“My ideal man? He’d have to be considerate, easygoing, and well-mannered.
Above all, he’d need to treat me like a queen.”
—Emmaline Troy, aka Emma the Timid,
half vampire half Valkyrie
“Never run from one such as me, female.
You will no’ get away—and we like it.”
—Lachlain MacRieve, King of the Lykae
— Prologue —
Sometimes the fire that licks the skin from his bones dies down.
It is
his
fire. In a recess of his mind still capable of rational thought, he
believes this. His fire because he’s fed it for centuries with his
destroyed body and decaying mind.
Long ago—and who knows how much
time has toiled past—the Vampire Horde trapped him in these catacombs
deep beneath Paris. He stands chained against a rock, pinned at two
places on each limb and once around his neck. Before him—an opening into
hell that spews fire.
Here he waits and suffers, offered to a
column of fire that may weaken but is never-ending—never-ending, just
like his life. His existence is to burn to death repeatedly, only to
have his dogged immortality revive him again.
Detailed fantasies of retribution have gotten him this far; nursing the rage in his heart is all he has.
Until her.
Over
the centuries, he has sometimes heard uncanny new things in the streets
above, occasionally smelled Paris changing seasons. But now he has
scented her, his mate, the one woman made for him alone.
The one woman he’d searched for without cease for a thousand years—up until the day of his capture.
The
flames have ebbed. At this moment, she lingers somewhere above. It is
enough. One arm strains against its bonds until the thick metal cuts
into his skin. Blood drips, then pours. Every muscle in his weakened
body works in
concert,
striving to do what he’s never been able to for an eternity before. For
her, he can do this. He must … . His yell turns to a choking cough as
he rips two
bonds free.
He doesn’t have time to disbelieve what he’s accomplished. She is so close, he can almost feel her.
Need her. Another arm
wrenches free.
With
both hands he clenches the metal biting into his neck, vaguely
remembering the day the thick, long pin was hammered into place. He
knows its two ends are embedded at least three feet down. His strength
is waning, but nothing will stop him when she’s so close. In a rush of
rock and dust, the metal comes loose, the recoil making him fling it
across the cavernous space.
He yanks at the bond wrapped tight
around his thigh. He wrests it and the one at his ankle free, then
begins on the last two holding his other leg. Already envisioning his
escape, not even glancing down, he pulls. Nothing. Brows drawn in
confusion, he tries again. Straining, groaning with desperation.
Nothing.
Her scent is fading—
there is no time.
He pitilessly regards his trapped leg. Imagining how he can bury
himself in her and forget the pain, he reaches above his knee with
shaking hands. Yearning for that oblivion within her, he attempts to
crack the bone. His weakness ensures that this takes half a dozen tries.
His claws slice his skin and
muscle,
but the nerve running the length of his femur is taut as a piano wire.
When he even nears it, unimaginable pain stabs up its length and
explodes in his upper body, making his vision go black.
Too weak.
Bleeding too freely. The fire will build again soon. The vampires return
periodically. Will he lose her just when he’s found her?
“Never,”
he grates. He surrenders himself to the beast inside him, the beast
that will take its freedom with its teeth, drink water from the gutters
and scavenge refuse to survive. He sees the frenzied amputation as
though watching a misery from a distance.
Crawling from his
torture, abandoning his leg, he pulls himself through the shadows of the
dank catacombs until he spies a passageway. Ever watchful for his
enemies, he creeps through the bones littering the floor to reach it. He
has no idea how far it is to escape, but he finds his way—and the
strength—by following her scent. He regrets the pain he will give her.
She will be so connected to him, she’ll feel his suffering and horror as
her own.
It can’t be helped. He is escaping. Doing his part. Can she save him from his memories when his skin still burns?
He finally inches his way to the surface, then into a darkened alley. But her scent has faltered.
Fate has given her to him when he needs her most, and God help him—
and this city—if he can’t find her. His brutality had been legendary, and he will unleash it without measure for her.
