Bleeding Hearts

by Alyxandra Harvey

  “Son of a bitch.”

  While they stared at each other, I took the opportunity to dart out the open door. I nearly broke my ankle avoiding a rotten floorboard. When I leaped off the porch onto the dirt road, I should have kept running for my life—mountain lions, forest snows, and my utter lack of direction be damned. But I couldn’t move. I could only stare as a creature shuffled out onto the deserted street.

  He was a deeper, more vibrant blue than Aidan and Saga, and he had even more teeth. When the wind shifted I got a mouthful of his smell: not just mushrooms but rotting mushrooms, not just damp but stagnant swamp. I gagged. Something about the way he moved made my hands clench and sweat soak the back of my shirt. He didn’t say anything, just licked his lips. His eyes caught the faint light from the moon when the clouds parted. He inhaled deeply and snapped his jaws again, saliva dripping from his teeth.

  Then he came at me, snarling.

  And I knew I couldn’t outrun him.

  I tried anyway.

  I whirled, trying to get back to the relative safety of the porch and the broken house and the slightly less crazy, less blue people inside.

  I didn’t make it.

  He grabbed my hand, yanking me backward as I was running forward. My shoulder jerked painfully. I screamed. I was locked in place, twisted unnaturally, and he was trying to lick my hand.

  Gross.

  And weird.

  I pulled harder, feeling sharp, sudden fear in every part of my body—my head, my knees, my spleen, and, most of all, my stinging hands.

  And then Aidan was there, faster, stronger, and crazier. He grabbed the blue man’s wrist and broke it, snapping it as easily as if it were a dry twig. The man howled. Something howled back in response from behind one of the buildings, and it wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t animal or human. And it wasn’t alone.

  “One of the whelps got loose, did it?” Aidan said, his hands suddenly full of slender, sharpened sticks. No, not sticks. Stakes. One caught the man in the neck and, as he jerked back, another caught him in the chest. Aidan used the heel of his hand to shove the stake through skin and flesh and bone. My stomach threatened to turn inside out.

  But it had to wait while my brain threatened the same thing, because the creature clutched at his chest, gurgling in pain before he crumbled into ashes. He looked like soot and crushed embers in the dirt. My vision wavered and my shoulder ached. I trembled all over. Aidan kept me in place, his hand on my wrist. I prayed he wouldn’t break it, too.

  The howling continued, louder, more high-pitched, as frantic as disembodied howling could get. Saga marched out to the edge of the porch and blew a wooden whistle.

  The howling ceased, as sharp in its silence as it had been in its clamor.

  Chapter 12

  Connor

  Nicholas and I were patrolling in the forest near the road into town when my bike broke down. Computers I can handle, cars and bikes not so much. We were well off Drake land, miles away really, but there were so many Hel-Blar around and with the Blood Moon approaching, we couldn’t afford to take chances. We hadn’t made the Hel-Blar—they weren’t technically our mess to clean up—but it would look bad if we didn’t. Not to mention, people might get eaten.

  “Could be the battery cables,” Nicholas said. He lifted the seat and then shook his head. “They seem fine.” He tightened them anyway and then dropped the seat back down and turned the key. It still didn’t sound right. He looked irritated. Duncan was the mechanic of the family, but Nicholas was trying to catch up. He muttered to himself while I texted Duncan to meet us.

  “I can fix it,” Nicholas said, shooting me a glare when he caught me texting. He started poking at the innards of the bike. I leaned against a tree and checked my phone for messages while we waited for Duncan. I’d texted Christabel to see if she wanted to check out the bookstores in town.

  “So … you and Christabel?” Nicholas asked.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket, shrugging. She hadn’t texted me back. “We’ll see.”

  “But you like her?”

  When I just raised my eyebrows at him, he sighed. “Lucy wanted me to ask,” he admitted.

  “Tell her it’s none of her business.”

  He snorted. “You tell her.”

  “Unless she’ll put in a good word for me,” I amended.

  “So you do like her.”

