White Nights: A Vampires of Manhattan Novel

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “Be quiet!” Ara was sick of him. When would Edon arrive? He must have seen her there, chasing Christian. Surely he’d come to help soon?

  “Ara!” Edon – at last. Ara glanced over her shoulder. Both Edon and Mina were approaching but tentatively, with slow and creeping steps, one padding to the left and one to the right.

  “I have him here!” she shouted back. “It’s Christian. The Venator chief’s guy – his human conduit!”

  “Let him go, Ara,” said Mina. She stepped into Ara’s sight line, axe in hand. Her ferocious yellow eyes glared straight at Ara. “Step away. Hands up.”

  “What?” Ara spun to look at Edon, just stepping out of the shadows. He said nothing but there was a strange look on his face. Hurt. Confusion. Sadness. “What – you think I’m the criminal here? You think I’m the one who tried to kill Oliver?”

  “We saw you running away …” Mina began, her axe still pointed at Ara’s head.

  “Chasing this guy! Oh my god. Do you actually know me?” She looked at Edon, and felt sickened with disgust. To think of how close they’d been, how much they’d shared. How much she’d exposed herself to him and let herself be soft and vulnerable. She wished she had her Venator blades with her now. These two wolves would be cut to shreds in seconds.

  “Mina said … you must have been the one who hurled the blades. That it was a Venator and …”

  “A Venator!” Christian spluttered. “Listen to you all. You can’t help yourselves. If someone’s killed with a crescent blade, it has to be a Venator. Don’t you ever stop to think, for one moment, that someone else can learn the same tricks? Someone who can slip unnoticed into meetings and clubs and apartments, someone who nobody in the whole smug, dysfunctional, conceited Coven suspects of having a brain?”

  Edon was staring at him open-mouthed.

  “He says he killed the kid in the nightclub. And some girl who Oliver knew in Stockholm.”

  “And don’t forget the Venator at the airfield today,” Christian chimed in.

  “Shut up,” Mina told him. She wasn’t glaring at Ara anymore, and she’d lowered her blade.

  In the distance a roar arose, cheering and shrieking. Christian kicked his feet, a maniacal grin on his face.

  “You can kill me if you want now,” he said. “It’s too late to matter! The White Queen is here! Our time has come!”

  Mina and Edon exchanged looks. The crowd noises back in the party glade were growing louder and more charged. Something bad was about to go down, Ara knew. Something evil.

  Midsummer. The maypole. The White Queen.

  Christian gave an almighty heave and Ara, off her guard, tumbled into the leaves. He scrambled to his feet and started to run.

  “All hail the White Queen!” he cried, face raised to the sky, and then disappeared into the darkness.

  “Ara, I’m sorry,” said Edon. He held out a hand to her, to help her up.

  “Just run,” Ara told him. There was no time now for apologies. “We have to get back to the maypole. Now – it’s happening now!”

  29 | The White Queen

  High in the sky the moon was a serene ivory circle, beaming down on the crowded glade. This was it. The moment Catherine had been waiting for – all her life, maybe. All her many lives, her many cycles. The old order had let her down, but a new order was dawning. At last she would get revenge, and maybe – at last – some peace.

  People around her were cheering and shouting, and Catherine smiled out at them, as benign as the moon. She was being carried aloft on a wooden chair decorated with vibrant ribbons and trailing ivy, her white flowing dress so long it covered her bare feet. Her hair was loose, held back by a crown of greenery and wildflowers. Below her, so many happy young people – mortals and vampires – were waving their arms and calling out: White Queen! White Queen! Some people threw flowers: buds landed on her lap, and she closed her eyes, so heady was the scent and the sounds of her triumphal entry.

  White Queen! White Queen!

  The men carrying her reached the tall maypole that was decorated with hundreds of colored ribbons, so long they touched the ground. Every year there was a Queen here at Midsummer, but usually it was just some Coven girl with a pretty face whose father was in favor with the Regis. This year word had gone out for the past two months that the Queen would be a special one, that the whole celebration would be special in grand and unexpected ways. Catherine had no intention of letting anyone down.

