A Hunger Like No Other (12 page)

Out of the path of the window.

When he scooped her up, she whispered, “No. I need to be down there. I like it down there.”

Of course she did. Vampires craved low places, sleeping in shadowed corners and under beds. As a Lykae, he'd always known exactly where to find them to sever their heads before they even woke.

Anger flared again. “No longer.” She slept with him from now on, and he would never even entertain the idea of accepting that unnatural custom of his enemy. “I will no' let the sun get you again, but you'll break yourself of this.”

“Why do you care?” she asked so softly he barely heard her.

Because you've been out of my bed for far too long.

*  *  *

Annika's broken body lay trapped in the bricks. Helpless, she could do nothing but watch when the vampire brushed away Lucia's arrows as though they were flies.

Annika shared Lucia's obvious disbelief. Cursed long ago to feel unfathomable pain if she missed a target, Lucia suddenly shrieked, dropping her bow as she fell. She lay
writhing, her fingers curled, screaming until she'd shattered every window and light in the manor.

In the distance, a
Lykae
howled, a deep, guttural sound of rage.

Darkness, except for the lightning now thrashing the earth and a flickering gas lamp outside.

Ivo's red eyes were ablaze in the lamplight, his expression amused. Lothaire secretly appeared in the background once more but did nothing. Lucia still screamed. The Lykae roared in answer—nearing them? Regin alone against three. “Leave us, Regin,” Annika bit out.

Then . . . a shadow moved inside. White teeth and fangs. Pale blue eyes glowed in the darkness. It crept over to Lucia's twitching form. Annika could do nothing. So helpless. In the scant lulls between bolts, he looked human. In the silver flashes, he was a beast, a man with the shadow of a beast.

Annika wanted her strength as she never had, wanted to kill it
so slowly
. The beast pawed at Lucia's face. Annika couldn't bear to—

It was trying to brush away Lucia's tears?
He lifted her, then crossed to a corner, tucking her behind a table.

Why wasn't it ripping her throat out?

It reared up with a terrible fury and launched itself at the vampires, fighting beside a shocked, but quickly adapting Regin until the two vampire followers were decapitated. Ivo and the horned one traced away,
fleeing
. Enigmatic Lothaire merely nodded, then disappeared.

The Lykae sprang for Lucia, then crouched beside her as she stared up in awe and horror. When Annika closed her eyes and opened them once more, it had disappeared, leaving Lucia shaking.

“What the fuck?” Regin cried, circling around as though shell-shocked.

Just then Kaderin the Coldhearted arrived, jogging up the glass-covered porch. Ever blessed to feel no raw emotions, she chided gently, “Language, Regin.” Then she entered the war zone, and even she raised an eyebrow as she leisurely drew her swords from the thin sheaths at her back.

“Annika!” Regin cried, digging through brick. Annika strained to answer but couldn't. She'd never felt so helpless, never been beaten so badly.

“What has happened here?” Kaderin demanded, searching for a kill yet holding her swords so loosely, her wrists fluid as she swirled them in tight circles. When Lucia crawled out from behind the table, Kaderin backed her way to her.

“Vampires attacked. And you just missed the Lykae on top of all this,” Regin sputtered, digging frantically. “The fucking monster mash—
Annika
?”

Annika managed to work a hand out of the rubble. Regin gripped it, hauling her free.

Dimly, Annika spied Nïx perched on the rail of the stairs above. She called down in a petulant tone, “How inconsiderate not to wake me when we are entertaining.”

*  *  *

Emma woke precisely at sundown, frowning as she recalled the details of the morning. Hazily, she remembered Lachlain's big, warm hands kneading the stiffness from her muscles, making her moan as he'd rubbed her neck and back.

Perhaps Lachlain wasn't the insanely brutish animal she thought him. She'd known he wanted to make love to her—she'd felt how badly—yet he'd refrained. Then later, she'd sensed him returning from the shower and climbing in bed with her. His skin had still been damp and so warm as he'd
tucked her bottom into his lap and placed her head on his outstretched arm. She'd felt his erection growing behind her. He'd grated a foreign word as though he cursed it, but he'd never acted on his desire.

She'd been distinctly aware that he'd lain between her and the window, and as he drew her to his chest, she'd felt . . . protected.

Just when she thought she had him figured out, he did something to surprise her.

She opened her eyes and sat up, then blinked as if the scene couldn't be right. If he noticed she'd woken, he didn't indicate it, just continued sitting in the corner in the dark, watching her with glowing eyes. Disbelieving her night vision, she reached for the bedside lamp. It lay crushed beside the bed.

She'd seen correctly. The room was . . . destroyed.

What had happened? What could make him do this?

“Get dressed. We leave in twenty minutes.” He rose wearily, nearly stumbling as his leg seemed to give out, then limped to the door.

“But, Lachlain . . .”

The door closed behind him.

She stared, bewildered, at the claw marks in the walls, the floor, the furniture. Everything was rent to pieces.

She looked down. Well, not everything. Her belongings sat behind the savaged chair as though he'd hidden them away, knowing what was about to come. The blanket he'd strung up over the curtains sometime last night still hung where it added another safeguard against the sun. And the bed? Claw marks, mattress foam, and feathers surrounded her like a pod.

She was untouched.

I
f Lachlain didn't want to tell her why he'd huffed and puffed and torn their hotel room to bits, then fine by her. After she'd thrown on a skirt, shirt, and boots and very purposely tied a folded scarf over her ears, she dug her iPod out of her luggage and strapped it on her arm.

