A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark #2)(21)
Author: Kresley Cole

Ivo’s red eyes were ablaze in the lamplight, his expression amused. Lothaire secretly appeared in the background once more but did nothing. Lucia still screamed. The Lykae roared in answer – nearing them? Regin alone against three. "Leave us, Regin," Annika bit out.

Then…a shadow moved inside. White teeth and fangs. Pale blue eyes glowed in the darkness. It crept over to Lucia’s twitching form. Annika could do nothing. So helpless. In the scant lulls between bolts, he looked human. In the silver flashes, he was a beast, a man with the shadow of a beast.

Annika wanted her strength as she never had, wanted to kill it so slowly. The beast pawed at Lucia’s face. Annika couldn’t bear to –

It was trying to brush away Lucia’s tears? He lifted her, then crossed to a corner, tucking her behind a table.

Why wasn’t it ripping her throat out?

It reared up with a terrible fury and launched itself at the vampires, fighting beside a shocked, but quickly adapting Regin until the two vampire followers were decapitated. Ivo and the horned one traced away, fleeing. Enigmatic Lothaire merely nodded, then disappeared.

The Lykae sprang for Lucia, then crouched beside her as she stared up in awe and horror. When Annika closed her eyes and opened them once more, it had disappeared, leaving Lucia shaking.

"What the f**k?" Regin cried, circling around as though shell-shocked.

Just then Kaderin the Coldhearted arrived, jogging up the glass-covered porch. Ever blessed to feel no raw emotions, she chided gently, "Language, Regin." Then she entered the war zone, and even she raised an eyebrow as she leisurely drew her swords from the thin sheaths at her back.

"Annika!" Regin cried, digging through brick. Annika strained to answer but couldn’t. She’d never felt so helpless, never been beaten so badly.

"What has happened here?" Kaderin demanded, searching for a kill yet holding her swords so loosely, her wrists fluid as she swirled them in tight circles. When Lucia crawled out from behind the table, Kaderin backed her way to her.

"Vampires attacked. And you just missed the Lykae on top of all this," Regin sputtered, digging frantically. "The f**king monster mash – Annika?"

Annika managed to work a hand out of the rubble. Regin gripped it, hauling her free.

Dimly, Annika spied Nïx perched on the rail of the stairs above. She called down in a petulant tone, "How inconsiderate not to wake me when we are entertaining."

Emma woke precisely at sundown, frowning as she recalled the details of the morning. Hazily, she remembered Lachlain’s big, warm hands kneading the stiffness from her muscles, making her moan as he’d rubbed her neck and back.

Perhaps Lachlain wasn’t the insanely brutish animal she thought him. She’d known he wanted to make love to her – she’d felt how badly – yet he’d refrained. Then later, she’d sensed him returning from the shower and climbing in bed with her. His skin had still been damp and so warm as he’d tucked her bottom into his lap and placed her head on his outstretched arm. She’d felt his erection growing behind her. He’d grated a foreign word as though he cursed it, but he’d never acted on his desire.

She’d been distinctly aware that he’d lain between her and the window, and as he drew her to his chest, she’d felt…protected.

Just when she thought she had him figured out, he did something to surprise her.

She opened her eyes and sat up, then blinked as if the scene couldn’t be right. If he noticed she’d woken, he didn’t indicate it, just continued sitting in the corner in the dark, watching her with glowing eyes. Disbelieving her night vision, she reached for the bedside lamp. It lay crushed beside the bed.

She’d seen correctly. The room was…destroyed.

What had happened? What could make him do this?

"Get dressed. We leave in twenty minutes." He rose wearily, nearly stumbling as his leg seemed to give out, then limped to the door.

"But, Lachlain…"

The door closed behind him.

She stared, bewildered, at the claw marks in the walls, the floor, the furniture. Everything was rent to pieces.

She looked down. Well, not everything. Her belongings sat behind the savaged chair as though he’d hidden them away, knowing what was about to come. The blanket he’d strung up over the curtains sometime last night still hung where it added another safeguard against the sun. And the bed? Claw marks, mattress foam, and feathers surrounded her like a pod.

She was untouched.

9

If Lachlain didn’t want to tell her why he’d huffed and puffed and torn their hotel room to bits, then fine by her. After she’d thrown on a skirt, shirt, and boots and very purposely tied a folded scarf over her ears, she dug her iPod out of her luggage and strapped it on her arm.

Her aunt Myst called it the EIP, or "Emma’s iPod Pacifier," because whenever Emma got irritated or angry, she listened to music in order to "avoid conflict." As if this were a bad thing.

And if the EIP wasn’t made for a time like this…

Emma was pissed. Just when she’d decided this Lykae might be okay, that he’d finally begun leaning the right way in the sane-or-not conundrum, he had to go all big bad wolf on her. But this little piggy can compartmentalize, Emma thought, and Lachlain was cruising toward getting squared away in her mind forever.

His personality changed like rapid fire, from the soul-searing embrace in the rain when he’d pressed his naked chest against hers, to the howling attacks, to the gentle would-be lover in the bathtub last night. He kept her wary – an unfortunate and fatiguing state that she already tended to – and that frustrated her.

And now this. He’d left her with this ravaged room and no explanation. She could’ve looked like that chair.

She blew a curl out of her eyes, and found a wisp of upholstery filler had attached itself to her hair. As she swatted at it, she realized she was as angry at herself as she was with him.

Her first night with him, he’d allowed sun to burn her skin, and now, today, he’d used those claws – which had shredded the side of a car – in a frenzy while she’d slept unaware.

Why had she overprotected herself all her life, put forth the exhausting effort to do so, then thrown caution out the window regarding him? Why had her family taken pains to keep her safe, moving the coven to Lore-rich New Orleans to hide her, cloaking the manor in darkness only to have her die now –

Cloaking the manor…? Why had they done that? She never rose before sunset, never remained awake past sunrise. Her room was shuttered and she slept under the bed. So why did she have memories of running through their darkened home during the day?

Her gaze was drawn to the back of her hand, her trembling immediate. For the first time since she’d been frozen into her immortality, the memory of her "lesson" erupted in her mind with a perfect clarity…