She frowned at her thoughts. As a natural-born vampire, she couldn't lie to others. If an untruth arose in her thoughts and the impulse to use it fired in her mind, she would become violently ill. No, Emma couldn't lie to others, but she'd always had a talent for lying to herself. A couple of little tweaks? In truth, there was a yawning loneliness in her life - and a fear about her nature that rode her constantly...

As far as she knew, she was like no one else in existence - she truly belonged nowhere - and though her Valkyrie aunts loved her, she felt loneliness as sharply as a blade driven into her heart every day.

She'd figured if she could determine how her parents had lived together and had been able to have her, then maybe she could find others like herself. Perhaps then she could finally feel a connection to something else. And if she could discover more about her vampire half, she might allay her fear that one day she would become like them.

No one should have to worry each day that she might turn into a killer...

If she'd assumed he would give her privacy because he'd learned a lesson, she'd have been wrong. He walked right in and opened the shower stall door. She jumped, startled, fumbling not to drop the conditioner bottle before catching it on the pad of her forefinger.

She saw his fists clench and open, and that finger went limp. The bottle thudded.

One hit...The image of the shredded bedside table flashed in her mind, then the memory of the car he'd batted like a crumpled piece of paper. Chunks of marble that hadn't been pulverized still littered the shower floor. Fool. She'd been a fool to think he wouldn't hurt her. Of all the things she should fear, she feared pain the most. And now a Lykae clenched his fists in anger. At her.

She turned into the corner, giving him her side to try to shield her nudity. And because if he hit, she could sink down and draw her knees to her chest. But with some foreign curse, he stalked off.

After showering, she returned to the bedroom to find almost all of her belongings gone. Had he taken them to the car he'd secured? If so, ten euros said that he'd tossed her laptop under everything else. She supposed it didn't matter anyway, since she'd uncovered nothing about her parents to go into said computer. Just because she could navigate Tulane's research library did not mean she could crack the Lore in a foreign country - oh, and in the hours between sundown and sunup.

She'd accomplished nothing on this trip. But for her abduction, of course.

Why should she even be surprised?

She exhaled wearily and trudged to the items he had left her - one outfit laid out on the bed. Of course he'd chosen the tiniest, most sheer lingerie she'd brought with her. The thought of him handling her underclothes, deliberately choosing them for her, made her blush for the thousandth time since she'd met him. She must have wasted a gallon of blood blushing because of him.

He'd also picked out long pants and a turtleneck and a sweater and a jacket. Did he want her to be buried in clothes?

At that moment, he appeared again. She leapt backward, clearing the length of the mattress to stand at the headboard. Even with her keen hearing, she hadn't heard a hint of his approach.

He raised his eyebrows at the quick movement. "That frightened of me?"

She clutched her towel. I'm that frightened of my own shadow, much less an overgrown Lykae! But his voice hadn't been cruel, and she gathered the courage to study him from beneath her lashes. His eyes were that warm golden color and he was wearing new clothes. He looked like a mid-thirties millionaire. Or more aptly, a physique-model playing one.

The bastard was a remarkably handsome man. And he obviously knew it, which nettled. "You've attacked me twice. You've given me no reason not to be frightened."

He was getting irritated again. "That was before I gave you my word that I would no' hurt you." Then, seeming to get his temper under control, he said, "Everything is ready. I have a rented car waiting and I've settled the bill for this room."

She could just imagine that bill. Even though he'd annihilated the antique bedside table in this room, it wouldn't add up to the cost of her stay. "But I've been here for weeks. I can pay for my own - "

"You did pay. Now, come down from the bed."

When he held out his hand to her, she crossed to the opposite side and stepped down, feeling dizzy and fearing the worst - the utter abuse of her credit card. "And I suppose I paid for your new clothes?" she dared to ask with the bed between them. Emma knew fine things - all Valkyrie did - since they'd inherited Freya's acquisitiveness - and the cut of his clothes reeked of money.

