by Kresley Cole
He dipped down to kiss her. As his mouth slanted over hers, her lips parted, her little tongue seeking. With his first taste, dizziness swept over him.
“So sweet,” he groaned against her lips. Like drugging poppies.
At once, memories overwhelmed him. Crimson spatter in snow. Being kept from her when he would slaughter anything that separated them. His savage need to claim her.
He drew his head back, his gaze narrowed. “No one keeps me from you, Reginleit.” When he realized his very accent had changed, his jaw slackened with shock.
I am this man she spoke of.
Which meant that she belonged to him. “Mine. Woman, you are mine.”
“A-Aidan?”
Blood surged within him as a frenzy took hold. “I have come for you.” Love for her pounded in his chest, matching the fever of his need.
Her eyes went wide, the irises pure silver. “You’ve remembered me!”
“From the moment I took your lips.”
“H-how?” She arched beneath him. “How could you return?”
He didn’t know; as he drove into her body, it didn’t matter. “Nothing keeps me from you. Nothing!” He cupped her face, pulling her up to him. “Tell me that you belong to me.”
“I belong to you.” Her claws sunk into his back as she gasped and writhed. “Ah, gods, I’ve missed you so much!”
He felt her sex tightening around his shaft, knew she was about to climax. I will take her over the edge, will make her scream with abandon.
“Follow me!” she cried.
“Wherever you lead.” Plunging into her madly, he did. …
Declan woke with his back bowed, his hand on his cock, precisely two quick pumps away from spending.
“Regin!” he bellowed when his seed erupted. He fucked his fist, imagining it was her tight little quim as lash after lash of scorching semen struck his torso. He yelled until his voice went hoarse, until the pressure finally ebbed. …
He was left gasping for breath, sprawled on his bed—with no pain, no anxiety, no strain. Only after-shudders from the most powerful ejaculation he’d ever experienced.
He’d masturbated to a dream about a detrus and had come so hard, his spend had nearly reached his chin.
I hadn’t known I could come so hard.
How had he lived without this for so long?
He groaned, wallowing in a kind of sick satisfaction. The guilt would arise soon enough, but for right now, he lay stunned, his limbs boneless.
Sick.
What was happening to him? Just like the Treves she spoke of, Declan felt like he was going mad. And, as in the dream, he’d begun having those stray thoughts, as if someone else was inside him.
In the end, Treves had been taken over by Aidan, the berserker’s memories overriding the knight’s, sublimating them.
The fuck that will be happenin’ to me. No, this was an entrancement. Regin was a born killer, an unnatural, deathless female. Damn it, he didn’t feel this way about her.
Go run, go train. Go kill something. But relaxation made his muscles lethargic, not with sleepiness, just … ease.
Yet soon enough humiliation begun to burn within him. Here he was, nearly comatose with pleasure after stroking off to one of them.
Where’s your iron will now, Dekko? With a bitter curse, he forced himself to rise and wipe off his chest. Stay away from her. Ignore her. Fight this—
His private line rang. Webb.
Just in time to make the humiliation and guilt complete. Declan crossed to his console, answered the call.
“You sound like hell, son. You losing your voice?”
There was something in Webb’s tone that immediately set him on edge. Paranoia gripped him yet again. “No, sir.” Just my mind.
Webb wasted no time. “I’ve received some disturbing reports about you and the Valkyrie.”
“No doubt from Fegley.” Though Vincente was privy to Declan’s dealings, he didn’t suspect the man for even a moment.
“Perhaps it was. The fact remains that I’ve heard disconcerting things.”
“She delivers information to me,” Declan said. “Information you ordered me to get.”
“Then why haven’t any transcripts been uploaded?”
Because Declan needed to edit them first—so her pleas for him to kiss her never went on record. “They will be,” he bit out, the harshest tone he’d taken with the man since that first night in the hospital.
