"No." He reached for her and Claire's panic spiked. "I won't go with you. Take your hands off me!" The second agent moved in, his expression grave. "Let's not make this difficult, all right?" Claire wrenched her arm out of the bruising grasp. She took two lunging steps away from them, fully prepared to bolt if she could just reach the door. She didn't even come close. One guard was there before she had a chance to blink.
The other came up behind her and shoved something hard and cold against the small of her back. She felt the searing bite of the taser for only an instant before the shock took her legs out from under her. She crashed to the floor on a broken scream, pain rippling through her. "Pick her up," she heard one of them say from above her. "I'll go open the vehicle." Claire felt large, hard hands hoist her to her feet. She heard the apartment door open, felt the incoming chill of night air skate across the floor from outside. Then a low grunt and a sick, sodden sound of someone choking, gasping, sputtering for breath. The agent holding on to Claire let go as he faced whatever it was that now stood on the threshold of the open door. "What the f**k!" Claire lifted her head and couldn't hold back her cry of stunned relief. Andreas.
Oh, God... he came back for her. His big body blocked the doorway, his eyes blazing, fangs glistening white with menace. At his feet lay the bleeding corpse of the agent who'd tasered her, his throat brutally skewered and all but severed by a length of twisted black wrought iron. As the second agent drew his weapon and prepared to fire, Andreas stalked inside and fired on him with his companion's gun, killing him with the swift, deadly aim of a sniper. Then he was at her side as if nothing else existed. "Claire...Jesus Christ," he said, his voice gruff, his expression as grave as she'd ever seen it. He smoothed his hands over her face, touching every inch of her as if he feared she was broken. His strong fingers trembled against her skin. For one moment she thought--desperately hoped--he might kiss her again. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head, feeling wobbly and unstable until Andreas wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her away from the blood and death on the floor.
"We're not safe in the city now," she told him. "I just talked to Wilhelm. He knows that I'm with you. He knows that you drank from me tonight." Andreas's mouth compressed tightly. Something dark flashed in his eyes. Remorse, perhaps? Was it regret? "I don't think either one of us is safe from him now," she said. He stared at her for a long moment, an intense, searching look. Then he gave her a curt nod. "You're coming with me, Claire. No matter what happens, I will keep you safe."
Chapter Ten
Stripped of their weapons, keys, cell phones, and cash, Reichen left the dead Enforcement Agents where they lay, then motioned for Claire to follow him to the SUV parked on the street outside. "Where will we go?" she asked him as they leapt into the vehicle and Reichen hauled ass away from the curb. "It won't take Wilhelm long to have half the Agency on our heels." Reichen acknowledged that fact with a grim nod. "We can't stay in Hamburg. It would probably be wise if we left Germany altogether." "And go where? He has contacts all over Europe. We can't trust anyone in the Darkhavens or the Enforcement Agency not to turn us in to him the first chance they get."
"We can trust the Order." In his periphery, Reichen saw Claire's doubtful reaction. "The Order? From what I've heard about them, they don't exactly have an open-door policy. Why would a dangerous group of vigilantes from the States be willing to help us?" Reichen resisted the urge to correct her opinion of the Order, one that had been unfairly yet widely accepted among the general Breed population for generations. He slid a glance at her. "I've been working with Lucan, Tegan, and the other warriors for close to a year now. The night my Darkhaven was attacked, I was away from Berlin, following up on a mission for the Order.
We'd been gathering intel concerning a spate of Gen One assassinations and looking into possible links to blood clubs around Europe." "You and the Order... working together?" She got quiet then, considering him in studied silence as he turned the SUV onto a busy boulevard that led out of Hamburg. "There's so much I don't know about you anymore, Andre. Everything about you seems so different now." Not everything, he thought, recalling all too easily how familiar she'd felt pressed against him, her mouth on his in a heated kiss. He felt possessive around her. Fiercely protective. All the things he'd felt with her in the beginning. Time had diffused none of it, though that hardly gave him cause to celebrate. The need to hold her close right here and now was nearly overwhelming. He knew she was basically all right, but just the idea of her being shoved around by the agents--tasered by them, for God's sake--made his blood boil with fury.
The taste of her fear, her pain, still echoed in his veins. Here was one thing that was different about him now: the bond he'd stolen from her with his uninvited bite. Even though Claire had yet to condemn him for it, he would carry the guilt of his actions forever. Especially once he left her widowed and alone, after he crushed the life out of Wilhelm Roth. Some mercenary part of him found the prospect of Roth's imminent death even more attractive when it would free Claire to take another mate. Particularly if that new mate might be him. But regardless of the fact that he had already bound himself to her by blood, Claire deserved something more than what he could ever give her. She always had. "Are you hungry?" he asked her, eager to turn his mind away from all the things he'd done wrong by her, now and before. "You haven't eaten all day. You must be starving." She gave him a noncommittal shrug. "If it's not a good idea to stop anywhere yet, I'll understand--" "You need food," he said, more sharply than intended. "We'll stop." As a Breedmate, Claire's perfect health and ageless longevity depended on the regular intake of a Breed male's blood, but her body still required food to function. It was a hell of a lot more palatable for Reichen to risk the time it would take to get her a sandwich than it was for him to think about Wilhelm Roth nourishing Claire as only her true mate could do. He wondered how long it had been since she'd fed from Roth's vein. Not long, he was guessing, based on how youthful and strong she looked. He wondered how long it had been since she'd lain with Roth. Had she ever loved him? The questions were bitter on his tongue, but he choked them back. He didn't want to know all of the ways that Wilhelm Roth had been with Claire, or how recently.