He wore a dark leather car coat that was hand-stitched and flat-front trousers, camel in color and lean in fit. Under the opened jacket, a black thin cashmere shirt molded to him like a second skin. Between the edges of his coat, she could see the rigid outlines of his chest. His clothing said, I'm rich, and I might be a little dangerous.

Women would adore him.

"Aye. The man downstairs has many resources and our card has no limits." His tone dared her to say something.

Our card? Her Centurion AmEx with instructions that some purchases might seem off and that the owner would be traveling, so do not hinder in any way. A safeguard had now turned into a financial weapon in his hands.

Like all in the coven, she had a yearly allowance for clothes and entertainment and it was very generous, but she'd been saving up, thinking of buying something major that would be all her own - an antique or her own horse or anything that she wouldn't have to share with her aunts. No longer.

Among her other trials with him, the Lykae appeared determined to break her bank.

"You didn't leave me any way to cover my ears," she said, glancing down, avoiding his eyes as usual.

Her comment made him scowl again at her clothing. She wanted to hide something he found attractive, and yet her garments were so revealing to others? Her black trews scarcely came up over her hipbones and hugged the curves of her arse. Her red shirt, though high-collared, had strange, asymmetrical seams that drew the eye to the swell of her breasts. When she moved, flashes of her flat midriff came into view. He'd chosen those clothes to cover her - not advertise her. He'd buy her new ones at the first opportunity, spending lavishly of the vampire's money. He intended to find out how much he could possibly spend.

"I just need a scarf or a way to fasten my braids. Or people will see them - "

"You'll leave your hair down."

"B-but the humans - "

"Will no' dare do anything when I am there." When he found himself crossing to her, she took several steps back. Terrified of him.

Lachlain had little memory of the field and even the rest of the night before was hazy, but he knew he'd been...less than gentle. Then tonight he'd leapt onto her, pinning her to the bed about to shove into her, even while knowing he would hurt her. He'd seen her in the shower warily noting his clenched fists. She was right - she had no reason not to.

On the balcony, he'd discovered pain within her. That's what she had in her eyes. He had it, too, and he was too damaged to help her. Too full of hate to want to help her.

"Then can I at least call my family?" she asked. "Like you promised?"

He frowned. He'd said "contact her family," as in a letter. He'd seen the man downstairs use the telephone. On the television, he'd seen it as well. He'd never thought she could have called another country. "Be quick about it. We have to make good time tonight."

"Why? Are we going very far?" Her voice grew panicked. "Because you said an hour before sunrise - "

"Are you nervous about this?"

"Of course I am!"

"Doona be. I will protect you," he said simply, annoyed that she relaxed not a whit. "Make your call." He turned the corner into their room's foyer, strode down the hall to the door, opened and closed it.

But he never left.

5

Do you have any idea how dead you are?" Regin asked. "Annika is freaking out. She's making berserkers look like candy-stripers right now."

"I know she's worried!" Emma said, clenching the phone in both hands. "I-is she there?"

"Nope. There was an emergency she had to take care of. Em, why in the hell weren't you on the plane? Or answering your cell phone?"

"The cell phone's toast. Got wet in the rain - "

"And why weren't you on the plane?" Regin snapped.

"I've decided to stay, okay? I came here for a reason and I'm not finished yet." Not a lie.

"You couldn't answer any of our messages? Any of the messages the manager tried to deliver to your room today?"

"There could've been knocking, I don't know. Go figure - daytime and I was asleep?"

"Annika's sending a search party for you," Regin said. "They're at the airport right now."

"Well, call and tell them to make a U-ee, because I won't be here."

"Don't you even wanna know what you're in danger from?"

Emma glanced over at the bedside table. "I quite know, thank you."

"You spotted a vampire?" Regin shrieked. "Did he approach you?"

"A what?" she shrieked back.

"What did you think I meant about danger? Vampires have been following Valkyrie all over the world - even here. Vampires in Louisiana, if you can wrap your mind around that. But wait, the insanity builds: Ivo the Cruel, number-two man to the vampire king, was on Bourbon Street."

