Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [706]
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.
“Not this one. We get off at the next station.”
He sat back down and tried not to let the irritated growl escape him as the train’s doors slid shut and his erstwhile meal ambled obliviously into the crowd newly poured onto the platform.
A few minutes later, he and Claire reached their stop. They got off the train and walked the rest of the way to the Speicherstadt, Hamburg’s warehouse district. Rows of tall redbrick buildings divided by canal waterways glowed with incandescent light against the night sky. The mingled aromas of coffee beans and spices rode on the crisp breeze as Claire led him over a sweeping arched bridge, then deeper into the historic district. As the scents would indicate, some of the gothic buildings appeared to still be in use as commodities warehouses; others