MatchUp

THRILLERS COME IN ALL FORMS. The number of subgenres is staggering, and this story is representative of one of the most popular.

Paranormal.

Lara Adrian has made a name for herself in this world where her books are huge bestsellers. True to his namesake (as the son of Anne Rice), Christopher Rice cut his teeth on dark suspense, before shifting to romance. Teaming these two together seemed like an exciting idea, but it also posed a few challenges. The timeline of Lara’s long-running Midnight Breed series spans twenty-five years in the future. Chris sets his stories and characters in the present. So, right away, the clock had to be turned back to a time when Lara’s vampires were unknown inside her imagined world.

But that played right into their hands.

Chris’s initial idea was to have his Desire Exchange series character, Lilliane, attacked by someone on her home turf of New Orleans where Lara’s character, Lucan Thorne, could witness both the altercation and Lilliane’s extraordinary powers.

From there, everything fell right into place.

Lara wrote the first draft, then Chris rewrote and edited. The title is a bit of an inside thing. Midnight from Lara’s long-running series. Flame from the candles that symbolically form a huge part of Chris’s fictional world.

The result is a gem.

Midnight Flame.

MIDNIGHT FLAME

THUNDER SHOOK THE TINY FRENCH quarter bookshop as Lucan Thorne handed his cash to the young woman behind the register. Rain had been hammering New Orleans since he arrived from Boston a couple of days ago. As the evening crept toward midnight, the deluge showed no signs of letting up anytime soon either. He didn’t mind getting wet. Besides, this last-minute stop for a special gift before returning home would be worth the trouble and then some.

The perky blond clerk made change for him and handed it over along with his purchase. “You sure picked a bad night to be out shopping. The city’s a lot more fun when the weather’s nice and everyone’s out having a good time.” When he reached for the paper gift bag, she brushed her fingers over his. “You gonna be in town for a while? I’d love to show you what I mean.”

Under the fall of his damp black hair, Lucan smiled, baring just the tips of his fangs. “I’m not really a people person.”

The human sucked in a sharp breath.

She let go of the bag as if it burned her fingers, blinking fast, her mortal brain no doubt struggling to process what she imagined she’d just seen.

“Thanks for your help, Krystal,” he said, his fangs now retracted as he slipped the bag into a large inside pocket under his black trench coat.

“Uh, sure.”

She gave him a befuddled wave as he left the store.

As he stepped out to the wet street, he heard the locks on the shop door tumble closed behind him. Revealing himself, or his kind’s, existence to the humans living alongside the Breed wasn’t something Lucan chanced often. As one of the eldest members of his kind, he knew better than anyone how critical it was for the vampire nation to maintain its secret from mankind.

As commander of the Order, a cadre of Breed warriors who’d pledged their arms and their lives to protecting the fragile peace with their mortal neighbors, there was nothing Lucan wouldn’t do to ensure the security of both man and Breed alike. And if he thought for one second that the clerk inside the bookstore was any kind of threat to those goals, he’d have mind-scrubbed her on the spot.

Right now, all he wanted to do was get back to the Order’s headquarters in Boston, where the rest of his team, and his new Breedmate, Gabrielle, awaited his return. After two days in New Orleans, smoothing the ruffled feathers of Breed civilian leaders worried that recent problems in Boston might spill over into other major cities unless the Order got them under control, he was eager to be done with his diplomatic duties. He itched to be back in combat with his warriors. More than that, he couldn’t wait to be back in bed with his sweet Gabrielle.

The book he’d bought was a present for her. A signed first-edition novel by one of her favorite authors whose bestselling books had proclaimed New Orleans the vampire capital of the world and ignited a global obsession. Hell, decades later, women were still swooning over that certain French bloodsucker who was as sinister as he was sophisticated and seductive.

Personally, Lucan didn’t understand the appeal.

And, yeah, maybe he didn’t particularly appreciate competing with that fictional fantasy where Gabrielle was concerned either. But if the book made his mate happy, who was he to disagree?

Still, his ego needed some reassurance that his fangs were the only ones his Breedmate wanted at her neck.

Not to mention elsewhere.

Smiling as he pictured all the ways he and Gabrielle would celebrate his homecoming, he set out to find a lingerie shop to buy her something skimpy. Maybe something with tiny buttons he could bite off one by one as he undressed her.

Tilting his head down against the sluicing rain, he pushed deeper into the Quarter. He didn’t have much company tonight. The storm had driven all but the most stalwart or inebriated tourists indoors. The restaurants and bars were packed and lively, but the streets outside were practically empty. Only a few shops remained open. Lucan walked past half a dozen T-shirt stalls and several more boutiques hawking everything from gourmet foods to sex toys. He wandered without a plan, trusting he’d eventually spot a window full of the frilly lace things Gabrielle liked.

How he ended up near a small, tucked-away courtyard filled with banana trees and a babbling fountain at its center he had no idea. Inside the courtyard, a coffee shop employee was just closing up for the night, dodging past the tarp-covered cast-iron tables and chairs outside. Of the handful of businesses that called the courtyard home, only one appeared to be open. Through the relentless curtain of pelting rain, Lucan’s acute Breed vision caught the hand-painted wooden sign above the door.

FEU DE COEUR.

