Coughing, Claire stepped over the scorched vegetation. She stumbled, her foot catching on a charred black lump that lay on the ground. Horror washed over her even before her senses processed what she was seeing. It was a child. A dead child, burned beyond recognition. "Oh, my God." Claire backed away, repulsed. Stricken. "Andreas!" She swiveled her head and cried out with relief to see the broad green lawn and the stone-and-timber mansion that had been Andreas's Darkhaven estate seated at the top of a gently sloping incline. Claire ran toward the house. She was na**d and cold, terrified and confused by what she'd just seen outside. "Andre?" she called frantically as she walked along the back of the mansion, seeing no light or movement inside. "Andreas ... are you in there?" She went around to the front, her arms wrapped around her nudity as she climbed the steps to the elegant entry. She knocked on the door. It eased open on silent hinges, but no one waited for her inside. Claire stepped over the threshold and into a strange mausoleum of white. Everywhere she looked--the floors, the walls, the furnishings--all of it was pristine, snowy white. And quiet as a tomb. "Andreas, please. I'm frightened. Where are--" He emerged from one of the rooms off the ghostly foyer. He was na**d like she was, his eyes still burning amber, his fangs still filling his mouth. He stalked forward without a word and hauled her into a bruising, unyielding grasp.
Kissed her with so much heat and desire, her knees almost buckled beneath her. Then, just as she was beginning to feel safe again, he drew back from her. He let go so forcefully, thrusting her out of his reach, that she stumbled a bit before catching herself. Something wet and slippery was under her feet. She slid in it... an instant before the coppery tang of spilled blood registered in her nose. "Oh, my God." Claire looked down at the floor, which was no longer white but veined marble. Marble that was bloodstained and awful with gore. The walls and furnishings were no longer pristine and colorless either. Now everything was ruined, bullet-riddled, bloodied. Furniture and wall art toppled, broken, all of it in shambles. "Oh, no... Oh, God... no." She didn't know what to make of the burnt field or the tragic child outside, but there could be no mistaking what she was seeing here. Claire looked at him in abject horror and heartsick misery, realizing that he was showing her the destruction of his home. Destruction called for by Wilhelm Roth, just as he'd told her that first night at the country house. She put her hand out to Andreas in support, but he didn't take it. His expression was hard, condemning. When she glanced down, she saw why. Blood coated her fingers and palms. She was splattered with it all over her front, even her hair was sticky with it. And there, at her feet, was the lifeless body of a little boy-- one of Reichen's nephews' sons, murdered by gunfire. Still more bodies lay elsewhere in the mansion, on the first floor, halfway up the staircase, near the door to the cellar down the hall. She was standing in the center of a massacre she wouldn't have been able to imagine in the worst of her nightmares. When she looked to Andreas again, he was engulfed in white-hot, deadly heat. Flames leapt off his body to ignite the walls and furniture.
In mere seconds, all Claire could see was fire. The scream ripped out of her throat, raw and despairing. She jolted herself out of the dream, unable to bear another moment of the ugliness of it. Sickened and trembling, she sat up in the bed and threw aside the quilt and sheets. No blood on her now. No cinders. Just the cold sweat of true terror and the anguish of having witnessed Andreas's horrific nightmare for herself. Claire expected him to wake up and offer her some kind of explanation or comfort. He had to know how shaken up she was now. But he kept on sleeping, lying still and breathing unruffled on the floor next to the bed. He let her weather her deep distress alone, as if he'd wanted her to be disturbed--horrified--by what he'd shown her. Perhaps he'd wanted her to be horrified by him in some way as well. Claire waited until her pulse leveled out and her body stopped trembling, then she inched down under the covers and counted the hours until dusk.
Chapter Thirteen
Fucking place is dead tonight," Chase muttered as he scanned the crowded dance club and apparently found little to his liking. "Should have hit the north side of the city like I told you, instead of wasting our time in Dorchester." Kade shrugged, slanting a grin at Brock, the third member of their patrol. "You wanna see dead clubs, let me take you to Alaska. It's pathetic, man. We've got more moose per square mile than women." "Is that right?" Chase grunted.
"No wonder you jumped at the chance to get out of there and come to Boston last year. How many months of freezing your nuts off before all those moose start looking like prime pieces of ass?" At Brock's low chuckle, Kade curled his lip back off the points of his fangs and saluted both of the Breed males with double- barreled middle fingers. "Well, this has been fun, but I'm outta here," Chase announced. He scrubbed his hand over his stubbled jaw, his blue eyes looking a bit dodgy and unfocused under the edge of his black knit skullcap. "Got an itch that won't get scratched hanging out in this pe. Good luck with the moose-hunting." Kade gave the ex?Enforcement Agent a nod. "See you back at the compound." "Eventually," Chase replied, already heading for the club's exit. When he was gone, Brock blew out a low sigh and shook his dark head. "That son of a bitch has got a serious problem." "You mean, other than walking around all the time with that Agency-installed stick shoved up his ass?" Kade drawled, looking at the big warrior who'd been recruited into the Order out of Detroit around the same time he'd come in from Alaska. It wasn't that Kade didn't like Sterling Chase--or Harvard, as he was sometimes referred to, on account of his fancy Ivy League pedigree. Chase was a competent enough warrior, one of the best, in fact. He was a crack shot and one hell of a man to have at your back in combat, but on the personal side, he was as cold as a glacier.