  “What’s not to like? She’s hot and badass.” Which made it sound as if I liked her just because she was pretty, which wasn’t true. She was fierce in her combat boots but she read poetry. She didn’t flirt but she was damn cute—and she smelled like cinnamon. She was also the first girl in a long time who was invading my thoughts like this.

  But you didn’t go off all sappy to one of your brothers. That never ended well.

  Duncan pulled up, trailed by Quinn.

  “I was visiting Hunter,” Quinn explained, “and came across Duncan.”

  Duncan just grunted and went straight to my bike. His jeans and white T-shirt were smeared with engine grease, as usual, and he was carrying his pack of tools. Nicholas made room for him and they both crouched, looking serious.

  “I checked the battery cables already,” Nicholas said. “But it’s still bogging. Must be the carb again.”

  Duncan reached for a ratchet. “Good work, little brother.”

  They tinkered for a while. Black goo dripped onto the grass. Quinn tossed me a bottle of soda. “What are you doing patrolling when you could be flirting with Lucy’s cousin?”

  I groaned. “What, is there a bulletin out or something?”

  “Dude, I’m your twin. And it’s about a girl. I’m offended you’d think I wouldn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said quietly. “I don’t think she’s interested.”

  Quinn just snorted. “She’s interested.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “You’ve barely met her.”

  “Connor,” he said. “We’re pretty. The sooner you deal with that, the better.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think she goes for pretty.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with her?”

  It took another half hour for Duncan and Nicholas to finish flushing the carburetor or whatever it was they were doing. Duncan explained it in great detail, but I was listening as well as he listened when I explained why his computer was freezing up. He smiled smugly when the engine finally purred. If it was a cat, it would have rubbed its head against Duncan’s knee.

  “You guys up for patrol?” Nicholas asked.

  Duncan shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, grimacing. “Aunt Ruby’s decided she wants her Mustang ready for the Blood Moon. You know, the Mustang that hasn’t run since 1965?”

  “How is she going to drive it to the camp? There isn’t even a road.”

  Duncan shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.” He rode off without another word.

  “I’m always up for patrol.” Quinn grinned. “Let’s hit the outskirts of town. Hel-Blar are running wild again. Hunter says the school now gets nightly bulletins from the Helios-Ra agents in town.”

  We rode around for a while but it was uneventful, until we were making our way back out among the farms nearest Violet Hill. There was a bright yellow car on the side of Cedar Road with the driver’s door open. No one was inside.

  “That’s Lucy’s car,” Nicholas said, all but tossing his bike into the ditch when the kickstand didn’t snap down fast enough.

  “Shit,” Quinn whispered as we ran after him. I already had my phone out. I wasn’t sure if we were calling a tow truck or hunters. I called Lucy first while Nicholas raced around her car, shouting her name. She didn’t answer.

  “Her cell’s out of range,” I said when Nicholas stopped, hands braced on the hood, his expression painful to look at. Rain pattered around us.

  “I smell mushrooms,” Quinn said grimly, nostrils flaring. Hel-Blar. “Or wet earth?” Nicholas punched the car, denting the hood. “I don’t smell any blood, though,” Quinn
added. “Nicholas.”

  Nicholas nodded, jaw clenched. “I heard you.” He slid into the car’s driver’s seat. His fangs were out, his eyes faintly bloodshot. He was pale even through the window. “There’s Hypnos on the steering wheel.”

  “Shit.” I grabbed my laptop and monitored all the lines and signals going to any of the family phones or computers. Mom and Dad didn’t know I’d set them up that way.

  “Anything?” Quinn asked me quietly. “He doesn’t look good, man. Hurry up.”

  “Nothing—wait, no.” I hacked into Mom’s private account. “Gotcha. Shit. Shit!”

  “What?” Quinn read over my shoulder, going pale. “Shit.”

  Nicholas finally looked up from the section of the dirt road he was investigating. “What?”

  “Message to Mom. From Saga.”

  “Saga? The one we thought shot at Solange?”

  I nodded. “Nick.”

  “Spit it out already. What does she have to do with Lucy?”

