring him back to her. All she wanted was for us to be a family again, including her and her child."

Bishop listened, but he remained unmoved. Not even Regina's tears, now streaming down her cheeks, had any effect. He was in too deep and for much too long. Rather than wasting time feeling pity or remorse for things he couldn't change, he was already calculating ways to twist this situation so that he might curry the favor of Gerard Starkn - or Dragos, whatever the powerful male had taken to calling himself now.

Offering neither a word nor a hand, he watched Regina come up to her feet. She despised him; he could feel it seething in her blood.

"I want you to leave, Victor. Tonight, I want you gone from this Darkhaven."

It was such a ridiculous demand, he laughed out loud. "You expect me to walk away from my own home?"

"That's right," she replied, steady as he'd ever seen her. "Because if you don't, I will expose your corruption to the entire Breed nation. You, Gerard Starkn, Henry Vachon ... all of you."

Defiant, she turned on her heel and headed for the open doorway of the study. He didn't let her reach it.

In a second - less than that - he flashed from where he'd been standing in the center of the room to directly in front of her, blocking her path into the foyer beyond. He grabbed her fiercely by the upper arms, then spoke through gritted teeth. "You will do no such thing. You, my dear, will mind your fucking tongue. You will mind your mate, if you know what's good for you."

Her eyes went a bit wider, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed. Before she spoke, he had mistaken it for fear. "Or what?" she asked, much too bold for his liking. "What will you do, Victor, kill me?"

Although it was rare enough to be virtually unheard of, particularly in these modern, civilized times, he wouldn't be the first Breed male to lose control of the more savage side of his nature and kill his mate.

As he looked at Regina, he realized how much easier it would be for him without her now. His sins would die with her. And if Corinne, wherever she ended up, should ever think to stand in his way, it would be nothing at all to pluck her from this world like a burr trapped under his saddle. She was nothing to him now, even less than she had been the night Gerard Starkn had stolen her away.

Bishop's grip on his Breedmate tightened, almost of its own accord. She frowned, pain pinching her pretty face. "You're hurting me," she complained, casting a nervous glance over the top of his shoulder as though searching for help.

He was sick with anger now, and cold with the realization that as much as her trust in him had been shattered, so too was his faith in her. "Threatening me was a very stupid thing to do, Regina. I might have been able to excuse your contempt of me, but as you've so helpfully pointed out, you have become a threat to my way of living. You are a risk I cannot afford - "

The sudden click of a gun being chambered took him aback. But no more so than the feel of cold metal coming to rest against his right temple.

"You need to take your hands off her, sir. Now."

Mason.

Without looking, he knew the low, steady voice of one of his longest-serving guards. And he had seen the male in action more than once, enough to understand that he was caught in a very unpleasant predicament. Righteous to a fault, Mason would not back down from a fight unless he was no longer breathing. All the more so when he was coming to the defense of lovely Regina, whom Bishop had long suspected secretly meant more to Mason than simply the lady of the Darkhaven. Mason would protect her to his death, Bishop had no doubt. Which meant he was going to have to bloody his hands with the lives of both of them before this day was out.

No matter, Bishop thought, devoid of mercy.

He was ready to do whatever he must to put his life - his future - on a less complicated course.

"I said let her go." Mason pushed the cold nose of his pistol a bit more insistently against Bishop's temple.

Bishop released Regina from his hold, complying with the tightly issued order, but only long enough to let the guard believe the situation was under control. As soon as he sensed Mason's trigger finger relax, Bishop railed on him with fangs bared. Regina screamed as he knocked the weapon out of the other male's grasp. She took off running from the study as the gun clattered out to the foyer floor. Bishop lunged for his guard. They were an equal match, Bishop having the advantage of his fierce determination, his fury like a madness pounding in his blood and brain. With an unhinged roar, he grabbed Mason by the chest and flung him with all his might against the far wall of the study. He didn't give the guard so much as a second to react. Leaping at him, he crushed the heel of his Italian loafer into Mason's groin. The vampire bellowed in agony, his eyes burning like coals, fangs tearing out of his gums. Bishop chuckled. He couldn't help himself from taking some enjoyment in the pain he was causing the other male. He would kill Mason slowly before strangling Regina with his bare hands.

As the thought danced through his mind, he caught a rush of movement in the foyer. Regina had come back, hadn't gone very far at all. She had Mason's gun in her hands. Bishop swung a hard look on her - just in time to hear the metallic pop of the hammer as she squeezed the trigger. The bullet discharged, sailed toward him on a small cloud of smoke. He jerked out of its path at the very last moment. Behind him, the curtained French door exploded with a crash of breaking glass. Afternoon sunlight poured in through the hole in the thick curtains, bringing with it the chill December breeze.

Bishop snorted, about to ridicule his Breedmate's shaky hands and lousy aim. But then she fired again. She fired at him again and again and again, and this time there was no chance to evade the hail of bullets. She fired until the gun had been emptied into him. He staggered back on his heels, looking down at the field of scarlet that seeped out of his chest. He couldn't stop the bleeding, could only stare in baffled astonishment at the hellish damage. He felt his heart labor to keep its rhythm, each breath a raw scrape of talons in his chest. His legs grew weak beneath him.

And now Mason was on his feet, standing before him, animosity rolling off his big body like a dark thundercloud.

Bishop knew this was his end.

The bullets alone might not kill him, but they had sapped him of much-needed strength. His lungs were punctured, his heart as well. But he clung fast to his fury - the only thing he had left in this, his final moment.

With a roar that seemed to shred him from deep inside, Victor Bishop began to lunge for his Breedmate.