  It was after midnight, and that was a shame. Catherine was a traditionalist in many ways, and had liked the idea of being displayed at the maypole just as Midsummer turned – the longest day signaling the end of things. The end of an old world with its hypocrisy and status. But it was OK to be carried out later, in the deepest moments of darkness on this long white night. She’d waited so long. She could relish the final minutes, and hang on just a little longer.

  The moon, so high in the sky, gazed down at her, its pale face a mask. The light at that moment on her own face was so bright and clear that it felt like a sign. Everyone around her was going wild, screaming and stamping. For the first time in her life she felt truly powerful.

  She thought of Finn’s promise to her. Tonight, Finn swore, would be Catherine’s chance to get revenge on the Silver Blood who murdered her husband – and damned him for all eternity – hundreds of years ago. Catherine didn’t even know his identity until a few months ago. Finn was the one who found out – sweet Finn, who everyone hated and raged against. Finn had contacted her, out of the blue, and sworn her to secrecy. Did she want to know Louis’ killer? Yes? Then Finn would reveal this to her and make the revenge she’d craved possible. Nobody else had done that for her. Nobody else had even tried to help.

  White Queen! White Queen!

  Catherine smiled for her adoring public, while the men holding her aloft slowly rotated her chair, allowing everyone in the crowd to see her. It wasn’t hard to pick out the shocked, blood-drained face of Schuyler Van Alen, that Coven princess, her face even whiter than the moon’s.

  Of course there’d been a price for Finn’s information. Just as Catherine longed for something, Finn did as well – and both of them were tired of other people denying them their destiny. But Finn didn’t want revenge. She wanted something much more pure and innocent. Bring Schuyler and Jack’s daughter to her, here in Sweden – that was what Finn requested. She wanted a child of her own, and not just any child. A little girl with angel’s blood, who she could raise, love, and nurture as a princess of the Dark Side.

  There was no way Finn would harm Lily: Catherine was sure of that. And what was the difference between the dark and the light these days, anyway? What was the difference at any point in history? Lily would grow up loved and valued. She was lucky, to be so wanted by so many people. Catherine had wanted children with Louis, her bondmate, but his murder had prevented that. All her dreams over, in one jab of a sword.

  Back then her esteemed and powerful in-laws couldn’t locate her husband’s killer, and she knew that whatever Jack promised, he and Mimi were too busy and self-important to look for him now. They’d betrayed her, and now she must betray them.

  White Queen! White Queen!

  The chair kept spinning, and Catherine could see them all down there, looking up at her, no idea of what she was about to do. Jack had reached Schuyler, and was clutching her arm. The ruling class of this vampire world: they thought they controlled everything and everyone. But not this moment – this moment was Catherine’s.

  Still, seeing them there with their outraged faces, she struggled to keep the smile on her face. That day in Trinity Church, Catherine had known that Jack was lying – saying anything just to keep her doing the menial job of running after his children. He needed to pay for being such a careless father in a past life, as well as in this. He needed to feel that terrible sorrow all over again, because apparently he’d forgotten it all too quickly the last time. What did he care? He just switched one bondmate for another. Catherine was the one
who had nobody.

  White Queen! White Queen!

  The spinning was making Catherine feel dizzy.

  “Stop!” she commanded, holding up a hand. There was hushing and laughter in the crowd, a thrill of anticipation. The Queen had spoken. On the far reaches of the crowd there was still boisterous noise, but everyone who could see Catherine fell silent. The annual tradition had begun. What Catherine knew and they didn’t was that the ritual was almost over.

  The men grasping each leg of the decorated chair started lowering it onto a high wooden platform, pushed into place next to the giant maypole so people in the crowd could see. Lukas, the local Regent, was the man climbing its narrow steps. It was his job to take her hand and bow, the great landowner accepting the higher power of the pagan Queen. It was the same every year, she’d been told.

  Catherine rose from her chair, bare feet scrunched on the rough boards of the platform. Her white gown fluttered in the night breeze. All around her expectant faces gazed, waiting to hear the traditional words.

