Valtteri turned a surprised look toward Erik, and the Huntsman raised an eyebrow and nodded, smiling. The Finn looked at Nika next, and she sidled closer to him, as well.

  “I want to make this trip…very… memorable.”

  She glanced at Erik and thought to him, Am I coming on too strong?

  He’s a twenty-something male and you’re a beautiful woman, Erik replied. There’s no such thing as too strong.

  “Wow. Me? Uh…with… both of you?”

  Erik smiled at him, his blue eyes twinkling, the faintest hint of Draugr fire dancing in his irises. “Is that a problem?”

  The young man looked like he thought he’d just won the lottery. “Oh, no! Not at all. It’s just… I’m not….”

  “Neither am I.”

  “So, what….”

  Nika leaned forward and kissed the young man, her hand cupping his face. He returned the touch eagerly. She broke the kiss and leaned back, whispering, “He likes to watch.”

  Valtteri’s face nearly split in two from his grin. “Well… wow. I have a room here… Do you…”

  Erik put his glass down, the alcohol untouched. “Let’s go.”

  They rode up the elevator together, Valtteri standing between the two vampires. Nika ran her hand down his chest, her eyes locked with his, the Draugr lights shining. Erik smiled. She was a fast study, just like he knew she’d be.

  When they reached the appropriate floor, the young man produced his key card and handed it to Erik. While Valtteri put his hands on Nika, kissing her and cupping her round buttocks, Erik opened the lock. The three of them went inside, and then Erik secured the door behind them.

  I don’t want to go to bed with him, Nika told him telepathically. What do I do?

  You’ve got him on the hook. Now put him to sleep and make him forget all about us.

  But… how? She sounded near panic.

  I will do it. Watch from inside my mind.

  He could feel her piggy backing onto him as he gently interceded between his woman and their prey. Valtteri looked up at Erik in confusion as the much bigger Draugr pushed him onto the mattress.

  “I thought you said you weren’t gay,” he accused.

  “I’m not.” He smiled and brushed a hand across the mortal’s forehead. The green lights danced in his eyes again. With a voice more mental than physical, he said, “Sleep…”

  Valtteri fell back onto the bed, his head lolling. Erik followed him down, whispering in his ear.

  “You will remember an incredible sexual experience with a beautiful woman, and that her boyfriend simply watched. It was erotic, and it was exciting, and it left you tired.”

  He pushed his power into the mortal’s mind, conveying the words as it went. Valtteri moaned and gripped the bedclothes in his hands, lost in the fantasy his mind had been told to create.

  Erik sat up and held out a hand to Nika. “Do you see?”

  “I know what you did, but I don’t know if I can,” she admitted.

  He smiled. “Practice makes perfect. Now he’s ours. Open his vein.”

  Nika knelt beside the moaning Finn, and she looked up at Erik uncertainly. He smiled encouragement and nodded to her, letting his eyes gain the brightly glowing green of his full vampire self instead of just the sparks that had burned there until now. His teeth lengthened in his mouth. She followed his lead, and her Draugr came forward. She leaned over the young man’s throat and sniffed delicately at the corner of his jaw.

  “Here?” she asked.

  Erik stroked her back with one hand. “Wherever you like.”

  He could sense her hesitation, but she mastered her nerves and pressed her mouth to the man’s throat. He knew how it felt to have a pulse pounding against thirsty lips, and he knew that if she let it, the feeling would take her. She just needed to let her new nature take its course.

  She pushed her fangs into the man’s vein, and Erik could hear the soft puncturing sound of tooth penetrating skin. Then there was the scent of blood and the sound of Nika’s mouth, her lips and tongue working at the bite. Her eyes were closed, and she was lost in the feeling of the feeding. It was the sexiest thing Erik had ever seen.

  He took Valtteri’s hand and sank his own fangs into the soft inside of his wrist. The Finn’s blood splashed onto his tongue, and he shivered at the tingling pulse of it. He drew once, twice, then licked the bite wound, healing it shut.

  Nika was clutching onto their prey, pressing her mouth harder into him, forcing her fangs deeper. She was still too young to have developed much in the way of blood control. He gently pulled her away, and though she fought him at first, she eventually obeyed.

  He stroked her hair and kissed her, reveling in the combined tastes of blood and her. She clung to him, and her fang grazed his lip, bringing a scarlet drop to the surface. She sucked it away, her mouth and tongue doing great damage to his self-control.

  Close his wound, he told her mentally, because his physical voice would have failed him. Lick it and it will seal. Your saliva will heal it.

  She backed away from him, releasing his lip with great reluctance, and bent to obey. She crouched over the sleeping Finn like a cat and sealed the bite wound she had opened. She licked the last of the blood away, lapping all traces of it from the man’s skin, her shoulders low and her hips high.

  Erik put his hands on her hips with gentle pressure, bringing her back to herself. She rose, pulling away from their prey, and she turned in his arms. The kiss she gave him was full of passion and promises, and his body sprang to respond.

  Not here, he told her, although he would have liked nothing better at that moment than to roll Valtteri onto the floor and to commandeer his bed. Not now.

