the hairs at the back of rio's neck did a sudden ten-hut at that bit of news. "how was he killed?"

nikolai's look was grave. "bullet to the brain, pointblank range."

"where?"

"typically the brain is located in the head region," chase drawled, his thick arms crossed over his chest.

rio slid a narrowed glare on the male. "thanks for the anatomy lesson, harvard. i mean where was this gen one at when he was killed?"

niko met rio's sober look. "shot in the backseat of his chauffeured limousine. my contact said the poor bastard was returning from the opera or the ballet or some damn thing, and while he was waiting at a traffic light, someone popped him in the head and vanished before the driver even realized what had happened. why?"

rio shrugged. "maybe nothing, but when i was in berlin, andreas reichen told me about a gen one killing that happened recently over there. only this darkhaven elder ate it at a blood club."

"those private sports clubs have been outlawed for decades," chase said.

"right," rio agreed, all sarcasm, since the ex - darkhaven agent seemed intent on being a prick. "so now they print the invitations in invisible ink and you need a secret decoder ring to get past the door."

"same mo on the berlin gen one?" niko asked.

"no, not a gunshot wound. according to reichen's sources, this sports lover ended up losing his head."

niko whistled low under his breath. "that's two of the top three methods for killing a first generation breed vampire. option three being uv exposure, and let's face it, the least effective way unless you have a leisurely ten to fifteen minutes to devote to your work."

"the two killings could be unrelated," rio said, not sure his instincts could be trusted on this anyway. but damn if warning bells weren't clamoring in his head like a cathedral belfry on easter sunday.

"something's off," chase said, finally getting with the program. "i don't like the feel of this either. two dead gen ones in a matter of, what, a week's time? and both of them smelling like executions?"

"we don't know that's what they were," niko cautioned. "come on, think of the odds here. if you live for a thousand years or so, you're bound to piss someone off. someone who might want to shoot you in the back of your limo, or guillotine you at a blood club."

"and the darkhavens don't want word of either slaying going public?" rio added.

chase's tawny brows came together tightly. "berlin's on hush mode, too?"

"yeah. reichen said they were keeping it quiet to avoid a scandal. doesn't look good to anyone if a pillar of your community gets toppled in a sports club full of blooded, dead humans."

"no, it doesn't," chase agreed. "but two dead gen ones is a pretty serious hit to the entire vampire nation. there can't be more than twenty first generation inpiduals still alive among the entire population - lucan and tegan included. once they're gone, they're gone."

nikolai nodded. "that's true. and it's not like we can make any more."

a chilling thought sank into rio's gut. "not unless we had a live ancient, a breedmate, and about twenty years' lead time."

both warriors looked at him with grave expressions.

niko raked a hand through his blond hair. "ah, fuck. you don't think - "

"i pray to god i'm wrong," rio said. "but we'd better wake lucan."

chapter twenty

being alone after rio left had made dylan restless as hell. her mind was spinning, emotions churning. and she couldn't help thinking about her life back in new york. she had to let her mother know that she was all right at the very least.

flipping on a lamp, dylan padded into the bedroom and retrieved her cell phone from its hiding place. she'd practically forgotten about it since she arrived there, having taken it out of her pants pocket and stuffed it under the mattress of rio's bed the first chance she'd gotten to ditch the thing for safekeeping.

she powered it up, trying to muffle the musical chime as the phone came alive. it was a miracle there was any juice left in the battery at all, but she figured the single bar of remaining power was better than nothing.

voice mail waiting, the illuminated display informed her.

she had service again.

oh, thank god.

the number for call-back on the first voice mail was a new york exchange - one of coleman hogg's office lines. she retrieved the message and wasn't a bit surprised to hear him sputter and curse about her rudeness in standing up his freelance photographer in prague.

dylan skipped the rest of his diatribe and went to the next message. it was her mom, received two days ago, just calling to check in and say she loved her and hoped she was having fun. she sounded tired, that feathery quality to her voice making dylan's heart go tight in her chest.

there was another message from her boss. this time he was even more angry. he was docking her pay for the cameraman's fee, and he was considering the e-mail he'd received from her about taking extra time abroad to be her resignation. effective immediately, dylan was unemployed.

"great," she muttered under her breath as she skipped to the next call.

she couldn't really get worked up over the loss of the job itself, but the lack of a paycheck was going to hurt real quick. unless she found something better, something bigger. something monumental. something with real teeth...or fangs, as it were.

"no," she told herself sharply before the idea could fully form in her mind.

no way could she take this story public now. not when she still had more questions than answers - when she had become a part of the story herself, bizarre as it was to think that.

and then there was rio.

if she needed one reason to protect what she'd learned about another species existing alongside humankind, he was it. she didn't want to betray him, or put his kind at risk of any sort. she was past that, now that she was coming to know him. now that she was coming to care for him, as dangerous as that might prove to be.

what happened between them a short while ago rattled her big-time. the kiss had been amazing. the feel of rio's body pressed so intimately against hers had been the hottest thing she'd ever known. and the feel of his teeth - his fangs - grazing the fragile skin of her neck had been both terrifying and erotic. would he really have bitten her? and if he had, what would it have done to her?

based on how fast he bolted out of the room, she didn't expect she would ever have those answers. and really, she shouldn't feel so empty at the thought.

what she needed to do was get herself out of this place - wherever she was - and get back to her own life. back to being there for her mom, who was probably going crazy with worry now that dylan had been out of touch for three full days.

the next three incoming calls had been from the runaway shelter, all received yesterday and last night. there were no messages, but the close timing of them seemed to indicate some urgency.

dylan hit the speed-dial button for her mom's house and waited as the phone rang unanswered on the other end. no answer on her mom's cell phone either. with her heart in her throat, dylan brought up the number for the shelter. janet picked up her mom's extension.

