No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole Read Free Book Online Page A

the Valkyrie knew about, and because it was a good base for the Hie—not because she couldn’t face her coven.
    Tonight was her first in the city, and she’d set out for King’s Cross with one objective: to kill leeches. Beneath her trench coat, her sword and whip rested hidden. She meandered down a cobblestone back way she remembered well—just over a century ago, two vampire brothers had nearly beheaded her on these very bricks.
    Kaderin didn’t despise vampires only for her sisters’ sake.
    Along the alley, she’d gradually begun to act as though she were lost in the dingy veil of the city, even subtly limping—signaling a predator that dinner was here for the taking.
    She tried to convince herself that her excursion wasn’t meant to prove anything. This wasn’t an exercise to see if she still had the stones to hunt vampires. That would be too cliché, too movie-montage-worthy, as she busted heads and cleaned out the streets of London.
    To kill tonight was, simply, her life as usual.
    A gang of five of them materialized from thin air. “Seems my birthday came early, boys,” Kaderin drawled. They were dressed like street thugs, and their glowing red eyes were spattered with floating black flecks. Dirty eyes. When they drank beings to death, they drank from the pit of the soul, taking all the bad, absorbing all the madness and sin into themselves.
    The five surrounded her; she yanked her sword free and struck hard without delay.
    A flip of her wrist claimed her first head. Lookit, Kaderin thought. A vampire’s head rolling across a London back alley. Business as usual. Control.
    They began tracing all around her, striking out with fists or blades. She yanked her coiled metal whip free from her belt. Titanium.
    With a whip, she could contain a tracing vampire. One recognized her with the first crack and escaped, fleeing the fight.
    Ah, but the other three are going to roll the dice.
    Her whip caught one’s neck, coiling round again and again, snapping at the end.
    The house always wins.
    She yanked, sending him listing toward her, right into her sword’s reach. As she severed his head, she kicked behind her to ward off the other two. She ducked under the bigger one’s blade, and it sank into his comrade’s temple.
    Blood sprayed. She was in her element now. Cool dispassion. Cold killing. Her sword flew, her whip cracked—she was back to normal.
    How irrational she’d been, fleeing hysterically from Russia, with all the weeping and uncontrollable shaking. How many times had she moaned, “Oh, dear Freya, what have I done?” or recalled the look on that vampire’s face when he’d realized he was going to have to let her go into the sun?
    She’d had an indiscretion. As Valkyrie sometimes did.
    Like Myst the Coveted? Kaderin thought, delivering a killing blow to the vampire with the knife jutting from his head like a horn.
    When Myst had been in a Horde prison, the Forbearer rebels took the castle, and one of their generals had freed her to make love to her. Before the Valkyrie could rescue her, things had gotten out of hand in a dank cell.
    Myst’s status among the Lore—which she’d built over lifetimes—was ruined. She was shunned, an outcast. Even the nymphs ridiculed her. There was no ignominy worse than that—
    The last one threw a hit to Kaderin’s jaw that had her seeing double for a moment, but she blindly punched out and connected.
    Then she was back on her toes, sword gliding, thoughts whirring. As the two of them circled each other, Kaderin recalled the ultimate fall from grace. Just decades ago, a Valkyrie named Helen had had sex with a vampire, and then bore his child, Emmaline.
    Helen had died of sorrow—because the vampire had turned on her.
    Another strike of her sword. The last one barely dodged it and cursed her.
    “Goodness. I have never been called a bitch before.” She wiped her sleeve over her face, and their eyes met.
    Vampires turned. That was what they did. She hadn’t