by Kresley Cole
Too late, it was done. He knew that he’d unlocked the floodgates and that these dreams were going to play out, each spinning to their gruesome, perverted endings.
Myst slowly lifted her skirt up. Yet then Nikolai felt something new—chills crawling up her spine as she peered down at the Roman with his wet lips and furious stroking.
She was ashamed at her disgust and closed her mind off it. She was the bait. She’d be whatever it took to free her sister.
“I’ll possess Myst the Coveted …”
No one possesses me but in their fantasies. I’ll kill you as easily as kiss you… The Roman sought to make her his plaything just as he had Daniela for weeks.
Suddenly Myst glanced up and Nikolai saw through her eyes. Lucia had Daniela in her covered arms, the girl’s body limp and burned over most of her icy skin. Daniela had been tortured, Myst realized, by this animal at her feet, by his very touch. The familiar rage erupted within her. Control it, she thought. Just a moment longer. “And I’ll be yours, only yours,” she somehow purred.
When Lucia signaled, Myst nodded, extracting her foot, his lips producing a loud sucking sound that made her cringe. She tapped the man’s bulbous nose with her big toe. In a tone dripping with sexuality, she said, “You probably won’t live through what I’m about to do”—her voice had gone to a breathy whisper belying the words and confusing the man—“but if you survive, learn and tell others that you should never”—a tap with the toe—“ever”—tap—“harm a Valkyrie.”
Then she punted him across the room—
Another scene began, the one with the raiding party, the one he’d always dreaded seeing the most. The men were nearing; he could hear her feigning heavy breathing, a stumble. All a part of the game.
One tackled her hard into the snow. The others snared her arms. She was pretending fear, weakly struggling. While others cheered, a burly Viking knelt between her legs and told her, “I hope you live longer than the last ones did.”
Lightning streaked behind the man’s head, and the wind seemed to follow it. A few looked around uneasily with nervous laughter.
“The last ones’ names were Angritte and her daughter Carin,” Myst informed him. Carin, so young, simple in the mind, had for some reason immediately recognized Myst for what she was. “Swan maiden,” the girl had whispered, uttering one of the Valkyries’ more beautiful names.
Both the careless mother and her innocent daughter had been killed, smothered under the weight of these men as they brutalized them. “I will live longer than them—and you.” A change came over her, like a bloodlust, thoughts turned feral, the rage …
The frown on her attacker’s face was the last expression he’d ever make. She rose up, easily shaking off the powerful men. She had loved Carin for her very innocence and joy, and these beasts had stolen these things from Myst, from the world, which was poorer from the loss.
As lightning painted the sky, she mindlessly slashed her way through them. When all but one were felled, she told the sole survivor, “Any time you think to hunt down a woman, wonder if she’s not like me. I’ve spared you, but my sisters would unman you with a flick of their claws, their wrath unimaginable.” She wiped her arm over her face, found it was wet.
She crouched over the man and could see her reflection in his eyes. “There are thousands of us out there. Lining these coasts, waiting.” Her eyes were silver, and blood marked the side of her face. He was frozen in terror. “And I’m the gentle one.”
She turned from him, dusting off her hands and said to herself, “This is how rumors get started.” But her swagger disappeared at the site of the rough gravestones atop the hill by the sea—Carin’s beside her mother’s. “You stupid human,” she hissed at the mother’s. “I’ve cursed you to your hell.”
“Why did you disobey me? I told you to take Carin in land in the spring when they come down. Stay far from the coasts,” Myst said, her voice breaking on a sob as she flew to the girl’s tombstone. She curled up against it, her face resting against the crude inscription. Then she hit it, her blood trickling along the new jagged fracture.
She stayed like that, unmoving for days, as villagers held a vigil at the base of the hill, offering up tributes fit for a goddess for her protection and benevolence. Nikolai shuddered at the physical pain Myst didn’t seem to feel—her hand frozen in blood to the stone, her muscles knotted, and skin raw from cold. On the third day, her sister Nïx found her and lifted her from the snow as easily as a pillow. Tears were ice on Myst’s face.