"good morning. sharon alexander's office."

"janet, hi. it's dylan."

"oh...hi, honey. how are you doing?" the question sounded oddly careful, as if janet already knew - or thought she knew - that dylan was probably not having a good day. "are you at the hospital?"

"the what - no." dylan's stomach sank. "what's going on? is it mom? what's wrong?"

"oh, lord," janet breathed softly. "you mean, you don't know? i thought nancy was going to call you...where are you, dylan - are you back home yet?"

"no," she said, hardly aware she was talking for the cold ache opening up her chest. "no, i'm, ah...i'm still out of town. where's my mom, janet? is she okay? what's happened to her?"

"she'd been feeling a little run-down after the river cruise the other night, but yesterday afternoon she collapsed here at the shelter. dylan, honey, she's not doing well right now. we took her to the hospital and they admitted her."

"oh, god." dylan's whole body felt numbed out, frozen in place. "is it a relapse?"

"they think so, yes." janet's voice was the quietest it had ever been. "i'm so sorry, honey."

lucan hadn't been happy to be roused out of bed with gabrielle in the middle of the day, but as soon as he heard the reason for the interruption, the order's leader was all business, instantly snapped to attention. he'd thrown on a pair of dark jeans and an unbuttoned silk oxford, and came out to the corridor where rio, nikolai, and chase waited.

"we're going to need gideon to run some record checks," lucan said, flipping out his cell phone and speed-dialing the warrior's quarters. he murmured a greeting and an abrupt apology for the intrusion, then gave gideon the same news rio and the others had just shared with him. as the four of them headed down the hallway toward the tech lab, gideon's personal command center, lucan finished up the short conversation and snapped the cell phone shut. "he's on the way. i sure hope like hell you're wrong about this, rio."

"so do i," he said, no more eager than anyone else to consider the possibility.

it didn't take gideon more than a couple of minutes to join the impromptu meeting. he came into the lab in gray sweats and a white muscle shirt, sneakers unlaced like he'd just shoved his feet into them and ran. he dropped ass into the wheeled swivel chair at his computer command center and started launching programs from several of the machines.

"okay, we're sending feelers out to every reporting agency and darkhaven resident bank, including the international identification database," he said, watching the monitors as data slowly began to scroll up on the screens. "huh. that's odd. you said one of the two dead gen ones was out of seattle?"

nikolai nodded.

"well, not according to this. seattle came back with zip - no recent deaths reported. no record of a gen one in their population at all, although that alone isn't completely unheard of. the iid's only been around for a few decades, so it's by no means thorough. we have a few of the breed's eldest members catalogued, but the majority of the twenty or so gen ones still breathing tend to be a bit protective of their privacy. rumor has it that more than a couple of them are bona fide recluses who haven't been near a darkhaven for a century or more. i guess they feel they've earned some autonomy after about a thousand or more years of living. ain't that right, lucan?"

lucan, himself aged around nine hundred and not in the iid register, only grunted in response, his gray eyes narrowed on the computer monitors. "what about europe? anything coming back on the gen one that reichen mentioned?"

gideon banged out a lightning-fast sequence on his keyboard, burrowing into yet another secured software system like it was child's play. "shit. nope, nothing showing up there either. i gotta tell you, this level of silence is eerie as hell."

rio had to agree. "so, if no one's reporting gen one deaths, there could actually be more than just the two we know of so far."

"that's something we need to find out," lucan said.

"how many gen ones are registered in the iid across all breed locations, gideon?"

the warrior ran a quick search. "i've got seven between the states and europe. i'm sending the report of names and darkhaven affiliations to the printer now."

when the single-page listing came off the laser, gideon swiveled around and handed it to lucan. he looked it over. "most of these names are familiar to me. i know of a couple more that aren't listed. tegan can probably come up with a couple more too." he put the list of data down on the meeting table so that rio and the others could have a look. "any gen one names you see missing from that list?"

rio and chase shook their heads.

"sergei yakut," niko murmured. "i saw him once in siberia when i was a kid. he was the first gen one i ever knew - hell, the only one, until i came to boston and met lucan and tegan. yakut's name is not on this list."

"you think you could find him if you had to?" lucan asked. "assuming he's not already some long years dead, that is."

nikolai chuckled. "sergei yakut is one mean son of a bitch. too mean for death. i'm willing to bet he's still alive, and yeah, i think i could probably locate him if he is."

"good," lucan said, his expression dark. "i want to get a handle on this fast. just in case we are looking at a potential serial situation, we need to get names and locations of every gen one in the population."

"i'm sure the enforcement agency knows of a few more than what we have here," chase added. "i've still got one or two friends left over there. maybe someone knows something or can point me to someone who does."

lucan nodded. "yeah. check it out, then. but i know i don't need to tell you to keep your cards close when you're dealing with them. you may have a few friends in the agency, but the order sure as shit doesn't. and no offense to you, harvard, but i trust those useless darkhaven ass-kissers about as far as i can drop-kick them."

lucan turned a serious look on rio. "as for the other potential you brought up - that the ancient may be revived and being used to breed a new line of first generation vampires?" he shook his head and exhaled a low curse. "nightmare scenario, my friend. but it could very well be a solid one."

"if it is," rio said, "then we'd better hope we get a lead on it soon. and that we're not a couple of decades behind the bastard."