"Come out, female." His voice sounded rusty and foreign to him. Tasted as dry as ashes in his throat. "You don't have much time left. Come out of there while you still can." She didn't obey him. Some distant part of him wasn't exactly surprised by her stubborn resistance--he might even go so far as to say that he'd expected it. But another part of him, the part that was lit up with pyrokinetic fury and deadly short on patience, let loose with a ground-shuddering roar. The warning, such as it was, proved effective. He caught a flash of movement--heard the quick rush of footsteps flying over leaf-strewn ground--in the instant before the tree root detonated. Sparks shot out in all directions, sending streamers of orange light high overhead. Reichen saw Roth's woman bolting deeper into the woods as smoldering debris rained down around the crater that now gouged the earth where she'd been hiding. On a black curse, he went after her. She was running fast, but he was faster. There was nowhere for her to go. It didn't take her long to figure that out for herself. Her steps slowed, then stopped altogether. Reichen paused where he stood, some ten paces away from her. Leaves crackled and withered above his head, all around him branches scorching from his heat.
Her hands flexed and fisted at her sides, her feet shifting as she seemed to weigh her chances of escape and quickly dismiss them. "If you're going to kill me now, then do it." Her voice was quiet, but without the slightest falter. The velvet sound of it awakened scattered memories that shot through his mind in a barrage of images: He and this woman, na**d in bed together, caught in a tangle of sheets, laughing, kissing. Her deep brown gaze dancing in golden candlelight as he fed her sugared raspberries on a midnight picnic by the lake. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek resting against his bare chest as she confessed that she had fallen in love with him. Claire...
It took long moments for him to shake loose of that remembered past. He forced himself to think of a more recent one, the one that he could still taste in the bitter tang of the smoke that hung in the forest air. The one that was soaked in the blood of too many innocent lives. "I haven't come for your death, Claire Roth." She went very still at the mention of her name. Reichen stared at the rigidly held spine ahead of him, the delicate shoulders squared and unshaking, defiant, as his enemy's mate slowly pivoted to face him. Her large, dark eyes held his gaze across the distance. He saw a note of recognition there, but it was swallowed up by disbelief. She mutely shook her head, staring at him as if he were a ghost or, rather, some kind of monster. He knew he was, especially after tonight, but seeing it in another's eyes--in her eyes-- made the anger in him surge a bit wilder.
"Tell me where he is," Reichen demanded. She didn't seem to hear him. She stared for what seemed like forever, taking him in with that keen, inquisitive gaze. Finally, she gave a slow shake of her head. "I don't understand how this can be," she murmured. She took a step forward, only to back off a second later as blackened leaves and pine needles fell from their branches around him and turned to white ash at his feet. "My God... Andreas. Is this a dream? I mean, I must be dreaming, right? This isn't real. It can't be ..." The words came haltingly, sounding weak, choked in her throat. Despite the intense heat pouring off him, she lifted her hand as if she meant to reach out for him. "I thought you were dead, Andreas.
All these three months since the fire destroyed your Darkhaven... I believed that you were dead." Reichen snarled at the threat of her touch. On a startled gasp, Claire snatched her arm back. She rubbed the fingers that would have incinerated on contact with him, no doubt feeling some measure of that truth on her unprotected skin. Her confusion was clear. As was her horror. "Good lord, what's happened to you?" Of course she wouldn't know.
He had been different when she knew him. Christ, everything had been different then. The heat that lived in him now had been cold and dormant, lurking deep beneath even his own awareness--until the hellish power of it had been beaten and tortured out of him for the first time some thirty years ago. It had taken all he had and all that he was to snuff the accursed power and hold it down inside him. It had been so long since the heat had risen in him, he'd actually been fool enough to believe he'd driven the heat back for good. But it was still there, banked but smoldering. Waiting for the slightest chance to ignite while he strove to deny its very existence. He had lived a lie for the past three decades, only to have it erupt in his face. Now he would never be the same. Now Wilhelm Roth's treachery had reawakened that monstrous side of him. Now grief and anger had invited the terrible ability back into his life, and the fires were always burning inside him. They were beginning to rule him. To destroy him.
And because of the ruthless actions of her mate, Claire was seeing that hideous truth with her own eyes. No, he would never be the same again. And he would not rest until he had his vengeance. Through the flames, Claire's eyes searched his, part in worry, part in pity. "I don't understand what's going on, Andre. Why are you like this? Tell me what's happened to you." He hated the concern in her voice. He didn't want to hear it, not from Roth's mate. "Please, talk to me, Andre." Andre. Only she had called him that. After her, he'd not permitted anyone to become that familiar--that intimate--with him. After her, there had been many things he'd not dared permit, of himself or others. The sound of his name on her lips now was a pain he hadn't anticipated. Reichen bared his teeth and fangs in a sneer meant to cower her, but she wouldn't relent with her demand for answers.
"Who, Andre ... who has done this to you?" He let the fire of his rage wash over him, his voice as rough as gravel in his throat. "The bastard who sent his death squad into my home to slaughter my kin in cold blood. Wilhelm Roth."