  “Every queen needs a king,” she said, her voice loud and clear. Lukas grasped her right hand, and bent his silver head low before her.

  Catherine reached her left hand into the bodice of her dress, and pulled from it, in one fluent movement, a thin silver dagger. Those nearest in the crowd gasped and Lukas looked up, just long enough to see the shining blade, and for Catherine to see the terror in his eyes. She plunged the dagger into his heart, all the way to the hilt – into his bloated, cushiony body, dark blood like a spreading fungus over his white shirt. His face seemed frozen with shock, though he was still alive. Catherine bent her head close to his.

  “For Louis,” she whispered. “I found you at last.”

  She pulled the knife out and Lukas fell backwards, his eyes rolling, his body thunking down the wooden stairs. Someone screamed, but Catherine knew she had to act quickly, before anyone grabbed her. This was still her moment, still her night. The White Queen on the White Night. The blood of Lukas – silver and corrupt, seeping into the forest floor.

  Catherine pointed the knife at her own belly. She’d rehearsed this many times, the thrust and the jagged line. She’d achieved all she wanted to – all she could achieve after Louis’ death, after she’d been damned to eternal unhappiness.

  The dagger was sharp, and sticky with Lukas’ blood. She plunged it deep into her flesh: the searing pain took her breath away. She thought she could see Louis’ face, just out of reach, waiting for her on the other side. In her final seconds of consciousness she was falling, falling, falling, her white dress flying around her like an angel’s wings.

  30 | The Dream

  The two bodies lay in a crumpled heap – Lukas on his back, and Catherine collapsed onto them. Schuyler could see them clearly, now that so many people had backed away, screaming and crying, stumbling into the trees and towards the lake. Others further back pushed forward, confused or curious, then horrified. Some people had stood watching, dumbstruck, convinced this was all an elaborate pantomime and that the two star players, Queen and Lord, would jump to their feet and take a bow. But this was no game.

  Amid all the chaos, Jack was on his knees, pulling Catherine’s prone form off Lukas and trying to revive her.

  “Lily!” he was shouting at her. “You have to tell us – where’s Lily, Catherine? Where is she?”

  Schuyler was fixed to the spot, unable to move. She could see, even if Jack couldn’t, that Catherine was dead. She couldn’t tell them anything, even if she wanted to. Why she’d brought Lily here, and where she’d hidden her – those were secrets that had died with Catherine, probably just as she intended.

  People were pushing past her, falling and stumbling; a girl was shrieking hysterically, her friends dragging her away. Schuyler stood there, trying to read the night, to read the air. There was too much interference. She needed to clear her head. Jack approached, blood all over his hands and shirt. They were both dead, he said. Axel the Venator Chief had taken over.

  “Why would Catherine do such a thing, and why here? Schuyler asked Jack, and he explained, eyes glued to the ground, of his and Mimi’s past relationship with Catherine, and of her desperate, unhinged desire for revenge after Louis’ death. The Silver Blood who killed Louis back then was apparently Lukas in this cycle, though how Catherine had learned that, and if it was even true … well.

  He kept apologizing to her, but despair and helplessness was crowding in on her again. Too many secrets. Too many lies. The past never going away. The future always at stake.

  “Please, Jack,” she said. “Not now. Let’s just find her, OK?”

  “I’ll go talk to the Venators,” he said, still too ashamed to look her in the eye.

  “Schuyler.” A trembling hand on her arm. It was Pernilla, her face drawn and streaked with tears. “We should leave. Can we go? Please?”

  “Don’t you want to …” Schuyler nodded at Lukas’ body, flat on its back. Pernilla shook her head. She clutched at Schuyler’s arm again,

  “I’m scared. I think we should go. I … I don’t think it’s over. Do you?”

  “I have to find my daughter,” Schuyler said. “Your … White Queen here is Catherine Denham, our children’s nanny. She kidnapped our little girl and brought her here to Sweden. I don’t know why, but I’m not leaving this damned forest until I find her. But you should go home, if you can get there safely. Who do you trust?”