"So close to home?" Annika had moved their coven to New Orleans years before to get away from the Vampire Horde's kingdom in Russia.

"Yeah, and Lothaire was with him, too. You might not have heard of him - he's an elder in the Horde, kind of does his own thing, but creepy-creepy. I'm thinking he and Ivo weren't in the Quarter for a Hand Grenade and a Lucky Dog. Annika has been out searching for them. We don't know their intentions, why they don't just kill as per usual, but if they found out what you are..."

Emma thought back to her nightly forays around Paris. Had she been followed by members of the Horde? Could she even tell a vampire from a human? If her aunts had taught her that the Lykae were monsters, they'd told her every day of her life how vicious the Horde was.

The vampires had captured Furie, the Valkyrie queen, more than fifty years ago and no one could find her. There were rumors they'd chained her to the bottom of the ocean, dooming her to an eternity of drowning only to have her immortality surge her to life again and again.

They'd wiped out Regin's entire race of beings - Regin was the last of the Radiant Ones - which made for a conflicted relationship between her and Emma, to say the least. Emma knew Regin loved her, but she was hard on her. Her own foster mother, Annika, made a hobby of killing vampires, because as she often said, "The only good leech is a dead leech."

And now the vampires might discover Emma. For seventy years, that had been Annika's worst fear - ever since Emma had first tried to nip her with her baby fangs in public...

"Annika thinks these are signs that the Accession has begun," Regin said, knowing that would strike fear in Emma. "And yet you're away from the safety of the coven?"

The Accession. A chill crept through her.

Bringing prosperity and power to the victors, the Accession wasn't an Armageddon type of war - it wasn't as if the strongest factions of the Lore met on neutral turf after an invitation to "rumble." About a decade into it, events began to come into play, as if fate was seeding future, deadly conflicts, involving all the players at a startling rate. Like windmill vanes on a rusted spoke, it began creaking, creeping to life, only to gain momentum and soar with speed every five hundred years.

Some said it was a kind of cosmic checks-and-balances system for an ever-growing population of immortals, forcing them to kill each other off.

In the end, the faction that lost the fewest of their kind won.

But the Valkyrie could not increase their numbers like the Horde and the Lykae, and the last time the Valkyrie had dominated through an Accession was two millennia ago. The Horde had won it ever since. This one would be Emma's first. Damn it, Annika had promised Emma that she could stay under her bed through the thick of it!

Regin's voice was smug when she said, "So, I suppose you'll be wanting that ride home now."

Can't lie, can't lie. "No. Not yet. I met someone. I met a...man. And I'm staying with him."

"A man?" Regin gasped. "Oooh, you want to bite him, don't you? Or have you already? Oh, Freya, I knew this would happen."

"What do you mean, you knew this would happen?" The coven had forbidden Emma to drink straight from a living source because they didn't want her to accidentally kill. Plus they believed blood was mystically alive when inside a being, its powers - and side effects - dying when outside. It had never been a problem for Emma. In New Orleans, they had delivery from a Lore-owned blood-bank setup, the number on speed dial like Domino's.

"Em, this was law. You knew better than to get dental with somebody."

"But I - "

"Hey, Lucia," Regin called out, not even bothering to mute the phone. "Pay up, suckah, Emma got dental with some dude - "

"No, I didn't!" Emma said in a rush. "I've never gotten dental!" How many Valkyrie were home to hear Regin? "You placed bets about me?" She strove not to sound as dismayed as she was by this. Was Regin the only one who thought Emma would behave as other vampires would? That she would slip up - or revert to her true vampire nature? Or did they all share Emma's fear that she might turn killer?

"If not to drink him, then what would you want with a man? Huh?"

Her voice quavering with anger, Emma said, "What any woman wants! I'm no different from you - "

"You want to, like, sleep with him?"

Why did she sound that disbelieving? "Maybe I do!"