A candle shop, he guessed, noting the small gold flame etched above the logo on the weathered wood. Even through the rain he could smell flame-warmed wax. His keen nose seemed to detect something more, but it was impossibly delicate.

Elusive.

And now that he was staring closer at the small shop, even the storefront seemed hard to define. It wobbled in a peculiar way, seeming to fade in and out of his sight as if it wasn’t completely solid.

Or not quite real?

Curious, Lucan started toward the shop.

He didn’t get far.

Before he could cross the small courtyard, he heard the sound of rushing footsteps somewhere on the street outside.

“There she is. Let’s get her.”

A male voice, issuing orders in a low tone that only one of Lucan’s kind could pick up from such a sizable distance.

“You knock the bitch down, Danny. I’ll grab the case.”

The two pairs of footsteps sped up now, heavy boots running hard through the downpour and coming his way.

Lucan didn’t like any of it. In a blink, he was out of the courtyard and back on the street, just in time to see a pair of rangy human males beating feet behind a tall, full-figured, and elegantly dressed black woman who was making her way up the street toward the courtyard.

She toted a briefcase in her right hand.

The case her pair of fast-approaching attackers were intent on taking unless he stopped them.

Hadn’t he just been thinking how ready he was to be back on patrol?

Dispatching a couple of idiot mortal thieves was child’s play, but he’d gladly take it.

Except he didn’t get the chance.

No sooner had he moved to take action, intending to leapfrog the woman and position himself between her and the two assailants, than she pivoted on her heels and faced off against the pair.

Was she crazy?

One of the two rushed her.

She tossed him aside with a sweep of her free hand. She was superstrong. Inhumanly so. A spray of gold dust shot out of her fingertips, trailing after her dispatched attacker like an arc of delicate glitter.

Who, or what, the hell was she?

Still, there were two assailants and only one of her. And despite the fact that she was something Lucan had never seen before, she was still a woman and he wasn’t about to stand by and let her take on these hoods alone. Calling upon his Breed genetics, he moved in front of her faster than any human eye could track. Combat instinct raged through his veins. His fangs punched out of his gums, firing his dark-gray irises to coal-bright amber behind his narrowing, cat’s-eye pupils. He grabbed the second attacker by the collar and held the man aloft, his boots several inches off the ground. The man screamed when he saw Lucan’s face, making a frantic, but futile, attempt to scramble loose from his hold. Across the street, his buddy staggered to his feet and stared slack-jawed. Then he bolted, leaving his comrade to face the music alone.

“Let me go. Please. I don’t wanna die.”

Lucan ignored his struggling, whimpering quarry and turned his head to look at the woman behind him. She was beautiful, with an ageless face and deep brown eyes that seemed fathomless in the darkness.

“You okay?”

She nodded, studying him in guarded silence.

“Please, let me go,” the human whined. “I’s only doin’ a job, that’s all. Me and my friend were hired to jump the lady and see what happened. I swear, we weren’t gonna hurt her.”

The woman scowled.

Her lovely face held an unearthly, dangerous rage. “Who told you to do this? Who wanted to see what would happen?”

The answer came a moment later, though not from the hired thug swinging at the end of Lucan’s grasp.

Headlights blinked on from down an alley across the street.

The twin high beams cut through the rain as a dark van rocketed out of the side street and swung past them in a scream of burning rubber.

The lone driver held a video camera in his hand, its tiny red recording light trained on Lucan’s face as the vehicle sped away.

LILLIANE’S FAMOUS TEMPER SMOLDERED AS she watched the van disappear into the rain-filled night, its taillights swallowed up by the darkness. She cut a glance at the vampire standing next to her.

“Where did you come from?”

He grunted, sounding as displeased as she was. “I might ask you the same thing. What’s your name? How did you end up on the radar of this fool and his friend with the camera?”

Her would-be assailant had since fainted dead away and now hung limp in the big vampire’s grasp. She pursed her lips, her fingers curling tighter around the jeweled handle of her briefcase.

“Only a few people know about the kind of business I do around here and this guy’s not one of ’em. Trust me.”

“Trust is earned.”

He released the unconscious human, letting the man slump to the wet pavement. Gray eyes, shot with amber sparks, met her gaze through the relentless deluge. As she watched, his pupils transformed from narrow vertical slits to rounded pools of black. Behind his lips the points of the big male’s fangs gleamed diamond-bright.

“Your name,” he said again, more demand than inquiry.

“Lilliane.”

“Your last name?” he asked, bearing his fangs slightly.

“Smith,” she lied, summoning a swell of emotion she knew would fill her eyes with a brief shimmer of gold.

He seemed dazed by this display for a second, then he introduced himself.

“Lucan Thorne.”

She smirked. “Your kind isn’t the only thing that goes bump in the night, Mr. Thorne.”

He frowned, clearly taken aback. “You’re not Breed.”

“No.”

“But you are immortal.”

“That remains to be seen.”

In truth, she was uncertain just how to classify what she and the twenty-three other Radiants like her actually were. On some days she felt special. Blessed by her ability to leap several stories into the air, to send would-be attackers flying backward with just a flick of her wrist. She didn’t age. She didn’t get sick. All wonderful things, right?

