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

and ensuring that the pockets of the senator’s campaign coffers remained more than amply full.
    The human believed he was destined for greatness, and Dragos was doing everything he could to see that he climbed as high and as fast as possible. All the way to the White House, if he had anything to say about it.
    Dragos opened the envelope and scanned the details of the invitation. It was to be an exclusive event, a high-priced dinner and charity fundraiser for the senator’s power-broker pals, not to mention his most influential—and most generous—campaign contributors. He wouldn’t miss this party for the world. In fact, he could hardly stand the wait.
    In just a few more nights, he would tilt the table so far in his favor, no one would be able to stop him from seeing his vision through to its fruition. Certainly not the humans. They would be clueless until the very end, just as he intended.
    The Order wouldn’t be able to stop him either. He was making certain of that even now, having sent one of his Minion pawns out to retrieve the specialized weapons he needed to combat Lucan and his warriors in this new brand of warfare and to ensure that none in the Order would be left standing to get in his way again.
    As he set the senator’s invitation back down on the desk, his laptop computer chimed with an incoming email message from an untraceable free service. Right on schedule, Dragos thought, as he clicked to open the report from his Minion in the field. The message was simple and succinct, just what he’d expect from a former military serviceman.
Assets located .
Initial contact successful .
Moving forward with retrieval as planned .
    There was no need to reply. The Minion knew his mission objectives, and for security purposes, the email address would already be deactivated on the other end. Dragos deleted the message from his in box and leaned back in his chair.
    Outside, the winter squall continued to bluster. He settled back and closed his eyes, listening to its fury in a state of satisfied calm, content with the knowledge that all the pieces of his grand plan were at last falling into place.
    His name was Dragos, and soon every man, woman, and child—Breed and human alike—would bow to him as their overlord and king.
    Everything had changed.
    That was the thought that had been drumming around in Corinne’s head from the moment she and Hunter arrived in Detroit the next evening.
    Decades of imprisonment in Dragos’s laboratories had left her struggling to adapt to countless new changes and advancements in the world she once knew, from the way people talked and dressed, to how they lived and worked and traveled. From the moment of her release, Corinne had felt like she’d somehow drifted into another plane of reality, a stranger lost in a strange future world.
    But nothing had struck so close to the bone as the feeling she had as she and Hunter left the airport in a car provided by the Order and made the drive into the city to her parents’ Darkhaven. The vibrant downtown she remembered was no more. Along the river, land that had been open spaces was now crowded with buildings—some sleekly modern, lights glowing from high-rise offices; other structures appearing long vacant, derelict and broken. Only a handful of people strolled the streets, shuffling quickly along the main avenue, past the lightless corridors of neglect.
    Even in the dark, the dichotomy of the Detroit landscape was shocking, unbelievable. Block by block, it looked as if progress had smiled on one lot of land while spitting on another.
    She didn’t realize how worried she was until Hunter brought the large black sedan to a stop in front of the moonlit Darkhaven estate she once called home.
    “My God,” she whispered from her seat beside him in the car as relief washed over her. “It’s still here. I’m finally home …”
    But even the Darkhaven looked different from what she recalled. Corinne fumbled to unclasp her confining seat