Kresley Cole - Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Indeed, two swords in black leather sheaths crisscrossed her back.

Her blond hair cascaded all the way to her waist, except where it was braided into haphazard plaits that jutted out all over the top and sides of her head.

Declan suspected she would be as attractive from the front; Lorean females often were. He detested all immortals but especially the females. They used their seductive looks as a weapon, a tool to rob mortal men of their senses.

They will separate you from your purpose, lure you to your doom. How many times had his superior told him that?

A row of bushes between him and the house rustled. Another enemy lying in wait? The Valkyrie had plenty of adversaries. And they had no idea danger lurked so close—

The front doors burst open; a woman stormed outside.

Regin.

He released a sharp breath.

Those wild braids held her hair back from her face, revealing all her delicate features. Her cheekbones were high and defined, her nose pert. Blond brows drew together over her vivid amber eyes, and her full lips were parted.

She radiated a pure golden light.

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

She wasn’t the first unearthly beauty they’d tracked—the Order’s island compound was filled with them—so he would’ve thought himself prepared for her comeliness. But he feared she might be the most beautiful.

At least to me.

“Make a hole, bitches!” she yelled to the wraiths, tossing one of them … a braid of hair? When the red-robed beings parted, she strode down the steps, her thick-heeled boots clicking.

Out on the lawn, she stopped and cocked her head, drawing those swords with a lethal grace. One of her pointed ears was visible and clearly twitching as she scanned the night. She would see Declan … would sense him.

He was about to slip back when the bushes nearby rustled once more.

Without a second’s thought she dove into them, pouncing on whatever skulked there. A moment later, a ghoul’s severed head came flying out. When she bounded from the shrubs, her swords were already sheathed and twigs protruded from those haphazard braids. She reached up, felt them, then left them there with a shrug.

When a trio of other women staggered out onto the front porch, Regin held up the head and made an exaggerated curtsy. They cheered drunkenly. Witches, no doubt. They were the Valkyrie’s allies and notorious drunks.

One laughed, tripped over her own feet into a pratfall, then laughed again.

Regin turned back to face his direction. With her skin glowing brighter and her expression animated, she punted the ghoul’s head like a football, then shaded her eyes melodramatically. As it sailed far above him toward a nearby swamp, she cried, “It. Might. Go. All. The. … Way!”

She cannot be one thousand years old.

The witches cheered again.

That task completed, she plucked a sat-phone from a holster on her belt. She texted something, her fingers so fast they were a blur, then strolled over to her car and hopped inside. The engine purred when she started it. She pulled up in front of the house, honking the horn and rolling down the windows.

“Nïx!” she called. “Get your ass out here!” She said something to the witches in a lower voice, and they howled with laughter. But when Regin turned from them, her easy grin faltered, her demeanor preoccupied.

Another Valkyrie sauntered from that madhouse, a black-haired one with vacant eyes, cradling what looked like a paralyzed bat in one arm like a babe.

She had to be Nïx the Ever-Knowing, a powerful soothsayer. Though she looked to be in her mid-twenties, she was one of the oldest—and most crazed—immortals on record.

She wore a long, flowing skirt, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt that read VALKYRIE in big block letters with an arrow pointing up at her face.

Flaunting themselves. The arrogance. Christ, how he hated them.

She too proffered a braid to the wraiths— a toll of some sort? —then joined Regin in the car, blowing a kiss to the witches. The two Valkyrie pulled out, some asinine song blaring from the car stereo—the only lyrics were “Da-da-da.” They bobbed their heads in unison to the music.

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.

Regin the Radiant sensed some enemy was hot on her ass as she sped down dark country roads.

But she simply didn’t have time for a fight to the death just now. Regin had to reach Lucia before it was too late.

She adjusted the rearview mirror. “Are we being followed?”

Nïx nodded happily. “Usually.” She tapped her chin with her free hand. “You know, you think you don’t like it, but actually you’ll miss it when it’s gone.”

Regin scowled at her sister, doing her damnedest to ignore Bertil—the bat Nïx carried. It’d been a gift from a secret admirer . “Seeing as we’re on our way to the Loreport, you probably should tell me where I’m flying out to tonight.” Nïx’s last report on Lucia had her in the Amazon, of all places.

“Hmm. Should I remember?”

“Me. Meeting up with Lucia. Who’s gearing up to slay Cruach, her worst nightmare.” Crom Cruach was the ancient horned god of human sacrifices and cannibalism—and the monster who’d tricked Lucia into leaving Valhalla. Every five hundred years, he tried to escape his prison. For the last two times, Lucia—with Regin as her trusty wingman—had forcibly denied his parole. “Any of this ringing a bell, Nïx?”

Blankness.

“Gods, I don’t have time for this!” Lucia was out there alone; Cruach was rising nowish. And Nïx was spacing ?

“Don’t shriek,” Nïx chided. “You’ll hurt Bertil’s ears, and he needs them for echolocation.” As she stroked her new pet in a love-him-and-pet-him-and-call-him-George kind of way, her eyes were even more vacant than usual. Her visions of the future had been hitting her rapid-fire lately, and they were taking a toll.

Assholes were laying odds in the Lore betting book that Nucking Futs Nïx wouldn’t make it through this Accession with any remaining sanity intact. And there wasn’t a whole lot remaining.

“Don’t fret, love,” Nïx said reassuringly.

“How can I not fret …” Regin trailed off. “You’re talking to the freaking bat!”

She tickled its belly with a claw. “Coochy-coo.” Regin swore the bat smacked its lips with contentment, snuggling into her arm.

Had Nïx been feeding that little winged rat her blood? “Don’t you know that those things spread Cujos? Damn, Nïxie, you’re getting worse. Even more cray-cray than usual.”

She briefly glanced up. “That’s fair.”

“Uh-huh.” Regin downshifted, tires squealing as she swerved to dodge a roadkill-bound possum.

“But what about your own cray-crayness, Regin? You’ve been behaving very badly of late. Getting high on intoxispells and picking fights. You are acting out, and it simply must stop unless you invite me to join in.”

Also fair. But what else was Regin supposed to do? A year ago, she and Lucia had undertaken a badass mission to discover a way to defeat the unkillable Cruach forever. Instead of merely imprisoning him. They’d traveled all over the world together, risking their lives.

In other words, good times. But then Prince Garreth MacRieve, Lucia’s werewolf admirer, had started following her everywhere, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Regin’s solution? Euthanasia.