Her petite frame was nestled tightly against Reichen's body, her arms wrapped lovingly around him, holding him in what looked to be a fiercely protective embrace. Her sleep seemed vastly different from Reichen's. Where he lay motionless, unresponsive, Claire's eyes flickered rapidly behind her closed lids. Her fine muscles twitched now and again, as though she were caught in a brief doze, not dead to the world for the past several days. "You've tried everything to attempt to wake her?" he asked Tess. "Everything, Lucan. It's as if her body--as well as her heart and mind--simply refuses to come back to consciousness.
She's willing herself to remain asleep, I'm certain of it." He scowled, watching Claire's eyelids twitch with the movement of her eyes beneath them. "She's been dreaming this whole time?" "Yes, since the moment I found her like this. I have to believe she's using her talent to be with Andreas." Lucan huffed out a heavy sigh. "Even if it kills her in the process?" "You saw them together, didn't you?" Tess's voice was gentle with sympathy and not a little awe. "I suppose I can understand the depth of devotion--of pure, unshakable love--that would inspire this kind of sacrifice. If it were Dante on that bed and I thought I could reach him in some way--in any way--I'd be right in there, too. For however long it might take. I know if it were Gabrielle, you would do the same for her." He was hardly going to stand there and deny it.
But neither could he stand by and knowingly allow Claire, or Reichen, to waste away while he watched. He glanced back to Tess and gave the Breedmate a tight nod. "Gather whatever you need from the infirmary to get her hydrated. I'll go inform everyone of the situation."
Several thousand miles away from Boston, on a remote stretch of railroad track that led into the frozen heart of Alaska's interior, the wrecked remains of a large, refrigerated cargo container lay open and abandoned to the elements. It had made the journey from the industrial yard in Albany, New York, to the rail station that sent it westward across the country, arriving as planned four days ago at the port of Seattle.
From there, it had been loaded without incident onto a barge and shipped north, where it was scheduled to reach its final destination just a mere eighteen hours later. By the time the first inklings of trouble had been detected by Dragos's lieutenant and the cadre of Gen One guards escorting the dangerous cargo, it was already far too late to stop what was about to occur. Now that dangerous cargo was gone. The container was empty, aside from the savaged, bloodied bodies that littered its floor and the snow-covered ground outside. And leading away from the moonlit tracks, into the tree-choked, frozen wilderness beyond, was a trail of huge footprints made by a feral, deadly creature not of this world. A creature that had been biding its time through weeks of starvation and drugging, feigning lethargy and compliance, while waiting for its chance to escape.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The endless dark refused to release him. Reichen's lungs expanded and drew in air as if he'd been underwater and just broke through the surface after half a year of drowning in the tide. He gasped in sharply, then immediately began to choke on the acrid taste of sulfur and smoke. He felt a light weight draped around him in the pitch blackness of his surroundings. Claire's arms, holding him close. Her soft, tender body curved along the length of him from behind. Amid the bleak void that engulfed him, he'd never felt anything so perfect and right. He knew he was dreaming, but for how long? He couldn't dismiss the feeling that he'd been lost in the darkness of this other realm for a good long time. And Claire was with him. Good Christ... had she been here with him the whole time? He smoothed his palm over the velvety length of her arm. Her skin was cool to the touch, alarmingly so.
She didn't stir at all as he gently stroked her. What troubled him more was the shallow panting of her breath beside his ear, the notable limpness of her cold fingers as he grasped them in his own and tried to rouse her. "Claire," he murmured, his tongue thick, his voice sluggish and rusty in the heavy pall of this smoke-clogged dream. "Claire?" She wouldn't respond. Panic clutched him, snapping his eyes open.
It was then he noticed the glow of flames rising up from far below the cold hard perch where he and Claire had been lying together. As he sat up, the flames shot higher, as if they, too, had been merely resting but were now stirring with renewed life. Beyond the steep, narrow ledge was a great abyss. A pit of fire and roiling lava churned at the bottom of that hellish drop. The flames surged violently upward, twisting and tumbling, nearly blinding him with the intensity of their heat. Like a beast breaking loose of its shackles, the fire lunged for him. Bright white-hot tendrils made a sudden grab across the stone ledge, stretching greedy fingers of flame toward the place where he and Claire sat. Reichen quickly covered Claire's body with his own, twisting himself over her as the heat roared all around them. The burn licked at his na**d skin, searing and relentless. But it couldn't touch her. He wouldn't permit it. No goddamn way would he let the fires get near her. He bellowed with fury as the force of his pyro rolled over him and around him. This hellish heat was his--it was him, the terrible curse of his birthright. The very power that had protected him from the explosion in Dragos's underground lair.
Memory of that moment slammed into him in an instant. He recalled how he'd had to conjure every measure of his fury in order to shield himself from the inferno that had erupted all around him. The pyro had spared him from death in the blast, but it wasn't through with him yet. It was still burning inside him. Ready to consume him, just as Claire had tried to warn him. Just as he himself had known it would, from the moment the very first spark had lit within him in that godforsaken field in Hamburg. If he let go now--if he gave one fraction of his will to keep Claire safe from the heat--the curse that had plagued him for so long would own him. And it would destroy Claire in the process. He felt the fires searching for her, flames hissing and flicking like serpents' tongues, hungry for a taste of the treasure he was denying them.