Deeper Than Midnight

"Do you have other family?" she asked Amelie when the ache in her chest started to be more than she could bear.

The elderly woman beamed. "Oh, my, yes. Two daughters and a son. I've got eight grandbabies too. My kin is all spread out now. The kids, they never did love the swamp the way I do. It's not in their blood, in their bones, the way it is with me and my late husband. They took off to the cities as soon as they were able. Oh, they come to see me every week or so, make sure I'm getting on all right and help take care of things around the house, but it's never enough.

'Specially the older I get. Age makes you want to hold everyone you love close as you can."

Corinne smiled and gave the warm, age-lined hand a gentle squeeze. She was glad for the elderly woman's blindness in that moment, grateful that the tear leaking from the corner of her eye would go undetected. "I don't think you need to be old to feel that way, Amelie."

The kindly woman's face tilted slightly, a thoughtful expression coming over her features.

"Has it been a long time since you've seen yours, child?"

Corinne stilled, suddenly wondering if the cloudy eyes saw more than she assumed. Feeling ridiculous, she lifted her free hand and waved it briefly in front of Amelie's gaze. No reaction whatsoever. Had the old woman somehow peered into her mind? She glanced over her shoulder, making sure Hunter was nowhere that he might overhear. "How could you possibly know - "

"Oh, I'm not psychic, if that's what you think," Amelie said around a soft chuckle.

"Savannah's the only one in our family line with any kind of true gift. According to Mama, the girl was more gypsy than Cajun, but who's to say? Savannah's daddy was little more than a rumor in our family. Mama never seemed eager to speak of him. As for me, I've just midwived enough years to recognize a woman who's given birth. Something changes in a woman after she's brought a life into the world. If you're sensitive to such things, you can feel it - like an intuition, I guess."

Corinne didn't try to deny it. "I haven't seen my son since he was an infant. He was taken away from me soon after he was born. I don't even know where he is."

"Oh, child," Amelie gasped. "I'm so sorry for you. I'm sorry for him too, because I can feel the love you have for him in your heart. You need to find him. You must not give up hope."

"He's all that matters to me," Corinne replied quietly.

But even as she said it, she knew that wasn't entirely true. Someone else was coming to matter to her as well. Someone she wanted to trust with the truth. Someone she felt sick at having pushed away and lied to, when he'd shown her nothing but tenderness. She hated the wall he was erecting between them. She wanted to tear it down before it got any higher, and that meant opening herself up to him completely. She wanted to trust him, and that meant giving him the power to prove her right ... or wrong, if she turned out to be the fool. All she knew was she had to give him that chance.

"Will you excuse me for just a moment, Amelie? I want to see what's keeping Hunter."

At the old woman's nod of agreement, Corinne got up from the table and walked back through the front of the house. Before she even got out to the porch, she saw that Hunter and the purple car were gone.

He had left for his mission without even saying a word.

Murdock came back to consciousness on a choked scream.

Chase watched the vampire flail and struggle on the chain that held him suspended by his ankles from the central beam of an old, empty grain silo somewhere deep in podunk. Blood ran from the hours-old lacerations and contusions that riddled the Agent's naked body. The air inside the silo was bitter cold, added torture for the son of a bitch who'd stubbornly refused to tell Chase what he needed to know.

For most of the daylight hours they'd spent within the rat-infested shelter, Chase had tried beating the intel out of Murdock. When that didn't work, and when Chase's thin patience had started to snap with the setting of the sun outside and the pricking of his thirst, he'd picked up Murdock's own blade and tried slicing the truth from him.

At some point, the vampire had passed out. Chase hadn't noticed until his own hand was bathed in the other male's blood, the big body drooping limply, unresponsive to any amount of inflicted pain.

And so Chase had put down the blade and waited.

