The situation in the streets of nearly every major city around the world was getting worse. Opus Nostrum was coming at the Order hard, and with every weapon in their seemingly unlimited arsenal.
There would be more bloodshed. More death and destruction.
The truth of it was, everything was going to shit on a nightly basis, not getting better.
He didn’t need to say the words aloud for everyone with eyes and ears in their heads to understand. Each time the sun set came the start of another battle to be fought, another fresh round of Rogues being loosed on otherwise peaceful communities in nearly every corner of the globe. The Order was holding the line so far, but how long could they maintain it?
Add in the threat of ultraviolet weaponry and the Atlantean crystals currently in enemy hands and Lucan wasn’t sure how he and his comrades might eventually win their multiple wars.
All he did know was that they had to find a way.
Lucan kept to his scripted remarks for his wary global audience, well aware that his enemies would be listening too. He couldn’t give Opus--or anyone else--the slightest indication that the Order might bend even a little under the strain of everything they had been called to do.
Lucan had ended his speech with a personal message to all who were listening, renewing the promise he had made to a terrified, uncertain human public some twenty years ago.
The Order was committed to true, lasting peace. He and every last warrior under his command would give up their final breaths to see that vow come to fruition.
Lucan just hoped for fuck’s sake it wouldn’t come to that.
Exiting from a back door into the corridor outside the secured meeting room, he growled under his breath to see a small gaggle of press gathered like vultures at the far end of the hallway. One of the female reporters spotted him and hurried in his direction.
“Lucan Thorne! A moment of your time, please?”
The woman’s shout drew everyone else’s attention and the pack started toward him en masse.
“Not a fucking chance,” he muttered, pivoting away.
Using his Breed genetics, he ducked into the nearby stairwell as a blur of motion and sped to the underground garage level.
Unfortunately, another handful of reporters had already found their way down there as well. Across the concrete parking area, half a dozen people swarmed his black SUV, nattering among themselves while they waited to pounce on him with their cameras and microphones. Two of the humans appeared to be protesters, if their T-shirts printed with his face sporting fireball eyes, devil’s horns, and huge, blood-dripping fangs were any indication.
Lucan was not in the fucking mood.
He had half a mind to let his critics see the monster they apparently thought he was. His lip began to curl away from his teeth and emerging fangs as he took the first steps toward the crowd.
He had hardly gone three paces before a fast-approaching sedan roared up erratically beside him from another area of the garage. The tires shrieked to a halt and the driver peered up at him from the opened window with a look of horror in his panicked eyes.
“Chairman Thorne! Oh, thank God you’re still here!” It was Owen Keener, one of the GNC members who’d attended tonight’s emergency meeting. The timid human diplomat was pallid under normal circumstances, but now his face was ghostly white with fear. His fingers were clamped on the steering wheel in a death grip. “I don’t know what to do!”
All of Lucan’s annoyance with reporters and protesters silenced by the obvious distress of his GNC colleague. “What’s wrong?”
“Rogues. At my house.” Keener dropped his chin and sobbed. “My wife just called . . . she’s trapped inside.” He swallowed hard, lifting an imploring, desperate stare at Lucan. “They’re going to kill her. You have to help me save her, I beg you!”
Shit.Lucan scowled in the direction of his SUV and the reporters who were still surrounding it, but suddenly getting curious about what was happening across the garage from them.
It would take precious seconds to reach his vehicle and chase everyone out of his way.
Fuck that. He had a semiauto full of titanium hollowpoints tucked down the back waistband of his dress slacks. He could take out a dozen Rogues singlehandedly if it came down to it.
Right now, the most important thing was making sure Oliver Keener’s society darling wife didn’t end up getting slaughtered, let alone have it happen on the evening news.
“Move over.” Lucan pointed to the passenger seat. “I’ll drive.”
Keener scrambled from behind the wheel as Lucan climbed in. Across the garage, the crowd was beginning to realize they were about to be ditched. They started scrambling over.
Lucan punched the accelerator and the sedan squealed into action.
He sent a mental command to the electronic gate and it swung open just as he reached it. Keener’s sedan exploded onto the darkened street.
