Son of a bitch.
It was supposed to be a recon mission, nothing more. Now Trygg was cooling his heels in an alleyway across from an old three-story house near the train station, waiting for the two assholes he’d been tailing to wrap up their apparent breaking and entering so he could resume his surveillance of them.
Or, rather, hehadbeen waiting.
Until the moment one of the windows on the second floor lit up with what appeared to be a cosmic explosion of pure white energy. Followed by gunfire.
A lot of gunfire.
“Fuck it.”
He emerged out of the shadows and headed for the house.
The Order had specifically instructed him not to do anything to alert Roberto Santino or his crew to his presence during this intel-gathering mission. Trygg had been following Santino’s muscle, a Breed male named Franco, for the better part of a week now. In the process, Trygg had two of the three set points pinned into the triangulation formula he’d mapped out and was only a couple more data points from being able to nail Santino’s lair down to a quarter-mile radius.
Which meant the Order was as close as they’d ever been to locating and taking down one of the most dangerous drug kingpins of Europe.
That mission was a must-do. There were thousands of garden variety narcotics dealers in the world, both human and Breed, and although the Order would never be able to stop them all, Santino was different. The human made no secret of his hatred for the Breed, and he was indulging in that sentiment by dealing in Red Dragon, the worst thing to hit Trygg’s kind since its predecessor, Crimson, some twenty years ago.
Secretly manufactured and only effective on the Breed, Red Dragon was a problem nobody needed. Not when relations with the human population in general were already strained. Add in persistent, growing problems with terror groups like Opus Nostrum, and more recent conflicts with the Atlanteans and their unpredictable queen, Selene, and the dead last thing the Order wanted was an epidemic of blood-crazed Breed civilians raising hell—and inciting panic—in all corners of the globe.
In a word, this situation with Santino was war. And collateral damage was to be expected in any war. Not what the Order wanted, but there were times it couldn't be helped. Trygg knew his mission. His commander, Lazaro Archer, had spelled out the rules of engagement for him in no uncertain terms: Anything that jeopardized the prime objective wasverboten.
Too bad following rules wasn’t Trygg’s strong suit.
He stalked across the street, certain this was a bad fucking idea. The cries of a baby that had been faint even with his preternaturally sharp hearing intensified tenfold as he leapt to a small wrought-iron balcony on the second story of the house. Over the wailing of the infant in the next room, sounds of a struggle continued. And as troubling as the racket was, the putrid stench of a Breed male high on Red Dragon made Trygg’s own blood boil with rage.
The point of entry he stood at was equipped with a remarkably sophisticated alarm system, but it was no match for his Breed ability. With a silent command, he disabled the sensors and cut the heat registers on the glass before mentally freeing the lock on the balcony doors.
It was the same method Santino’s Breed thug had used to let himself and his human companion inside a few minutes ago.
What the hell business did they have here?
And where had that blast of white light come from?
He’d have to sort all of that out later. Right now, he needed to neutralize the situation inside the house before things went any further sideways.
A fresh chorus of screams went up as he pushed open the glass doors and slipped inside what he realized now was another bedroom in the house. One occupied by three women of varying ages, all of them clad in nightshirts or robes, huddled together and shrieking at him in terror.
He scowled at the fearful gaggle of females, a response that only made them scream louder. Shit. He knew he was a frightful sight just based on his size and width alone. With his shaved head and the jagged scar that dug deep into the flesh of his left cheek from below his eye to his squared jaw, his looks bordered on nightmarish.
His fangs didn’t help, he was sure. The points dug into his tongue as he glowered at the trembling women. “Be quiet. I’m not here to hurt you.”
It was a feeble attempt to reassure them, but they were beyond reasoning anyway. And he had neither the skill nor the time to try.
On a snarl, he touched the forehead of the woman nearest to him. “Sleep,” he commanded her, putting her into an instant trance.
The two others went down just as swiftly.
Of all the weapons at his disposal, using his Breed ability to manipulate someone’s mind was the one he employed the least. In fact, he hated having to use it. As a former Hunter, raised in captivity and trained to kill by a madman named Dragos, Trygg knew what it was like to be controlled, to be forced into doing something at another’s will.
For the first fourteen years of his life, he’d been enslaved to the brutal program, compelled to obey through ruthless conditioning and an ultraviolet collar that would have obliterated him if he’d refused any command.
But Dragos was only the first of Trygg’s masters.
The last of them had sliced his face wide open—just before he killed her.
Trygg shook off the old memories as an animal roar shook the walls from the room next door. Franco was a sadistic individual in general, but if the Breed male was hopped up on Red Dragon tonight, Trygg hated to think of the violence he was capable of now.