He watched Murdock struggle back to alertness, chains jangling in the enclosed shelter. The male coughed and spit blood onto the floor some six feet beneath his head. A large stain already lay on the filthy concrete, the congealing pool of blood and piss soaking into the moldy remnants of long-forgotten livestock feed and scattered, ice-encrusted vermin droppings. The glossy puddle of fresh red cells drew his eye like a beacon, making him yearn to forget this business that needed to get done and instead head out to hunt.

Murdock bucked and thrashed, hissing when his bleary eyes met Chase's unblinking stare from across the floor of the silo. "Bastard!" he roared. "You don't know who you're fucking with!"

Chase wrapped his fist a bit tighter into the end of another long chain - this one slipknotted around Murdock's neck - and gave it a good, hard yank. "Does that mean you're ready to tell me?" He stood up, slowly looping the chain's slack around and around his fist as he approached. When there was only a couple of feet of space remaining, he paused. "What's your connection to Dragos? And fair warning - if you continue to tell me the name means nothing to you, I'm going to pound your fucking face into a mashy pulp until you figure it out."

Murdock let out a growl, his narrowed, blood-crusted eyes flaring with amber rage. "He'll kill me if I talk to you."

Chase shrugged. "And I'm going to kill you if you don't. This here is what you'd call your classic rock and a hard place. Since I'm the one holding the chain and the blade that's going to start cutting you up into bite-size pieces, I suggest you try not to piss me off any more than you already have."

Murdock glared. His jaw was held tight, but there was a note of fear in his coal-bright eyes. "There are others who are closer to Dragos's operation than me. Whatever it is you're looking for, I'm not the one you want to talk to."

"Unfortunately, you're the only one I've got hanging around at the moment. So stop testing my patience and start talking." To drive home his point, Chase wound another bit of chain around his fist.

Christ, he hated being so close to the male. Not only because of the strong urge to smash his brains out for his participation in the blood club, among his other repulsive sins, but also because of all the goddamned blood. Although Breed blood offered no nourishment to their own kind, the sight and scent of so much fresh, spilling hemoglobin made the feral part of Chase coil like a viper in the pit of his stomach.

Murdock would hardly be able to miss the fact that Chase's fangs were filling his mouth. His own gaze mirrored the same amber fire that seared him from between the battered slits of Murdock's eyes, though not from pain or fear or fury, but from the taloned grip of the hunger that had somehow begun to ride him nearly every waking moment.

That savage part of him snarled as he forced himself to get right up in Murdock's face.

"Tell me where to find Dragos."

When the answer didn't come fast enough, Chase hauled his arm back and swung the chain-wrapped hammer of his fist into the side of Murdock's skull. The vampire howled, a tooth shooting out of his mouth in a stream of dark red blood.

Chase's gut clenched, a hideous, wild thrill soaring through his veins as he watched Murdock spew a scarlet river onto the concrete below. A sick, rabid glee urged him to throw another punch, to tear the wailing piece of shit apart like he so richly deserved. It took him aback, how powerful the darkness inside him was becoming. How demanding the savagery, how deep-seated the madness felt now that it had him in its grasp. In truth, it terrified him.

He pushed it down - as far down as he could force it to go - and reached out to grab Murdock by his chin. It was a struggle to find his voice amid the churning roar of the battle taking place inside him. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravel, scraping in the back of his throat. His lips peeled away from his teeth and fangs on a snarl. "Where. Is. Dragos?"

"I don't know," Murdock gasped. Chase raised the ball of chain to strike again. "I don't know! I don't know - I swear to you! All I can tell you is he wants to see the Order destroyed - "

"No shit," Chase interjected tightly. "Now tell me something I don't know, before I end you right here and now."

Murdock sucked in a few quick breaths. "Okay, okay ... he has a plan. He wants to get rid of all of you - the entire Order. He says he has to, if he stands any chance of seeing his grand scheme through to its fruition."

"Grand scheme," Chase repeated, feeling like maybe he was finally getting somewhere.

"What the fuck is Dragos up to?"

