"Good." Dragos's shrewd gaze drilled into him. "See that it is, Herr Roth." On the other side of the viewing window, the Ancient let loose with another agonized howl. Dragos watched, unflinching, as the creature who was his father's father clawed at himself and shrieked in pain. "I've no further need of you at this time," Dragos murmured without looking at Roth.
"I will look for a report of your current status later this evening." "Yes, sire," Roth hissed through a tightly held smile. That smile turned to a sneer as he exited the lab and headed out to attend his business for Dragos.
When his cell phone rang in his pocket, it was all he could do not to crush the thing in his fist as he stormed through the bunker. "What is it," he snapped into the receiver. He listened, blood boiling in his veins, as an Enforcement Agent from Hamburg informed him that they had his Breedmate safely in custody. "Is she alone?" "Yes, Director Roth. And by some miracle, she appears to be unharmed. We have her with us here at your office in the Speicherstadt." "Excellent." Roth turned into an unoccupied supply room and closed the door behind him. "Put her on the line. I would have a word with her."
Claire wanted to ignore the Enforcement Agent knocking on the bathroom door, but she couldn't hide in there forever. No more than she could avoid talking to Wilhelm, who was apparently on the phone right now, waiting to speak with her. "Frau Roth," called the agent. "Is everything all right in there?" She got up from the floor where she'd been sitting and went over to open the door. As she came out of the dark room, the agent thrust his cell phone toward her. She took it. Slowly brought it up to her ear. As soon as she heard Wilhelm's breath blowing hotly across the receiver, she knew that he was furious with her. Her veins jangled a warning that she had no patience to acknowledge. "You lied to me," she said by way of greeting. "But then, you've lied about many things, haven't you?" His answering scoff was as sharp as a blade. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"The men you sent to the house earlier tonight. They had no intention of taking Andreas out of there peacefully. You sent a death squad to kill him." "Andreas Reichen is a very dangerous inpidual," came the icy reply. "I was only thinking of your safety, Claire." "Really?" Her voice climbed up slightly, enough to draw anxious looks from her Enforcement Agency watchdogs. "If my safety was anything of an issue to you, then why did you insist that I stay there with him? You practically thrust me at him." A low-toned, amused chuckle grated across her nerves. "Truthfully, I don't see the point of your distress, darling.
You did manage to come out of the situation with your pretty neck unscathed, I assume." Claire dismissed the obviously weighted comment with a tight shake of her head. She wasn't going to let him shame her when he made her sick with anger and revulsion and not a little fear. "What about the girl from Aphrodite, Wilhelm? Did she walk away from you unscathed?" Silence stretched on the other end of the line and it gave Claire the courage to keep going, to lay everything out in one rush of breath. "What do you know about the attack on Andreas's Darkhaven, Wilhelm? Did you have something to do with that?" She practically choked on the awful words. "Did you send a Minion into his home with a death squad on orders to kill everyone inside? Are you the cold-blooded murderer he says you are?" "For Christ's sake, Claire. Listen to yourself. You are spewing a lot of paranoid nonsense." "Am I?" She heard the hesitancy in his voice. She could practically hear the wheels in his shrewd mind turning, calculating his errors and how to smooth them over. "What is this thing between you and Andreas? Has he threatened to expose you in some way, or is this personal ... because of the past?" "I could care less about the past," he replied, utterly devoid of emotion.
"And unless I miss my guess, Claire, this thing between Reichen and me became about as personal as it could get just a short time ago. What kind of mate would I be to you if I let him defile the sanctity of our bond and simply walk away uncontested? There's not a male alive in the entire Breed nation who would deny me the right to defend your honor." Oh, God. He was right. If the violence Andreas had orchestrated the past few weeks was not reason enough, in drinking from her, a blood-bonded Breedmate, he had just written his own death warrant. Claire swallowed the lump of dread that crawled into her throat. "You've never loved me, Wilhelm. Have you? Why did you want me for your mate? Why do you care what I do now, when I have never truly been a part of your life? Our bond has never been anything but a farce--" "If you are looking for a way to justify your actions, Claire, you are sorely mistaken. The fact is, you are my mate. If and when I get my hands on Andreas Reichen, I will demand the full rights due me.