“Shhh, sister,” Nïx murmured. “We’ve already heard the tales of your revenge. They’ll never harm another maid. In fact, I doubt that league of men will ever trouble this coast again.”
“But … the girl,” Myst whispered, awash in confusion, tears streaming anew, “is simply gone.” The last word was a sob.
“Yes, dearling,” Nïx said. “Never to return.”
Myst was weeping. “But … but it hurts when they die.”
Nïx pressed her lips to Myst’s forehead, murmuring, “And they always do.”
Nikolai’s chest ached with Myst’s sorrow as no physical wound had ever hurt him. She’d run from the men because the ones who would chase a “helpless” maiden were the ones who would die. He wanted to stay with that memory, to make sure she recovered from this hellish pain, but another familiar dream began. Snow outside, packed so high it covered half of the window. The meeting around the hearth. “ … teach her to be all that was good and honorable about the Valkyrie …”
Myst closed her eyes against a memory—the one he’d struggled to see—that she could never erase, never alleviate. She remembered and she vowed again that she would be worthy.
She was in the middle of her first field of battle, there as a chooser of the slain. She’d been sent young, barely fifteen, because she’d been born of a brave Pict who’d plunged a dagger into her own heart. Myst was supposed to be like that.
But she wasn’t. Not yet. She was sick with terror.
One hundred thousand men, cut to pieces, blood like a river up to her ankles. “They were all brave,” she said, peering around her, dizzily turning in circles as electricity rolled from her in waves. Sounding lost, she whispered, “How am I to choose? A beggar handing out coins …” She began trembling uncontrollably with fear.
He wanted to be there to protect her, comfort her.
Another memory. New to him. Could he withstand an other?
Myst ran to him when he returned to Blachmount from some errand, and as he’d squeezed her up into his arms and kissed her, she’d thought, “I just ran to get in his arms. I just …Whoa. Whoa. Uhn-uh.”
Nikolai remembered that she’d clambered down from him, looking flushed and panicky, joking about the Xbox, saying she felt “a little like Bobby Brown” for introducing him to the addictive game.
Now he knew why she’d panicked. Myst, along with all her sisters, had been taught that she would know her true partner when he opened his arms and she realized she’d forever run to get within them—
Nikolai woke to his own yelling, thrashing over, clutching for her. Everything he’d thought about her was wrong. His chest hurt with the loss and anguish she’d experienced. “You’re free. Myst …”
The bed was empty.
He shot to his feet, scanning the room, finding a bloody note on the table by the bed, under the cross. A heart for a heart …
Dread settled over him, numbing his mind, even as panic was sharp, stabbing at his body like a blade. He half-staggered, half-traced into the study, eyes falling on the safe wall.
To his horror, he saw no safe, but as he neared, growing more sickened, he found blood on the stone that had housed it, clawed away in a frenzy. She’d dug through it to get to her chain, to her freedom.
Nikolai fell to his knees, head bowed as a guttural sound of pain erupted from his chest. At the first opportunity, he’d offered her torture, only to follow it by stealing her freedom from her.
And then …
A heart for a heart. She’d made his beat. Had he broken hers?
He’d lost her. And he’d deserved to.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The coven met around the safe, all of them waiting for Regin to swing the Sword of Wóden to cut through the vampire’s mojo-protected metal. Wóden’s sword cut through anything. Well, anything but the chain, as Myst and Regin could attest to after one scary experiment that nearly made Myst a good deal shorter.
The sisters were still debating who would accept the responsibility of the chain because Myst was no longer allowed, not as long as Wroth lived. But no one wanted the thing, and killing that vampire seemed a bingo solution to them.
Regin raised the sword above her, and even the wraiths flying outside that they’d hired to guard Val Hall against intruders—like Wroth—seemed to slow their circling to catch a window. With a dramatic breath, Regin sliced through the safe as easily as powder, though sparks flew. When all was clear, Myst wearily reached forward to collect her torment.
