Blood Moon

  “Try not to look like a cop,” I told Jenna. She shook her shoulders and tried again. “Or a bodyguard.”

  She winced sheepishly. “I can’t help it.”

  “Try looking scared to death like Tyson instead,” I suggested. Tyson just swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically. I patted his shoulder. “You’d rather come face to fang with a Hel-Blar, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hell, yeah. Way less scary than girls,” he muttered.

  Jenna was trying not to look too curious. “And you want to take notes, don’t you?” I shook my head. “You guys are in serious need of socialization.”

  “H-R is a small school,” Jenna agreed. “And a small world.”

  I knew everyone, and it was easy to slip into the old rhythm. The only difference was that one of the school bullies, Peter, now went out of his way to avoid me. Christabel had kicked him in the balls for threatening Nathan. I was glad to see Peter avoided him too. Nathan, being far nicer than me, wouldn’t take advantage of the situation.

  “Hey, Lucy.” Megan waved, tottering on a pair of boots with ridiculous heels. She wanted to be a big-city girl so badly she gave herself frostbite the year Crocs were in fashion. “Are you back?”

  “Just visiting,” I said, accepting the paper cup of apple cider she passed me. There was an iron cauldron full of the stuff boiling over one of the fires. There was beer and cheap wine too, but I preferred something warm. Jenna and Tyson did the same. I knew they weren’t comfortable enough to let their guards down, not this close to the forest at night. And especially not with a Blood Moon going on. “Great turnout. Have you seen Nathan?”

  “The fire on the left there,” she said, turning back to her giggling friends. I said hi to a few more people as I found my way to one of the smaller fires. The embers shimmered. Nathan sat on a bench, his feet practically inside the fire.

  “You dyed your hair!” I exclaimed, plopping down next to him. The rickety bench wobbled. Usually his hair was bleached white, but now it was black enough to shine nearly blue in the firelight.

  “You got contacts,” he accused.

  I scrunched up my nose. “Had to. Long story.”

  “Do you eat hamburgers now too?” he grumbled.

  “Aw. You missed me,” I grinned, tugging on the end of his red-and-white-striped scarf. It was way too long, brushing the ground when he sat down. I’d made it for him three years ago when my Mom taught me to crochet.

  “Did not, traitor,” he grumbled, but he slung his arm around my shoulder. “Where’s your gorgeous boyfriend? He’s the one I really wanted to see.”

  “He has a family thing,” I told him, trying not to let my smile slip. Knowing Nicholas was alive wasn’t the same thing as knowing he was okay. “But these are my friends Jenna and Tyson.”

  “Hey.” He gave Tyson a considering look then glanced at me. I gave a near imperceptible shake of my head. Nathan sighed. “Bummer,” he said under his breath. He nudged me. “You are useless to me, Hamilton.”

  “I know, sorry. There’s this guy Jason, but I don’t know him well enough to know if he’s your type.” Nathan liked to play at being casual, but he was actually a romantic at heart. I had no intention of setting him up with anyone who didn’t deserve him, no matter how cute they were. When Nathan fell, he fell hard.

  “This music really is awful,” I said cheerfully. “We should fire her.”

  “Too dangerous,” Nathan said. “MJ’s a biter.”

  “And how exactly do you know that?”

  “She bit me in grade six. I still have the scar.”

  “Do I even want to know why she bit you?”

  “She claimed I stole her X-Men comic book.” He sniffed. “When clearly, she stole it from me. She didn’t even know who Gambit was.”

  “Oh well, I’m surprised you don’t shun her even now.” I was used to Connor geeking out over comics and sci-fi movies. “Let’s run her out of town, Nathan.”

  “If she plays Celine Dion again, no one would blame us.”

  Jenna was chatting with the girl next to her, and Tyson looked as if he wanted to flee into the woods. The music was bad, the fires were cozy.

  It was nice. Normal.

  You know, until the screaming.

  And that kind of scream in Violet Hill could mean only one thing.

  Vampire.

