He turned over onto his elbow, his gaze intense. I looked away. His finger touched my chin gently, lifted it so I had to look at him.
“If you make fun of me, I’ll stake you,” I muttered.
He raised an eyebrow. “Way to ruin the moment there, Lucky.”
Oops.
The way he was looking at me made me feel suddenly shy. That was definitely new for me. I never felt shy. And now I actually had to stop myself from squirming awkwardly. It was probably just the sugar. Or an allergy to nougat.
He leaned in, his lips stopping just short of touching mine. He was so close, if I took a deep breath we’d be kissing. Something warm tingled through me. He didn’t even need vampire pheromones, he was that hot.
“I love you, too,” he whispered, one corner of his mouth lifting into a smile. I grinned back, then kissed him until I felt light-headed and breathless.
My phone vibrated in my pocket just as things were starting to get interesting. Nicholas pulled away. I sighed. Stupid phone.
“What?” I answered it crossly. I frowned. “Kieran? Is that you?” I checked the call display, then nodded at Nicholas. We both sat up. “What’s going on?” I held the phone away from my ear slightly so Nicholas could hear.
“It’s Solange,” Kieran said.
“Is she okay? What happened?”
“She’s okay,” he assured me. Nicholas stood up, hauling me by my elbow so fast I got a little dizzy. “I think.”
“What’s happening?”
“We were supposed to meet up in the woods, near the swamp before you get to the Blood Moon fields we’re not supposed to know about.” Nicholas’s mouth thinned at that. “By the time I got here, she was already … um …”
“What?” I nearly shouted, then lowered my voice, glancing up at my parents’ bedroom window.
“She’s feeding.” His voice went even tighter. “On a bloodslave.”
Nicholas and I stared at each other.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m looking at her, aren’t I?” He sounded freaked out and definitely not like the usual arrogant vampire hunter with all the answers.
Nicholas took the phone from me. “I’m coming. Stay there. Don’t call my parents!”
He tossed the phone back to me and took off across the lawn toward the lilac bushes. I chased after him.
“Like hell you’re going without me, Drake,” I called after him. I shoved through the lilac branches. Nicholas was already tossing a motorcycle helmet at me. It nearly hit me in the nose. I pulled it onto my head, fiddling with the straps as Nicholas walked the bike out onto the road, away from the house so the noise wouldn’t wake my parents.
“Get on,” he said, already straddling the bike.
The fact that he wasn’t trying to leave me behind made me want to kiss him even more. I climbed on and wrapped my arms around his waist, holding on as tightly as I could. He’d barely notice anyway; it’s not like he needed to breathe. We hurtled down the street, past the pumpkin patches and the apple orchards and the struggling vineyard, toward the mountains and the forest. Violet Hill was a small collection of lights behind us.
I couldn’t believe Solange was drinking from a human. It was one thing to drink from blood banks and willing donors, but feasting in the woods off some bloodslave was … disconcerting.
“Can you go faster?” I shouted over the roaring wind.
“Hang on,” he shouted back.
The night was a blur of shadows and asphalt and cold wind. I was losing feeling in my fingers and my arms were cramping. We finally turned off the road and cut through a field. Purple loosestrife brushed my knees.
In the woods, the ground was even more treacherous. Nicholas did his best to maneuver around tree branches and rocks and fallen birch trunks bursting with moss and lichen. A pine bough slapped him in the face. It smelled like Christmas all of a sudden. He went over a bump and my helmet bounced off the back of his. The next bump made my teeth rattle. The next two made him stop altogether.
“We’ll have to go on foot from here,” he said, tossing his helmet aside. I clambered off, legs stiff. I hung mine on the backseat and jogged after him. We soon passed Kieran’s motorcycle under a hemlock. The trees this far into the forest grew taller, so tall I wouldn’t have been able to see their tops even in the daylight. Ferns feathered at our feet.
