Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

sword above her neck. And she felt not even a trickle of fear. As they bent over her, their eyes became more apparent to her dimmed vision. Red, dirty eyes, staring down at her. No, she didn’t feel fear, no revulsion—just nothing.
    Another vampire materialized, likely wanting to see the momentous kill. The brothers’ attention was drawn away for an instant. It was all she needed. Earlier, she’d fallen back onto the shackles. Without warning, she whipped them out and cuffed their wrists together. They struggled to break free, but somehow the metal held even with their obvious strength. They tried to trace in different directions and couldn’t.
    As she rose, the third vampire fled. She tilted her head at the two, and murmured, “I told you I’d kill you,” then let instinct take over—
    He bolted awake at the sound of her shrieking, the loudest he’d ever heard, and clamped his hands over his ears. When the windows began to crack, he lunged for her and forced his hand over her mouth. Her fingers shot out, claws bared to snatch at his heart, but he caught her wrists in his free hand.
    She was staring at him but seemed unseeing, her pale face lit by a series of lightning strikes just outside. He pulled her into his arms until she finally stopped fighting. But then she began softly weeping. His whole hand pressed the side of her head to his chest.
    As he sat back in the chair with her in his lap, his dreams came over him in a rush. For ages in the past, Kaderin hadn’t felt?
    And now she clearly did.
    No wonder she’d been so confused the morning they’d met. He didn’t understand how this could have happened to her, but he’d experienced her lack of emotions. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to recover them.
    “You’ve made me feel,” she’d hissed at him that first morning.
    Could I really have had something to do with this?
    Her shoulders shook, and his shirt grew wet with tears, and it was killing him. “ Brave girl, ” he murmured against her hair. “You are safe.” No wonder she was vicious. She’d had to be to survive. “It doesn’t have to be like that anymore.” Eventually her breaths grew quick and light as they did when she slept.
    He’d begun to recognize that although she was perfect on the surface, his Bride was wounded, scarred inside, and now he knew why.
    And he’d seen only a few nights in her life.
    He knew she feared at every hour that he would become like those who had toyed with her in a filthy back alley and had savaged her army of young Valkyrie. She dreaded seeing his eyes turn red.
    When she clutched his shirt in her panting sleep and nuzzled his chest, realization hit him sharply. Staring out over her head to the valley below, he suddenly knew that he was meant to be here at this very moment, to comfort her, to protect her.
    All the choices he’d made to direct his life—and all the choices that had been taken from him—had conspired to bring her to him. His seemingly endless years at the castle, though he’d been alone and weary, had been a worthy sacrifice to ultimately have her.
    Sebastian was meant to call her his own. The good and the bad. She’d been made for him, and he for her.
    Tomorrow, Sebastian would face Nikolai again. He could no longer deny that Nikolai’s decision for him had been a fated one.

20

Cave of the Basilisks, Las Quijadas, Argentina Day 10

    Prize: Two eggs of the Basilisk, each worth thirteen points

    T he crackle of flexing scales and the sibilance of a forked tongue sounded behind Kaderin, echoing throughout the cavern system.
    With her sword sheathed at her back, she sprinted, her night vision taking her from one underground chamber to the next. She’d covered every inch of this hive of tunnels dug through solid rock in antiquity.
    Yet she’d been unable to pinpoint the exact position of the three beasts she’d heard stirring down here. Nor had she been able to find either of the eggs, or an alternative exit.
    Each tunnel had a high-ceilinged chamber at its terminus. In the chambers were the old nests of a basilisk, a giant scaled dragon with dripping fangs the size of her forearms and a lethal tail, corded with muscle.
    She had checked every nest for eggs but found none. There was another cavern system in the mountain a ravine over—the prizes must be in that one. The only things she’d found here were the ancient remains of female human sacrifices, and more recent ones from archeologists of the ill-fated