Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

that sword over my neck. Are you trying to make me go crazy like you? Make me check out mentally before I do physically?”
    “Is it a possibility?” he asked in all seriousness. At least he’d calmed down a fraction.
    “How much more do you think I can take?”
    “You’ll take whatever I give you—”
    “And I’ll like it?” She rolled her eyes. “Do you torture everyone like this?”
    He grew still as a statue, his voice dripping with menace as he said, “You don’t know the meaning of torture.”
    “You do? Have you only dished it out or been on the receiving end?”
    “Both.”
    She wished she wasn’t curious about him. But . . . “ How were you tortured?”
    “Take the worst agony you can possibly imagine, multiply it by a thousand, then suffer that every second for six hundred years. And that was merely one among many times.”
    “Six centuries?” He’s exaggerating. He has to be. “Is that why you’re crazy?”
    “Partly. Also because of the memories.”
    “Did you see mine when you slept last?”
    “So far, no recollections of coal dust, leaking roofs, or the pungent aroma of myriad critters sizzling in old cooking lard.”
    He made it sound so awful—but what she wouldn’t give to be back there right now! “You watched me more than you’d let on.”
    “I had to learn about you, investigating your belongings, spying on your shuddersome family.”
    She gasped. “You were in my home?”
    “ I have a home. You lived in a conveyance.”
    “It’s bought and paid for. No one can ever make us leave.” Unlike the land it was parked on.
    The Va-Co representative Saroya had killed had been sniffing around Peirce Mountain for a reason. Deep down, it was laden with coal. Va-Co had begun putting pressure on the family to sell. When that hadn’t worked, they’d gone after the mortgage bank.
    Though Ruth and Ephraim and the rest of the family had been cobbling together payments, it was only a matter of time before they defaulted on their loan.
    “You are so proud,” Lothaire murmured, his tone perplexed. “And I cannot comprehend why.”
    She choked back a retort. Cool it, Ellie. Get information. “Tell me what Saroya’s like.”
    “Vicious, contemptuous, fearless. She’s a queen whom other queens would bow down to.”
    Ellie quirked a brow. “A vicious female who doesn’t mind you spending so much time alone with the beautiful Hag?”
    “The fey and I are not involved.”
    “Saroya’s agreeable to having all those heirs you want?”
    “She will give me as many as I desire,” he said coolly.
    Deflection? “Don’t you want to get started on little vampire princes?”
    “I can’t claim her until she’s in an undying body, else harm her with my strength. Remember? Pop. ”
    “So that’s the delay.” Or was there more? Saroya could still satisfy the vampire. Perhaps the goddess didn’t enjoy sexual situations? “I have a hard time imagining that kind of strength.”
    “There are four things that make a vampire more powerful than his brethren. Bloodlust, a beating heart, Dacian blood, and age. I’m a vampire gone red-eyed with bloodlust, a Dacian with a beating heart. I’ve lived for millennia, growing stronger over the endless days of my life.”
    Great. She’d been nabbed by the Hulk of vampires. Then she glanced up. “You’re a real Dacian?”
    “Ah, that’s right—you’ve been reading after school. My mother was Ivana Daciano, heir to their throne. I am Lothaire Daciano, now the rightful heir.”
    “But they’re thought not to exist.”
    “Of course they exist. Immortals can be just as bad as humans, thinking that if they can’t see something, it must not be.”
    “Your interest lies in the Horde and the Dacian thrones?” When he inclined his head, she said, “If you’re so powerful, your subjects must be hankering for you to be their king.”
    He made a scoffing sound. “I intend to subjugate one kingdom and lay waste to the other.”
    “And then what?”
    His blond brows knit. “What do you mean?”
    “Laying waste, subjugation? There’s got to be a reason for doing these things.”
    “Pure gratification.”
    “How long will that last? A hundred years? A thousand? Surely you have an ultimate goal?”
    He rose, abruptly enraged, all towering intimidation. “I have an Endgame !”
    Round the bend. He muttered to himself in Russian, then jerked his headsharply in that way insane people did—as if he’d just seen or experienced something