By the time we reached Solange, I was sweating and panting. She looked worse than me, sitting in a nest of mossy roots and leaning against an aspen, its yellowing leaves quivering above her. There was blood on her face and her shirt was torn. Nicholas swore and blurred, reaching her side in one blink. He crouched next to her and she smiled wearily at him.
“I’m good,” she said, sounding drunk.
Kieran was standing in the path, over the prone body of the bloodslave woman Solange and I had seen in the Blood Moon camp. She was nearly as pale as Solange but smiling. There was blood and teeth marks on the inside of her elbow. They weren’t as elegant as the scars on her neck.
“Is she sleeping?” I asked.
Kieran nodded. “Solange told her to go to sleep. So she did.” We exchanged a grim glance. I stepped over her hand, flung out like a fallen calla lily.
Solange had blood on the side of her mouth. Her tongue darted out to lick it. There was a deep gash on her arm and scratches on her face. Her sunglasses were broken, lying in a clump of primrose.
“Oh, Sol.” I reached out to brush her hair off her face where it was stuck to a cut already scabbing over. She jerked back, moaning.
“No! Get away!”
I snatched my hand back, stunned. “What? Sol, it’s me.”
Her eyes went wild, veined with red all around irises the delicate blue of Wedgwood china. All three sets of her fangs were extended, but that wasn’t a shock anymore. The way she was looking at me was—as if I was hurting her, as if I was food. I could have been naked, with blood pouring out of my wrists, and Nicholas still wouldn’t have looked at me like that. I froze, confused.
Nicholas swore and tilted Solange’s head back so he could see into her eyes. “How much did you drink?”
She smiled lazily. “Don’t know. She was nice.” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Like chocolate-covered strawberries.”
“Great,” I muttered. “I’ll never be able to eat those again now.”
Nicholas glanced at me. He hadn’t looked this worried since Solange’s bloodchange, when we weren’t even sure if she’d survive. His gaze shifted to Kieran. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. I just found her like this. She was wounded.”
“I got ambushed,” she told us, closing her eyes. “I got him, though.”
“Hel-Blar?”
She nodded. “Nasty one, all stinky. I really hate mushrooms,” she added, suddenly serious before bursting into laughter for no apparent reason.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “At least she’s a cheerful drunk,” I said.
“Is Constantine here?” she asked suddenly.
Kieran’s eyes narrowed.
So did mine. “Why?” I asked.
“And who the hell’s Constantine?” Kieran added.
“He told me Penelope was nice. He was right.”
“Okay, I’m so punching Constantine in the nose,” I said brightly. “And who’s Penelope?” I pointed to the woman curled in the ferns. “Her?”
“She’s used to it,” Solange informed us, slightly slurring. She was acting like Penelope had veins full of wine. I hoped she’d have a hell of a hangover in the morning. She clearly needed something to wake her up. “Kieran’s just mad because I wasn’t drinking from him.” She sat up, tilting her head. She smiled at him. “Come here.”
Kieran took a bewildered step forward. I knocked him back with a hard shove, then whirled on Solange. “What the hell are you doing?”
She shrugged. “I was just asking,” she said, pouting.
“That’s not asking,” I told her through my teeth.
“That’s force. What’s wrong with you?”
“Penelope doesn’t judge. She said so.” Solange eyed me. “But you’re judging.”
“You’re damn right I am.”
Nicholas hoisted Solange to her feet. “I need to get her home.”
I went to help him but she snarled at me. Nicholas’s jaw clenched, then he held up a hand. “I have her.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’ll be fine,” he assured me, but I could tell he wasn’t sure. And the fact that he didn’t want his parents to know didn’t bode well. “I’ll take her home, and Kieran, you take Lucy back.”
“What do we do with her?” Kieran asked, standing over Penelope.
“We need to wake her up and send her back to the camp,” Nicholas said. “I can call someone to meet her once she’s on her feet.”
