Ashes of Midnight

The agent spoke to her, but his focus was centered wholly on Andreas, who loomed behind her, throwing off heat like a furnace. "It's okay," said the agent. "I've got him covered. He won't hurt you anymore." The agent stepped farther into the room, cautious progress that brought him to within arm's length of Claire. His weapon remained locked on target. As he neared, Andreas let loose with a feral-sounding growl. The heat that Claire felt coming off him before was getting stronger now, making the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. "Please," she finally managed to croak. "You don't have any idea what you're doing. Put down your weapon." The agent's eyes darted to her for only a fraction of a second, as though to gauge her sanity--or lack thereof. "You need to step aside, Frau Roth. I have specific orders here. I mean to carry them out." Specific orders to kill Andreas on the spot. The realization sank into her consciousness like poison. They were a death squad, just as Andreas knew they would be. Wilhelm had called for his death.



Not only that, but he would have his men kill Andre in cold blood, right in front of her. The agent's voice was lethally cold now, and in the narrowing distance outside the bedroom, more agents were making a swift climb up the stairs. "Step aside, Frau Roth. I'm afraid I can't ask you again." The rifle came closer, a very convincing threat. She had no intention of cooperating with the agent, but in that next instant she sensed, rather than saw, Andreas's arm come up and around her to reach for the weapon with blinding speed. Heat traveled all along her side with the movement, sending out an electrical current that vibrated deep in her bones. Andreas locked his fist around the gun's barrel. His arm was glowing with heat that radiated down to his fingers in rings of pulsing white-hot light. The energy leapt from him and onto the rifle in bright undulations. Instantly, the agent's eyes went wide. His head lolled back on his shoulders and his body went into a violent spasm that made his teeth clatter. Claire smelled burning skin and hair. Sickened, she looked away as the Breed male dropped to the floor and convulsed from the sudden dose of lethal power. Before he was dead, another agent came racing into the room, his weapon at the ready. "Claire, stay back!"



Andreas roared at her. At that same instant, he threw off more heat and light, expelling it like a cannonball that materialized out of the palm of his hand. He threw the orb of fire at the newly arrived agent, killing him on the spot. Flames erupted all around. Fire crept up the far wall and onto the ceiling. Andreas shot a fierce look over his bleeding shoulder to where Claire stood behind him, awestruck by the terrible power he possessed. "Come on. We have to get out of here." She followed him out of the burning room and onto the second-floor landing. Two more agents were scrambling up the stairs to head them off. He stopped them halfway there, unleashing twin fireballs that exploded like bombs, tearing a hole in the silk- papered wall and taking a large bite out of the curving wooden staircase. As they navigated to the ground level, Claire stayed close to him--but not too close, mindful of the searing energy that rode every inch of his body. When she got so much as a foot away from Andreas, his heat was overwhelming. The incinerating glow that had covered him in the woods last night was back again. If she touched him now, even accidentally, she knew it would kill her. But as an inferno of his making surged hotter upstairs and in the foyer, and as Andreas dispatched the rest of the death squad that had come to kill him on what could only have been Wilhelm's explicit orders, Claire knew that this lethal being--this man she had possibly never fully understood--was her best chance of surviving the next few minutes. So she ran when he told her to run. She stuck as close as she dared. It wasn't until they both were out of the manor house, feet flying over the cool, moonlit autumn grass outside, that Claire allowed herself to drop to her knees and let the tears fall. She pivoted around, choking on the crisp night air and her own strangling confusion of emotions. Her house was ablaze. More lives were lost. She wanted to scream, but in the deepest corner of her heart, all she knew was a selfish, swamping relief that Andreas was still breathing. She swiveled her head to look at him. The large, bright shape of him wobbled through her welling tears. How many times in the past few months had she wished that he were still alive?



How many tears had she secretly shed for him and his perished kin? No matter what Andreas said, she could not allow herself to believe for one second that Wilhelm had had anything to do with the destruction of Andreas's Darkhaven. She hoped with every shred of her being that his accusations were wrong. But now, after what happened here tonight, she couldn't dislodge the sharp pebble of doubt that had embedded itself under her skin. And she knew she wouldn't be able to rest until she knew of Wilhelm's guilt or innocence for a fact. She needed answers. Now more than ever, she needed to understand just what kind of man Wilhelm Roth truly was. "Are you all right?" Andreas asked as she wiped her wet eyes and got to her feet. Claire nodded, but inside she felt numb, a growing sense of sickness roiling in the pit of her stomach. "He would have had you killed tonight," she murmured. "I didn't know, Andreas. I swear to you, I didn't know." He stared at her in silence, watching her through the pulsating glow of fire that still traveled his body. He was bleeding and wounded, monstrous with heat, all because of Wilhelm. And because of her. She regretted contacting Wilhelm now, regardless of any obligation she might have to him as his Breedmate.



