White Nights: A Vampires of Manhattan Novel

by Melissa de la Cruz

  There was only one thing left to do. Slowly and carefully Schuyler drew the blade across her own upturned left palm, exposing a thin line of blood. The pain stung when the open wound hit the night air, but the breeze meant the scent would travel further. She held her left hand high in the air, as though she was reaching for the moon, and waited.

  31 | The Blood of an Angel

  The wolves hadn’t made it back to the maypole: by the time they were getting close, the crowd had turned on its heels, and people were running away and screaming, falling over themselves to get back to the lake – or to just scatter into the woods. Some great mass hysteria had overtaken the revelers, and Edon heard garbled cries about murder and death. He grabbed someone who he overheard speaking English, and asked him what had happened.

  “The White Queen stabbed the old dude, then she killed herself. We thought it was fake, but it wasn’t – there are two dead bodies on the ground! Two bodies!”

  Mina’s head snapped towards Edon. Only two? He was thinking the same thing. If the White Queen was Finn Chase – then she was dead? And who was the old dude?

  A local Venator sprinted up, out of breath from running so fast. The Regis was dead, he told them.

  “I told you,” Ara said, punching Edon’s arm. “Something big is about to go down. This is just the start of it.”

  “She’s right.” Mina was sniffing the air, eyes raised to the moon. “Can you smell it?”

  “What?” Ara snapped, but Edon didn’t reply. He could smell something as well – a pure note, frigid and unadulterated as alpine air, with the faint sweetness of a flower. The blood of an angel.

  He remembered it from the war, from the last battle. They were being summoned.

  “Go find Axel,” he told Ara. “Jack Force, other Venators – whoever you can find. We’re being called. The fight’s begun.”

  “Who’s calling?” Ara reeled back, her eyes intense.

  “You, give her a blade,” Edon demanded, pointing at the local Venator. “You have a gun as well, right? She needs a weapon.”

  “I said, who’s calling?” Ara demanded again. Mina narrowed her eyes. They glowed like yellow lanterns.

  “Schuyler Van Alen,” she said. “To the northwest – north northwest. Right?”

  She glanced at Edon for agreement and he nodded. The scent was strong and clear to him now. Angel blood was like a golden arrow in the sky, impossible to miss, pointing the way. He turned to speak to Ara again, but she was already running towards the maypole, crescent blade in hand. Good: they needed every fighter they could find. Schuyler would only call this way if the danger was extreme and imminent.

  They ran to the place the blood flowed. Edon’s senses were alive, every creak and rustle and whisper as vivid to him as a shout through a megaphone, but he followed nothing but the blood scent, Mina pounding along beside him, leaping over rocks and fallen branches.

  They were running so fast that they almost passed Schuyler Van Alen altogether. She was standing completely still, sword in hand, at the edge of a green clearing. Not far from where she waited was the beginning of more deep forest, huge trees that towered like dark skyscrapers. A little girl stood just before the first line of trees, dark hair loose. She wore a wreath of greenery, trailing bedraggled ribbons. She made no sound, but Edon could just make out the tears dribbling down her pale cheeks.

  Mina was sniffing the air again, and Edon could smell something else as well. Something rotting and pungent, with a metallic tang. Silver Bloods. A lot of them as well, to release such an odor.

  “They must be everywhere,” Mina muttered to him. “Again, to the north. Just past the girl.”

  Edon nodded. The Silver Bloods were here in force. Just because they couldn’t see them yet didn’t mean they weren’t assembled – demons behind the trees, or hanging in them, secreted beneath moss or behind logs and boulders. The smell might be emanating from their new gateway to hell, an open wound in the earth releasing hell’s foul stench. The demons, he was certain, were poised to attack.

  “They’re waiting for me to rescue Lily,” Schuyler said to them in a low voice. “They’re waiting for us to get close.”

  “The girl can’t run to us?” Mina asked.

  “She hasn’t moved since I got here,” Schuyler said. “She’s terrified, or they’re holding her some way. We have to draw them out.”

