Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [780]
The warriors began to disperse, those in combat fatigues heading for the corridor while Lucan, Dante, and Gideon would be monitoring the mission from the compound. When Reichen moved to join Tegan and the others on their way to the hallway, Lucan stopped him with a look.
“This is the Order’s mission, and we can’t afford any weak links in the chain.” At Reichen’s disapproving scowl, Lucan went on. “Listen, you’ve been a hell of an ally thus far, Reichen, but Tegan’s filled me in on a few things—what you’re going through with the pyro and the aftereffects. I also heard about the vision that Roth’s Breedmate saw in Mira’s eyes. Those are no small things, and we can’t afford any liabilities right now.”
Reichen held the Gen One warrior’s keen gray eyes. “I’m bonded to her, Lucan. I love her. If you want to keep me out of this, you’re going to have to kill me right here and now.”
A silence fell over the lab and the group of warriors standing around them.
“I’ve given the Order my full support,” Reichen said. “It’s cost me dearly, but I am dealing with that. Now I’m asking you to give me this one thing: I want Roth dead. I need Roth dead, and so does the Order. Let me take the son of a bitch down, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“And if it is the last thing you do?” Lucan pressed.
Reichen gave a slow shake of his head, feeling determination light up his veins in far greater measure than even the worst of his pyro. “I don’t intend to lose this battle, Lucan. I don’t intend to lose Claire, either.”
The Gen One vampire stared at him for a long moment, his gray eyes weighing him in unflinching scrutiny. “Very well,” he said at last. “Suit up and get the hell out of here. Godspeed, Reichen. I have a feeling you might need it.”
The last ray of sunlight dipped behind the westerly tree line just as Claire, Renata, and Dylan left the Range Rover behind them near the river and started walking up the dirt lane toward the road. They had collected everything of importance from the disabled SUV—maps, notes, weapons, and ammunition—and were taking up a post near the main road as the warriors had instructed Renata when she’d phoned in their situation a short time ago.
As they walked up the narrow path in the gathering dusk, Claire couldn’t keep from looking over her shoulder or jumping at every unexpected noise that came out of the ever-darkening forest that flanked both sides of them. The day had been unsettling enough as it was, but it was the buzzing in her veins—the dreadful certainty that Wilhelm Roth was near—that had her skin feeling too tight on her body, all of her senses on edge.
She kept revisiting her last dreamwalk with Roth, chilled to remember how he’d seethed with his promise to make Andreas and her suffer. And she also recalled, all too vividly, the numerous women being held in Dragos’s cages—prison cells that might be located not far from where she and her two companions had been standing not long ago. It sickened her to think of the horrors those captive Breedmates might have been through. Horrors that had ended in death for many of them, as evidenced by the group of specters that had shown themselves to Dylan back in those remote woods.
Dragos had to be stopped. Wilhelm Roth, as well, and any other members of the Breed who would condone the kind of torment and terror that she’d witnessed through Roth’s subconscious mind.
Claire knew men like that needed to be removed from existence, but it didn’t dampen her fear for the ones who had made it their life’s mission to see that kind