A Hunger Like No Other (2 page)

The human males she passed turned their heads slowly to regard her, frowns in place, sensing something, but unsure. Probably some genetic memory from long ago that signaled her as their wildest fantasy or their darkest nightmare.

Emma was neither.

She was a co-ed—a recent Tulane grad—alone in Paris and hungry. Weary from another failed search for blood, she sank onto a rustic bench beneath a chestnut tree, eyes riveted to a waitress drawing espresso at a café. If only blood poured so easily, Emma thought. Yes, if it came warm and rich from a bottomless tap, then her stomach wouldn't be clenched in hunger at the mere idea.

Starving in Paris. And friendless. Was there ever such a predicament?

Couples strolling hand in hand along the gravel walk seemed to mock her loneliness. Was it just her, or did lovers look more adoringly at each other in this city? Especially in the springtime.
Die, bastards.

She sighed. It wasn't their fault that they were bastards who should die.

She'd been spurred to enter this fray by the prospect of her echoing hotel room and the idea that she might find another blood pusher in the City of Light. Her former hookup had gone south—literally—fleeing Paris for Ibiza. He'd given little explanation for abandoning his job, saying only that with the “arrival of the risen king,” some “serious epic shit” was brewing in “gay Paree.” Whatever that meant.

As a vampire, she was a member of the Lore, that stratum of beings who'd convinced humans they existed only in imagination. Yet though the Lore was thick here, Emma had been unable to replace her pusher. Any creatures she could scout out to ask fled her solely because she was a vampire. They scurried without knowing that she wasn't even a full-blooded one, nor that Emma was a wuss who'd never bitten another living being. As her fierce adoptive aunts loved to tell everyone, “Emma cries her pink tears if she dusts a moth's wings.”

Emma had accomplished nothing during this trip that she'd insisted on taking. Her quest to uncover information about her deceased parents—her Valkyrie mother and her unknown vampire father—was a failure. A failure that would culminate in a call to her aunts to get them to retrieve her. Because she couldn't feed herself. Pitiful. She sighed. She'd be razzed about this for another seventy years—

She heard a crash, and before she even had time to feel
bad for the waitress getting docked, another crash and then another followed. She tilted her head in curiosity—just as a table umbrella across the walk shot fifteen feet up to be batted high in the sky, fluttering all the way to the Seine. A cruise boat honked and Gallic curses erupted.

Half-lit by the walk's torchlights, a towering man turned over café tables, artists' easels, and book stands selling century-old pornography. Tourists screamed and fled in the wake of destruction. Emma shot to her feet with a gasp, looping her satchel over her shoulder.

He was cutting a path directly to her, his black trench coat trailing behind him. His size and his unnaturally fluid movements made her wonder if he could possibly be human. His hair was thick and long, concealing half his face, and several days' growth of beard shadowed his jaw.

He pointed a shaking hand at her.
“You,”
he growled.

She jerked glances over both of her shoulders looking for the unfortunate
you
he was addressing. Her. Holy shite, this madman had settled on her.

He turned his palm up and beckoned her to come to him—as if he was confident she would.

“Uh, I-I don't know you,” she squeaked, trying to back up, but her legs immediately met the bench.

He continued stalking her, ignoring the tables between them, tossing them aside like toys instead of varying his direct pursuit of her. Furious intent burned in his pale blue eyes. She could sense his rage more sharply as he neared, unsettling her, because her kind were considered the predators in the night—never the prey. And because, at heart, she was a coward.

“Come.”
He bit out the word as though with difficulty and motioned for her again.

Eyes wide, she shook her head, then leapt backward over the bench, twisting in the air. She landed facing away from him and began speeding down the quay. She was weak, more than two days without blood, but terror made her quick as she crossed the Archevêché Bridge to exit the island.

Three . . . four blocks covered. She chanced a look behind her. Didn't see him. Had she lost him—? Sudden glaring music from her purse made her cry out.