She had practically signed Andreas's death warrant herself. "They will send more agents before long," she said. "When this unit doesn't report in to Wilhelm, he will only send in more to find you." "Yes," Andreas said, his tone flat and grimly accepting. "He will send in more men and I will kill them, too, until I take out so many that Roth has no choice but to face me himself. I welcome that moment. I don't care what it takes to get there." Claire shuddered internally at the thought of so much violence and death. She was desperate for answers of her own from Wilhelm, and she wasn't about to stand around and wait to witness more bloodshed and flames. She walked past Andreas and headed toward the road that led off the estate. "Claire," he called from behind her, but she kept walking, moving with a new kind of resolve. Andreas's deep voice reached out to her from the stretch of darkness in her wake. "Claire... where the hell do you think you're going?" She paused, turned a weary look on him. "You say you mean to locate Wilhelm and take your revenge on him. Now I need the truth from him. Most of his business is conducted from a private office in the city. Maybe if we go there, we'll both find the answers we need."



Chapter Eight



Reichen wasn't sure which was worse: the persistent pain of his gunshot wound, or the way his gut twisted with the urgency to feed. One thing would take care of both problems. Blood. He felt a snarl work its way up his parched throat as his nostrils filled with the mingled odors of dozens of humans in close proximity to him, all of them trapped together in the tight compartment of the train into Hamburg. The temptation to glance up and single out viable prey--the need to quench his burning thirst--was almost overwhelming. "Keep your head down," Claire whispered to him, her breath skating warmly against his ear. "Your eyes, too, Andre." Bad enough he was injured and bleeding, and that both he and Claire smelled like a pair of chimney sweeps. It wouldn't be a good idea to let any of the passengers seated around them get a look at his transformed eyes or his rather unusual dental situation. At least his fury had cooled. He and Claire had walked for about an hour before the glow of his pyrokinesis had ebbed. They'd had no choice but to travel on foot. Until his metabolism leveled out, anything he touched, anything that got too near him, would incinerate to ashes. Claire seemed to pick up on that fact, and she'd kept a careful distance from him while he struggled to get his internal systems back in line. Being Breed, and despite being shot, Reichen could have easily walked the entire two-hour distance from Roth's country house to his private office in Hamburg. He could have crossed the miles at a speed human eyes couldn't possibly track, but no way would he have abandoned Claire to the night by herself. Not after everything she'd been through. Or, rather, everything that he had put her through.



She was weary and fatigued, even now, seated next to him on the inbound train. She hadn't put up much of an argument at all when he led her to the rural village station and asked her which line they needed to take. They'd had no money on them, so Reichen had procured their passage with a little Breed-born sleight of hand. At his suggestion, the man collecting tickets fell into a quick but brief trance, giving them the opportunity to slip past the turnstiles and board the train with no one the wiser. The trick had sapped just about all of his strength, but at least Claire was out of the cold and able to relax. He, on the other hand, was as twitchy and tense as he could be. Reichen tucked his chin down to his chest and hunched his shoulders to help conceal his assorted visible problems from any curious human eyes. His thirst was another thing.



