Viola glanced at her. “I’m queen, haven’t you heard?”
“You’re mental,” Lucy said. “Solange! Seriously?”
Viola felt a flare of fury at being called names. She hated it even more that Lucy didn’t cower. She didn’t realize that Lucy never cowered, ever, and especially not to me, her best friend.
Her best friend. God, Viola could do anything to her. She could get right under Lucy’s defenses.
I wondered briefly if I could stake myself on the sword lying across the arms of an empty chair.
I’ll kill her before you reach the chair, Viola warned me.
I retreated, terrified at what might happen to Lucy. Lucy noticed Marigold and Spencer. She frowned at Spencer. “I know you.”
“I don’t think so,” Spencer said.
“No, I know I recognize you from somewhere. A photo, maybe?”
While they talked, I tried to find a way around the door, tried to pick the metaphorical lock or use myself as a psychic battering ram.
Viola looked between the two of them, frowning. She arched an eyebrow at Marigold and Spencer. “Leave us.”
“Well, listen to herself,” Marigold muttered.
“Wait!” Lucy turned toward them but the guard knocked her back down before she could get up. “My friend Jenna from school is in the woods south of here, wounded.”
Spencer paused, paled. And then he was out of the tent before Viola could even remark.
Lucy!
Lucy looked up, peering at me closely, as if something didn’t make sense, as if she saw more than the others. Viola didn’t like it. Rage bubbled inside her, but she smiled prettily at the guard. “Could you get rid of her?”
“Certainly.”
Lucy pulled a long silver chain and medallion out of her pocket. “Solange, damn it, at least hear me out. Someone’s trying to frame you for murder.”
“On second thought.” Viola rose with all the deadly grace of a predator. “Let me.”
Chapter 29
Lucy
Saturday night, 10:30 p.m.
I didn’t believe Solange attacked Libby, even when I found her medallion, but I also couldn’t have imagined that she’d break from her family and set herself up as some kind of rebel queen. She hadn’t been human for a few months, but I’d never thought of her as inhuman until now.
She looked weird.
She hauled me to my feet. I tried to fight her, but she was stronger. She dragged me through the camp. I’d wanted to see the Blood Moon up close, but certainly not like this.
“Solange, what the hell?” I snapped, trying to make myself as heavy as possible. My parents taught me to go limp if I was ever arrested in a protest. “Ow!”
“Walk or get thrown.”
We passed rows of ornate tents, vampires talking, arguing, some even packing up to go home. Everyone’s gaze was drawn to her, like a magnet. She preened.
“Where’s your mom? The others?”
“Banned.” I halted in shock, and she hauled me along roughly, impatiently. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You kicked them out?”
“I had to.”
“You really are crazy.”
“This way I can find Nicholas,” she said smoothly. “Isn’t that what you want?”
I stumbled along beside her, trying to find my best friend in the lithe, hard girl with the sickly sweet smile. She may as well have been a different person. No one stopped us as she took me past guards and rows of motorcycles, past more guards and over a stream. I couldn’t keep up. I was panting, sweat burning into my eyes. When she stopped I felt a trickle of fear. She just smiled again, like a little girl.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, looking around frantically for a makeshift weapon.
“Get rid of yet another problem.”
She was reaching for me when the voice speared between us.
“Get the hell away from her.”
“Nicholas!” I was so happy to hear his rough, angry voice, I could have cried. “You’re alive!” I wanted to throw myself at him, but Solange had me by the throat. I struggled even though I knew it was useless. Nicholas’s eyes looked like a winter storm, all fog and black ice. He stalked toward us.
“Ah, the prodigal son returns.”
“I mean it, Solange,” he said, his jaw clenching. “Get off her. Now.” He moved so fast I just saw a blur of pale skin and furious eyes, and then he was right in front of us. He was covered in blood and gashes, his shirt torn, ugly burns on the side of his neck. He reached for me.
Solange tightened her grip.
I would have squeaked but I had no breath left to make even the smallest sound.
Nicholas froze. It would be easy for her to snap my neck. I knew it, Solange knew it, Nicholas knew it.