Who in the hell had programmed the Crazy Frog ring tone into her cell phone? Her eyes narrowed. Aunt Regin. The world's most immature immortal, who looked like a siren and behaved like a frat pledge.

Cell phones in their coven were for dire emergency only. Ringers would disturb their hunting in the back alleys of New Orleans, and even a vibration would be enough to trigger a twitching ear in a low creature.

She flipped it open. Speak of the devil: Regin the Radiant.

“Little busy right now,” Emma snapped, taking another peek over her shoulder.

“Drop your things. Don't take time to pack. Annika wants you at the executive airport immediately.
You're in danger.”

“Duh.”

Click.
That wasn't a warning—that was narration.

She'd ask the details once she was on the plane. As if she'd needed a reason to return home. Just the mention of danger and she would scamper back to her coven, to her Valkyrie aunts who would kill anything that threatened her and keep malice at bay.

As she tried to remember her way to the airport where she'd landed, the rain started to fall, warm and light at first—
April lovers still laughing as they ran under awnings—but swiftly turning to pounding cold. She came to a crowded avenue, feeling safer as she wound through traffic. She dodged cars with their wipers and horns going full-force. She didn't see her pursuer.

With only the satchel slung around her neck, she traveled quickly, miles passing beneath her feet before she spied an open park and then the airfield just beyond it. She could see the diffused air around the jet engines as they warmed, could see the shades on every window already drawn tight. Almost there.

Emma convinced herself she'd lost him, because she
was
fast. She was also adept at convincing herself of things that might not be—good at pretending. She could pretend she took classes at night by choice, and that blushing didn't make her thirsty—

A vicious growl sounded. Her eyes widened, but she didn't turn back, just sprinted across the field. She felt claws sink into her ankle a second before she was dragged to the muddy ground and thrown onto her back. A hand covered her mouth, though she'd been trained not to scream.

“Never run from one such as me.” Her attacker didn't sound human. “You will no' get away.
And we like it.”
His voice was guttural like a beast's, breaking, yet his accent was . . . Scottish?

As she peered up at him through the rain, he examined her with eyes that were golden in color one moment, then flickering that eerie blue the next. No, not human.

Up close, she could see his features were even, masculine. A strong chin and jaw complemented the chiseled planes. He was beautiful, so much so that she thought he had to be a fallen angel. Possible. How could
she
rule out anything?

The hand that had been covering her mouth roughly grasped her chin. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on her lips—on her barely noticeable fangs.
“No,”
he choked out. “No' possible . . . .” He yanked her head side to side, running his face down her neck, smelling her, then growled in fury,
“Goddamn you.”

When his eyes turned blue sharply, she cried out, her breath seeming to leave her body.

“Can you trace?” he grated as though speech was difficult. “Answer me!”

She shook her head, uncomprehending. Tracing was how vampires teleported, disappearing and reappearing in thin air.
Then he knows I'm a vampire?

“Can you?”

“N-no.” She'd never been strong or skilled enough. “Please.” She blinked against the rain, pleading with her eyes. “You have the wrong woman.”

“Think I'd know you. Make sure, if you insist.” He raised a hand—to touch her? Strike her? She fought, hissing desperately.

A callused palm grasped the back of her neck, his other hand clenching her wrists as he bent down to her neck. Her body jerked from the feel of his tongue against her skin. His mouth was hot in the chill, wet air, making her shudder until her muscles knotted. He groaned while kissing her, his hand squeezing her wrists hard. Below her skirt, drops of rain tracked down her thighs, shocking her with cold.

“Don't do this!
Please
 . . .” When her last word ended with a whimper, he seemed to come out of a trance, his brows drawing together as his eyes met hers, but he didn't release her hands.

He flicked his claw down her blouse and sliced it and the
flimsy bra beneath open, then slowly brushed the halves past her breasts. She struggled, but it was useless against his strength. He studied her with a greedy gaze as rain splattered down, stinging her naked breasts. She was shivering uncontrollably.