But on other days, she felt cursed by the fact that a decision she’d made decades before had robbed her of the ability to feel anything close to romantic love for another being, mortal or immortal. She wasn’t alone in this struggle. There were twenty-three others just like her, extraordinary creatures with extraordinary powers. She served as their mentor and mother, even though she played no role in their creation. But none of them could agree on what to call their condition, just that the exact same chain of events had made each one of them what they were now.

Lucan stared at her in silent contemplation before glancing down at the unconscious human at his feet. “Lilliane Smith, whoever or whatever you are, it’s obvious that you and I have a big problem here. We need to talk.”

As much as she wanted to deny it, the Breed warrior was right. “Come with me. Let’s get out of the rain.”

She stepped into the small courtyard, Lucan Thorne walking behind her, carrying the fainted human over his shoulder.

“This way,” she said, leading him to the candle shop nestled in the corner of the square.

The vampire cleared his throat. “I’d rather we go somewhere a bit more discreet, Lilliane. Someplace secure.”

“We won’t find anywhere more discreet or secure in all the city,” she assured him. “Or all the world, probably.”

She’d been coming to this place when the pair of men assaulted her. And while the shop’s enigmatic proprietor, Bastian Drake, wasn’t likely to welcome this late-night intrusion, the fact that the store’s light was still burning in the window, the fact that the shop itself hadn’t disappeared from sight altogether by way of his powerful magic, was signal enough that she and her unwanted new acquaintance could take shelter inside for a while.

She opened the door and led Lucan Thorne inside. Shrugging out of her soaked raincoat, she indicated an empty wooden chair and watched as the vampire dumped the human onto the seat.

“Are we alone here?” he asked.

“Alone enough.”

She noticed how his shrewd gaze surveyed the cramped space with its rug-covered, old wood floors and the dozens of thick candles on display in unusual burnt-umber glass containers. “I know the owner of this shop. We won’t be disturbed.”

“Considering how the rest of this evening’s gone already, you’d better be damned sure of that.”

She laid down her briefcase. “Suffice to say, the proprietor isn’t exactly what you’d call a people person.”

The remark earned a cryptic smirk from the massive Breed male.

“Strange place,” he said, strolling over to a collection of candles shelved on the far wall. He brought one to his nose and sniffed shallowly. Then he jerked his head away, as if his preternatural senses told him he wasn’t merely smelling poured wax and some added fragrance, but something else.

Something primal, raw. Otherworldly.

“Smells terrible, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“That and then some.” He returned the candle to its shelf. “The presentation had me fooled.”

“That’s because it’s not for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The candle. It’s not meant for you. So to your nose it probably smells like pond water or something worse.”

“And the one it’s meant for? What will it smell like to them?”

Her eyes glazed over but held their natural color. “Ever been in love?”

“I am now.”

“Ah, you’re sweet.”

“I’m not talking about you.”

“And I wasn’t remotely serious, so sheathe those fangs, big boy. Is the love of your life a he or a she?”

“She.”

“She’s got a smell, right? A special smell. Not just the smell of her skin, but the way her skin smells when she’s flushed and ready for you, beckoning to you. It’s a smell that makes you feel like you’re in her arms no matter where you are when you smell it.”

“I suppose so.”

“If that candle was meant for you, that’s what it would smell like to you. Only none of these candles are meant for you, because you’re already with the love of your life. Or at least it sounds like it. But if you weren’t, and the love of your life was in your life, but you weren’t man enough to step up and try to make a move, or you had a hundred excuses why it wasn’t going to work and you shouldn’t even try, eventually, you might find yourself here, smelling her smell in one of those candles.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Or are you just humoring me? I’m not really sure how to handle skepticism from a vampire, so you’ll have to bear with me for a second.”

“I’ve got a question. If there isn’t a candle for me here, why’d this place appear to me at all?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe the guy who runs it wanted me to help you. Maybe that’s why I wound up in this courtyard right as you were attacked.”

His words gave a tense set to her jaw. “Let’s stop speculating and get back to the business at hand.”

“Fine. You going to tell me what’s in that fancy case of yours, or am I going to have to open it and see for myself?”

She saw no reason to lie. After all, as he’d pointed out, they shared a common problem tonight. Namely, both of them being revealed to the world as something other than human. She lifted the glossy leather briefcase and flipped the jeweled locks open. Holding the open case in her arms, she presented the contents to him.

He strode over to look at the half-dozen glowing jars, nestled safe in their cushioned sleeves inside the case. Their illumination seemed to startle the large warrior. He drew back, as wary as any solar-allergic being should be.

“Is that light captured inside them?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She glanced at the soft hues that burned like colored embers in the jars. “They hold the pure essence of true desire. That’s a force even more powerful than light. More powerful than most anything in this world, or the next.”

He swiveled his head and took in the scores of candles that surrounded them. “And your friend who runs this shop. How does he fit into the equation?”

“He’s not my friend.” Her jaw stiffened. “As for what he does, that’s a long story. And one best saved for another time.”

The unconscious man slouched in the chair across the room was beginning to rouse.

“I’ll just say this. I’ve got a little business I run that supplies him with what he needs to run his place. All my customers walk away happy. Most of his do too.”

“Most, huh?”

“Like I said, long story.”

Lucan cursed under his breath. “Long story or not, before this is all over tonight, you will tell me.”