  The rest of the party assumed it was someone fooling around, an ordinary scream of a girl being scared by some drunk idiot jumping out of the shadows at a field party. But I knew better. I followed Jenna and Tyson, pulling my embroidered purse in front of me in case I needed easy access to a stake or a pepper-Hypnos egg. I pushed through the branches of a stand of slender birch trees, barely noticing when they slapped me in the face. I skidded to a halt in the frozen dirt and decomposing leaves. I didn’t know the girls well because they were a year ahead of me, but I knew their names. Rachel was hyperventilating and weeping, her fist stuffed into her mouth.

  Libby was sprawled in the undergrowth, blood on her neck.

  Tyson knelt beside her, checking her pulse and lifting her eyelids to see if her pupils responded. Jenna was already sweeping the grove for vampires. I turned to Rachel, my hand still hovering near my purse, just in case.

  “Did you see who did this?” I asked.

  Rachel just continued to fall apart. “Rachel!” I grabbed her shoulders and tried to make my tone firm and strict, like an angry teacher. “Pay attention!” She just hiccuped pitifully and made me feel like a monster. But we couldn’t help Libby without certain answers. “Rachel! Answer me!” I shook her.

  She gagged on a sob but tried to answer. “I just saw a shadow running away.” She choked. “Pale and…” She dissolved into tears again. “Libby’s bleeding. Why is she bleeding?”

  I sniffed the cold air, smelling snow and fire and old pine needles but not mushrooms or rot. I didn’t think it was Hel-Blar but best to be sure. “Did you smell anything… weird?”

  She blinked, momentarily distracted by the strange question. “What, like pot?” She shrugged.

  “No, I mean something… kind of rotten.”

  “No, nothing like that. Why?”

  “Not Hel-Blar,” I told Jenna quietly when she circled back to us.

  “Thank God for that,” she muttered as Tyson rose from his crouch with Libby in his arms.

  He looked calm and utterly capable. There was no bumbling shyness about him when he looked down at two guys in his path. “Move.” They scrambled to get out of his way.

  “Where is he taking her?” Rachel shrieked, trying to grab at Tyson. “Wait!”

  “He knows first aid,” Jenna explained. “And he has a car. It’ll be faster than waiting for an ambulance.” Translation: she’d been bitten by a vampire and was unresponsive and we had no idea if she’d been infected or not. No hospital could help her now, not even in Violet Hill. She needed the Helios-Ra doctors.

  I was about to follow Tyson and Jenna when I saw it.

  It was a faint glint in the flattened grass and old leaves. I knelt down and grabbed it, easing back behind a tree. No one saw me. Well, no one but Jenna. She frowned at me, using her body to shield us from prying eyes.

  “What did you find?”

  I held up the medallion. It had the royal vampire crest on one side—a sword and bleeding crown—and the Drake insignia of a dragon with ivy in its mouth on the other side. “This is Solange’s,” I said bleakly.

  “How do you know? Hunter’s got one too. I heard everyone who was at the coronation got one.”

  “Yeah, me included. But this one has her name on it,” I explained grimly, flicking it so it twirled. “The brothers got personalized ones too.”

  Jenna’s eyes went so round she had to blink when they dried out.

  I didn’t for one second believe that Solange had snuck into a party for a snack. For one thing, if she had, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave behind such a damning piece of evidence. Even if she was going through a dark pat
ch, she was still a Drake. She instinctively knew better than that, thanks to years of training.

  But no one else would believe that. Not a Huntsman out for a kill or a Helios-Ra hunter claiming justice for the drained humans in town. They might just act first and look for proof later. We didn’t know who was killing humans, who had attacked Libby or who was behind the vampire disappearances I’d heard about.

  But I knew one thing, and I knew it for a fact.

  Solange was being framed.

  You’d think I’d have learned by now that field parties never end well.

  I went crashing through the trees, across the fields and into the wide dark mouth of the forest that clamped its jaw around the mountain.

  “Lucy!” Jenna called out. “What the hell?” She caught up to me, running easily. She spent enough time at the track that I wasn’t surprised when she was just there at my side, keeping pace. Her red ponytail swung judgmentally. “Just what the hell are you doing?”