His pain was so sharp it nauseated her. He could take her or he could tear open her unprotected belly and kill her . . . .

Instead he ripped open his own shirt, then placed his huge palms against her back to draw her to his chest. He groaned when their skin touched, and electricity seemed to flash through her. Lightning split the sky.

He rumbled foreign words against her ear. She felt they were . . .
tender
words, making her think she'd lost her mind. She went limp, her arms hanging while he shuddered against her, his lips so hot in the pouring rain as he ran them down her neck, across her face, even brushing them over her eyelids. There he knelt, clutching her; there she lay, boneless and dazed, as she watched the lightning slash above them.

His hand cradled the back of her head as he moved her to face him.

He seemed torn as he watched her with some fierce emotion—she'd never been looked at so . . . consumingly. Confusion overwhelmed her. Would he attack or let her go?
Let me go . . . .

A tear slipped down her face, warmth streaking down amidst the drops of rain.

The look disappeared.
“Blood for tears?”
he roared, clearly revolted by her pink tears. He turned away as if he couldn't stand to look upon her, then blindly swatted at her shirt to close it. “Take me to your home, vampire.”

“I-I don't live here,” she said in a strangled tone, staggered
by what had just occurred, and by the fact that he knew what she was.

“Take me to where you stay,” he ordered, finally facing her as he stood before her.

“No,” she amazed herself by saying.

He, too, looked surprised. “Because you doona want me to stop? Good. I'll take you here on the grass on your hands and knees”—he lifted her easily until she was kneeling—“till well after the sun rises.”

He must have seen her resignation because he hauled her to her feet and pushed at her to get her moving. “Who stays with you?”

My husband,
she wanted to snap.
The linebacker who's going to kick your ass.
Yet she couldn't lie, even now, and never would have had the nerve to provoke him anyway. “I am alone.”

“Your man lets you travel by yourself?” he asked over the downpour. His voice was beginning to sound human again. When she didn't answer, he said with a sneer, “You've a careless male for yourself. His loss.”

She stumbled in a pothole and he gently steadied her, then seemed angry with himself that he'd helped her. But when he led them in front of a car a moment later, he threw her out of the way, leaping back at the sound of the horn. He swiped at the side of the car, claws crumpling the metal like tinfoil, sending it skidding. When it finally stopped, the engine block dropped to the street with a thud. The driver threw open the door, dived for the street, then darted away.

Mouth open in shock, she frantically scrambled backward, realizing her captor looked as though he'd . . .
never seen a car.

He crossed to her, looming over her. In a low, deadly tone, he grated, “I only hope you run from me again.”

He snatched her hand and again lifted her to her feet. “How much farther?”

With a limp finger, she pointed out the Crillon on Place de la Concorde.

He gave her a look of pure hatred. “Your kind always had money.” His tone was scathing. “Nothing's changed.” He knew she was a vampire. Did he know who or what her aunts were? He must—otherwise how could Regin have known to warn her about him? How could he know her coven was well-off?

After ten minutes of her being dragged across avenues, they pushed past the doorman of the hotel, garnering stares as they entered the palatial lobby. At least the lights were dimmed. She pulled her soaked jacket over her ruined blouse and kept her head down, thankful that she'd braided her hair over her ears.

He released the vise-grip on her arm in front of these people. He must know that she wouldn't attract attention.
Never scream, never draw the attention of humans.
They were always more dangerous in the end than any of the thousands of creatures of the Lore.

When he draped his heavy arm across her shoulders as if they were together, she glanced up at him from under a wet lock of hair. Though he walked with his broad shoulders back, like he owned this place, he was examining everything as if it was new to him. The phone ringing made him tense. The revolving doors had done the same. Though he hid it well, she could tell he was unfamiliar with the elevator and hesitated to enter. Inside the lift, his size and his energy made the generous space seem cramped.