She smiled back at him. “Sure.”
“You can take my bike,” I added, tossing her the keys.
“Sweet.” The silver studs on the leather strap across her chest glinted in the light as she turned toward my motorcycle. She had a dozen stakes easy on that strap and a sword strapped to her back.
Logan looked down the lane and frowned. “Where’s your guard?”
I waited until we were crossing the field to the forest to tell him the rest. The growl of the motorcycle behind us helped cover our voices. I told about Solange compelling our guards, even the part about finding her in the woods drunk on a bloodslave.
“Our Solange? Really?” Logan scrubbed his face. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s been a bad day already.”
It got worse.
Of course, it got worse.
The woods were crawling with Hel-Blar, vampires from around the world, and vampire hunters. We passed a broken stake stuck in a birch tree, a clump of ferns covered in what looked like ash, and several trails of blood.
“Remember when no one ever came here?” Logan asked. The moon scattered light between the branches and turned the river to pewter.
“Yeah, I kind of miss being in shameful exile,” I agreed.
And then we heard it, even over the rumble of the motorcycle pacing us.
Battle.
Logan and I glanced at each other and then launched into a run, the trees a blur of green and gray around us. The sounds of a struggle, cursing, the distinctive quiet whoosh of a vampire turning to dust. We skidded to a stop under a huge ponderosa pine tree.
It looked like the fight was down to three vampire hunters and a vampire girl in black pleather pants out of the Matrix movies. I recognized the short black hair and the sneer, instantly.
She was family. And though she might have accidentally almost gotten Solange killed this summer, she still needed our help. Because she was clearly losing.
Grace sped up and cut us off, sliding the bike between us and the fight. “Stay back,” she ordered, drawing a sword, slender as an ice pick.
We diverted around her, leaping into the air and landing in unison on the other side.
“That’s our cousin,” I tossed back at her, still running. “London! Hang on!”
Grace tossed back a few words that weren’t anatomically possible. Logan pulled the nearest hunter out of the melee and threw him into a clump of purple monkshood. He landed on his arm and there was an audible crack.
“Is it broken?” his partner shouted.
“Dislocated,” he grunted.
I jumped over him and grabbed his partner. She whirled, snarling, and tried to bite me. And she wasn’t even a vampire. I dodged a punch and then a stake, but only just barely. I used vampire speed to pop from one side of her to the other, until she was frustrated and dizzy. Then I threw her at the first hunter just scrambling to his feet.
London used her elbow on the third hunter’s nose, and blood sprayed into the grass. He didn’t fall, only staggered and grabbed for another stake. There was a cut on London’s cheek and a gash under her knee.
“Nick, behind you!”
I reacted to Logan’s shout before thinking. I dropped and rolled toward the attack instead of away, which was expected. I caught the hunter in the ankles and knocked her down. Her stake still flew true enough to pin my sleeve to a tree root. I yanked free just as the wounded hunter also threw a stake, this one at London. She yelled and toppled. I smelled blood but couldn’t see if she was badly hurt.
Logan bent his body forward as if he’d been doing yoga with Lucy, and then he kicked backward at the last second and caught the female hunter in the hip. Grace flew off the motorcycle, fists flying, and knocked her out to finish the job.
Logan reached London just as her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped down into the pine needles. “Stakes are soaked in holy water!” he yelled. “She’s down.”
It distracted me just long enough to get caught by the hunter with the beard. He lashed out at a brutal angle, catching my kneecap. I fell, screaming, my fangs biting through my gums. He kicked my shoulder as I bent to grab my knee, rolling me slightly into a nest of withered ferns, keeping me pinned. His boot ground down on my neck. Pain choked me. He was stronger than he looked, with scars on his throat and a rattling necklace of vampire fangs.
Logan was bent over London and didn’t see me.
Grace was busy trying not to get killed herself.
The stake descended.
And then Solange was suddenly there.
