A Tithe of Blood and Ashes

  I frowned. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You were five, “Helena murmured. “And it was over quickly.”

  I could just imagine. “Okay, but what does that have to do with the Hel-Blar invasion?”

  “After that, we found someone who could cast a shield spell.” Mom tried to smile. “To protect you.”

  “Cailleach?” I hazarded a guess. “Black Annis?”

  “Where did you hear that name? Never mind. The Cailleach is the Winter Hag in the old Celtic stories,” Mom explained. “Like the woman in the grey cloak you drew. She comes from the winter mountains. We gave you a shield of stone and ice.”

  It explained, a little, how I’d survived the Drakes for so long.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Because the shield can’t protect you from everything. It just gave you an edge, a little luck. And I love you to pieces, Lucky Moon,” Dad replied. “But you don’t exactly need another reason to be reckless.”

  He said reckless, I said spitting in the face of fear. Given my proximity to vampires and general mayhem, I figured there were two options : let fear turn me into a dumbass or a smartass. No contest.

  “But we didn’t even believe in magic before last year,” Connor said quizzically. It was part of the reason we’d all nearly had our asses handed to us by both Lady Natasha and Montmartre.

  “The Drakes didn’t,” Dad corrected. “But we always have.”

  And because they had, I knew exactly what happened in the old stories. I faced them both, heedless of the cold air sneaking under my collar and the burning tingle as my toes defrosted. “What did you sacrifice?”

  Dad’s gaze slid away. “What do you mean?”

  He was such a bad liar. “In all the stories you used to read to me, magic comes at a price.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Mom said quietly.

  “It was a vampire spell. You must have offered blood at the very least.”

  “In a way.”

  I actually growled in frustration. “Mom.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “We gave up the ability to have more children.”

  How could you miss something that had never happened?

  Clearly, it was possible. You only had to look at my parents’ pallid faces. They’d probably imagined a big family with lots of children. But they’d given it all up for me.

  “What now?” I asked, feeling small and sick and strangely exposed.

  “The magic’s run out,” Dad explained.

  “It hasn’t just run out, it’s backfired,” Nicholas pointed out quietly. “So we call Isabeau.”

  Isabeau was a Hound, part of reclusive tribe of vampires who worked magic. They’d come out of hiding last year to help us defeat Lady Natasha and Montmartre. She was also Logan’s girlfriend, even though the term girlfriend seemed ridiculous for such a severe, ferocious girl.

  “Isabeau is away with the Hounds,” Logan said. He was starting to slur his words as dawn unfurled. “They’re searching out new caves in the mountains.”

  I looked at the ashes clumping in the snow. “And we clearly can’t wait. If the last three nights are any indication, there will be a Hel-Blar army at our door tonight.” We’d killed so many already, but there were always more. We couldn’t keep this up.

  Weak sunlight finally brightened the clouds until the sky was pearly and luminescent. Nicholas and his brothers toppled together, trying to hold each other up with varying degrees of success. Helena held tightly to the side mirror of the van they’d driven here.

  “We’ll fix this,” Mom promised. “Leave it to us.”

  My parents had already given up too much to keep me safe.

  I’d find a way to protect myself.

  Nicholas was the only one who caught the glint in my eye. He tried to speak, even as his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “I’ll get them home,” Bruno said, catching Connor before he took out the mailbox with his head. “Before they start drooling on themselves.”

  ***

  Mom might personally know every guru, witch, and shaman in the area, but I had other resources. Paranormal Studies at the academy for one, and Samuel for another. And I had exactly five and a half hours of sunlight left to figure it all out.

  Because Nicholas knew me as well as I knew him. It was a race, no question.

  “A shield spell?” Rosa looked at me across her desk, suddenly interested.

  I’d cornered Samuel at lunch and told him just enough about my magical problem to get him intrigued. I’d promised to be his guinea pig for his next paper, if he helped me out. Instead of taking me to the converted greenhouse behind the gym that currently served as study hall for the Paranormal Studies division, he drove me to the dodgy end of Violet Hill.

