by Kresley Cole
Sebastian had been appalled at himself. From the time he was a small boy, he'd always had a shy bent, and things like this made it much worse. He'd become unsure around all women, without the smooth charm of Murdoch or the indifference of Conrad.
At thirteen, Murdoch had had a devilish grin that had already earned him entrance under many women's skirts in the village. At the same age, Sebastian had been the quiet lad with a sweating fistful of crushed wildflowers that would never make it to their intended.
So he'd turned to his studies. Incredibly, even after he'd trained for war since he was old enough to hold a wooden sword, Sebastian's mind was the strongest part of his body. He'd written treatises and scientific papers, which garnered him the notice of some of the great minds of the time—
"You've seen something," Myst said, bringing Nikolai from his thoughts.
"I can tell you where Murdoch is."
"I saw him only yesterday," Nikolai grated. Murdoch lived at Mount Oblak, a castle seized from the Horde. It was the new Forbearer stronghold, so Nikolai traced there most days.
"Oh, yes. Of course," Nïx began in a sarcastic tone. "Murdoch is right where you left him."
"What's that supposed to mean?" At her blank look, he said, "About Murdoch—what did you mean?"
"Did I say something? What did I say? How am I supposed to keep track of what I said?"
He was losing patience. "Damn it, Nïx, I know you could tell us where they are."
Her eyes went wide as she breathed, "Are you psychic, too?"
Sometimes he really hated his in-laws.
"Nïx, I need you to help with this," he said, biting out the words. As a former general in the Estonian army, and a current one with the Forbearers, he was used to giving orders—and having them obeyed with alacrity. This... this asking for things was excruciating.
Yet now Nïx concentrated only on her craft, until she'd folded what looked like an intricate fire, gingerly placing it next to the other two. More pages ripped free, folding at an even faster rate. Nikolai found his attention riveted to the creations that she seemed compelled to make.
Moments later, she'd wrought a baying paper wolf. Four shapes placed as though for a storyboard. Myst spared them no more than a glance, but Nikolai was enthralled.
"Nïx, try harder!" Myst snapped, and Nikolai shook himself, forcing his gaze away.
"I can't see Conrad!" she snapped back, and lightning struck nearby.
"What about Sebastian?" Myst said. "Tell us anything."
"Anything? Well, what do I know?" Nïx frowned. "What do I know? Oh! I know what I know!"
Nikolai paced impatiently, gesturing with his free hand for her to continue.
She shrugged. "Right now, your brother Sebastian is bellowing at someone outside a castle, demanding that they return to him, wishing it with everything that he is." She smiled, as if pleased with herself for seeing so much, then gave a quick clap. "Oh! And his skin just caught fire!"
5
Why would she run from me?
Repeating this agonizing question over and over in his mind, Sebastian scuffed through the pouring rain and the puddles of water along the main street of the deserted village.
At sunset, just as he'd set out to search for her, the rain had begun. Even now, hours later, it still fell with a pounding force, visibly eating away at the cobblestone grout. It struck his burned face and hands, but he hardly perceived it.
What the hell had happened? He'd just been feeling the centuries-old weariness lifting, disappearing with her arrival. Now it had returned doubled.
"Don't!" he'd bellowed to her. Before he'd been forced to trace back, she'd turned to him, her eyes wide, her lips parted. She'd seen his pain, his skin beginning to burn.
Her expression had become stricken. He'd seen that look before. It was the same one soldiers had a split second after a cannon blast had landed too close—as if they simply couldn't assimilate what had just happened.
Why did she run? What did I do wrong?
He'd searched all night, scouring the empty streets and the entire valley. He'd traced to the airport, but he knew she was long gone.
As were the denizens of this village. Only a dog howled in the background. Though Sebastian had avoided humans since he'd been turned, he was fully prepared to question them now. He was desperate to. If they had information about his mysterious Bride, he'd become the thing they feared in order to get it from them.
