Ashes of Midnight

Would he be willing to accept the only thing she had left to offer him? Claire couldn't be sure unless she tried. Repulsed by what she was about to do, but feeling it was her last hope where Andreas was concerned, she leaned her head back and slowed her breathing. She was adept at putting herself into a swift sleep, but finding Roth--hoping that he might be sleeping too--was not quite as easy. She rode the tide away from consciousness and drifted toward the dream realm, searching, praying she would find Roth there. It took her several long minutes before she felt the edge of his dreaming mind through the veil of slumber. Ice formed in her stomach as she moved toward him, ignoring every instinct inside her that screamed for her to flee in the other direction as fast as she could. She saw him in front of her now. He had his back to her, hastily making his way through what appeared to be some kind of earthen vault. Claire followed him in silence, formulating her desperate appeal. Ahead of him, a heavy door opened to let him pass. Claire slipped in behind him just as the thick stone panel swung closed. Roth was grumbling to himself low under his breath, unintelligible words filled with venom and frustration. Inside another room, this one more clinical than the primitive-looking anterior chamber, he stormed past a counter lined with microscopes, dishes, and beakers. As he neared the end of the long surface, he shot his hand out and swept a bunch of the equipment to the floor.



Claire gasped as glass crashed and shattered in front of her. "What the fuck--" Roth wheeled around. When he saw her there, his cruel eyes narrowed and he laughed, a brittle, dangerous rumble in the back of his throat. "Well, well. If it isn't my faithless bitch of a Breedmate." She didn't let his verbal slap hurt her. "We need to talk, Wilhelm. You and I need to come to some kind of agreement before things go any further between you and Andreas." Now he chortled in true amusement. "Let me guess. He sent you here to appeal to my mercy? My sense of honor?" "He didn't send me, no. He doesn't even know I'm here." When his brow quirked with curiosity, she forged on. "I've come to ask you to stay away from Andreas. Drop your animosity for him--and for me--and let Andreas move on with his life." Roth scoffed.



"You can't be serious." "I am," Claire said. "And I'm willing to offer you everything I have to secure your word right here and now. I will come back to you, Wilhelm. Do whatever you want to me--take your hatred for him out on me, I don't care anymore. Just leave him alone. Please." His eyes went narrow as blades, cutting her with their malice. "Are you truly so naive, Claire? I could care less about him," he said, utterly devoid of emotion. "You either, for that matter." Hope kindled, dim but promising. But then Wilhelm Roth let loose with a terrible laugh that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "It's never been about you, Claire.



Didn't you know that? Didn't you ever suspect? You were just a prize I wanted because it would mean taking something precious away from him. Destroying his Darkhaven and the people closest to him was a pleasure I hadn't anticipated. One I relished, nevertheless." "You're sick, Wilhelm." Her stomach twisted with contempt. "My God. You really are a monster." "And you, Claire, are already dead to me," he whispered, his voice an airless growl that chilled her to the bone. "You and Andreas are both already dead. You just don't know it yet. You are obstacles standing in the way of greatness, and you will be removed. You and the Order, as well." "Is that your promise to Dragos?" she asked woodenly "How long have you been doing his evil for him?" Roth smiled maliciously at her disgust. "Our revolution began even before I made the misjudgment of taking you as my mate. I should never have bothered wasting time on you, no matter how much it pleased me to know what I had taken from you and Reichen both. It might have been just as gratifying to me had I farmed you off to Dragos with the other females I sent to him over the years." Claire struggled to make sense of what he was saying. Other females. Roth was sending females--did he mean Breedmate females?--to Dragos. For what purpose, she wondered, but only needed to guess for another moment. From out of the ether of the dream, a wall of barred cells appeared. Dank, lightless, terrible prisons. And within them were captive women. Breedmates. Claire could see the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark on a few of them even from where she stood. The same birthmark she bore. The same birthmark that denoted a human female capable of bonding with a Breed male and bearing his young. Good lord, there were upward of twenty women caged in those cells. Her stomach roiled even more miserably to see that some of them were pregnant.