  “She kidnapped Lucy. She’s holding her hostage in exchange for official recognition for the Hel-Blar.”

  Nicholas’s eyes went wild, like lightning striking a moonlit lake.

  Quinn looked at me. “You guys see if you can track her. I’ll alert the others.”

  “They’ll be out of range, too.”

  “I know,” he said, jumping on his bike. “I’ll send out texts and then hit the caves and the camp. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

  “I’ll try,” I said as he sped away. I approached Nicholas warily. “Find any tracks?”

  “No.” His voice was stark, cold as naked steel.

  I inhaled deeply, cataloging the faint mushroom smell. “It’s not the normal mushroom stink, more like wet earth and leaves,” I said, frowning. “I don’t smell swamp—do you?” He sniffed and shook his head. I froze. “But I smell cinnamon.”

  “Lucy doesn’t smell like cinnamon,” Nicholas said tightly. “She smells like cherry gum and pepper.”

  “I know,” I replied just as tightly. “But Christabel smells like cinnamon.”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” But I did know we were both remembering the Hel-Blar attacking us that night we went to the beach. “Lucy’s prepared,” I said. But Christabel didn’t even know vampires existed. “Shit,” I said as the rain started to fall harder. My nostrils flared. “That way toward the woods.”

  Nicholas turned on his heel. “I don’t smell Lucy.”

  “Could Christabel have borrowed Lucy’s car?” I asked.

  “I guess so.” He frowned. “I don’t smell Lucy anywhere.”

  “And I definitely smell Christabel.” I wiped water off my face, stepping off the road into the fields of goldenrod.

  “Where are you going?” Nicholas called.

  “I don’t think they took Lucy,” I said over my shoulder. Thunder growled and lightning hissed. “And I’ll lose Christabel’s scent if it keeps raining.” Frustration simmered in my blood.

  “Wait for me!”

  “No, stay there. Just in case.” Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they had Lucy, too, or maybe they’d separated the cousins. Either way, Nicholas was Lucy’s best chance and I was Christabel’s.

  I didn’t think. I just ran, trying to find my way through the smothering rain and the hundreds of smells in a forest during autumn: mud, leaves, apples. I concentrated on cinnamon, just cinnamon.

  The faint trail took me through the deepest part of the oldest woods, where the canopy was so thick the rain barely came through. It was the only reason I didn’t lose her scent completely. The spicy warmth of it tickling my nostrils goaded me forward, through the swelling river and the frost gathering at the foot of the mountain. There was a dirt road, overgrown with weeds but clearly some kind of man-made road. I heard howling and snarling and I wasn’t sure if it was animal or vampire.

  The road took me to the ruins of a frontier town, all rotting logs and sagging porches. Wooden signs creaked. The smell of mushrooms was thick, rancid. I gagged but took another breath anyway.

  Because underneath the rot: cinnamon.

  Chapter 13

  Lucy

  I didn’t know what to say.

  And I always had something to say, to anyone, at any time. Especially Solange. She was crouched next to me in the ferns, delicate and pale as a pearl. The grizzled old guard was lying in the roots of a tree. I tried not to keep staring at him.

  “He’s fine,” Solange muttered.

  She was right. Technically he was fine. And I was going to ruin a perfectly good moment of intrigue. I pushed a frond out of my way, trying to peer into the shadows. There were a few torches in iron stands. The rain continued to patter listlessly, barely able to slide between the branches to the forest floor. The clearing was a narrow band of grass and wildflowers around the base of the mountain. Tents had been erected, like some kind of vampire circus or a production of Arabian Nights had come to town. There was a lot of silk, gold thread, carved mahogany, and a long wooden table roughly the length of the main street in town. Tin lanterns cast a warm pattern of light over its surface.

  “Your aunt must love this.” Solange’s aunt Hyacinth still thought the only rightful queen was Queen Victoria, and she was in love with pomp and circumstance and a proper bustle. She’d also nearly been killed by rogue Helios-Ra agents, and the burns to her face hadn’t healed as well as they should have. At least, that’s what we assumed, since she still refused to lift her veils.

