Rogue Read online

  Rogue

  Midnight Playground: International Series

  Eden Bradley

  Rogue

  Copyright 2013 Eden Bradley

  Cover Art by Scott Carpenter

  Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About Eden Bradley

  Other Titles from Eden Bradley

  Bonus Excerpt: THE SEEKING KISS

  Bonus Excerpt: BLOODSONG

  Bonus Excerpt: SANCTUARY

  Chapter One

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  Madrid, 2069

  He prowled like a shadow around the perimeter of the compound that had once been Retiro Park. He was used to being a shadow. Invisible. Without a name other than the one he had given himself after his Turning. Rogue.

  Rebel.

  Vampire.

  Vampire—yes. But he didn’t subscribe to their ways. Their rules. Except for the edict to never take an unwilling victim.

  Only once…

  No. Don’t think of it. Don’t remember.

  But the images came flooding into his mind like a movie he couldn’t turn away from, burned into a hundred years of memory.

  Her hair like red silk in his hands, and he so newly reborn he couldn’t yet read through his enhanced senses to smell the drugs in her blood. All he’d smelled was blood. All he’d tasted was his driving need and the flavor of life in his mouth.

  She was beautiful, like a flame in the foggy London night. A lovely face. He’d been as drawn to that as much as he was by the heady scent of human flesh. He hadn’t noticed until it was over that her skin held the sick pall of an addict—a morphie they called them now, although he had some vague memory that they were once called junkies. He hadn’t noticed until the breath was gone from her body that her red hair was matted, the skin on her arms torn where she’d scratched at it. He hadn’t seen any of it until the girl was dead in his arms, her blood still tangy and warm on his tongue.

  He’d waited for days afterward in a dank, abandoned apartment building in King’s Cross, consumed by the thirst but unable to believe that he wanted to drink human blood. He’d fought it. But there had been nothing to hold him back. No one to teach him. His attack on the red-headed girl had been savage, inexcusably vicious and cruel. Neither one of them had understood what was happening. And in taking her blood he had read her—even through the haze of blood lust—and everything he’d seen had been fear and pain and grief.

  Awful.

  It was only later, when he was nearly dying of the thirst, that some wandering group of vampires had come upon him trying to hunt in the alleys of London and had shown him how to feed properly.

  He shook his head, tried to shake the memories away. Focused once more on the night around him, the pungent scent of blood discernible from behind the high wall. The tops of the cypress trees making a stark black silhouette against the sky. The moon hanging above like a lantern against the sheet of stars.

  The blood.

  Deer blood—one of them injured.

  He’d heard the vampires who ran Madrid’s Midnight Playground club, housed here in the Park in the enormous greenhouse-like structure that was called the Palacio de Crista–the Crystal Palace—kept a herd of deer on the grounds. That their immortal guests were invited to hunt them down and drink their blood for sport.

  He was not invited. But he would hunt tonight.

  He attuned his hearing, searching for any sign of activity behind the wall. He heard only the crickets chirping, the occasional snap of a twig as some creature walked among the trees. No humans. No vampires that he could detect. Of course, a being who was older than his mere single century could mask themselves from him. But that was part of the game, wasn’t it? As a vampire he could walk through the front doors of any of Europe’s Midnight Playground clubs, which were there to serve the needs and desires of the world’s vampires, whether to satisfy their thirst for blood or for sex. But he was too used to being a loner. He gloried in it now.

  He laid a hand on the towering concrete wall, felt the lingering warmth of the day against his palm, his fingertips picking up every tiny crevice in its surface. He closed his eyes and listened.

  Being at the furthest point from the Palace itself, he could hear voices only if he concentrated very closely. But it was the park that interested him. It appeared to be clear.

  He took a few steps back, gathered himself and sprung to the top of the wall. He knelt there, paused, searching the grass and the trees, looking for the scent that had drawn him.

  They were maybe a hundred yards in, hidden among the trees. He wouldn’t go for the injured animal—that would be far too easy. But the rest… His hands itched to feel their downy pelts. His legs itched for the chase. His entire being itched to feel their innocent struggle beneath his hands.

  He drew in a breath, and leapt.

  He was running before they caught his scent—he could sense their wariness. He made it to the stand of trees and ducked in. As he moved closer he could feel them, hear the beating of their hearts. Maybe two dozen of them. It would be a fine chase.

  He slowed when he saw the herd between the trees, their ears twitching. When they bolted he dashed after them.

  The run itself was glorious. The hunt would be even sweeter for it. His legs pumping effortlessly, he darted between the trunks of the giant cypress—and fell like a stone as he was captured.

  Arms clamped around his body, pinning his arms to his sides, pinning him to the ground.