A long pause followed. “Look, son, guarding the monstrous ones is relatively easy. It’s far more difficult to guard the innocent-faced ones, the beautiful ones. The ones that sound like us, dress like us, mimic our species in every way. They call to our sympathy. You’re there because you have no sympathy. You’re devoid of emotions like that.”
Declan’s mind flashed back to his training—the intermittent sleep and food deprivation, the combat simulation with live rounds and no pulled strikes. He remembered the butt of a rifle slamming into his temple as his commander yelled, “You’re more of a monster than the creatures out there. …”
At seventeen, he’d been shown photos of what detrus did to mortals. Hour after hour of grisly images for days. No sleep. In the end, his bloodshot eyes had rolled back in his head, and he’d collapsed.
To this day, I punish myself with photos. …
“They’ll fill you with doubt,” Webb continued, “make you question your mission. Is it already happening?”
Making his voice like steel, he said, “Absolutely not, sir.” He refused to elaborate, refused to try to convince Webb to see that he was still solid.
He remained staunch, his hatred stoked as hot as ever.
“Good.” Webb exhaled a relieved breath. “In any case, I’m arriving next week.”
Next bloody week? No! Not that soon. But knowing it was inevitable, Declan said, “Very good, sir.” Have to beat this obsession with the Valkyrie. Webb would see through Declan’s indifferent guise in a heartbeat.
“I look forward to viewing the new addition to your collection. Is everything on schedule for Malkom Slaine’s capture?”
My next acquisition. Slaine was a vampiric demon, a made immortal creature. Through some unknown ritual, a demon could be poisoned with a vampire’s blood, gifting it with the strengths of both species. Colloquially known as vemons, they were rumored to be the most powerful of the beings in the Lore, stronger even than a Lykae in his prime.
There were only four known vemons alive. Declan wanted to destroy them and forever bury the knowledge of their genesis.
“We’ve set the plan in motion.” Declan had dispatched Carrow the witch to Slaine’s home—a hell plane called Oblivion—in order to lure him into a trap. In return, he’d promised to free her and her young cousin.
An easy lie. After his hellish entrancement, Declan held a singular hatred for witches. And the young one had already killed twenty soldiers with her unearthly powers.
Carrow was due back in less than a week. He gave her a six-in-ten chance of succeeding. “Everything’s on schedule, sir.”
“Excellent. And while I’m there, you and I are going to take some time off. We’ll have a proper visit outside of work and all this madness.”
To talk about sports and women? Declan had no life outside of work. None. Still he said, “I look forward to it.”
Once they hung up, Declan glanced around his chamber. This room represented his entire life outside of his job. The facility itself was his life’s work. Now he was in jeopardy of losing it all.
Truly, how much is there to lose, Dekko? No family, no friends. No woman of his own.
No peace. For as long as Declan could remember, he’d craved some kind of ease inside himself. Though he’d never experienced it, he could somehow imagine what it would feel like not to know constant misery.
Declan had seen men with an expression that said All is right in the world, had envied them their contentment. His own da had had that confident, satisfied mien. At least, before Declan
had started having nightmares as a boy. Once he’d begun running with that gang at fourteen, his da never had it again.
Listening to the Valkyrie’s tales, simply being near her, was the closest Declan had ever come to it. And tonight’s dream …
His mind whispered, Why not enjoy her?
No! She was undermining his resolve. And with that fall would go any pride he’d managed to salvage over the last twenty years. Whatever power she wielded, he would resist it.
Another of those creatures controlling him again? Never.
She would not break him. His will was stronger than hers. Than anyone’s.
I’ll break her.
And that was the reason—the only one—that he still burned to see her.
TWENTY-ONE
“ You’ve, uh, used all your dares, ma’am,” Thad murmured.
“And you’ve used all your truths, Tiger,” Natalya countered throatily. “So ask me a truth.”
