Playing Easy to Get

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Wroth shuddered to see his brother's face torn and limbs broken like this even while knowing he couldn't die from anything short of a beheading or sunlight. He shook himself. "What has happened to you?" he asked, his voice a rasp.

  "About to ask you the same. My God, Nikolai, you look worse than I do."

  He thought about how he'd left Myst at the window, crying, staring out at the lightning storm that came from within her. It pained him so much to think of her hurting alone.... "We'll talk of my problems later. Who has done this to you?"

  "Ivo has demons. Demons turned vampires. They are strong--you can't imagine it. He is looking for someone, but I don't think it's your Bride--they mentioned something about a 'halfling'."

  "How many?"

  "There were three in his party--other vampires as well. We took down two of the demons but one remains." He glanced behind him. "Where's your Bride?"

  After a hesitation, he explained everything, seeking the same unburdening he felt when he spoke with Myst. His brother's expression grew stark.

  Long moments of silence passed before he said incredulously, "Wroth, you took away the free will of a creature that has had it for two thousand years. A good wager says she's going to want it back."

  "No, you don't understand. She's callous. Incapable of love. It eats at me, her deception, because it's the only thing that makes sense." More to himself, he muttered, "Why else would she want me?"

  Murdoch weakly grabbed Wroth's wrist. "For all these years I've seen you continually choose the best, most rational course, even if it's the most difficult. I've been proud to follow your leadership because you've acted with courage and always--always--with rationality. I never thought I would have to inform you that your reason and judgment have failed you, Nikolai. If she's as bad as you say then you have to...I don't know, just help her change, but you can't order this. Get back to her. Explain your fears to her."

  "I don't think I can. You saw her, Murdoch. Why would she so quickly acquiesce?"

  "Why don't you just ask her?"

  Because I don't want to show her again how craven I've become with wanting her.

  "And about the other men--this isn't the sixteen hundreds anymore," Murdoch said. "This isn't even the same plane. She's immortal, not an eighteen-year-old blushing bride straight from a convent. She can't change these things, so if you want her, you have to adjust."

  Wroth ran a hand over his face and snapped, "When did you get so bloody understanding?"

  Murdoch shrugged. "I had someone explain a few rules of the Lore to me and learned we can't apply our human expectations to the beings within it."

  "Who told you this?" When he didn't answer, Wroth didn't press, not with all the secrets he'd been keeping. "Will you be all right?" he asked.

  "That's the thing about being immortal. It'll always look worse than it is."

  Wroth attempted a grin and failed.

  "Good luck, Nikolai."

  Outside of the room, he spoke with those watching over Murdoch and emphasized what would happen to them should his brother worsen, then contemplated tracing back. He was almost glad when Kristoff called a meeting about this newest threat, grateful for the time to cool off before he faced Myst again.

  Kristoff didn't hesitate to ask, "Why didn't your wife tell you about the turned demons?"

  "I don't know. I will ask her when I return." He wondered as well. Had she known? No, she'd been teaching him everything she knew--teaching him constantly.

  Why would she do that if she only planned to leave him?

  When he cringed, he realized Kristoff was still studying him.

  "Something to add?"

  He owed Kristoff his life and the life of his brothers. Three brothers and for Myst herself, he owed his king. He would withhold information on Myst's kind but relate the rest. "I've learned a good deal about the Lore from her and want to discuss it with you, but I left my wife feeling poorly. I'd like to get back to her."

  "By all means," Kristoff said, his face unreadable. "But tomorrow we'll talk of this."

  Wroth nodded, then traced back to Myst, frowning as a hazy idea surfaced in the turmoil of his mind. Had his brother's heart been beating earlier? But before he could contemplate this further, Wroth's attention was distracted by Myst's sleeping form. He gazed down at her, chest aching as usual. Sometimes he damned his beating heart because of the pain that seemed to follow it.

  Murdoch was right. She couldn't change what she was, and he'd wronged her today. If only he could think more clearly where she was concerned instead of reacting viscerally. Primitively. Before, he'd never understood when men talked of madness and love in the same breath. Now he understood.

  He only hoped that when he asked her to forgive him his weakness, she could.

  After undressing, he climbed into bed with her. He pulled her close to him, running his hand down her arm, burying his face in her hair and smelling her soft, sweet scent. Finally at dawn, he passed out with exhaustion. When he dreamed, he opened his mind to her memories, to what had become his nightmares. They superseded all his other visions of battle and famine because these hurt him the most. See her in a sordid light. Punish yourself.

  See them all.

  Chapter Eleven

  T he dream of the Roman appeared first. Wroth impatiently waited through the usual scene, seeking to see more. Did he truly want to? Could he ever turn back from this?

  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 Wroth 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 these past six months.

  Suddenly Myst glanced up and Wroth 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.... 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 pinned 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 the attack
er'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 one she allowed to live, "Any time you think to hunt down a woman or to force her, 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 inland in the spring when they come down. Stay far from the coasts," she 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. Wroth 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 Nix found her and lifted her from the snow as easily as a pillow. Tears were ice on her face.

  "Shhh, Myst," Nix 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," Nix said. "Never to return."

  Myst was weeping. "But...but it hurts when they die."

  Nix pressed her lips to Myst's forehead, murmuring, "And they always do."

  Wroth'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. Wroth 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 another?

  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."

  Wroth remembered 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.

  Wroth 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.

  Wroth 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 Twelve

  T he coven met around the safe, all of them waiting for Regin to swing the Sword of Woden to cut through the vampire's mojo-protected metal. Woden'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 Wroth 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-karat 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 they booed her for taking away "My Precious." The chain was heavy and cold in her other hand. Nix 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." Nix'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, "Nix, 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?" Nix asked. "I even imagine kicking some vampire tail 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 Nix. "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 Nix 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 would he follow his "tarnished" Bride? she wondered, but she knew the answer, had felt the wild emotion roiling within him. He'd follow forever.

  Wroth 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 Wroth 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.