"What's going on here?" she asked, appalled and sickened. "What the hell are you and Dragos doing?" As she said it, her voice rising in outrage, she caught the low howl of an animal emanating from somewhere deep within the place where she and Roth stood. The howl rose to a roar--a pained, keening cry that vibrated through the soles of her feet and straight into her marrow. It was unlike anything she'd ever heard before ... an utterly alien noise that put a knot of terror in her lungs. God, what was this place? What horrors were Dragos and Roth conducting in here? The terrible cry kept going, so loud it rattled the floor beneath her feet. Roth threw his head back and howled along with the unseen creature, mocking and sadistic. Then he smiled a murderous smile. "You're dead, Claire. Just like those Breedmates over there. He's going to tear you limb from tender limb. Unless I have the pleasure first. You think about that the next time you let Reichen touch you. The next time you let him fuck you, know that this is waiting for you. I'm going to kill you both and relish doing it." Then just like that, Roth and the chamber of horrors were gone. He severed the web that connected them in sleep, and Claire woke up shaking, panting under the warm spray of the shower.



"Oh, God," she gasped, putting her face into her wet palms. Bile rose in her throat. "Oh, God... what have I done?"



It wasn't until a few minutes after he woke that Wilhelm Roth realized the depth of the mistake he'd just made with Claire. At first he'd been shocked to see her in his dream--he hadn't expected the female to have that kind of guts, putting herself in close proximity to him, even in the realm of sleep, after having knowingly stoked his anger with her whoring for Andreas Reichen. After the surprise of her sneaking up on him had worn off, Roth had let himself indulge in provoking her, baiting her fear with a good hard look at what he and Dragos were capable of. He'd delighted in letting her hear the savage roars of the Ancient in his cage. Her horror over seeing the captive Breedmates that Dragos had been using in all manner of experiments had given him a deliciously sadistic thrill. Now that he was awake, he had time to consider the price of his little game. He had shown her the laboratory and underground bunker where Dragos kept all of his secrets. Would she understand what she'd seen? He hoped not. Claire had an inquisitive mind, but what could she do with this knowledge?



Tell the Order, of course, but the saving grace there was that Dragos was already anticipating a move by the warriors in Boston. He'd been banking on the Order eventually finding him out, ever since the gathering they had disrupted near Montreal. Dragos had been making plans, moving pieces on the chessboard of his master design. Still, Roth knew he could not let this slip go untold. If he did, he knew without question that Dragos would somehow unearth the truth in no time. He had to own up to the error and let the chips fall where they may. With luck, his head would not be made to fall along with them. Formulating his excuses, Roth called Dragos's private line. "Sire," he said as the other vampire picked up with a snarled greeting. "Forgive the interruption, but I have news that, unfortunately, could not wait." "Speak." Roth told him about the encounter with Claire in his dream. He was careful to gloss over most of his self-blame for the slip, pinning the fault on the weasly stealth of his Breedmate's talent. "She spied on me without my knowledge, sire.



When I discovered her there in the dream with me, it was too late to prevent her from seeing the lab." "Hmm," Dragos grunted, listening in a maddening silence. "I'm growing very tired of knowing that this female and her companion are still breathing, Herr Roth. Now that you have things under way in Boston, perhaps it's time you dealt with her as we discussed." "Yes, sire. And I will." He cleared his throat, feeling the aggression pouring over the phone line despite Dragos's outward calm. "It will be my personal pleasure to choke the life out of the bitch--after I let her watch me kill Andreas Reichen." "I have a better idea," Dragos said, his voice soft and venomous. "I want you to come to the headquarters at sundown." "Sire?" Roth was confused. "What about the blood bond?" "What about it?" "If she tells the Order what she saw today, what's to say that the warriors won't use her blood bond to find me and the lab?" There was only the briefest hesitation on the other end. "Be here at sundown, Herr Roth. Your instructions will be waiting for you."



Chapter Twenty-Two



The Order's compound in Boston was an architectural and technological marvel. Even in spite of the gravity of Claire's reasons for being there, she couldn't help but be impressed by the subterranean network of sprawling corridors and chambers hidden beneath the grand limestone mansion at street level. The Order lived in unquestionable comfort, but it was clear that this was a tactical location. Their headquarters' primary function--the neurological center of the entire location--was the tech lab, with its banks of computers, surveillance equipment, wall charts, and strategical maps of key cities in the United States and abroad. She had entered a war room, and even though she had been welcomed there as a guest by everyone she'd met so far, as she sat at the large conference table, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was still Wilhelm Roth's mate and the closest link to an inpidual in alliance with the Order's most treacherous enemy. "Everyone's on the way," Gideon said as he ended a call to summon the rest of the warriors and their mates to hear what Claire had to tell them.