It’s too early in the morning for this, Regin thought, bemoaning her second week in this hell hole. She lay on the top bunk, trying to ignore the latest episode of Good Boy Gone Bad, guest-starring Natalya, whose voice had turned porn-queenesque.
And Thad truly was a good boy. Over these unending days, he’d proved to be both affable and kind. At least when not faced with mind-bending sights like the Cerunnos or bewinged and behorned demons.
He’d also proved curious. A typical conversation between him and Regin:
“Is there a drinking age in the Lore?”
“Nope. Your high-school self can get slizzard on Zimas every night.”
“Is there marriage?”
“Well, sometimes. It’s species-dependent, I guess.”
“Church?”
“Define church.”
But he was starting to flag, with shadows under his eyes, and he’d lost weight. He ate none of the slop the Order served him and Natalya. His jeans hung on his lanky frame, his build morphing from football player to marathon runner.
Ultimately, Regin had concluded that he was part leech, a halfling vamp, because while Natalya had been busy monitoring Thad’s sleep woodies—“Two words, Valkyrie: nocturnal emission. Just kidding, but I got you to look!”—Regin had been noticing another part of him giving a salute.
His fangs had lengthened and retracted at intervals. The sweet kid who’d barely been broken of calling them Ms. Natalya and Ms. Regin was a leech, or part one?
Regin’s beloved niece Emma was half vamp, half Valk, but Emma could never go out in the sun as Thad obviously could. So what was the kid’s other half?
And why do I still like him?
First Emma. Now Thad. Regin was sick and tired of non-evil vampiric creatures messing with her millennium’s worth of scathing animosity for their species. …
“A truth, then?” Thad asked Nat. “So how many guys, uh, you know—”
“Have I bedded? I’m centuries old, you remember, so if I ‘went steady’ with one guy every six months, well … you get the picture. I wouldn’t say an army’s worth, but definitely several battalions. Care to enlist?” Over Thad’s embarrassed stammering, she said, “And how many girls have you enjoyed, Tiger?”
Regin could hear him blushing.
“I’ve had tons of girlfriends,” he said. “I am a quarterback, you know. I chase tail all the time.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
In a low tone, he admitted, “Between football and Eagle Scouts, I haven’t had time to find, you know, the right girl.”
Natalya sighed. “How utterly irresistible of you. Now that you’ve found her, I dare you to lose the jeans.”
He choked out, “Ma’am?”
Thaddeus Brayden, worshipped as a football god in his small Texas town of Harley, had obviously never encountered a female like Natalya. “Of course we should share a bunk,” the fey had purred this morning. “I’m nothing more than a fairy godmother. If we share a bed, I can make all your wishes come true.”
Regin turned a blind eye—because everyone in this cell might be executed at any time. And because she’d forgotten she wasn’t a moral person who wouldn’t give a shit if the virginal Thad got it on with Natalya.
Just wait till I’m asleep. In the meantime, she stared at the ceiling, mulling over her own situation with Chase.
After their fight last week, Chase had ignored her, letting her languish in her cell. She had no idea where she stood with him or how close he was to remembering her, to kissing her.
This mulling sucked. Regin didn’t introspect; she acted. Sometimes she got it right, oftentimes she didn’t, and she’d never really figured out how to differentiate between the two.
Because she didn’t fucking introspect.
Now apparently she was going to contend with some kind of internal struggle. Some kind of on-the-one-hand type crisis. Like the ones her sisters routinely went through.
The ones Regin mocked.
She simply didn’t have them. She did whatever she wanted to do, and she slept well at night.
Regin muttered, “Balls.” Then she finally surrendered to it:
On the one hand, her big berserker had returned to her, and her memories of their times together were burning hot. Each day I’ll love you more than the one before…
On the other hand, how could she let this misery go on? Her friends, old and new, were suffering. Like Carrow.
The grapevine had been abuzz with gossip about her, rumors that Regin prayed were untrue. Word held that Chase had forced the witch to travel to the demon plane of Oblivion—a.k.a., hell—to use her wiles and trap a brutal vampire demon. Or else Chase would kill another prisoner.
