"We can't delay," the guard was saying now. "We have to get you evacuated before this location comes under attack, as well." "You really believe that whoever did this will come out here? Why?" This time the guard didn't pause to tell her anything more. His fingers clamped down hard around her arm and he started walking--quickly. The message in his brisk stride was plain enough: Claire could hurry to keep up with him, or he would drag her out of there.
Either way, she was leaving the premises and doing so under heavily armed, grim-faced security. There was no stopping for a coat or her purse. She fled with the guard, out of the house and into the chill of the late October evening. The cold autumn breeze bled through the fibers of her wine cashmere sweater and her gray wool pants as she ran alongside the guard to the paved drive, the soles of her suede loafers scuffing in her effort to keep up with the longer-legged gait of the agent dragging her along by the arm. Claire was shown to the open back door of a Mercedes that idled in the center of a vanguard of four other vehicles.
"Get in," the guard instructed her, and gently but urgently guided her inside ahead of him. As he slid in next to her on the leather seat and closed the door, Claire tried to rub away the bone-deep chill that seemed to emanate from within her body rather than without. Everything was happening so fast. She was still trying to come to grips with the terrible news of the attack on the Darkhaven in Hamburg, let alone register the idea that not a few minutes ago her biggest worry was the proper placement of a garden bench or flower bed. Now the handful of Wilhelm's relatives and personal guards who'd resided at the Darkhaven were dead and she was being removed from her home in the middle of the night, fleeing from an unknown, unfathomable evil. Why? The question wailed in her mind.
It was the same thing she'd been asking herself some three months ago, when another Darkhaven had fallen to tragedy--a tragedy that also had left behind only ash and smoke in its wake. But that had been an accident, according to the investigating Enforcement Agents. A freak explosion so fierce and total that it likely killed all of the Darkhaven's residents instantly. And still the question haunted her, as painfully as it had when she first heard the awful news ... Why?
"We are in and rolling," said the guard seated behind the wheel, radioing to the other vehicles. He stepped on the accelerator, and, like a fast-moving snake, the fleet of black sedans began to speed as one down the lengthy, forest-lined driveway. Claire sat back, trying not to feel the anxiety that hung in the stale air of the car. The woods around them seemed darker than usual, so strangely quiet. Overhead, the thin moonlight was blotted out by the densely needled tops of the towering pines. The vanguard cleared the first bend in the nearly mile-long private drive. They sped up on the straightaway, all of the cars lurching into a higher gear as they gunned it for the main road. There was no warning of the assault that hit the lead car in that next instant. From out of the pitch-dark forest came a blinding ball of orange fire.
It smashed into the first Mercedes in the line, exploding the car on impact. Claire screamed, feeling the sonic vibration of the blast all the way into the soles of her feet. "What the f**k is that?" shouted the guard next to her in the backseat. "Jesus Christ, hit the damn brakes!" Red taillights went bright in front of them, and it was all their driver could do to avoid crashing into the back of the other sedan as it skidded to a stop. Like a toy train suddenly gone off its track, the caravan of vehicles bunched up, their line skewed and broken. And up ahead, the first car was engulfed in flames that shot high into the black sky. Just then another fireball launched out of the cover of the forest. It flew in a speeding, comet-bright arc, projecting straight toward the halted cars. Yet another orb of flames came quickly in its wake, both of the airborne threats awesome in their terrible, burning beauty. The guard seated beside Claire leaned forward, his fingers clawing into the headrest of the seat in front of him. "Back up--fast, damn it!" he yelled at the shell-shocked driver. "Throw this thing into reverse and get us the hell out of here!" Tires squealing, the Mercedes jerked into a violent backward retreat.
As the car spun around on the narrow track of pavement, its bumper crunching into the vehicle behind them in the driver's panic, Claire watched the guards in the two remaining cars out front throw open their doors and try to make an escape on foot. One of them leapt to safety in the woods. The other proved only seconds too slow. The first fireball crashed down into the hood of his car, obliterating man and metal both in a sickening roar of twisting, flying debris. Claire screamed, turning her face away from the carnage just as the second fireball rained down onto the empty car ahead of them on the road. The thundering explosion shook the earth and chewed a deep, smoking crater into the ground. The guard next to her made the sign of the cross on his chest, then punched the back of the driver's seat with a nasty curse. "Go, you moron! Hit the f**king gas! Get us out of here!" Too late. From out of nowhere--from out of the sky itself, it seemed--came a rolling, fiery sphere of heat.
The fireball soared down past the windshield of the vehicle, the glow of it so intense it filled the interior of the Mercedes with blinding white-hot light. Whatever it was, it felt charged with the power of ten suns, as electric as a bolt of lightning, concentrated into an orb the size of a bowling ball. All the hair on Claire's arms and at the back of her neck rose up as the thing smashed into the ground mere feet from the hood of the car. Another fireball hit behind them, knocking Claire and her two companions forward in their seats. The driver's head hit the steering wheel with a sickening crack. The airbag detonated with the impact, setting off the car's security system. Amid the bleating alarm and the puff of chemical smoke from the deployed airbag, Claire also smelled the trace scent of blood. She wiped her forehead and swallowed hard when her fingers came away stained crimson. Shit.