Diadem of Blood and Bones

by Ripley Proserpina

“I’m fine with that,” Hudson replied.

  Briar paused her exploration of his features and met his stare. “Are you?” she asked. Stop being a baby! Whatever this new mental voice was, it was neither sympathetic nor self-pitying, and Briar wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

  “Yes.” Hudson bent at the knees to better meet her gaze. “Briar, yes. As much as I may have wanted you to live a fully human life, I am selfish. Asher is dead, and by some miracle I don’t deserve, you’ve survived. The thought of spending forever with you fills me with nothing but joy.” Honesty rang in every note of his voice, but when she didn’t answer right away, he sighed. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “No.” He never had.

  “Do you love me?” His dark brows drew together.

  “Of course!” She loved him with every ounce of her being. “I love you more than my own life, Hudson.” Asher had forced her to choose between her life and that of her vampires. She’d chosen without a moment of doubt. Theirs. And she’d do it again. No matter how much it had hurt to step into the sunlight, if Briar ever had to choose between them and herself, she’d always always choose them.

  Because they’re ours. Ours to love. Ours to protect.

  Hudson’s smile returned, a little dimmer but no less happy. “So there you go, princess. We have forever now.”

  Forever didn’t sound bad at all. In the meantime, however… “I need to call my mom. If I let too long go between conversations, she gets upset.”

  Hudson nodded and then glanced out the window. “Marcus’s car is gone. Everything inside it—we’ll have to go back.” Have to go back to the warehouse where you died. He didn’t say it aloud, but he didn’t need to. The trembling hand he ran through his hair gave away what it would take for him to go back there.

  Too soon. Briar could imagine her mental state if she thought Hudson was dead, and then he turned up alive.

  It was hard enough not to keep her arms threaded through theirs, or wrap herself around their backs like a monkey. She wouldn’t let them out of her sight for anything.

  “I can call from your phone,” she said.

  Immediately, Hudson pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to her. Briar dialed, and when he made a move to leave, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. As she waited for her mother to answer, she tugged Hudson toward the bed. When he sat, she sat next to him, curling up at his side.

  “Hello?” her mother’s confused voice asked.

  “It’s me,” Briar said. “I’m borrowing a phone because I misplaced mine.”

  “Oh, Briar,” Mom began before going off on responsibilities and trust, ending with, “Don’t expect me to send you a new phone just because you lost yours, young lady. You’re old enough to move to Boston by yourself, you’re old enough to keep track of your things.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Briar answered. She glanced up at Hudson who smiled down at her. He could hear her entire conversation and seemed amused by her mother. Briar shook her head and barely resisted rolling her eyes as her mother went off on a tangent about their neighbors.

  “So that’s why we’re moving back to South Carolina,” Mom finished.

  Surprised, she sat up straighter. “You are?”

  “Well, why shouldn’t we?” Mom asked. “You’re not around and all our family is back in Georgetown.”

  “That’s good,” Briar said. It was, wasn’t it?

  “Briar, honey.” Mom must have heard something in her voice. “It’s so dark here. And I miss you so much. You know my days and nights are all turned around, and it’s taken months for me to get turned around the right way.”

  “No. It’s good, Mom. It really is. Just took me by surprise.” Hudson’s arm snuck around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. “I’m happy here in Boston. You need to be happy, too.”

  “Are you, sweets?” Mom asked. She sighed, blasting static across the line. “Are you sure? I worry you’re lonely.”

  It was pretty impossible to be lonely with Hudson, Marcus, Sylvain, and Valen.

  “I’m not,” she said and then meeting Hudson’s gaze, lifted her eyebrows to say, should I tell her?

  Eyes wide, Hudson lifted his free hand. I don’t know.

  Briar took the leap. “Actually, I’ve met some pretty special people here.”

  “Oh?” Her mom sounded distracted and then as if she realized what Briar meant, repeated, “Oh! Have you? Tell me! Nice boys there in Boston? Not rude I hope, like some of those blunt, sour-faced…” Mom took a breath. “So did you meet at a mixer? You know I met your father at one of those. He was so handsome.”

