Bleeding Hearts

by Alyxandra Harvey

And then, the fire spread. It rained over the encroaching Hel-Blar and they screamed. It wasn’t much, just enough to make them pause. Connor took the flask from me and poured it over the cedars, then threw arcs of the amber liquid over the Hel-Blar. He added the fuel from a lighter in his pocket. The fire swelled and crackled, eating through the hedges and licking at the frantic Hel-Blar. The next scraggly hedge caught fire.

  “Whoa. You’re even better than Princess Leia,” Connor told me as the snow sizzled and evaporated over the flames.

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get any ideas about that gold bikini.” I grinned. “Now come on, this way.”

  “What way? That’s a wall.”

  “It’s cedar,” I scoffed, “not concrete. We shove through it and aim that way and just keep going through the branches until we get out of here.”

  “Yup, hotter than Leia.”

  We pushed through the branches, getting scratched and mauled by needles and thorns from the vines. Flower petals scattered with the snow, making everything cold and slippery. The fire crackled. There was a pulse of light glowing over the maze. Burning evergreen masked the thick slime of mushrooms. It was trickier than it seemed, contorting yourself to fit between branches that wouldn’t break off or bend easily. Marble statues of Roman goddesses missing various body parts watched us coldly.

  “Barbed wire,” he said, stopping me before I ripped my face open.

  My hair curled around a metal thorn and turned into an instant knot. I yanked at it, my scalp stinging. “Ouch.”

  “I’ve got it.” He bent the lengths of barbed wire apart, making an opening. He wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving bloody streaks. “Go.”

  He glanced behind us to make sure nothing was sneaking up on us while I climbed through the rusted iron tangle of wire and thorns.

  “Think we’re almost out of this thing?” I asked, hacking away at another hedge.

  “I don’t think that’s what we have to worry about right now.” He sounded tense and he was sniffing the air.

  I groaned. “What now?”

  “The fire’s coming this way.”

  “Already?”

  “It’s been a dry season.” He pushed me along faster. “The trees are like tinder right now, and the wind just shifted.”

  He was right. Cold air whirled around us and then pushed from the other direction.

  The smell of smoke stung my nostrils. I coughed. “Shit.”

  We tried to run as we broke through woven branches and the odd clump of barbed wire. Fire snapped its own jaws at us. It couldn’t be contained or predicted, and there wasn’t nearly enough snow to put it out. The flames licked the sky. It was easy to see where we were going now—angry orange light closed in enough to give us long, frantic shadows, which darted through the cedars ahead of us.

  Maddened, the Hel-Blar who’d managed to find their way around the fire before it spread out of control followed. They crashed through after us, some even vaulting the hedges altogether. Which is how two of them ended up in front of us and then turned back, drawn by the scent of the blood smeared on Connor’s jeans and beading all over my hands and face from scratches. The fire was behind us, just as hungry and deadly. We couldn’t turn back, and the maze was too complicated—as likely to lead us into the belly of the fire as out of it. A Hel-Blar woman made a grab for me. Trying to avoid her smell and the smoke, I was breathing shallowly through my mouth. It was making me feel light-headed.

  Connor was grappling with the second Hel-Blar, who was built like an angry wrestler. I couldn’t help him and he couldn’t help me.

  I jabbed my dagger out viciously, blindly. She leaned back, grinned her ghoulish grin, and didn’t seem particularly concerned. Damn it. Someone was going to have to teach me how to use one of these things properly. And to think, I used to worry about social workers getting me.

  It soon became apparent that there was no way I could win in combat against a creature crazed with both hunger and an animal’s terror of fire. I just wasn’t properly equipped for this kind of fight.

  So I’d just have to use the only weapon I could actually do damage with.

  Fire.

  A wall of heat was starting to make my nose and cheeks feel sunburned. The metal buttons on my jacket were already too hot to touch, scalding me when I brushed against them. The wind played with the flames, flinging them around like a dancer’s skirt. A thin pine tree wobbled precariously. Now or never.

