"Overall, it looks decent," he murmured, forcing himself to pull away. He replaced the bandages and sat back on the edge of the bed. "The exit wound is still pretty livid."
"Jack says I'm lucky that the bullet went straight through and didn't hit any bones."
Niko grunted. She was lucky to have been blood-bonded to a Gen One male. Sergei Yakut may have been a vicious, good- for-nothing bastard, but the presence of his nearly pure Breed blood in her system should hasten her healing like nothing else. In fact, he was surprised to see her looking so tired. Then again, it had been quite a long night so far by any standards. Based on the dark circles smudged under her eyes, she hadn't slept at all. She hadn't eaten either. A tray of food sat untouched on the metal card table nearby.
He wondered if it was grief over Yakut's death that added to her fatigue. She was clearly concerned for Mira, but by all rights, and as hard as it was for him to accept the idea, she was also a female who'd recently lost her mate. And here she was, nursing a gunshot wound on top of all that simply because she'd decided to seek his help.
"Why don't you rest for a while," Nikolai suggested. "Take the bed. Get some sleep. It's my turn to be on watch."
She didn't argue, much to his surprise. He got up and held the blanket for her as she climbed in and struggled to position herself around her shoulder wound.
"The window," she murmured, pointing at it. "I was going to cover it for you."
"I'll take care of that."
She fell asleep in less than a minute's time. Niko watched her for a moment, and then, when he was certain she wouldn't feel it, he gave in to his urge to touch her. Just a brief caress of her cheek, his fingers trailing into the black silk of her hair. It was wrong to desire her, he knew that.
In his condition, at what was just about the worst of possible circumstances, it was probably stupid as hell for him to crave Renata the way he did - the way he had nearly from the instant he first laid eyes on her.
But in that moment, had she lifted her lids and found him there beside her, nothing would have kept him from pulling her into his arms.
A pair of halogen high-beams pierced the blanket of fog that spilled down onto the valley road from Vermont's densely forested Green Mountains. In the backseat, the chauffeured vehicle's passenger stared impatiently at the dark landscape, his Breed eyes throwing off amber reflections in the opaque glass. He was pissed off, and after speaking with Edgar Fabien, his contact in Montreal, he had ample reason to be upset. The only glimmer of promise had been the fact that amid all the recent f**kups and disasters narrowly averted, somehow, Sergei Yakut was dead and, in the process, Fabien had managed to net a member of the Order.
Unfortunately, that small victory had been short-lived. Just a few hours ago, Fabien had sheepishly reported that the Breed warrior had escaped the containment facility and was currently at large with the female who'd apparently aided him. If Fabien's hands weren't already full with the other important business he'd been assigned, the Montreal Darkhaven leader might be getting an unexpected visit tonight as well. He could deal with Fabien later.
Annoyed by this mandatory detour through cow country, what infuriated him the most by far was the recent malfunction of his best, most effective instrument.
Failure simply could not be tolerated. One mistake was one too many, and, like a watchdog that suddenly turns on its owner, there was only one viable solution for the problem awaiting him up this particular stretch of rural backcountry road: termination. The vehicle slowed and made a right off the asphalt, onto a bumpy dirt one-laner. A rambling Colonial-era stone fence and half a dozen tall oaks and maples lined the drive that led up to an old white farmhouse with a wide, wraparound porch. The car came to a stop in front of a big red barn around the back of the house. The driver - a Minion - got out, walked around to the rear passenger door, and opened it for his vampire Master.
"Sire," the human mind slave said with a deferential bow of his head.
The Breed male inside the car climbed out, sniffing derisively at the taint of livestock in the so-called fresh night air. His senses were no less offended as he turned his head toward the house and saw the dim light of a table lamp glowing in one of the rooms, the inane yammering of a television game show drifting out of the open windows.
"Wait here," he instructed his driver. "This won't take long."
Stones crunching under his polished leather loafers, he walked over the gravel to the covered porch steps leading to the farmhouse's back door. It was locked, for all that it mattered. He willed the bolt open and strode inside the blue -and-white gingham-trimmed eyesore of a kitchen. As the door creaked closed behind him, a middle-aged human male holding a shotgun came in from the hallway.
"Master," he gasped, setting the rifle down on the countertop. "Forgive me. I wasn't aware that you, ah...that you w-were coming." The Minion stammered, anxious, and evidently wise enough to know that this was no social call. "H-how may I serve you?"
"Where is the Hunter?"
"The cellar, sire."
"Take me to him."
"Of course." The Minion scrambled past and opened the back door, holding it wide. When his master had exited, he dashed around to lead the way to the coffinlike entrance of the cellar along the side of the house. "I don't know what could have gone wrong with him, Master. He's never failed to carry out an assignment before."
True enough, although that only made the current failure of such a perfect specimen all the more inexcusable. "I'm not interested in the past."
"No, no. Of course not, sire. My apologies."