Regin sucked in a breath. "Who are you and what have you done with my niece's body? Come on, Em! You've never even had a date and all of a sudden you're meeting a 'man' and thinking about lifting tail? You, sweet seventy and never been kissed? Don't you think it's a little more likely that you want to drink him?"

"No, it's not like that," she insisted. The vampires in the Horde sublimated the sexual urge. Blood lust and the need to kill ruled them. And for all these years, Emma had not been a sexual person. She'd never been in a sexual situation.

Until last night.

She felt a glimmer of hope. She'd been aroused by Lachlain. She'd felt regular lust - not blood lust. And she'd been so close. Even tonight, she'd been to the edge with him. Could she use him to answer this question once and for all? She bit her lip, thinking of the possibility.

"Have you gotten yourself into trouble?" Regin asked. Emma could hear her narrowing her eyes. "Is someone there right now?"

"No, I'm alone in my room. Is this really so hard to believe?"

"Okay, I'll play. Who is he? How did you meet?"

This could get tricky. "He was a stranger. I met him outside of Notre Dame among the vendor stands."

"And? Want to not be the secretive vamp you always are and spill the details? If this is true..."

"As if I can lie! All right, you want to know? I think he's...he's wildly handsome!" With emphasis on wild. "He knows what I am and we're leaving Paris together."

"Great Freya, you're serious. What's he like?"

"He's strong. Said he'd protect me." Great kisser. Intermittently insane. With a broad chest she'd wanted to lick like ice cream.

In a scoffing tone, Regin asked, "Strong enough to take down a vampire?"

"You have no idea." Getting out of town with a powerful Lykae - the natural-born enemy of the vampires - was sounding more and more like a bingo idea. But then she frowned. If Lachlain hadn't been the danger they'd warned her of, then what was his agenda? What did he want with her? Why didn't he simply kill the vampire he'd captured?

A suspicion tickled her mind, but she mentally scratched it away. He can't even drive a car - obviously he needs help. And I'm from the Lore...

"When are you leaving Paris?"

"Tonight. Right now, actually."

"That's good, at least. Tell me where you're going."

"So Annika can come drag me home by my ear?" And fight Lachlain to the death? "Nope. Tell her I'll be home week after next at the latest, and that if she tries to find me, I'll know she doesn't trust that I am more than capable of taking care of myself - "

Regin snorted, then laughed outright.

"I can take care of myself." Her tone hurt, she asked, "Why is that funny?"

Shrieking laughter.

"Piss off, Regin! You know what? I'll send you a postcard!"

She slammed the phone down, then snatched up her boots. Stomping into the first one, she muttered angrily, "I will so go." Another boot shoved on. "And I won't be catching any Stockholm syndrome."

When the phone rang seconds later, she yanked it back up. "What?"

"Alrighty then, have it your way - you're officially on your own," Regin said, then sniffled as if she'd cried from laughing so hard. "Now, if you come across a leech, no offense, remember your training."

"None taken. And would that be the sword training where you fly past my defenses and swat me on the ass, chirping, 'Dead!'? Another swat. 'Dead!'? Yeah, I'll get right on that."

"No, that would be the training where you sprint like hell whenever you hear that I'm looking for you to train."

Once she'd hung up the telephone again, Lachlain strode around the corner without even acting like he hadn't listened.

She jumped again, then her brows drew together. "You eavesdropped, didn't you?"

"Aye," he answered without compunction.

"Learn anything new?" she asked in a nervous tone.

Not really. "Your accent's odd and you speak too quickly," he answered honestly. Then he smirked. "But I did hear that you think me 'wildly handsome.' " He wondered why he'd felt a flush of pleasure at that. As if he cared what she thought.

She glanced away, but not before he saw her face flush. He thought he heard her mutter, "Emphasis on the wild."

"Why did you no' tell your family what I am?"

"I would never want to worry them unduly."

"And knowing you are with a Lykae would worry them?" he asked, as though he didn't know how violently they would react to the news.