  He inhaled. Vampire. Like ancient stone and earth. Impossibly strong.

  He struggled, but it was useless. He kept at it, anyway.

  “Quiet down now,” came the voice in English with a distinct British accent. “You know damn well you’re not going anywhere.”

  He was pulled to his feet by the old vampire, a male of pale, ethereal beauty. If they’d been human he would have easily taken this man down, but they were no longer men, either of them. Another vampire was with him, a female with long black hair in a braid down her back. Lovely, of course, as they all were.

  “What’s your name, little beauty?” he asked her, giving her a wink.

  The male holding him wrapped a fist in his long hair and yanked hard. “Being caught poaching on the M
idnight Playground lands without invitation is nothing to scoff at, rogue. There will be consequences.” He gave another sharp yank. “You’d do well to mind your manners.”

  “I’d do even better to fuck her. Or you.”

  The female laughed. “Ramsey is going to love this one,” she said in a soft Castilian accent.

  “There is nothing funny about this, Adriana,” the male muttered, “Or about this young scoundrel and his poorly used wit.”

  She reached out to stroke Rogue’s chin, and he caught her dark, long-lashed gaze with his, making her smile. “He is pretty, though, isn’t he Julian? Like some tender teenager.”

  “I don’t find him so,” Julian growled. “Come along now. We’re taking him to Ramsey.”

  They marched him off through the woods, and he was more distraught about having his hunt ruined than he was about any repercussions. He was frankly furious that his fun had been interrupted.

  The Palace itself came into view, and it was everything it was reputed to be—an exquisite structure of glass and wrought iron in the Romanesque style, with vaulting, arched roofs and glass-paned wings, built in the 1880’s as a greenhouse to nurture exotic plants, he’d heard. It was lit with amber lights, making it appear as if a flame burned within. He supposed it did—the flame of the vampire’s hunger. The burning heat of desire—both vampire and human.

  They drew closer and moved up the marble steps to a pair of iron doors. The sigil of the Midnight Playground clubs, a pair of dragon’s heads with long, snaking tongues, stood in detailed relief on each one. A pair of human guards—both nearly seven feet tall with shaved heads and dressed in black leather—stood on either side.

  “Where do you get your bogymen?” he asked.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” the male vampire scolded. “Don’t think for a moment Ramsey will put up with it.”

  “I don’t assume anyone will put up with it. I’m compelled nonetheless.”

  The older vampire squeezed his shoulder painfully, but it only made Rogue smile.

  The doors were opened and they went inside. They passed through a short hallway and into a sort of ballroom. The scent of human blood was everywhere. He saw right away that the rumors were true—the humans allowed into the clubs were the most beautiful to be found anywhere, both male and female. Shining eyes, flawless complexions. They mingled with the vampires as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do. Except that he heard their pulses racing, felt the heat of their wanting. He was starving and they’d brought him to a fucking feast. Except it was obvious he would get none of it.

  “Is this the first time you’ve been in one of our clubs?” the Spanish beauty at his side asked softly. “Your surprise gives you away, though you shouldn’t find it so strange. You can smell how they desire us—we vampires are beyond enticing to them. It is why they come here, why they volunteer their blood to the Seeking Kiss. Why so many yearn for the eternal gift that is the Turning Kiss.”

  “It’s no gift,” Rogue muttered.

  She chuckled, a low purr in her throat. “Ah, you are one of those—the bitter ones. Why is it I find that so charming?”

  He let out a sharp laugh. “The darker the bitterness, the sweeter the blood, little beauty. Or is that how the quote goes? But damn right I’m bitter.”

  They’d reached the back of the ballroom and he was ushered through a smaller version of the enormous iron doors outside and into some sort of luxuriously furnished, dimly lit office.

  The surly Julian shoved him roughly to his knees on the white marble floor. “You will kneel for Ramsey.”

  Rogue turned to glare at him but a new voice distracted him.

  “No need to be so harsh, Julian.”

  Unable to place the accent which was somewhere between Spanish and French with some other element mixed in, he peered into the shadows before him.

  A man—a vampire—seemed to materialize out of the darkness as if he were a ghost. That silent. That utterly graceful.

  He was the most gorgeous creature Rogue had ever seen.

  Still on his knees, held in place by Julian’s ruthless grip on his neck, he couldn’t move for several moments. Couldn’t breathe. Something inside him knew he would go down on his knees voluntarily for this one whose aura of power he sensed like the heaviness of a coming storm.

  Time disappeared as he studied skin the color of polished caramel, dark dreadlocks that fell in narrow twists of satiny black around his broad shoulders. But it was this vampire’s eyes that pierced him down to his bones, a brilliant mossy green as sharp and pure as glass.