Mason's unyielding hands stopped him. Took hold of him and lifted him off the floor. And then he was flying, pitching backward, into the tall French doors that opened out onto the lawn of his Darkhaven estate. His body crashed through the curtains and glass, coming to rest broken and bleeding on the frozen ground outside.

He stared up into the sky above him, unable to move. Unable to save himself from the excruciatingly slow death that awaited him as he peered up in wonder at the glorious, merciless light of day.

Chapter Thirteen

Dragos snapped his cell phone closed, irritation still rankling him from the news he'd received a few hours ago from his lieutenant in New Orleans.

Henry Vachon, a longtime ally from his time in the Enforcement Agency, was gravely concerned that he was soon to get a visit from one of the members of the Order. Dragos didn't doubt it for a moment. Based on the information Vachon had received from a very anxious Victor Bishop in Detroit, Dragos was guessing that retaliation from the Order would be more a matter of when than if.

To soothe Vachon and ensure that the operation didn't lose yet another asset to Lucan's warriors, Dragos had called in heavy reinforcements and given them orders to kill. As for Victor Bishop, he had served his purpose long ago. Now he was nothing but a liability, no matter how he'd apparently groveled when he'd called to alert Vachon to the trouble. If Bishop was ever fool enough to show his face, Dragos would take great pleasure in tearing it off. His foul mood of the past few hours wasn't helped at all by the hellish jostle of his limousine as his driver barreled along a godforsaken stretch of twilit, rural dirt road in northern Maine.

"Must you hit every goddamn pothole?" he barked at the Minion. He ignored the simpering apology that followed, instead glaring out the window at mile after mile of dark, encroaching forest and frozen marshland. "I've been getting tossed around back here for more than four hours since we arrived on the mainland. How much farther is it?"

"Not far at all, Master. According to the GPS, we're nearly there."

Dragos grunted, his gaze still following the bleakness of the passing landscape. They'd left the last town behind them a hundred miles ago - if the rundown cluster of fifty-year-old mobile homes and junked automobiles could actually be called a town. Human civilization hadn't seemed to stretch this far north, not in any great numbers. Or if it had, it had been beaten back down toward the cities by the rugged land and lack of industry.

Only the most intrepid souls would choose to carve their living out of this backwoods frontier. Or those with damned good reason to live off grid, as far as they could get from the human establishment they so despised.

Men like the ones Dragos was on his way to meet now.

The human government called them terrorists, disgruntled citizens looking to blame their malcontent and personal failures on anyone but themselves. Others would call them sociopathic time bombs just waiting for the next political or financial crisis to justify their violence. To most on either side of the argument, men like these were deemed insane, anomalies within the norm of human society.

Among themselves, no doubt they called one another heroes, patriots. Any one of the three awaiting him would likely go so far as to be a willing martyr, emulating the celebrity handful of their ilk who had staked and spent their lives on the altars of their righteous moral indignation. It was that fervent belief in their personal causes, that dangerous dedication and the eagerness to act on it, that had first brought these men to Dragos's attention.

The fact that the entire group of them had spent time on the U.S. government's watch list over the past decade only made the prospect of recruiting them that much sweeter. From the backseat of the limo, Dragos glanced out the windshield as his driver slowed, then turned onto an even more narrow tract of unpaved road. This was less road than path, a sheet of hard-packed snow and ice that led into a thick stand of forested acreage. The headlight beams bounced as the long sedan rocked and pitched along the trail. Except for the faint track of a pickup truck's chained snow tires - left by his other Minion, the one who'd arranged the meeting for him the day before - it didn't appear that anyone had been back on this chunk of godforsaken land for months.

That Minion, a former Army intelligence officer, was waiting outside a ramshackle barn at the end of the road.

He walked up to the passenger-side door of the limousine as it jounced to a stop.

"Master," he greeted, bowing his head as Dragos climbed out. "They await you inside."

"Tell my driver to kill the engine and the headlights and wait for me here," Dragos murmured. "This shouldn't take long."

"Of course, Master."

Dragos stepped carefully onto the icy path that meandered toward the dim light glowing from inside the old barn. He couldn't help pausing to look at the dilapidated, sagging wooden structure with its rotting boards and aged, wafting livestock stench. Nor could he help the smile that curved his mouth as he thought about the victory that would soon be his. How ironic that within this inauspicious wreck of a building - in the hands of a radical few local losers - lay the perfect means of ensuring the total, irrevocable demise of mighty Lucan Thorne and his damnable Order.

Corinne sat on one of the two double beds in the New Orleans hotel room, clicking from channel to channel on the television remote control. The activity had kept her mind occupied for a little while, kept her from prowling the confines of her small quarters like a caged cat. But the novelty of so much chatter and noise, all the vivid images flashing by onscreen with just a push of a button, had long since worn off.

She glanced at Hunter, who'd seemed to grow more distant, more silently aloof, with every passing minute since the sun had set. He had spoken to Gideon on his cell phone about an hour ago, discussing Hunter's intended plan for locating and infiltrating Henry Vachon's known properties in the area. When he found Vachon, he would remove him to an isolated location and interrogate him for information on Dragos. He only needed to uncover Vachon's current whereabouts and break in without getting caught or killed in the process. It all sounded very bold, extremely dangerous.

She turned off the television, leaving the remote on the bed as she got up to look at the marked-up map that was spread out on the sofa table across the room. Hunter had since discarded the paper map in favor of the electronic one on his cell phone.

She studied the circled areas where the Order believed Vachon's properties were situated. During the flight from Detroit and the time she'd spent sequestered in the hotel room awaiting nightfall with Hunter, Corinne had been puzzling out a way to find Henry Vachon on her own and plead her case to him about getting back her son.