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the city. One face caught Tegan’s eye more than the rest. It was the human Crimson dealer, Ben Sullivan.
    Although Dante had taken the bastard out last November, the whereabouts of his manufacturing lab were yet unknown. Problems with the drug had simmered down in the months since the Order got involved, but so long as the Rogues possessed the means to manufacture more of the shit, the threat of a resurgence in Crimson use among the Breed still existed.
    “Hold up. I’m getting a match on a location out in Revere,” Gideon was saying now. “Yeah, whaddaya know, I think it’s a legit lead. You guys wanna do a drive-by down by the Chelsea River, see what you find?”
    Tegan zeroed in on the photo of Ben Sullivan’s grinning, busted-up face. The human had killed a lot of young vampires with his drug, including Camden Chase, Elise’s teenage son. If not for Crimson, that kid would never have turned Rogue and had to be put down. And a gently bred female like Elise wouldn’t be holed up in that slum apartment downtown, out of her head with grief and anger, and hell-bent on some maternal brand of vengeance that was probably going to get her killed too.
    A weight settled on Tegan as he considered all the bloodshed, the centuries he and the others like him had been fighting this battle against the savage side of the Breed. There were peaks and lulls, of course, times of relative peace, but the unrest was always there, burrowed deep within the race. Festering and corrupting.
    “It’s fucking never going to end, is it?”
    “Sorry?”
    Tegan didn’t realize he’d spoken until he glanced over and saw Gideon looking at him over the rims of his pale blue shades. Tegan shook his head. “Nothing.”
    He stalked away from the computers, his thoughts gone dark and churning as Gideon swung back to his monitors and sent his fingers clacking over a keyboard. Another satellite image filled the screen, this one showing an old industrial lot not far from the riverfront.
    Tegan knew the location. He didn’t need anything more.
    “Yeah, Niko,” Gideon said into the mouthpiece. “Right. Sounds good. If things look hot over there, yell for backup. Dante and Chase are less than an hour away and Tegan’s right…here…”
    But Tegan wasn’t there anymore.
    He was stalking purposefully up the corridor outside the tech lab now, where he heard Gideon’s voice trail off as the lab’s glass door hissed shut.

 

    CHAPTER
Five

    T his is it. Hang a left up here at the stop sign,” Nikolai said from the backseat of the Order’s black SUV. He was busy reloading the weapons that he and the two new warrior recruits accompanying him tonight had put to good use on the city’s east side. The custom rounds he’d made were his favorite Rogue-blasting numbers—kick-ass hollowpoints filled with powdered titanium. One taste of that metal meant certain death to the blood-addicted members of the vampire race. Niko slapped the clip into the tricked-out Beretta 92FS he’d converted to full auto, then shoved the weapon into its holster under his coat.
    “Park behind that piece of shit pickup truck,” he told the warrior doing the driving. This part of Revere was tight with houses and run-down businesses, thick clusters of humanity clinging to the outskirts of Boston and a briny stretch of the Chelsea River. “We’ll hoof it the rest of the way. Go in nice and quiet so we can get a good look around.”
    “You got it.” Brock, a towering nightmare of a fighter recruited out of Detroit, was as smooth behind the wheel as he was with the ladies. He swept the vehicle over to the side of the snowy curb and killed the engine.
    Next to Brock in the front seat, Niko’s other trainee pivoted around and held out his hand for the refreshed weapon. Kade’s wolflike silver eyes were still glowing from the night’s earlier action, his black hair spiky and wet with melted snow. “Think we’re gonna find something out here?”
    Niko grinned. “I sure as