  We stopped at a run-down looking century house and went around back to a large shed. When I asked if all magic was performed in gardening sheds, he pointed out that magic was frequently smelly. Rosa was his secret contact, and that’s all he’d say about her. Apparently she taught him things about magic that the profs refused to. I’d expected long skirts and faded tattoos like my mom, or at least a proper old lady with some kind of an accent. Instead, Rosa was in her mid-twenties. She wore a plain white t-shirt with ancient jeans and her hair was pixie-short and as black as her eyes. No New Age sandals either, just red converse.

  “Shield spells are extraordinarily rare,” she continued. “Especially when they work. Are you sure?”

  I thought of my parents’ bleak and brave faces. “I’m sure.”

  I paced around to distract myself but there wasn’t much room. I was used to the cramped quarters in Solange’s pottery shed, though, so it didn’t stop me. Rosa’s shelves were crowded with plants and glass jars filled with stones, salt, and feathers. There were books in a chest under her wooden work table. “They called on the Cailleach,” I said, hoping that would make sense to her. “Or Black Annis, I’m not sure.”

  “That’s brilliant.” Her eyebrows rose sharply. The ring through her left brow glinted. “The Cailleach created the Scottish highland mountains by dropping stones from her apron. She’s an old woman with blue skin and governs the winter dark. Sympathetic magic,” she elaborated when I didn’t look properly fascinated. She was excited enough I was half-afraid she’d try to high-five me.

  “Your parents created a link from those mountains, to the Violet Hill mountains, from the blue skin of the Cailleach to that of the Hel-Blar. Parallels like that almost never happen.”

  “Who’s Black Annis then?”

  “Another face to the Cailleach. One who eats children.”

  I thought of my parents unborn children.

  “There was a sacrifice,” I said quietly before Rosa got any giddier.

  “There always is.” She wasn’t surprised or particularly sympathetic. “Only we don’t call it that. It’s a tithe.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “There’s a big difference between sacrifice and payment. Well, sometimes. And the spirits or gods, or whoever, don’t exactly need money. So we tithe energy, dreams, broken swords.”

  “Blood.”

  “In Violet Hill? Yes.”

  “My parents will try again.”

  “But you’ve decided you don’t need a shield?”

  I thought of everything that had happened since Solange’s birthday in August: Lady Natasha eating a raw deer heart thinking it belonged to Solange, a Drake cousin, London, turned to ash, Hunter’s grandfather and my friend Tyson killed at the battle, Nicholas’s scars, Solange traveling the world on a self-imposed exile.

  “Oh, I need it,” I said. “But the sacrifice should be mine.”

  “You want to call up Black Annis and make a bargain?” Samuel’s usually impassive assassin-face was comically shocked. “Dude.”

  “Yes.” I faced Rosa. “What do I need to do?”

  “Pray.”

  “Not helpful.”

  “I wasn’t kidding. You go in humb
le, or you don’t come out. You bring gifts: flowers, cupcakes.”

  “Like a tea party?” I asked dubiously. I was accustomed to this, my parents offered enough incense and flowers to make their own Mardi Gras parade float.

  “You’re going to her home,” Rosa pointed out. “So be a good guest.”

  That made sense. “What else?”

  “You already have a link to her. If anyone can pull this off, it’s you. More so than your parents. More than any witch I know, even. But it would help if you could go to the same spot your parents used. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, there’s a big boulder near the bottom of the Crowfoot Trail that looks like an ancient standing stone. They always go there for weird rituals.” They’d been married there, had conceived me there, and had covered me in flowers there when I was just a week old. And Mom had made each of the Drake brothers go there after their sixteenth birthdays, to start their vampire lives with a blessing. That blessing mostly entailed standing under the full moon while my mother sprinkled them with red rose petals and chanted. Solange had escaped the ceremony, but only because she’d been kidnapped.

  “You’ll need rowan wood for the fire. And a bunch of other things. I’ll make you a list. Do you know when they worked their spell?”

