A Tithe of Blood and Ashes
Alyxandra Harvey
DEDICATION
This one is for all the Drake fans who want more of Lucy.
You guys rock!
Getting up at five in the morning to sit in a cold snowplough truck was not exactly the same as still being awake because I’d been kissing Nicholas way past my curfew.
But I wasn’t about to tell my dad that. I had an exam later this morning and I needed to study. And unfortunately, they didn’t have exams for kissing Nicholas Drake. More’s the pity. I’m pretty sure my grade point average would dramatically increase. As it was, I was bundled in the passenger seat, trying to remember the dates of when random hunters killed random vampires hundreds of years ago.
I wondered if there’d be a bonus question on who killed whom at the Blood Moon battle back in November. Somehow, I doubted it. Once again, my vampire knowledge was wasted on the Helios-Ra.
Dad pushed more snow along, steam rising from his travel mug of contraband coffee. His ulcers were healing, mostly because no one had tried to kill me in weeks, but Mom had already tossed out the coffee maker. Now he drove into town to a café which bartered secret coffee for free snow removal.
Hot air blasted through the ancient heater, chasing the frost and fog off the windshield. I had about two hours before Dad dropped me off at school for my Monday morning exam since my car had broken down again. As if Monday mornings weren’t rude enough. I still boarded in the campus dorms but after the battle, Mom needed as much art therapy and family time as she claimed I did and she’d never even set foot near the battlefield. We compromised by having me spend at least a couple of weekends a month at home. I didn’t mind, especially since Nicholas wasn’t exactly welcomed on campus, curfew or not.
It was getting better. There’ been enough blood in the snow, both human and vampire, to scare the secret Violet Hill citizens into a proper attempt at a peace treaty. It helped enormously that Solange was no longer possessed by the spirit of a batshit crazy thousand year old vampire. And that Hope, the rogue Helios-Ra hunter, was locked away. We could now all focus on keeping the Hel-Blar out of town. They were still coming down off the mountains, drawn by the remains of the battle even two months later. They were getting too close.
Way too close.
Dad instinctively slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the hulking shadow in the middle of the road. The crossbow I’d put up on the dash slid into my lap as the seatbelt locked tight, digging painfully into my sternum. He thought it was a deer or a coyote.
I knew better.
“Hit it! Hit it!”
“Lucky Moon , since when do ----.” His disappointed anti-violence speech cut of abruptly when the Hel-Blar lifted it head, hissing at the headlights.
Rows of needle-sharp teeth glinted with saliva and mottled bruise-blue skin looked exactly like the dead frostbitten flesh it was. I undid my seatbelt and then clipped it back in the holder, hooking it around my feet to secure me as I stood up through the sunroof. The smell hit me first: rot and mildew and stagnant bogwater. The Hel-Blar smelled me just as strongly: warm blood and cherries and pepper, if Nicholas was to be believed.
I lifted the crossbow, bracing myself against the roof.
“We talked about you killing things from the truck!” Dad snapped, throwing the truck into reverse. “Sit down!”
I nearly apologized to his ulcer, but I didn’t sit back down. If the Hel-Blar took off into the woods, it would only come back later and attack someone who didn’t know how to put it down. Hel-Blar saliva was contagious, it would turn anyone human or vampire, into a feral fetid beast.
The truck slid sideways, the plough scraping against the icy road. But the wind was frigid and I’d fumble the bolts if I waited any longer. My fingers were already stiff. The snow thickened, until I was peering at the Hel-Blar through a veil of white. He clacked his jaws at me, but scurried to the side of the road. Dad was still backing up. I was going to lose him.
“Not a chance, you vile undead thing,” I muttered. I rubbed the side of my finger on the bolt tip until it sliced through. A drop of blood burned, dripping down onto my knuckle. I flicked it into the snow and took aim again.
The Hel-Blar froze as his head snapped up, smelling the fresh blood. He clacked his jaws again, like ice breaking off a branch. He launched himself at us with unnatural speed. The way they moved always sent a shiver down the back of my neck: it was pure monster, graceful but hulking, and all predator. I released the bolt. It cut through the snow and slammed into his chest. He gurgled and turned to thick, putrid ashes. Dad finally stepped on the brake.