She inclined her head, observing as he stalked toward the unconscious human and hoisted the man upright in the wooden chair. The man’s head lolled before finally facing Lucan. As soon as his bleary eyes opened, the human sucked in air and practically leapt off his seat in terror.

“Oh, God, no. I thought it was a nightmare.”

“That’s all it is,” Lucan said, placing his palm against the man’s sweaty brow. “A bad dream. Relax now.”

The human complied immediately.

His trembling ceased, along with his panicked stammering.

“What are you doing?” she asked, setting her briefcase down to draw up beside the vampire.

“I tranced him. He’ll tell us everything we ask.” Lucan turned his attention back on the calmed human. “You can start with your name.”

“Danny Boudreaux.”

Lucan glanced her way and she shrugged, signaling that the name meant nothing to her.

“What about your friend in the van, Danny? What’s his name?”

“I dunno. My friend Ricky—he knows him, not me.”

“Ricky is the other guy you were with tonight?”

Danny nodded.

“And what did Ricky tell you about the man with the camera?”

“He said the dude was offerin’ us fifty bucks to come with him and jump this lady he’s been watchin’ for a couple of months. Said he wanted to see what would happen if we got her good and pissed off.”

“You succeeded,” she muttered.

“There was supposed to be an extra hundred in it for us if we could grab the bitch’s briefcase away from her.”

“A lousy hundred dollars,” she said. “You don’t have the first idea what’s in these jars or what to do with it. And you’d spend the rest of your miserable life trying to figure it out.”

Lucan slanted her a look. “I don’t think it mattered to anyone what was inside it. The man with the camera knew the briefcase was important to you. He only wanted to test your reaction to the theft. He’s been watching you long enough to know your habits, where to find you.”

“What for? Just to make a feeble attempt to mug me?”

His face turned grim. “So he could capture the altercation on video. More specifically, your reaction.”

She arched a brow as a cold understanding settled on her. “Because whoever’s been watching me knew my reaction would be something more than human.”

He nodded. “And now he has both of us on video during the attack.”

“We need to get that camera.”

“The man who hired you, Danny. Do you know where we can find him?”

The human shook his head, his eyes closed, his mind still caught in the web of the trance. “I don’t know anything else. Ricky set it all up.”

Danny slumped and a cell phone screeched with a heavy metal ringtone. The grating noise filled the shop, although it didn’t seem to register with the dazed human at all. Lucan rifled through Danny’s pockets and found the bleating phone.

“Jackpot.”

He held the phone up, showing her the name on the screen.

Ricky.

He pushed the call to voice mail, silencing the racket. “We have everything we need now. I’ve got a plan.”

She pointed at Danny. “What are you going to do with him?”

He smirked. “Mind-scrub the little fuck, then toss him back in the gutter. When he comes to again in the morning, he’ll have one wicked hangover, but he won’t remember a thing that happened.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not a thing.”

She walked over and punched the human in the face.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Much. Let’s hear your plan, vampire.”

AFTER DUMPING DANNY IN A side alley a few blocks away from the candle shop, Lucan and Lilliane hailed a taxi and headed to the Bywater to find one Richard “Ricky” Dubois.

A quick call to Gideon, the Order’s resident computer genius at the Boston headquarters, had been all it took to gather a full dossier on Danny’s erstwhile partner in crime. The GPS tracer Gideon placed on Ricky’s cell-phone signal now led them straight to the small-time thief’s location outside a seedy bar down at the river. The place was packed, never mind that it was also dank and dilapidated, a squat redbrick eyesore sitting about as far off the tourist maps as you could get.

Lucan didn’t have to guess which of the huddled, drowned rats smoking blunts under the tattered awning at the bar’s entrance across the street was the human he needed to find. He could still picture Ricky’s slack-jawed stare from earlier tonight. Judging from the way he weaved and swayed on his feet, Ricky had been trying to take the edge off his tattered nerves. Better that he ended up here instead of running to the police station with his eyewitness account of paranormal happenings. Although, given Ricky Dubois’s rap sheet, Lucan doubted he would ever approach the authorities on a voluntary basis.

He paid the cab fare, then looked at Lilliane beside him. “You sure you’re ready to do this?”

“I’ve never been ready for most of the things that have happened to me, and yet here I am. Hunting lowlifes with a vampire. Next stop, Disneyland.”

“Yeah. You could be one of the attractions.”

“I feel like I should be offended by that.”

“I’ll let you make jokes about me stopping off at the blood bank for a snack if it makes you feel better. In the meantime, we’ve got work to do.”

He wasn’t used to bringing civilians along on patrols with him, least of all an unarmed woman of questionable powers who might slow him down. As one of the Breed he could traverse miles in mere minutes. He would have done so on this mission, but Lilliane had made it clear before they left the candle shop that this was her problem as much as his and she wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines. So, like it or not, and for the record he didn’t, he was saddled with a partner.

“I repeat,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Do it.”

They stepped out and the taxi rolled away.

He’d hoped to have the element of surprise on their side, but as they crossed the street, Ricky Dubois glanced over and spotted the incoming threat. His face paled to a ghostly shade of white.

Then he bolted.

Straight into the crowded bar.

“You take the front entrance,” he told Lilliane. “Flush him out toward the back. I’ll cover the rear of the building and make sure our little rat doesn’t slip his trap.”