You may count on that." She could hear the danger in his tone and knew from the sharp way he'd cut her off that she would find no mercy in him whatsoever. She had never been one to cower, but the thought of him sending more of his death dealers into the city after Andre made her heart squeeze like it was in a vise. "Wilhelm, please ..." "Don't beg me, Claire. Not for him," he snapped, full of venom. "Put the agent back on the phone now. You're going to go with the Enforcement Agents to their headquarters and help them in their pursuit of this ... animal." "Wilhelm, no--" "Put the agent on the phone, goddamn you!" She didn't have to get the armed guards' attention.
Both of them gaped at her as Wilhelm's furious outburst ricocheted across the room. One of the agents came over to her and extracted the phone from her reluctant grasp. He listened for only a moment before he motioned the other guard over to Claire and instructed him not to let her leave their custody. Claire's heart banged in her chest as the agent wrapped up the private conversation. She could see the confusion and sympathy in the Breed male's eyes as he hung up and came toward her with the steady calm of a soldier accustomed to handling difficult situations. "You need to come with us now," he told her gently but firmly "We have orders, Frau Roth. I'm sorry."
"No." He reached for her and Claire's panic spiked. "I won't go with you. Take your hands off me!" The second agent moved in, his expression grave. "Let's not make this difficult, all right?" Claire wrenched her arm out of the bruising grasp. She took two lunging steps away from them, fully prepared to bolt if she could just reach the door. She didn't even come close. One guard was there before she had a chance to blink.
The other came up behind her and shoved something hard and cold against the small of her back. She felt the searing bite of the taser for only an instant before the shock took her legs out from under her. She crashed to the floor on a broken scream, pain rippling through her. "Pick her up," she heard one of them say from above her. "I'll go open the vehicle." Claire felt large, hard hands hoist her to her feet. She heard the apartment door open, felt the incoming chill of night air skate across the floor from outside. Then a low grunt and a sick, sodden sound of someone choking, gasping, sputtering for breath. The agent holding on to Claire let go as he faced whatever it was that now stood on the threshold of the open door. "What the fuck!" Claire lifted her head and couldn't hold back her cry of stunned relief. Andreas.
Oh, God... he came back for her. His big body blocked the doorway, his eyes blazing, fangs glistening white with menace. At his feet lay the bleeding corpse of the agent who'd tasered her, his throat brutally skewered and all but severed by a length of twisted black wrought iron. As the second agent drew his weapon and prepared to fire, Andreas stalked inside and fired on him with his companion's gun, killing him with the swift, deadly aim of a sniper. Then he was at her side as if nothing else existed. "Claire...Jesus Christ," he said, his voice gruff, his expression as grave as she'd ever seen it. He smoothed his hands over her face, touching every inch of her as if he feared she was broken. His strong fingers trembled against her skin. For one moment she thought--desperately hoped--he might kiss her again. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head, feeling wobbly and unstable until Andreas wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her away from the blood and death on the floor.
"We're not safe in the city now," she told him. "I just talked to Wilhelm. He knows that I'm with you. He knows that you drank from me tonight." Andreas's mouth compressed tightly. Something dark flashed in his eyes. Remorse, perhaps? Was it regret? "I don't think either one of us is safe from him now," she said. He stared at her for a long moment, an intense, searching look. Then he gave her a curt nod. "You're coming with me, Claire. No matter what happens, I will keep you safe."