I ducked back into the truck, grinning. “Got him.”
Dad’s hands were tight worried fists around the steering wheel. “Wouldn’t you rather go to art school? You could learn macramé.”
I fished a small red flag out of my coat pocket and slid out the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” he called after me. “You’re grounded! Detention! Something!”
I poked my head back inside. “Dad, I’m just going to leave a marker. The Helios-Ra are trying to keep track of where the Hel-Blar are showing up so we can trace back to their nests. I’ll be quick.”
I jogged to the pile of ashes, already covered in snow. That was something else the Helios-Ra had taught me: jogging. And it was way scarier than staking feral vampires. I crossed the road, trudging to the bare tangled bushes on the edge of the woods. I sank up to my ankles as the snow whirled around me, sticking to my eyelashes. I tied the red flag to a branch.
Something moved in the woods, graceful and strangely regal. I could barely see what it was but I reached for a stake, just in case. I’d had my fill of regal. It never ended well.
I squinted through the snow. A woman trailed a long cloak the colour of stone. Her hair fell past her elbows and was the same shade of grey. Her skin was pale blue, like the rare Na-Faoir vampires who’d claimed my cousin Christabel. This wasn’t a vampire though, it was something else. It felt ancient, mysterious. Snow whirled in eddies around her.
I blinked and she vanished. I pushed through the snow but she hadn’t left any footprints, nothing at all to prove some weird old woman was frolicking through a snowstorm in the darkest part of the night.
The wind shook the branches, dumping more snow on my head. It also, unfortunately, carried the stench of a second Hel-Blar away from me. So when he roared out of the bushes, I very helpfully screeched in surprise. The snow drift caught at my boots and I fell. I hit a tree, the trunk scraping my face. Branches slapped at me, adding insult to injury. Instinct kicked in and I threw a stake before I’d even sat up properly. I missed the Hel-Blar but at least I distracted it long enough to stop it from eating my face.
For now.
If I survived this, I deserved to fail my exam. I knew better than to let my guard down like that, snowstorm or not. At least I had more stakes in each of my pockets and a slender dagger in my boot. It was long enough to double as a short sword. I scrambled backward, reaching for it. Dad yelled something from the truck. The Hel-Blar ground his teeth, saliva dripping into the snow. Adrenaline, disgust and fear brewed a toxic soup in my belly as I pushed into a crouch. The cut I’d made on my finger earlier began to bleed again.
The Hel-Blar leapt.
A chunk of ice caught him right in the face. It would have been funny at any other time, Dad resorting to a snowball fight. The Hel-Blar hissed, clawing at his eyes. It gave me just enough time to leap up and push my sword between its ribs. It was harder than it looked. I had to lean back away from its teeth and claws and then dart back it, kicking at the pommel. The blade finally sliced through his grey, dead heart and he collapsed into a
shes and dust.
Three more Hel-Blar shuffled out of the forest, clacking teeth and feral stench. From behind them, came a swarm of Drake brothers: Quinn, Connor, and Logan.
“Incoming!” Quinn hollered cheerfully, as he yanked one away from me in mid-leap. As usual, he was like a rock star, all slow motion hair and fast action fight. “Hi Lucy.”
“Duck!” I returned, throwing a stake at the Hel-Blar directly behind him. It pierced his ragged shirt and stuck in his flesh, but didn’t touch his heart. He howled. I glanced behind me. “Dad, get back in the truck!” I thought he yelled the same thing to me, but I was too busy ducking the Hel-Blar Logan tossed through the air.
There was one more Hel-Blar, coming out from behind the trees. He was fast, a suggestion of movement in the heavily fallen snow. I didn’t have time to shout out a warning. Logan turned, but his hands were empty. He’d used all of his stakes.
And then Nicholas dropped out of a tree. He knocked the Hel-Blar on its back and staked it to the ground in one movement. He landed on one knee, like a knight in a painting. He grinned up at me.