  “There are three of us,” said Mina, matter-of-fact as ever. “There are more than three of them.”

  “Ara will be here soon,” Edon muttered. He was wrong, so incredibly wrong, to have doubted Ara. She would never go rogue. She would never make a unilateral decision to murder Oliver Hazard-Perry and then run away to avoid getting caught. He was stupid to have believed Mina – especially as Mina hadn’t even seen the blade-thrower. He should have trusted his instinct, and trusted his love. He loved Ara, despite all the grief they gave each other. If they both went fell tonight, in this endless forest that seethed with Silver Bloods, then it would be the best way to go. Wolf and Venator, the odd couple. Fighting demons to the death.

  Footsteps crunched behind them, and Edon was relieved to see Jack Force, along with Axel and more than a dozen of his Venators. A young fair-headed woman he didn’t know was with them as well, clutching a silver dagger. She looked terrified. Someone from the Coven, he guessed, but why she thought she could fight Silver Bloods wasn’t immediately obvious.

  Ara brought up the rear, keeping her distance. Moonlight caught the edge of her crescent blade and briefly it blazed like a white warning. There were still too few of them, Edon thought. But it was too late. Sometimes in war you had to fight with the army you had. And any army led by Schuyler Van Alen had right on its side.

  Schuyler was murmuring orders so their group could break into three units, and consulting with Axel about deploying the Venators.

  “Pernilla, stay with me,” she said to the young woman with the dagger.

  One of the Venators produced a flare gun and shot it into the air. The white flare broke in the sky like fireworks and as its pieces tumbled into the forest beyond them, it lit up the trees and ground with blinding white light. They could hear screams and the thuds of people falling – of demons falling from their perches, no doubt. The white shards hissed as they hit branches, the wood dissolving instantly into ash. More screams now, and glimpses of movement behind the trunks and rocks in the distance.

  “Swedish technology,” Jack Force said, nodding in admiration. “Let’s flush these demons out.”

  Three more Venators stepped forward one at a time to shoot flare guns into the sky, the white lights blazing into the dull clouds of early morning. The forest before them sizzled and shrieked, and Edon set off to the left, keeping low to the ground, with some of the Venator team. Mina moved to the right, her axe lifted. The Venators had blades and guns with silver bullets, the kind that put demons to sleep forever. But they still had no idea how many demons lay in wait, a little more exposed – at least – in the burning white woods.

  In a blur of black a demon launched itself at Edon, and the fight was on. Edon slashed with his axe, knocking off heads and disemboweling anything that got in his way. When his axe got stuff in someone’s spleen or heart, he dug his fangs into exposed skin to finish the demon off. The smell now was nothing but metallic – the smell of blood – and the smell of ash from the flare-razed trees.

  Edon was spinning, his axe arcing through the air. He’d always been a fighter, but he hadn’t taken part in combat this violent and bloody since the war. His hands were slimy with gore, and there was a mixture of blood and sweat dripping down his own face. Demons hurled themselves at him, screaming and swinging, and the sound of his axe batting away their swords and blades rang out like a bell. He backed one against a boulder and sliced its ugly head into two pieces with his axe, the blade bouncing back so hard off the stone that it almost flew out of his hand.

  When he spotted a Venator in trouble, he smacked his axe into the attacking demon, but the
numbers were still on their side: he had to jump over the bodies of two Venators, demons crouched over them to drain their blood. This made him so sick that he kicked one demon away with the steel-capped toe of his boot, pausing long enough to grab the felled Venator’s blade. With a weapon in each hand he was a killing machine, slicing through the enemy like a thresher in the field.

  Edon had lost sight of Ara and Mina, but he could see Schuyler working her way towards her daughter, fighting with the energy and skill of ten people. Her sword whirled above her head and then whooshed through three attacking Silver Bloods. The ones who stayed on their feet, staggering, were finished off by the woman with the dagger. She tailed Schuyler, piercing exposed necks with her sharp silver point, flinching every time a demon dropped to the ground before her.

