A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark #2)(81)

After kissing the mark she’d just drawn from, she drifted into a fitful sleep full of dreams.

In one, she saw Lachlain’s office from his eyes. Harmann stood at the door with a pensive expression, clipboard in hand.

Lachlain’s voice rang in her head as though she were there. “There’s no chance of it, Harmann. We will no’ have bairns,” he said.

Expeditious Harmann had wanted to make preparations for the arrival of children, because as he’d said, “If you have vampire little ones, they will need special amenities. We can’t begin preparing soon enough.” He appeared anxious, as though he was already behind.

Lachlain believed he and Emma would have had incredible children—brilliant lasses with her beauty, and braw, wily lads with his temper. He might have felt a whisper of regret, but then he pictured her upstairs sleeping in his bed. How she would sigh in contentment when he joined her, and how he could coax her to take blood from his neck in her sleep.

She’d never known this—why was he doing it?

She heard his thoughts: Must make her stronger.

When he watched her sleeping, he often thought, My heart lies vulnerable outside my chest.

Emma flinched with shame. Her weakness made him worry about her constantly, worry so much that it even made him ill sometimes. He was so strong, and she was a liability.

He hadn’t told her he loved her, but his heart hurt—she felt it—with love for her, for his Emmaline.

Children? He would give up anything for her.

Could he give up his revenge? If he did, he would become a shell of himself….

The dream changed. Lachlain was in a dark, foul place that smelled of smoke and sulfur; his body was a knot of agony that she felt. He tried to stare down the two vampires, with their red, glowing eyes before him, but he could scarcely see from his own battered eyes. The vampire with the shaved head was Ivo the Cruel. The blond, tall one she knew through Lachlain’s hatred was…Demestriu.

Emma’s body tensed at the sight of him. Why did he seem familiar to her? Why did he stare into Lachlain’s eyes as though he were seeing…her?

Then came the fire.





30


E mma raised her face to the warmth of the rising moon as it filtered through the trees. She and Lachlain sat on opposite sides of a small fire he’d built to warm her further. The breeze that wisped through the great forest of Kinevane was chilly.

She knew others would enjoy such a romantic situation—two people alone, a fire crackling in the Highlands—but she was on edge and Lachlain clearly was as well. His gaze was locked on her every movement, no doubt scrutinizing her for a hint about what she’d dreamed.

She would love a hint, too.

Near sunset, she’d shot up in bed with hot tears streaming down her face and the entire castle quaking under an onslaught of lightning. Face drawn with panic, Lachlain had clasped her arms, shaking her and yelling her name.

Yet she didn’t remember the dream. N?x had told her that people couldn’t remember what they couldn’t handle. So what had been so bad that Emma had almost toppled a castle with lightning, then wiped it from her memory? All night, she hadn’t been able to shake an underlying feeling of dread. Just how heavy was this other shoe she sensed was about to fall?

“What do you think of that makes your expression so serious?” he asked.

“The future.”

“Why no’ relax and enjoy the present?”

“As soon as you let go of the past,” she countered.

He exhaled wearily and leaned back against a tree. “You ken I canna do that. Can we no’ speak of something else?”

“I know you won’t speak of the…torture. But how did Demestriu come to capture you in the first place?”

“Demestriu faced my father in the last Accession and slew him. My younger brother Heath could no’ handle the rage he carried. He obsessed on the fact that Demestriu took our father’s life—and then stooped to steal his ring, which had been passed down since metal was first forged. Heath told us he’d rather die than feel that way. He set out for Demestriu’s head and that damned ring, uncaring if we followed or aided him.”

“He wasn’t scared? To face him alone?”

“Emma, I believe in times of adversity there’s a line that is sometimes drawn, a line that separates your old life from your new. You cross the line, you’ll never be the same. Heath’s hatred made him cross the line, and he could never go back. He’d sealed his fate to one of two outcomes: Kill Demestriu, or die trying.”

His voice went low. “I searched everywhere for him, but Helvita is hidden mystically, like Kinevane is. I used everything I’d ever learned about tracking, and I believe I got close. That’s when they ambushed me.” His eyes were faraway. “Like a nest of vipers they rose up, attacking, then tracing, so I could no’ retaliate. There were too many.” He ran a hand over his face. “I later learned that they had no’ taken Heath alive.”

“Oh, Lachlain, I’m so sorry.” She sidled over to kneel beside his outstretched legs.

“It’s the way of war, I’m afraid,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’d lost two brothers before Heath.”

How much pain he’d endured, most of it at the hands of Demestriu. “I’ve never lost anyone I’ve known. Except Furie. But I can’t believe she’s dead.”