  She nodded her understanding and pulled away from him, glancing down once at the outward evidence of his excitement. She grinned, biting her lower lip.

  “Hold that thought,” she told him. “I’ll race you back to the cottage.”

  “I’ll win,” he told her.

  She grinned wider. “Prove it.”

  He took her by the hand and hauled her up into his arms. Proof would be easy to come by. He opened the door to Valtteri’s balcony, and with his love clutched to his chest and his need aching for her, he took flight.

  ***

  He brought her to a secluded park in the city, a place where darkness was deep. She smiled at him. “This isn’t the cottage.”

  “It’s better,” he said, and kissed her.

  His kiss was insistent and deep, his tongue probing into her mouth to dance with her own. She wrapped her arms around him, and they lay on the soft grass, intertwined. He broke the kiss long enough to pull her shirt over her head and to fling his own aside, and then he returned, his body on top of hers.

  She moaned softly when she felt him hot and hard against her thigh, and she pulled him closer. Clothing was an obstacle that was easily overcome, and soon they were locked together, rocking in an endless rhythm. He was so strong and powerful, and his loving went so deep that she was breathless. She could feel him with every nerve ending in her body, and her spirit sang along, vibrating along their Chosen cord. They were connected in every way but one.

  He pressed his face to her shoulder, and in that instant, his beautiful neck was bared. She called down her fangs and pushed them into him, piercing the vein and bringing his sweet blood to the surface. She licked and suckled the wound she was making, and he moaned, bucking against her as his excitement skyrocketed. She crashed around him like a wave, shuddering in her pleasure, and he followed right behind.

  They stayed that way, utterly interconnected, for a long while. Finally, reluctantly, she pulled her teeth out of his salty flesh, and he sighed in contentment. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, lifting her off of the ground as he sat back on his heels. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked down into his rapture-moist eyes. He gave her a slow smile, and she kissed him, still feeling him deep inside of her.

  “This is heaven,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “No,” he breathed. “It’s better.”

  Chapter Four

  They spent the next two days in the comfort and safety of their rental cottage, drinking their dreyri, the lovers enjoying one another at sensuous length. On the day he was to meet with the First, Erik rose early to begin his trip to Stockholm. He left Nika sleeping in their bed, her scarlet hair spread like a pool across her pillow, her naked back smooth and flawless. He was tempted to kiss that back, to touch her perfect, milky skin, but he didn’t have time for such delightful distractions.

  He had arranged a private flight to Stockholm, and he had a plane to catch. He packed his weapons and ammunition and headed down the stairs.

  Magda was sitting on the living room floor, her eyes closed and her legs folded. She was meditating, and he tried to move through the room without disturbing her. Her eyes snapped open, though, and she stood in one fluid motion.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Magda scowled. “Don’t argue. And don’t think I’m coming because I have any loyalty to you. I want to make sure you idiots don’t ruin my club.”

  “Fine. Come with, then.”

  She picked up her purse, and he held the door for her. The courtesy shuttle to the airport was already idling outside. The driver opened the door for them, and Erik waited while Magda slid into the back seat. He sat beside her, and the driver closed the door and returned to his seat.

  “What will you do if they don’t answer your summons?” Magda asked him.

  He shrugged. “Hunt them down, I suppose. That is what I was made for.”

  She smirked. “Indeed. And you’ve been very good at it in the past.”

  “I know.”

  The driver glanced at them in the rear-view mirror, eavesdropping. Magda glared at him, and he turned his eyes back to the road. Erik chuckled.

  She turned that glare onto him. “What are you laughing at, Thorvald?”

  “You. You’re so irascible.”

  Magda raised an eyebrow. “Irascible? That’s an impressive word for a walking beefcake like you to use.”

  He laughed. “I’m full of surprises.”

  “You always are. And they’re not always the good kind.”

  Erik considered her for a moment, a thousand years of memories running through his mind. Softly, he said, “It hasn’t always been that bad, has it?”

  She turned her green eyes onto his face, and something in her gaze softened for the first time in centuries. “Not always,” she admitted. “When you’re not in Sweden, it’s much more tolerable.”

  He shook his head and turned away, looking out the window at the passing city lights. The airport was not far from the hotel, and from there it would be a short flight to Stockholm.

  He wondered how many of his remaining comrades would be there for the meeting. He hoped that at least Bjorn would show up, since he was responsible for bringing the raiding party back into existence. He needed to talk to them about their attacks on faery settlements and the consequences for those actions.

  If Magda was correct, they were raiding to obtain faery blood. He knew from past experience that the blood of the Huldra and the Mara was highly addictive. One of his late brothers, Ivar, had developed a fixation on those two races of faery women, nymphs who seduced mortal men to their demise in the wood. He had nearly caused a war with the faery in the late 1540s.

  Blood had been the currency used by vampires in those days. Now they used regular money, but obviously blood still flowed, from the simple pints that he obtained from the blood bank to the bottles and kegs at Snake Eyes. The immortal Valtaeigr sitting in the seat beside him was the main supplier of enchanted blood, that vintage that gave the Draugr a little something extra in the form of magic.