  “I was five. So twelve years ago, I guess.”

  “Even better,” Rosa declared, after typing something into her laptop. “There was a comet twelve years ago. That’s partly why this is happening now.”

  Samuel and I exchanged a glance. “And?” He asked.

  “And the Cailleach is linked to comets. Some think the first mention of her Black Annis aspect was actually just a comet sighting. So you’ll need a meteorite stone.”

  “I can get that.”

  “Really? By tonight?”

  Nicholas’s brother Duncan spent so much time alone roaming the mountains and the forest , he’d found a meteorite once, still smoking from being swallowed by the atmosphere. It was in a glass box in the Drake library. I texted him so he’d get the message as soon as he woke up. I asked him to leave it in the mailbox Solange and I had set up in a grove of birch trees by the road that led past their property. We’d been reading Little Women and loved the idea of secret letters.

  And I couldn’t visit the Drake farmhouse at dusk anymore, not since the battle and the resulting vampire delegates and visitors swarming the place. Dusk is a vampire’s most violent time, it can make them as vicious as sunrise makes them vulnerable.

  “Just be careful, kid. Black Annis collects children, to protect or to eat , but no one ever knows which it will be until it’s too late.”

  “Why is everyone always so determined to make me into food?”

  ***

  I didn’t make it to the secret mailbox until after sundown. My parents were smarter than I gave them credit for and they’d sicced all the teachers on me. I couldn’t go three feet without one of them getting in my way.

  But I’d once snuck out of the house when Helena was home so a few vampire hunters weren’t going to stop me.

  But by the time I made it to the birch grove though, the letterbox was empty.

  Instead, I got a text message from Nicholas. I love you.

  I stared at it with a sinking feeling of dread.

  “Shit.”

  ***

  I stole a car.

  Sort of.

  I took Dad’s truck while he and my mother were inside making phone calls to every flaky person they’d ever met. It would take a while. They’d still be searching out the spell ingredients while I was at the base of the mountains chatting with a goddess who, may or may not want to eat me.

  Even for me, this was a spectacularly bad idea.

  But Nicholas had drank the Drake White-Knight Kool-aid a long time ago, and while I was bouncing and shuddering over the rocky road, he had already done something heroic. Read: stupid. I knew it was partly Duncan’s fault, he must have told Nicholas about my text.

  I would have pounded the steering wheel if I wasn’t holding onto it so tightly. Driving through the old mountain passes, even in a snowplough truck, wasn’t easy. I finally had to abandon it when the snow got too deep. I strapped on snow shoes, knapsack on my back and a bundle of rowan twigs under my arm. The sun had set while I was driving, turning the mountains pink as cotton candy. It was darker now, and even colder. Luckily, I didn’t have far to go.

  Unluckily, I could already see Nicholas on the ground, his blood on the snow.

  Running in snowshoes is nearly impossible but I managed. My heart was in my throat, choking me.

  Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. I stopped myself from shouting out his name. His blood would be calling to any Hel-Blar in the area, and I didn’t want to make it an easier for them to track us.

  Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. He wasn’t moving. And he was pale, even for a vampire. I would have thrown up, if there’d been time.

  “Don’t be dead,” I whispered, digging through the snow to reach him. Smoke ringed around us and the standing stone jutting out of the ground like a monster’s tooth.

  His veins were faintly blue under his skin, like rivers coursing the winter-white of his temple. There was blood pooling in the cut on his left wrist; the rest had dripped down onto the small chunk of meteorite. The crystal clusters, the ring of salt, the rowan fire. The spell was already started. A hollowed egg, like the one I’d brought with me, sat on a flat stone over the flames. Inside the egg would be a piece of paper with my name on it.

  When his eyelids fluttered, I hugged him so hard he actually squeaked. I was half-laughing and half-crying. “You are such an idiot,” I said, wiping my eyes so I could see clearly.

  “Shield...spell.”

