Dark Desire After Dark

11

I guess we're keeping the conspicuous car?" Holly asked when Cade pulled onto the highway, going north.

"For now. We've got to get out of town fast. Coincidentally, this car hauls ass."

"Where are we headed first?"

"Memphis. Nïx said she put the directions in your bag."

Holly reached into the backseat, grabbing the heavy satchel her aunt had given her. Inside, she found her passport, a handwritten letter, a map with an X right above Memphis, and two weighty tomes. One was called The Living Book of Lore, the other The Book of Warriors.

As she pulled out the letter, Holly asked, "Why did Nïx seem vacant at times?"

Cade sipped his Red Bull, never glancing her way. "She's so busy seeing the future, she spaces out in the present. You get used to it. Plus she's over three thousand years old."

That was mind-boggling. Nïx had looked the same age as Holly. "How old are you?"

"Nearly a millennium." Cade looked no more than thirty-four or thirty-five.

"You weren't kidding about being medieval. Why isn't your accent?"

"Lorekind adapt to evolving languages and dialects. It's unconscious."

When Holly cracked open the letter's black wax seal, Cade leaned over to scan the contents.

She turned down the corner of the letter until he shrugged and faced forward again. Then she read the flourishing script, or tried to—her glasses actually seemed to make it harder…

Dearest Niece,

Welcome to the family at last!

This letter will explain more that I didn't have time to. Inside your welcome package you'll find two books. One is the story of our origin and a record of the Valkyrie's noblest warriors. Your mother's history is among them.

Your father was a human civil engineer, the great love of Greta's life. He was killed in a revenge hit for one of her vampire raids before Greta even knew about you.

Revenge hit? Vampire raid? "Is Lorekind more violent than humankind?" she asked Cadeon.

Without turning to her, he said, "A lot more. We've got constant wars going on."

"Constant wars," she repeated. Why would someone like Holly ever want to descend into this new, even more tumultuous world…?

Greta was heartbroken to give you up, but it's the Valkyrie way to relinquish human offspring. And we all thought you were mortal. She did it with love in her heart for you. Never doubt that.

Holly didn't. She now knew that her placement with the loving Ashwins hadn't been an accident.

The second book will explain some of the aspects of this new world you've found yourself thrust into.

Read both tomes. There will be a quiz.

Now, I know that you expressed some doubts about staying a Valkyrie….

How could she know that? Unless…"She really is a soothsayer," Holly murmured.

Seeming to relax a bit, Cade said, "Oh, yeah."

But I ask that you at least give Valkyrism a sporting try. All the cool kids are doing it. And all you have to do is embrace everything you've ever feared and shunned for the last twenty years. Simple enough!

Lick Cade's horns for me, and, yes, you can treat him like a hireling if you wish, because that is certainly what he is—and what he's used to.

Lick his horns? Holly tried to act as if they weren't there at all, much less licking them!

Two tips: If you need to be certain that your erstwhile guardian is telling you the truth about anything, make him "vow it to the Lore." And if you don't want to get pregnant, don't eat. Valkyrie are infertile if they don't consume the fruits of the earth.

Warmly,

Nïx, Proto-Valkyrie, Soothsayer without Equal, Demigoddess, your loving auntie

Folding the letter, Holly sat stunned. Too much to think about. So much information, and she was only on the intro letter. Simply learning her father's occupation was momentous for her.

With a sigh, she pulled out The Book of Warriors and flipped to the "Origin of the Valkyrie" section—and found herself growing enthralled with the tale.

The Lore said that millennia ago, the gods Wóden and Freya were awakened from a decade of sleep by a maiden warrior's scream as she died in battle. Freya had marveled at the maiden's valor and wanted to preserve it, so she and Wóden struck the human with their lightning.

The maiden woke in their great hall, healed but unaltered—still mortal—and pregnant with an immortal Valkyrie daughter.

In the ages that passed, their lightning would strike dying women warriors from all species of the Lore—from Furies to shapeshifters to Lykae.

Freya and Wóden gave the daughters Freya's fey looks and his cunning, then combined these traits with the mother's courage and individual ancestry. The daughters were all half sisters, each one unique; but according to the Lore, one could always recognize a Valkyrie if her eyes fired silver with strong emotion.

Holly glanced up. "Did my eyes turn silver tonight?"

Cadeon nodded, finally giving her a glance. "It's how I knew you'd turned Valkyrie, or had begun to." He rubbed his palms on his jeans, briefly steering with his knees. "All Lorekind have eyes that turn a specific color." Cadeon's had been black.

Running her pearls along her lips, she pondered this new information. If Holly believed this legend, then that would mean that she was the granddaughter of Norse gods.

It was one thing for an adopted person to find out he or she came from a family of wealth or fame. But this was ridiculous.

