Ashes of Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online Page A

confirmed nor denied his whereabouts. “Stay put, Claire. You’ll be fine.”
     
“Wilhelm,” she said slowly. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious about who attacked us last night? I would think you’d want to know who’s responsible … and why.”
     
Roth stared at her.
     
“Andreas Reichen,” she said, watching him much too closely for his reaction.
     
He was careful to give her nothing, not so much as a blink of his eyes or a kick of his pulse. He frowned after a moment, feigning confusion. “You speak of a ghost, Claire. Andreas Reichen perished with the rest of his kin this past summer when his Darkhaven burned to the ground.”
     
In fact, Roth thought with private disappointment, the arrogant son of a bitch should have been dead long before then.
     
Claire shook her head. “He’s alive. He’s… changed, Wilhelm. He has a terrible rage inside him—a power I can barely comprehend. The fires and explosions here and inHamburg? He made them. They came out of him. I saw it with my own eyes.”
     
Roth listened, both incredulous and concerned.
     
“Wilhelm, he says he intends to kill you.”
     
He scoffed. “The bastard will never get close enough to try.”
     
“He’s here, Wilhelm.” Claire’s gaze was imploring. “He is here, in the house with me, passed out in the cellar. I don’t know what to do.”
     
Roth’s furious curse was punctuated by an electronic bleating that pierced the fabric of his dream. His surroundings warped and vibrated. The ribbon of dark pavement and the perfect starlit sky above trembled, the vision of Claire starting to fade out with the sound waves that were rousing him from sleep.
     
“My mobile is ringing,” he said, ready to be done with her anyway. As he spoke, the Jaguar he’d been sitting in vaporized, leaving him standing on the strip of moonlit pavement beside her. “I have to take this call now—”
     
Claire’s filmy image reached for him. “What about Andreas?”
     
He ground his molars together at the apparent easy familiarity she still seemed to feel toward the other male, even after decades of separation. “Keep the son of a bitch contained at the house while I make arrangements to deal with him.”
     
“You want me to stay here with him?” She stared, uncertain. “For how long?”
     
“As long as it takes. I’ll send another Agency detail to remove him at sunset.”
     
“Remove him into Agency custody, you mean? You won’t let your men hurt him, will you?”
     
Her apparent concern was thoroughly pissing him off.“My men are professionals, Claire. They know how to handle a situation like this. You needn’t worry about the details.”
     
The jangle of his ringing phone came again, pulling him further away from her, back to consciousness.
     
“What about me, Wilhelm?” Claire murmured. “How am I supposed to keep Andreas here until your men arrive?”
     
“Do whatever you must,” Roth replied flatly. “You know him better than most, after all. Intimately, if memory serves. I’m sure you’ll think of some way to detain him.”
     
He didn’t wait for her to say anything more. The phone rang again and Roth’s eyes snapped open, severing his thready connection to Claire.
     
He grabbed the mobile from the table next to his bed. “Yes.”
     
“Herr Roth,” said a nervous Breed male on the other end of the line. “This is Agent Krieger from the Berlin office, sir. There’s been a murder here last night—Agent Waldemar’s body was just discovered in his residence. His neck was broken. And… there’s more, sir. It seems there was an incident at your Darkhaven in Hamburg, as well.”
     
Roth scoffed, full of sarcasm. “You don’t say.”
     
“Sir?”
     
“Assemble a combat team and send them to my country house as soon as the sun sets. The unit on-site has been attacked and eliminated. Now my Breedmate is there without any cover. She’s alone, and she’s holding Andreas Reichen for you.”
     
“Reichen?” asked the agent. “I don’t understand, sir. Wasn’t he killed in that freak