"I'm not sure. I'm not part of the inner circle. I reported to a lieutenant of his who came up to Boston from Atlanta. Freyne reported to him too."

"What's this lieutenant's name?" Chase demanded.

"Tell me where I can find him."

"Don't bother," Murdock replied. "No one's heard from him since last week, so odds are he pissed Dragos off and got himself killed. Dragos doesn't give anyone the chance to fuck up twice."

Chase growled a low curse. "Okay, then tell me some more about his inner circle. Who else is in it?"

Murdock shook his head, scattering raindrops of blood onto Chase's boots. "No one knows who's got that kind of access to him. He's very careful like that."

"How does he plan to take out the Order?"

"I don't know. Something big. Something he's been working toward for a while, from what I've heard. He's been trying to find out where the compound is. Before Freyne was killed, he mentioned something about a decoy. Some kind of Trojan horse - "

"Ah, fuck," Chase muttered.

A sick suspicion snaked through him when he considered how Dragos might go about doing something like Murdock just described. Through the haze of his gnawing hunger, he thought about the night of Kellan Archer's rescue. The annihilation of Lazaro Archer's Darkhaven - an attack that had left the Order with little choice but to bring the two surviving members of that family into the compound for protection.

Had the whole thing played out the way Dragos had intended it to? Could the son of a bitch have used the incident to somehow expose the Order's headquarters? And to what end? The possibilities were numerous, every one of them driving into his gut like an iron stake. Chase mentally jerked his focus back to the interrogation. "What else do you know about his plans?"

"That's it. That's all I know."

Chase narrowed a look on the vampire, anger flaring along with suspicion. He shook his head. "I don't believe you. Maybe you need something to help jog your memory."

He smashed his fist into Murdock's head again. A gash ripped open on the vampire's cheek, and Chase could not contain the animal growl that erupted from him at the sight and scent of still more blood.

"Speak, goddamn you," he hissed, the bare thread of his humanity being devoured by the beast that was snapping at its bit. "I won't ask you again."

Murdock seemed convinced now. He coughed, a wet, broken sound. "He's using humans in law enforcement to be his eyes and ears. He's been making Minions, lots of them. I heard he's been talking about a politician recently - that new senator that just got elected."

It had been a long time since Chase gave a shit about human politics, but even he wasn't so far removed that he wasn't aware of the promising young Ivy Leaguer who had come fresh out of Cambridge and seemed destined for a fast rise to the national stage. "What's any of this got to do with him?" Chase demanded.

"You'll have to ask Dragos," Murdock sputtered through a split lip and swelling jaw.

"Whatever his plans are, there's a good chance they involve this Clarence guy in some way."

Chase considered it for a moment, staring at the Agent in contempt. "You sure that's all you can tell me? I'm not going to find out something more interesting if I knock a hole in the other side of your fucked-up skull?"

"I've told you everything now. I don't know anything more, I give you my word."

"Your word," Chase muttered low under his breath. "You expect me to take the word of a pedophile blood clubber who would sell out his own kind to a twisted piece of shit like Dragos?"

Murdock's eyes took on a cautious, worried gleam. His southern drawl seemed thicker for the blood that was leaking from the side of his mouth. "You said you wanted information, and I gave it to you. Fair's fair, Chase. Cut me loose. Let me go."

Chase smiled, genuinely amused. "Let you go? Oh, I don't think so. It ends for you right here. The world will be a hell of a lot better place without the likes of you in it."

Murdock's answering giggle had a maniacal edge to it, as though he understood he had no hope of walking away from the situation and meant to go out swinging. "Oh, that is rich, Sterling Chase. Your self-righteousness knows no bounds, does it? The world will be a better place without me in it. Have you looked in a mirror lately, my boy? I may be all the things you called me, but you're no prize either."

"Shut the fuck up," Chase growled.

"Don't think I didn't notice the fact that your eyes have been throwing off amber like a furnace this whole time. How long has it been since your fangs weren't filling your mouth?"