Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [705]
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