Dreams of a Dark Warrior (Immortals After Dark, #10)

by Kresley Cole

Just before his breaths ceased, he vowed, “Somehow, love . . . I will find you.”

“Check yourself before you wreck yourself?” If I hear that one more *$#&%@! time . . . —Regin the Radiant, Valkyrie, prankster, modern-day swordswoman

The only good immortal is a dead immortal. —Declan Chase, magister of the Order

Drops of perspiration trickled down his chest, over the countless scars covering his torso. His never-ending reminders of a time spent in hell . . . .

A feeling of recognition swept over him. At once, the near crippling tension he’d endured for decades began to ebb. Why? How?

But he feared she might be the most beautiful. At least to me.

As they passed, he drew back into the brush, his heart thundering. But the dark-haired one turned, looking directly at him with eerie golden eyes. Just as the hair on the back of his neck stood up, the soothsayer mouthed, You’re late.

“I need to keep moving anyway. You know he’s returning soon.” Aidan. With his heart-stopping smile and big, possessive hands. Though she longed to see her Viking in any reincarnation, she’d decided that he might actually live a full life if he never found her.

“Have you truly given up all hope of finding a way to be with him?” Regin glanced over at her, trying not to feel even a sliver of hope. “Any reason not to give up?”

“Unless you can tell me things might be different this time?” Regin added. Damn, could she sound more desperate? But Nïx helped other immortals with things like this. Why not me?

“To break this curse, I would do just about anything.”

If the rest of her sisters—or, gods forbid, her witch buddies—found out Regin hadn’t been laid in nearly two hundred years, she’d never live it down. But like some stupid, sappy tool, she stayed faithful to Aidan and his reincarnates.

Once he’d reached the Quarter, he quickly spotted Regin’s car, parked half on the street, half on the curb. A three-hundred-thousand-dollar car treated like junk. He’d throttle her just for abusing a car that fine.

As Declan trailed her, even he felt his shaft twitch, as if trying to stir for her—though his “medicine” would make that impossible.

Hair whipping all around her face, she took the electricity, seeming to consume it. Lips curling, she stabbed her swords back into their sheaths and opened her arms wide. Her lids briefly slid shut in pleasure. As he ran, he inexplicably shuddered in reaction. Thoughts arose that never should, impulses long denied . . . .

Rage erupted within Declan. The strength and speed he fought so hard to hide rose to the fore. Blood pumped to his muscles, his thoughts dimming.

Declan stole behind her, wrapping one arm around her neck to yank her back into him. He inhaled her scent, felt her body, hesitated. Stab her, incapacitate her.

Her little body trembled against him, her skin cooling as her light dimmed. Wrong! his mind screamed.

Her shirt rode up, revealing the bloody wound Declan had given her. Why was he sickened? He raked his hand through his hair, then squeezed his forehead. His skull felt like it was splitting.

He’d almost wished his hands had been bare when he’d taken her. To feel a woman’s flesh after so long . . . He’d craved touching her even as he’d stabbed her.

The betrayed look in the Valkyrie’s eyes still confounded him. When capturing immortals, he’d been critically injured, even bespelled once; but never had one looked at him with recognition and then . . . hurt. As if he’d broken the gravest promise. Never had he nearly vomited in the midst of a capture.

What is this? Why did Declan feel like he’d die if he didn’t see her that second? He recalled that expression of ecstasy on her face—and the way he’d responded. He remembered his thoughts at that moment, was shamed by the ideas that had arisen. To touch that glowing skin, to be burned by it . . .

When he’d seized her in his arms, he’d nearly groaned. That had been the most his body had touched a female’s in years. Her scent and curves had tantalized him.

He’d been Aidan, returned once more.

But never in his other lifetimes had he harmed her. If he was truly Aidan, then surely those other men were evil, and he’d had to play along. By twisting the knife?

He’d been so fast, powerful. No surprise there. In each reincarnation, he’d been a berserker, even if he hadn’t known it.

He was middle-aged, probably upper thirties, with a strong jaw, broad cheekbones—and Aidan’s eyes. In this face, they looked cold. Though for one brief moment tonight, they’d glowed with a berserker’s light—the telltale sign she’d spied while bleeding out in the street.

It was either Irish or lowlands Scot. This Aidan version was Celtic. Before, he’d been a French knight, a Spanish privateer, and an English cavalryman.

Unless she planned for me to get captured. Knowing Nïx, she probably considered all this a date that she’d set up between Regin and Aidan.

She could shriek before he could shoot her, blowing out the glass of this aircraft. She might survive a crash. Aidan would be done for. Even now she hesitated to harm him. “I can’t tell you how much you would regret that.”

“No, not because of revenge. You’ll regret hurting me.”

Once he remembered, his actions would put him to his knees with misery.

My man is responsible for all this?

On this night, Declan had savored the feel of a captive’s body in his arms. And I’m . . . changing. His doses could barely control it.

Instead of feeling satisfaction to see her like this, he suffered more of that inexplicable conflict within him. He’d done his duty with her. So why this . . . guilt?

thought ye weren’t to come a’tall . . . .” Then she passed out. Declan yanked off his empty condom. I didn’t. Already anticipating the misery to follow, he’d gnashed his teeth, struggling to finish like a man. And couldn’t. He gazed over at her, feeling the strain build. Wrong. Wrong girl beside him, wrong time, wrong place.

He shot upright, shoving his fist against his mouth to hold down whatever meager slop he’d forced himself to eat during the day. Chills seized him, his muscles shaking. He felt this way every time he was with a woman.

For as long as he could remember, he’d had a frenzied sense that he was supposed to be doing something. No matter where he was, he felt like he was supposed to be somewhere else.

After sex, it grew stronger, like a beast lived inside him, clawing at his insides to get free. Though only seventeen, he was ready to give up women altogether.

“I’m beggin’.” He was about to vomit. The dealer clearly thought it was from withdrawal. No, from madness, more like. He’d do anything to avoid what awaited him. Anything.

“There’s got to be something I can give ye?”

He hadn’t known Declan Chase would suck for it. ...

God, to become a thing like that . . . Nothing that a Glock to the mouth can’t cure, Dekko.

“I recalled something I’d heard about you. Aren’t you supposed to have a kiss that drugs men?” “So everyone says.”

Aidan had sworn her lips were like a drug. And with each reincarnation, her kiss had triggered his memories. As soon as their lips touched, his past assailed him.

“I finally understand what a dickie-do is. Your gut does stick out more than your dickie do.”

“He’s like six hundred years younger than you are.” Regin pointed a finger at the ceiling and declared, “I refuse to be the moral compass of our cell! Most weekends I have an intoxispell bong attached to my mouth like a respirator. I love scatological humor, and I list ‘pranks involving nuclear waste’ and ‘making demons eat things’ as my hobbies.”

“Valkyrie, if there was ever a cradle to be robbed . . . Gods, just look at him.”

Lothaire had that harvesting ability and was one of the oldest vampires alive, yet his eyes hadn’t turned fully red. Somehow he’d refrained from drinking as much as his brethren, shrewdly clinging to what little sanity he still possessed. The Enemy of Old was an anomaly.

She’d been braiding her hair into haphazard plaits that he somehow found pleasing to the eye—though one would think she’d grow more proficient at braiding after a thousand years.