One of the Order's newer members was with Dante too, riding shotgun. Ex - Darkhaven Enforcement Agent Sterling Chase, also garbed in combat gear and loaded for bear, gave Rio a nod of greeting from inside the vehicle. Chase looked as hard-ass as any warrior, his razor-cut golden hair covered in a black skullcap, steel blue eyes hard and steady in his lean face, the shrewd gaze a little emptier than Rio recalled it from a few months ago. Now there was hardly any trace of the uptight, holier-than-thou bureaucrat who'd showed up last summer asking the Order for help and then laying down his own rules of how he expected the warriors to work with him. Dante had not-so-affectionately dubbed the Darkhaven Agent "Harvard," a nickname that stuck even after Chase left his old civilian life and joined up with the Order.
"Jay-zus," Dante said, cracking a broad smile as Rio approached with Dylan lying slack in his arms. "Talk about going off grid, man. Five months is a helluva vacay." The warrior chuckled as he opened the SUV's back door and helped Rio get Dylan and her gear situated inside. When they were settled, Dante shut them in, then hopped back behind the wheel. He pivoted around to face Rio. "At least you came home with a nice souvenir, eh?"
Rio grunted, flicking a glance at Dylan sleeping on the backseat beside him. "She's a reporter. And a Breedmate."
"So I heard. We all did. Gideon told us all about your run-in with Lois Lane back there in Prague," Dante said.
"No worries, man. We're gonna clamp a hard lid on her story and her pictures before any of that shit goes public. As for her, calls have already been made to find her a place in the Darkhavens if that's her choice after all this is over. It's as good as handled."
Rio didn't doubt a word Dante said, but he couldn't help wondering which way Dylan was going to go in the end. If she chose the Darkhavens, it would only be a matter of time before a savvy Breed male convinced her that she needed him and ought to be his mate. God knew she'd have no shortage of candidates. With her unusual beauty, she would be the flame they all converged on, and the thought of her being pursued by a bunch of sophisticated, smooth-talking, mostly useless civilians set Rio's teeth on edge.
Though why he should give a damn what she did or with whom, he didn't know.
He had no claim on her, other than the immediate goal of thwarting the disaster that her presence was stirring up. Or rather, the disaster he'd invited by wallowing in his own misery instead of blowing that damn cave like he'd been entrusted to do. Being back in Boston only made him wish he was back on that mountainside, pressing the detonator and watching as a ton of rock sealed him in for good.
"What were you doing over there all this time?" Chase asked, a casually phrased question that didn't quite mask the male's suspicion. "You told Nikolai that you were going to secure the cave and take off on your own for Spain. The way he told it, you'd up and quit the Order. That was five months ago and no word out of you until now, when you show up bringing bad news and trouble. What the f**k gives?"
"Chill it, man," Dante advised, throwing a dark look across the front seat. To Rio he said, "Feel free to ignore Harvard. He's had a hard-on all night because he didn't get to play with his Beretta."
"No, really," Chase said, not about to give it up. "I'm curious is all. What exactly happened over there with you since February when we left you on that mountainside with a duffel full of C-4? Why'd you wait this long to do the damn job? Why the change of plans?"
"There was no change of plans," Rio replied, meeting the measuring gaze of the warrior in the passenger seat. He couldn't be offended by the challenging tone. Chase had every right to question him - they all had the right - and there wasn't much Rio could say in his defense. He'd let his weakness own him these past several months, and now he had to set that to rights. "I had a mission to carry out, and I failed in it. Simple as that."
"Well, we're not exactly batting a thousand on this end either," Dante put in. "Since we found that hibernation chamber outside Prague, we've been running leads on the possible existence of an Ancient and they've all come up empty. Chase has been doing some covert internal digging with the Darkhavens and the Enforcement Agency, but those sources aren't turning up anything useful either."
In the passenger seat, Chase gave an affirmative nod. "It doesn't seem possible, but if the Ancient is out there, the son of a bitch is deep underground and laying very low."
"What about the Breed family from Germany that was linked to the Ancient back in the Middle Ages?" Rio asked.
"The Odolfs," Dante said, shaking his head. "No survivors that we've found. The few who didn't go Rogue and end up dead from Bloodlust over the years turned up missing or dead of other causes. The entire Odolf line is no more."
"Shit," Rio murmured.
Dante nodded. "That's about all we've got. Just a whole lot of silence and dead ends. We're not about to give up, but right now we're looking for a f**king needle in a haystack."
Rio frowned, considering the difficulties in hiding the existence of an otherworldly creature like the one the Order hunted now. It would be damn hard not to notice a nearly seven-foot-tall, hairless, dermaglyph -covered vampire with an insatiable thirst for blood. Even among the most savage dregs of Breed society, the Ancient would stand out.
The only reason the Ancient had gone undetected for as long as it had was because of the hibernation chamber that housed it on the remote mountain in the Czech countryside. Someone had freed the Ancient from its hidden crypt, but the Order had no way of knowing when, or how, or even if the bloodthirsty creature had survived its awakening.