Chapter Three
He walked unfazed through the smoldering ash and ruin on the pavement. His boots crunched over broken glass and wrenched metal, past puddles of spilled, flaming oil and the smoking remains of the Breed males who'd fired on him with their paltry weapons. Their bullets hadn't stopped him. Nothing could, not when he was like this. The ground sizzled under the heavy soles of his boots--not from annihilated debris, but from the heat that was still running through his limbs, an electrical crackle that traveled every inch of his body in pulsing waves of lethal, pure living energy. He'd let his fury get out of control tonight; he knew that. He'd understood well enough how important it was to contain the fire inside of him, but his hatred of Wilhelm Roth had made him careless--first in the city, then here. His thirst to complete his vengeance had pushed him over a steep ledge and now he was falling, falling ... Failing, when justice was so near his grasp. Roth hadn't been at his Hamburg Darkhaven. Nor had he been among the dead who'd tried to flee these grounds tonight.>"My thanks again for the lovely design, Martina. Let me know if you have any other questions before we proceed with the project." "Of course. Good night, Frau Roth." Claire ended the call, then stepped out of the room. She closed the door behind her, still feeling protective of her secret undertaking and seeing no reason to invite questions from Wilhelm's loyal hounds. But now that she was standing alone with one of the half-dozen Enforcement Agents assigned to look out for her and the property she occupied, she realized that her little side project was the least of the security detail's concern. The guard seemed agitated, uncharacteristically twitchy. "Yes. What is it?" "I need you to come with me, Frau Roth." "What for?" She could see now that the big male was visibly rattled. Considering he was Breed, in addition to being armed to his fangs with firearms and combat gear, rattling someone like him was no small thing. Something was terribly wrong. The comm device clipped to his black bulletproof vest was crackling with intermittent static and snippets of urgent conversation among the other agents posted at the country house. "We're evacuating the premises immediately. This way, if you would." "Evacuating? Why? What's going on?"
"I'm afraid there is no time to waste." More static sounded over his comm. More voices issuing clipped orders in the background. "We're readying a vehicle for you now. Please. You must come with me." He started to reach for her arm, but Claire stepped out of his range. "I don't understand. Why do I have to leave? I demand that you tell me what's going on." "We had a situation at the Darkhaven in Hamburg a short while ago--" "A situation?" The guard didn't elaborate, simply spoke right over her. "As a precaution, we're clearing out of here and taking you to another location. A safe house in Mecklenburg." "Wait a minute--I have no idea what you're talking about. What situation in Hamburg? Why do I need to be moved to a safe house? What exactly does any of this mean?" The guard gave her an impatient look as he barked his position into his comm device. "Yes, I'm with her now. Bring the vehicles around to the front and prepare to roll out. We're on the way to meet you." He made another grab for her and Claire's patience snapped.
"Goddamn it, talk to me! What the hell is going on? And where is Wilhelm? Get him on the phone. I want to talk to him before I let you haul me out of my own home with hardly an explanation." "Director Roth has been out of the country since July," the agent told her, his schooled expression seeming to suggest that he didn't notice her embarrassment over the fact that a basic security detail could know more about her mate's whereabouts than she did. He cleared his throat. "We're attempting to contact the director now to brief him on the attack--" "Attack," Claire replied, awkwardness forgotten as her skin went cold and tight. "Good lord. Was someone attacked at the Darkhaven? Has someone been injured?" The guard stared at her for what seemed like endless minutes before he finally hissed a curse and blurted out the details in a toneless spill of words. "The Darkhaven in Hamburg was breached less than an hour ago. We just received the call from one of the guards who managed to escape. The only guard who escaped," he amended. "It was a complete annihilation. Everyone present at the mansion tonight is dead." "Oh, God," Claire whispered, leaning back against the closed library doors for support. "I don't understand ... Who could do something like that?"