He
fights to sit up against a wall. Clawing tracks into the brick street,
he struggles to calm his ragged breaths so he can scent her once more.
Need her. Bury myself in her. Waited so long … .
Her scent is gone.
His eyes go wet and he shudders violently at the loss. An anguished roar makes the city tremble.
Chapter 1
One week later …
On
an island in the Seine, against the nighttime backdrop of an ageless
cathedral, the denizens of Paris came out to play. Emmaline Troy wound
around fire-eaters, pick-pockets, and
chanteurs de rue.
She meandered through the tribes of black-clad Goths who swarmed Notre
Dame like it was the Gothic mother ship calling them home. And still she
attracted attention.
The human males she passed turned their
heads slowly to regard her, frowns in place, sensing something, but
unsure. Probably some genetic memory from long ago that signaled her as
their wildest fantasy or their darkest nightmare.
Emma was neither.
She
was a co-ed—a recent Tulane grad—alone in Paris and hungry. Weary from
another failed search for blood, she sank onto a rustic bench beneath a
chestnut tree, eyes riveted to a waitress drawing espresso at a café. If
only blood poured so easily, Emma thought. Yes, if it came warm and
rich from a bottomless tap, then her stomach wouldn’t be clenched in
hunger at the mere idea.
Starving in Paris. And friendless. Was there ever such a predicament?
Couples
strolling hand in hand along the gravel walk seemed to mock her
loneliness. Was it just her, or did lovers look more adoringly at each
other in this city? Especially in the springtime.
Die, bastards.
She sighed. It wasn’t their fault that they were bastards who should die.
She’d
been spurred to enter this fray by the prospect of her echoing hotel
room and the idea that she might find another blood pusher in the City
of Light. Her former hookup had gone south—literally—fleeing Paris for
Ibiza. He’d given little explanation for abandoning his job, saying only
that with the “arrival of the risen king,” some “serious epic shit” was
brewing in “gay Paree.” Whatever that meant.
As a vampire, she
was a member of the Lore, that stratum of beings who’d convinced humans
they existed only in imagination. Yet though the Lore was thick here,
Emma had been unable to Title her pusher. Any creatures she could scout
out to ask fled her solely because she was a vampire. They scurried
without knowing that she wasn’t even a full-blooded one, nor that Emma
was a wuss who’d never bitten another living being. As her fierce
adoptive aunts loved to tell everyone, “Emma cries her pink tears if she
dusts a moth’s wings.”
Emma had accomplished nothing during this
trip that she’d insisted on taking. Her quest to uncover information
about her deceased parents—her Valkyrie mother and her unknown vampire
father—was a failure. A failure that would culminate in a call to her
aunts to get them to retrieve her. Because she couldn’t feed herself.
Pitiful. She sighed. She’d be razzed about this for another seventy
years—
She heard a crash, and before she even had time to feel bad
for the waitress getting docked, another crash and then another
followed. She tilted her head in curiosity—just as a table umbrella
across the walk shot fifteen feet up to be batted high in the sky,
fluttering all the way to the Seine. A cruise boat honked and Gallic
curses erupted.
Half-lit by the walk’s torchlights, a towering man
turned over café tables, artists’ easels, and book stands selling
century-old pornography. Tourists screamed and fled in the wake of
destruction. Emma shot to her feet with a gasp, looping her satchel over
her shoulder.
He was cutting a path directly to her, his black
trench coat trailing behind him. His size and his unnaturally fluid
movements made her wonder if he could possibly be human. His hair was
thick and long, concealing half his face, and several days’ growth of
beard shadowed his jaw.
He pointed a shaking hand at her.
“You,” he growled.
She jerked glances over both of her shoulders looking for the
you he was addressing. Her. Holy shite, this madman had settled on her.
He turned his palm up and beckoned her to come to him—as if he was confident she would.