"Of course it would. They've told me about you. About what you are."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "And what am I?"

For the first time since he'd taken her, she purposely met his gaze. "Deep down, you're a monster."

6

Emma wears her fear like a flag.

That's what her aunts said about her, not cruelly, just with baffled shakes of their heads. Compared to them, she feared so much - and she was the first to admit it.

They were courageous, fierce, and each of them had a purpose in life - some to guard indestructible weapons that could never fall into the wrong hands. Some watched over a bloodline of a particularly strong or noble human family. They were considered guardian angels.

Emma? Well, Emma had undertaken the epic endeavor of...college. At Tulane. She hadn't even ventured outside of her hometown to earn her identity of Emma the Co-ed, possessor of a B.A. in pop culture.

She remembered one time when she was young, playing at night in her sandbox. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen the yellow glow of a troop of ghouls as they descended on the manor.

She'd fled inside, bursting through the door, screaming, "Run!"

Her aunts had all shared glances. Annika had appeared embarrassed, her stunningly beautiful face displaying a frown. "Emma, sweetling, what precisely do you mean by run? We don't run from anything. We're the creatures they run from, remember?"

How surprised they'd been when Emma had wanted this trip abroad. How shocked they would be that her finger was very decidedly pushing the lobby button of the elevator to take her to the Lykae waiting for her. After she'd called him a monster to his face, his eyes had flickered, then he'd stormed out of the room, ordering her to meet him at the car downstairs.

The car downstairs. Holy shite, was she really going to do this? As she descended, she did a quick mental tally of the pros and cons of cooperating and leaving with him.

Pros. She could possibly use him to finally understand more about herself and her nature, and he would kill any other vampire in sight, thereby protecting her from them.

Cons. He'd never told her whether he ultimately planned to kill her or not. The Lykae might protect her from the vampires, but who would have her back against him?

Her aunts might never run - but Emma excelled at it. Until she got into the car with him, she thought, she still had a chance...

When she exited the elevator, she spotted him through the lobby as he waited in the drive. His gaze was already locked on her. She took a steadying breath, glad for once that she and Regin had bickered - it always fired her up, sometimes enough to make Emma throw down her pompoms and toe the sideline.

He was standing beside a black sedan, a black... Mercedes? She raised an eyebrow. He'd rented what looked like a 500 series that was going to cost her a fortune to drop off in a different country. Werewolf couldn't find an S6?

Yes, he was a Lykae, but seeing him like this, she realized that no one would ever know he was of a different species. When he casually leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, he appeared human, just taller, stronger, with some kind of inexplicable pull.

Although he appeared relaxed, his eyes were watchful, and the streetlamps lit an expression that was intent and never wavering from her face. She suppressed the urge to glance behind her for the woman he was truly devouring with his eyes.

Was this whole scary situation worth it just so she could experience that look? Just so she could have the knowledge of what it was like to have a man like that look at her as if she were the only woman in the world?

All her life she'd lived in the shadow of her aunts, who were so stunningly lovely that eddas were written about them. Though Emma's mother was dead, Emma was still overwhelmed by universal tales of her fabled beauty.

Emma was scrawny, pale, and...befanged.

Yet a man this handsome was giving her a look that could smelt metal. If he hadn't terrified her and attacked her - if he could be the gentle lover who'd cupped her breast and rumbled in her ear that her skin was soft - would she leave with him? Her eyes met his. This male had touched her and made her feel things she hadn't before, things she'd envied others. Merely nestling her face against his naked chest had been a new experience that she would never trade for anything.

Feeling bolder, she allowed her gaze to flicker over his body before slowly inching back up to his face. He wasn't smirking or scowling, but looked as if he was thinking the same thoughts she was.

She found herself drawn to him, her mind and thoughts shutting down, like she was disconnected from reality. As her heels clicked across the lobby's marble floor toward him, her body seemed to come alive. He stood fully, visibly tensing.