Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

her crusty thumb and stolen the ring.
    And possibly he’d flooded her tomb with a tidal wave.
    Perhaps I oughtn’t to have brazenly stolen her most beloved possession off her body, waking her and potentially heralding the apocalypse?
    I might’ve left her thumb. . . .
    “I’ve seen Dorada in visions, have sensed her,” Hag continued. “The Queen of Evil will stop at nothing to punish you.”
    A “Queen” was a sorceress who wielded more control over something than any other sorceress. When Dorada was fully regenerated, she could control evil beings—including Lothaire.
    But he hadn’t been concerned about her power, figuring that with the ring he could defeat her easily enough. Yet just when he’d been about to slip it on his finger, he’d been captured by Declan Chase.
    “I’ll deal with her once I’ve found the ring,” Lothaire said. “We’ve got some time. Just seven days ago, I managed to cast her into a fiery chasm.” When all hell had broken loose—or rather, when all the immortalprisoners had broken loose from the Order’s holding cells—her zombie Wendigos had attacked him as a pack.
    He’d defeated all of them, a particularly noteworthy feat considering he’d been starving, recovering from torture, mystically weakened, and unable to trace. Then he’d turned his hate-filled gaze to Dorada. . . .
    Hag fiddled with a smoking flask. “The sorceress is already coming for you.”
    “Risen so quickly, has she?” After dispatching the Wendigos, he’d leapt over a crevasse to reach Dorada, casting her down. But she’d caught his leg. As they’d dangled, he’d done what anyone would in his situation—booted her in the face until her skull caved in and an eye popped out.
    In the end, she’d plummeted into an abyss hundreds of feet deep.
    “Yes, Dorada is rebounding from the injuries you inflicted—and from her mummified state. Lothaire, if you barely prevailed against her last time, and she is regenerating now . . . ? Her control over all evil creatures will be absolute in a matter of weeks, maybe even days.”
    Then she could command him to greet a noonday sun in an equatorial desert, which would kill even him.
    Elizabeth coughed, hiding a grin behind her fist.
    “Why are you amused?” he demanded.
    “Sounds to me like you almost got your ass spanked by a chick. I don’t know who this Dorada is, but I’m wishing her all the luck in the world.”
    Hag gasped. Lothaire slammed his fist onto the stool beside him, smashing it, splinters flying.
    As he and Hag watched in astonishment, the mortal calmly picked them off her plate and out of her hair, then ate another bite of waffle.

18
    S everal realities had become apparent to Ellie as the immortals had talked in front of her like she was an oblivious toddler in a high chair.
    One: Lothaire was having difficulty finding the ring that equaled Ellie’s death.
    Two: His concentration suffered when he went round the bend.
    Three: Ellie needed to make him go round the bend as often as possible.
    Four: She risked dying with every attempt. And that was okay. Win-win.
    Yet now his forbidding expression was doing a number on her courage. To bolster it again, she reminded herself that she was already as good as dead.
    Ellie had once read an article about wartime post-traumatic stress disorder. She remembered one particular army officer would tell new front-line soldiers, “You died the day you signed on for this war. You’re already dead. So why not be brave now?”
    I died the day Saroya landed in me. So why not take Lothaire’s sanity down with me?
    His voice vibrating with rage, the vampire said, “I’d been tortured and deprived of blood for weeks before I faced Dorada.”
    Ellie gave him a look as if she was mildly embarrassed for him. “Butwasn’t she still a mummy or something? Regenerating and all? Sounds like you’re the flyweight to her heavy.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hag’s jaw drop.
    Lothaire traced in front of her, clenching his fists so hard blood began to drip from them. “The sorceress had a dozen Wendigo guards that I defeated.”
    “I don’t know what a Wendigo is. Could be a Lore bunny. But it sounds like you consider that feat a big deal.”
    Hag intervened. “Wendigos are ravenous zombies, contagious even to immortals, lightning fast, with claws and fangs as long as blades. In the past, one has been enough to decimate an entire species of immortals. Much less a dozen.”
    In a chipper tone,