Instead, she lowered her head and licked the blood trickling from the cut on my hairline.
“Solange, gross!” I flinched and tried to kick her since my legs were about the only thing I could move.
“She’ll die if I so much as get a splinter,” Solange warned him calmly, almost sadly. “I don’t want to, Nicholas, so don’t force my hand.”
“Let her go,” Nicholas ground out. “Solange, she’s your best friend. More than that, she’s like your sister.”
She shifted so I was held up against a tree by the pale spear of her arm. “A lot’s changed since you’ve been gone,” she said. “I just need you to listen for a moment.”
He jerked a hand through his muddy, dirty hair. I ached to touch him, to kiss him. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m listening. Christ.”
“I’m the queen now, Nicholas.”
“Which explains why you’re wearing a crown.” He sounded exhausted. His hands were trembling. When he finally looked at me, he could only stare at the blood on my forehead.
“I need to know that you’re loyal to me.”
“My loyalties?” he shot back. There was a stake in his hand and a kind of mad serenity in his expression. “Are you kidding? After everything that’s happened? After what I just went through?”
“What did you go through?” I asked.
He still wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I got away, that’s what matters. They thought they broke me.”
“I need to know,” Solange insisted. “I need to be sure you’re on my side.”
“Then be sure.”
“I’m not just a princess anymore.”
“You’re an assh—” I managed to hiss out before she pushed harder with her thumb, and my trachea threatened to explode. I struggled not to pass out as black spots danced at the edges of my vision, then faded. My eyes rolled back in my head.
And then Nicholas was all fangs and fury. He attacked so fast I had no warning, wasn’t even sure my eyes could register motion that quickly.
But he still wasn’t quicker than Solange.
“Stop!”
A stake bit into the tree beside me, so close that a splinter grazed my cheek. It was a small scratch barely noticeable, but it bled. And the coppery scent of blood made the battle all the more fierce, all the more vicious. I could barely make out what was going on, and couldn’t jump in with a stake of my own since I might accidentally stake my own boyfriend. Or my best friend. And every time I moved, even an inch, Solange was there, shoving me back.
And then Nicholas brought his arm down with enough force to break her wrist. I heard the snap of the bones even as she released me so abruptly I choked and dropped to my knees. I hauled air into my bruised throat. My lungs felt as if they’d turned to paper.
Solange hissed in pain, cracking her wrist back into position. It might hurt but it wasn’t enough to stop her. I was pushing to my knees and Nicholas was reaching for me when she struck again. She kicked Nicholas in the chest with her boot. He staggered just out of reach, for barely a moment. She yanked my arm behind my back, hard enough that I yelled.
“An eye for an eye,” she said. “I’ll snap her bones and call it justice.”
/> Nicholas shrugged.
He shrugged.
I gaped at him. “She’s mine, broken or not,” he said darkly.
I felt like throwing up.
Solange was silent for a long moment. My elbow was bending the wrong way, shooting pain up my arm like rusty iron nails. Her fingers were so tight around my wrist that there were bruises already forming. It hurt enough that tears burned my eyelids if I so much as breathed too deeply against her hold. Rocks and tree roots dug into my knees.
Then she smiled. “Yes, I can smell the darkness in you,” she murmured.
“Can you?” His expression, his stance, the leashed violence in his smile; it was all wrong.
“Yes, and if you give into it, prove yourself to me, then you can come back to the camp. Lucy goes free.”
I really wanted to poke her in the eye with a sharp stick. Better yet, right in the heart, the undead cow.
She raised an eyebrow at Nicholas. “She’s your bloodslave, and yet I don’t smell her blood on you.”
Nicholas just folded his arms, as if the fight had never happened, as if this were all very normal, as if he weren’t bruised and battered. As if it didn’t hurt me just to look at him. “Yeah. So?”
Suddenly I didn’t know who I wanted to poke more.
“So, I believe you’ll drink her blood, right here and right now if you want to keep your claim on her. Otherwise, I’ll think you’re playing me, brother.”
