Midnight Rising

"Oh, my God." She gaped at them, only half-conscious of the shelter employees going about their business outside, completely unaware of the ghostly gathering. "Are you all here because of my mom?"

The group of them stared at her in eerie silence, their forms rippling like candle flames caught in a stuttering breeze.

Help them, one of the unmoving mouths told her. They need you to help them.

Damn it, she did not have time for this now. She wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with any of this right now.

But something prickled within her, something that told her she had to listen.

She had to do something.

He won't stop hurting them, said another ghostly voice. He won't stop the killing.

Dylan grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen and started writing down what she was hearing. Maybe Rio and the Order could help make sense of it, if she couldn't.

They're underground.

In darkness.

Screaming.

Dying.

Dylan heard the pain and fear in the mingled whispers as the dead Breedmates tried to communicate with her. She felt a kinship to each one of them, and to the ones they said were still alive but in terrible danger.

"Tell me who," she said quietly, hoping she couldn't be heard outside the door. "I can't help you if you don't give me something more than this. Please, hear me. Tell me who's hurting the others like us."

Dragos.

She didn't know which one of them said it, or even if - or how - she might have been heard through the barrier that separated the living from the dead. But the word branded into her mind in an instant.

It was a name.

Dragos.

"Where is he?" Dylan asked, trying for more. "Can you tell me anything else?"

But the group of them were already fading. One by one, they dissipated...vanished into nothingness.

"I almost forgot to give you these, honey." Janet's singsong voice in the doorway startled a gasp out of Dylan. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."

"It's okay." Dylan shook her head, still dazed by the other encounter. "What do you have?"

"A couple of pictures I took from the river cruise Mr. Fasso hosted earlier this week. I think your mom would like to have them." Janet came in and put a couple of color prints on the desk. "Doesn't she look nice in that blue dress? Those girls at the table with her are a few of the ones she was mentoring. Oh - and there's Mr. Fasso way in the back of the room. You can hardly make him out, but that's the side of his face. Isn't he handsome?"

He was, actually. And younger than she imagined him. He had to be about twenty years younger than her mother - in his late forties at most, and probably not even that old.

"Will you take these to your mom for me, honey?"

"Sure." Dylan smiled, hoping she didn't look as rattled as she felt.

It wasn't until Janet had toddled off again that Dylan took a good look at the pictures. A really good look.

"Jesus Christ."

One of the girls seated at the table with her mom on that river cruise a few short days ago was among the group of dead Breedmates she'd just seen in the office.

She grabbed a stack of older photographs from the box she'd packed them into and sifted through the images. Her heart sank. There was another young woman's face that she'd just seen in spectral form a minute ago.

"Oh, God."

Dylan felt sick to her stomach as she bolted out of the office for the ladies room. She dialed the number Rio gave her and barely gave him a chance to say hello before she blurted out everything that had just happened.

"One of them said the name Dragos," she told him in a frantic whisper. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Rio's sudden silence made the ice in her stomach grow even colder. "Yeah. Son of a bitch. I know the name."

"Who is he, Rio?"

"Dragos is the one who created the hibernation chamber in that cave. His son freed the creature that had been sleeping there. He's evil, Dylan. About the worst kind you'd ever want to know."

Chapter Thirty-three

Sharon Alexander was making another pot of tea when a knock sounded on her twelfth-floor apartment door.

"It's open, baby," she called from the kitchen. "What'd you do, forget your key?"

"I never had one."

Sharon jolted at the unexpected boom of a deep male voice. She recognized the dark baritone, but hearing it in her apartment - unannounced, and after dark - was something of a shock.

"Oh. Hello, Gordon." She tugged self-consciously at her cardigan, wishing she'd put on something less lived-in, more appealing to a sophisticated man like Gordon Fasso. "I'm...well, my goodness...this is such an unexpected surprise."

He sent his cool gaze around the small, embarrassingly cluttered apartment. "Did I come at a bad time?"

"No, of course not." She smiled but he didn't return it. "I was just making some tea. Would you like some?"

"No. I can't stomach the stuff, actually." Now he did smile, but the slow spreading grin didn't make her feel any more comfortable. "I stopped by the hospital, but the nurse there told me you were released. I understand your daughter brought you home."

"Yes," Sharon replied, watching as he took a leisurely stroll around her living room. She smoothed her hair, hoping it wasn't a complete disaster. "I really enjoyed the chocolates you gave me. You didn't have to bring me anything, you know."

"Where is she?"

"Hmm?"

"Your daughter," he said tightly. "Where is Dylan?"

For a second, maternal instinct told Sharon to lie and say that Dylan wasn't around and wouldn't be coming back any time soon. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it?

She had no reason to fear Mr. Fasso. Gordon, she reminded herself, trying to see the charming gentleman he'd shown himself to be recently.

"I can smell her, Sharon."

The statement was so odd, it took her aback completely. "You can...what?"

"I know she's been here." He pinned her with an icy glare. "Where is she, and when is she coming back? These aren't difficult questions."

A bone-deep chill settled in her as she looked at this man she truly knew so little about. A word skated through her mind as he moved toward her...evil.

"I told you I wanted to meet the girl," he said, and as he spoke, something very strange was happening to his eyes. The icy color of them was changing, turning fiery with amber light. "I'm tired of waiting, Sharon. I need to see the bitch, and I need to see her now."

Sharon started mouthing a prayer. She backed up as he approached her, but she had few places to go. The walls would hem her in, and the slider in the living room opened onto a short balcony that overlooked a twelve-story drop to the street below. A warm breeze filtered in through the slider screen, and carrying with it the din of the rushing traffic out on busy Queens Boulevard.

