female. Now!" As she scrambled up from the polished marble beneath her and escaped the room, the Darkhaven vampire leapt into the air in a single, fluid arc of motion. Before his feet could touch down, Reichen launched himself at the bastard. Their bodies collided, the explosion of Reichen's forward momentum propelling both of them across the width of the chamber. Fangs huge and gnashing, fierce amber eyes locked on each other in the deadliest kind of malice, together they crashed like a wrecking ball into the far wall. Bones cracked with the impact, but it wasn't enough for Reichen. Not nearly enough. He threw the struggling, furious Breed male to the floor and pinned him there, one knee crushing his throat. "Ignorant fool!" roared the vampire, arrogant despite his pain. "Have you any idea who I am?" "I know who you are--Enforcement Agent Hans Friedrich Waldemar." Reichen bared his teeth and fangs in a profanity of a smile as he glared down at him.
"Don't tell me you have already forgotten who I am." No, he hadn't forgotten. Recognition flickered behind the pain and fear in Waldemar's slitted pupils. "Son of a bitch... Andreas Reichen." "That's right." Reichen held the bastard in a gaze so deadly furious it must have burned to hold it. "What's the matter, Agent Waldemar? You seem surprised to see me." "I--I don't understand. The attack on the Darkhaven this past summer..."
The vampire sucked in a choked breath. "I'd heard no one survived." "Almost no one," Reichen corrected tightly. And now Waldemar knew why he'd been paid this unexpected visit. There was no mistaking the bleak awareness in the other male's gaze. Or the stark fear. When he spoke now, his voice shook a bit. "I had nothing to do with it, Andreas. You must believe me--" Reichen snorted. "That's what the others said, too." Waldemar started to squirm, but Reichen pressed down harder with his knee planted heavily against the vampire's throat. Waldemar wheezed, trying to raise his hands as the weight began to crush his air channel. "Please...just tell me what you want from me." "Justice." With neither satisfaction nor remorse, Reichen grabbed Waldemar's head in his hands and gave a fierce yank. His neck snapped, then the Breed male's head fell back to the floor with a heavy thunk. Reichen exhaled a deep sigh that did little to purge his anguish, or the grief he felt at being alive and alone. The sole survivor. The last of his family line. As he stood and prepared to leave this latest death behind him, a glint of polished glass on one of the room's several mahogany bookcases caught his eye. He stalked over to it, his feet moving automatically, sharpened gaze fixed on the face of his enemy that stared out from within the silver-framed photograph. He grabbed the picture and stared down at it, his fingers hot where they pressed into the metal of the frame.
Reichen's eyes burned the longer he looked at that hated face, a growl curling low in his throat, raw with visceral, still-smoldering rage. Wilhelm Roth stood among a small group of Breed males wearing ceremonial Enforcement Agency garb. All of them were decked out in black tuxedos and starched white shirts, their chests festooned with bright silk sashes and gleaming pendant medallions, gilded rapiers sheathed at their sides. Reichen snorted at the self-importance--the power-hungry arrogance--etched in those smug, smiling faces. Now they were dead men...all but one. He'd saved Roth for last, having meticulously worked his way up the chain of command. First the Agency death squad members who'd ambushed his Darkhaven home and opened fire on every living being inside--even the females, even the infants asleep in their cribs.
Next he'd targeted the handful of Enforcement Agency cronies who had made no secret of their allegiance to the powerful Darkhaven leader responsible for ordering the slaughter. One by one over the past several weeks, the guilty had met their end. The vampire lying dead and broken on the floor was the last known member of Wilhelm Roth's corrupt inner circle in Germany. Which left Roth himself.
The bastard was going to burn for what he'd done. But first he would suffer. Reichen's gaze drifted back to the framed photograph in his hands and froze there. On first glance, he hadn't noticed the woman. All of his focus--all his fury--had been centered solely on Roth. Now that he had found her, he couldn't tear his eyes away from her. Claire. She