She dropped down from a tree so quickly the hunter must have thought she could fly. I barely saw her, just a wash of pale skin, a battle yell, and a frenzy of bats in the air. The hunter fell back just enough that I could break free of his boot. I yanked on his foot and he fell to one knee. I pushed up, coughing.
Solange was a good fighter, and stronger, but he’d had more years to practice. He wasn’t easy to best. I limped forward but I was too slow. He punched Solange with a fist the size of a bread box, as if he was a retired wrestler turned hunter. He got her in the cheek close enough that her fangs cut her lip open. Blood spattered like a fine mist. It hit the hunter in the left eye, over his nose, and across his mouth.
I saw the exact moment he tasted Solange’s blood on his tongue.
The moon was bright enough that she looked like pale porcelain, except for the veins prominent at her wrists and throat. The blue was like the center of a flame, like the sky before a storm. And I knew what he saw when he looked at that blue.
Hel-Blar.
His partners stirred, the unconscious woman sitting up blearily, the other man snapping his shoulder back into the right place. They saw Solange the same way. The woman shouted. The bearded hunter wiped his face and started at the blood on his fingertips for a moment. He reached for another stake, this one stainless steel and made with such lethal precision it would pierce flesh and slide through bone with little effort.
He didn’t aim it at Solange.
He just spat the blood out of his mouth and then stabbed himself with the stake, right in the heart.
Time slowed down. The other hunters froze, looking sad and furious.
But not surprised.
He gurgled and fell, making wheezing sounds of undiluted pain. He had just enough strength left to pull out the stake. Blood pooled out of the wound, stained his shirt, and dripped into grass. Solange turned away. The rest of us stared, unable to do anything else. He jerked once, his eyes rolling back in his head. The smell of his blood and sweat and fear was rancid in my nostrils. It galvanized me into action.
“We need something to press on the wound and stop the bleeding. He needs a hospit—”
He died before I could finish my sentence.
“He killed himself,” Solange croaked in disbelief. “He just … killed himself.”
“Better dead than undead,” the woman hunter said viciously, coldly. “He did right.”
Solange whirled, her eyes flaring, her fangs elongated. “I’m not Hel-Blar, you idiots.”
Grace stepped between them. “Don’t bother, princess.”
The male hunter’s gaze snapped on her. “Princess?” He reached for another stake.
“We’re losing her!” Logan yelled, lifting London into his arms. She was pale and limp, the wound in her shoulder blistering. “There’s no time for this!”
The hunters looked grim and exhausted and utterly unwilling to back down. Solange lifted her hand, and then brought it down again, pointing at them.
Bats dove out of the branches. They attacked the hunters, nipping at their eyes, but avoided the rest of us entirely. The hunters punched and swatted frantically but there were too many bats, too many teeth and leathery wings. The sound they made was unholy.
“Run,” Solange suggested darkly.
The hunters ran. Logan did the same, in the opposite direction, with London. Grace stood over the body of the dead hunter.
He was human and didn’t conveniently blow away like vampire ashes did.
“Call Bruno,” I told her, jerking a hand through my hair. The bruises on my throat were already fading but my knee still throbbed. “He’ll know what to do, and if he doesn’t, Hart will.”
“I can’t leave Logan.”
“You don’t have to, he just left you.”
Grace hesitated. “Still, my orders …”
Solange put her hand on Grace’s arm. “Grace, look at me.”
She was going to use her pheromones and compel her. I shoved between them.
“Solange, no.” I glanced over my shoulder at Grace. “Just make the call. We’ll go with Logan.”
Then I pushed Solange into a run. We followed the trail of London’s blood until we caught up with Logan. London should be healing enough by now not to drip blood over the forest floor. She didn’t look right, too pale and too gray. I dialed Uncle Geoffrey’s cell phone as we paced like wolves between the pine trees. We’d be out of range soon, and we needed to know if we should take London to the farm or the camp. He wasn’t answering.
“Damn it,” I snapped. Both the caves and the royal courts had dodgy reception. We didn’t have the time to run around searching him out. London didn’t have the time.
