Ashes of Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online

that it simply pissed him off to have his privacy invaded in any form.
     
Annoyed, Roth tucked himself back into his pants as he brought the car to a smooth halt right in front of his anxious Breedmate. She didn’t wait for him to address her, didn’t apologize for the interruption.
     
“Wilhelm, something terrible has happened.” She gripped the edge of the driver’s side door, her dark eyes intense with worry. “There’s been an attack at the country house.”
     
Roth felt his jaw go tense with anger more than surprise. “An attack? When?”
     
“Last night. A few hours ago.”
     
And he was just hearing about this now? Through her, and not his guards?
     
Roth scowled. “Tell me what happened.”
     
“It was awful,” she said, closing her eyes as though the memory pained her. “There were fires everywhere … explosions in the woods near the house and on the road. So much smoke and ash. We tried to leave, but we were too late.”
     
His anger spiked. “Where are you now?”
     
“At home… well, at my home. I’m still at the country house.”
     
“All right.” Roth nodded vaguely. “What about the men on watch there? Why is it they’ve left you to tell me all of this when they’re the ones who owe me the explanation?”
     
“They’re dead, Wilhelm.” Her voice faltered, dropping to a whisper. “Everyone else who was here tonight is dead.”
     
Roth bit off a ripe curse. “Very well. Stay put. I’ll contact the Hamburg Darkhaven and arrange for an envoy to pick you up and bring you back into the city.”
     
Claire was shaking her head before he had a chance tocomplete the thought. “Wilhelm… haven’t you heard? The Hamburg Darkhaven. It’s gone.”
     
“What?”
     
“The Darkhaven came under attack first. There’s nothing left of it. No survivors, other than one Enforcement Agent who escaped the fires to warn us that we were likely in danger, as well.”
     
Roth absorbed this news in grim silence. He didn’t have a lot of kin—no sons of his own to want to oust him from power, no brothers of any generation who’d managed to live as long as he had. The Darkhaven community he shepherded in Hamburg consisted only of a few nephews, who’d never been good for much; various household staff; plus a small garrison of guards on loan from the Agency. He hardly knew any of them, in truth, and frankly, he had more important things to consider than wasting any time mourning the loss.
     
“I’m sorry, Wilhelm,” Claire was saying now, sentiment he dismissed with a curt wave of his hand.
     
He supposed he had to know something like this was going to happen. He did know, in fact. He’d known from the moment he’d been informed of the first Enforcement Agency death at the Berlin office several weeks past—the up-close-and-personal killing of an agent who reported directly to him on covert, often unofficial, operations. When the second violent murder within his private contingent occurred, then the third and fourth, it left little question that someone was out for blood.
     
The only trouble with that theory being the fact that the someone in question was dead. At least that had been the report coming out of the Agency. At the time, Roth hadn’t had the opportunity or the inclination to doubt the intel; more important business had already called him away toMontreal. That business was still his chief priority, but this assault on his personal holdings could not go unmet.
     
“I will take care of the matter,” he told Claire. “And you needn’t worry, I’ll call in a few favors to find you temporary shelter in the region until I am able to return.”
     
“Where exactly are you, Wilhelm? One of your guards told me you’re not in Germany.” She looked around at the dream landscape, her gaze clearly taking note of the jags of steep granite that flanked some of the stretch of rural highway his mind had manufactured. “Are you in New England?”
     
Too clever, his Yankee-born Breedmate. And far too inquisitive now for her own good. Roth neither