The guard shook his head. "We don't have a clear count of how many attackers were involved in the strike, but the surviving agent said the assault was like nothing he'd ever seen before--fire everywhere, as though hell itself had blown down the gates and swept through the place. There's nothing left but cinders." Claire stood there, stricken and voiceless, trying to process everything she was hearing. It was impossible ... unbelievable. It just didn't make sense. God, so much of what had been happening lately made no good sense at all. So much random violence. So much senseless death. So much pain and loss ...
"We can't delay," the guard was saying now. "We have to get you evacuated before this location comes under attack, as well." "You really believe that whoever did this will come out here? Why?" This time the guard didn't pause to tell her anything more. His fingers clamped down hard around her arm and he started walking--quickly. The message in his brisk stride was plain enough: Claire could hurry to keep up with him, or he would drag her out of there.
Either way, she was leaving the premises and doing so under heavily armed, grim-faced security. There was no stopping for a coat or her purse. She fled with the guard, out of the house and into the chill of the late October evening. The cold autumn breeze bled through the fibers of her wine cashmere sweater and her gray wool pants as she ran alongside the guard to the paved drive, the soles of her suede loafers scuffing in her effort to keep up with the longer-legged gait of the agent dragging her along by the arm. Claire was shown to the open back door of a Mercedes that idled in the center of a vanguard of four other vehicles.
"Get in," the guard instructed her, and gently but urgently guided her inside ahead of him. As he slid in next to her on the leather seat and closed the door, Claire tried to rub away the bone-deep chill that seemed to emanate from within her body rather than without. Everything was happening so fast. She was still trying to come to grips with the terrible news of the attack on the Darkhaven in Hamburg, let alone register the idea that not a few minutes ago her biggest worry was the proper placement of a garden bench or flower bed. Now the handful of Wilhelm's relatives and personal guards who'd resided at the Darkhaven were dead and she was being removed from her home in the middle of the night, fleeing from an unknown, unfathomable evil. Why? The question wailed in her mind.
It was the same thing she'd been asking herself some three months ago, when another Darkhaven had fallen to tragedy--a tragedy that also had left behind only ash and smoke in its wake. But that had been an accident, according to the investigating Enforcement Agents. A freak explosion so fierce and total that it likely killed all of the Darkhaven's residents instantly. And still the question haunted her, as painfully as it had when she first heard the awful news ... Why?
"We are in and rolling," said the guard seated behind the wheel, radioing to the other vehicles. He stepped on the accelerator, and, like a fast-moving snake, the fleet of black sedans began to speed as one down the lengthy, forest-lined driveway. Claire sat back, trying not to feel the anxiety that hung in the stale air of the car. The woods around them seemed darker than usual, so strangely quiet. Overhead, the thin moonlight was blotted out by the densely needled tops of the towering pines. The vanguard cleared the first bend in the nearly mile-long private drive. They sped up on the straightaway, all of the cars lurching into a higher gear as they gunned it for the main road. There was no warning of the assault that hit the lead car in that next instant. From out of the pitch-dark forest came a blinding ball of orange fire.
It smashed into the first Mercedes in the line, exploding the car on impact. Claire screamed, feeling the sonic vibration of the blast all the way into the soles of her feet. "What the fuck is that?" shouted the guard next to her in the backseat. "Jesus Christ, hit the damn brakes!" Red taillights went bright in front of them, and it was all their driver could do to avoid crashing into the back of the other sedan as it skidded to a stop. Like a toy train suddenly gone off its track, the caravan of vehicles bunched up, their line skewed and broken. And up ahead, the first car was engulfed in flames that shot high into the black sky. Just then another fireball launched out of the cover of the forest. It flew in a speeding, comet-bright arc, projecting straight toward the halted cars. Yet another orb of flames came quickly in its wake, both of the airborne threats awesome in their terrible, burning beauty. The guard seated beside Claire leaned forward, his fingers clawing into the headrest of the seat in front of him. "Back up--fast, damn it!" he yelled at the shell-shocked driver. "Throw this thing into reverse and get us the hell out of here!" Tires squealing, the Mercedes jerked into a violent backward retreat.