“Call Mom,” I told Solange as I called Dad. No reply. Solange shook her head as well.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I tried Aunt Hyacinth on the off chance she actually bothered to answer her phone.
“Hello?”
“Thank God. Where’s Uncle Geoffrey?”
“He’s at the cam—” I hung up before she could finish. “Camp,” I said to Logan. We turned left at the river, ran at full speed for another ten minutes, then charged past the guards and the vampires milling about under the torchlight. We burst into the family tent, Logan carrying London’s arms and me holding up her legs.
Dad rose from his chair. “What—” He cut himself off. “Find Geoffrey,” he said to the courtier he’d been talking to. I recognized her from the royal caves.
We lay London down on a sofa. Dad crouched beside her. “London? Can you hear me?” She didn’t make a sound. That was unusual in itself; she was usually all bluster and bravado. He peeled her shirt away from the festering wound. It was raw, as if acid had eaten through her skin.
“Holy water,” I confirmed as Logan dropped into a chair. Solange started to pace. “There were three hunters. I didn’t see who she was with; they turned to ash as we got there.”
“You saved her,” Dad said firmly. He pulled a bottle of blood out of the cooler stored inside the wooden chest by the couch and tipped it up to London’s lips. “Geoffrey will get her well.”
“Solange saved me,” I said. “Where did you come from anyway?”
“Smelled the blood,” she said tightly.
“Since when do Helios-Ra just wander around attacking us?” I asked. “I thought we had treaties, and Hart was on board and all that.” And my girlfriend was currently trapped in their school. Every muscle in my body throbbed to run out and find her.
“They don’t,” Dad said thoughtfully. “Are you sure they were Helios-Ra?”
“Who else would they be?”
“Huntsmen.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Huntsmen are vampire hunters, just not League. They haven’t come to Violet Hill since before any of you were even born. No point with all the Helios-Ra about.”
“Do they wear fang trophy necklaces?”
He nodded grimly.
“And commit suicide if they think they’ve been infected?” Solange asked quietly.
Dad nodded again. “Did one of them … ?”
“Yes.”
Dad winced. “In front of you?”
London started to whimper. She wasn’t conscious but she was thrashing on the sofa. I helped Dad hold her down. Her skin was hot, feverish. Vampires didn’t run hot. We just didn’t.
Uncle Geoffrey finally arrived, toting his medical case. He went straight to London, the pleasant, slightly befuddled scientist replaced with clinical precision. He went tight-lipped when he saw the wound.
“Stake soaked in holy water,” Dad said. “Huntsman’s weapon.”
Uncle Geoffrey looked even grimmer. “Who knows what other tricks they have,” he said. He hooked London up to a blood bag to give her a transfusion since she didn’t appear to be swallowing. Vampires needed blood to heal. Lots of blood. And sleep.
“She’ll be okay, right?” Solange asked. “I mean, Aunt Hyacinth survived holy water.” Scarred, but survived. And vampires didn’t scar easily.
“Hyacinth had Madame Veronique’s blood,” Geoffrey said, rummaging through his case. “That’s what saved her. And I have none.”
Vampires didn’t drink other vampire blood as a rule. It served no nutritional purpose. Unless it was the blood of an ancient from your own lineage—then it could heal you. Madame Veronique was the oldest living Drake, according to all the family stories. Her twins, born in 1162, were our first direct ancestors and the reason our particular branch of the family tree turned into vampires on our sixteenth birthdays.
“Well, where is she?” Logan asked. “Can we bring her here?”
“Would she even help?” I asked. “She’s not exactly puppies and rainbows. And you know how she feels about London’s side of the family.” London had served Lady Natasha, not believing that she’d wanted Solange dead. She’d nearly handed us all over into a trap.
“I have her blood,” Solange announced softly. We turned to stare at her. “Well, don’t I?” she asked Uncle Geoffrey. “I drank that tiny bit to heal me through my bloodchange. Is it still inside me?”
Uncle Geoffrey blinked. “I honestly wouldn’t know. But it’s worth a try.”