  “I have to get to Solange,” I answered, looping the silver chain of the medallion around my wrist. “She’s being framed. She didn’t attack that girl.”

  “And going off alone into a forest full of vampires will prove that?” she asked. “Did you take stupid pills this morning?”

  “Just go with Tyson,” I panted. “I’ll meet you back at the dorms.”

  “You really did take stupid pills if you think I’m going to let you do this suicidal idiotic thing alone.” She flipped her phone open and told Tyson to get Libby to the infirmary and we’d meet him there. “He was already on his way,” she added to me after she’d hung up.

  “Jenna, seriously, you don’t have to do this. Kinda goes against training to help a vampire, right?”

  “It goes against training even more to let a fellow hunter go off into a trap all by herself.”

  A fellow hunter. So not a compliment to me, even if she meant it as one. “It might not be safe. And you’ll probably get suspended.”

  “Just run. You sound like a lame goose,” she added conversationally.

  “We’re not all born with the workout disease like you and Hunter.”

  She just shrugged. “Do we even know where we’re going?” she asked as we split paths around a huge tree and met up again on the other side.

  “I have to find Solange. Or at least one of the Drakes, but they’re all out of range. Worse comes to worst I can text Connor. He’s the one most likely to sneak off to find a signal.”

  “We’re not going to help anyone by getting lost and being eaten by a vampire. Or a bear.”

  “I’m not lost,” I assured her, ducking under a low branch before I ran right into it. “I grew up in these woods. We’ll be on Drake property in about fifteen minutes, if my heart doesn’t explode, and after that someone’s bound to find us even if we can’t find them.”

  “Not terribly comforting actually.”

  After another ten minutes, my running turned into more of a jog. A stitch seared my side every time I tried to take a deep breath. I was wearing fuzzy boots with purple pom-poms. I made fun of Megan’s footwear but mine were giving me blisters.

  And then blisters and burning lungs were the least of my worries.

  The first vampire dropped in front of me so abruptly I ran right into him. I didn’t recognize him beyond knowing he wasn’t a Blood Moon Guard. He wasn’t wearing insignia of any kind. I knew this intimately since my nose had bounced off his jacket. I tripped on a root and fell back into the dirt, hard enough that it felt as if electrical shocks were shooting from my tailbone. My palms scraped down a boulder half-hidden under the mulch, breaking open the skin. Scrapes flared on my elbows.

  The second vampire grabbed Jenna’s ponytail. She yelped, jerking backward. I fumbled for a stake with my bloody hands. I threw it, but it went wide when the first vampire kicked my arm. The second backhanded Jenna hard enough that she flew into a tree and slumped to the ground, blood on her temple. She didn’t move.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but the vampire yanked me to my feet, fingers digging into the painful bruise already throbbing from his boot.

  “Humans, not Moon Guard,” he said to his companion.

  “Constantine will still want to know. Bring them.”

  “Constantine?” I said. “I’m looking for Solange Drake.”

  “Sure you are, duckie. That’s the problem.”

  “What? What’s wrong? What do you mean?”

  He shook me hard enough that my teeth rattled. “Shut it.”

  I stopped talking and went for another stake instead. Since I was dangling a few inches off the ground, there wasn’t quite enough power behind my swing. The stake only went into the flesh deep enough to make him angry. Blood stained his jacket. His fangs flashed, lips lifting. I aimed for them with my elbows. There was a crack and he let go of me.

  I didn’t get far.

  Jenna stirred briefly. I didn’t think the others noticed. I ran to the right, knowing vampire instincts would have them following. I waited until Jenna’s dazed eyes met mine, until I saw her hand reach inside her coat.

  I dropped, sudden and hard as ship’s anchor with a loose chain.

  Jenna’s stake flung past the spot where I’d been and embedded itself between the ribs of the vampire who’d hit her. The point pierced flesh and muscle and finally, heart. He crumbled to ash with a stunned cry. Horrified, his friend paused just long enough for me to scissor kick the back of his knee. He stumbled.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  He was going to kill Jenna. I could see it in his face.

