Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

London.
    While his brothers had been fighting each other or chasing women, Sebastian had been studying, growing confident in his ability to learn.
    It might just be that Sebastian’s sacrifices then would benefit him now, as he chased the only female who’d ever mattered to him.
    Filled with a burning determination, Sebastian had traced back and forth to places he only vaguely remembered from boyhood, studying the amount of effort, the amount of mental clarity, required.
    He convinced himself that he just needed to see her as clearly as a location.
    There was danger inherent in tracing to a place unseen. She could be under an equatorial sun at
noon
, and he could be too stunned to get away. She could be on a plane. If his trace was mere feet off, he could be sucked into an engine.
    Hell, it would have been worth it.

    Perhaps when Kaderin had determined that everything was under control, she might have done so too hastily.
    Since that night, her blessing had been behaving like an engine in an old Karmann Ghia convertible—sometimes it slipped. There she’d be, cruising along, the same as usual, then, out of nowhere—a slip.
    For instance, right now, she felt an odd, hollow kind of ache. She thought she was... worried. Coincidentally, Kaderin had a pressing urge to know if her niece, seventy-year-old Emmaline, the daughter of Helen, was better. The last time Kaderin had checked in with her New Orleans coven, she’d learned that Emma had been critically injured by a vampire.
    She rang the manor, hoping she wouldn’t get Regin the Radiant. Kaderin wasn’t ready to talk to her, not yet, not so soon after her reckless morning with the vampire.
    Regin’s entire race had been annihilated by the Horde.
    Kaderin had molded Regin into a killer like herself, training her and stoking her hatred of vampires. “Sword up! Remember your mother,” she’d told the girl again and again, and all the while she was telling herself, Remember your sisters.
    Don’t be Regin...
    Regin answered with: “Bridge. Uhura here.” Kaderin sighed, then shook her head at the Star Trek reference. Kaderin did not appreciate Star Trek references.
    Yet that was the thing about Regin. Aside from her boiling hatred of vampires, she was easygoing, quick to laugh, a prankster.
    “Hi, Regin, it’s Kaderin.” She swallowed. “I’m calling to check on Emma. Is she any better?”
    “Hey, Kiddy-Kad! She’s totally better. She’s healed already.”
    “Healed?” Kaderin asked in surprise. “This is great news, but how can it be? Did the witches help?”
    “Actually, she’s already wed that Lykae—that hateful one we wanted to neuter—two nights ago.”
    Had Regin just purposely glossed over that question? Kaderin wanted to know more but had always believed that in digging for secrets, she was begging Fate to somehow reveal her own. And now with her new secret? Kaderin would let Regin coast by so very easily right now.
    “I can’t believe she married him.” The werewolf had absconded with Emmaline, taking her back to his castle in Scotland.
    “I know . A freaking Lykae . It could be worse, I suppose. Could have been a leech.” Though Emma was half leech herself and drank blood for sustenance, the coven didn’t think of her that way whatsoever. “Nah, Emma isn’t that big of a bonehead.”
    Kaderin felt a tic in her cheek, almost as if she had winced. The Valkyrie covens were at war with the vampires even now, and the Lore was hurtling toward an Accession—a war among immortals that occurred every five hundred years. During times like this, Kaderin was expected to be ridding vampires from the earth, not riding them. Did her face just get hot?
    “We tried to call you,” Regin said. Kaderin heard her blow a gum bubble. Like so many Valkyrie, she would chew only one specific brand, Sad Wiener Peppermint, which was beyond foul. Kaderin herself secretly preferred Happy Squirrel Citrus. “I think you left your sat phone at the Lykae’s in all the confusion.”
    “I remember,” Kaderin said, but she had to wonder if they’d truly called her. Kaderin was an emotionless cipher, and many were uncomfortable around her—especially at celebrations.
    Kaderin recognized when situations might be humorous but was never moved to laugh. She knew she loved her half-sisters but never felt the need to show affection. At a wedding, she wouldn’t have even approached a smile.
    She bit her lip and stared at her feet. Luckily, Kaderin couldn’t