  I grabbed for a smoldering branch near my foot, ignoring the heat that singed my palm. The other end burned like one of the torches, so I threw it as hard as I could at the feral woman. She instinctively stumbled back a step, embers scattering over her. The pine tree groaned, creaked, and then gave in to the fire eating its roots. It fell in a plume of smoke and fire right on top of her. She shrieked, batting at her singed hair and the blisters on her face, pinned under the burning trunk. Pine sap flared.

  I jumped in the other direction, yelling at Connor, “Watch out!”

  Connor and the wrestler tumbled in the dirt, Connor falling flat on his back. He looked winded and in pain. I was pretty sure I’d heard something crack. The wrestler grinned and reached out to grab Connor’s shirt to haul him back up within reach of his dripping teeth. Connor rolled over and scissor-kicked back, catching him across the back of the knees. He fell and he fell hard. Connor flipped over and drove his stake through the Hel-Blar’s back and into his heart. There was a howl and then ashes mixing with the embers of the cedars toppling around us.

  The fire was everywhere now, and I could barely hear myself think though the crackle and hiss of flames eating their way through the evergreens. I felt sick. I’d burned that woman alive. Even if she’d been trying to maul and kill me, I couldn’t feel good about it. But I didn’t really have time to feel bad, either.

  “Go.” Connor crowded behind me, trying to take the blast of heat for both of us.

  We crashed through the hedges and finally fell into cold, sharp air, snow, and a view of the mountains. We crawled to a safe distance and collapsed. There was enough bare dirt between the maze and the fields stretching to the forest at the base of the mountain that the fire wouldn’t spread. Still, birds filled the sky above us, squawking in panic. I heaved air into my lungs. My chest felt like an ashtray.

  Connor crouched next to me, but I had no intention of trying to stand up again until my legs felt more like legs and less like Popsicles left in the sun. Snow dusted the weeds and the flowers, pretty as a cupcake.

  “Are you okay?” Connor whispered in my ear. He was cold, colder than regular body temperature should be, but I felt too hot. He was like cool water on a humid day. I edged closer to him.

  “I have no idea,” I answered. At this point I might have recited “The Highwayman” to myself, but I couldn’t even remember the first line. That scared me more than anything.

  But it wasn’t over.

  There were shadows on the burning edges of the maze and more coming down the mountainside.

  “Now what?”

  “More Hel-Blar.”

  “How many of those things are there?” I asked, scrambling to my feet beside him.

  “Kind of an epidemic right now,” Connor admitted.

  “I hate this town.”

  Someone erupted out of the fire-licked darkness. I threw my knife. It went a foot wide, and Aidan watched it mildly as it flew past him. “You’ll need to get better at that.”

  “You scared the crap out of me.”

  He retrieved my dagger and handed it back to me. “Learn fast.”

  “Where’s Saga?”

  “Busy.”

  And then we were fighting again.

  I’d love to say that I was a natural. That my attitude and my ability to scare bullies made me fierce in the face of battle.

  But the truth was, my aim sucked and I was too slow.

  I was outgunned and outmaneuvered. The only reason I was still standing was because Aidan and Connor kept me between them. And then it jus
t wasn’t possible anymore. The Hel-Blar were persistent and vicious. Connor had only the one stake, and Aidan was covered in blood and mud. He was the best fighter I’d ever seen, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once. And some of the Hel-Blar had stakes. Well, whittled sticks, but it amounted to the same thing. They pelted us like sharp, deadly rain. One caught Aidan in the left arm and he hissed. The blood maddened the Hel-Blar further, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. The battle was nearly too fast for my human eyes to see.

  I didn’t need to see the stake to feel it pierce my skin, to feel it bite through flesh and muscle and slide past my ribs.

  There was numb shock. I gurgled a sound.

  Pain flared like electrical shocks. I fell to my knees. Connor and Aidan whirled to look at me. I closed my hand around the makeshift stake and yanked it out of my chest just as Connor paled and began to shout.

  “Christabel, no! Don’t pull it out!”