Chapter Ten
Stripped of their weapons, keys, cell phones, and cash, Reichen left the dead Enforcement Agents where they lay, then motioned for Claire to follow him to the SUV parked on the street outside. "Where will we go?" she asked him as they leapt into the vehicle and Reichen hauled ass away from the curb. "It won't take Wilhelm long to have half the Agency on our heels." Reichen acknowledged that fact with a grim nod. "We can't stay in Hamburg. It would probably be wise if we left Germany altogether." "And go where? He has contacts all over Europe. We can't trust anyone in the Darkhavens or the Enforcement Agency not to turn us in to him the first chance they get."
"We can trust the Order." In his periphery, Reichen saw Claire's doubtful reaction. "The Order? From what I've heard about them, they don't exactly have an open-door policy. Why would a dangerous group of vigilantes from the States be willing to help us?" Reichen resisted the urge to correct her opinion of the Order, one that had been unfairly yet widely accepted among the general Breed population for generations. He slid a glance at her. "I've been working with Lucan, Tegan, and the other warriors for close to a year now. The night my Darkhaven was attacked, I was away from Berlin, following up on a mission for the Order.
We'd been gathering intel concerning a spate of Gen One assassinations and looking into possible links to blood clubs around Europe." "You and the Order... working together?" She got quiet then, considering him in studied silence as he turned the SUV onto a busy boulevard that led out of Hamburg. "There's so much I don't know about you anymore, Andre. Everything about you seems so different now." Not everything, he thought, recalling all too easily how familiar she'd felt pressed against him, her mouth on his in a heated kiss. He felt possessive around her. Fiercely protective. All the things he'd felt with her in the beginning. Time had diffused none of it, though that hardly gave him cause to celebrate. The need to hold her close right here and now was nearly overwhelming. He knew she was basically all right, but just the idea of her being shoved around by the agents--tasered by them, for God's sake--made his blood boil with fury.
The taste of her fear, her pain, still echoed in his veins. Here was one thing that was different about him now: the bond he'd stolen from her with his uninvited bite. Even though Claire had yet to condemn him for it, he would carry the guilt of his actions forever. Especially once he left her widowed and alone, after he crushed the life out of Wilhelm Roth. Some mercenary part of him found the prospect of Roth's imminent death even more attractive when it would free Claire to take another mate. Particularly if that new mate might be him. But regardless of the fact that he had already bound himself to her by blood, Claire deserved something more than what he could ever give her. She always had. "Are you hungry?" he asked her, eager to turn his mind away from all the things he'd done wrong by her, now and before. "You haven't eaten all day. You must be starving." She gave him a noncommittal shrug. "If it's not a good idea to stop anywhere yet, I'll understand--" "You need food," he said, more sharply than intended. "We'll stop." As a Breedmate, Claire's perfect health and ageless longevity depended on the regular intake of a Breed male's blood, but her body still required food to function. It was a hell of a lot more palatable for Reichen to risk the time it would take to get her a sandwich than it was for him to think about Wilhelm Roth nourishing Claire as only her true mate could do. He wondered how long it had been since she'd fed from Roth's vein. Not long, he was guessing, based on how youthful and strong she looked. He wondered how long it had been since she'd lain with Roth. Had she ever loved him? The questions were bitter on his tongue, but he choked them back. He didn't want to know all of the ways that Wilhelm Roth had been with Claire, or how recently.
She wasn't his, and he had better put all thoughts of her aside to maintain his focus on the thing that truly mattered to him now--upholding his promise to avenge the innocent souls whom Roth destroyed. If he couldn't do that, then he was no good to himself or anyone else. Reichen drove for a while without speaking, working hard to ignore the fact that only a small space of leather and plastic separated him from Claire. At least he hadn't gone pyro back at Roth's office. Claire's blood was likely to thank for that small blessing. He'd felt the fires leap to life inside him when he sensed her distress a few blocks away from the place, but somehow, by the time he'd returned to face the agents who were hurting her, he'd managed to keep the flames from erupting. Barely. For all his reassurances that he would keep her safe, he knew that his destructive power posed a very real danger to her. The more he used it, the more slippery his hold on it became. He didn't know how long it might be before the fire trapped within him burned out of his control completely.