Solange approached the sofa. There was enough blood being pumped into London’s veins that she was lucid, her eyes half-open. But her lips were already dry and cracked, as if she’d been ill for weeks and was severely dehydrated. Before Uncle Geoffrey could pass Solange a lancet, she’d already sliced her wrist open with her triple fangs. A trickle of blood moved down her arm and she hurried to press the cut over London’s mouth. London swallowed thickly, painfully; once, twice, three times. Bats whispered at the tent ceiling, their shadows huge and distorted by the torchlight.
At Uncle Geoffrey’s nod, Solange pulled back, pressing the edges of her cut together to help it heal faster. London’s gaping wound didn’t magically heal but it did look slightly less angry. Geoffrey fussed over her for a few moments then nodded, satisfied. “Well done, Sol,” he said proudly. “I think she’ll be fine, eventually.” He pulled empty test tubes out of his case. “Fascinating. If I could get more blood from you … I never thought to test—”
“No.” Solange backed away. “No more tests, Uncle Geoffrey.” She fled the tent before anyone could stop her.
Chapter 7
Lucy
Sunday night
I snuck off campus using the route Hunter showed me earlier. Between her and Quinn, they kept it free of school surveillance, and it was the best way for me to see Nicholas. It was getting darker so much earlier now that winter was approaching; we had more hours available to us before my new school curfew, which, despite Bellwood’s warnings, I had to ignore tonight. I waited until I was securely hidden inside the forest before taking out my cell phone. Nathan, a friend of mine from my old school, answered on the first ring.
“I’m still mad at you,” he informed me in lieu of a hello.
“I know,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better, there are way more mean kids here.”
I could practically hear him frowning. “I thought art school kids were supposed to be cooler than the rest of us.”
“So did I.” I’d lied to him about my new school. Nathan was strictly a civilian and knew nothing about vampires or vampire hunters. The only thing he knew about Nicholas was that he was hot. And it had seemed the most believable excuse to have my parents send me
off to some artsy alternative school in the mountains. “I miss you guys.”
“You wouldn’t miss us if you came back,” he grumbled. “Tell your mom that school’s bad for your chi or whatever.”
“Can’t. Nonrefundable deposit.”
“That bites.”
I snorted a laugh. “You have no idea.”
“There’s a party in Megan’s backfield Saturday night. Last one before the snow hits. You’re coming.”
“It’s cold.”
“So what, Grandma? Too busy hanging out with guys in black turtlenecks talking about Picasso?”
“Picasso?”
“Isn’t that what art students do? And I’ve seen you draw, Hamilton. I can’t believe they even let you through the front door.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I’m on the music track.”
“That makes more sense. Anyway, the party. If you bail on me I will never forgive you. And Linnet will cry. You want that on your conscience?”
“Oh, please. Linnet won’t cry. But I won’t bail,” I promised.
“You better not. So, any cute boys at that school?”
I thought about Hunter’s friend Jason. I’d have to ask around if he had a boyfriend. “Some.”
“Good. Bring them.” Nathan hung up.
I switched on my flashlight as I tramped deeper into the woods. Most of the moonlight was blocked by thick spruce and pine. Since I didn’t have vampiric eyesight, I’d walk into a tree if I wasn’t careful. The trail was barely a suggestion, but there were white ribbons tied around branches to mark the way. The path ended abruptly in a small clearing thick with late-blooming goldenrod. I thought I might still be technically on school property. No wonder Hunter had commandeered this spot for her secret tryst. The wind was frigid and nibbled hungrily at my fingers and the tip of my nose. I slipped on the stripy mittens my mom made for me. Like everything else she touched, it still smelled faintly of Nag Champa incense. I felt vaguely homesick.
And then Nicholas came toward me through the field, the tall yellow flowers bending around him, and the stone of worry lodged in my throat loosened. He was sleek and dark and beautiful, the way thunderstorms are beautiful. I never got tired of the way he smiled at me, both solemn and wicked. Even if he wasn’t exactly smiling right now.