She frowned to find a small, ornate box of wood inside as well. All of her sisters seemed to realize at the same time that it was about the size of those velvet jewelry boxes—because the room went quiet, then they dove for it like a wedding bouquet. “Shiny, in the box, shiny,” one of the younger sisters whimpered. Myst was closest and snagged it and even if she hadn’t been able to she would’ve bitch-slapped anyone who made a run with it.
“Open it, then,” Regin cried, out of breath.
Myst did.
And light seemed to blaze from it.
“Great Freya,” someone breathed. “Diamond. Big. Glittery.”
Another said, “That’s not a rock, that’s real estate. When did vampires start coming off with the bling? No. Really.”
Myst closed her fingers over what had to be a perfect four-carat diamond, so she could look at the actual ring. It was inscribed with her name.
Suddenly feeling exhausted, she rose, dragging her feet to her room away from the excitement, though the others booed her for taking away “My Precious.” The chain was heavy and cold in her other hand.
Nïx followed her up. She was a good listener and even though her lucidity came in erratic spurts, she’d been a boon to talk to.
Myst eyed her sister as she raised the ring. “You didn’t look surprised about this.” Nïx’s pupils enlarged at it before Myst tucked it and the chain in her jewelry case. “You knew what was in the safe?”
“I’m not predeterminationally-abled for nothing,” she said as she dug two bottles of fingernail polish and some cotton from her pocket. She hopped on the bed and set them up to paint each other’s toenails, patting the bed for Myst to come sit.
Myst had missed this little ritual, but she had no interest just now. Instead she crossed to the window and said, “Nïx, why didn’t you come for me? You knew how to find me.”
“You were fated to spend that time with Wroth.”
Wroth. Who had found her so lacking that he’d needed to change her.
What had he seen that disgusted him so much? She’d wracked her brain for the last three days, but found nothing she’d be truly ashamed of, certainly nothing that would make a vampire lose his freaking mind. “He’s out there right now.” Myst stared out into the fog-shrouded yard. “Watching this house, waiting for a chance to take me again. But if I stay behind the wraiths, then I’m just as contained here as I was there.”
“Without the weakness of the chain, you could fight him, yes?” Nïx asked. “I even imagine kicking some vampire ass might be good for you.”
A few moments later, Regin popped her head in. “Cara and I are going out to canoodle ghouls. You in?”
Myst frowned, then turned to Nïx. “Any reason I shouldn’t?”
She bit her lip, staring at the ceiling as if trying to recall a memory when it was just the opposite. “No, I think it would be just the thing.”
Myst nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I could use a little goo.”
Regin beamed, then bounded across the landing to
scream downstairs, “Myst is back online!”
Ready to fight, needing it, she quickly dressed as Nïx did a buff-job on her neglected sword. Myst had no doubt Wroth would be out there watching her and that she would sense him every hour.
How long will he follow his “tarnished” Bride? she wondered, but she knew the answer, had felt the wild emotion roiling within him.
He’d follow forever.
Nikolai crept among the shadows as Myst split up from Regin and Cara at a sprawling cemetery. Myst easily vaulted to the top of a mausoleum to observe the field below her, where ghouls snapped and clashed against each other or lazed in the dampness of the night.
He was spellbound, watching as she rested on the edge of the roof, perched down as a gargoyle might. Her eyes swirled silver and her claws curled into the clay tile. She was clearly eager for the kill but waited, studying them. This was the first time he’d seen her in days.
After Nikolai had found her gone from Blachmount, he’d traced to her eerie home, but found it had just gotten eerier. Ghostly, howling creatures in ragged red cloth circled the manor like a tornado. He’d shrugged and traced to her room, but the things caught him. They had a grip he couldn’t have imagined, and when he’d finally landed, his lesson had been learned. He rotated his arm, pleased he’d finally been able to force it back into its socket.
