Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

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 perceived 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