Her aunt Myst called it the EIP, or “Emma's iPod Pacifier,” because whenever Emma got irritated or angry, she listened to music in order to “avoid conflict.” As if this were a bad thing.

And if the EIP wasn't made for a time like this . . . .

Emma was pissed. Just when she'd decided this Lykae might be okay, that he'd finally begun leaning the right way in the
sane-or-not
conundrum, he had to go all big bad wolf on her.
But this little piggy can compartmentalize,
Emma thought, and Lachlain was cruising toward getting squared away in her mind forever.

His personality changed like rapid fire, from the soul-searing embrace in the rain when he'd pressed his naked chest against hers, to the howling attacks, to the gentle would-be lover in the bathtub last night. He kept her wary—an unfortunate and fatiguing state that she already tended to—and that frustrated her.

And now this. He'd left her with this ravaged room and no explanation. She could've looked like that chair.

She blew a curl out of her eyes, and found a wisp of upholstery filler had attached itself to her hair. As she swatted at it, she realized she was as angry at herself as she was with him.

Her first night with him, he'd allowed sun to burn her skin, and now, today, he'd used those claws—which had shredded the side of a
car
—in a frenzy while she'd slept unaware.

Why had she overprotected herself all her life, put forth the exhausting
effort
to do so, then thrown caution out the window regarding him? Why had her family taken pains to keep her safe, moving the coven to Lore-rich New Orleans to hide her, cloaking the manor in darkness only to have her die now—

Cloaking the manor . . . ?
Why had they done that? She never rose before sunset, never remained awake past sunrise. Her room was shuttered and she slept under the bed. So why did she have memories of running through their darkened home during the day?

Her gaze was drawn to the back of her hand, her trembling immediate. For the first time since she'd been frozen into her immortality, the memory of her “lesson” erupted in her mind with a perfect clarity . . . .

A witch was babysitting. Emma was in the woman's arms when she heard Annika returning to the manor after a week's absence and struggled until she freed herself. Screaming Annika's name, Emma ran for her.

Regin had heard her and tackled her into the shadows right before Emma ran headlong for the sun shining in from the just-opened door.

Regin squeezed her to her chest with shaking arms and whispered, “What'd you do that for?” With another squeeze, she mumbled, “Boneheaded little leech.”

By this time everyone had come downstairs. The witch apologized abjectly, saying, “Emma hissed and snapped and scared me till I dropped her.”

Annika scolded Emma between her shudders, until Furie's voice sounded from outside the circle. The crowd parted to let her pass. Furie was, just as her name said, part Fury. And she was frightening.

“Put the child's hand in it.”

Annika's face had paled even more than natural. “She is not like us. She's delicate—”

“She hissed and fought to get what she wanted,” Furie interrupted. “I'd say she's exactly like us. And like us, the pain will teach her.”

Furie's twin, Cara, said, “She's right.” They always took each other's sides. “This isn't the first time there's been a close call. Her hand now or her face—or, worse, her life—later. It doesn't matter how dark we keep the manor if you can't keep her inside.”

“I won't do it,” Annika said. “I . . . can't do it.”

Regin dragged Emma along, though she resisted. “Then I will.”

As Annika stood by, her face perfectly stoic, like marble but for incongruous tears running down, Regin forced Emma's hand into the shaft of sunlight. She shrieked in pain, screaming for her Annika, crying “why” again and again until her skin caught fire.

When Emma woke, Furie was peering down at her with lavender eyes, tilting her head, as if confused by Emma's reaction. “Child, you must realize that every day the entire earth is saturated in something that will kill you, and only if you're wary will you elude it. Do not forget this lesson, for it will be repeated to bring you much greater pain next time.”

Emma fell to her knees, then to her hands as she gasped for breath. The fine scarring on the back of her hand itched. No wonder she was a coward. No wonder . . . no wonder . . . no wonder . . .

Emma believed that they had saved her life, but they'd compromised it at the same time. That lesser evil they'd chosen shaped every day of her life. She stood, then stumbled to the bathroom, splashing water on her face. She clutched the counter.
Get it together, Em.

By the time Lachlain returned for her bag, her emotions had fired into roiling anger, and she directed it to the deserving target. She made a show of brushing upholstery stuffing from her luggage with jerky, exaggerated movements, glaring at him. His brows drew together.

She followed him to the car, stifling hisses, wanting to punt the back of his knee. He turned and opened the door for her.

Once they were ensconced inside and she'd started the car, he said, “Did you . . . hear?”

“Did I hear when you flipped out like a ninja?” she snapped. At his blank look, she answered, “No. I didn't.” And she didn't ask him to elaborate. She believed he wanted her to, felt that he was willing her to. When he wouldn't look away, she said, “Not taking that ball back in my court.”

“You will no' address this?”

She gripped the steering wheel.

“You are angry? I dinna expect this reaction.”

She faced him, her rein on her temper and her innate fear of him no match for such a close call with death. “I'm angry because you only gave me an inch-wide margin of error with your lethal claws. Maybe next time I won't get an
inch. When I sleep I am utterly vulnerable—
I have no defenses.
You forced me into that situation and I resent it.”

He stared at her for long moments, then exhaled and said something she'd never expected. “You are right. Since it happens when I sleep, I will no' sleep near you again.”

The memory of his damp body so warm against hers flashed in her mind. She regretted giving that up, a realization that made her even angrier.

He sat stiffly in his seat, his body tense, as she dialed up her “Angry Female Rock” playlist.