As the car spun around on the narrow track of pavement, its bumper crunching into the vehicle behind them in the driver's panic, Claire watched the guards in the two remaining cars out front throw open their doors and try to make an escape on foot. One of them leapt to safety in the woods. The other proved only seconds too slow. The first fireball crashed down into the hood of his car, obliterating man and metal both in a sickening roar of twisting, flying debris. Claire screamed, turning her face away from the carnage just as the second fireball rained down onto the empty car ahead of them on the road. The thundering explosion shook the earth and chewed a deep, smoking crater into the ground. The guard next to her made the sign of the cross on his chest, then punched the back of the driver's seat with a nasty curse. "Go, you moron! Hit the fucking gas! Get us out of here!" Too late. From out of nowhere--from out of the sky itself, it seemed--came a rolling, fiery sphere of heat.
The fireball soared down past the windshield of the vehicle, the glow of it so intense it filled the interior of the Mercedes with blinding white-hot light. Whatever it was, it felt charged with the power of ten suns, as electric as a bolt of lightning, concentrated into an orb the size of a bowling ball. All the hair on Claire's arms and at the back of her neck rose up as the thing smashed into the ground mere feet from the hood of the car. Another fireball hit behind them, knocking Claire and her two companions forward in their seats. The driver's head hit the steering wheel with a sickening crack. The airbag detonated with the impact, setting off the car's security system. Amid the bleating alarm and the puff of chemical smoke from the deployed airbag, Claire also smelled the trace scent of blood. She wiped her forehead and swallowed hard when her fingers came away stained crimson. Shit.
It was never a good idea to bleed in front of vampires, even vampires disciplined by Enforcement Agency training and dedicated to the service of her very powerful, very unforgiving mate. Not that she really expected to live long enough tonight to worry about the potential blood thirsts of her guards. It didn't seem likely that she or any of them would survive these next few moments.
"Run," growled the one in back with her. He had a gun in each hand. His pupils were contracted to vertical slits in the center of their amber irises as he glared at the door handle beside her. The panel swung open with the force of his Breed mind. "Run as far as you can. It's your only hope." Claire scrambled out and hit the ground in a clumsy stagger. Her legs were weak, shaking. Her head was ringing, her heart hammering in her chest. She heard the guard roar as he got out of the vehicle on the other side and stood to face whatever assault was coming. Claire drifted toward the tall black shadows of the woods as the chaos continued all around her. A couple of guards raced past her, weapons drawn, as though any of them could stand against the hell that had arrived here tonight. She couldn't imagine what kind of army had opened up such a brutal offensive strike.
Claire shot a terrified look over her shoulder as she made her way to the edge of the forest. Whoever the attacking forces were, they were coming closer now. The unearthly glow of the forest behind her was growing brighter, marking their progress. Her steps slowed as the orange light reached through the trees like rays of scorching sunshine in the midst of coldest darkness. She stared, transfixed, unable to look away from the approach of what was probably going to be her death. A silhouette began to take shape. Not an army, but a single man. A man whose entire being was alive with flames.
For one instant--one jarring, delusional instant--Claire thought she recognized the broad cut of his shoulders, the fluid swagger of his stride. Impossible, of course. Still, a glimmer of familiarity kindled in the back of her mind. Could she know him somehow? But this was no man--certainly none that she knew, now or ever. This creature was something out of a nightmare. He was death incarnate. The crack of a gun firing jolted Claire's attention to the gathered group of Enforcement Agents nearby. Another bullet rang out, then another and another, until the air was filled with the sound. For all the good it did. The man of flame kept walking, unfazed. The bullets popped like firecrackers as they neared him, exploding harmlessly the instant they met the wall of heat that surrounded his body. When the last shell was finally spent, he paused.