I went cold. “You’re not serious.” I tried to jerk away again, but it was no use. Every muscle in my arm screeched. I tried to catch Nicholas’s eye, but he still wouldn’t look at me. He stepped closer. “Nicholas, don’t.”
When he finally looked at me, fear whispered through me, insidious and soft, making my bones watery.
We’d lost Solange. And now Nicholas wasn’t acting like himself. Was he drugged on her pheromones? Had she compelled him? Where had he been all this time? What had happened to him? He’d just broken her bones to protect me, but now I had to wonder, for the first time, if it was vampire possessiveness playing out, not love. Nothing made sense anymore.
Nicholas had never drunk my blood before. He’d never had to. He was the one who was always worried about what it might mean. But it had never really bothered me. I wasn’t lying when I told Jenna it was like donating at the blood bank.
But now I wasn’t so sure.
No needle or antiseptic or plastic blood bag held such menace, such hunger.
Solange shoved my frock coat off my shoulder, revealing my slip dress, which was really meant to be a nightgown. It was sleeveless, and goosebumps marched from wrist to collarbone as the snow began to fall again. It caught in my eyelashes, making prisms of colors when I looked at Nicholas’s pale skin, his gleaming fangs. I shivered, from cold or fear, I couldn’t say. Likely both.
He lifted my arm gently to his mouth, and for a brief moment I thought he’d use the leverage of our position to somehow free me from Solange’s grasp.
He didn’t.
He just ran his lips over the vulnerable crook of my elbow, back and forth, soft as moth wings, until I felt every snowflake sizzle on my exposed skin, every tree root and acorn under my knees, even the smell of cedars as it tickled my nostrils. I was exposed, like a bare electrical wire. My teeth chattered.
Nicholas’s eyes were like gray fog on the ocean, the kind that sinks ships and leads people off cliff sides. It wasn’t pretty or magical; it was deadly.
But he was still Nicholas; he had to be.
He licked at the blood pebbling over the numerous scratches and scrapes I’d already sustained. His mouth was gentle, completely at odds with the burning angle of my shoulder and the smug sinister shadow of Solange falling over me. The snow was starting to stick, making the forest too soft and too bright.
When the bite of fangs sunk sharply into my skin, I couldn’t help but make a small strangled sound. It hurt, but only briefly. Nicholas ran his tongue over the cut, then sucked gently until blood welled into his mouth. I felt him swallow, felt the brush of cold air on the small cuts, the pressure of his mouth when he bent to drink again.
I felt lightheaded even though I knew, logically, that he’d barely drunk enough to notice the loss. I’d bled more the time my grandma’s psychotic cat bit me.
“There,” he said to Solange, wiping a small drop off his lower lip. “I’m with you, but Lucy?” He sounded dark, and baleful. “Lucy’s mine.”
Epilogue
Kieran
Saturday night, 11:00 p.m.
If Solange wasn’t trying to get herself killed, Lucy was.
I was beginning to think that all of my training wasn’t actually about killing vampires anymore, it was about saving my girlfriend and her best friend from themselves. And it was a full-time job.
Though technically, Solange was my ex-girlfriend now.
But that didn’t sound right, and it sure as hell didn’t feel right either, even if it had seemed inevitable that night on my front porch. I could still feel the shape of her under my hands, see the look on her face and the delicate treachery of her fangs when I kissed her.
I didn’t know what my dad would think about Solange and me. Treaty or not, hunters and vampires didn’t date. And they sure as hell didn’t fall in love.
Until the Drakes.
Now even Hunter had fallen, for Quinn, of all vampires. It effectively made us both traitors or revolutionary heroes, depending on who you asked. I didn’t want to be a traitor; I didn’t even want to be a hero.
I just wanted Solange back.
But first I had to find Lucy and rescue her, despite the fact that I knew damned well she’d hate the term “rescue.” The GPS flashed another warning, and I checked my position one last time before slipping it into my pocket. I headed deeper into the woods. Thank God she wasn’t in the Blood Moon camp. I’d never get her out of there. As it was, I should probably call Hunter for backup. Eric wouldn’t come, not for a vampire. He was better about my new friends than the others, but he wasn’t quite to the point of helping me save one.
