Read Online Deeper Than Midnight by Lara Adrián - Free Book Online

shuttered windows that blocked the scant midday light, a winter storm howled. Wind and snow gusted off the Atlantic, buffeting the glass and shaking the shingles as it whipped up over the steep rocks of his island lair. The tall alpine evergreens surrounding his large estate whistled and moaned as the gale slammed westward, heading toward the mainland, just a few miles away from the isolated crag he now called home.
    Dragos relished the fury of the storm that raged outside. He felt a similar tempest churning inside him every time he thought about the Order and the strikes they’d made against his operation. He wanted them to feel the lash of his anger, to know that when he came to collect his vengeance—and he would, very soon—it would be blood-soaked and complete. He would give no quarter, grant no mercy whatsoever.
    He was still ruminating over the plans he had for Lucan and his heretofore unbreachable, secret Boston compound when a polite rap sounded on the closed doors of his study.
    “What is it?” he barked, his temper as short as his patience was thin.
    One of his Minions opened the door. She was pretty and young, with her strawberry blond hair and dewy, peaches-and-cream face. He’d spotted her waiting tables in a podunk fishing town a couple of weeks ago and decided she might prove amusing to him back at his lair.
    And so she had.
    Dragos had fed upon her behind a restaurant Dumpster that reeked of fish guts and brine. She’d put up a struggle at first, scratching at his face and kicking him in the moments before his bite had fully taken hold of her delicate throat. She’d let out a short scream and tried to put her knee into his balls.
    He raped her for that, brutally, repeatedly, and with pleasure. Then he’d drained her almost to the point of death and made her what she was now—his Minion, selfless, devoted, utterly enslaved to him. She no longer resisted anything he demanded of her, no matter how depraved.
    The girl entered his study with a demure incline of her head. “I have this morning’s mail from your box on the mainland, Master.”
    “Excellent,” he murmured, shadowing her as she walked in with a handful of envelopes and placed them on his large desk in the center of the grand room.
    When she pivoted to face him, her expression was bland but receptive, the hallmark look of a Minion awaiting its Master’s next command. If he told her to drop to her knees and suck him off then and there, she’d do it without the slightest hesitation. She would respond with equal obedience if he told her to pick up the silver letter opener and slice it across her own throat.
    Dragos cocked his head and studied her, wondering which of the two scenarios would amuse him more. He was about to settle on one when his eye strayed to a large white vellum envelope sitting atop the rest of his incoming mail on the desk. The Boston return address and handwritten calligraphy on the front of the invitation captured his full attention.
    He dismissed the Minion with a bored flick of his wrist.
    Seating himself in the thick leather cushions of his desk chair as the girl quietly exited the study, he picked up the white envelope and smiled, brushing his fingers across the carefully hand-lettered script that spelled out the alias he’d been using in human circles of late.
    Dragos had assumed so many false identities over the centuries of his existence, among both his own Breed kind and humans, he hardly bothered to keep track anymore. It no longer mattered; his time of hiding who he was, and what he was capable of, had nearly reached its end. He was so close now. Never mind the recent interference of the Order. Their efforts to thwart him were insignificant, and had come too late as well.
    The holiday party announcement in his hand was just another step along his path to triumph. He’d been courting the junior senator from Massachusetts for the better part of a year now, tracking the ambitious young politician’s every move