Defy the Dawn

“Gotta go with blonde,” Rafe said. “Crowe’s definitely got a type, at least when it comes to his ex-wives.”

“Can’t argue that,” Aric replied. “Then again, there’s something to be said for variety, right? Miss Iona Lynch of Finglas, County Dublin, could be a saucy little redhead. Or maybe a smoking hot brunette with a fine ass and legs that go on forever.”

Chuckling, Rafe shook his head. “You describing Crowe’s taste in women, or your own?”

“I apply few conditions to my tastes in women.” Aric’s grin was shameless. “Why put limits on something you enjoy?”

“Spoken like a true manwhore.”

Aric shrugged, unfazed. “You should try it sometime.”

“You mean like the time you talked me into playing wingman for you with those twin strippers down in Southie? I spent half the night with their drunk friend’s tongue in my ear.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“She was hopped up on liquor and narcotics,” Rafe reminded him. “While you went off to have your fun with the twins, I was in a bathroom stall with Speedball Sally, sobering her up and healing her long-term drug addiction.”

Like all of the Breed, Rafe had been born with a unique ability passed down from his Breedmate mother. In his case, he’d inherited Tess’s healing touch. He could mend wounds, repair cellular disease or weakness, and, in one case recently—after a former warrior, Kellan Archer, had been mortally wounded by gunfire—Rafe and Tess together had even managed to reverse death.

“See? That’s your problem, man. That gift of yours is a curse. You’ve got no shortage of female interest wherever we go—hell, even more than I do, and that’s saying something.”

“Jealous?” Rafe quipped.

“Hell, yeah. Women practically drop their panties at your feet, and yet you’ve got a look-but-don’t-touch policy going on.” Aric blew out a short breath. “I swear, you think you’ve got to save everyone. Climb down off the cross once in a while and have some fun.”

Rafe couldn’t deny there was some truth in his best friend’s accusation. All right, a lot of truth. Maybe if he’d been gifted with Aric’s ability to bend shadows, or their team captain Nathan’s talent for sonokinesis, things would be different.

But Rafe felt an obligation with the ability he’d been given.

It wasn’t as if he never got laid. He was male and he also had a warrior’s blood in his Breed veins. He had all the female company he wanted; he just preferred to be selective—with his bed partners and his blood Hosts, both of which he drew exclusively from the human population.

He slanted a flat look at Aric. “You want to keep lecturing me for a while, or are you ready to get to work?”

He turned onto a quiet road leading away from the Finglas city center. Rows of small, nearly identical red-brick duplexes and townhomes lined one side of the lumpy asphalt. On the other side of the darkened residential road, an overgrown spread of grass that might have passed for a park at one time spanned several blocks.

“This is the street Gideon gave us?”

Rafe nodded. “This is it.”

Aric’s brows rose. “Not exactly the kind of posh address I’d expect for one of Crowe’s women. If she was sleeping with him, she should’ve demanded a raise.”

“Maybe it’s modest for a reason. If not for Gideon tracking her down, we probably never would’ve thought to look in a nondescript neighborhood like this for Crowe or anyone he associated with.”

“Hide in plain sight,” Aric said. “Crowe wouldn’t be the first Atlantean to pull that stunt.”

Rafe nodded, checking house numbers as the SUV rolled past one tiny cracker box after another on the narrow residential street. “Guess she’s not hiding in plain sight anymore. Here we are.”

Aric stared out the passenger side window at the tidy little apartment building that sat quiet and dark at the end of a short slab of cracked concrete. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

Rafe peered closer and shook his head. “She’s home. There’s a light on in the back, first floor. Come on. Let’s go say hello to Miss Lynch.”

Killing the headlights and engine, Rafe stepped out of the vehicle. As soon as his boots hit the pavement, his senses went tight with alarm.

“Jesus Christ.”

Aric swung a tense look at him. “You smell it too?”

Rafe nodded, his fangs prickling in his gums.

Blood.

Human blood. A fucking river of it, based on the way the stench was hitting his nose.

They rushed the house on silent feet, Rafe motioning Aric to round the place to the back while he took the front. Aric was gone in an instant, vanishing into the shadows.

Rafe touched the latch on the front door and found it unlocked. No signs of forced entry, but there was no mistaking that something bad had occurred inside. He stepped in, nearly overpowered by the olfactory punch that slammed into him as he entered Iona Lynch’s home.

The place was silent. As soundless as a tomb.

“Hello?” he called into the darkness, unsurprised to receive no reply.

He crept through the small foyer and past a neatly furnished little living room. Despite the stench of bloodshed filling his nose and making his irises burn with amber heat, he didn’t see evidence of a struggle until he stepped toward the galley kitchen in the back of the house.

Then, the impact of what had taken place here—very recently, from the look of it—shook him to the bone. He drew up short, his boots halted in a pool of fresh blood.

Aric had just entered the kitchen from the back door now too, and his low curse echoed Rafe’s thoughts. “Holy hell.”

A young blonde woman lay crumpled and deadly still in the center of the blood-soaked kitchen tiles, a lethal gash at her throat. There was no question she was dead. She’d been cut so savagely, the wound had nearly decapitated her.

“Jesus Christ,” Aric murmured woodenly. “Guess we weren’t the only ones looking for Iona Lynch.”

Rafe clamped his teeth and fangs together on a ripe curse as he strode through the slick lake of spilled blood to reach the woman. He was fucking up a crime scene, but if there was any chance he could revive her, he had to try. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but because Iona Lynch was the Order’s best lead on Crowe and his Opus associates. They couldn’t afford to lose her.