Midnight Rising(49)

Gideon scrunched up his face as if he were calculating the square root of Bill Gates’s net worth. “About ten minutes for delivery of your basic hard-drive wrecking ball to all of the computers on her distribution list. Thirteen, if you’re looking for something with a little more finesse.”



“I don’t give a rat’s ass about finesse,” Lucan said. “Just do whatever you need to trash the pictures and kill any text references to what she found on that mountain.”



“I’m on it,” Gideon replied, already working his magic on both devices.



“We can destroy the electronic files, but we still need to deal with the people she’s been in contact with about the cave,” Rio pointed out. “Aside from her employer, there’s the three women she was traveling with, and her mother.”



“I’m going to leave that to you,” Lucan said. “I don’t care how you go about it—use her to deny the story, discredit her, or go out and find the folks she’s talked to and scrub the memory of every last one of them. Your choice, Rio. Just handle it, like I know you will.”



He nodded. “I give you my word, Lucan. I will fix this.”



The Gen One vampire’s expression was as grave as it was certain. “I don’t doubt you. Never have, never will.”



Lucan’s confidence was unexpected, and a gift Rio didn’t plan to squander, no matter how wrecked he knew himself to be. For so many years, the Order and the warriors serving within it were his chief purpose in life—even above his love for Eva, which had seeded a quiet, but festering resentment in her. Rio was honor-bound to every last one of these men like his own blood kin, pledged to fight alongside them, even die for them. He looked around him, humbled by the grim, courageous faces of the five Breed males whom he knew without question would lay down their lives for him as well.



Rio cleared his throat, feeling awkward for the nearly unanimous welcome from his brethren. Across the lab, the glass doors whisked open as Nikolai, Brock, and Kade strode in from the corridor outside. The three of them were talking animatedly, giving off an air of easy camaraderie as they swept into the lab.



“Hey,” Niko said, a greeting tossed out to no one in particular. His ice-blue gaze lit on Rio for half a second before he looked to Lucan and began relaying the details of the trio’s night patrol. “Smoked a Rogue down by the river about an hour ago. Bastard was sleeping off a kill inside a Dumpster when we found him.”



“Think it was one of Marek’s hounds?” Lucan asked, referring to the army of Rogue vampires his own brother had been amassing until the Order stepped in. Marek was dead at the hands of the Order, but the remnants of his army were still vermin in need of extermination.



Nikolai gave a shake of his head. “This suckhead wasn’t a fighter, just an addict scratching his permanent itch for blood. I figure he was only a few nights out of the Darkhaven based on how easy he went down.” The Russian-born vampire looked past Rio to crack a crooked grin at Dante and Chase. “Any action over on the South Side?”



“Not a damn thing,” Chase muttered. “Too busy running errands out at the airport.”



Nikolai grunted, acknowledging the comment with a glance in Rio’s direction. “Long fucking time, man. Good to see you in one piece.”



Rio knew the male too well to think the reply was friendly. Of all the warriors in the Order, it was Nikolai that Rio expected to be first in line to defend him—whether or not Rio deserved it. Niko was the brother Rio never had, both of them born in the past century, both having joined the Order in Boston around the same time.



Odd that Niko had been absent for Rio’s arrival at the compound, although knowing the vampire and his love for combat, he probably was pissed off that his patrol was cut short with still a couple of hours to go until dawn.



Before Rio could say anything to his old friend, Nikolai’s attention swung back to Lucan. “The Rogue we found tonight was young, but the kill he left behind looked like the work of more than one vampire. I’d like to head back tomorrow night and sniff around, see if we turn up anything more.”



Lucan nodded. “Sounds good.”



With that out of the way, Niko turned to Kade and Brock. “Got enough time before sunrise to do a little hunting of our own. Anyone else feeling thirsty all of a sudden?”



Kade’s wolflike eyes glittered like quicksilver. “There’s an after-hours place in the North End that’s probably just getting interesting. Plenty of sweet young things just ripe for the plucking.”