One of the compound's female residents, a regal-looking, auburn-haired young woman, placed her hand over Claire's in a show of feminine support. Her name was Gabrielle, and she was the Breedmate of the Order's leader, Lucan, who had been the first to learn of the disturbing news Claire had reported after her dreamwalk to Wilhelm Roth earlier today. The big Gen One vampire began a pace of the room, his long legs carrying him across the width of the place in no more than half a dozen strides while Rio and Dylan watched from the other side of the table. Claire hadn't known what to expect of the Order, and frankly had been more than a little apprehensive when she'd first arrived at their Boston headquarters last night. It surprised her to see that they were not the crude lot their reputation among the general Breed population painted them to be, but rather a professional, close-knit cadre of brothers in arms. With their Breedmates, who lived in the compound with them, the Order was a community not unlike any of the Darkhavens Claire had known.



The warriors and their mates obviously looked out for one another, cared for one another. They were a family. Claire registered a small pang of envy for that, but even more guilt when she considered the fact that Wilhelm Roth might have anything to do with the danger threatening the warriors now. After the horror of what she'd seen in her dream a short time ago, she was suddenly, unwaveringly, committed to the Order's cause. Whatever she could do to prevent Roth--or Dragos--from inflicting more harm, she would. Unfortunately, since sundown today, her blood-bond link to Roth seemed to be progressively diminishing. He was on the move; she was certain of it. He might have been in Boston a couple of nights ago when she'd first arrived with Reichen from Europe, and even as recently as last night, when they'd been driving up from Newport, but her senses told her that he wasn't in the city anymore. She'd been explaining that very fact to Gideon and the others who were gathered in the tech lab before the start of the night's patrols. "Do you have any idea where Roth might go?" Savannah, Gideon's mate, sat beside him near the computer workstations. The tall black female was a calming presence in the room, a source of serene strength that seemed a good counterpoint to Gideon's frenetic energy. "Were there any recognizable landmarks in the dream?" Claire shook her head. "Nothing that I could point to, unfortunately. I wish there were."



"Do you think he's aware that you knew he was in Boston?" Rio asked, his voice rolling with a rich Spanish accent, his dark brows lowered over smoky topaz eyes. "It's possible that he might have suspected I was," Claire guessed. "And if I sensed him, I have to assume he sensed my presence in the city as well." Gideon nodded. "That could be reason enough for him to leave town, if he also thinks you might be persuaded to turn over that information to us." "And if he's carrying out orders for Dragos," Dylan piped in from next to Rio, "then it could be that he's moved himself somewhere near Dragos's lair. Maybe if we find out where he is now, we'll find Dragos, too." Gideon scowled pensively, then glanced to Claire. "Let's go over again what you saw in your dream. Maybe Roth left us some further clues to help us find him." Claire started to rehash her dreamwalk from the beginning. As she recounted the details of her confrontation with Roth, the glass doors of the tech lab slid open and in walked Tegan with a few other warriors, all of them dressed for combat in head-to-toe black. And behind them was Andreas, dressed similarly and looking every bit as lethal as his heavily armed companions. Claire's heart stuttered at the sight of him.



She'd considered going to him directly after her dreamwalk with Roth, but she didn't think she could bear to be near him after the way they'd parted in the chapel. And a more cowardly part of her knew that he would be furious to find out what she'd done. The look he gave her as he entered the room with Tegan could hardly be described as friendly. Evidently he'd already been informed of the purpose behind this impromptu meeting of the Order. "What else do you recall, Claire?" Gideon asked her now. "You said you saw chemistry equipment and tables lined with laboratory supplies." She nodded. "Yes, there were microscopes, computers and beakers, and lots of chemical vials. It all seemed very state of the art, but I couldn't tell you what kind of experiments were being conducted there." "And past the lab there were the barred cells," Gideon prompted.

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