He lifted his hands in front of him, though not in surrender. With little more than a second's warning, he turned loose a volley of fire on the defending guards. Claire couldn't bite back her scream of horror as the flames engulfed them, incinerating them on the spot. She knew the instant the man noticed her. She felt the heat of his eyes pierce her from across the distance, every nerve ending in her body going taut with fear. "Oh, God," she whispered, stumbling backward a few paces. The man of flames took a step in her direction, all of his terrible fury now rooted entirely on her. Claire bolted, not daring to look back again as she plunged into the woods and ran for all she was worth.
Chapter Three
He walked unfazed through the smoldering ash and ruin on the pavement. His boots crunched over broken glass and wrenched metal, past puddles of spilled, flaming oil and the smoking remains of the Breed males who'd fired on him with their paltry weapons. Their bullets hadn't stopped him. Nothing could, not when he was like this. The ground sizzled under the heavy soles of his boots--not from annihilated debris, but from the heat that was still running through his limbs, an electrical crackle that traveled every inch of his body in pulsing waves of lethal, pure living energy. He'd let his fury get out of control tonight; he knew that. He'd understood well enough how important it was to contain the fire inside of him, but his hatred of Wilhelm Roth had made him careless--first in the city, then here. His thirst to complete his vengeance had pushed him over a steep ledge and now he was falling, falling ... Failing, when justice was so near his grasp. Roth hadn't been at his Hamburg Darkhaven. Nor had he been among the dead who'd tried to flee these grounds tonight.
His vision flooded red with heat, Reichen cast a ruthless eye over the wreckage. He could see no sign of the bastard. But Roth's mate was here. She would know where to find him. And if her lips refused to give him up, her blood would tell soon enough. Claire. Her name flickered like a shorting-out circuit in his mind, dimly, darkly, only to be devoured by the rage that owned him. Right now, to him, she wasn't anyone he'd known, once or ever. She was no one he'd ever held in his arms. No one he'd ever loved. Right now, like this, his fury knew only that she was the female who belonged to Wilhelm Roth. And that made her as much Reichen's enemy as Roth himself. He stalked toward the edge of the woods where he'd watched the Breedmate run. Vaguely he registered the scent of melting pine pitch and singeing leaves as he passed into the thick stand of trees.
Low-hanging branches curled out of his way, bent from his path by the heat rolling off him with each stride. He knew precisely where the female had fled. He could hear the rapid panting of her breath as he walked deeper into the forest. She was afraid, the scent of her terror a crisp note that the drifting smoke didn't quite conceal. Up ahead now, her footsteps went silent. She'd found someplace to hide from him--or so she thought. Reichen's boots chewed up an unerring path toward her. Bloodred, laser-sharp, his focus locked on a huge ball of crumbling earth and the exposed, twisted dead roots of a fallen tree.
Roth's Breedmate crouched behind it. Reichen heard the pound of her heartbeat kick even faster as he neared and the current traveling his body began to cook the ancient root ball, steam rising from deep inside the dark clump. It would be just moments before the whole thing ignited. His heat was too strong now and roiling outward in pulsing waves. He wouldn't be able to stop the coming explosion, even if he tried.
"Come out, female." His voice sounded rusty and foreign to him. Tasted as dry as ashes in his throat. "You don't have much time left. Come out of there while you still can." She didn't obey him. Some distant part of him wasn't exactly surprised by her stubborn resistance--he might even go so far as to say that he'd expected it. But another part of him, the part that was lit up with pyrokinetic fury and deadly short on patience, let loose with a ground-shuddering roar. The warning, such as it was, proved effective. He caught a flash of movement--heard the quick rush of footsteps flying over leaf-strewn ground--in the instant before the tree root detonated. Sparks shot out in all directions, sending streamers of orange light high overhead. Reichen saw Roth's woman bolting deeper into the woods as smoldering debris rained down around the crater that now gouged the earth where she'd been hiding. On a black curse, he went after her. She was running fast, but he was faster. There was nowhere for her to go. It didn't take her long to figure that out for herself. Her steps slowed, then stopped altogether. Reichen paused where he stood, some ten paces away from her. Leaves crackled and withered above his head, all around him branches scorching from his heat.
