Lachlain had little memory of the field and even the rest of the night before was hazy, but he knew he'd been...less than gentle. Then tonight he'd leapt onto her, pinning her to the bed about to shove into her, even while knowing he would hurt her. He'd seen her in the shower warily noting his clenched fists. She was right - she had no reason not to.
On the balcony, he'd discovered pain within her. That's what she had in her eyes. He had it, too, and he was too damaged to help her. Too full of hate to want to help her.
"Then can I at least call my family?" she asked. "Like you promised?"
He frowned. He'd said "contact her family," as in a letter. He'd seen the man downstairs use the telephone. On the television, he'd seen it as well. He'd never thought she could have called another country. "Be quick about it. We have to make good time tonight."
"Why? Are we going very far?" Her voice grew panicked. "Because you said an hour before sunrise - "
"Are you nervous about this?"
"Of course I am!"
"Doona be. I will protect you," he said simply, annoyed that she relaxed not a whit. "Make your call." He turned the corner into their room's foyer, strode down the hall to the door, opened and closed it.
But he never left.
5
Do you have any idea how dead you are?" Regin asked. "Annika is freaking out. She's making berserkers look like candy-stripers right now."
"I know she's worried!" Emma said, clenching the phone in both hands. "I-is she there?"
"Nope. There was an emergency she had to take care of. Em, why in the hell weren't you on the plane? Or answering your cell phone?"
"The cell phone's toast. Got wet in the rain - "
"And why weren't you on the plane?" Regin snapped.
"I've decided to stay, okay? I came here for a reason and I'm not finished yet." Not a lie.
"You couldn't answer any of our messages? Any of the messages the manager tried to deliver to your room today?"
"There could've been knocking, I don't know. Go figure - daytime and I was asleep?"
"Annika's sending a search party for you," Regin said. "They're at the airport right now."
"Well, call and tell them to make a U-ee, because I won't be here."
"Don't you even wanna know what you're in danger from?"
Emma glanced over at the bedside table. "I quite know, thank you."
"You spotted a vampire?" Regin shrieked. "Did he approach you?"
"A what?" she shrieked back.
"What did you think I meant about danger? Vampires have been following Valkyrie all over the world - even here. Vampires in Louisiana, if you can wrap your mind around that. But wait, the insanity builds: Ivo the Cruel, number-two man to the vampire king, was on Bourbon Street."
"So close to home?" Annika had moved their coven to New Orleans years before to get away from the Vampire Horde's kingdom in Russia.
"Yeah, and Lothaire was with him, too. You might not have heard of him - he's an elder in the Horde, kind of does his own thing, but creepy-creepy. I'm thinking he and Ivo weren't in the Quarter for a Hand Grenade and a Lucky Dog. Annika has been out searching for them. We don't know their intentions, why they don't just kill as per usual, but if they found out what you are..."
Emma thought back to her nightly forays around Paris. Had she been followed by members of the Horde? Could she even tell a vampire from a human? If her aunts had taught her that the Lykae were monsters, they'd told her every day of her life how vicious the Horde was.
The vampires had captured Furie, the Valkyrie queen, more than fifty years ago and no one could find her. There were rumors they'd chained her to the bottom of the ocean, dooming her to an eternity of drowning only to have her immortality surge her to life again and again.
They'd wiped out Regin's entire race of beings - Regin was the last of the Radiant Ones - which made for a conflicted relationship between her and Emma, to say the least. Emma knew Regin loved her, but she was hard on her. Her own foster mother, Annika, made a hobby of killing vampires, because as she often said, "The only good leech is a dead leech."
And now the vampires might discover Emma. For seventy years, that had been Annika's worst fear - ever since Emma had first tried to nip her with her baby fangs in public...
"Annika thinks these are signs that the Accession has begun," Regin said, knowing that would strike fear in Emma. "And yet you're away from the safety of the coven?"
The Accession. A chill crept through her.
Bringing prosperity and power to the victors, the Accession wasn't an Armageddon type of war - it wasn't as if the strongest factions of the Lore met on neutral turf after an invitation to "rumble." About a decade into it, events began to come into play, as if fate was seeding future, deadly conflicts, involving all the players at a startling rate. Like windmill vanes on a rusted spoke, it began creaking, creeping to life, only to gain momentum and soar with speed every five hundred years.
Some said it was a kind of cosmic checks-and-balances system for an ever-growing population of immortals, forcing them to kill each other off.
In the end, the faction that lost the fewest of their kind won.
But the Valkyrie could not increase their numbers like the Horde and the Lykae, and the last time the Valkyrie had dominated through an Accession was two millennia ago. The Horde had won it ever since. This one would be Emma's first. Damn it, Annika had promised Emma that she could stay under her bed through the thick of it!
Regin's voice was smug when she said, "So, I suppose you'll be wanting that ride home now."