And yet, this information explained so much about herself that she'd never understood, things that a pompous psychiatrist had been all too ready to medicate away.

Her obsession with shining jewels? All Valkyrie had it, because they'd inherited their acquisitiveness from Freya.

Holly's captivation with lightning and her "uncontrollable urges" to run out into thunder storms? Valkyrie derived nourishment from electricity, taking energy from the earth. Lightning was how the species was first created—and how Holly was first turned.

She wondered if her "grandparents" had struck her with that comforting bolt, or if the lightning had been drawn to her during her emotional turmoil.

And Holly's freakish strength that she'd fought so hard to disguise? Valkyrie were preternaturally strong, fierce, and warlike.

As well as amorous…

She remembered the first time she'd been in bed with a male, a schoolmate named Bobby Thibodeaux. They'd been sixteen, and a few of Bobby's unpracticed kisses had made her crazed. She'd leapt upon him, overpowering him.

Holly had been so caught up, she hadn't realized how distressed he'd become. She'd eventually registered that he'd stopped kissing her back—and that her fingernails had been digging into his arms, holding him as he'd desperately tried to get out from under her.

As he'd gaped up at her in fear, she'd blinked down at him. As though someone else had inhabited her body, she'd throatily murmured, "I guess we should part ways here?" When she released him, he'd fled.

Once Bobby's tales had made the rounds at school, no boy would ask her out, so she'd buried herself even more in her studies.

In fact, she hadn't attempted to be intimate with another male until her first year in college. The only thing different about that encounter was that she'd grown more aggressive and even stronger.

Shaking away that memory, Holly turned to Greta's page in The Book of Warriors. Greta the Bold had been a master strategist and had led troops of Valkyrie, witches, and Furies in the great Battle of the Plains of Doom.

If the dates of that battle were correct, then Greta had gone to war when she'd been pregnant with Holly. Six years later, Greta had lost her life on the front line in the infamous Eighteen-Night Siege.

Holly was struck by the fact that if a new world existed, then she would have an entirely new history to learn.

Suddenly feeling exhausted, she dragged the weighty Living Book of Lore onto her lap without enthusiasm. Scanning the pages, she found encyclopedic entries on each of the "known species." After a brief intro, a more detailed history would follow. Flipping through, she found everything from wraiths and sirens, to Wendigos and demonarchies….

"Do you want something to eat or drink?" Cadeon asked.

She wasn't hungry whatsoever. "Do you have anything to drink other than Red Bull?"

He pulled a bottle of water from the space behind her seat, handing it to her. My favorite brand.

"Thanks." She carefully twisted the cap, determined not to touch—

Crap! She'd touched the bottle rim. With a sigh, she put the cap back on and placed the bottle at her feet.

"Something wrong with the water?"

She debated not answering, but figured he'd encounter all her quirks over the next couple of weeks anyway—the eating difficulties, the germophobia, the endless arranging.

"I touched the rim." She put her chin up. "There was transference. I can't drink it now."

Instead of laughing at her, he reached behind her seat to grab another bottle. He opened it without contaminating the rim, then handed it to her. "These shorter caps must be a pain in the ass."

Her lips parted. She'd complained to Mei about the newfangled caps just the other week.

"So, you feeling overwhelmed yet?" he asked.

"A tad." She took a drink. She continued to feel as if she were reading fiction—as if all of this were far too fantastic to be true.

Even when a thousand-year-old demon sat a foot from her.

"Read the book to me, and I'll add details or explain things."

"How can I trust you? You said Valkyrie are docile. In The Book of Warriors, I read about Kaderin the Coldhearted, an assassin who strings up fangs collected from the heads of vampires she's decapitated. And then there is Emmaline the Unlikely, who slew her own father. Cut him up into three pieces." Three. I like Emmaline already. "Clearly, they are the picture of docility."

"Like I said, I was just having a bit of fun. It'd be like saying sirens don't like to sing."

She tilted her head at him. "So if I had questions, you'd answer them truthfully?"

"Yeah, if you answer questions about yourself."

She didn't see the harm. "Very well. I'll start. How many demonarchies are there? Where are they?"

"There are hundreds. Almost every breed of demon—from the smoke demons like Rök to the pathos demons—has a kingdom of some kind, usually in a separate plane."

"Separate plane? There are such things?"

He nodded. "There are more dimensions than can be mapped."

"What's your kingdom called?"

"Rothkalina." When he said it, his accent became more pronounced, as if even the mention of his home brought on keen feeling.

"How do you get there?" she asked.

"The most accessible portal is in southern Africa."

And that explained the accent. "So does it look like an alternate universe? Does it have purple skies and a green sun?"

"Nah. Rothkalina looks a lot like the west coast of North America."

"Oh," she said, feeling a bit silly. Then she frowned. "But if Omort is a sorcerer, why would he want to take over a demon kingdom?"