down without a fight. Chase's nostrils flared, throat tickled, as his eyes rooted on the four long, bloodied gashes raking the human's cheek.
"Bitch fuckin' broke my nose," Man of the Year complained as he leaned back against the white-glazed brick wall of the holding cell. "You believe that shit? I give her a little smack for dropping my dinner in my lap, tell her to watch where the fuck she's goin', for crissake, and she hauls off and cold-cocks me. Big mistake." He grunted, mouth curling in a sneer. "She won't be stupid enough to try a stunt like that again, though. And the friggin' cops, man! Shoulda known they'd take that bitch's word over mine. Just like last time. I'm supposed ta let a judge wave a piece of paper at me sayin' I gotta stay away from my own wife? I gotta stay outta my own damn house? Fuck that. And fuck her too. I've sent her to the hospital more 'an once. Next time I see her, I'm gonna fix that bitch so good, she'll never be able to sic the cops on me again." Chase said nothing, merely listening in silence and trying not to fixate too intensely on the bright red rivulets that were making a liquid slide down onto the wife-beater's jaw. The sight and scent of fresh blood was enough to wake the predator in any member of the Breed, but all the worse for Chase.
Head tipped down toward his chest, he drew in a shallow breath and caught a whiff of something even more disturbing beneath the stale foulness of the room and the coppery tang of coagulating red cells - something raw and feral, verging on rabid.
Him.
The realization made his mouth quirk, but it was hard to appreciate the irony when his gums were throbbing with the need to feed.
Thanks to the fierce thirst that had been his constant companion for longer than he cared to admit, his sensory inputs were locked in overdrive. He felt every minute shift in the air around him. Saw every twitch and tic in the movements of his restless cellmates. He heard every anxious breath taken and expelled, every rhythmic heartbeat, every rush of blood pulsing through the veins of all three humans, who were little more than arm's reach from him inside the room. His mouth watered feverishly at the thought. Behind his flattened upper lip, the points of his fangs pressed like twin daggers into the cushion of his tongue. His vision started to tighten, burning amber as his pupils narrowed to thin slits under his closed lids.
Fuck. This was a bad place for him to be, especially in his condition.
Bad place, bad idea. Bad damned odds of walking away from this whole situation in any way, shape, or form.
Not that he'd given a shit about bad ideas and doomed outcomes when he'd offered himself up to the police on the front lawn of the Order's estate earlier that day. His only concern had been protecting his friends. Giving them the opportunity - very likely their only prayer of a chance - to avoid discovery by human law enforcement and, he hoped, find a way to clear out of the compound and get to someplace safe.
And so he hadn't resisted when the cops clamped handcuffs on him and hauled him into the station. He'd cooperated during the seven hours of interrogation, doling out just enough information to the local boys and the feds to satisfy their endless questioning and keep them focused solely on him as the kingpin and mastermind of the violence that had taken place in the city over the last couple of days. Violence that had begun a few nights ago with a holiday party shooting at an up-and-coming young politician's swank North Shore home.
The botched assassination attempt had been Chase's doing, but the intended target wasn't the golden-boy senator or even his highprofile guest of honor, the United States vice president, as the cops and federal agents were inclined to believe. Chase had been gunning for a vampire named Dragos that night. The Order had been hunting Dragos for more than a year, and suddenly Chase had found the bastard rubbing elbows with influential, well-connected humans, passing himself off as one of them. To what end, Chase could only imagine, and none of it was good. Which is why, when he saw the opportunity to act, he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the son of a bitch.