  “Nobody,” said Pernilla. She sounded bitter and miserable. “I never really trusted Lukas, to be honest. All our friends are his friends. Even the people who work for us – I don’t trust any of them. I’d rather stay with you and help you find your daughter.”

  “Then can you fight?” Schuyler asked her bluntly. Pernilla was right. It wasn’t over, and finding Lily tonight was not going to be easy, pretty or blood-free, she suspected. Pernilla blanched.

  “I’ve never had to,” she said, and swallowed away tears. “But I’d rather die fighting than get murdered in my bed.”

  To Schuyler’s amazement Pernilla stalked over to Catherine’s limp body and pulled out the silver dagger. Jack rocked back on his heels, frowning at her.

  “Can I use this?” she said, looking from Jack to Schuyler. “If there’s going to be a fight? It’s small, but clearly it works.”

  This night, Schuyler thought, was getting stranger by the minute.

  Still she felt stuck to the spot, as though she was growing roots and becoming a tree of the forest. Clouds floated over the moon, smutting its clear face. Schuyler closed her eyes and lifted her face up, trying to focus on nothing but the breeze lifting her hair, damp with sweat, off her clammy skin.

  The hysteria of her surroundings faded into the low hum of background noise, and Schuyler saw a vision of her daughter. Lily was smiling, her own hair shivering in the breeze. She wore a wreath of green around her head, and from it thin ribbons were fluttering, blue and yellow and red. Lily was smiling. She was looking at Schuyler and smiling.

  Schuyler opened her eyes, just in time to see Pernilla wiping the dagger’s blade clean on the grass just feet from where her dead husband lay.

  Mama! Mama!

  The voice was in Schuyler’s head, but it had risen unprompted, as clear as the vision of Lily in her floral crown. She was here somewhere, Schuyler knew, and the strong signals she was getting suggested that Lily wasn’t that far away. Schuyler was walking as though she were in a trance, away from Jack and Pernilla and the dead bodies, through gaggles of upset and confused people, past clumps of revelers now flopped at the bases of trees, comforting each other, holding each other close. The forest called her, so deep into the forest she must go. It didn’t even feel dark anymore, as though first light had begun to emerge, bringing with it the hint of a new day. The light at this time was eerie, she thought, a time for ghosts to emerge.

  And for visions to mislead.

  Schuyler had no idea where she was walking now. Away from the thinning crowds but towards a stretch of dark lake;
she could hear the water lapping before she saw it. The grass underfoot was longer here and it slowed her paces down. She was listening for Lily’s voice, or even just the hint of a cry. She would know the sound of Lily anywhere.

  She climbed over a rocky pile and descended into a small clearing, surrounded b towering trees. Her breath caught in her throat, jagged and harsh, and she wasn’t sure if the small form in the distance could be Lily or just some apparition. With every step Schuyler could see it was indeed Lily, just as she’d appeared in Schuyler’s dream. The wildflower wreath, the white dress, the bright ribbon streamers wafting in the wind. Lily stood alone in a glade looking straight at her mother, but she didn’t run or call out. Schuyler followed her lead, simply looking at her lovely little daughter’s face and not saying a word. Lily was young but she was already astute. The expression on her face was a clue, and she needed Schuyler to draw close enough to see it. But not too close – her dark eyes were wide with alarm.

  She looked terrified, Schuyler realized. This was not the happy smile of the dream. Lily was not smiling, calling her forward, even pleading for help. She was warning her mother not to take another step.

  So this is where it would begin – not at the maypole, but deep in the forest after all the mortals had run away, terrified by the murder-suicide they’d just witnessed.

  Schuyler stood still, nodding to Lily, with the slightest of smiles, to say that she understood. As quietly as she could manage, Schuyler drew her sword. It felt long and heavy in her hands, but she was strong enough to swing it, and the sword itelf seemed to tingle with readiness. Whoever was holding Lily captive over there, and whoever was lying in wait, Schuyler would fight them. She’d driven back Lucifer and his forces before, and she wasn’t letting demons take her daughter – or take her daughter’s life. Over her dead body.