  Ew. “No,” she answered. “BC doesn’t have fraternities or sororities.”

  “It doesn’t?” Her mother sounded shocked.

  “No, ma’am. It’s a Jesuit school, remember?”

  “I don’t, sweets. I was just excited about the scholarship.” At least her mother was honest.

  “I met them in class, and on my way to class…” Before she could go on, her mother interrupted.

  “Briar, hon, your dad is calling me. I need to let you go.”

  Huh? For the first time in Briar’s short life away from home, her mother was getting off the phone first. Apparently, she was coping just fine with her newly emptied nest.

  “Okay, Mom. Love you.” Briar bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  “Love you. Gerry! Get off the ladder!”

  Mom hung up, and Briar let out the chuckle she’d held inside. “That will be us one day,” Hudson murmured.

  Briar straightened, leaning away to better see him. “What?”

  Hudson glanced at her before staring toward the window. He eased her to his shoulder, encouraging her to lean her head against him, and she did. “Sylvain will be on a ladder. Valen will be yelling at him to get down. You’ll be giggling.”

  Briar laughed. His words painted such a clear picture, but… “You just compared Valen to my mother.”

  “Hey!” Valen yelled from downstairs.

  “Briar’s mom is probably hot,” Sylvain retorted.

  “Oh. Never mind!” he yelled again.

  Briar shut her eyes and burrowed her face against Hudson. “I like that.” She let herself imagine a world where she and the others did everyday activities. The promise of that kind of life shimmered on the horizon—so close. She should probably be freaking out more about the direction her life had suddenly taken, but she wasn’t. “I’m not freaking out about being a vampire,” she said quietly. “But I am sort of freaking out about not freaking out.”

  “You are handling it remarkably well.” His hand smoothed her hair behind her ear. Touching her chin, Hudson gently tilted her face toward him. “But you’re a logical person, Briar. And I know you’ve probably gone through what this means and came to the same conclusion I did.”

  “Well, I didn’t inherit Asher’s mind reading ability. What conclusion did you come to?” she asked.

  “You’ll deal with the issues as they arrive. But as it stands, nothing has changed all that much.” He frowned at her. “What did you mean, though, ‘inherit Asher’s mind reading ability?’ ”

  “He changed me, didn’t he? I remember his blood on my lips.” Some of the events of her death were crystal clear—her fear for her vampires as they fought the soldiers and crawlers, the pain of the sunlight and quick burn from Hudson’s medicine—while others were hazy. She didn’t remember anything after falling at Asher’s feet. She didn’t remember waking up, but remembered rushing through the city. She didn’t remember seeing Marcus’s house, but she remembered curling on the back doorstep.

  “I didn’t see him give you his blood,” Hudson said softly. His gaze went to the windows, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “He may have. Sylvain fought his way to you and gave you his blood.”

  “Sylvain.” Briar smiled. “I’m glad it was Sylvain and not Asher.” She didn’t want anything from Asher inside her, no lasting piece of him to live as long as she did.

&
nbsp; Hudson threaded his fingers through her hair and didn’t reply. Briar’s eyes closed as her body relaxed into his.

  “I don’t remember what day it is,” she said after they’d been silent awhile.

  Hudson paused. “I don’t either. Wednesday?” He shifted on the bed to reach the phone Briar’d placed on the end table. “Friday.”

  “I think I’m going to skip classes,” Briar whispered.

  “Me, too.” Hudson kissed her, and she shut her eyes again. “We’ll deal with real life in a few days.”

  “I like that. The idea of spending days, just the five of us, sounds perfect.” It really did. She needed time to adjust to the way her life had changed.

  From the floor below, Briar could make out the guys moving around. Their feet clipped on the wood floor and then shuffled over the carpeted stairs. “They’re coming,” Hudson whispered. “I hope you’re prepared to be smothered.”

  “That sounds pretty perfect,” Briar said. She’d come so close to losing them. “I don’t want to be without you all.”

  The door opened and Marcus poked his head in. “I was going to knock, but you knew we were coming.”