Yet they had disappeared. Even the home of the butcher who secretly sold him blood and occasionally transacted for clothing and books was darkened and empty. Apparently, she'd warned them that he'd be searching for her with a vengeance.
Again and again, Sebastian contemplated what he knew about his mysterious Kaderin. At times he thought her too beautiful, too perfect, a vision who existed only in his fantasies. He had been alone for so long...
And had been mad in the past.
But if he thought he'd imagined the entire thing, he had a glaring bruise on his chest and rents in his shirt from where her claws had dug into his back and his arms. God, she was fierce, his Bride, and even now he was hard for her.
Never before had he felt such lust. No woman had ever stirred him to anything like this. Surely the desire for her was stronger because he'd abstained for so long. That had to be it. He hadn't even taken her.
Hell, he hadn't even seen her naked body or touched her skin.
He shook his head, flushing yet again at his behavior with her. He was in no way experienced, but he knew enough to know that what they'd done was... irregular.
In his entire life, he'd had sex fewer than half a dozen times, with just two women, if you could call it that with the second. Sebastian had never been inclined to charm ladies, but even if he hadn't been quiet and introspective, there simply hadn't been time, opportunity, or, more important, women to have.
His family's home of Blachmount had been secluded from towns and markets. Any attractive farmers' daughters within a hundred miles had been hopelessly in love with—and most likely enjoying—Sebastian's rakish brother Murdoch. Which excluded them forever from Sebastian's interest. He could never have compared with Murdoch's experience, and he'd dreaded looking down as he took a woman and knowing that she was thinking the same.
If not Murdoch, Sebastian still had to compete with two other older brothers.
Then came the war.
Sebastian's forgettable—or disastrous—experiences had not prepared him in any way for Kaderin's passion. She had been as frantic as he was. He couldn't even imagine what she would be like naked and writhing beneath him. His erection throbbed at the idea, and he cursed it.
She'd urged him on and then reveled in his strength, like some wild creature. Which reminded him that not only did he not know her full name or how to contact her—he didn't even know what her species was.
If only he understood more about this world he now inhabited, the Lore. He was as ignorant of it as he was of modern human culture.
When he had awakened from the dead all those years ago, Nikolai and Murdoch had tried to explain what they knew of the Lore, which was little—they'd only been turned recently themselves. Sebastian hadn't listened. What good would their teaching do him if he was going to walk into the sun anyway?
For all these years, he'd avoided Blachmount, instead residing in the one country where no one would have thought to look for him. What if he returned now? Could he even predict what he would do if he faced Nikolai?
From the corner of his eye, Sebastian caught sight of something. He twisted around to find his reflection in a shop window. As he stood arrested, he brought his hand up to grasp his chin.
Christ, why wouldn't she run?
He looked like a monster in the pouring rain. His face was sun-blistered down one side and gaunt from irregular feeding—he had never been able to make himself drink enough to sustain his weight. His hair was cut haphazardly, and his clothes were worn and threadbare.
In her eyes, Sebastian wa
s penniless, living in a heap, without friends or relations. He'd given her no indication that he would be a worthy partner for her. In his time, a female had needed to be assured that the male she cast her lot with could provide for her. Surely something so elemental hadn't changed.
Worse than all this, he was a vampire—which she clearly detested.
He would never be able to share days outside with her. God, how he already missed the sun—now more than ever because he couldn't walk in it with her.
Vampiir. He raked his hand through his wet hair. What kind of children would I give her? Would they drink blood?
He'd have run from him, too.
How could he expect her not to be repulsed by what he'd become, when he himself was? He subsisted on blood. He was relegated to shadow.
"You'll never be my husband," she'd vowed.
"I'll destroy myself," he'd vowed to Nikolai the last night he'd seen him.
How could Sebastian persuade her to live with him, when for three centuries he hadn't been able to persuade himself that he deserved to live at all?
Yet even briefly, Sebastian had gotten her to kiss him and accept his unpracticed advances. With time, surely he could overcome her aversion.
