Each sunset he rose and checked his eyes for the telltale red, and every day if he could manage to sleep, he was subjected to the same series of memories that subtly grew in detail each time.

The first found her atop a hill, sun bright, with snow still on the ground. "I've cursed you to your hell," Myst hissed at the site of a rough gravestone. She was roiling with so much hostility that Wroth knew she must have killed whatever being lay there. She spoke an ancient language that Wroth shouldn't understand, but he did. He felt the sensations she'd felt, the constant sway of her chain around her waist, the smell of the ocean just below her, brine on a cold day.

Another familiar dream. A drunken Roman senator kneeling at her feet. "At long last, I'm about to have Myst the Coveted. And you'll no longer be coveted, you'll be possessed." He laughed. "You'll make me twist on your little hook no longer."

Wroth had discovered the full name of his tormenter. Myst the Coveted.

With disgust, Wroth saw the Roman take Myst's dainty foot in his mouth, sucking greedily, stroking himself, as she slowly lifted her skirt up her silken thighs for him. As ever, Wroth fought not to see this, fought to wake. His violent revulsion never diminished over time.

The first time he'd had that dream, he'd been relieved when another scene unfolded before that one came to some kind of sick conclusion. But never again…

Myst was running past a Viking raiding party on the coast of some northern land. Purposely. She wanted them to hunt her. To catch her and throw her to the ground in the hard snow. What kind of twisted need did she have? She was excited, her blood pumping. Her skin felt like it was sizzling with electricity, and lightning was generated from her excitement. She stifled a smile, when with bellows and cheers, the men gave chase…

As ever, Wroth fought to force his mind away before he saw a dozen Vikings rutting on his Bride. To her delight.

Tonight a new dream. Finally. Snow outside, packed so high it covered half the window. Women, or other creatures like her, met around a great hearth. They were sisters and Wroth saw their faces as though familiar and knew their names and who they were as well as Myst did. He recognized the archer as Lucia, and the bright one he now knew was Regin the Radiant. A vacant-eyed one was called Nïx, the oldest of her sisters and believed to be a soothsayer. Their clothing indicated early twentieth century.

They were meeting over the fate of a baby that their leader, a somber creature named Annika, wished to keep. Myst frowned at the little girl in Annika's arms, confused to feel some stirring of feeling for it.

"How are we to care for her, Annika?" Lucia murmured.

Regin snapped, "How can you bring a vampire among us when they slaughtered my people?"

One named Daniela the Ice Maiden knelt beside Annika, gazing up at her, briefly touching her with a pale hand. Myst shivered to think of the pain Danii had just felt to offer that cold touch. Daniela's mother's people had been the ice fey and she couldn't be touched by anyone but one of them without extreme pain. "She needs to be with her own kind. I know this well."

Annika shook her head determinedly. "Her ears. Her eyes. She's Valkyrie as much as vampire."

Valkyrie…? Impossible.

"She'll grow to be evil," Regin insisted. "She's already snapped at me with her baby fangs. By Freya, she drinks blood!"

"Trifling," Myst interjected in a casual tone. "We eat electricity."

The vacant-eyed Nïx laughed.

A vampire child? Eating electricity? His heart was racing…

Annika said, "I will keep Emmaline from the Horde and guide her to be all that was good and honorable about the Valkyrie before time eroded us." Her words were laced with sadness and triggered a memory that Myst hated.

Wroth wanted to see it but couldn't.

Annika rubbed noses with the baby and asked her, "Now where's the best place to hide the most beautiful little vampire in the world?"

Nïx laughed delightedly. "Laissez les bon temps roulez…"

New Orleans.

Wroth shot up in bed, body drenched with sweat.

My Bride's a Valkyrie? he thought with a choking cough. His mind couldn't wrap around the idea of it.

He hadn't known they even existed. A character from legends told around campfires was linked to him for eternity. From the dreams, he knew she was a millennias-old mystical being born of a fierce Pictish princess—who'd plunged a dagger into her heart rather than be taken alive by an enemy—and of gods.

She didn't eat because she took electrical energy from the earth and gave it back with her emotions in the form of lightning. She was a killer and had been a Roman senator's whore. She despised men and enjoyed tormenting them, just as she'd done with him.

He glanced down at his throbbing erection. Even his hatred couldn't battle his relentless need for her. The impulse to take his cock in his fist was there, but he fought it, knowing he could never bring himself to come, knowing it would only increase his pain.

For five years she'd sentenced him to suffering from this constant, grueling ache. Before he'd learned there was no relief without her, he would've futilely stroked himself or thrust against the bed, imagining it was Myst clutched beneath him, but he never took release.

Other females repelled him—because they weren't her. Even if he believed he could find ease with another woman, he would never demean himself with another. He'd felt his Myst's incredible softness, felt her wet with desire for him, her body squeezing around his fingers as she'd climaxed from his touch.

He shuddered and his cock pulsed hungrily. Linked for eternity. To Myst the Coveted, a mythological being who despised him. The only way he'd keep her for eternity would be to punish her for that long.

He knew he coveted her as none other had. And now he knew where to find her.

The fumes of swamp, steamed hot dogs and soured beer wafted up to Myst and her sisters as they perched on a roof above the chaos that was Bourbon Street.

There were rumors of vampires running about in New Orleans.

Vampires in Louisiana? Unheard of.

If there'd been only one account of leeches, then she and Regin and Nïx would still be back at Val Hall, their bayou manor, playing video games. But a demon friend had sworn he'd seen one—and a phantom had whispered that there was not just one faction of vampires, but two.

Myst's eyes darted over the scene, trying to remain focused and not notice the couples frantically grinding against each other in dark alleys. If Daniela was here she would blow them a kiss and cool them off, freezing hands to asses in mid-grope and making her sisters chortle and roll along the roof. Myst supposed that the Valkyrie were easily amused.

But focus was proving futile ever since her heart had sped up at the idea of vampires here. If for some reason they had come to the New World—which the Horde historically found vulgar and beneath them—that still didn't mean him.

Wroth. One of her true regrets in her life.

Every day, she mused that she shouldn't have left that vampire to suffer—she should have killed him.

Regin tossed her blade up, caught the point into her claw, then flicked it up once more. "You know, not that I believe there are actual vampires here—cause that's just whacky speak—but if there were, they should know that this is our turf."

"Should we ask them to rumble? Or maybe mash?" Nïx asked as she swiftly braided her waist-length black hair. "I've heard those can be a graveyard smash." Even sporting the old-fashioned hairstyle and an occasionally confused glance—she saw the future more clearly than the present—Nïx still looked like a supermodel.