  “Yeah, we’ll fight about that later when you’re not dying the death of the undead.” I wasn’t even sure if I was making sense. I was giddy with relief. He wasn’t dead. I was full of butterflies and cupcakes and other revoltingly happy things. Maybe I really could sneeze rainbows now. I pulled off my mittens, exposing the thin skin of my own wrist. “Drink.”

  He stared at me, mutinous. “No.” He’d bitten me once, to save me from Solange’s inner demons. He’d never forgiven himself. I wasn’t kidding when I’d called vampire hunters drama queens, but they had nothing on actual vampires.

  “Nicholas, you offered too much of your own blood. I don’t have any handy blood packets in the truck and I can’t exactly hunt you down a rabbit. If you don’t drink, you will die.”

  “Too close to sunset,” he pushed my arm away, feebly. Drake brothers never did anything feebly. Fear slid back in, stuttering my breath. “Can’t...control...”

  “Drink,” I demanded. “Or I will stake you myself.”

  He was stubborn, but I was more stubborn. And reckless and insane, according to, well, everyone. I used his own pocket knife to make a cut under my thumb, shield spell utterly forgotten. The blade bit and I swore. I waited until the blood dripped, not just beaded on my wound, before pressing it Nicholas’s mouth.

  He tried to resist, tried to turn away, but I wouldn’t let him. It was just a little blood. Nothing to me, and everything to him.

  I knew the exact moment the vampire in him took over.

  The whites of his eyes veined red and the supernatural pheromones I was mostly immune to made an inappropriate giggle effervesce in the back of my throat. His hand closed over my wrist, pressing it closer, like a dark, tingling kiss. Languid heat tickled and trembled in my throat, my belly, the backs of my knees.

  He sat up, burning like the white centre of a flame. Strength retuned to him as he swallowed, like a beautiful marionette suddenly coming to life. His features were too perfect; he was art.

  He was greedy.

  My eyes rolled back and I had to force myself not to swoon like some girl in a horror movie. If I was going to go down into the basement to investigate the strange sound, I’d damn well go armed.

  One of us was going to have to stop him. I didn’t want to
, I wanted to sink into the softness, into the darkness, into the impossible beauty of him.

  “Nicholas.” I fumbled with the cartridge of Hypnos powder under the cuff of my other arm.

  He stopped abruptly. He scuttled back out of reach, wiping his mouth clean. “Damn it, Lucy.”

  “We don’t have time for an existential crisis right now,” I pointed out. “We don’t even have time for you to tell me how the hell you figured out the spell.”

  “Samuel called.”

  “That little traitor.” Not that he knew I’d be keeping it a secret from Nicholas, but still.

  “He was trying to get a hold of you.”

  “My phone never gets a signal out here. We need to put the egg in the stone, before the coals die out.”

  Only it wasn’t there.

  I frowned and reached for the egg in my pocket. It was in pieces, cracked apart when I‘d arrived and thrown myself on top of Nicholas.

  “He was---.” Nicholas cut himself off. He stood up, nearly feline in his alertness. A shadow moved from behind the stone. She wore a parka and a cap over her short dark hair.

  “Rosa?” I asked, startled. I’d expected something with pointy teeth. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry, Lucy. But I have a little brother to protect.”

  “Wait.” I scrambled to my feet. “What? You’re stealing my shield?”

  “I told you how rare they are. And I need it.” She did look genuinely apologetic. Fat lot of good that would do me the next time the Hel-Blar surrounded me.

  Which was all too soon.

  Nicholas didn’t waste time on threats or bluster. He just moved so fast he blurred around the edges, like a smeared Pre-Raphaelite painting. Rosa didn’t run away. She didn’t have to. She pulled a bottle from the gym bag at her feet and hurled it a tree. Blood dripped down the trunk, thick and coppery. She threw more bottles until the snow turned to a Jackson Pollock painting.

  Blood stung the air. Nicholas froze, fangs extended. It was only for a moment, but it was long enough for another smell to hit us: rot and slimy wet dead things. I gagged.

  She’d called Hel-Bar on us. It was a hell of a distraction.