  Briar smiled from where she rested her head on Hudson’s chest before tapping her ear. “Vamp hearing. Awesome.”

  Marcus walked inside, followed by Valen and Sylvain, the latter wearing a distinct frown on his face. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Are you hungry again?”

  “I don’t think so.” When she’d first arrived at Marcus’s house, she’d been parched. Her throat throbbed and ached like she’d had strep throat and then swallowed some glass. Concentrating, she inventoried her body. Her throat felt normal, and she swallowed, just to test it.

  Nope. Not hungry.

  She yawned so hugely her eyes watered. Hudson’s warmth and the soft bed combined to make her sleepy. As her eyes cleared, she noticed Marcus, Valen, and Sylvain watching her closely. While next to her, Hudson had tensed.

  “What?” she asked. She worried they could sense something about her she didn’t recognize about herself. Was she about to go murderous vampire? Had her fangs descended? Briar touched her tongue to her teeth. No. They were flat and blunt. “Am I going to murder everyone in Boston? How do I stop? Should you chain me somewhere, like in the basement?”

  Sylvain choked and started to cough. “Chain you in the basement?”

  “If the options are I murder Back Bay or spend some time in the basement, I choose basement.” Was it her imagination or did Sylvain’s cheek twitch?

  “Do you want to see the basement first before you decide you want to spend time there?” Marcus asked. “It’s not very nice. It has a dirt floor.”

  Briar relaxed. “You wouldn’t be joking with me if I was really going to go all murdery.” But that meant something else was bothering them. “If it’s not that, what is it?”

  Marcus glanced quickly at Hudson who nodded so slightly Briar nearly missed it. “You’re tired,” he said.

  She was. But she’d died and come back to life. A little bone-deep weariness seemed warranted. “I am.”

  “Vampires sleep during the day.” Hudson looked out the window where the sun was rising higher. “We can’t control the exhaustion. It hits us at dawn, and we collapse.”

  “I’m tired,” Briar agreed, nodding. “I could definitely fall asleep.”

  “No, little one.” Valen’s voice was kind, and she remembered how he’d described their wedding night with Annie. Fell into a vampiric sleep.

  “I’m supposed to be out cold right now, aren’t I?”

  Valen nodded. He sat on the end of the bed and gripped her ankle with his large hand. Briar shifted, shuffling away from Hudson to wrap her arms around Valen. He kissed her head before releasing her back to Hudson.

  “When you first told me what you were, I enumerated everything I knew about vampires.”

  “I remember,” Marcus said. “Sylvain made sure you knew we didn’t—”

  Sylvain drew his finger across his neck, and Marcus shut up. A siren sounded outside the window, and the long-haired man craned his neck to see what was happening. As soon as his back was turned, Marcus held up his hands, wiggling his fingers in the air.

  Should she be having this much fun with them after everything that had happened to her? Surely, she should be more serious. More… vampire ice queen? A voice inside her snarked.

  Briar snorted. Whatever becoming a vampire had released in her was pretty funny. She enjoyed this side of herself—free and irreverent.

  Another siren blared outside, followed by the pulsing bass of a police cruiser. The sound shook Briar’s bones, and she hurried to the window. Sylvain wrapped his arm around her waist when she stood beside him. A line of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks rushed past Marcus’s house.

  “I wonder what’s going on.” Briar craned her neck. There was no smoke as far as she could see.

  “Marcus. Valen.” Hudson’s voice cut through the room. Briar spun toward him, only to see them staring at Hudson’s phone.

  “Let me see.”

  But Sylvain got the phone first. Voices carried across the room, tinny and indistinct, until there was a scream, and another, and another.

  Sylvain’s jaw tightened, lips firming until they were a pale line. “Soldiers.”

  “On video?” Briar asked. She hurried to Sylvain to peer over his shoulder. He played the video again, and at first, she couldn’t be sure of what she was watching. A group of people in a club danced, lights flashing green and purple and white, when suddenly, they surged forward. The camera moved away from the group toward the crush of dancers. There were screams, the video shook and there was a flash of white teeth before a figure descended onto the humans.