I crouched next to her and shook her shoulder. Her cleavage was impressive, even lying on her back. “Hey, wake up!” There were scars along her collarbone, too, like tiny stars. I couldn’t stop staring at them. “Penelope!” I slapped her cheek lightly. Nothing happened. I jerked back suddenly, landing on my butt. My tailbone hit a rock and pain tingled up my spine. “She’s not dead, is she?”
“No.” Solange sighed dramatically. “You’re overreacting.”
“Solange’s pheromones should wake her up.” Nicholas turned Solange, nudging her toward Penelope. I got out of the way. “We can’t wait for her to do it on her own.”
“But she needs to rest,” Solange said, sounding almost like her old self.
“She needs to rest in her own bed.”
“Oh.” She sat down next to Penelope, leaning in close. With her black hair she looked lethal and beautiful, like an obsidian blade some ancient tribes used for human sacrifices. “Penelope? You have to wake up now.”
Penelope stirred.
“Wake up right now!” Solange commanded.
Penelope’s eyes opened abruptly. She blinked, then smiled.
“There,” Solange said, pleased. Nicholas pulled her back up. “See? No problem.”
Penelope sat up slowly.
“Send her back home,” Nicholas bit out.
Penelope smiled. “There’s no need,” she said, perfectly at ease. As if she wasn’t wearing bite marks like jewelry. “I can find my way without a blood command.”
We stared at her. Kieran was the first to speak. “Someone will meet you.”
She nodded, then curtsied to Solange. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Your Highness?” I echoed, disgusted. I was even more disgusted when Solange didn’t look uncomfortable being curtsied to. “Seriously?”
Solange shrugged as Penelope turned and made her way between the tall pines. Nicholas texted one of the guards to collect her.
“Constantine said I shouldn’t fight being a princess. It’s not like it’s a crime.”
“I hate Constantine,” I muttered. “He’s an ass.”
Solange turned on me so fast, her hair actually lifted in the breeze. Her eyes went even more red, her lips lifting off her teeth.
“Don’t say that about him!” Her voice felt like a thousand needles bristling in my skin, like a sunburn, like broken glass.
I was too shocked even to make a fist. If one of the Drake brothers pulled that on me, I would have punched them.
Nicholas yanked Solange away from me. “Shit, Lucy. Get out of here,” he told me, struggling to hold Solange back. She was furious.
Kieran grabbed my arm. “Come on.”
“Kieran, that’s not her,” I said through the tears in the back of my throat.
“I know.”
I thought of Penelope’s scars. “You thought I was like her,” I said quietly, remembering the first time I’d met Kieran. I hadn’t heard the term “bloodslave” before. The Drakes were more interested in seclusion than power. And they had other methods of feeding. It hadn’t really occurred to me that other vampires might not have the same scruples. It wasn’t the blood I minded so much. I mean, if Nicholas or Solange or any of the Drakes needed a mouthful of my blood to survive, I wouldn’t begrudge them. And even Kieran had given Solange his blood on the night of her sixteenth birthday to save her. It was the slightly cultlike joy on Penelope’s face that made me queasy.
“But I guess it’s her choice,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Maybe,” Kieran replied. “Maybe not.”
I glanced over my shoulder, watching Nicholas lead Solange away. Everything felt wrong. I should be going with them, not back home with a vampire hunter. And I shouldn’t be trusting that vampire hunter more than my best friend. I didn’t know how to help her.
She looked back at me once, then drooped, as if she were wilting.
Chapter 21
Christabel
Hel-Blar stampeded through the field above us, and when the wind shifted it was full of rotten mushrooms and slimy pond water. I heard them shoving to get through the narrow opening to the maze.
I ran faster, clutching the back of Connor’s belt. He was moving so quickly that I was like those cars using the wind drag behind transport trucks on the highway. We went left, left, came up against another dead end, doubled back, went right, then left again. I felt the Hel-Blar closing in. Fear made my heart feel like it was too big for my chest. My stomach hurt, my lungs tightened, my legs tingled. I could almost feel their decayed breath on the back of my neck. I tried but I couldn’t run any faster.