  Between the flares and first light, the glade seemed lit with an otherworldly white glow. Edon glimpsed Ara, still on her feet, hair streaked with dark blood, spearing a demon right through his rotten heart. She had two crescent blades now, and worked them with ferocious expertise, carving demons up with every twist and slash. Axel fought alongside her, towering above the attacking demons. He picked one up by the scruff of its neck and hurled it into a tree. Axel’s roar sounded like some Viking battle cry, energizing all the Venators who were still fighting.

  A smoldering demon who must have been hit by a flare spark rolled out from behind a rock and grabbed Edon’s ankles, but a sword smacked down on the outstretched arms, amputating them both at the elbow. He didn’t have time to thank Jack Force, already swinging at something else, or even acknowledge him. There was another demon, and then another, to dispatch with the sharp blade of his axe, or even with the blunt thud of its heavy handle. Swarm after swarm of them came at him, smelling foul and fighting dirty, but they had no idea how vicious wolves were were cornered.

  Edon realized he was getting close to Lily. He must have veered to the center at some point when he was helping out a Venator, and now he seemed to be the closest one to her. The poor little thing was trembling, but still not moving from her spot. A dead demon, its face a mask of blood and one eye dangling from its socket, lay at her feet. Her skin was the color of the ashy branches, and ash feathered her hair. She had to be terrified out of her wits.

  He reached out a hand to her, but she still didn’t move. That’s when he realized she was tethered to a tree stump, thick vines around her ankles and wrists gripping her in place. Unlike the ribbons fluttering from the wreath on her head, those vines looked lodged like concrete. Edon kicked the demon’s body out of the way and leaned forward, just close enough to her to tug on one of the twisted ivy ropes around her ankles. It wouldn’t give way: he’d have to use his axe to slash her free, and it would be tricky to sever the vines without cutting her delicate skin.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he told her. “I’ll get you out of this.”

  The girl gasped, looking up in the air, and Edon swung around just in time. A demon with a long blade was flying towards him, moments from contact. Edon smacked the blade away with the flat side of his axe and then swung the blade at the demon, but this time he missed. The demon ran at him, its red eyes the color of spilled guts, and if Schuyler hadn’t swooped in, one arc of her sword decapitating his assailant, Edon might not have made it.

  In an instant he and Schuyler were surrounded again, fighting back-to-back with nothing to focus on but red eyes, spurting blood and smeared metal blades. When he turned again to slash the ivy binding Lily to the boulder, she was gone. Schuyler was still fighting, Jack was still fighting, he was still fighting, everyone was still fighting – but finally he spotted the little girl, still bound by the hands with the twisted vines. Someone, out of sight, was pulling her away, and although Lily seemed to be resisting – being dragging rather than walking – she was being led away. Further and further away, out of reach, out of sight.

  Edon struck his axe into the back of a demon about to finish off a Venator. The fight wasn’t over, but the prize was disappearing. Lily was gone, and there was nothing Edon could do to stop it.

  32 | The Silver Princess

  Oliver staggered through the trees with no idea of his direction. Everything was for nothing. For absolutely nothing. He’d almost been killed by a whirling Venator blade, then he’d had to run away from the White Queen’s maypole ceremony to avoid getting nabbed by the wolves and Venators. By the time he was sure he’d eluded them, the ceremony was over.

  He’d been convinced that Finn was the White Queen, but it turned out that she wasn’t. When he finally got close to the maypole, pushing through the fleeing and screaming crowds, he saw another young woman in white robes and floral crown lying dead on the ground. Near him lay another dead body, a silver-haired man he recognized as the local Regis, though he couldn’t remember his name. Someone told him that the White Queen had murdered someone and then killed herself. Whoever she was, the body lying there on the ground, a smile on her face and a deep bloody blotch across her stomach, she wasn’t Finn.

  So where was Finn? She had to be here – he had told himself that so many times he was convinced of it. Was she somewhere else in the forest, and if so – why? What was the point of this whole White Queen charade anyway? When would she show herself? Maybe this whole Swedish misadventure was yet another false lead, another chance to reach Finn that slipped through Oliver’s fingers.