Her hands flexed and fisted at her sides, her feet shifting as she seemed to weigh her chances of escape and quickly dismiss them. "If you're going to kill me now, then do it." Her voice was quiet, but without the slightest falter. The velvet sound of it awakened scattered memories that shot through his mind in a barrage of images: He and this woman, naked in bed together, caught in a tangle of sheets, laughing, kissing. Her deep brown gaze dancing in golden candlelight as he fed her sugared raspberries on a midnight picnic by the lake. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek resting against his bare chest as she confessed that she had fallen in love with him. Claire...
It took long moments for him to shake loose of that remembered past. He forced himself to think of a more recent one, the one that he could still taste in the bitter tang of the smoke that hung in the forest air. The one that was soaked in the blood of too many innocent lives. "I haven't come for your death, Claire Roth." She went very still at the mention of her name. Reichen stared at the rigidly held spine ahead of him, the delicate shoulders squared and unshaking, defiant, as his enemy's mate slowly pivoted to face him. Her large, dark eyes held his gaze across the distance. He saw a note of recognition there, but it was swallowed up by disbelief. She mutely shook her head, staring at him as if he were a ghost or, rather, some kind of monster. He knew he was, especially after tonight, but seeing it in another's eyes--in her eyes-- made the anger in him surge a bit wilder.
"Tell me where he is," Reichen demanded. She didn't seem to hear him. She stared for what seemed like forever, taking him in with that keen, inquisitive gaze. Finally, she gave a slow shake of her head. "I don't understand how this can be," she murmured. She took a step forward, only to back off a second later as blackened leaves and pine needles fell from their branches around him and turned to white ash at his feet. "My God... Andreas. Is this a dream? I mean, I must be dreaming, right? This isn't real. It can't be ..." The words came haltingly, sounding weak, choked in her throat. Despite the intense heat pouring off him, she lifted her hand as if she meant to reach out for him. "I thought you were dead, Andreas.
All these three months since the fire destroyed your Darkhaven... I believed that you were dead." Reichen snarled at the threat of her touch. On a startled gasp, Claire snatched her arm back. She rubbed the fingers that would have incinerated on contact with him, no doubt feeling some measure of that truth on her unprotected skin. Her confusion was clear. As was her horror. "Good lord, what's happened to you?" Of course she wouldn't know.
He had been different when she knew him. Christ, everything had been different then. The heat that lived in him now had been cold and dormant, lurking deep beneath even his own awareness--until the hellish power of it had been beaten and tortured out of him for the first time some thirty years ago. It had taken all he had and all that he was to snuff the accursed power and hold it down inside him. It had been so long since the heat had risen in him, he'd actually been fool enough to believe he'd driven the heat back for good. But it was still there, banked but smoldering. Waiting for the slightest chance to ignite while he strove to deny its very existence. He had lived a lie for the past three decades, only to have it erupt in his face. Now he would never be the same. Now Wilhelm Roth's treachery had reawakened that monstrous side of him. Now grief and anger had invited the terrible ability back into his life, and the fires were always burning inside him. They were beginning to rule him. To destroy him.
And because of the ruthless actions of her mate, Claire was seeing that hideous truth with her own eyes. No, he would never be the same again. And he would not rest until he had his vengeance. Through the flames, Claire's eyes searched his, part in worry, part in pity. "I don't understand what's going on, Andre. Why are you like this? Tell me what's happened to you." He hated the concern in her voice. He didn't want to hear it, not from Roth's mate. "Please, talk to me, Andre." Andre. Only she had called him that. After her, he'd not permitted anyone to become that familiar--that intimate--with him. After her, there had been many things he'd not dared permit, of himself or others. The sound of his name on her lips now was a pain he hadn't anticipated. Reichen bared his teeth and fangs in a sneer meant to cower her, but she wouldn't relent with her demand for answers.