It didn’t matter. There wasn’t any time anyway.
Because if the GPS tag was activated, it meant only one thing: Lucy was in trouble. And so was Nicholas. Because the only reason he wouldn’t save her himself was if he couldn’t.
I had no idea what kind of situation I was heading into. I had stakes on my belt, Hypnos powder secured up my sleeve, and nose plugs around my neck. I always had nose plugs with me, ever since I’d realized I couldn’t fully trust Solange anymore. I put them on and kept off the trail, trying not to crack twigs under my boots and give myself away. Vampire hearing had me at a disadvantage, but I was used to that. I was used to a lot of things now.
I cleared my head and concentrated on where I was going. A distracted hunter didn’t last long. And at least, despite everything, I was still a hunter. I could rely on that, on the training a hundred years of tradition had afforded me. Even if I did use it for rather less than traditional reasons.
The forest was cold, hung with frost and a thin dusting of snow. Thick pine boughs muffled the last moments of the night into an eerie silence. Dawn wasn’t far off; there was already a slight pink tinge to the light. Another weapon at my disposal, even if I couldn’t hang it off my belt. I ran for nearly twenty minutes before I saw signs of habitation: a scrap of lace caught on a thorny branch, a lantern half-buried in snow, and finally an empty wine bottle in a decorative metal cage hung with rubies.
Also, a vampire.
She dropped out of the tree above me, landing quietly. She didn’t say a word, didn’t even bother with the trademark vampiric smirk upon finding a lone hunter in the woods. She just attacked, launched into a feral deadly dance that blurred the colors of her dress and shook the bare branches around us. I didn’t have time to fight.
And I didn’t have time to lose either.
She cracked her elbow into my stomach before I could dodge her. I doubled over, cursing on a strangled gasp. I used th
e momentum of my stumble to drop to the ground and roll to the side. I came up, kicking out to catch her ankles with my steel-toe boots. She hissed in pain. It was the only moment I was likely to get. As she staggered, I released the Hypnos from the casing under my cuff. White powder exploded in a cloud right in her face. Before she could react, the hypnotic powder was entering her bloodstream, seeping into her pores. Her pale eyes dilated, her lips lifted off angry fangs.
“Stop,” I ordered, pushing to my feet. Dried leaves and pine needles clung to my clothes. “Go home.”
She snarled at me, the violence of it contradicting her blond curls and angelic face. I’d long ago stopped believing angelic faces, since the small and pretty Hope killed my father.
I could have ordered this vampire to do anything at all and she would have obeyed. She would have fallen on a stake for me, or even lain down to suntan if I’d asked it of her. But I had no idea who she was. She could be under the protection of a treaty, or belong to some foreign vampire dignitary. A Huntsman would have killed her regardless and wouldn’t have considered any other option. I wasn’t a Huntsman.
She tumbled away and I pushed between cedar trees, emerging in a strange sort of outdoor living room hung with lanterns and crowded with velvet sofas. A river glittered between Persian rugs. And under a willow tree hung with candles and ribbons, Lucy knelt on the frost-encrusted ground between Solange and Nicholas.
Even at a distance, something wasn’t right.
As I ran toward them, Solange glanced up. When she saw me, she jerked once, as if she’d been stabbed. She shoved Lucy forward so that she sprawled over the roots. Then she turned and vanished between the trees, her hair streaming behind her, her skin moon-pale.
“Sol, wait!” Ice and frozen mud cracked under my boots.
“What’s going on?” I asked Nicholas. He shouldn’t be here, not if Lucy’s GPS tag had been activated.
Unless he was the problem.
I stopped, stake in my hand. I catalogued what little information I could in the second it took for Lucy to stand up, looking befuddled. Blood trickled down her bare arm, and there were leaves in her hair. Solange had taken off toward the encampment. There were vampires in the woods, closing in. Nicholas looked as if he’d had the crap kicked out of him.
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