He couldn't care less what happened to him, but if the heat should snap its tether while Claire was nearby... Reichen looked at her pretty profile in the milky light of the dashboard. Her head was tipped down as she tried to smooth a nasty snag in her sweater. She concentrated on the imperfection, worrying the loose thread between her graceful, pianist's fingers, her loose ebony hair stirring in the low draft of the heat blowing out of the vent. "What is he afraid of?" she murmured. She glanced over, frowning now. "What is it that Wilhelm feels he needs to protect from you?" Reichen shook his head. "I don't know, and frankly, I can't say that it matters to me now. I don't care why he did what he did. All that's left is the fact that he must pay." She pivoted in her seat, her dark eyes shining, stubbornly suspicious. "He's threatened by you, Andreas. Not because of anything that happened these past two nights, but before that. Why else would he take such a drastic step and order an attack on your Darkhaven?" "I suppose he didn't appreciate me digging around in his affairs. He felt he needed to send a strong message to me." Claire nodded grimly. "And just what did he think you might find? I can't believe it had anything to do with that missing girl from the club. Not to warrant the kind of retaliation you described." "So, you believe me now?" he asked. She gave him a frank, unflinching look. "I don't want to, but after talking with Wilhelm tonight... it's harder for me to doubt you than it is to trust anything he says. You scared him, Andre. He's still afraid of what you might know or what you could do to him. The question is, why?
What is he protecting... or whom?" A knot of coldness formed in Reichen's gut as Claire spoke. He'd never asked himself why Roth came after him. He'd assumed it was due to a mix of old animosity and new opportunity when Reichen had unwittingly sent Helene into Roth's crosshairs. The why of it really hadn't seemed important. Not when rage and grief had been the only things Reichen had known in the aftermath of the slaughter. He'd been blinded by his fury. By the need for vengeance. He'd never stopped to consider the simple truth that Claire had just laid out for him so plainly. Roth had something very significant to hide. Something that went much deeper than his whispered gangster alliances with the crooks and politicians who tended to gravitate toward the Enforcement Agency. He was protecting a monumental secret. Something worth spilling the lives of more than a dozen people without a moment's hesitation. Worth even more than that, Reichen was certain now. As he stared ahead at the dark ribbon of road, a name crept into his mind like a serpent: Dragos. Good Christ. Could the two of them be connected in some way? Had he gotten too close to uncovering some kind of alliance between Dragos and Roth? If he'd had cause to contact the Order in Boston before, now he couldn't reach them fast enough. Reichen leaned on the accelerator, his thoughts flying as black as the night landscape zooming past the windows of the SUV A few minutes out of the city, he spotted an Internet caf?. He turned off the road and headed for the place, praying like hell that his instincts were wrong about Roth and Dragos being in league together. If his instincts were right? Ah, fuck.
If they were right, then he had just nailed the lid shut on not only his coffin, but Claire's, as well. He brought her inside the caf?, to an empty workstation and table as far away from the rest of the patrons as he could find. Using some of the euros he'd lifted off the dead agents, Reichen bought Claire a bowl of soup and a sandwich, and purchased himself an hour's time on the computer. While she went to work on her meal, he opened an Internet browser on his rented workstation and brought up the secured emergency access site address that belonged to the Order. It was a generic-looking page, basic black, with an unlabeled prompt blinking on the screen as it waited for input. Reichen typed in an access code and password that Gideon back in Boston had given him some months ago, when he'd first begun his remote work for the Order. He hit the enter key and waited, uncertain if the unique ID he'd been assigned was still valid, as the prompt disappeared and he was left staring at the empty black screen. "What's it doing?" Claire asked, leaning close to him. Reichen shook his head, guessing that the warriors might have written him off as dead in the three months he'd been out of contact since the destruction of his Darkhaven. "This site links up to the Boston compound. It's fully encrypted and continuously monitored by the Order. Once I'm verified, we should get a response from Gideon." No sooner had he said it than the prompt reappeared, asking for method of contact. Reichen typed in one of the numbers from the Agency cell phones, advising that the line was stolen, most likely compromised, and far from secure. Gideon's response was instantaneous: Acknowledged, and not a problem. Calling on a scramble right now. The cell phone started ringing. Reichen answered, speaking his name and a string of security words at the computerized request that stated simply: Identify.
