Ashes of Midnight

Page 14

Treating me like Wilhelm and I are one and the same, both of us your enemies." "What would you have me do instead? Tell you that everything will work out between us in the end? Pretend that Roth doesn't exist so that you and I can pick up where we left off all those years ago?" Claire glanced down, feeling foolish for having wanted him to say those very things--and more. Words he might never offer her again, even in the flimsy haven of a dream. He lifted her chin on the tips of his strong fingers. "We can't change anything that's happened, Claire. I won't stand here and give you lies to make either one of us feel better. And I'm not going to give you promises that I know I can't keep." "No," she said. "You'd rather run away." His mouth flattened and he shook his head, his eyes glittering darkly. "You think I wanted to leave you."
Not a question, but a quiet accusation. "Would it matter if I did?" she tossed back at him. She scoffed, still stinging from the wound he'd inflicted on her thirty years ago. "Never mind, don't answer that. I wouldn't want to press you into saying something only to make me feel better." Realizing she'd made a mistake in coming there, she pivoted, about to walk off and leave him to sulk alone in his dream. But before she could take a single step away, his fingers wrapped around her arm and he held her in place. He moved in front of her, his face taut and deadly serious. "Leaving you was the last thing I ever wanted to do." He scowled, his grip holding her tighter, moving her farther into the heated wall of his body. "It was the hardest goddamn thing I've ever done. Ever, Claire." She stared up at him speechless, lost in the dark glimmer of his eyes. In the next moment, he bent his head down and kissed her, their mouths fusing together in a long, breathless joining. She never wanted to stop. She didn't think she could let go of him now that he was in her arms again, even if only in her dreams. "God, I want you, Claire," he moaned against her mouth, the sharp prick of his fangs grazing her lips. "I want to be with you now...
Ah, Christ, I have needed to be with you for so long." Because it was a dream, wishes often need only be whispered to make them so. In an instant, Claire found herself pressed down on the soft, cool grass, Andreas's magnificent body poised above her. They were naked now, clothing having fallen away as if it were made of mist. But even in dreams, Andreas's skin was warm and firm to the touch. His broad shoulders and thick arms, his muscular chest and ridged abdomen ... all of him was real and strong and perfect in its masculinity. Claire couldn't keep her eyes from traveling the length of him. She remembered all too vividly that Andreas's perfection extended farther down, as well. Because it was a dream, she cast aside the knowledge of all the reasons they should not be together. She knew only the calling of her heart, and as her palm came to rest on the center of his chest, she knew the calling of his heart, too. His pulse hammered against her fingers. His breath was coming fast, heavy, hot with need. Claire looked up into eyes that burned as bright as any flame, his face a tight, tormented mask. "Yes," she hissed, almost incapable of words. She sucked in her breath as the broad head of his cock nudged her, cleaved her. With a slow push of his hips he was sliding inside her, burying himself in a long, gloriously deep thrust. Claire cried out, arching up to take all of him within her, needing him to fill her. He stretched her tight, his length touching her very core.
"Oh, yes," she panted as they found a familiar rhythm, fitting together as though they'd never been apart. He was a ferocious lover; she knew that about him already and reveled in his animalistic intensity. Every hard stroke made her shatter just a little, every low moan and growl sent a shiver coursing through her veins. He knew just how to move with her, just the right tempo to wring every ounce of pleasure from her body. Claire felt the first tremors of release streak through her like tiny bolts of lightning in her blood. She couldn't contain it, had no strength to resist Andreas's mastery of her senses. She could only dig her fingers into the thick muscle of his shoulders and hold on as he steered her toward a splintering climax. She didn't know if he followed her there. All she knew was the incredible wave of pleasure that rushed over her... then the sudden hollow grief of realizing Andreas was gone. Claire called out to him in the dream, but he was nowhere to be seen. And now the garden sanctuary where they'd lain together was gone, as well. She was sitting in the middle of a sun-baked field, daylight blinding her eyes. "Andre?" She got up and started walking, holding her arm up to her brow like a visor as she struggled to get her bearings. She didn't know this place. She couldn't make sense of the golden light, or the pungent stink of smoke and something worse, something unidentifiable that filled her nostrils and choked her throat.