  Now he was lost in a forest that stretched as far as he could see in any direction. The crowds who’d been there for the big party had dissolved like sugar. Oliver had been walking and walking but he saw nobody – mortals, Blue Bloods, demons. All he saw were trees, battalions of them. The gnarled bark of their trunks was beginning to look like a series of faces, looming over him. Oliver picked up his pace, exhaustion the only thing holding him back. He had to get out of here – find the lake, find a boat, swim. This endless walking and seeing faces in the trees was a madness, he realized. His love for Finn, and his profound desire to make amends, had turned him into a madman. All he’d done in the last year was take one misstep after another.

  In the distance white flares shot into the sky, their bright chalk-like pieces tumbling into the trees; then there were booms and shrieks, and the smell of ash. If the forest was on fire now, he really needed to get out. The water. Oliver needed to get to the water.

  He could hear more flares whizzing up towards the moon but he didn’t turn to gaze at their strange illuminations. Not when he could hear something else – a gentle lapping, soft but persistent. The lake. It was somewhere close by, past all these thickets and hollows, waiting for him. He’d found his way back to the lake at last.

  All along Oliver had thought his story would end here in Sweden, and maybe the chilly waters of Lake Siljan would truly be his final destination. Usually the Fallen died in fire and blood, not in watery graves. But there was something appealing about the silent depths of the lake, and the peace he hoped to find there. No Silver Blood would be able to drain him and prevent his soul from rising again.

  Oliver bent to feel around on the ground for some stones, then crammed them into his pockets. He didn’t want to bob to the surface. He wanted to sink deep, deep, deep into those waters and never return. Let the pike and eels have their way with his decomposing body. He’d be back, though not – he hoped – for a very long time.

  Oliver could see the lake, silvery in the moonlight, before he reached it. This part of the shoreline was rocky and slippery, and Oliver was looking for an inlet, the best place to walk into the water, never to return. Not far ahead of him was a sliver of meadow, long grass rippling in the breeze. The moon disappeared under a cluster of clouds and then re-appeared, its ivory beam lighting the thin tips of the grass, the silvery bark of trees, and the lacy tips of the lake’s gentle waves.

  That’s when he saw her, by the water’s edge. Finn, his once-mortal beloved. She was standing in shallow water dressed in white, her long blonde hair pulled back off her face. That ungodly beautiful face, cheekbones picked out by the moo
nlight. She looked like an apparition.

  Oliver was scared of frightening her away. After all this time, to see her again, for her to be close enough to touch! He stood mired in the grass, watching her haul a small wooden boat from the shadows and onto the narrow ledge of sand.

  “It’s OK! Come here,” she said to someone – to him? Had she seen him? Was she beckoning him over?

  No.

  Finn was bending over to lift something into the small boat. A child – a little girl. Lily! That girl had to be Lily, Schuyler and Jack’s little girl. What was she doing here? Why was Finn taking her – and where? A tidal wave of sickness drenched him, because seeing this forced him to accept what Finn had become. However much he loved her, it wasn’t enough. Not enough to keep her from the dark side, and not enough to keep her from delivering the worst blow of all to Schuyler, her own sister. Taking Schuyler’s daughter to Lucifer’s lair, to make an angel a corrupted Silver Princess.

  “Finn! Stop!” Finn he could let go, but Lily he could not. Losing the little girl would destroy Schuyler and Jack. Heaven would weep. Oliver marched forwards, determined to grab Lily whatever it cost him – Finn, or his own life. Nothing of the past mattered now. Only the future.

  “Oliver!” Finn’s face clouded. He reached into the boat for Lily and the child keeled into his arms. She was shaking but not sobbing. That kid had always had guts.

  “Let her go, Finn,” he commanded, aware his own voice was shaking. This was not at all how he’d imagined their reunion. Not at all what he’d planned, all those hundreds of nights, to say to the woman he thought he loved more than the entire world. “She’s done nothing wrong. She’s blameless. If you want to embrace the darkness, I won’t stop you. I’ll stand here and watch you go. But you’ll have to kill me first before I let you take Lily with you.”