Perhaps other vampires were evil—he'd never seen any besides his brothers. But he could prove to her that he was not. He could protect her and provide anything she desired.
Returning to Blachmount was no longer avoidable—all his wealth was there, buried on the grounds. Before Sebastian and Conrad had left the battlefield, Sebastian had amassed a fortune in war spoils from the Russian officers, including the castle he currently occupied.
He had half a dozen chests filled with gold coins, stamped with the imprint of some ancient god in flight. Several more chests contained jewels the officers had plundered from the east before their greedy gazes turned to neighboring Estonia.
He would force himself to drink and to buy new clothes. He'd purchase a new home for them—he'd be relieved if he never returned to that wretched castle.
When he found her again, he would appear as a man worthy of consideration as a husband. But to acquire the things necessary to do this, Sebastian would be forced to navigate the new world around him. He'd seen cars but had never driven one. He'd seen advertisements for movies but had never viewed one. Planes flew overhead, and he knew the composition of their engines from books, but he'd never traveled in one.
And he would have to walk among humans, though he'd always felt that they could look at him and suspect what he was—an abomination, trying to pass as one of them.
Or worse, he feared that he might crave drinking them. Yet, never had that happened before Kaderin's golden skin had been just before him. Could he control himself with her? Was it selfish to seek her? No, he was disciplined. He could forbear, as his brothers' order called it.
He wanted his Bride back, and would have her again if it killed him.
Turning away from the window, he stared out into the rain, realizing he'd been wanting her all his life. Sebastian shook his head ruefully. Even before she'd become all he had.
London, England
Everything is under control.
Kaderin's blessing was back in place, even though, to any who saw her, she appeared disoriented.
Since the time when London had been a marshy encampment beside a forgettable river, vampires had hunted in the fog here. And whenever she'd visited, she'd hunted them.
After her debacle in Russia, she'd chosen to come to this Lore-rich city because she had a private flat here that none of the Valkyrie knew about, and because it was a good base for the Hie—not because she couldn't face her coven.
Tonight was her first in the city, and she'd set out for King's Cross with one objective: to kill leeches. Beneath her trench coat, her sword and whip rested hidden. She meandered down a cobblestone back way she remembered well—just over a century ago, two vampire brothers had nearly beheaded her on these very bricks.
Kaderin didn't despise vampires only for her sisters' sake.
Along the alley, she'd gradually begun to act as though she were lost in the dingy veil of the city, even subtly limping—signaling a predator that dinner was here for the taking.
She tried to convince herself that her excursion wasn't meant to prove anything. This wasn't an exercise to see if she still had the stones to hunt vampires. That would be too cliché, too movie-montage-worthy, as she busted heads and cleaned out the streets of London.
To kill tonight was, simply, her life as usual.
A gang of five of them materialized from thin air. "Seems my birthday came early, boys," Kaderin drawled. They were dressed like street thugs, and their glowing red eyes were spattered with floating black flecks. Dirty eyes. When they drank beings to death, they drank from the pit of the soul, taking all the bad, absorbing all the madness and sin into themselves.
The five surrounded her; she yanked her sword free and struck hard without delay.
A flip of her wrist claimed her first head. Lookit, Kaderin thought. A vampire's head rolling across a London back alley. Business as usual. Control.
They began tracing all around her, striking out with fists or blades. She yanked her coiled metal whip free from her belt. Titanium. With a whip, she could contain a tracing vampire. One recognized her with the first crack and escaped, fleeing the fight.
Ah, but the other three are going to roll the dice.
Her whip caught one's neck, coiling round again and again, snapping at the end.
The house always wins.
She yanked, sending him listing toward her, right into her sword's reach. As she severed his head, she kicked behind her to ward off the other two. She ducked under the bigger one's blade, and it sank into his comrade's temple.
Blood sprayed. She was in her element now. Cool dispassion. Cold killing. Her sword flew, her whip cracked—she was back to normal.
