A Hunger Like No Other

'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