"Guess it's a damn good thing I got lazy and kept your access data in the system," Gideon said as the call connected. "Jesus. Good to hear your voice, Reichen. Word out of Germany was we'd lost you. I see you're calling in from Hamburg. What the hell's been going on over there?" Reichen tried to condense the past several weeks into a succinct explanation of events, laying it all out, from the attack on his home by Wilhelm Roth to the systematic, often fiery payback he'd been delivering on the vampire and his known associates ever since. He told him that Roth and his Enforcement Agency cronies were on his tail and that the situation had just gotten even more complicated now that Claire was on the run with him. And he couldn't leave the subject of Claire without confessing to what he'd done to her in Roth's office. "For crissake, Reichen," the warrior hissed on the other end of the line. "She's his blood-bonded mate. You know he'd be within his rights to kill you for that. Hell, he could take your head in front of every Darkhaven leader in the whole vampire nation and no one would condemn him for it." "Yes, I know." He couldn't keep from looking over at Claire and thinking how far south her life had gone in the couple of days since she'd been in his company.
"I don't care what Roth might try to do to me. It's Claire who needs protection right now. Roth is more than upset, and I wouldn't put it past him to take his anger out on her. Just tonight his agents tried to haul her into custody on his orders. One of them hit her with a taser before I had a chance to disable him." Gideon blew out a sharp sigh. "Jesus. This Roth is a real prince, eh?" "He's about as dirty as they come," Reichen said. "And there's more. I'm beginning to suspect he might be involved in something much bigger than his usual shady dealings. There's a possibility he could be mixed up with Dragos." "Ah, fuck... you got proof, or are you going on your gut?" "Gut for now, but it sure as hell wouldn't surprise me." "Okay," Gideon said. There was a sudden clack of fingers flying over a keyboard as the warrior in Boston spoke. "First things first, we have to get both of you out of Hamburg. I'm arranging for your pickup right now, but unfortunately we won't be able to get wings on the ground over there until tomorrow night.
You got somewhere you can hole up in the next few hours before sunrise to wait for your ride?" Reichen considered his options, which were few to nonexistent. "Nothing solid over here right now, I'm afraid. Roth's got his fingers in the pockets of too many people. Any one of them could turn us in to him." "Understood. All right, listen. You're only about three hours by train away from Denmark. If we arrange safe haven for you there with a friend of the Order, do you think you can handle making the trip on your own?" "We'll make it," Reichen said, determined that they would. His gunshot wound was mending rapidly now, and his strength was on full power. If he had to make the trip to Denmark on foot, carrying Claire in his arms, by God, he'd do it. More typing clatter sounded in the background. "I'm sending the message out to our contact as we speak," Gideon said. "Should only take a minute or two to hear back." "Gideon," Reichen broke in. "I cannot thank you enough." "No thanks necessary. You've had our back more than once. We've got yours now." There was a slight pause on Gideon's end, then a low chuckle. "Okay, we just got confirmation out of Denmark. Your contact will meet you at the train station in Varde. She knows to watch for you. Look for a statuesque blonde with a toddler son on her hip. Her name is Danika." Reichen listened, then gave Claire a reassuring nod. "All right. We're on our way there now." Dragos jolted awake from a nightmare, cold sweat beading on his brow. He sat up in his bed and blinked at his surroundings, relieved to find that he was still in his lavish headquarters. Still lord and master of the hidden, underground domain he'd had carved out of a large tract of Connecticut granite and bedrock more than a century ago. It was all still here. The nightmare wasn't real. Not yet, anyway. And never would be, if he had anything to say about it.>"We're not safe in the city now," she told him. "I just talked to Wilhelm. He knows that I'm with you. He knows that you drank from me tonight." Andreas's mouth compressed tightly. Something dark flashed in his eyes. Remorse, perhaps? Was it regret? "I don't think either one of us is safe from him now," she said. He stared at her for a long moment, an intense, searching look. Then he gave her a curt nod. "You're coming with me, Claire. No matter what happens, I will keep you safe."