“Uh, I-I don’t know you,” she squeaked, trying to back up, but her legs immediately met the bench.
He
continued stalking her, ignoring the tables between them, tossing them
aside like toys instead of varying his direct pursuit of her. Furious
intent burned in his pale blue eyes. She could sense his rage more
sharply as he neared, unsettling her, because her kind were considered
the predators in the night—never the prey. And because, at heart, she
was a coward.
“Come.” He bit out the word as though with difficulty and motioned for her again.
Eyes
wide, she shook her head, then leapt backward over the bench, twisting
in the air. She landed facing away from him and began speeding down the
quay. She was weak, more than two days without blood, but terror made
her quick as she crossed the Archevêché Bridge to exit the island.
Three
… four blocks covered. She chanced a look behind her. Didn’t see him.
Had she lost him—? Sudden glaring music from her purse made her cry out.
Who
in the hell had programmed the Crazy Frog ring tone into her cell
phone? Her eyes narrowed. Aunt Regin. The world’s most immature
immortal, who looked like a siren and behaved like a frat pledge.
Cell
phones in their coven were for dire emergency only. Ringers would
disturb their hunting in the back alleys of New Orleans, and even a
vibration would be enough to trigger a twitching ear in a low creature.
She flipped it open. Speak of the devil: Regin the Radiant.
“Little busy right now,” Emma snapped, taking another peek over her shoulder.
“Drop your things. Don’t take time to pack. Annika wants you at the executive airport immediately.
You’re in danger.”
“Duh.”
Click. That wasn’t a warning—that was narration.
She’d
ask the details once she was on the plane. As if she’d needed a reason
to return home. Just the mention of danger and she would scamper back to
her coven, to her Valkyrie aunts who would kill anything that
threatened her and keep malice at bay.
As she tried to remember
her way to the airport where she’d landed, the rain started to fall,
warm and light at first—April lovers still laughing as they ran under
awnings—but swiftly turning to pounding cold. She came to a crowded
avenue, feeling safer as she wound through traffic. She dodged cars with
their wipers and horns going full-force. She didn’t see her pursuer.
With
only the satchel slung around her neck, she traveled quickly, miles
passing beneath her feet before she spied an open park and then the
airfield just beyond it. She could see the diffused air around the jet
engines as they warmed, could see the shades on every window already
drawn tight. Almost there.
Emma convinced herself she’d lost him,
because she was fast. She was also adept at convincing herself of things
that might not be—good at pretending. She could pretend she took
classes at night by choice, and that blushing didn’t make her thirsty—
A
vicious growl sounded. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t turn back, just
sprinted across the field. She felt claws sink into her ankle a second
before she was dragged to the muddy ground and thrown onto her back. A
hand covered her mouth, though she’d been trained not to scream.
“Never run from one such as me.” Her attacker didn’t sound human. “You will no’ get away.
And we like it.” His voice was guttural like a beast’s, breaking, yet his accent was … Scottish?
As
she peered up at him through the rain, he examined her with eyes that
were golden in color one moment, then flickering that eerie blue the
next. No, not human.
Up close, she could see his features were
even, masculine. A strong chin and jaw complemented the chiseled planes.
He was beautiful, so much so that she thought he had to be a fallen
angel. Possible. How could
she rule out anything?
The
hand that had been covering her mouth roughly grasped her chin. He
narrowed his eyes, focusing on her lips—on her barely noticeable fangs. “
No,”
he choked out. “No’ possible… .” He yanked her head side to side,
running his face down her neck, smelling her, then growled in fury,
“Goddamn you.”
When his eyes turned blue sharply, she cried out, her breath seeming to
leave her body. “Can you trace?” he grated as though speech was
difficult. “Answer me!”
She shook her head, uncomprehending. Tracing was how vampires teleported, disappearing and reappearing in thin air.
Then he knows I’m a vampire?
“Can you?”
