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.With any luck, the savage son of a bitch was long dead.The other alternative was a scenario no one, Breed or human, would want toimagine.Dante cleared his throat in the long stretch of silence, his tone goingserious. Listen, Rio.Whatever your deal was these past months you ve beenAWOL, it s good to have you back in Boston.We re all glad you re back. Rio nodded stiffly as he met the warrior s eyes.No sense telling Dante oranyone else that his return was only temporary.The last thing the Orderneeded was a liability like him in the ranks.No doubt they d alreadydiscussed that subject when Gideon alerted them about Rio s return.Dante met his gaze in the rearview. You ready to roll, amigo? Yeah, Rio said. I m more than ready. The metallic clack of a lock being freed echoed like a gunshot against thetunnel of rough-hewn granite walls.The door was old, the oiled wood as darkas pitch and as aged as the stone that had been hollowed out of the earth tocreate the long tunnel and the locked chamber secreted at its end.But here was where the primitiveness of the place ended.Beyond the stone and wood and crude iron locks was a laboratory equippedwith the finest state-of-the-art technology.It had evolved over the years,Page 120 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlemploying the best science and robotics that money could buy.The staff ofhumans operating the facility had been collected from some of the mostadvanced biological institutions in the nation.They were Minions now, theirminds enslaved, loyalty unquestioningly ensured.All for one purpose.A single individual, unlike any that existed in all the world.That individual waited at the end of the tunneled corridor, behind theelectronic quadruple-bolted steel door.Inside was a cell constructedspecifically to hold a man who was no man at all, but a vampiric, aliencreature from a planet far different from the one he inhabited now.He was an Ancient the last remaining forebear of the hybrid race known asthe Breed.Many thousands of years old, he was more powerful than an army ofhumans, even kept as he was currently, in a managed state of near starvation.The hunger weakened him, as intended, but it also pissed him off, and rage wasalways a factor when it came to controlling a powerful creature like the onelifting its hairless,glyph -riddled head within the cell.Bars of highly concentrated ultraviolet light caged the cell in two-inchincrements, more effective than the strongest steel.The Ancient would nottest them; he d already done that years ago and nearly lost his right arm fromthe resulting solar burns.He was masked to keep him calm, and to protect hiseyes from the intensity of his UV prison.He was naked because there was noneed for modesty here, and because it was crucial that his keeper be able tomonitor even the most subtle changes in thedermaglyphsthat covered every inchof his alien skin.As for the robotic restraints on the creature s neck, limbs, and torso, theywere in place as preparation for the day s assorted fluid and tissueextractions. Hello, Grandfather, drawled the one who held the Ancient prisoner for thepast fifty-odd years.He himself was very old by human standards easily fourhundred if he was a day.Not that he kept track anymore, and not that itmattered in the least.As one of the Breed, he appeared in the prime of hisyouth.With the Ancient kept secretly, and successfully, under his control allthis time, he felt like a god. Yesterday s test results, Master. Page 121 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlOne of the humans who served him handed him a file of reports.They didn tcall him by name; no one did.There were none around who knew who he trulywas.He d been born the son of Dragos, his sire a first generation Breed malefathered by the very creature contained within the UV prison cell built inthis underground lair.Birthed in secret and sent away to be raised bystrangers, it had taken him many long years to finally understand his purpose.Longer still to get his hands on the prize that would lift him to greatness. Did you have a pleasant rest? he idly asked his prisoner, as he closed thefile of test results and readings.The creature didn t answer, just peeled its lips back and breathed inslowly, air hissing through the large, elongated fangs.He d stopped speaking about a decade ago, whether from madness, anger, ordefeat, his keeper didn t know.Nor did he particularly care.There was nolove between them.The Ancient, despite being close kin, was primarily a meansto an end. We ll begin now, the keeper told his prisoner.He entered a code into the computer that would command the robotics in thecell to commence with the extractions.The tests were painful, plentiful, andprolonged& but all necessary.Body fluids were collected, tissue samplesharvested.So far, the experiments had yielded only minor successes.But therewas promise, and that was enough.By the time the last specimen was retrieved and catalogued, the Ancientslumped with exhaustion in the cell.Its huge body quivered and spasmed as itsadvanced physiology worked to heal the damage inflicted by the procedure. Just one more process left to complete, the keeper said.It was this last one that was most crucial and most primal for the vampirerecuperating behind the UV light bars of his cell.Page 122 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlLocked within another, more rudimentary prison, was a heavily sedated humanfemale, recently captured off the streets.She too was naked, her dyed blackgoth-styled hair cut away entirely to better expose her neck.Her eyes wereunfocused, pupils dilated from the drugs injected into her system a shortwhile ago.She didn t scream or struggle as she was led out of her confinement by twoMinions and into the main holding area of the laboratory.Her small breastsjiggled with each shuffling step she took, and her head lolled back on hershoulders, revealing the little teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark she boreunderneath her chin.Her bare feet moved listlessly as she was placed intostirrups on an automated seat that would carry her past the UV barrier anddirectly into the center of the Ancient s cell.She hardly flinched as the chair tipped back, positioning her for what wasto come.Inside the cell, the restraints on the huge male loosened slightly,freeing him to move in on her like the predator he was. You will feed now, the keeper told him. And then you will breed on her. CHAPTERFourteenIt felt goddamn strange to be in the compound again.But as strange as itwas, Rio found it even more surreal to be entering his private apartmentswithin the Order s subterranean headquarters just outside Boston proper.Dante and Chase had gone off to the tech lab as soon as they arrived,leaving Rio to contend with Dylan on his own.He supposed the warriors werealso giving him a chance to reacquaint himself privately with his old life theone Eva had stolen from him a year ago with her betrayal.He hadn t been inPage 123 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlhis quarters at the compound for a long time, but the place looked exactly ashe remembered it
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