Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

“We’ve established that you can’t kill me.”
    She glared at him over her shoulder. “I ache to make those your last words.”
    “I am beginning to understand this.” He was calm on the exterior, gentlemanly even, but she knew the ferocity that lurked within him—tonight she’d seen it. “If this contest is important to you, then let me help you. I could trace you to many of the places, and you could defeat everyone.” He hesitantly reached his hand to her shoulder, but he saw that she was about to hiss, and he drew it back.
    “I’m going to defeat them anyway.”
    “But why not take an easier path?”
    “Okay, I’ll play.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and his gaze dipped to her cleavage. She snapped her fingers in front of his face.
    When his eyes met hers, he scrubbed his hand over his mouth. “I apologize.” But his expression said he found it worth it. “You were about to... play?”
    “Have you ever been to New Orleans?”
    “In the United States?” At her nod, he said, “Not yet.”
    “What about South America?” she asked. “Africa?”
    He hesitated, then shook his head.
    “Vampires can only trace to places they’ve already been. So, where were you planning to trace me? Around your backyard?” she asked, with a deceptively pleasant mien that faded in an instant. “Vampire, this game is for the big kids only.” She glanced up at the cracked skylight to the lightening sky. Dawn would come in less than an hour. “And it’s almost your beddy-bye time.”
    “I could travel with you, to keep you safe.”
    “Travel with me? Do you think I would stop and wait around every single day? To cut my time in half because you can’t go in the sun?”
    He looked as if he’d briefly forgotten a harsh reality and she’d just reminded him. “No, of course not,” he said quietly. “I just wanted—”
    “You’re crowding me. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that females don’t like to be crowded? One of women’s big three turnoffs. Not very sexy.”
    For some reason, that made him frown, and immediately back off. His voice was gruff when he asked, “What are the other two?”
    “You’re wearing out number one. How about working on that first?” She turned from him to get to the altar, and surprisingly, he didn’t follow.
    She passed Scribe, who’d begun cleaning the temple—though not so much as to effect order. He plucked a camouflaging tree limb off the damaged column. When he saw the claw marks, he scowled at nearby creatures, who studied their hooves.
    She strode past him with a kindly greeting, addressing him as “Sacred Scribe,” which always put him in raptures, and he stumbled on the limb, nervously stuttering a reply.
    At the altar, Riora was speaking with two elves, saying something about the “real-time coverage of the competition online” and ordering them to “drive visitors to the site.”
    Still feeling the vampire’s eyes on her, Kaderin hopped up, the only one in the Lore who would dare such a thing. She plucked a scroll from a pile of them and unrolled it. Every competitor would get the same list of tasks—and each list included the talismans or sought objects, the coordinates for finding them, and a brief description. As usual, there were about ten choices of tasks in any given round.
    Once Riora was finished with her spate of PR, she said, “And how are your parents, Kaderin the Cold?”
    Kaderin knew Riora was inquiring about two of her three parents. Kaderin’s birth mother had been mortal. “They sleep still, Goddess,” she said absently, reading. Gods derived power from how many prayers and offerings they received with each passing of the sun, hence Riora’s Internet attempt to garner more. But there were so few who worshipped Freya and Wóden that the two slept to conserve their energy. “Interesting talismans this Hie,” Kaderin observed.
    In the past, Kaderin had always gone after the closest talismans first. Now, with more than one real contender, she would devise new strategies, shake them all up. She would go for the far-flung points and the more difficult tasks at the outset.
    “I thought so,” Riora said. “Pity I’ll only get about half on that list. You know, because of all the accidental deaths.”
    Kaderin nodded in sympathy. Then her gaze landed on the option for the highest points offered in this interval: twelve points to retrieve one of three mirror amulets. The most she’d ever gone for was a prize worth