Coughing, Claire stepped over the scorched vegetation. She stumbled, her foot catching on a charred black lump that lay on the ground. Horror washed over her even before her senses processed what she was seeing. It was a child. A dead child, burned beyond recognition. "Oh, my God." Claire backed away, repulsed. Stricken. "Andreas!" She swiveled her head and cried out with relief to see the broad green lawn and the stone-and-timber mansion that had been Andreas's Darkhaven estate seated at the top of a gently sloping incline. Claire ran toward the house. She was naked and cold, terrified and confused by what she'd just seen outside. "Andre?" she called frantically as she walked along the back of the mansion, seeing no light or movement inside. "Andreas ... are you in there?" She went around to the front, her arms wrapped around her nudity as she climbed the steps to the elegant entry. She knocked on the door. It eased open on silent hinges, but no one waited for her inside. Claire stepped over the threshold and into a strange mausoleum of white. Everywhere she looked--the floors, the walls, the furnishings--all of it was pristine, snowy white. And quiet as a tomb. "Andreas, please. I'm frightened. Where are--" He emerged from one of the rooms off the ghostly foyer. He was naked like she was, his eyes still burning amber, his fangs still filling his mouth. He stalked forward without a word and hauled her into a bruising, unyielding grasp.
Kissed her with so much heat and desire, her knees almost buckled beneath her. Then, just as she was beginning to feel safe again, he drew back from her. He let go so forcefully, thrusting her out of his reach, that she stumbled a bit before catching herself. Something wet and slippery was under her feet. She slid in it... an instant before the coppery tang of spilled blood registered in her nose. "Oh, my God." Claire looked down at the floor, which was no longer white but veined marble. Marble that was bloodstained and awful with gore. The walls and furnishings were no longer pristine and colorless either. Now everything was ruined, bullet-riddled, bloodied. Furniture and wall art toppled, broken, all of it in shambles. "Oh, no... Oh, God... no." She didn't know what to make of the burnt field or the tragic child outside, but there could be no mistaking what she was seeing here. Claire looked at him in abject horror and heartsick misery, realizing that he was showing her the destruction of his home. Destruction called for by Wilhelm Roth, just as he'd told her that first night at the country house. She put her hand out to Andreas in support, but he didn't take it. His expression was hard, condemning. When she glanced down, she saw why. Blood coated her fingers and palms. She was splattered with it all over her front, even her hair was sticky with it. And there, at her feet, was the lifeless body of a little boy-- one of Reichen's nephews' sons, murdered by gunfire. Still more bodies lay elsewhere in the mansion, on the first floor, halfway up the staircase, near the door to the cellar down the hall. She was standing in the center of a massacre she wouldn't have been able to imagine in the worst of her nightmares. When she looked to Andreas again, he was engulfed in white-hot, deadly heat. Flames leapt off his body to ignite the walls and furniture.
In mere seconds, all Claire could see was fire. The scream ripped out of her throat, raw and despairing. She jolted herself out of the dream, unable to bear another moment of the ugliness of it. Sickened and trembling, she sat up in the bed and threw aside the quilt and sheets. No blood on her now. No cinders. Just the cold sweat of true terror and the anguish of having witnessed Andreas's horrific nightmare for herself. Claire expected him to wake up and offer her some kind of explanation or comfort. He had to know how shaken up she was now. But he kept on sleeping, lying still and breathing unruffled on the floor next to the bed. He let her weather her deep distress alone, as if he'd wanted her to be disturbed--horrified--by what he'd shown her. Perhaps he'd wanted her to be horrified by him in some way as well. Claire waited until her pulse leveled out and her body stopped trembling, then she inched down under the covers and counted the hours until dusk.
Chapter Thirteen
Fucking place is dead tonight," Chase muttered as he scanned the crowded dance club and apparently found little to his liking. "Should have hit the north side of the city like I told you, instead of wasting our time in Dorchester." Kade shrugged, slanting a grin at Brock, the third member of their patrol. "You wanna see dead clubs, let me take you to Alaska. It's pathetic, man. We've got more moose per square mile than women." "Is that right?" Chase grunted.
"No wonder you jumped at the chance to get out of there and come to Boston last year. How many months of freezing your nuts off before all those moose start looking like prime pieces of ass?" At Brock's low chuckle, Kade curled his lip back off the points of his fangs and saluted both of the Breed males with double- barreled middle fingers. "Well, this has been fun, but I'm outta here," Chase announced. He scrubbed his hand over his stubbled jaw, his blue eyes looking a bit dodgy and unfocused under the edge of his black knit skullcap. "Got an itch that won't get scratched hanging out in this pe. Good luck with the moose-hunting." Kade gave the ex?Enforcement Agent a nod. "See you back at the compound." "Eventually," Chase replied, already heading for the club's exit. When he was gone, Brock blew out a low sigh and shook his dark head. "That son of a bitch has got a serious problem." "You mean, other than walking around all the time with that Agency-installed stick shoved up his ass?" Kade drawled, looking at the big warrior who'd been recruited into the Order out of Detroit around the same time he'd come in from Alaska. It wasn't that Kade didn't like Sterling Chase--or Harvard, as he was sometimes referred to, on account of his fancy Ivy League pedigree. Chase was a competent enough warrior, one of the best, in fact. He was a crack shot and one hell of a man to have at your back in combat, but on the personal side, he was as cold as a glacier.