  Back in the day, when the curse had first been laid upon Hakon’s band, the unadulterated blood from a human vein had been enough to make a Draugr powerful. Now, like in an arms race, they needed to drink the heavily-enchanted dreyri to remain strong enough to stay on top of the heap. The older the vampire, the stronger the blood had to be, and when the young ones obtained strong dreyri intended for their elders, they responded like humans with a system full of narcotics. They became temporarily strong but locked in the chains of addiction. So it had been with Ivar and the blood he stole from the Mara and the Huldra.

  Now it sounded like the First had gone into business creating dreyri using faery blood as the base component. It would be like humans who manufactured street drugs like bath salts and krokodil – they were making something that was nearly too powerful to control. If they weren’t stopped, not only would they be bringing the wrath of the faery down onto the Draugr community, they would be seducing their own younglings into a life of addiction and misery.

  He wondered how many faery had been taken, and how much dreyri had been created. For that matter, he wondered how many humans had been bled to create the drink he himself imbibed on a regular basis. To skip his daily dose was to court headache and fatigue, and now that he was thinking about it, he supposed that was the first sign of withdrawal.

  Such a slippery slope, he thought. You fall and never realize it until you’re at the bottom of the hill.

  “Magda,” he said suddenly. “Where do you get the base material for the dreyri that you sell?”

  He didn’t say the word blood out loud, because the driver was still eavesdropping.

  His companion looked at him, surprised and annoyed by the question. “From appropriate sources.”

  “What is an appropriate source? And how many of those ‘appropriate sources’ did you have to use to fill the keg back at the house?”

  She gave him a hard look, and for a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she said, “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Huntsman. Just keep drinking it like you always have and never mind my sources.” She looked away. “You’ve never cared before.”

  He felt vaguely sickened. “It never occurred to me to ask before.”

  “Slow, aren’t you?”

  “Apparently.”

  They rode to the airport without another word, and when they boarded the plane, Magda curled up beneath a blanket and watched out the window instead of acknowledging him in the other seat. He fiddled with his phone, playing a mindless app while letting his mind wander.

  The Ulfen were an enemy to take seriously, and he would have liked to have avoided their involvement. The faery must have been severely aggrieved to have involved them, since deals with the Ulfen always came at a high price. Their alpha, Ardrik, had a reputation as a shrewd negotiator, and he had an eye toward improving his pack like a general improved his stockpile. Erik wondered what price the canny wolf had asked for his pack’s protection.

  The landing in Stockholm was smooth and untroubled, and they found a cab easily. On the ride to Snake Eyes, Magda finally spoke again.

  “Forty-seven humans are exsanguinated for each barrel of dreyri that I create. That means twenty-four for kegs the size of the one in the cabin. I get the blood from a supplier. I don’t ask where it comes from before that.”

  “Who is your supplier?”

  Magda pursed her lips. “Some secrets, Huntsman, are not for you to know.”

  He considered himself foolish for never having asked these questions before. He had always assumed that the blood came from willing donors, but the mathematics of scale begged the question of how many people would have been required, and how many human beings had died, creatures that he and the rest of the Veithimathr had been sworn to protect.

  The Veithimathr had been created in the same year that the first dreyri began to circulate among the Draugr. The gods, and the vala, acted in mysterious ways.

  Magda had been the apprentice to the vala who had bewitched Erik and his brothers, making them into Huntsmen. She had been at the elbow of Inga, the wise woman who had created the potion that allowed the old gods to take up residence in new bodies. She had seen and learned everything in her many centuries of existence, and she knew things that he would never hope to understand. The ways of the vala were the ways of women, and men were not to know them.

  Nika, though, could learn.

  He looked out the window and endeavored to keep his body language casual, despite the ringing of his own pulse in his ears. He was on to something important here.

  “The Veithimathr have almost all been destroyed,” he began.

  “Yes, I know,” Magda said sharply. “Good job, there.”

  He rankled but refused to rise to the bait. She knew how to push his buttons. “I was wondering… how have the Valtaeigr been doing? How are your numbers?”

  She sighed. “Decreasing.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, those of us who are immortal cannot bear children to normal men, and as you know, Draugr are infertile. That leaves us very few options as mates. Our numbers decrease the old-fashioned way – the old ones die, and not enough new ones are born. We are forced to rely on reincarnation and try to find the souls when they return. It is easier said than done.”

  He nodded. “The same is true of vessels. The gods’ souls attach, but then scatter when rebirth happens. The vessels need to find one another again. They’re not always reborn in the same place.”

  “Yes.”

  “When you find newborn Valtaeigr, what do you do?”

  She shifted in her seat. “Not your business, Huntsman.”

  “Perhaps not, but my Chosen is Valtaeigr…”

  Magda interrupted, “She will be trained.”

  “By whom?”

  “Well, it started with Ingrid, didn’t it? She just needs to go back, if you’ll let her. You seem to be spending a lot of time distracting her.”

  Erik felt foolishly complimented by the comment. “Well…it’s her choice.”

  “She needs to be trained. We need as many valas as we can get.” She looked at him, finally, with a serious expression. “Sif is going to talk to her while we’re gone. Your Chosen may be taken from you, Huntsman.”