Kiss of Crimson(32)

―No,‖ Dante answered calmly as he cleaned his blade and resheathed it on his hip. ―What I killed was a Rogue, no longer a civilian or an innocent kid. The Crimson turned him, Chase. See for yourself.‖

On the street in front of them, all that was left of the Rogue was a scattered pile of ash. The fine dust caught in the slight breeze, tracing across the pavement. Chase bent down to recover the crude knife from the scattering remains of its owner.

―Where‘s the dealer?‖ Dante asked, hoping like hell to get his hands on him next.

Chase shook his head. ―He got away from me. I lost track of him a few blocks from here. I thought I had him, but then he ran into a restaurant and I just... I lost him.‖

―Forget it.‖ Dante wasn‘t worried about finding the guy; he only had to look for Tess, and sooner or later her boyfriend was bound to make an appearance. And he had to admit that taking the human out personally was something he looked forward to.

The Darkhaven agent swore under his breath as he stared down at the knife in his hands. ―That kid you killed—that Rogue,‖ he corrected, ―was from my community. He was a good kid from a good family, goddamn it. How am I going to tell them what happened to their son?‖

Dante didn‘t know what to say. He couldn‘t apologize for the killing. This was war, no matter what the Darkhavens‘ official position might be on the situation. Once a Breed vampire turned Rogue—whether he turned from Crimson or the weakness present in all of the Breed—there was no coming back, no hope of rehabilitation. No second chances. If Harvard was going to run with the Order for any length of time, he‘d better get a grip on that fact ASAP.

―Come on,‖ Dante said, clapping the grim-faced agent on the shoulder. ―We‘re finished here. You won‘t be able to save them all.‖



Ben Sullivan didn‘t ease up on the gas until Boston‘s city lights were a distant glow in the rearview mirror. He turned off Route 1 just inside Revere, flooring the vehicle onto one of the industrial drives down near the river. His hands were shaking on the wheel, palms slick with sweat. His heart was beating like a jackhammer behind his rib cage. He couldn‘t catch his breath.

Holy shit.

What the fuck just happened back there at that club?

Some kind of overdose—it had to be. The guy who‘d taken the hit of Crimson and lapsed into convulsions was a regular customer. Ben had sold to him at least half a dozen times in the past couple of weeks alone. He‘d been manufacturing and dealing the mild stimulant on the club and rave circuit for months now—since the summer—and to his knowledge, nothing like this had ever happened before.

A goddamn overdose.

Ben pulled the van into a gravel yard outside an old warehouse, cut the lights, and sat there with the engine running.

He‘d been tailed by someone on foot when he fled the club—one of the two big dudes who‘d been somewhere inside the place and evidently had seen him dealing. They might have been undercover cops, maybe even DEA, but both the dark-haired one in sunglasses and his equally intimidating companion who came at Ben like a freight train looked to be the shoot-first, askquestions-later types. Ben wasn‘t about to wait around and find out. He‘d run out of the club and made a frantic, helterskelter dash in and out of the surrounding streets and alleyways, finally ditching his pursuer long enough to circle back, reach his van, and get the hell out of Dodge.

The situation at the club was still playing through his head in a haze of confusion. Everything had happened so fast. The kid taking the jumbo hit of Crimson. The first sign of trouble, when his body began to spasm as the drug entered his system. The freakish roar that came out of his mouth an instant later. The answering screams of the people around him.

The sheer chaos that ensued.

Most of those intense several minutes were still spinning through Ben‘s mind in strobe-light flashes of memory, some images clear, others lost to the dark fog of his panic. But there was one thing he was absolutely sure of...

The kid had sprouted fucking fangs.

Sharp-ass canines that would have been damn hard to hide, not that the kid had been trying to conceal anything when he‘d let out that bloodcurdling howl and made a grab for one of the club girls standing next to him.

Like he meant to rip her throat out with his teeth. And his eyes. For crissake, they had been glowing bright amber, like they were on fire in his skull. Like they belonged on some kind of alien creature.

Ben knew what he saw, but it made zero sense. Not in this world, not by any brand of science he knew, and not in this reality, which cast things like that firmly into the realm of fiction.

Frankly, by everything he knew to be logical and true, what he had witnessed just wasn‘t possible. But logic had little to do with the fear pounding through him right now or the chilling sense that his harmless little ―pharming‖ endeavor had suddenly veered way off the track. An overdose was bad enough, even worse that it had happened in a very public place, with him still on the premises to be identified. But the incredible effect the Crimson seemed to have on that kid—the monstrous transformation—was