"W-what do you want with Dylan?"

He smiled, and Sharon nearly fainted at the sight of his grotesquely long teeth.

No, she thought in near incomprehension. Not teeth at all.

Fangs.

"I need your daughter, Sharon. She's an unusual woman, who can help give birth to the future. My future."

"Oh, my God...you're crazy, aren't you? You're sick." Sharon inched farther away from him, panic hammering in her chest. "What the hell are you, really?"

He chuckled, low and menacing. "I'm your Master, Sharon. You just don't know it yet. Now I'm going to bleed you, and you're going to tell me everything I want to know. You're going to help me find Dylan. I'm going to turn you into my slave, and you're going to deliver your daughter right into my hands. And then I'm going to make her my whore."

He bared those huge, dripping fangs and hissed like a viper about to strike.

Sharon didn't know what possessed her, beyond the consuming terror of what this man - this terrible creature - could do to Dylan. She didn't doubt for a second that he could do precisely what he threatened. And it was that certainty that carried her feet toward the screen door.

Gordon Fasso laughed as she fumbled with the flimsy plastic sliding lock. She threw the screen open.

"What do you think you're going to do, Sharon?"

She backed out onto the balcony but he followed, the broad shoulders of his suitcoat filling the open space of the slider. Sharon felt the rail of the balcony press hard at her spine. Far, far below, horns blasted and engines screamed with the speeding rush of traffic.

"I won't let you use me to get to her," she told him, her breath rasping through her lips.

She didn't look over the edge. She kept her eyes trained on the glowing embers of the monster's gaze in front of her. And took some small measure of satisfaction when he roared and made a hasty grab for her...too late.

Sharon toppled backward over the railing, onto the dark pavement below.

Traffic on the street outside her mother's apartment building was backed up for two blocks. Up ahead in the dark, emergency lights flashed, and police were directing vehicles to an alternate access onto Queens Boulevard. Dylan tried to peer around the minivan in front of her, to what looked like a pretty active crime scene. Yellow tape cordoned off the street below her mom's building.

Dylan tapped the steering wheel, sliding a glance over at the takeout that was getting cold. She was later than she intended. The episode at the runaway shelter had put her back about an hour, and all the phone calls to her mother's apartment had gone to voice mail. She was probably resting, probably wondering what the hell had happened to their little dinner celebration.

She tried the apartment again and got the message service again. "Shit."

A couple of kids swaggered by on the sidewalk, coming from the direction of all the activity. Dylan slid the window down.

"Hey. What's going on up there? Are they going to start letting cars through?"

One of the boys shook his head. "Some old lady took a header off her balcony. Cops are up there trying to clean up the mess."

Dread settled in Dylan's stomach like a stone. "Do you know what building?"

"Nah. One of the high-rises on 108th Street."

Oh, fuck. Oh, holy Christ...

Dylan jumped out of the car without even killing the engine. She had her cell phone in hand, dialing her mother as she headed at a dead run up the sidewalk toward all the commotion near the intersection a couple blocks away. As she got closer, cutting into the gathered crowd, her feet slowed of their own accord.

She knew.

She just...knew.

Her mother was dead.

But then her cell phone went off like a bank alarm. She stared down at the display and saw her mother's cell number on the lighted screen.

"Mom!" she cried as she picked up the call.

There was silence on the other end.

"Mom? Mom, is that you?"

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. She whipped her head around and found herself staring into the cruel eyes of a man she'd seen only recently in a photograph from her mother's office.

Gordon Fasso held her mother's pink cell phone in his other hand. He smiled, baring the tips of his fangs. When he spoke, Dylan heard his deep voice vibrate in her ears and in her palm, as his words carried through the speaker of her mother's phone into her own.

"Hello, Dylan. So good to finally meet you."

Chapter Thirty-four

Somewhere in Connecticut, a couple of hours into the drive from Boston to New York, Rio's chest felt like it had been yanked open by ice-cold hands. He was on speakerphone with the compound, trying to find out if Gideon had been able to uncover any intel about the dead Breedmates Dylan reported seeing at the runaway shelter. The Order had the pictures she'd sent from her cell phone, and Gideon was searching for further missing persons information from the Darkhavens and human populations.

Rio heard the other warrior talking to him now, but the words weren't penetrating his skull.

"Ah, fuck," he groaned, rubbing at the tight blast of cold that seemed to have moved into the region of his heart.

"What's going on?" Gideon asked. "Rio? You still with me?"

"Yeah. But...something's wrong."

Dylan.

Something was very wrong with Dylan. He could sense her fear, and a sorrow so profound it nearly blinded him.

Not a good thing when he was speeding along I-84 at roughly ninety miles an hour.

"I've got a bad feeling, Gideon. I have to get ahold of Dylan right now."

"Sure. Be right here when you're done."

Rio clicked off the call and dialed Dylan. It rang into voice mail. Repeatedly.

That bad feeling was getting worse by the second. She was in real danger - he knew it by the sudden frantic drum of his pulse, his blood bond with her telling him that something terrible was happening to her.

Right now, while she was easily three hours away from him.

"Goddamn it," he growled, stomping on the gas.

He speed-dialed Gideon again.

"Any luck reaching her?"

"No." A deeper chill went through him. "She's in trouble, Gid. She's in pain somewhere. Goddamn it! I should never have let her out of my sight!"

"Okay," Gideon, the calm one, said. "I'm going to run a track on the Volvo's GPS, and I'll run one on her cell phone too. We'll locate her, Rio."

He heard the keyboard clacking on the other end of the line, but the dread in his gut told him that neither device was going to bring him any closer to Dylan. And sure enough, Gideon came back a second later with bad news.