Kresley Cole: MacRieve

“You ask about his before your own?”

“Munro craves his.” He needed that female in order to get the bairns he was keen to have. He longed for offspring more than a mother hen did. Already his brother was fostering two Lykae lads in their house.

Yet Munro had best be careful what he wished for; an old oracle had once predicted he’d be cursed with a “harridan” for his mate.

“And you don’t crave yours? Spill to Nïxie. I won’t tell anyone anything. This night is our little secret. ”

As if those words weren’t disturbing enough to Will, Nïx’s bat chose that moment to climb down her front, unfurling its wings to span her collarbones, its wee talons embedded in her shirt.

“It’s complicated.” He’d once thought he’d possessed his mate. What a bluidy fool you were.

“Don’t make me turn this car around, wolf.”

He raised a brow. “Verra well. I’ve envied other males who’ve found theirs. But I’m no’ in a good place right now.” He pulled on his collar. Understatement. Hi then, I’m MacRieve, and this is my Lykae beast. Get used to him, because you’ll be seeing a lot of him.

Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Have you foreseen mine, then?”

“Oh! Here’s my exit!” With expert precision, Nïx cut across the second lane of traffic to an off-ramp. They turned, still in reverse, onto a smaller country road.

Before he could repeat his question, Nïx asked, “So what are you going to wear to the apocalypse? I’m thinking something sparkly and transfixing.”

“Apocalypse?”

“We all must band together, enemies and allies, gods and men. Or they will win.”

“And who would they be, Valkyrie?”

“The Møriør. Bringers of Doom. By the time I even foresee them, it’s already too late.”

Ominous words. “You can’t drop a line like that without unpacking it.”

“Just did, You-Lame !”

“It’s MacRieve!”

“Where?” she gasped, jerking a glance toward the side of the road. She swerved sharply before righting the car. They collected another horn honk.

“Nïx, answer me.”

She faced him again, waving that away. “Let’s just put it this way: smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

Will tried to muster the appropriate apocalyptic concern. But if you’d lived as long—and as badly—as he had, impending end-of-world scenarios lost their bite.

Nïx’s expression perked up. “Here’s our turn.”

He finally twisted in his seat to glance over his shoulder. It was a dirt road overgrown with banana trees and kudzu. As they wound deeper into a gloomy, fog-laden swamp, Will again felt sorry for this Bentley.

After bottoming out—backward—for a fourth time, Nïx pulled into a small clearing and parked. “Oh. We ended up being early.”

“For what?” Did she want to show him something out here? “Where are we?”

“Our destination. Consider it a waypoint.”

“Why? Am I going somewhere else?” he asked, the hair on the back of his neck rising. Was there a threat? He scented nothing, and his Instinct remained quiet.

But then, these days it was usually quiet.

In any case, Nïx would have foreseen any trouble, and she’d specifically driven to this place.

She turned to face him, giving him the full view of her crazy. The bat’s placement on her T-shirt made it seem like Bertil had been captioned SEXUALLY LIBERATED UNINHIBITED TART.

Nïx was so lovely and so . . . damaged.

“Let’s talk a sec, just you and me. Relax, don’t you trust me?” she asked in a playful tone.

“Face it, Valkyrie. There are few in the Lore that I trust, and you’re one of them.” She was a tested and true ally of the clan.

“How sweet, Ahllomeam—”

“ MacRieve, Nïx.” Just because she was trusted didn’t mean she couldn’t be a pain in the arse. “Could you call me MacRieve? Or wolf, or prick, or anything but my given name? Now, back to my mate. When will I find her?”

“Before Munro finds his.”

“That tells me nothing. Are we talking decades, centuries?”

“How boorish of me, divulging all while you’re divulging nothing.” She leaned in closer to him. “Look into my eyes. Let me see your history.”

History? Not just foresight? “I doona know about this—”

“Ruelle did a number on you,” she said softly. “But I already knew that.”

He jerked his head back. “And what have you heard, then?” Whisperings of his shameful time with the succubus had passed among the older Lykae of the clan.

Had other factions learned of that?

“Not heard , wolf. Seen . . .”

He swallowed. Could Nïx see that he’d wiped out most of his family by succumbing to that parasite? Could this Valkyrie see that Ruelle still seemed to control his mind and body even from beyond the grave?

When he had been not yet double-digits in age, that bitch had gotten her claws into him. And I’ve borne them in one way or another ever since.

She’d ruined the boy he’d been and perverted the man he would become.

Nïx gazed at him with pity, and he knew she could see. Gods, he despised the pitying looks. Had received them all his miserable life! Was he truly so pitiable? Just because I hate myself and have no control of my beast?

“Yes, wolf, I see all. And by all, I mean some. ”

Sweat dotted his upper lip.

“What is it the nymphs say about you? I remember! You’re all ‘good and fucked up,’ ‘dark and twisted.’ But they don’t know why. ”

They called him Bucket List, one to do before they died—because they knew they wouldn’t be getting vanilla.

He had nothing to give but dark and twisted.

Suddenly, he had difficulty catching his breath, as if a weight pressed on his chest. As if Ruelle pressed on his chest.

He wanted away from the soothsayer, from this car, this swamp, this bloody state. His earlier nonchalance had vanished. Mayhap it was time to return to the North—

“And then, as if Ruelle wasn’t bad enough,” Nïx said sadly, “you had to endure Dr. Dixon’s tortures.”

Will froze. He didn’t know this person. “Never heard of a Dr. Dixon.”

“The psychotic mortal scientist? From the Order’s island prison?” At his confounded look, she said, “Surely you must remember all those experiments she performed on you when you were captured by humans? Electrocutions, beatings, weapons testing, vivisection? How could you forget when she cracked open your chest with a rib separator and sliced out your still-beating heart? She beamed proudly as she showed it to you. Of course, she was only following Webb’s orders, but she did seem to take a sick interest in you.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “Nïx, these things have no’ happened to me. I’ve never met this Dixon woman or anyone named Webb.”

The Valkyrie looked puzzled. “You don’t remember being blasted with electricity, then trapped like an animal for weeks? After the prison overthrow, when everything was pandemonium and death, you organized the Vertas shifters, saving them from wholesale slaughter! That’s one of the reasons a wisewoman dispatched you there.”

“You are unnerving the hell out of me, Valkyrie.”

“Oh.” She frowned, petting her bat fitfully. “I must have misread the future for the past.” She shrugged. “It happens.”

“The future?” He swallowed. “You’re saying these things are going to happen to me?”

“Yes, wolf.” Nïx’s face abruptly went cold. “And all because you were betrayed by a soothsayer.”

Spotlights blazed around the car, temporarily blinding him. They were suddenly surrounded—by mortals with weapons.