“N-no.”
She’d never been strong or skilled enough. “Please.” She blinked
against the rain, pleading with her eyes. “You have the wrong woman.”
“Think I’d know you. Make sure, if you insist.” He raised a hand—to touch her? Strike her? She fought, hissing desperately.
A
callused palm grasped the back of her neck, his other hand clenching
her wrists as he bent down to her neck. Her body jerked from the feel of
his tongue against her skin. His mouth was hot in the chill, wet air,
making her shudder until her muscles knotted. He groaned while kissing
her, his hand squeezing her wrists hard. Below her skirt, drops of rain
tracked down her thighs, shocking her with cold.
“Don’t do this!
Please …”
When her last word ended with a whimper, he seemed to come out of a
trance, his brows drawing together as his eyes met hers, but he didn’t
release her hands.
He flicked his claw down her blouse and sliced
it and the flimsy bra beneath open, then slowly brushed the halves past
her breasts. She struggled, but it was useless against his strength. He
studied her with a greedy gaze as rain splattered down, stinging her
naked breasts. She was shivering uncontrollably.
His pain was so sharp it nauseated her. He could take her or he could tear open her unprotected belly and kill her … .
Instead
he ripped open his own shirt, then placed his huge palms against her
back to draw her to his chest. He groaned when their skin touched, and
electricity seemed to flash through her. Lightning split the sky.
He rumbled foreign words against her ear. She felt they were…
tender
words—making her think she’d lost her mind. She went limp, her arms
hanging while he shuddered against her, his lips so hot in the pouring
rain as he ran them down her neck, across her face, even brushing them
over her eyelids. There he knelt, clutching her; there she lay, boneless
and dazed, as she watched the lightning slash above them.
His hand cradled the back of her head as he moved her to face him.
He
seemed torn as he watched her with some fierce emotion—she’d never been
looked at so … consumingly. Confusion overwhelmed her. Would he attack
or let her go?
Let me go…
A tear slipped down her face, warmth streaking down amidst the drops of rain.
The look disappeared.
“Blood for tears?”
he roared, clearly revolted by her pink tears. He turned away as if he
couldn’t stand to look upon her, then blindly swatted at her shirt to
close it. “Take me to your home, vampire.”
“I-I don’t live here,”
she said in a strangled tone, staggered by what had just occurred, and
by the fact that he knew what she was.
“Take me to where you stay,” he ordered, finally facing her as he stood before her.
“No,” she amazed herself by saying.
He,
too, looked surprised. “Because you doona want me to stop? Good. I’ll
take you here on the grass on your hands and knees”—he lifted her easily
until she was kneeling—”till well after the sun rises.”
He must have seen her resignation because he hauled her to her feet and pushed at her to get her moving. “Who stays with you?”
My husband, she wanted to snap.
The linebacker who’s going to kick your ass. Yet she couldn’t lie, even now, and never would have had the nerve to provoke him anyway. “I am alone.”
“Your
man lets you travel by yourself?” he asked over the downpour. His voice
was beginning to sound human again. When she didn’t answer, he said
with a sneer, “You’ve a careless male for yourself. His loss.”
She
stumbled in a pothole and he gently steadied her, then seemed angry
with himself that he’d helped her. But when he led them in front of a
car a moment later, he threw her out of the way, leaping back at the
sound of the horn. He swiped at the side of the car, claws crumpling the
metal like tinfoil, sending it skidding. When it finally stopped, the
engine block dropped to the street with a thud. The driver threw open
the door, dived for the street, then darted away.
Mouth open in shock, she frantically scrambled backward, realizing her captor looked as though he’d…
never seen a car.
He crossed to her, looming over her. In a low, deadly tone, he grated, “I only hope you run from me again.”
My Tour of the Catacombs
My coolest pic I've ever taken ^^
In the giftshop ;-) Green Faery for Nix? hehe
<3 Kayla the Bibliophile
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