  “I’m okay,” I said, then I fell right over. Throbbing lances of fire burned through me. Blood spurted, soaking through my jacket. I was cold and confused. Connor was fighting to get to me but he was too far away. His lips were moving. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear him. Why couldn’t I hear him?

  Aidan reached me first. “Stake hit an artery,” he said grimly. “She’s losing too much blood, too fast.” He pushed his sleeves up as Connor dispatched another Hel-Blar. There were two more between us. He kept fighting.

  “Turn her!” he yelled, and I could finally hear him, though my vision was graying. “Turn her now!”

  Aidan used the tips of his fangs to slice through the skin of his inner wrist. Blood trickled, the color of raspberries. He pressed the wound against my mouth.

  “Drink.”

  I struggled, gagging.

  “Drink or die, Christabel.”

  My mouth was open because I was screaming. Blood slid down my throat, coppery and thick. I gagged again but I was too weak to do anything but swallow. My eyelids closed as Connor finally reached us, covered in ash and blood. He plucked me away from Aidan, cradling me against his chest. He was cold. Or was I cold?

  “Go,” Aidan said. “Run. I’ll keep the rest of the Hel-Blar off your trail. You have to get her back to your farm. She needs blood and it’s not safe here.” He made a sound, as if he were throwing a weapon. I didn’t have the strength to open my eyes to see. I didn’t even have the strength to care if there were a hundred Hel-Blar. “She’s my bloodkin,” he added. “And I’ll claim her as my daughter.

  “Now, run!”

  Chapter 22

  Lucy

  I was crawling in through my window when I heard the creak of the floorboards outside my room. I jumped into my bed, messing up the body-shaped pillows and crumpling the note into a little ball, just as my mom knocked and pushed open the door. She paused, eyeing me blearily.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing!”

  She swung the door open wider and marched in, flipping the corner of my comforter over. “Lucky Moon, why are you dressed? Where have you been?”

  “Nicholas came by to show me the northern lights,” I explained hastily. It wasn’t technically a lie. And it worked. She looked distracted.

  “Really, the aurora borealis is out?” Usually that meant she’d be out in the yard, naked, singing old songs. “Finally, a good omen.” She tucked me back into bed. “We just got word from the Drakes.”

  “About Christabel?”

  She nodded, looking sad. “Yes.”

  I felt cold all over. “She’s okay, right? Right? And Connor?”

  Mom forced a smile. “She’s okay. They both are. And they should be at the Drakes’ before dawn.”

  I frowned. “Why’s she going over there instead of back here?”

  Mom sighed. “She was turned.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What? Christabel’s going to be a vampire?” I thought of Solange and all the Drake brothers and what they’d gone through, and I shivered. There was a chance Christabel might not survive. I suddenly felt heavy, as if I were wearing clothes made out of stone. “Can I go see her?”

  “Soon,” Mom assured me. “They’re taking care of her. Try not to worry.” She ran a hand over my hair, as if to prove to herself that I was all right. It was supposed to be me, after all. I was supposed to be turning into a vampire, if Saga’s plan had gone as expected. “It’s late. You should sleep. You’re not a vampire, honey, and you shouldn’t be keeping their hours. It’s not healthy.”

  “Mom, I’m fine.”

  “Promise me you’ll try.” Her voice was strained and the lines at the corners of her eyes more pronounced. “It could’ve been you.”

  “But it wasn’t.” I didn’t say it, but it might have been better if it had been me. At least I was prepared; I knew what was going on. Poor Christabel.

  I couldn’t sleep, not until I got a text from Nicholas telling me he was home safely and Christabel was tucked into one of their guest beds.

  The next day I tried to follow my mom’s advice and act like a normal teenage girl, one who didn’t know anything about vampires and whose life wasn’t constantly in danger.

  If only because Christabel couldn’t anymore.

  I sat in the sunshine at lunchtime with Nathan and Linnet.

  “Where’s your cousin?” Nathan asked. “I haven’t seen her around since she kicked Peter in the balls.”

  “She has the flu,” I said. “She’s all sweaty and gross.” If you embellished a lie with just the right details, people generally didn’t want to know more.

