Ashes of Midnight (Midnight Breed #6)

"Wilhelm... haven't you heard? The Hamburg Darkhaven. It's gone." "What?" "The Darkhaven came under attack first. There's nothing left of it. No survivors, other than one Enforcement Agent who escaped the fires to warn us that we were likely in danger, as well." Roth absorbed this news in grim silence. He didn't have a lot of kin--no sons of his own to want to oust him from power, no brothers of any generation who'd managed to live as long as he had. The Darkhaven community he shepherded in Hamburg consisted only of a few nephews, who'd never been good for much; various household staff; plus a small garrison of guards on loan from the Agency. He hardly knew any of them, in truth, and frankly, he had more important things to consider than wasting any time mourning the loss. "I'm sorry, Wilhelm," Claire was saying now, sentiment he dismissed with a curt wave of his hand. He supposed he had to know something like this was going to happen. He did know, in fact. He'd known from the moment he'd been informed of the first Enforcement Agency death at the Berlin office several weeks past--the up-close-and-personal killing of an agent who reported directly to him on covert, often unofficial, operations. When the second violent murder within his private contingent occurred, then the third and fourth, it left little question that someone was out for blood. The only trouble with that theory being the fact that the someone in question was dead. At least that had been the report coming out of the Agency. At the time, Roth hadn't had the opportunity or the inclination to doubt the intel; more important business had already called him away to Montreal.

That business was still his chief priority, but this assault on his personal holdings could not go unmet. "I will take care of the matter," he told Claire. "And you needn't worry, I'll call in a few favors to find you temporary shelter in the region until I am able to return." "Where exactly are you, Wilhelm? One of your guards told me you're not in Germany." She looked around at the dream landscape, her gaze clearly taking note of the jags of steep granite that flanked some of the stretch of rural highway his mind had manufactured. "Are you in New England?" Too clever, his Yankee-born Breedmate. And far too inquisitive now for her own good. Roth neither confirmed nor denied his whereabouts. "Stay put, Claire. You'll be fine." "Wilhelm," she said slowly. "Aren't you even a little bit curious about who attacked us last night? I would think you'd want to know who's responsible ... and why." Roth stared at her. "Andreas Reichen," she said, watching him much too closely for his reaction. He was careful to give her nothing, not so much as a blink of his eyes or a kick of his pulse. He frowned after a moment, feigning confusion. "You speak of a ghost, Claire. Andreas Reichen perished with the rest of his kin this past summer when his Darkhaven burned to the ground." In fact, Roth thought with private disappointment, the arrogant son of a bitch should have been dead long before then. Claire shook her head. "He's alive. He's... changed, Wilhelm. He has a terrible rage inside him--a power I can barely comprehend. The fires and explosions here and in Hamburg? He made them. They came out of him. I saw it with my own eyes." Roth listened, both incredulous and concerned.

"Wilhelm, he says he intends to kill you." He scoffed. "The bastard will never get close enough to try." "He's here, Wilhelm." Claire's gaze was imploring. "He is here, in the house with me, passed out in the cellar. I don't know what to do." Roth's furious curse was punctuated by an electronic bleating that pierced the fabric of his dream. His surroundings warped and vibrated. The ribbon of dark pavement and the perfect starlit sky above trembled, the vision of Claire starting to fade out with the sound waves that were rousing him from sleep. "My mobile is ringing," he said, ready to be done with her anyway. As he spoke, the Jaguar he'd been sitting in vaporized, leaving him standing on the strip of moonlit pavement beside her. "I have to take this call now--" Claire's filmy image reached for him. "What about Andreas?" He ground his molars together at the apparent easy familiarity she still seemed to feel toward the other male, even after decades of separation. "Keep the son of a bitch contained at the house while I make arrangements to deal with him."

"You want me to stay here with him?" She stared, uncertain. "For how long?" "As long as it takes. I'll send another Agency detail to remove him at sunset." "Remove him into Agency custody, you mean? You won't let your men hurt him, will you?" Her apparent concern was thoroughly pissing him off. "My men are professionals, Claire. They know how to handle a situation like this. You needn't worry about the details." The jangle of his ringing phone came again, pulling him further away from her, back to consciousness. "What about me, Wilhelm?" Claire murmured. "How am I supposed to keep Andreas here until your men arrive?"

