Shades of Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online Page A

wooden it sounded apathetic, wholly undisturbed.
    “Nasty bit of video showed up on the Internet today,” Lucan said. “From what we can tell, this was captured by a cell phone camera a couple of days ago and uploaded from a Fairbanks ISP to a website that caters to crime-scene gawkers and other sick bastards who get off on viewing the dead.”
    He gave a look to Gideon and with a click of the computer mouse, the frozen image onscreen came to vivid life. Over the excitable breathing and crunching footsteps of the person holding the camera, Kade watched as the crudely shot video showed the scene of what must have been a very brutal slaying.
    A bloodied body lay dead on a snow-covered, gore-stained patch of land. The lens’s focus was shaky, but the operator managed to zoom in tight on the victim’s wounds. Shredded clothing and skin. A number of unmistakable tears and punctures that could only have been made by some very sharp teeth.
    Or fangs.
    “Jesus,” Kade muttered, struck by the savagery of the killing—the totality of it—as the video played past the four-minute mark and moved on to document no less than three more dead in the snow and ice.
    “This looks like the work of Rogues,” Brock said, his deep voice as grim as his expression.
    It was a sorry but unavoidable fact of life that there were members of the Breed population who could not—or simply would not—control their thirst for blood. While the majority of the vampire nation abided by laws and reasonable good sense, there were others who gave in to their hungers with no thought for the consequences. Those of the Breed who fed too much, or too frequently, soon found themselves addicted, lost to Bloodlust, the disease of the Rogues. Once a vampire tipped that scale, there was little hope for him to turn himself around.
    Bloodlust was almost always a one-way ticket to madness … and death. If not by edict of the Order, then by the disease itself, which made even the most careful Breed male reckless. All a Rogue knew was his thirst. He would kill indiscriminately, take any risk, in the attempt to quench it. He would even slaughter an entire village if the opportunity was there.
    “Whoever did this needs to be put down fast,” Brock added. “Son of a bitch needs to be put down hard.”
    Lucan nodded his agreement. “The sooner, the better. That’s why I called you in, Kade. The situation up there could get out of hand pretty quick, not only if we’ve got a Rogue problem to contend with, but also because human law enforcement has gotten wind of the killings. Gideon tracked an Alaska State Police dispatch call out of a little interior town called Harmony. Fortunately, there’s fewer than a hundred people living there, but it only takes one hysterical mouth screaming the word ‘vampire’ to turn this whole thing into an even bigger disaster.”
    “Shit,” Kade muttered. “Do we know who shot the video?”
    “Hard to say right now,” Lucan said. “Gideon’s looking into it. We do know for sure there’s a trooper posted in the town—he’s the one who alerted the Fairbanks dispatch to the killings. Obviously, time is critical here. We need to know who’s responsible for the slayings, and we need to make sure no one up there gets anywhere close to the truth about what exactly took place out there in the bush.”
    Kade listened, his veins still jangling with the brutality of what he had just seen on the monitor. In his peripheral vision was the final frame, paused on the screen, a blurred image of a young human’s blood-spattered face, his open, unseeing brown eyes clouded from the cold, ice crystals clinging to his dark eyelashes. He was just a kid, for crissake. Probably barely out of his teens, if that.
    It wasn’t the first time Kade had seen the aftermath of a bloody slaughter in the Alaskan bush. When he’d left home all those months ago, he’d sure as hell hoped he’d never see that kind of carnage again.
    “We’re spread thin