A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole Page A

whom—
    Immediately she shook her head as if to dislodge the questions.
    She didn’t want to know. Didn’t need to know.
    Annika had once told her that vampires were cold and dispassionate, able to use their powerful logic as no other in the Lore because they could disregard any detail outside of their goal as incidental.
    Emma had a job to do. Period. And when she completed it, she would be awarded her freedom. She just had to keep her eye on the ball. Never played baseball, freak. Oh, yeah.
    Didn’t matter. Finish the task— get to go on as usual.
    As she lathered and rinsed her hair, she mused over her typical week prior to the misbegotten trip. Monday through Friday she did research for her coven and trained before watching a late movie with the more night-owlish of her aunts. Friday and Saturday the witches came over with their Xbox and blenders full of pastel drinks. Sunday night sherode horses with the good demons who often loitered around the manor. If she could tweak just a couple of little aspects about her existence, life could be damn near perfect.
    She frowned at her thoughts. As a natural-born vampire, she couldn’t lie to others. If an untruth arose in her thoughts and the impulse to use it fired in her mind, she would become violently ill. No, Emma couldn’t lie to others, but she’d always had a talent for lying to herself. A couple of little tweaks? In truth, there was a yawning loneliness in her life—and a fear about her nature that rode her constantly . . . .
    As far as she knew, she was like no one else in existence—she truly belonged nowhere—and though her Valkyrie aunts loved her, she felt loneliness as sharply as a blade driven into her heart every day.
    She’d figured if she could determine how her parents had lived together and had been able to have her, then maybe she could find others like herself. Perhaps then she could finally feel a connection to something else. And if she could discover more about her vampire half, she might allay her fear that one day she would become like them.
    No one should have to worry each day that she might turn into a killer . . . .
    If she’d assumed he would give her privacy because he’d learned a lesson, she’d have been wrong. He walked right in and opened the shower stall door. She jumped, startled, fumbling not to drop the conditioner bottle before catching it on the pad of her forefinger.
    She saw his fists clench and open, and that finger went limp. The bottle thudded.
    One hit . . . The image of the shredded bedside table flashed in her mind, then the memory of the car he’d batted like a crumpled piece of paper. Chunks of marble that hadn’tbeen pulverized still littered the shower floor. Fool. She’d been a fool to think he wouldn’t hurt her. Of all the things she should fear, she feared pain the most. And now a Lykae clenched his fists in anger. At her.
    She turned into the corner, giving him her side to try to shield her nudity. And because if he hit, she could sink down and draw her knees to her chest. But with some foreign curse, he stalked off.
    After showering, she returned to the bedroom to find almost all of her belongings gone. Had he taken them to the car he’d secured? If so, ten euros said that he’d tossed her laptop under everything else. She supposed it didn’t matter anyway, since she’d uncovered nothing about her parents to go into said computer. Just because she could navigate Tulane’s research library did not mean she could crack the Lore in a foreign country—oh, and in the hours between sundown and sunup.
    She’d accomplished nothing on this trip. But for her abduction, of course.
    Why should she even be surprised?
    She exhaled wearily and trudged to the items he had left her—one outfit laid out on the bed. Of course he’d chosen the tiniest, most sheer lingerie she’d brought with