  Linnet wrinkled her nose. “Is your mom making her drink that herbal thing?”

  I nodded. “And anyone else who comes by the house, just in case.” Both Linnet and Nathan knew my mom’s herbal concoctions intimately. She made them for colds and headaches and allergies. You had to strain big lumps of valerian or hyssop through your teeth. Nathan shuddered.

  “Tell her we say hi,” he said. “And thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  We talked about school and skipping gym class and whether or not we could sneak off campus for a latte before our next class. I tried not to think about Christabel or Connor or tainted blood being delivered to the Drakes.

  After school we wandered down Main Street with mochaccinos and chocolate-chip muffins. We threw crumbs for the seagulls and I stopped to buy soothing incense for my dad. We had another latte and Linnet started talking really fast. Nathan and I grinned at each other.

  “We need to give you extralarge lattes before your presentation next week,” Nathan decided. Linnet was deathly afraid of public speaking. She made a face at us and licked more milk foam off the lid of her cup.

  We were crossing through the parking lot toward Linnet’s car when it happened.

  We’d had a nice afternoon and I wasn’t even feeling particularly jumpy. Plus, the sun was still out, so there was no need to worry.

  But when the guy came up behind us on his bicycle, I heard the squeak of his wheels, the soft scrape of rubber against the pavement, and everything in me went on high alert. Especially when a quick glance revealed he was wearing blue.

  I gave a battle cry Xena would have been proud of and spun around, throwing my cup in the air with one hand and a stake at him with the other. The stake bounced off his wheel well and veered him off course. He went one way and his bike went the other. He landed awkwardly and rolled up against a garbage can.

  “Oh my God!” I yelled. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Oh my God!” Nathan yelled too. “What’s the matter with you?” I knew he was only saying that because the guy was cute. He rushed over to see if he needed help. I grabbed the stake before anyone got a good look at it and started to wonder why I carried sharp sticks in my bag. The biker got to his feet, his jeans torn at one knee and dirt clinging to shirt. He pulled off his helmet and stared at his bike, then at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again. “Really.”

  “Shit,” he muttered. �
�Are you crazy?” He rode away before I could apologize again.

  I’d almost maimed a guy because he was wearing a blue shirt.

  In my defense, I associated that particular shade with Hel-Blar determined to tear my head off my shoulders.

  Still.

  “You need to lay off the caffeine, too,” Nathan told me, his eyes wide. “There aren’t so many cute guys in this town that you can just throw shit at them like that.”

  I groaned and shook my head. “I know. He just spooked me.”

  Aside from my spazzing out, the day had been nice. And I really did try.

  But it was clear that this girl just wasn’t me.

  Like being a girl who hung out only with the Drakes and never with Nathan and Linnet wasn’t me either, and neither was being monitored like a criminal by my own parents.

  Besides, I had a better idea.

  I just had to make one stop first.

  “He spooked you?” Nathan snorted, oblivious to the conclusions I was making in my head. “It’s Violet Hill. Nothing ever happens here.”

  Nathan dropped me off at my house around sunset. I didn’t go inside, just hopped right into my mom’s car and took off before she could stop me. I texted her to tell her where I was going and that I wouldn’t be long. When she called me back, the phone ringing insistently, I switched off the sound.

  The drive to the Drakes’ was uneventful. I passed three guards on my way into the farmhouse. Solange’s uncle Geoffrey’s barn-slash-laboratory had all the lights on and the door shut tight, which meant he was hard at work on something scientific. The dogs raced up to greet me when I reached the house and got out of the car. They chased me up the porch steps, drooling on my knees. I knocked hard.

  Nicholas answered the door. He still looked sleepy, his dark hair mussed, his shirt unbuttoned.

  Yum.

  I launched myself at him and he caught me with one arm, burying his head in my hair. “ ’Morning,” he mumbled. I clung to him for a long wonderful moment before reluctantly stepping back.

  “Hey, where’re you going?” he asked. His serious smile had a wicked glint. “I wasn’t done.”