Lothaire (Immortals After Dark #12)(109)

She made him feel young and alive.

Elizabeth Daciano was a drug to a male like Lothaire.

So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that she was drifting away from him?

He bent down to press his lips to hers, taking her soothing scent within him. “Will you worry for me when I’m gone?”

She shook her head. “But I’ll pity anyone who crosses you.”

His chest bowed. Like a drug, Elizavetta . . .

Reluctantly he traced away. As soon as he appeared in Erol’s oyster-shell parking lot, he perceived a heavy presence. Dorada was nearby.

Rain drizzled, thunder rumbling. Music blared from inside the dilapidated shack of a bar. The scents of so many of his enemies muddled together in one place had him wishing he’d brought a mystical bomb. To eradicate them all so easily . . .

No. Focus.

He crossed to the black water’s edge, spying an old duck blind far out in the middle of a cove. Tracing to the blind, he crouched atop it, listening for Dorada.

Over the strengthening rain, he heard only expected sounds—reptiles gliding through the swamp, a stray Valkyrie shriek. He scented the wet air, perceived a faint trace of Dorada’s rotted skin, but couldn’t pinpoint its source.

In the past, he would have waited here until dawn, stalking his enemy, envisioning their upcoming battle in gory detail.

Now he was impatient, knowing his thoughts would grow more chaotic every moment he was away from Elizabeth.

Lightning forked out above, momentarily setting the bayou aglow. The reflective eyes of Lore creatures flashed all around the water. None were his prey.

Where are you, Dorada? He didn’t have time to pursue her—

His head jerked around as he caught that scent once more. He lunged into a trace, landing at the perimeter of the bayou, spinning in place. The smell seemed to come from all around him.

Then I’ll scour every inch of this godsforsaken mire. Half tracing, half sprinting, he began to cover ground, dematerializing through thickets of briars, then charging around trees.

The winds began to howl, sheeting the rain sideways, dispersing the scent. Still he ran, his thoughts growing as tangled as the underbrush. Find Dorada. Slay her. Then nothing will distract me from the ring.

He’d considered forgiving the Blademan’s debt in exchange for Webb’s location. After all, Chase surely hated Webb; the commander had gone behind his back and had Regin “studied.”

But Lothaire knew the Blademan would tell him nothing. He despised Lothaire even more than he did the man who’d ordered his female cut open—while she was conscious.

Navigating a dense stand of cypress, Lothaire ducked under a limb,

startling a pack of crocodilae shifters and the nymphs who slummed with them.

The beings beheld him, screamed with fear, then scattered in all directions.

He didn’t spare them even a hiss. That scent . . . why couldn’t he run it to ground . . . ?

No, there’d be no negotiating with the Blademan; tapping into Chase’s memories was Lothaire’s only hope of reclaiming his ring. Yet instead of dreaming them, he’d continued to experience his own.

His last? Lothaire had relived the night he’d finally captured Stefanovich for Fyodor, ages after Lothaire’s torture had ended.

In a mindless rage, Lothaire tortured Stefanovich for hours—days—reveling in his father’s pleas for mercy. Once Fyodor gave the order, Lothaire raised his sword for the deathblow, steadying enough to comprehend that the king’s heart was beating. “Blyad’! He’s been blooded, Uncle.”

Fyodor looked aghast. “Then he might have sired a secret heir.” He pressed his own sword edge against Stefanovich’s throat, beginning to slice it back and forth. “Where is your Bride?”

“Dying,” Stefanovich grated with difficulty; he was scarcely alive himself. “Like the others.”

Female vampires had been afflicted in number by some kind of plague. King Stefanovich considered this such an embarrassing sign of weakness—immortals succumbing to sickness!—that he’d kept the tragedy secret, disseminating wild rumors. . . .

“And where is your heir?” Lothaire asked, preparing for another round of torture.

“Where you’ll never find him, bastard.”

But Lothaire had.

Moving like a shadow, silent as death, he loomed over a cradle. A fair-haired infant gazed up at him, grasping his finger with a tiny hand. . . .

Why see this scene again? What was his consciousness telling him?

When dawn neared, he eased his unrelenting pace, lurching to a stop. Sweat poured down his back and face to mingle with the rain.

He cast an accusing look at the lightening sky. Lothaire had uncovered no signs of Dorada. That heavy presence had faded to nothing.

Yet another wasted night. Will this be the one when my mind fails me for good? He squeezed his head in his hands.

Though he’d given only passing thought to his crowns, his apprehension for Elizabeth was ceaseless, grinding him down, as the earth had once done centuries before.

Want her so much! What the hell am I going to do?

Eventually, he would find the ring. Then three scenarios would open up before him.

He could wish to go back in time, erasing his vows completely. While there, he’d cast out Saroya, then take time to court Elizabeth, treating her like a queen.

Or he could wish to go back, yet be denied—the vows themselves might prevent him from using the ring in that fashion. He’d made an oath to do everything in his power to transform Saroya into an immortal and to extinguish Elizabeth.