  She’d lapsed back into unconsciousness and was defenseless. I scraped my scratched palm along the nearest tree, pressing hard enough that blood dripped down my wrist when I pulled my hand away. I flicked it at him and then shot to my feet, running as fast and as far from Jenna as I could.

  He caught me in less than a minute. I kicked and punched but I couldn’t get loose.

  And then he cuffed me on the back of the head and everything went black.

  Chapter 28

  Solange

  Saturday night, 10:00 p.m.

  When I sat up again, I felt distant, small.

  Powerless.

  I tried to rip the crown off my head, but instead my fingertips caressed it greedily, lovingly. The pearls were soft and cool, the garnets bumpy.

  What just happened? I felt my lips moving, felt the words come out, but when they left my mouth they changed. “I am now your queen.”

  It was my voice but not my words. Viola was somehow in control of my body. This couldn’t be happening. I struggled, but it was like fighting spider webs and air. There was nothing to hold on to. I was floating, helpless.

  Mom sat up first, eyeing me warily. Dad was next, glancing at the rest of his children, assessing damage. Sebastian wiped blood from his face. Blood seeped through London’s bandages. Aunt Hyacinth’s veils were knocked askew, showing the burn on her cheek. Uncle Geoffrey just blinked at me.

  Help me!

  But they didn’t hear me. They just heard her.

  They didn’t see me. They saw her.

  Even the bats drifted away.

  I panicked, thrashing about inside my own head. I felt her annoyance. Hush, little girl. You’ll spoil it for me.

  Stop it! Leave them alone!

  She sighed, as if I was bothering her. I wanted to stake her so badly my hand twitched. I felt her inner glare.

  “We shall retire,” she said. “You may see my family out. They are banned from the camp until I say otherwise.” She smiled sweetly. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Constantine! Can you hear me?

  But he was talking to the guards and didn’t even glance my way. Their numbers had tripled now that I wore the crown. When Viola walked to the Drake tent, hundreds of eyes tracked our every movement, some impressed, some vengeful. Isabeau struggled to stop her dogs from attacking us. They snapped their teeth at me, spittle flying.

  Inside the tent, Viola rec
lined my body into a chair. “I need blood.” We were alone in the tent. Viola felt the tip of my fangs with her tongue. “Lovely. You never did use these properly.”

  Why are you doing this to me?

  “Quiet. I have to think.”

  I don’t know what she did, but it was like a heavy iron-studded oak door shutting in my face, separating us even farther. I could see what she did, hear her thoughts, but I couldn’t voice my own. I was trapped in a stone tower. Panic was like rat’s feet, soft and insidious.

  Marigold and Spencer burst into the tent. “So it’s true?” Marigold asked, dropping into a chair and swinging her feet. “Crossed over to the dark side, did you?”

  “What?” Viola asked coldly.

  Marigold grinned. “You became the man, Sol. You’re a bleeding queen.” She shook her head with mock pity. “And I had such high hopes for you.”

  “Yes,” Viola replied mildly. “Didn’t we all?”

  “Camp’s all abuzz,” Marigold informed her cheerfully. “Your mam must be right pissed.”

  She had no idea.

  I could only imagine what my family must be thinking. I was living it and I didn’t know what to think. I guess I should be grateful I’d compelled so many guards not to hurt them, while I still could. I just wanted them to know I hadn’t betrayed them. Wanted them to know I’d meant what I’d said about finding Nicholas. Where was Isabeau? Did she realize there was magic involved?

  Marigold frowned. “Are you crying?”

  Viola wiped her eye roughly. “Stop it,” she hissed at me quietly.

  The tent door wavered, interrupting us by letting in more torchlight and sounds of conversations. A guard I didn’t recognize stalked in, dragging someone behind him.

  Lucy.

  There was blood on her clothes and bruises darkening her skin. The guard shook her roughly when she tried to bite him. He cuffed her and she stumbled, landing on the rug. She looked up, holding her split lip. She blinked at Viola.

  “Are you wearing a crown?” she blurted out.

  Viola glanced at her. “I’m queen, haven’t you heard?”