She nodded and they split up.

He knew he didn’t have to wait and make sure she made it inside. The woman was strong and capable of handling herself. He only hoped she’d stick with the plan to collar Ricky so they could interrogate him, not coldcock the idiot into next week the way she’d done to Danny.

Not that he blamed her.

It wasn’t so long ago that his famous temper had ruled him too. He’d been angry at the world. Angry with himself for all the ways he’d failed in life, and for all the things he couldn’t change. Meeting Gabrielle had changed that. She changed him. He couldn’t help wondering if some of Lilliane’s fury might be from self-inflicted wounds as well.

In another place, another time, he might be interested to find out.

Right now, all he wanted to do was fix this situation, then get home to his mate and team.

Lilliane Smith’s problems were her own to solve.

Calling on his Breed genetics, he flashed past the crowd near the front entrance like nothing more than a chilled breeze. He was waiting at the bar’s back door when Ricky crashed through from inside and stumbled onto the rough gravel.

Lilliane emerged right behind him.

Her eyes glowed with that same unearthly fire she’d shown him when he first bared his fangs. For a moment the effect was so jarring, Lucan might have mistaken her for Breed.

But she was something else.

And this time she was truly pissed.

Lilliane pushed the human several feet in the air with a sweep of her hand. Screaming as he sailed high in the air, Ricky came down hard on a rickety old dock at the river’s edge. The rotting wood groaned from the crash, some of the boards cracking as they heaved and rocked over the dark water. Her hands fisted at her sides, she stalked forward onto the dock. Ricky’s wide eyes were locked on her in terror. Beneath him, the old dock swayed as he frantically crab-scrambled for the farthest edge. The wood started to break. The dock pitched violently to the side. Ricky lost his hold. The platform gave way, dumping him into the murky drink.

Only then did she pause.

No. More froze.

Watching, stock-still, as their quarry started swimming away.

Lucan plowed past her and dove in.

“YOU WANT TO TELL ME what that was about back there at the dock?” Lucan asked, shrugging out of his soaked black leather trench coat.

To avoid attracting any more attention, after fishing Ricky Dubois from the Mississippi they’d immediately brought the human to an abandoned house a few blocks away. Inside the neglected ruin that likely hadn’t seen inhabitants since Katrina, they’d conducted a tranced interrogation. He’d given them the name and address of the local private investigator who hired them tonight, but like his pal Danny, Ricky didn’t know how or why Lilliane had ended up on the PI’s radar.

Now, with Ricky mind-scrubbed and unconscious following his questioning, she watched as Lucan set his coat aside then pulled off his shirt and squeezed the foul water from his clothing. She couldn’t help noticing the complicated pattern of skin markings that danced and swirled over the Breed male’s torso and muscled arms. They weren’t tattoos, not the way their colors changed and moved.

There was a lot she didn’t know about his kind.

And vice versa.

Yet here they were, forced to work together to protect the secrets of both their people.

“I don’t swim,” she said, belatedly answering his question as to why she froze.

“All that power and badassery, but you don’t know how to swim?”

“I know how to swim. I said I don’t swim. Not anymore. Not since . . .”

Her words trailed off.

“Not since when?”

“Since I became what I am.”

“Which is?”

“I’m called a Radiant. Fifty-odd years ago I was just a woman. Mortal.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged nonchalantly, but the taste of regret hung bitter in her throat. “I made a terrible mistake. One I cannot correct.”

“Does your mistake have something to do with that strange candle shop back in the Quarter?”

She nodded, seeing no need to hide the facts from him. “One of those candles, the one meant for me. It found me. The shop. The man who runs it. The ghost who runs it. They all found me. Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.”

“Did you?”

“My heart’s desire was the white son of the family I cleaned house for. It was 1959. What do you think our chance of success would have been?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I lit it. And something came out of it I had no words for. I thought they were ghosts at first. But they weren’t. They were more like a force, a force from the spirit world itself. I was supposed to give myself over to it. It filled me, literally. It filled me with a desire to go to him, to make my feelings known. Feelings I knew he shared. But I was one of the few people strong enough to resist. As a result, I was changed forever. Changed into this.”

With a flick of her wrist she caused the remains of the nearest rotting door to slam shut on its weak hinges. For added effect she flicked her index finger against the ball of her thumb and sent a little trail of gold dust shimmering through the humid air.

“It’s like the force that came out of the candle that night is trapped in me forever. But it’s more than that. I was offered a chance at true love, and I denied it. I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to risk everything. This,” she said, gesturing to herself, “is my punishment. Alive, but loveless. My powers, my gifts, if you can call them that, I use them to help others find their true desire. But as for me I can’t love anymore. Not like that anyway. Not like I loved him.”

“What was his name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

His hard gray eyes softened as he listened to her pitiful history. “No wonder you’re mad at yourself and the world. If I didn’t have Gabrielle, if I had lost the chance to have her in my life as my mate.” He blew out a sharp curse and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lilliane. For everything you’ve been through. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem right. To have your entire existence shaped by one choice like that.”

