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.