Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

all they’d learned about Lucia….
    “She’s legendary for her archery skills,” Munro had said. “Nothing else unique about her.”
    That was all she was known for? “There must be more. What does she like to do? What are her interests?”
    “No one knows,” Uilleam had answered. “She’s just the Archer.” As if nothing more needed to be said about her. It was how she was identified.
    Munro had added, “But it’s rumored that she feels agonizing pain whenever she misses a target.”
    Luckily, Garreth couldn’t see that happening too often with her skill. But then his chest had grown heavy.
    Was that how she’d gotten to be so good?
    Above all, they’d learned the Valkyrie were peculiar creatures. Their origin alone fascinated him. Each Valkyrie had
three
parents. Whenever a maiden faced death with uncommon bravery, the Norse gods Freya and Wóden struck her with lightning, rescuing her to Valhalla. The maiden would wake there—healed, safe, and pregnant with a Valkyrie daughter.
    The birth mothers hailed from all Lorekind—furies, witches, shifters, even humans. So the daughters would each possess the unique coloring and characteristics of the mother, but they all inherited Freya’s fey features and her notorious acquisitiveness—in fact, they could be mesmerized by shining jewels, diamonds especially.
    The Valkyrie were rumored to have glass-shattering shrieks, preternatural speed, and no need to eat or drink. Instead they consumed electrical energy from the earth and produced lightning when they experienced sharp emotions.
    That had been a legend about Valkyrie he’d never quite believed until he’d been in the throes with one. Lightning had speared the night, and not only from the storm.
    Garreth had learned about various individual Valkyrie as well. Nïx was their soothsayer, rumored to be three thousand years old and mad as a hatter. Regin was the last of the Radiant Ones and had skin that glowed. Annika was the dauntless leader of the New Orleans coven, a master strategist who lived to war with vampires.
    No one knew who Lucia’s birth mother was—or
what
she’d been—but the shopkeeper had said this Accession would be Lucia’s third. Which meant that she was over a millennium old—near his own age.
    In the end, Garreth had more questions about her than answers….
    She’s no’ coming.
Damn it, why? He’d shown her passion—and patience. But she’d been skittish toward the end. Wild-eyed and spooked. Perhaps she feared the intensity of her own reaction? Or of
his
?
    He recalled what Bowen had once told him. “We doona understand our own ferocity.” His cousin’s deadened eyes had been filled with loss. “What’s normal to us is no’ to others.” Bowen’s own mate had loved him, until she’d seen him turned. Then she’d fled.
    Lucia too had fled—yet she hadn’t even seen a glimpse of the beast.
    The Lykae called their transformation
letting the beast out of its cage
. Garreth would grow taller, his muscles extending, his fangs and black claws lengthening. The brutal and menacing shadow of his beast would flicker over him.
    No, Lucia dinna see me like that.
He scowled at the waxing moon.
But she soon will.
    She would run far, if he wasn’t careful. Another glance at the moon, and he knew what he would have to do on that night. “Ah, Lousha, my lass. It’s going to hurt. But there’s no getting around it.”
    For now, she wasn’t coming to him, so again he’d go to her. He stood and turned for the Valkyrie’s home of Val Hall. Since he’d met her, he’d staked out the bizarre place. Lightning bombarded the property, flashing constantly above the antebellum manor. All over the grounds, lightning rods jutted up. Smoking moss dangled from burned oaks. From within, Valkyrie shrieks sounded.
    None of that mattered but for the fact that Lucia would be within. He strides took him closer and closer to her.

SEVEN

    “Lykae in our backyards. Horde vampires seeking out Valkyries all over the world. Happy Accession!” Regin cried from her “command center,” also known as the dining room table, which now stood covered with maps and papers—all lit by her glowing face.
    The more excited Regin became, the more she glowed. Yet that wasn’t the only reason she was called the Radiant One….
    Lucia made a noncommittal sound, only half listening. She’d thought she’d spotted something outside the manor. She was curled up in a window seat, bow in her lap, peering