Chapter Ten
Stripped of their weapons, keys, cell phones, and cash, Reichen left the dead Enforcement Agents where they lay, then motioned for Claire to follow him to the SUV parked on the street outside. "Where will we go?" she asked him as they leapt into the vehicle and Reichen hauled ass away from the curb. "It won't take Wilhelm long to have half the Agency on our heels." Reichen acknowledged that fact with a grim nod. "We can't stay in Hamburg. It would probably be wise if we left Germany altogether." "And go where? He has contacts all over Europe. We can't trust anyone in the Darkhavens or the Enforcement Agency not to turn us in to him the first chance they get."
"We can trust the Order." In his periphery, Reichen saw Claire's doubtful reaction. "The Order? From what I've heard about them, they don't exactly have an open-door policy. Why would a dangerous group of vigilantes from the States be willing to help us?" Reichen resisted the urge to correct her opinion of the Order, one that had been unfairly yet widely accepted among the general Breed population for generations. He slid a glance at her. "I've been working with Lucan, Tegan, and the other warriors for close to a year now. The night my Darkhaven was attacked, I was away from Berlin, following up on a mission for the Order.
We'd been gathering intel concerning a spate of Gen One assassinations and looking into possible links to blood clubs around Europe." "You and the Order... working together?" She got quiet then, considering him in studied silence as he turned the SUV onto a busy boulevard that led out of Hamburg. "There's so much I don't know about you anymore, Andre. Everything about you seems so different now." Not everything, he thought, recalling all too easily how familiar she'd felt pressed against him, her mouth on his in a heated kiss. He felt possessive around her. Fiercely protective. All the things he'd felt with her in the beginning. Time had diffused none of it, though that hardly gave him cause to celebrate. The need to hold her close right here and now was nearly overwhelming. He knew she was basically all right, but just the idea of her being shoved around by the agents--tasered by them, for God's sake--made his blood boil with fury.
The taste of her fear, her pain, still echoed in his veins. Here was one thing that was different about him now: the bond he'd stolen from her with his uninvited bite. Even though Claire had yet to condemn him for it, he would carry the guilt of his actions forever. Especially once he left her widowed and alone, after he crushed the life out of Wilhelm Roth. Some mercenary part of him found the prospect of Roth's imminent death even more attractive when it would free Claire to take another mate. Particularly if that new mate might be him. But regardless of the fact that he had already bound himself to her by blood, Claire deserved something more than what he could ever give her. She always had. "Are you hungry?" he asked her, eager to turn his mind away from all the things he'd done wrong by her, now and before. "You haven't eaten all day. You must be starving." She gave him a noncommittal shrug. "If it's not a good idea to stop anywhere yet, I'll understand--" "You need food," he said, more sharply than intended. "We'll stop." As a Breedmate, Claire's perfect health and ageless longevity depended on the regular intake of a Breed male's blood, but her body still required food to function. It was a hell of a lot more palatable for Reichen to risk the time it would take to get her a sandwich than it was for him to think about Wilhelm Roth nourishing Claire as only her true mate could do. He wondered how long it had been since she'd fed from Roth's vein. Not long, he was guessing, based on how youthful and strong she looked. He wondered how long it had been since she'd lain with Roth. Had she ever loved him? The questions were bitter on his tongue, but he choked them back. He didn't want to know all of the ways that Wilhelm Roth had been with Claire, or how recently.