"I don't know what his deal is," Brock said. "But he'd better watch his step, is all I'm saying. He strikes me as the kind who's got one foot in the grave and the other one eager to follow. He just doesn't give a shit about anything, and that is dangerous. Not only to himself, but to anyone who needs to count on him." Kade considered that as he glanced out across the bar and dance floor. A couple of young females were heading over from a table nearby. Brock gave them his knockout grin, the one that never failed to net him the hottest woman in any gathering. The guy had moves, no doubt about it.
Not that Kade was any kind of slouch. He eyed the pair of lovelies as they sauntered through the crowd, locked on to the two vampires like laser-guided missiles. "You can have the blonde," he murmured, setting his own sights on the brunette with the legs that went on forever under her short red leather miniskirt. It took all of three seconds for Brock and him to talk the ladies into stepping outside with them. Unfortunately, once they were out in the parking lot, it only took another three for Kade's nose to twitch with the prickling of his Breed senses coming online with a vengeance. He smelled blood. Fresh blood, and a lot of it, coming from somewhere around the rear of the club. A glance to Brock told him that the other vampire hadn't missed the coppery tang of spilled human red cells, either. They broke into a tandem jog, leaving the women complaining in their wake as the two of them hauled ass to the back of the building. Nothing there. The lone working security light mounted to the roof of the place shone down on empty concrete and sparse, weed-choked grass. But the scent of blood permeated the air, particularly strong for Kade and any of his kind. "There," he said, spotting the dark stain in the dirt a few feet away from him. Spatters in close proximity to each other soaked the dry earth near a leaning stretch of ragged chain-link fence. The bleeding human took the worst of his damage over there, and the trail of hemoglobin on the ground made it clear that whatever had happened, the victim wasn't going to get too far before he or she bled out completely. "This isn't only human blood," Brock said, his deep bass voice grim. "The attacker was Breed.
He spilled some of his own blood in the process." Now that the warrior mentioned it, Kade's nose also picked up on something other than basic Homo sapiens cells. "Not a Rogue," he guessed, detecting none of the foul odor left behind by the addicts of their race. "Who else would be idiot enough to feed this carelessly and let his Host stagger off like a stuck pig?" Brock shook his head, but suspicion darkened his steady, obsidian gaze. Although he didn't say it, Kade read the quiet doubt in the big male's eyes. "Chase?" Kade scoffed. "No fucking way." "Something's not right with him, man." "Not this," Kade said. The ex-agent was no Mr. Rogers, but to bleed out a human and break one of the Breed's most essential laws? When he said he had an itch that needed scratching, he sure as hell couldn't have meant something like this ...
Brock nodded gravely. "Maybe we'd better go have a look, just to be sure." They took off, following the blood trail across a vacant lot and down a narrow alley. The deeper they went, the more serious the blood spill became. Spatters turned to pools, some of them spread wide and smeared from where the victim had apparently fallen then somehow managed to get up and run some more. The trail led them to the entrance of a junkyard at the end of an industrial area. The place was gated, but the padlock and heavy chain that secured it had been loosened. There was just enough room for someone to squeeze inside. And someone had; the wet crimson stains on the latch and edge of the gate left no question about that. "Come on," Kade said, wrenching the thing open wide enough for Brock and him to slip through. He heard the rush of movement the instant before the big black dogs came barreling around a pile of scrap and rubbish. Two rottweilers, big as tanks and mean as hell. "Holy shit!" Brock's shout was all but drowned out by the savage barks and growls of the oncoming dogs. No animal alive could take a vampire, but that didn't mean the sight of a combined three hundred pounds of seething, furious canine wasn't cause for a little alarm. Kade stood firm, his legs braced wide as the pair of rotties swiftly closed the distance on him. He stared them down, eye to eye. They slowed... then stopped, both of them dropping into a cower at his feet. The hounds whimpered, shifting on their bellies and keeping their big heads low as their dark eyes searched out his favor. "Get out of here." They loped off, as docile as puppies. Brock gaped. "What the hell was that?"