How irrational she'd been, fleeing hysterically from Russia, with all the weeping and uncontrollable shaking. How many times had she moaned, "Oh, dear Freya, what have I done?" or recalled the look on that vampire's face when he'd realized he was going to have to let her go into the sun?
She'd had an indiscretion. As Valkyrie sometimes did.
Like Myst the Coveted? Kaderin thought, delivering a killing blow to the vampire with the knife jutting from his head like a horn. When Myst had been in a Horde prison, the Forbearer rebels took the castle, and one of their generals had freed her to make love to her. Before the Valkyrie could rescue her, things had gotten out of hand in a dank cell.
Myst's status among the Lore—which she'd built over lifetimes—was ruined. She was shunned, an outcast. Even the nymphs ridiculed her. There was no ignominy worse than that—
The last one threw a hit to Kaderin's jaw that had her seeing double for a moment, but she blindly punched out and connected. Then she was back on her toes, sword gliding, thoughts whirring. As the two of them circled each other, Kaderin recalled the ultimate fall from grace. Just decades ago, a Valkyrie named Helen had had sex with a vampire, and then bore his child, Emmaline. Helen had died of sorrow—because the vampire had turned on her.
Another strike of her sword. The last one barely dodged it and cursed her.
"Goodness. I have never been called a bitch before." She wiped her sleeve over her face, and their eyes met.
Vampires turned. That was what they did. She hadn't missed that Sebastian had hesitated with his mouth over her neck, even giving it a slow lick. He'd contemplated it.
Yes, eventually, even Sebastian would drink a victim to death, accidentally or not. His steady, clear gray eyes would grow dirty red with bloodlust, and the Horde would claim yet another soldier. Just like the one in front of her.
The thought had her charging forward with a shriek. She dipped and rolled, planting her sword up through his chest. Shooting to her feet, she snatched it back to swing for the head with a clean slice.
Her sword didn't whistle, because air rarely perceive
d it in time.
Too easy, not worthy, she thought as she dropped down for his fangs. Four. Whoop-de-fucking-do. If they'd been fish, she'd have caught and released.
But she was back, and now her mind was clear regarding Sebastian Wroth. No longer did that vampire's loneliness cling to her like the fog crawling on this city. With this clarity, she would be back to normal for the Hie in just two days. She would not be freaking out, as she'd predicted on her way to London. Nor would she be so sc-sc-screwed, as she'd figured.
No, here she was. Cold as ice.
From King's Cross, she jogged back toward her place in Knightsbridge, her blood-soaked clothing cloaked in the night mist. Her courtyard townhouse was in the perfect location. Close enough to shopping—if Kaderin was ever moved to that—but it also backed into narrow and murky mews, which allowed her to enter the residence unseen. From the back, she bounded over her courtyard wall, let herself in, then dashed up the stairs.
Kaderin yanked off the clothes she'd filched from Myst, took an appraising glance, and tossed them onto the do-not-resuscitate laundry pile. She hopped into the shower, washing away all the blood.
As she lathered her hair, she didn't think about the vampire. At all. She ignored questions about why he'd been in that castle and what exactly had made him want to end his forlorn existence. All that information, such as where he had been a warrior, was incidental.
After she won the Hie, and when she was ready, she'd return to finish him.
In the meantime, he would be searching for her. Vampires who'd found their... their Brides didn't tolerate losing them. But he wouldn't be able to find her, knowing nothing but her first name. The villagers would scurry away in fear before each sunset, staying away at night until she could return—or they would face her promised wrath.
And anyone else from the Lore who could reveal that information would run from the sight of him simply because he was a vampire. He was an outsider everywhere, with everyone, whether human or Lore creature. And while she competed in the Hie, he certainly wouldn't be able to locate her. In the coming weeks, she'd never sleep in the same place twice and would be racing to the farthest reaches of the earth, obtaining prizes, jewels, and amulets.