Lara vs Einherjar

I flopped like a landed fish, ectogoo making the floor more slippery than your average waterslide, eventually thrashing until I could see Lara again.
She still stood with her back to the Einherjar. They’d dropped the gun in the struggle, and the man had both hands on her throat now. Her face was bright pink, her lips an ugly greyish color. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t fighting back until I saw her hands, behind her, at the small of her back.
She wasn’t trying to fight off his hold on her. She was going for the kill.
Lara arched, twisting and struggling, and the poor bastard hung on to her neck. He thought he was winning the fight.
Then his fatigue pants came loose. Lara’s lips twisted into a triumphant snarl. There was a surge of bodies, and then the Einherjar let out a startled huffing sound. His eyes went wide and unfocused.
The struggle stopped. A slow smile spread over Lara’s half-strangled face. She slid her hands up the Einherjar’s arms and tugged gently at his fingers. His hands came away at once, sliding down her shoulders to her breasts. She coughed once, then let out a low purring sound, and her hips began to move in slow rhythm.
The Einherjar staggered. He sank back against his desk, balance wavering. Lara stayed with him, and though the motion should have been awkward, Lara moved smoothly and nimbly to match him, somewhere between a dance partner, a lover, and a hungry spider wrapping up its prey for the feast.
She looked back at her victim, teeth showing, and then looked at me. Her eyes were liquid silver, like mirrors. Deep pink finger marks on her neck promised bruises to come, but even as I stared at her, they were fading—as the Einherjar’s breathing became heavier and more desperate.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded. Her voice was quiet and rough, as if she’d somehow spent ten years drinking whiskey. “Giant spiders? Dammit, Dresden.”
I found myself just staring for a second. She wasn’t putting out the same kind of aura she had before, but she was still one of the most er0tic, terrifying sights I had looked upon. Her allure drew me, calling to my purely human hormones—and, needless to say, the Winter mantle was going absolutely insane with lust for her. It wanted nothing so much as to challenge the Einherjar, beat him to death, and then claim Lara as a prize of conquest.
But that wasn’t me. Not the real me. That was just the mantle and the meat, wanting what they wanted. I pushed back against them both with my mind, with my will, until I remembered my purpose.
Thomas.
Save my brother.
I came to my sock feet, soaked with ectoplasm though they might be, and padded forward squishily.
“Don’t kill him,” I hissed intently, trying not to look at her. “All of this trouble is for nothing if you kill him.”
“Don’t be long,” she countered, her voice throaty, sensual, a hint of a moan in every word. Her eyes had become almost completely white at this point, pupils like beads of black in their centers. Her eyes looked utterly inhuman—and exactly like those of the demon Hunger I’d observed with my wizard senses in my brother, years ago.
“He’s stronger than he looks. Hurt me badly. I’m still healing.”
The Einherjar just remained locked where he was, his eyes blank, his expression one of a man in torment, moving only as needed to match Lara’s motion. She was a tiny thing compared to his sheer muscular mass—and he clearly didn’t have a chance in the world against her at this point. A man dedicated for centuries to his profession, and it meant nothing in the face of her power. There was no dignity to it.
Do we all look that goofy and clumsy during the act?
Yeah. Probably. Even when there wasn’t a succubus involved.

Peace Talks Chapter 26, Page 255-257


“You’re taking forever,” she said, and hauled me out of the hole.
“And yet you’re the one literally f*cking around on the job,” I countered.
“That?” she asked, bobbing her head back toward the guard station and flashing me a wise, wicked smile. “No. That was just feeding. The other thing takes much, much longer. And preferably candles and champagne.”
I pulled my legs out of the way, barely, before she shut the trapdoor—my trapdoor—and threw the bolt.
“How is he?” she asked.
I held up my amulet so that she could see her brother better.
“Empty night,” she cursed. She crouched over him, peeling back one of his eyelids, and then his lips. His gums were swollen and blotchy with dark stains.
“What’s happening?” I asked her.
“He’s sustained too much trauma without feeding,” she said. “His Hunger needs life energy. It’s taking his. It’s turned on him. It’s killing him.”
White Court vampires led a bizarre symbiotic existence: They were born bound to a demon that existed in immaterial tandem with them, called a Hunger. It was the demon who gave them their strength, their speed, their long lives, their capacity to recover from injury. In exchange they had to feed on the life force of others, to sustain the Hunger. My brother was, I knew, a rather potent example of the breed. That meant that his Hunger was strong, too.
And now he was paying for it.
“What can we do?”
She shook her head, her face hard. “This is how White Court vampires die. How my father will die, sooner or later.”
“Justine,” I said.
That word got through. Thomas lifted his head, mirrored eyes on me. He reached out a weak hand toward me in a gesture that died of exhaustion halfway.
“No,” Lara said, her eyes intent on his face. “By the time a Hunger turns on one of us, it’s mad, uncontrollable, insatiable. Even if we could redirect the Hunger, it would kill her and the child, and he’d die anyway.” The muscles in her jaw tensed.
“There’s still part of him in there. I might be able to reach him if we get him out of here—if we hurry.”
“Right,” I said, and slung my brother back up onto my shoulder.
Lara gave me a nod of approval and rose with me, and we both padded as quietly as we could back toward the dumbwaiter shaft. We passed the enormous guard, who was sprawled on his desk, pants back on but unfastened. He reeked of bourbon. I hesitated beside the guard long enough to be sure I saw his chest rise and fall.
“He’ll have a hell of a hangover,” Lara noted.
“You were also drinking?” I asked. “When did you have time? Do you have vampire party superpowers I don’t know about?”
“I found a bottle in his desk after he was finished and poured it on him,” Lara said primly, as if she’d been wearing a Victorian school-marm’s outfit instead of a whole lot of very well-tailored nothing. She strode to the dumbwaiter door and opened it. “Simple explanation for when he wakes up with a headache and a scrambled memory.” She tilted her head. “What was with those spiders? Why did you conjure them?”

Peace Talks Chapter 27, Page 261-263