Those beings circled the house to protect it, and did so without cease and without fail, as he could well attest to. But the sentinel that protected Myst from threats like Ivo kept Nikolai from her as well. She’d stayed behind them for night upon night, yet now he’d finally found her outside of their protection, no doubt waiting for her sisters to return so they could attack.
But dawn was coming soon and he needed to—
She leapt from the roof, drawing her sword from her back sheath as she dropped into the middle of the group of ghouls. There were at least fifty of them.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he bellowed, tracing to her side, unsheathing his own sword.
“This isn’t happening,” she said to herself. “You’re not going to ruin my personal life and my fast-track career, Wroth.”
“But in the middle?”
“I’m enraged enough to do this. You have no idea”—she struck out, slicing a ghoul from crotch to neck—“how much I need this.”
“I do have an idea.” A perfect one. He’d felt her rage and her need to fight from inside him. And yet he’d told her that as his wife she would never again fight.
“You had better leave, because once I finish with them, I
won’t stop there.”
“I deserve your anger. I’ve wronged you and seek to make amends.” He wasn’t optimistic about his chances for that. She couldn’t be all things to him already and then forgiving on top of that.
“You think?” When one ghoul’s claw came close to his neck, he leapt back and she snapped, “Don’t let them scratch you!”
“Concerned for me, Myst?” He didn’t dare hope.
“Of course I don’t want you to get scratched.” She eyed him. “Vampires are easier to kill.”
“If I help you will you speak with me?”
“Don’t need your help.” And she didn’t. She was merrily felling them one after another with a skill that awed him, her sword flying so fast it was barely visible.
“Then you’ll have to listen here,” he grated, digging into the fight with her. “I’d had five years of torment. I’d had a hell of wanting you and feared you would leave me at the first opportunity. Then I had dreams of your memories.”
These ghouls were irritating him, especially when they got between him and Myst while he was trying to convince her about something so critical. He began killing them more quickly. “In each one you were evil … a seductress.”
“Still am, Wroth.” She kicked a ghoul in the belly, freeing her sword from his chest.
“No, you’re not—”
<
br /> “Duck!” Her sword whistled over his head to decapitate a ghoul behind him. “Yeah, well, as I recall, every sunset I asked you about your dreams and you brushed away my concerns.”
He slew two with one sword thrust. “I know. I should have asked you, because all those excruciating scenes of you … doing things were all out of context.” When the largest ghoul out there howled and attacked him, Nikolai stabbed the thing in the face, dropping it. She raised her eyebrows as if impressed, then scowled, remembering herself.
“Myst, even then I was still falling for you.”
That at least got her to pause. She blew a curl out of her eyes and just when he tensed to trace behind her, she took two hands and plunged her sword back along her side to kill the ghoul at her back.
Now he raised his eyebrows, but continued, “I was angry when I saw your plan to trick me, but I finally understand that you rightly wanted your freedom back. I know what and who you are now. I saw all the memories, clearly at last. Not out of context.” Goddamn it, more ghouls? “Myst, can we not just speak about this? Away from here? Dawn nears and all I ask is for a chance to—”
“I gave you a chance. Freely. And you threw it away. You were about to brainwash me.”
With one hand, he carved at a ghoul. “I couldn’t have lived with myself for that. I was wrong in many ways. I took your freedom when you needed it, and I hurt you just when you’d given yourself to me.” Never had he regretted his actions so much.
He could have won her. A heart for a heart.
“I wanted you so badly I resorted to anything I could and treated you ill when you didn’t deserve it.” He looked around. He’d been so intent on her, he’d scarcely noticed they’d cut such a swath that the others had run. “If you give me a chance, I will make it up to you.”
“Oh, you got it, Wroth. Just let me go gift wrap my chain for you.”
Wroth’s eyes flickered black and his voice went low. “I’d destroy the thing if I saw it.”
His reaction surprised her. “You’ll certainly never get within arm’s reach of it.”
“Myst, I felt your feelings for me, felt you struggling against them. I know you care for me.” Long moments passed as they stared into each other’s eyes.