"Do whatever you must," Roth replied flatly. "You know him better than most, after all. Intimately, if memory serves. I'm sure you'll think of some way to detain him." He didn't wait for her to say anything more. The phone rang again and Roth's eyes snapped open, severing his thready connection to Claire. He grabbed the mobile from the table next to his bed. "Yes." "Herr Roth," said a nervous Breed male on the other end of the line. "This is Agent Krieger from the Berlin office, sir. There's been a murder here last night--Agent Waldemar's body was just discovered in his residence. His neck was broken. And... there's more, sir. It seems there was an incident at your Darkhaven in Hamburg, as well." Roth scoffed, full of sarcasm. "You don't say." "Sir?" "Assemble a combat team and send them to my country house as soon as the sun sets. The unit on-site has been attacked and eliminated. Now my Breedmate is there without any cover. She's alone, and she's holding Andreas Reichen for you." "Reichen?" asked the agent.

"I don't understand, sir. Wasn't he killed in that freak accident at his Darkhaven some time ago?" Roth's fingers tightened on the thin case of the mobile phone. "Apparently the bastard is very much alive ... for the moment. Instruct the team that I want him taken out on sight. Make him dead, agent." "Yes, sir."

Chapter Five

Reichen stood over her in silence, his hands braced on the arms of a moss green wingback chair in one of the estate's receiving rooms, where Claire had fallen asleep. For a moment, when he'd first come to alone in the pitch-dark cellar, he hadn't the first clue where he was or how he'd gotten there. Nor could he immediately recall why it was that most of his body was recovering from UV burns. It was like that for him sometimes, after the pyrokinetic energy faded. Hard to remember details. Hard to make sense of his surroundings. Hard to know anything except the fierce blood thirst that overtook him once his inner fire had a chance to cool. He had been disoriented when he first regained consciousness in the cellar, but then he'd breathed in the softest trace scent of vanilla and warm spices. Claire. Her blood scent had drawn him out of the dark and up the flight of stone steps, into the room where she dozed now.

He breathed her in as he loomed over her, tempted to close his eyes and savor the memory of what had been, but instead he barely blinked. He watched the quick, darting movement of her eyes beneath her closed lids. She was dreaming. Reichen wondered how long she'd been sleeping, or where her dreams had carried her that her pulse would be beating as rapidly as a skittish hare's. His thirsting gaze drifted down from the delicate beauty of her face to the smooth golden brown skin of her throat. Ticking frantically at the right side of her neck, her artery beat beside a small scarlet-colored birthmark. Reichen's fangs were already filling his mouth, but now they throbbed, his eyes rooted on that tender patch of flesh with its diminutive teardrop- and-crescent-moon symbol riding so close to Claire's pulse. Jesus, he was parched. His belly was tight and empty, his limbs heavy and fatigued. He licked his lips, hardly able to keep himself from leaning in a bit closer, until the light beat of her pulse was banging in his own veins as loud and demanding as a drum. God, he thirsted... so deeply that the need was primal, animal, urging him to sweep in and take his fill like the predator he truly was.

That it was Claire beneath him was the only thing that made him pause. How long had he wondered what she would taste like? How many times had he come this close--hell, even closer than this--to pressing his fangs into her buttery soft skin and drinking from her vein? He'd wanted that more than anything at one time. But it was the one thing he'd never done, not even in their most fevered moments together. As much as he'd hungered to taste her, to bond her to him through blood, he had never taken his need for Claire that far. She was a Breedmate. Unlike the larger percentage of Homo sapiens females walking the planet, she was one of a small number bearing unusual blood and DNA properties. Claire and those like her, born with the crimson stamp somewhere on their bodies, were also uniquely gifted with extraordinary psychic abilities. And, unlike other human women, they had the ability to form an unbreakable bond with members of the Breed and bear their young. When a Breedmate offered her blood to one of Reichen's kind, it was a precious gift--the most sacred of all. It forged a bond that could be severed only by death. Reichen couldn't lie to himself and pretend that he'd never been tempted. But he'd hardly been the kind to settle down, especially then. For all his libertine ways, and as laughable as it seemed to him now, his honor had prevented him from taking something from Claire that could never be called back.