And then Connor suddenly stopped and whirled around me, as if we were dancing, blurring around the edges as if he was smoke. Later I’d be impressed by that. He ended up behind me just as a Hel-Blar leaped to clamp its jaws on me. Connor pushed me back with one arm and threw the Hel-Blar with his other. I stumbled and tried not to stab myself with my dagger. I turned just in time to see a billow of ashes.
“They’re coming,” he said. “How’s your aim?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Well, we’re about to find out. We’ll have to make our stand here.” He nodded at the torchlight. “That way you can see better than they can. These Hel-Blar don’t like light. When we’ve got a chance, we can make our way to the next torch. Stay back behind the barbed wire there; it’ll narrow their way in to us.”
“Connor?” My palms were sweating around the knife hilt and the stones from my pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And I’m sorry you’re going to die horribly.”
He actually grinned. “We’re not going to die, Christa.”
“We’re not? Maybe you’re not paying attention. The monsters are about to eat our brains.”
“They’re not zombies.”
I actually reached out and pinched him. “No geek semantics. I’m trying to say I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“You didn’t.” He turned and dragged me forward, his hand closing around the back of my neck. He kissed me hard and quick. “Are you ready?”
“Hell, no!”
And then there was no time left to talk.
We were seriously outnumbered.
The Hel-Blar bottlenecked between the two hedge walls with the barbed wire. Blood dripped onto the ground from their cuts, from their mouths.
“Don’t get any on you!” Connor warned me. He caught one under the jaw with his elbow and then used his stake when the Hel-Blar reared back. Ash made me gag and cough. Another came through the opening. He snarled at Connor and threw a stake at him. It whistled as it whirled toward Connor’s heart.
Wait, they had stakes, too? Not just teeth and contagious bites?
That was totally unfair.
I choked on a warning yell. Time was soaked in honey, slow and sticky. Connor leaned sideways and the wood grazed his arm, like a bullet. That’s how fast it was traveling and how strong the Hel-Blar was who’d thrown it. Connor was faster, though. Even as he leaned away, he used his foot to kick at my knee, knockin
g me out of the way. The stake went by me, so close that I could see the grooves from the knife that had whittled it in the torchlight.
“Christa, don’t freeze on me!” Connor yelled, jumping back into the fight.
Right. Standing there waiting to be eaten was bad.
And Connor was tiring. I’d always scoffed at those girls who waited around to be rescued. I hated that in books. So I should do something. Anything.
I tried to pretend I was back at home, maybe riding the subway alone too late at night, or crossing through a dark parking lot. I’d dealt with scary people before and I never froze. I’d kicked Peter when he tried to grab me, didn’t I? I could do this.
I threw stones like they were grenades. I think I was even yelling. My aim wasn’t great, but I was persistent and annoying. It distracted them just enough for Connor to get the upper hand. And when they got close enough that I saw saliva gleaming on their creepy teeth, I kicked out with my combat boots. I heard a shin bone snap when I caught a leg at a particularly good angle. It was mostly luck, but I wasn’t going to get picky about it.
Luck damn well owed me.
One of the rocks bounced off a Hel-Blar’s shoulder and caught Connor in the cheekbone, drawing blood.
“Sorry!” I threw another stone, more carefully this time. Connor staked another one, and I grabbed the torch and waved it threateningly. The two closing in on us hissed.
That gave me an idea.
I patted my coat, frantically searching for the flask Saga had given me. It was full of that nasty grog, and I was pretty sure only rubbing alcohol had a higher alcohol content.
“Behind me!” I told Connor. “Now!”
I took a big mouthful.
It always worked in books.
Not that I could think of one right now, but I was sure I’d read about it somewhere.
I tried to blow the rum out in a wide spray over the flame, hoping fervently I wasn’t about to set fire to my own face.
There was a horrible moment when nothing happened.
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