A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark #2)(67)
Author: Kresley Cole

"What are you speaking of, woman?"

Her voice was pure evil. "Your brother’s neck is beneath my boot right now. Garreth for Emma."

The line went dead.

31

Emma felt like an offering on a dark altar.

The vampire had traced her into a dim corridor just outside a heavy wooden door. He unlocked the door and opened it, then shoved her into a room with such force that she tripped to the cold stone floor. Lightheaded from his tracing, she’d lain where she’d fallen – at the foot of a towering arched window reaching at least twenty feet high. Its glass was stained obsidian, with gold inlays gracefully twisted into symbols of the black arts.

The vampire had abandoned her with only the warning, "Do not try to escape. No one traces into or out of his rooms but him," then he locked the door once more.

She shivered, dragging her eyes from the window, and rose dizzily to her knees to examine the room. A study, a working one – with papers atop the desk – though it was dank and redolent of the scent of old blood.

Screams sounded from somewhere in the bowels of the castle, and she shot to her feet, turning in wary circles. What in the hell had she done?

Before regret could overwhelm her, memories of the fire returned. The scene was as clear as if she’d been there.

Lachlain’s lungs had filled with fire, and he’d reacted more violently to that than even the skin burning from his legs as the fire grew. He’d never given them the pleasure of hearing him roar with pain. Not the first time he died, or the second, or any other time over the next fifteen decades when he’d burned and woken into a fresh hell. His hatred was the only thing that kept him remotely sane, and he’d clung to it.

He clung to it when the fires abated. He clung to it when he realized his leg alone kept him from her, and when he forced himself to snap the bone, and then when he…let the beast rise up so he could…

She hung her head and retched. He’d clung to it until he’d found her – the one he’d sensed on the surface, the one who was supposed to save him…

Then he’d fought it for their sake.

She wondered how he hadn’t killed her, how he hadn’t given in to the confusion and hate that mixed with his need to claim her and find oblivion. How had he not taken her savagely when his skin still burned?

He hadn’t wanted her to know about his torture, and she understood why. She’d known she would have to tell him about the dream memories, but what could she say about this? That she had an apocalyptic case of TMI? That she finally knew the nature of his torture, and she was certain it was the worst any being had ever been subjected to?

How to tell him that her father had done it to him?

Malevolent, filthy parasites that belong in hell.

She almost threw up, but choked it back. She didn’t think Lachlain could hate her for this, but it would burn, seethe like a tiny drop of acid on the skin. Always wearing away. Her father had destroyed almost his entire family, a family that he’d clearly loved.

Now that she knew everything Lachlain had been through, knew his thoughts, his vows for retribution, hot shame suffused her for fighting him about his revenge.

Especially now that she was about to take it from him forever.

Her resolve was, well, resolved. As she lay on Kinevane’s cool floor amid all that carnage, her mind had raced. Her bitter shame had been beaten down by the notorious Valkyrie pride and sense of honor that had finally roiled within her. Unworthy. Frightened. Weak. Emma the Meek. No longer.

Because – and here was the baffling thing – now that her emotions had stabilized and she could think more clearly, she would still do the same thing.

It frightened her how determined she was about this. Yes, the old Emma still lurked in the background of her mind, squeaking about how stupid this was: Hey, how do you like my new meat pants? Now, where is that tiger cage?

True, it was foolhardy.

But the new Emma knew she wasn’t too stupid to live; she was too ashamed to care. She needed to do this to make things right with her coven and with Lachlain.

Lachlain. The bighearted king she had fallen helplessly for. And for him, she’d fight relentlessly.

Her father, her burden. She’d come to slay Demestriu.

For the hellish hour it took Harmann to drive him to the private airport, Lachlain fought to keep from turning, never quite able to pull back from the razor-thin boundary – or to reason as clearly as he needed to. Vampires had Emma, and the Valkyrie had Garreth.

The curse of the Lykae. The strength and ferocity that they carried into battle was a detriment in all other scenarios, and the more they cared for something, the more the beast wanted to rise up to protect it.

He was gambling that they’d taken Emma to Helvita, back to Demestriu, though it could have been to Ivo or even this Kristoff. He’d dispatched Cass to find Uilleam and Munro and as many Lykae as they could readily assemble to travel to Kristoff’s castle. Lachlain knew she would do it. She’d taken one look at his eyes after Emma was gone and finally understood.

But what if Lachlain was wrong about where they’d taken her? What if he couldn’t find Helvita this time either? He couldn’t seem to think now that the full situation had hit him.

The full situation. Garreth had been taken, too. Somehow captured. Somehow? After palpable demonstrations of Lucia’s skill, Regin’s strength, Nïx’s speed, and Kaderin’s single-minded malice, Lachlain knew he’d underestimated an enemy.

"They have Garreth," he’d told Bowe, calling from the car as Harmann sped down foggy Scottish roads. "Get him back."

"Bloody hell. It isn’t as easy as that, Lachlain."

It was that easy. Lachlain wanted Garreth free. Bowe was a powerful Lykae known for his ruthlessness. "Free – him," he’d growled.

"We canna. I dinna want to tell you this, but they have goddamned wraiths guarding them."

Garreth, last of his blood family, behind the guard of an ancient scourge, in the hands of an insane, vicious being.

And…Emma had left him.

Purposely left him. Made the conscious effort to forsake him, and crawled to a vampire’s f**king outstretched hand to do it.

Haze.

No, need to fight it. Again and again he struggled to examine everything he knew about her, looking for a clue as to why she would do this.

Seventy years old. College. She’d been hunted by the vampires. It was her they wanted all along. For what purpose? Which faction? Annika’s her foster mother. Emma’s blood mother was of Lydian descent, she said. Helen. That’s where she got her looks from.

As they neared the airport, the sun rose. Lachlain roared with frustration, hating it, wanting never to see it rise again. She was out there without him to protect her, could be staked to a field at this moment. His palms were bloodied from his claws digging into them, his arm wound unchecked.