She wasn’t accustomed to compassion. Lord, it was so rare she hardly knew what to do with it anymore. She spent most of her time caring for the other Radiants. Bossing them around. Cautioning them against leaping seven-story buildings in broad daylight or getting their aliases confused. To suddenly have her needs addressed by this inhuman predator whose reputation for cold justice and a general lack of mercy was legend, even among her kind, left her at a total loss for words.

She watched in awkward silence as he pulled something out of his trench coat, his dark brow furrowed, his broad mouth flattened in a dismayed line. From out of a sodden paper bag, he withdrew a waterlogged book.

His eyes were filled with disappointment.

“A souvenir for your lady?” she asked.

“A novel by one of her favorite authors. A signed first edition. Now it’s only fit for the trash.”

She caught the author’s name on the jacket and smiled. “I know some people who might be able to help. The business I run, we’ve made a lot of contacts in the city over the years. Maybe when this is over tonight, I can arrange to procure you another copy.”

He stared at her for a long moment, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “You’re a good person, Lilliane Smith. Better than you seem to believe.”

Reluctantly, she allowed a rare smile to curve her mouth too. “I have a feeling the same could be said of you, Lucan Thorne.”

He chuckled as he donned his wrung-out shirt, then tossed his wet trench coat and the ruined book onto a pile of rubbish in the corner of the decrepit house.

“What do you say, partner? Ready to go conduct a breaking and entering on Ricky’s friend with the camera?”

She nodded. “Let’s get out of here. Oh, and Lucan?”

He stared at her.

“It’s Williams. Lilliane Williams.”

ALTHOUGH THE PEELING, STENCILED SIGNAGE on the door of Harold T. Grainger’s office in the Ninth Ward proclaimed him a private investigator, Lucan was willing to bet the man collected just as many fees for skip tracing and bounty hunting than he did legitimate investigative work.

Sitting alone in his dingy office, Grainger yammered on the phone at his desk with his back to the door, oblivious, as Lucan silently tripped the lock and he and Lilliane entered.

“I’m telling you, this footage is the real deal, Bart. The woman threw a grown man halfway across the street with one hand and the big dude in black leather who came to her rescue had a mouth full of fangs and eyes like a pair of glowing coals. What? No, I’m not smoking something, wiseass. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes and I’ve got the damned footage to prove it right here in front of me.” He leaned back in his brown leather swivel chair and chuckled, pausing to munch on a half-eaten Slim Jim. “Look, the point is there’ve been rumors about this Desire Exchange place for years and I’m willing to bet the house this woman’s part of it.” He paused, listening. “Who cares if I don’t own a house? Goddammit. Listen. Never mind how I managed to get the video. You want a piece of this action, or not?”

Lucan barely contained his growl as he stole farther into the office. Beside him, Lilliane radiated anger too, all of it focused on the sleazy opportunist seated a few paces in front of them.

Under the glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights, Grainger’s pale, balding head gleamed like a sweaty cue ball as he rocked in his creaky chair.

“So, what do you say, Bart? I called you first because we’re friends. Wanted to give you first dibs, but I gotta tell ya. This video is not gonna come cheap. Soon as I can link this woman to one of those rich bitches who head out into the swamp to have their deepest fantasies realized, or some such shit, this whole thing’s gonna blow up. But for now, I’ll be generous. I’m looking for twenty grand, no less.” A pause. “What do you mean you want a clip to prove it’s legit? I wouldn’t shit you, Bart. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sure. I can send you a couple of frames. Tell you what. I’ll e-mail—”

Some instinct must have finally clued Grainger into the fact that he wasn’t alone in the dank little office. With the skinny tube of processed meat clenched between his molars like a cigar, he swiveled slowly in his chair.

All the color drained from his jowly face.

Lucan gave him a flash of fangs. “You have something that belongs to us.”

Grainger’s mouth opened in mute shock, his eyes bulging in their sockets. The gnawed stick of salted meat tumbled into his lap, along with his cell phone. Lucan severed the connection to the man on the other end of the line with a sharp mental command. Grainger fumbled with the center drawer of his desk, pulling out a revolver, barely holding onto the weapon in his shaking hands.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” Lucan asked, confident that the terrified human wouldn’t be able to squeeze off an accurate shot, much less one that could stop a member of the Breed.

Grainger’s fearful, bug-eyed gaze bounced between Lucan and Lilliane. “What the hell are you two?”

Lilliane’s answering smile was cold. “We’re your worst nightmare.”

Lucan nodded. “If you’re lucky, when you wake up tomorrow, that’s all this will be.”

“Fuck both of you,” Grainger shouted, overcome with a sudden burst of bravado and stupidity.

The barrel of the gun wobbled, his finger tightening on the trigger.

With his mind, Lucan whisked the weapon from the human’s hands and sent it clattering away. Grainger let out a high-pitched scream and threw himself out of his chair, frantically crawling for the door. Lilliane planted the heel of her boot in the center of the mortal’s back, pinning him to the floor.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “We need to have a little talk about why you’ve been following me.”

“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t you I was following,” Grainger sputtered, his cheek mashed into the filthy commercial tile. “Not at first, that is.”

They exchanged looks.

“Explain,” Lucan growled.

“I was on a job. Tailing a cheating husband around the Quarter.” His terrified eyes rolled up to look at Lilliane. “That’s when I noticed you and that fancy briefcase you always carried with you. I saw you going into a candle shop with it one day. And while I was watching you, I swear to God I saw the place just disappear.”