Carrow’s seven-year-old cousin, a little girl named Ruby.
The Order had captured Ruby—after murdering the child’s mother. At that news, Regin had heaved, nearly vomiting energy—
She tensed when she heard Dixon’s heels clacking down the corridor. Evil Order employees going about their evil daily business.
Regin hadn’t thought anything could be worse than Fegley’s belligerent visits, but Dixon had edged him out for prize asshole.
Watching the woman pine for Chase made Regin ill. As if those two would ever have a shot.
Even worse was when Dixon gazed at Regin. Like the woman hungered to examine her.
It gave Regin the creeps. She wasn’t a puss by any means, but the threat of vivisection was really starting to get to her. Prisoners went off to those labs one way, and they came out another. Altered. …
She’d just heard Thad’s audible swallow and a whispered, “My jeans completely off?” when two guards arrived at the cell.
Regin leapt from the bunk. Had Chase sent for her? Or am I about to be vivisected?
One guard said, “Here for Brayden. We’re moving him.”
Thad shot to his feet, his eyes panicked. He subtly reached for Natalya’s hand.
“There, lad. It’ll be okay.”
Regin couldn’t say she was surprised by this transfer. Not many of the other cells were coed, from what she’d seen.
The second guard said, “Are you looking for this to be a gas extraction, or are we all going to play nice?”
She and Natalya shared a look. They both knew resisting the guards would be useless. Plus, it’d probably freak Thad out even more.
Regin shook her head. “Just be cool, kid. Remember, I’m not leaving this place without you.”
Natalya added, “Same here. You have my word.” Then she reluctantly pulled free her hand.
As the guards led him away toward the entrance of the corridor, Thad craned his head over his shoulder, keeping them in his sights for as long as possible.
Regin swallowed. His eyes had been glinting at the end.
She turned to Natalya, who looked bereft. “Come on, Nat, we both knew he’d get sent back to the minors. I’ve been expecting them to separate him from us ever since he woke from his stupor.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it. …”
Hours later, they heard gasps from inmates up-corridor from them. She and Natalya ran to the glass in time to see the same two guards dragging by Thad’s limp body, on their way to the opposite end of the ward.
He was soaking wet and shaking, his pupils the size of saucers. “They told me I’m a vampire,” he mumbled to Regin and Natalya. “Now you’ll w-want to kill me. …” His head lolled as he fell unconscious.
Screaming obscenities at the guards, Natalya slammed her hands on the glass, spitting and kicking, her irises gone black with fury. Regin shrieked right beside the fey, her hands balled into fists so tight that blood dripped to the floor. She was murderously enraged that Thad had been hurt—and that Chase had broken his word to her.
Vincente strode by then. In a low tone, the man said, “He’s only going to a new cell now. Worry for yourselves.”
Regin sagged against the glass. Gods, just give me one more chance to take Chase down. Just one more …
As Declan strode through the facility, finalizing preparations for Webb’s arrival this week, he decided it was time to bring the Valkyrie round once more.
His trap had been sprung for Malkom Slaine; now all he could do was wait. He’d compiled and edited the information Regin had given him about the Valkyrie, bersekers, and any impending apocalypses.
And by now, enough time had passed that he likely wouldn’t throttle her on sight.
Their last meeting had infuriated him; his subsequent dream—wet as it’d been—had only compounded his resentment. Spend up to my chin. …
Once again, the Valkyrie had sent him reeling. And again, he’d found his footing. If she meant to convince him he was a berserker, she’d have to do better than her tales, her induced dreams.
He would require irrefutable proof. Until then, he’d fight it every step of the way. Going down swinging—
“Magister Chase,” Vincente called from behind him.
Declan slowed his steps.
“You’ve, uh … you received a message, sir.”
“I’ll check it when I get back to my office.”