in their compound, and you can stay there until--" "Until when?" She closed her eyes for a long moment, as if absorbing the weight of his words. "Until you are either dead or very near to it? You want me to stand by and watch you pursue your own destruction, Andre? Now you are the one asking too much." He wanted to tell her that her fears were unfounded. More than anything, he wanted to promise her that he had no doubts about how this thing with Roth was going to work out. He wished he could assure her that somehow they would come through all of this in the end, that they could have a future together--the future Wilhelm Roth had denied them so many years ago. But he couldn't deceive her. Taking down Roth might demand the last of his thin control. If he had to unleash his power to its hellish maximum in order to destroy the bastard, he would. And if the situation called for that, he knew the odds of him emerging from it with any shred of his humanity intact was virtually nil. He gazed down at her lovely face and tenderly smoothed a damp tendril from her brow.
"Get dressed now, all right? We can talk more, but it won't be long before our ride arrives to pick us up. And you are going with me, Claire. That much is not open to debate." She looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she pressed her lips together and gave a faint shake of her head. "I know where Roth is, Andre." Reichen couldn't speak as those words spilled out of her mouth. He stood there, dumbstruck and confused, a building sense of rage forming swiftly from deep inside him. "I felt his presence through my blood bond to him last night, when we first arrived in Boston." Her admission was calmly voiced and steady, filled with certainty. It made him pause, even while his pulse slammed into a violent tempo. "He's here in the United States?" She nodded faintly. "In Boston." Reichen's blood began to sizzle. "You knew this? You knew this, but you didn't tell me." He didn't mean for it to come out as an accusation, but the heat flickering to life within him made it hard to form words. His head was buzzing, and it was hard to do anything but fight to keep control of the kindling fire that was already starting to spread through his body. Roth was a mere hour away. All this time, so close to his grasp. "I couldn't tell you, Andre. I didn't want to give you information that might only get you killed. That's why I left the airport without telling you. But then you followed me here, and I thought maybe if we spent some time together, the way we used to, then I could convince you to give up your need for vengeance." Reichen could barely breathe. His nostrils filled with the acrid tang of smoke and heat. All along his limbs, electricity crackled, growing hotter by the second. "For fuck's sake, Claire. You should have told me about this. I needed to know. Goddamn it, the Order needed to know also." "I didn't want my blood bond to Roth putting you or anyone else in danger."
His vision beginning to bleed red with rage, he stalked away from her, fuming. "Claire, you have been the one in danger all this time. With Roth so close, he had to know you were here, too. He could have shown up on this doorstep at any time." "But he didn't," she said quietly from behind him. "I couldn't tell you that I knew where he was, or you would have gone after him. You can't tell me that you wouldn't have insisted I help you locate him, Andreas. You're so determined to claim your justice, how long would it have taken you before you asked me to use my blood bond to lead you to him?" "Never," he said, appalled. He spun around to face her then, his body teeming with heat. "I never would have used you. Never. God, don't you know that?" "I suppose I wasn't willing to find out," she replied. "Andreas, please, don't be angry with me--" "I'm fucking furious with you!" he roared, unable to bite back the fear that had such a firm hold on his heart. His chest heaved with every breath he pulled into