“What else did you see?” Lilliane asked.

The investigator squirmed under her foot, but she gave him no room to break loose.

“What else did you see?” Lucan demanded.

Grainger wheezed beneath her boot heel. “I started following you after that. Shadowed you for a couple of weeks. And I saw you go into that same shop again. Feu de Coeur. Except the shop was in a different place than before. An entirely different part of the city. And then I knew I wasn’t imagining things. Something odd was going on. I knew there was something odd about you. And I figured it had—”

“You figured it had what?” she asked.

“Look, we’ve all heard the rumors. Some place out in the swamp where rich folks go to get their jollies on. Either it’s some club or some weird cult. But they do all sorts of crazy stuff. Some folks come back saying it’s the drugs they were given. Others, they say it’s some crazy shit. People who can lay their hands on them and make their fantasies come true. Almost like they’re transporting them to another world. Look, I didn’t make this stuff up, I’m just saying that is a great story. We’re talking Pulitzer quality.”

Lucan grunted. “Since when do third-rate PIs give a damn about winning Pulitzers?”

“Fame is fame, my friend,” Grainger said.

“And so you decided to hire a couple of stooges to knock the lady over because you didn’t have the balls to get your own hands dirty?”

“I needed to know what would happen.”

“You needed to see if you could profit from it,” she said. “Who were you planning to sell your tape to?”

“You,” Grainger said. “I figured I could sell it to you, to protect whatever secrets you were keeping.”

Lilliane’s eyes narrowed in fury. “You weren’t out to expose the Desire Exchange. And you couldn’t have cared less about fame. All you cared about was blackmail?”

“I never expected to see everything I did tonight,” Grainger said. “I never expected to see a vampire.”

Lucan reached down and freed the man from under Lilliane’s heel. Holding him by the throat, he made sure Grainger got up close and personal with his razor-sharp canines and smoldering amber eyes. “Take a good look, because my fangs are going to be the last thing you see tonight. Right before they shred your carotid.”

“Oh, God, no. I’m begging you.”

“Then you’d better give us every bit of video you took tonight. And if I find out you already sold it to anyone or made a bunch of copies—”

“I swear, I didn’t.”

“I don’t believe him,” she said. “I vote you sever his artery anyway.”

Grainger’s eyes popped in horror. “I’m telling you the truth. You’ve got to believe me. The only footage is what’s on the card in my camera. Please, don’t kill me.”

Lucan wouldn’t murder a civilian in cold blood, no matter how tempted he might be.

He glanced at Lilliane and she arched a knowing brow. “Oh, come on, vampire. Can’t we just play with the mortal for a little while?”

He knew her well enough now to realize she was only kidding, but Grainger didn’t know that. He’d already pissed on himself once, but from the way he trembled now, Lucan wouldn’t be surprised if Grainger wet his pants all over again. Before his grin could betray him, Lucan reached out and pressed his palm to the human’s forehead.

The touch put the man into a deep trance.

“You’re no fun,” she grumbled.

“Remind me never to piss you off, Radiant.” He nodded to the video camera lying on Grainger’s desk. “You grab the memory card out of that camera and I’ll make sure we’re not leaving anything else behind here in the office.”

As she moved to carry out his instructions, Lucan called Gideon at the Order’s headquarters and explained what happened. “Grainger swears he didn’t make copies, but that’s not good enough for me. Can you wipe out all the video files he has on his computers?”

“You seriously did not just ask me that. I can do this blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Just do it,” Lucan said. “I’ll give you five minutes to make it happen. I’m overdue at home and I’ve got a plane to catch before sunrise.”

THANKFULLY, GIDEON ONLY NEEDED THREE minutes.

With the video camera memory card confiscated and Grainger’s hard drives infested with a virus that no one without a PhD in advanced computer science could untangle, Lucan and Lilliane stepped out of the private investigator’s office and locked up behind them as stealthily as they’d arrived.

“Mission accomplished,” she said as they paused together on the darkened street. She held the small video card between her thumb and forefinger. “To think this little piece of circuitry could’ve proven a disaster for us both.”

He arched a brow. “Not to mention for your candle maker and his unusual shop. And this Desire Exchange place.”

“You heard the man. The Desire Exchange is just about people getting together to have a little fun. It’s just about sex.”

“And whatever you do out there with your rich clients, that’s where the jars come from? And then you take them to this Bastian Drake guy so he can make more candles out of them. Even though it’s one of his candles that made you what you are.”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect arrangement. But what can I say?” She threw him a warm smile. “Extraordinary people have to find ways to work together. Right, vampire?”

“You’re working for the man who made you what you are. You’re working for the man who stole your ability to love.”

“Twelve hundred,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Twelve hundred people. That’s how many have accepted his little gift of candles. That’s how many people followed the instructions on the card and suddenly found the courage to embrace their heart’s desire. Do you want to know how many there are like me?”

He nodded.

“Twenty-three. Twelve hundred people find true love thanks to Bastian Drake and his shop. Twenty-three end up never aging another day in their lives and leaping seven-story buildings in a single bound. Whatever magic governs that shop, whatever Bastian Drake is, maybe it’s a fair trade-off in the end.”

“You really believe that?”