I grinned back. “Hot, Drake.”
“Back at you, Hamilton.”
He rose to his feet but I didn’t wait for him to cross the road, but met halfway in a snow bank. We were like magnets, or stars falling to earth. We always found each other.
I rose on my tiptoes to kiss him just as he pulled me up against his chest. Our lips were winter-cold, vampire-cold . The kiss burned through everything: battle, exams, fathers waiting in a plume of truck exhaust. It was Nicholas’s tongue touching mine, his hands curling into loops of my jeans, my fingers sketching the muscles of his back through his shirt. It was only a brief, hot moment, but it felt like it went on forever.
“Your exams are almost over, right?” He murmured, smiling against my mouth. “I miss you.”
“Two more,” I replied, kissing him again.
His grey eyes might be pale as ice, but they burned like the inside of a star. He looked politely away from the scrape on my temple. “You’re hurt.”
“Embarrassed more than anything,” I said. I guess I’d gotten used to darting in and out of undead danger without too much bother. The last time I’d been hurt like this was when I followed Solange out into the forest. I’d slipped in the river and cracked my head. And now I’d been beaten up by a tree. I was not exactly at my most badass. I blamed it on the unholy hour of the morning and the fact that my brain was full of useless dates instead of killing blows.
I stepped back when I heard Dad’s boots crunching in the snow. “Also? What the hell?” I asked, nodding to the ashes. “Was there a Hel-Blar sale somewhere?”
“We routed a nest,” Quinn explained.
Connor snorted. “We found a nest, you mean, and then, as usual, you jumped in it like it was the ballpit at the carnival.”
“Same thing,” he grinned.
Logan wiped ashes off the black cravat he wore around his neck with a grimace. “Damn it, Quinn.”
“It’ll wash out,” Quinn replied, retrieving stakes from the road.
“Did you see anyone else out there?” I asked. “An old woman in a cloak?”
“No,” Nicholas replied. “Why?”
“I thought I saw something,” I shrugged. “Snow blindness, I guess.”
Dad slanted me a strange look. “Time to go.” He practically threw me back into the truck. “Thanks boys. Go home now,” he said.
He jumped in the driver’s seat and locked the doors. His hands were shaking. Poor Dad, he was just no good around violence. “Dad, I’m okay.”
He was the colour of curdled milk. “You’re bleeding.”
“It barely hurts.” Probably because there was snow stuck inside the scrape. I fished a bandaid out of my backpack mostly so he’d stop staring at it and freaking out.
“I’ll drive you back home,” Dad said, releasing a trembling breath. “I’ll write you a note for your exam.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think killing a vampire will get me out of an exam on killing vampires.” I reached for my textbook and a bag of chocolate macaroons, grumbling. “And apparently I’m way off my game.” I was offending myself. “I clearly need to study harder.”
***
My morning did not improve.
Jody and her minion Ben locked in the bathroom again. Although this time she made the effort to overflow the sinks so I had to crawl under the stall door through water. I nearly missed my first exam because I had to change. And the scratches on my face from running into a tree throbbed.
Now I was in the elegant and gorgeous school library which was basically acres of oak and stained glass and old books. I didn’t see any of it, just the columns of notes and names that were slowly sucking the life out of me. I ate another bag of macaroons.
Jason glanced over my shoulder and winced. “History of Hunters exam. My condolences.”
“Decorate my tombstone with fake vampire fangs,” I said as he sat next to me. “Because this exam is killing me.”
“No sympathy,” Jenna declared, dropping a tube of butcher paper secured with an elastic on the table. Her high red ponytail swung with indignation. “Your mother is the reason why I just had to spend an hour drawing with crayons instead of punching things.”
I grinned, unrepentant. “You must have pissed off the therapist. I get to use paint and clay.”
Jenna sat down, scowling. “It was pencils actually. But that doesn’t have the same ring. I must have done like a hundred mandalas since Christmas.”
