Ashes of Midnight Read Online Free Page A

broad cut of his shoulders, the fluid swagger of his stride. Impossible, of course. Still, a glimmer of familiarity kindled in the back of her mind. Could she know him somehow?
     
But this was no man—certainly none that she knew,now or ever. This creature was something out of a nightmare.
     
He was death incarnate.
     
The crack of a gun firing jolted Claire’s attention to the gathered group of Enforcement Agents nearby. Another bullet rang out, then another and another, until the air was filled with the sound. For all the good it did.
     
The man of flame kept walking, unfazed. The bullets popped like firecrackers as they neared him, exploding harmlessly the instant they met the wall of heat that surrounded his body.
     
When the last shell was finally spent, he paused.
     
He lifted his hands in front of him, though not in surrender. With little more than a second’s warning, he turned loose a volley of fire on the defending guards. Claire couldn’t bite back her scream of horror as the flames engulfed them, incinerating them on the spot.
     
She knew the instant the man noticed her. She felt the heat of his eyes pierce her from across the distance, every nerve ending in her body going taut with fear.
     
“Oh, God,” she whispered, stumbling backward a few paces.
     
The man of flames took a step in her direction, all of his terrible fury now rooted entirely on her.
     
Claire bolted, not daring to look back again as she plunged into the woods and ran for all she was worth.
     
     
     
     
     
CHAPTER
Three
     
     
H e walked unfazed through the smoldering ash and ruin on the pavement. His boots crunched over broken glass and wrenched metal, past puddles of spilled, flaming oil and the smoking remains of the Breed males who’d fired on him with their paltry weapons.
     
Their bullets hadn’t stopped him.
     
Nothing could, not when he was like this.
     
The ground sizzled under the heavy soles of his boots—not from annihilated debris, but from the heat that was still running through his limbs, an electrical crackle that traveled every inch of his body in pulsing waves of lethal, pure living energy.
     
He’d let his fury get out of control tonight; he knewthat. He’d understood well enough how important it was to contain the fire inside of him, but his hatred of Wilhelm Roth had made him careless—first in the city, then here. His thirst to complete his vengeance had pushed him over a steep ledge and now he was falling, falling …
     
Failing , when justice was so near his grasp.
     
Roth hadn’t been at his Hamburg Darkhaven. Nor had he been among the dead who’d tried to flee these grounds tonight. His vision flooded red with heat, Reichen cast a ruthless eye over the wreckage. He could see no sign of the bastard.
     
But Roth’s mate was here.
     
She would know where to find him. And if her lips refused to give him up, her blood would tell soon enough.
     
Claire .
     
Her name flickered like a shorting-out circuit in his mind, dimly, darkly, only to be devoured by the rage that owned him. Right now, to him, she wasn’t anyone he’d known, once or ever. She was no one he’d ever held in his arms. No one he’d ever loved.
     
Right now, like this, his fury knew only that she was the female who belonged to Wilhelm Roth.
     
And that made her as much Reichen’s enemy as Roth himself.
     
He stalked toward the edge of the woods where he’d watched the Breedmate run. Vaguely he registered the scent of melting pine pitch and singeing leaves as he passed into the thick stand of trees. Low-hanging branches curled out of his way, bent from his path by the heat rolling off him with each stride.
     
He knew precisely where the female had fled. He could hear the rapid panting of her breath as he walked deeperinto the forest. She was afraid, the scent of her terror a crisp note that the drifting smoke didn’t quite conceal.
     
Up ahead now, her footsteps went silent. She’d found someplace to hide from him—or so she thought.