It gnawed at him, always at its most fevered after the fire. Under ordinary circumstances, he and his kind could go a week or more without feeding, but since the attack on his Darkhaven and the reawakening of the deadly power inside him, his thirst was persistent. Almost constant. He'd seen others among his kind fall into blood addiction. It didn't happen often, mostly among those of weaker minds and lesser years, or, on the other end of the spectrum, the earliest generations of the Breed whose bloodlines were less diluted with human genes and closer to the Ancients--the alien fathers of the vampire race on Earth. Reichen's pyrokinetic curse was bad enough, but the thirst that rose in its wake horrified him every bit as much as the fires he could summon at will. And if he was being honest, with himself at least, he could hardly deny that the fires were becoming less of a response to his fury and more of a ruling part of who he was. Since he'd begun his mission of vengeance on Roth a few weeks ago, the fires were strengthening. Now they sprang to life with barely a thought, burning deeper and longer, more explosive every time. And once they faded, he was gripped with a blood thirst that could hardly be contained or sated. He was losing himself to both, and he knew it. If he stayed in Claire's company much longer, she would know it, too. Even as the gravity of that thought coiled around him, Reichen couldn't help watching in his periphery as a young hipster got up from his seat across the compartment from him and moved to a place that had been vacated at the last stop. Reichen followed the human male with a predator's gaze, noting the young man's lack of awareness of his surroundings as he flopped down onto the seat. White earbuds emitted tinny echoes of the music that was blaring into the human's head. Downcast, sullen eyes peeked out from under a sweep of jagged black bangs, all of the hipster's focus rooted on the touch screen of his iPhone as he busied himself with an intense round of text messaging. Reichen watched with the same keen interest as a lion observing wildebeests at the watering hole, his hunting instincts prickling to attention, already separating the easiest prey from the pack of other commuters. The train slowed. As it pulled into a station, the human got up. Reichen's muscles tensed in reflex. He started to follow, hunger ruling him, but Claire's hand came down gently on his forearm.



"Not this one. We get off at the next station." He sat back down and tried not to let the irritated growl escape him as the train's doors slid shut and his erstwhile meal ambled obliviously into the crowd newly poured onto the platform. A few minutes later, he and Claire reached their stop. They got off the train and walked the rest of the way to the Speicherstadt, Hamburg's warehouse district. Rows of tall redbrick buildings pided by canal waterways glowed with incandescent light against the night sky. The mingled aromas of coffee beans and spices rode on the crisp breeze as Claire led him over a sweeping arched bridge, then deeper into the historic district. As the scents would indicate, some of the gothic buildings appeared to still be in use as commodities warehouses; others had been converted to stores housing fine Oriental rugs. Claire continued on for another couple of blocks before she paused in front of a brick-and-limestone building that looked like any of its neighbors. A trio of concrete steps flanked by delicate wrought-iron railings led up to an unmarked, unnumbered door. "This place belongs to Roth?" Reichen asked as they reached the top step. She nodded. "One of several private offices he keeps in the city. Will you be able to open the locks?"



"If not by will, then by brute force," he said, moving in front of her to direct a mental command at the double dead bolts on the door. He hit them hard with his mind, careful not to wake the fire that still lurked at the edge of his control, waiting for the excuse to burn again. With a series of metallic clicks, the dead bolts twisted free and the door inched open. When Claire started to pass him and walk inside, Reichen held her back with a look. "Wait here while I look around. It might not be safe." He recognized the irony in his protectiveness as he stepped into the dark building and searched for any signs of trouble. Running into more Enforcement Agents would be a definite problem, but he was by far the worst threat to Claire's safety. Especially in his current hungered state. "All right," he told her when he was certain the quiet building was empty. He flicked on a light switch for her as she entered. Roth's tastes in this place were an incongruous mix of Old World and modern minimalist. Slick chrome-and-glass pieces competed with exquisite antiques. The art on the walls were beautiful masterworks, yet every painting depicted a scene of horrific brutality. Death scenes appeared to be a favorite, whether the subject was men, women, or animals. Apparently Roth didn't discriminate when it came to his appreciation for violence. "How often does he stay here?" Reichen asked, not missing the fact that there was a bedroom loft occupying the entire upper floor. "Often. At least, from what I understand," Claire said quietly but without any bitterness as she walked over to a computer workstation and turned on the machine. As it fired up, she opened one of the desk drawers and began sifting through its contents. "I do know that his work for the Agency has also taken him to Berlin from time to time." Reichen looked up at her, seeing the doubt in her soft brown gaze. She may not want to believe his accusations against her mate, but Claire was wrestling with at least some measure of uncertainty about Wilhelm Roth. "How is your wound?" she asked, looking remorseful where she had no reason to be. Reichen shrugged his good shoulder. The bullet had passed through cleanly; once he fed, the healing would speed even faster. "I'll live," he said. "Long enough to do what must be done." He could see her throat work as she swallowed. "When will you stop all of this, Andre? How many more people have to die?" His answer was grim and resolute. "Just one." She held his hard stare.