“Today I do. ’Cause I got my tape, thanks to you.”

She snapped her fingers and suddenly a light rain of gold dust showered down on his head and shoulders. He smiled despite himself, but by the time he went to brush it away, it seemed to be evaporating already.

“You must be eager to return home to your Gabrielle.”

“I am,” he admitted. “Two days is the longest I’ve been away from her since we mated.”

“Then you should go to her. Our work is done.”

“So it is.” He cleared his throat, holding out his hand. “Not that I don’t trust you with it, but I’ll take that video card now.”

“Of course. I have no use for it.” She dropped it into his open palm. “Consider it a memento of your visit to my city.”

He chuckled. “I hope you’ll understand if I’d rather burn it than watch it. I don’t need any reminders of the fact that both of us were nearly outed tonight.”

Her mouth quirked as she stared at him in the postmidnight darkness. “You know, I never thought I’d say this, but it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Lucan Thorne.”

“Likewise,” he said as he slipped the video card into his pocket. He extended his hand and smiled when she clasped his fingers in a firm grasp. “I hope you get it back, Lilliane.”

“Get what?”

“Your ability to fall in love.”

Her smile faded, but the light in her solemn, dark eyes seemed warm with acknowledgment. “Even if it means losing this?”

She vanished from view.

Then he saw her standing on the rooftop of the old house two stories overhead.

“Godspeed and a good life to you, Lucan Thorne,” she called down.

“To you as well, Lilliane Williams.”

She turned as if she were about to walk the length of the roof.

Instead, she took to the air and disappeared from view.

LUCAN HAD BEEN HOME FOR just over twenty-four hours, too many of them spent in the Order’s war room with his comrades, reviewing the fire he’d put out in New Orleans and gearing up to fight the even bigger problems taking shape in Boston. As critical as his work was with his fellow warriors, the only place he wanted to be was in bed with his lovely Breedmate.

As the meeting wore on, Lucan found his thoughts straying repeatedly to Gabrielle. He’d even go so far as to say his distraction these past few hours bordered on obsession. Every breath he drew into his lungs seemed wreathed with the scent of her. The elusive cinnamon-sweet fragrance tickled his nostrils and made his pulse hammer heavily, his veins drumming with the need to be as close as he could get.

“What do you think, Lucan? Do we take out the Rogue nest down in Southie first or chase down the lead on those skin traders over in Chinatown and ash the Rogues another night?”

The abrupt question from one of his comrades seated around the conference room table snapped him out of his sensory haze. He blinked at Tegan and the other Breed warriors, feeling embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming in the middle of the patrol review he was leading.

He cleared his throat.

“I want those skin traders stopped first. The Rogues are a nuisance, but we can flush them out anytime.” He stood, effectively adjourning the meeting. “I have something I need to take care of right now. Tegan, Dante, you two come up with a plan for the raid on the Chinatown location. You can run it by me later.”

With his orders dispersed, he stalked out of the war room and headed through the Boston compound with a purpose, all his thoughts and senses homed in on Gabrielle. Just thinking about her made his mouth water and his fangs punch out of his gums.

He sought her out like a man possessed, oblivious to everything except the thought of closing the distance between himself and his mate. And the strange perfume that seemed to beckon to him for the past hours only intensified now that he was on the path to Gabrielle’s side.

He found her in their living quarters.

Fresh out of her bath, she was sitting in their massive bed wearing just a frilly little bit of black lace.

God, she looked delectable.

He was so swept up in the sight and scent of her that he hardly noticed she held a book in her lap, which she held up as he approached the bed.

“Your package arrived from New Orleans a while ago,” she said, smiling. “A signed first edition of Interview with the Vampire? I have the best mate in the world.”

He frowned. “I didn’t send that book. The one I bought for you got ruined.”

Gabrielle’s auburn brows rose. “So this must be from your new friend, Lilliane?”

“Apparently so.”

“Does that mean she sent the candle too?”

“Candle?” A twinge of uncertainty arrowed through him. “What kind of candle?”

“That one.”

She pointed to the flickering flame.

For a second, he expected to see one of the burnt umber glass jars he’d spotted in that mysterious shop. But the candle resting on the bureau across the room came from some other, more ordinary store. The label said Cassidy’s Corner and the name of the fragrance was Orleans. He inhaled the air above its flickering flame and smelled vetiver, sweet olive, and a dozen other scents that reminded him of one of the most magical cities in the world.

“This came with the candle,” she said, pulling a delicate white card from between the pages of her book.

He took it from her and read the calligraphic script written on the back of the Feu de Coeur calling card.

Light this flame for your greatest passion and be grateful that your heart’s desire is already yours.

A slightly modified version of the card Lilliane had described to him, the one that had changed her life.

A custom-made version just for him.

And Gabrielle.

She was smiling when he looked at her. “I followed the instructions.” She patted the bed where they’d so often made love. “It works. I’ve never been so grateful to have you back.”

“Grateful,” he said, tossing the card aside to climb onto the mattress. “Gratitude is just the beginning of what I feel when I’m with you.”

And he found himself grateful for something else as well.

He’d lost many things in his immortal life, but never the ability to rest in the arms of a lover, to cherish the smell and feel of the one for whom he felt destined.

And he had Lilliane to thank for that realization.