  His cock pulsed. He felt like hunting again.

  The exquisite vampire nodded his beautifully molded chin, command in every gesture. “Julian, release him.”

  “Yes, Ramsey.”

  The male vampire eased his grip with obvious reluctance before letting go. Rogue was only marginally aware of him and the lovely female—this Ramsey took up all of his focus.

  Those green eyes were watching him carefully beneath dark, perfectly arching brows.

  “Why do you break into the Midnight Playground?” he demanded. “When you could have come in through the front doors at any time and been treated like a king?”

  “Because he is a rogue with no manners,” Julian ground out, “as these poor excuses for our kind always are.”

  Ramsey raised a hand and Rogue felt the other vampire step back.

  “I think it is because he knows no better,” the female said quietly.

  “Perhaps you are right, Adriana,” Ramsey said.

  “Oh, I knew better,” he couldn’t prevent himself from saying. “I always know better. Wouldn’t be half the fun if I didn’t.”

  Ramsey smiled, his sharp eyeteeth glinting in the light of the moon and the stars coming through the endless windows. “I will question him myself. You may leave us.”

  “Ramsey…” Julian started.

  He kept his gaze on Rogue’s. “Do you think I can’t handle him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I trust you will close the doors behind you.”

  Julian seemed to pause, then Rogue heard his retreating footsteps along with Adriana’s.

  Ramsey extended a hand. His fingers were long and graceful—the hands of a musician.

  “You may rise.”

  Rogue got to his feet, intrigued. Wary. If this vampire were toying with him, if he planned to kill him, it could easily be done. Rogue sensed his age, and although he was perhaps a few hundred years old, he wasn’t one of the ancient ones. Still, he could crush Rogue easily enough. Yet all he could think of was pressing his lips to Ramsey’s. Pressing his own hardening cock between them.

  Yes.

  Ramsey narrowed his eyes. “Tell me your name, rogue.”

  “You already seem to know it. It is Rogue.”

  Ramsey frowned, and even his frown was beautiful beyond belief. He reached out and laced one hand behind Rogue’s neck, squeezing until his grip drew a gasp.

  “Do not make a joke of this. Tell me your name.”

  “I did,” Rogue said again from between clenched teeth, the anger that was his habit suffusing him.

  “If you think to distract me with this ridiculous—”

  “My name is Rogue, damn it. I have no other. I have never known any other. If I did I don’t…remember.”

  He had never said those words aloud. Something twisted in his chest—something he’d been trying to ignore for a hundred years.

  Ramsey released him, dropped his hand to his side. “Tell me what you mean.”

  Why did he feel as if he wanted to tell this beautiful vampire? Needed to. It was more than his beauty. More than the air of authority he wore like a fine coat of armor, steely yet enticing.

  Rogue shrugged, trying to disguise his need, his acquiescence. “Only that I have no memory of my life before I was Turned. No memory of having a name to call my own.”

  “None? Do you not know who you were? Where you came from?”

&nb
sp; He shook his head. “I know nothing. My first memories are only of the thirst.”

  “But how did you learn to feed?” the older vampire demanded.

  Rogue clenched his jaw. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t escape Ramsey’s piercing gaze. He had to swallow the taste of death beneath his tongue, the lock of red hair slipping across the edge of his vision.

  “I didn’t, at first,” was all he could say. All he would say.

  Ramsey stared at him for endless moments, his arms crossed over his broad chest. It was then Rogue noticed his crisp white linen shirt and finely tailored slacks. He was dressed as only the wealthy dressed, as Rogue would expect the head of one of the vampire clubs to dress. A member of the Vampire Council whose rules he rejected. He should reject this vampire, as well—this unutterably gorgeous vampire who was a marshal of their law. And yet…

  “I am sorry,” Ramsey said, his tone gentle. “No one should be born into this life with no one to guide them. To have to live without a name, without a history. With no identity.”

  Rogue shook his head. “How could you possibly understand?”

  “Because it was something I once wished for.”

  “To lose your memories? Your life?”

  “Yes,” Ramsey said simply.

  Rogue could read the pain in his tone, in the torn expression on his dark, beautiful face.

  They were both silent for several moments, watching each other, then Ramsey said, “Come, drink some wine with me. Tell me of your vampiric life, if you can remember nothing else.”

  He turned and led the way to a plush sofa in red diamond-tucked velvet which sat before one of the long banks of windows looking out over a small lake. Rogue followed and sat beside him when Ramsey gestured. He watched as the older vampire poured a dark garnet-colored wine from a decanter into two crystal glasses and handed him one.

  Accepting it curiously, he lifted the glass and took in the sweet scent.

  “Do you have no memory of wine?” Ramsey asked.