Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [679]
Reichen snorted. “That’s what the others said, too.”
Waldemar started to squirm, but Reichen pressed down harder with his knee planted heavily against the vampire’s throat. Waldemar wheezed, trying to raise his hands as the weight began to crush his air channel. “Please…just tell me what you want from me.”
“Justice.”
With neither satisfaction nor remorse, Reichen grabbed Waldemar’s head in his hands and gave a fierce yank. His neck snapped, then the Breed male’s head fell back to the floor with a heavy thunk.
Reichen exhaled a deep sigh that did little to purge his anguish, or the grief he felt at being alive and alone. The sole survivor. The last of his family line.
As he stood and prepared to leave this latest death behind him, a glint of polished glass on one of the room’s several mahogany bookcases caught his eye. He stalked over to it, his feet moving automatically, sharpened gaze fixed on the face of his enemy that stared out from within the silver-framed photograph. He grabbed the picture and stared down at it, his fingers hot where they pressed into the metal of the frame. Reichen’s eyes burned the longer he looked at that hated face, a growl curling low in his throat, raw with visceral, still-smoldering rage.
Wilhelm Roth stood among a small group of Breed males wearing ceremonial Enforcement Agency garb. All of them were decked out in black tuxedos and starched white shirts, their chests festooned with bright silk sashes and gleaming pendant medallions, gilded rapiers sheathed at their sides. Reichen snorted at the self-importance—the power-hungry arrogance—etched in those smug, smiling faces.
Now they were dead men…all but one.
He’d saved Roth for last, having meticulously worked his way up the chain of command. First the Agency death squad members who’d ambushed his Darkhaven home and opened fire on every living being inside—even the females, even the infants asleep in their cribs. Next he’d targeted the handful of Enforcement Agency cronies who had made no secret of their allegiance to the powerful Darkhaven leader responsible for ordering the slaughter.
One by one over the past several weeks, the guilty had met their end. The vampire lying dead and broken on the floor was the last known member of Wilhelm Roth’s corrupt inner circle in Germany.
Which left Roth himself.
The bastard was going to burn for what he’d done.
But first he would suffer.
Reichen’s gaze drifted back to the framed photograph in his hands and froze there. On first glance, he hadn’t noticed the woman. All of his focus—all his fury—had been centered solely on Roth. Now that he had found her, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
Claire.
She stood off to the side of the group of Breed males, petite yet regal in a sleeveless ghost-gray gown that made her light brown skin look as smooth and lush as satin. Her soft black hair was swept up in a careful chignon, not a single strand out of place.
Time had not aged her so much as a year from when he’d known her—not that it would, when she was kept youthful and strong by the blood bond she shared with her chosen mate these thirty-some years. She was looking at Wilhelm Roth and his criminal friends, smiling with a perfectly schooled, perfectly unreadable expression.
A perfectly proper mate to the vampire who had proven to be Reichen’s most treacherous adversary.
Claire.
After all this time.
My Claire, he thought grimly.
No, not his.
Once, perhaps. Long ago, and for merely a few months at that. A brief handful of time.
Ancient history.
Reichen stared at her image behind the silver-framed glass, surprised at how easily his fury for Wilhelm Roth could bleed over to the vampire’s Breedmate. Sweet, lovely Claire … in bed with his most hated enemy. Was she aware of Roth’s corruption? Did she condone it?
It hardly mattered.
He had a mission to fulfill. Justice to claim. A deadly, final vengeance to serve.
And nothing would stand in his way… not even her.
Reichen’s gaze bore down on the photograph, fury smoldering in the amber light that reflected back at him from the surface