  “Is that now?” Briar asked, horrified.

  “No,” Sylvain replied, causing her to sag in relief—until he went on. “But this is not the only video.” The sound of screaming filled the room again, then paused, and then came on again. “At least five other videos similar to the first one are posted on the local news.”

  “Soldiers are attacking,” Hudson said. “With no one to control them, they’re acting purely by instinct.”

  Control. Something inside her took notice, growing thoughtful. “They won’t stop?”

  “No,” Marcus said. Sylvain began to play another video, but Marcus snagged the camera from his hand. “That’s enough.”

  “There’s a curfew tonight,” Sylvain said through gritted teeth. He met Briar’s gaze and his eyes softened, the tight lines around the sides of his lips disappearing as he forced himself to relax. “I’m sorry. I can’t help worrying you’re going to be taken away from me again.”

  Briar went to him. As soon as her arms went around his waist, his went around her back. His soft hair tickled her nose as he leaned his cheek on her head. A strange scent, sharp and bitter, filled her nose, and she breathed in to make sense of it. Pain. The answer came. Terror. The emotions were confounded, she couldn’t discriminate one from the other. She couldn’t tell if they were from now or earlier, but they were all she could think about. How had she not noticed this before? With every passing minute, the changes in her body became more apparent and harder to ignore.

  Now that she’d identified Sylvain’s emotions, it became easier to read Marcus, Valen, and Hudson. Their scents were a blaring indication of their emotional state. Hudson was anxious. Valen guarded. And Marcus?

  Marcus was harder to read so she took another breath. Angry. His hands hung loose by his thighs, but it was a ruse. Enraged. Somehow Briar understood that it would only take a small push to send Marcus over the edge.

  Protect them.

  “We should leave,” she said. In her arms, Sylvain tensed. Like she would a horse, Briar tried to infuse calm with her touch. “Go where it’s safe and you can relax.”

  Hudson immediately shook his head. “We can’t. If there are soldiers running amok, we may be the only ones capable of protecting the general population.”
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  Internally, she sighed. “We have to kill them.” The soldiers were mindless feeding machines. What other option did they have?

  “The hell you are!” Sylvain burst out. He jerked away from her, spun toward the window and then back to her. He gripped her arms and gave her a little shake. “You’ll never see the soldiers again if I have to rip their heads off with my bare hands.”

  A slow rumble built in her throat. She didn’t like Sylvain’s insinuation. “I’m stronger now, Sylvain.”

  But he merely shook his head.

  “Look at me.” Ducking her head, she tried to meet his eyes. “Sylvain. I love you. Please. Look at me.”

  A muscle jumped near his ear when he finally locked his brown eyes on her. Her lips curved upward despite herself. Sylvain’s harshest critic was himself. The anger which was so quick to rear its head wasn’t really directed outward. Her Sylvain owned his perceived failures and carried them around his neck. He needed to be gentled, eased into understanding.

  “Sylvain. I know you will protect me. You saved me. I’m standing here because of you.”

  He flinched, shaking his head. “No. I let you die. You’re cursed because of me.”

  Briar reached up, holding him the same way he held her, fingers tight around his biceps. “No.” She dug her fingers in. “Sylvain. No. I’m not cursed. If you had given me this choice, I would have chosen to remain with you. I want this.” Yes. This is right. “It happened sooner than I planned, but I had every intention of begging you to change me.”

  “No.” His voice was unsure now.

  “Yes.” He needed to understand. As she spoke, however, her vampires’ scents changed, morphing to confusion, and she knew she had to make them all understand. “I wanted to stay with each and every one of you forever. I knew this would happen.” Sylvain lifted his eyebrows, and she shrugged. “Okay, I didn’t know how or when it would happen, but I knew it was inevitable.”

  He still didn’t want to believe her. Briar could shake him he was so stubborn! “I love you, you big lug! I love you.”

  A switch flipped in Sylvain’s eyes, and he was on her. Lips, teeth crashed against her mouth and lit her body on fire.