No Rest for the Wicked (Immortals After Dark #3)(3)

“Will you not?” His lips curled at the corners, but it was a sad smile.

Another tightening on the sword. She would. Of course, she would. Killing was her only purpose in life. She didn’t care if his eyes weren’t red. Ultimately, he would drink to kill, and he would turn.

They always did.

He stepped around a stack of hardbound books—some of the hundreds of texts throughout the room with titles imprinted in Russian and, yes, Estonian—and leaned his massive frame against the crumbling wall. He truly wasn’t going to raise a hand in defense.

“Before you do, speak again. Your voice is beautiful. As beautiful as your stunning face.”

She swallowed, startled to feel her cheeks heating. “Who do you align with . . . ?” She trailed off when he closed his eyes as though listening to her were bliss. “The Forbearers?”

That got him to open his eyes. They were full of anger. “I align with no one. Especially not them.”

“But you were once human, weren’t you?” The Forbearers were an army, or order, of turned humans. They refused to take blood straight from the flesh because they believed that act caused bloodlust. By forbearing, they hoped to avoid becoming like crazed Horde vampires. The Valkyrie remained unoptimistic about their chances.

“Yes, but I’ve no interest in that order. And you? You’re no human either, are you?”

She ignored his question. “Why do you linger here in this castle?” she asked. “The villagers live in terror of you.”

“I won this holding on the battlefield and rightly own it, so I stay. And I’ve never harmed them.” He turned away and murmured, “I wish that I did not frighten them.”

Kaderin needed to get this killing over with. In just three days, she was to compete in the Talisman’s Hie, which was basically a deadly, immortal version of The Amazing Race. Besides hunting vampires, the Hie was the only thing she lived for, and she needed to confirm transportation and secure supplies. And yet she found herself saying, “They told me you live here alone.”

He faced her and gave a sharp nod. She sensed that he was embarrassed by this fact, as if he felt lacking that he didn’t have a family here.

“How long?”

He hiked his broad shoulders, pretending nonchalance. “A few centuries.”

To live solitary for all that time? “The people in the valley sent for me,” she said, as if she had to explain herself. The inhabitants of the remote village belonged to the Lore—a population of immortals and “mythical” creatures kept secret from humans. Many of them still worshipped the Valkyrie and provided tributes, but that wasn’t what made Kaderin travel to such an isolated place.

The chance to kill even a single vampire had drawn her. “They pleaded for me to destroy you.”

“Then I await your leisure.”

“Why not kill yourself, if that’s what you want?” she asked.

“It’s . . . complicated. But you save me from that end. I know you’re a skilled warrior—”

“How do you know what I am?”

He gave a nod at her sword. “I used to be a warrior, too, and your remarkable weapon speaks much.”

The one thing she felt pride in—the one thing in her life that she had left and couldn’t bear to lose—and he’d noted its excellence.

He strode closer to her and lowered his voice. “Strike your blow, creature. Know that no misfortune could come to you for killing one such as me. There is no reason to wait.”

As if this were a matter of conscience! It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She had no conscience. No real feelings, no raw emotions. She was coldhearted. After the tragedy, she’d prayed for oblivion, prayed for the sorrow and guilt to be numbed.

Some mysterious entity had answered her and made her heart like ash. Kaderin didn’t suffer from sorrow, from lust, from anger, or from joy. Nothing got in the way of her killing.

She was a perfect killer. She had been for one thousand years, half of her interminable life.

“Did you hear that?” he asked. The eyes that had been pleading for an end now narrowed. “Are you alone?”

She quirked an eyebrow. “I do not require help from others. Especially not for a single vampire,” she added, her tone growing absent. Oddly, her attention had dipped to his body once more—to low on his torso, past his navel to the dusky trail of hair leading down. She imagined grazing the back of one of her sharp claws along it while his massive body clenched and shuddered in reaction.

Her thoughts were making her uneasy, making her want to wind her hair up into a knot and let the chill air cool her neck—

He cleared his throat. When she jerked her gaze to his face, he raised his eyebrows.

Caught ogling the prey! The indignity! What is wrong with me? She had no more sexual urges than the walking-dead vampire before her. She shook herself, forcing herself to remember the last time she’d faltered.

On a battlefield, an age ago, she had spared and released another of this ilk, a young vampire soldier who had begged for his life.

Yet he had seemed to scorn her for her very mercy. Without delay, the soldier had found her two full-blood sisters fighting in the flatlands below them. Alerted by a shriek from another Valkyrie, Kaderin had sprinted, stumbling down a hill draped with bodies, living and dead. Just as she’d reached them, he’d cut her sisters down.