  “She’s in England.”

  “What? Since when?”

  “She went on a pilgrimage to Uncle Edward’s monument and to Queen Victoria’s grave.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’ll be back for the Blood Moon.”

  We watched two burly men muscle a huge clay amphora, like ones the ancient Romans used. I guessed it wasn’t full of red wine like our history teacher told us. Well, not undoctored red wine, anyway.

  “Hey.” I frowned. “They’re human.”

  Solange nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How come they’re allowed and I’m not?”

  “They belong to Bruno,” she said. Bruno was head of the Drake family security detail. He’d skulked around our house more than once as well.

  “What about her?” I pointed to a woman with large hips and a larger smile. “She’s not a bodyguard.”

  “She’s a … well, Kieran would call her a bloodslave.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? He was right about that?” He’d once accused me of being a bloodslave and had looked for the telltale scars on my arms. I’d punched him in the nose, righteously indignant on behalf of my vampire family.

  “She’s not ours,” Solange rushed to add. “She came with a European delegation. Apparently they think it’s cute that we drink from blood banks and animals. One of them actually called us colonial.” She didn’t sound thrilled about that. “Only humans who are under a pheromone trance can attend the festival, and they’re not allowed to speak.”

  “Seriously? That’s medieval.” I frowned. “I can’t believe your dad would agree to that.”

  “He thinks it’s too dangerous for humans to attend anyway. And you know what he says: one battle at a time.”

  I grinned. “As opposed to your mother, who says all battles, all the time.”

  “Exactly. Plus, it’s tradition. Humans don’t need to know how we govern ourselves.”

  “On behalf of humans, hey.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I did know what she meant, and it only made it worse.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, mostly to distract myself. The girl looked in her early twenties and was wearing paint-splattered jean overalls. Her hair was a soft Afro decorated with a single pink flower.

  “Sky,” Solange replied. “And that’s Sabrielle,” she added, when another girl walked by wearing a beautiful blue sari stiff with silver-thread embroidery and glass beads.

  “I totally want t
hat dress for prom,” I said.

  “She serves with Constantine.” Solange’s voice changed.

  I looked at her sharply. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s a dignitary.”

  He was something more than that, I could tell by her tone—both guarded and nearly reverent.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You can vamp out until the cows come home, Solange, but you can’t lie to me.”

  “It’s noth—” She stopped and rose silently to her feet, pivoting to face behind us. Her knees bent slightly, and she had a long dagger in her hand. I didn’t even see her reach for it. I thought of disembodied Hel-Blar body parts dangling from the trees and reached for a stake. Gandhi leaped in front of me, growling. His butt knocked me over.

  Quinn was suddenly standing in front of Solange. His long hair hung in his eyes. “Sol.”

  Solange relaxed her stance. So did Gandhi. “Crap. You got me going.” She sheathed her dagger and then shook her hands, as if they were full of adrenaline.

  “Sol, oh God,” he said. “They took Lucy. She’s gone.”

  “I am?” I pushed out of the ferns, confused. “I’m right here.” Quinn gaped at me, then plucked me up in a fierce hug. “Vampire strength,” I squeaked.

  He dropped me so fast I landed back on my butt in the mud. I shook my head. “What’s with you guys?”

  “You’re okay!” he said, helping me up. He would have helped me brush the dirt off my backside but I slapped his hand away.

  “What’s going on?” Solange asked.

  “Connor intercepted a message,” he explained, “doing his computer voodoo. It said Lucy’s a hostage.”

  I shivered, then scowled, hating the fear that scampered on insect feet over my spine. “Who sent it?”

  “Saga.”

  “Okay, but they clearly don’t have me. So what’s the deal?”

  Quinn jerked a hand through his dark hair. “Your car’s dead on Cedar Road.”

  “What?” I thought about Christabel, borrowing my crappy car to get home after detention. “Oh shit. Shit!” I felt sick. “It’s not me they have—it’s my cousin.”

  Solange swore. “We have to get her out. Have you told Mom and Dad yet?”