One sip of her blood meant she would live in him for as long as he drew breath. He would be bound to her always, drawn to her always, regardless of any vow she'd made to another male. Even through the smoke and fog of his recovering mind, he could still recall how hard it had been to exercise control where his hunger for Claire was concerned. But he'd been careful. As hard as it was, he'd been a pillar of restraint, right to the end. If he'd known then that she was going to waste so little time giving herself to Wilhelm Roth...? Reichen growled just thinking on it. His fury wasn't so cooled that he didn't entertain the idea of slaking his thirst on her right there and then. He leaned in, unable to tear his hungering eyes away from the rhythmic beat of her pulse. Her scent beckoned him as much as the rush of her blood beneath her skin. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. This close, she robbed him of breath. Made him ache to touch her. Jesus Christ, she made him burn far worse than sunlight or fury. It stunned him to realize that he wanted her still, after all this time. After all her mate had done to destroy him. He wanted Claire for his own... still. Reichen drew in a rough breath of air, his lips peeling back off his fangs. He wanted her, and, by God, he would take her. "No," he growled to himself. "Damn it, no." Claire's eyes snapped open and went wide. She gasped, drawing back as far as she could get from him with the chair blocking her escape.

Her dark brown eyes searched his face, too intelligent to misunderstand what had nearly happened. Reichen mentally yanked himself to heel, despite the hunger that was still making his gums throb with the urge to feed. "Pleasant dreams, Frau Roth?" "Not at all," she answered, staring hard at him. "After what happened here last night, I'm sure I'll be having nightmares for a long time to come." A pang of shame jabbed him, but he ignored it. He had to keep his eye on the ball. "You didn't happen to pay a dreamtime visit to your mate just now, did you?" Claire didn't so much as blink. He could see the recollection in her steady gaze, the realization that although many years had passed since they last saw each other, Reichen had not forgotten her special psychic ability. Her cheeks darkened a bit, and he wondered if she was thinking of all the times she had dreamwalked into some of his most erotic REM fantasies during those intense, passionate few months in which they'd fallen in love. He had not forgotten a single moment they'd shared, awake or joined in dreams, and he had damn sure tried. "Wilhelm doesn't like it when I intrude on his dreams," she murmured. "That's not really a denial," Reichen replied. He kept his hands braced on the arms of the chair, trapping her there while he continued his interrogation. "Where is he, Claire?" "I told you, I don't know." "But you do have some idea," he said, trying not to be distracted by his hunger or his sudden, growing awareness of just how close their bodies were to each other. He could feel her heat mingling with his own, making his healing, irradiated skin feel as though it were being touched by flame.

"Make no mistake, I will find him. The others weren't able to run, nor will he." She looked wary, repelled. "What... others?" "His faithful hounds, the ones who carried out his orders with no regard for innocent lives. I've put them all down, one by one. Not him, not yet. I've saved him for last because I wanted him to know that I was coming. I wanted him to understand that he was going to have to pay for what he did." Claire swallowed, gave a small shake of her head. "What you said last night--that Wilhelm is responsible for what happened to your Darkhaven... you are mistaken, Andreas. You have to be mistaken." "What I said is the truth." "It can't be--" "Why not?" he snapped. "Because that will mean you're mated not only to a known thug but a cold-blooded murderer, as well?" Her slender dark brows came together in an expression somewhere between pity and contempt. "This coming from someone whose own hands are stained with more than a dozen lives?" Reichen reeled back, bristling at the reminder.

He took a few steps away from her, then pivoted to begin a tense pace out of the room. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't damn well care. He knew he couldn't leave the house while it was daylight outside, and right now it felt like a cage. Claire drifted out behind him, her footsteps all but silent on the polished marble floor of the hall. "Andreas, I know you must be terribly hurt and confused after everything you've been through. We can try to sort all of this out later. Right now you need some peace and quiet while your body is healing from the UV burns. You need rest--" "What I need right now is blood," he snarled, swiveling a hard, amber-eyed look on her. "Since you're so reluctant to surrender Roth to me, I don't suppose you'd be willing to let me take my fill of you either." She blanched, appalled, just as he wanted her to be. Reichen continued his impatient prowl of the hallway, noting the assorted photographs and framed art on the walls. With his anger stoked, he looked for images of Claire and Roth, the adoring couple, eager for more kindling for the fury that still burned in his gut. There were only a handful of photos of them together, often among a group of Darkhaven or Enforcement Agency members, or in front of ribbon-cutting ceremonies taking place at various evening events. Claire's smile was perfect in each one: pleasant without being overly excited, polite without being overly cool. Reichen didn't know that smile.