“Fuck! Biggs is down,” he shouted into a mouthpiece clipped to his jacket. “Repeat, Biggs is—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish. Brynne let a dagger fly. The blade now buried in the gunman’s chest silenced him as he crumpled to his knees, then fell in a lifeless heap.
“Hit the switch!” another of the Opus lackeys bellowed from the vestibule. “Hit the goddamn switch now and unlock the doors. We gotta get the hell outta here!”
“What’s going on?” Phaedra asked.
Zael shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”
Smoke started to filter in through the ventilation system. It was bitter and strange, and tinted an odd, reddish color. It billowed in more rapidly now, big clouds of it beginning to fill the theater from all angles.
Zael’s receiver rasped with an incoming status from the Order’s teams. “We’ve got gunmen fleeing for the basement exits over here,” Darion’s deep voice reported. “We’re going after them.”
“Get out! Everyone, get out,” Brynne shouted into her comm unit. She started coughing as the smoke fell down toward her. She vaulted back up to the catwalk, her irises lit with amber sparks. “They’re pumping Red Dragon inside here.”
“Damn it,” Zael growled. “I need to get you out of here. Phaedra, you too. Back to the roof with us. Now.”
Down below in the vestibule, the Breed civilians and diplomats started choking on the narcotic fumes. The snarls and animal sounds they made as the Red Dragon absorbed into their bloodstreams put a chill in Phaedra’s marrow.
Their captors having abandoned their posts, the Breed hostages had no one to keep them inside their makeshift pen.
One big male in a tuxedo burst out of the vestibule and into the theater. He tilted his head up, spotting them on the catwalk. His lips peeled back, fangs bared in rising Bloodlust. On a roar, he sprang into the air.
Phaedra’s palms went hot with her alarm. She released the bolt of light that built in her hands, knocking the snarling Breed male back to the floor.
Another one stormed inside behind him, letting out an unearthly bellow.
“Let’s go!” Zael shouted, hurrying away with Brynne huddled close to him, her face buried in his chest to keep from breathing any more of the toxic air.
“What about the rest of them down there in the vestibule?”
“They’re a lost cause. The Red Dragon has them now. If I don’t get Brynne out of here, it’ll have her too.”
Phaedra started running with them, panic like cold lead in her breast. She only hoped Micah and the other warriors heeded Brynne’s warning. Part of her couldn’t bear to leave without knowing for certain they had fled the building.
She hesitated, needing to know he was safe. If anything happened to him—
The thought cut off abruptly as an iron grasp sank into her shoulder and yanked her back.
On a sharp cry, she wheeled around . . . and found herself staring into the savage, bloodthirsty amber eyes of the tuxedoed Breed male she should have killed with her power.
His jaw hung open, revealing razor-sharp fangs dripping with pink-tinged saliva. “Where do you think you’re going, pretty?”
# # #
Micah’s vision burned raging amber when he saw the newly turned Rogue in the fancy tux catapult himself up to make a grab for Phaedra.
The Breed male may have been a gentleman when he arrived at the theater event, but the clouds of Red Dragon pouring in through the ventilation system had made him a slavering animal. Putting him down would be a mercy at any time now that he was Rogue, but the male had made the mistake of threatening Phaedra and for that, his death was guaranteed.
Micah leapt up behind him with not even a second to spare and drove one of his long titanium daggers into the back of the Rogue’s neck. The metal was toxic to a Breed vampire caught in the throes of Bloodlust.
The body dropped off the catwalk, plummeting to the stage below.
“Micah.” Phaedra stepped forward on a small cry. “I didn’t want to leave without knowing you were okay.”
“I’m good now,” he said, relief at finding her unharmed pouring through him. He kept his words to a minimum, trying not to breathe any more of the poisonous dust. Grabbing her around the waist, he used every measure of Breed velocity at his command to flash to the roof’s open exit and bring Phaedra outside to the fresh night air.
Zael and Brynne were there too. The Atlantean had his hand resting on his mate’s back as she doubled over and tried to expel the Red Dragon fumes from her lungs.
