Crowe staggered, mouth slack as he gaped at his severed limb.
Then he looked back to Mira.
Something strange crossed his features as he stared into her eyes. He no longer seemed to notice the terrible wound that wasn't healing itself. His lost hand lay on the asphalt next to his gun, blood pumping down his forearm and onto the black rooftop. And yet Crowe stared at her eyes, utterly transfixed.
Her eyes . . .
She felt the tickle of one of her lenses where it clung to her cheek. It must have popped out during the struggle, unveiling the hypnotic mirror of her iris. Crowe didn't seem able to tear himself away from her gaze.
But he was still drifting backward, his steps sluggish now that he was caught in the power of her visions.
She didn't know what he saw.
She didn't think she'd want to know.
And in that next instant, it no longer mattered.
Crowe - or whatever his true, Atlantean name was - stumbled back on his heels. He was too close to the blades. Too tall, when the slowing rotors had started to droop with their loss of momentum.
Crowe turned his head then, almost as if some stronger part of his subconscious recognized the threat his waking mind couldn't see under the spell of Mira's gaze. He glanced behind him . . . just as the helicopter blade swung toward him, cleaving his head away from his neck.
Mira averted her eyes, but it was impossible to shut out the horror of what just happened.
Then, as Crowe's body crumpled to the ground, a bright light began to swell inside him. It rushed through his limbs and poured out of his neck, intense and pure and otherworldly. And in the center of his intact palm, a symbol began to take shape, illuminated from within.
It was in the shape of a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.
The same symbol Mira and every other Breedmate bore as a birthmark somewhere on their bodies.
There could be no doubting it now.
The Atlanteans were real, the otherworldly fathers of the Breedmates.
The Atlanteans were alive, an unknown number of them, hiding in secret with their banished queen. Lying in wait for their chance to rise up against the Breed and mankind.
They were immortal and deadly.
They were the enemy.
Lucan crashed through the battered door of the rooftop service stairwell, Darion and Nathan right behind him. It seemed the only feasible place for Crowe to have fled, but the situation that greeted Lucan at the top of the GNC building was nothing he would have expected.
Mira and Kellan stood together in the darkness, she wrapped tightly around the Breed male, her blond head nestled into his chest, his muscled arms holding her close.
Two of Crowe's uniformed security men lay dead on the black asphalt in front of him. Across the way, a helicopter idled, its pilot slumped forward in his seat, engine winding down to an unmanned stop.
And lying under the slowing rotor blades, the headless body of Reginald Crowe.
Lucan stared, uncertain if he was seeing right, as a glow that seemed to light Crowe's limbs and torso from within now faded away before his eyes.
Behind Lucan, both Dare and Nathan murmured their disbelief.
Lucan glanced back to Mira and Kellan. "What the hell just happened?"
As the pair began explaining, more of the Order arrived behind Nathan and Dare. The younger teams, and the warriors who'd been with Lucan nearly from the start of the Order's founding. Gabrielle and the other Breedmates soon arrived as well, until Lucan found himself surrounded by the kith and kin who meant the most to him.
They all listened in silent astonishment as Mira and Kellan described what Crowe had done, who he was . . . and the things the immortal had revealed in his final breaths.
That Mira and Kellan had defeated Crowe by themselves was commendable, even if the leader in Lucan wanted to take the pair to task for the maverick move undertaken without his knowledge or permission. Perhaps that was the rebel in Kellan, the leader unafraid to charge to the head of any battle. God knew, Mira had never been known for her willingness to color within the lines.
Tonight they had been a united front. A team of two, stronger together. It felt right, seeing them joined as a mated couple. A partnership that had been tested more than most, and hard-won.
Lucan walked over and extended his hand to them, first to Mira, whom he couldn't resist dragging into a brief embrace, feeling fatherly and proud of the little girl who had become such a valuable member of the Order's team. As they drew apart, Lucan clasped her hand in his firm grasp. "You honor us well, warrior."
To Kellan, he gave a nod of gratitude as he shook the Breed male's strong hand. "You as well," he said. "Maybe there's a place for a rebel ghost within the Order's ranks after all."
Kellan grinned, drawing Mira a bit closer to his side as he nodded in acceptance of Lucan's offer.
Lucan looked at them, then at his son and the younger warriors surrounding him. He was looking at the shape of the Order's future. A new generation, already stepping up to the plate.
And they would be needed, all of them.
Lucan glanced down at Reginald Crowe, realizing he was looking at something new there too: an enemy the Order had never confronted before, one that was clearly playing by its own set of rules now.
"What happened here tonight marks a new beginning," he told the men and women of the Order standing with him under the dark night sky. "This marks a new war . . . one we must win."
A round of agreeing voices answered him, grim faces filled with determination and fire.
Lucan met each fierce gaze, man and woman alike. "From this moment forward, we play by our own rules. Whatever it takes, whatever the cost. Our new mission begins now."
Epilogue
THE GNC SUMMIT WENT ON AS PLANNED THAT NEXT DAY. Lucan had announced to the world that there was no better time to gather for serious conversations about the future than in the wake of an assault that might have set the peace efforts of mankind and Breed back centuries.