“I like those,” Jason said easily. He was already so calm he could stand to be friends with both Jenna and I. The only reason he was in art therapy at all was because it was mandatory for anyone who had taken part in the battle. Courtesy of my mother.
She even had the Drake brothers doing it, though so far Duncan had managed to evade it entirely. He came home with a tattoo and called it his artistic expression. Solange, Kieran, Nicholas and I had already gotten matching tattoos of a slender pointed star before Solange and Kieran left Violet Hill. Mom hadn’t seen mine yet, it was safely tucked under layers of winter wool and flannel.
“Why so many mandalas?” I asked Jenna. “She’ll let you do other stuff if you suggest it.”
“Apparently my ability to focus is scary so she wants me doing something that requires it but also tames it. Or some shit like that. I stopped listening. Kind of like you, right now.”
“What? Oh, sorry. Samuel is staring at me. Just like this morning when he watched Jody and Ben lock me in the bathroom.” He was beginning to piss me off actually.
“She locked you in the bathroom again?”
“Yeah, it’s getting kind of boring.
“Did you tell Bellwood?”
“Hell, yeah, I did. But it’s Jody’s word against mine right now. “ I slanted Samuel a flinty gaze. He was lean and dark-haired and might have been menacing if I hadn’t grown up around the Drakes.
I took a deep breath and tried to change the subject. It wasn’t my usual tactic but I’d promised Mom I’d work on my violent tendencies. “So is Sebastian romantic or what?” I asked Jason. His cheeks went red immediately.
“Stop asking him about his love life, you perv,” Jenna rolled her eyes.
“But Sebastian is practically mute. How else am I going to get any intel?” That fact that I’d used “intel” instead of “gossip” was further proof that just three months at the Helios-Ra academy had irrevocably damaged me.
“If Jason blushes any harder, his head will explode.” Jenna pointed out. “And getting brain matter out of clothes is hard.”
“You speak from experience?” I paused . Samuel still hadn’t looked away. “Okay, now he’s really pissing me off.” I met his eyes and raised my voice. “Stop staring at me, Samuel.”
The other students hunched over their binders for last-minute studying looked up. Eyebrows rose, coughs covered startled laughs. “Are you crazy?” Jason slumped in his chair. “He’s s
cary even for a Helios-Ra student. You’re like a hurricane, Hamilton.”
“Or a really vicious ferret,” Jenna added, grinning.
“Seriously, what’s your problem?” I asked Samuel. Sorry, Mom. But at least I wasn’t punching anyone. I should get credit for that.
He just tilted his head as if he was studying me for one of the damn exams. “There’s something off about you.”
I stood up slowly. Jason touched my elbow. “Let’s just go,” he said. “It’s the last day of exams for everyone,” he reminded me as I stalked away. “We’re all on edge. That’s why we’re meeting up for paintball after dinner. It helps.”
“Shooting shit helps---wait.” I shook my head. “Of course it helps. I’m in.” I planned to shoot a paintball right in Samuel’s ass. Meanwhile, there was just enough time left before my next exam for him to make it up to me. I marched over to his chair.
“You owe me, Samuel Crow.” I grabbed his hand and yanked him up out of his chair. Startled, he let me. “Let’s go.”
“He’s going to eviscerate her,” Jason mumbled to Jenna.
Jenna just snorted. “My money’s on Lucy.”
I ignored them both and dragged Samuel out of the library and down the stairs to the headmistress’s office. “Are you taking me in for a scolding?” he drawled.
I recalled the rumours of fistfights and ambushes, nothing exactly out of the ordinary for this school. He’d also apparently put a guy in the infirmary and busted someone else’s leg. I wasn’t particularly impressed. I shoved him through the door, and not gently. “You go in there and tell Bellwood what you saw Jody and Ben do to me this morning when you just stood there and didn’t even help me. “
I didn’t want to be rescued, in fact it was deeply infuriating that Jody had gotten the better of me. At least she’d had to use Ben to do it. His shoulders were wide enough that he could have played the minotaur in one of those cheesy TV movies. Still, Samuel didn’t exactly have a reputation for being easily cowed.
“I figured you could handle yourself.”