He rubbed his temple. “Sorry.”
“Good,” I said crankily. “You can’t shut people out. Not now. Solange is shutting us out and you see how well that’s working for her. Things are going to get worse, Kieran. We all know it.”
He hunched his shoulders but he didn’t argue with me, which I counted as a victory.
We patrolled the alleys, stepping over a drunk guy snoring while propped up against the back door of the bar. He still had his car keys in his hand. I plucked them carefully out of his grasp and tossed them into the nearby garbage can. Then I knocked on the door. When one of the busboys opened it, the drunk fell back over his feet. The busboy just sighed. “Thanks.”
The back of the movie theater was deserted and smelled like popcorn. We saw three cats, two squirrels, and a fox, but no vampires. We crossed Main Street to check out the other alleys, passing the little park where I used to hang out with Solange on Saturday afternoons, drinking coffee and complaining about how there was never anything to do in Violet Hill. It seemed like forever ago.
“That alley connects to a back street behind the high school,” I told Kieran as it began to snow very lightly. It wasn’t cold enough to stick to the road, it just sort of floated in the air around us. The stars were still visible between thin wispy clouds. We skirted the debris of a tipped-over garbage can between a shop selling crystals and one selling ski equipment.
“It’s pretty quiet,” I said. I stopped, winced. “I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”
Kieran nodded, checking over his shoulder. He aimed his flashlight down the mouth of the dark alley. The light glinted off soda cans and a metal fence.
“I just totally jinxed us,” I groaned. I pulled my miniature crossbow out of my bag and loaded an arrow into it, just in case. I still carried stakes but I was more skilled with the crossbow. I had better aim than arm strength. It wasn’t easy pushing a sharp wooden stake through a rib cage. Not to mention distressingly gross.
Kieran and I both paused at the sound of a scuffle. He eased forward slowly, switching off his flashlight. A broken moan trailed toward us, went high-pitched and kept ululating. The hairs on my arms rose. We crept closer as the sounds got louder.
And then a shadow knocked a can across the alley, clattering suddenly. It leaped toward me, yowling. I scrambled back, slipped on a puddle of liquid, and landed hard, knocking the breath out of my lungs. Kieran fumbled with his flashlight. Cat eyes gleamed at us, then vanished with a hiss.
“Cat,” Kieran said shortly.
“I fell on my ass over two cats fighting?” I pushed myself up. “That’s just embarrassing.” Kieran’s light swung over me. His eyebrows lowered. I looked down.
I was covered in blood.
“Are you hurt?” He rushed toward me.
I shook my head. “Not my blood.”
The puddle I’d slipped on wasn’t rainwater or spilled garbage runoff. It was blood.
A lot of it.
I grimaced at the state of my pant cuffs and tried not to gag. Kieran crouched down to get a better look. The puddle was quite deep and thick, not yet dried.
“I don’t think anyone could lose this much blood and survive,” he said darkly.
I frowned. “Vampires wouldn’t waste that much though.”
He glanced at me, straightening. “Not the ones you know.” The beam of faintly blue light followed a trail of droplets so red they were nearly black to the brick wall of the nearest building. He pointed the flashlight to the metal fire escape, wet with melting snowflakes and something else entirely. “More blood on the bottom step.”
“But no body,” I confirmed after checking behind the Dumpster and a pile of crates full of empty bottles. “And no blood leading anywhere else.”
Kieran tucked the flashlight in his belt. “Will you be okay if I go up?” he asked.
“I’ve got this thing.” I adjusted my grip on the miniature crossbow. “I’m good. I’ll cover you.” God. The lingo was contagious.
“If there’s incoming, don’t wait for me,” he said, climbing the steps. “Just run.”
I rolled my eyes at his back. Then I turned my shoulder blades to the wall and kept an eye on the mouth of the alley leading to the road and the fence to the school on the other side. Litter pushed around my feet when the wind picked up. Wind chimes from someone’s back door shivered through the frigid air. A car drove slowly down the street, tires crunching through a very thin layer of ice, headlights spearing the drifting snow. A dog barked farther down the road, probably because of one of the cats. I heard the slight scrape of Kieran’s boots as he hauled himself up onto the last balcony. It was only a three-story building so it didn’t take him long. I risked a glance up and saw him pulling himself up to the roof as if he were doing chin-ups.
There was something unnerving about standing in a dark cold alley, the ground stained with mysterious blood. I went back to cataloging sounds, jumping when Kieran spoke, even though it was softly enough that I nearly didn’t hear him.
“I found a body,” he said tightly. “Female.”
I stared up at him. “Should I call 911?” I fumbled for my phone with cold fingers.
“Too late for that.”
I shuddered. Kieran was standing on the roof with a dead body. “What do we do?”
“She’s been exsanguinated,” he said. “Puncture marks on the neck. We’ll have to call it in to the League. They have a cleanup crew for this kind of thing.” He dialed and spoke into his phone in low tones.
“Remind me not to sign up for that department,” I muttered, hunching my shoulders against cold and trepidation. I was very aware that the cuffs of my pants were stiffening with a dead woman’s blood. I swallowed against the bile burning in my throat.
And then I realized there was something worse than being covered in blood.
Being covered in blood in a town overrun with vampires.
A shadow moved to fill the mouth of the alley. I couldn’t smell mushrooms over the rotting garbage in the Dumpster and the snow, but I knew it was a vampire regardless. Pale, too fast and too agile; just not Hel-Blar. It was a man, fangs gleaming. A woman stepped up behind him, smiling. She wore fur and pearls. Definitely not from Violet Hill.
“Oh, good,” she murmured, sniffing the air. “I’m starving.”
“I’m not food.” I lifted my crossbow. “And I’m under Drake protection.” I angled slightly so they could see the Drake family insignia cameo I wore around my neck.
“We just want a little bite.” The man shrugged. “And I don’t see any Drakes here. Do you?”
“There are still treaties,” I argued, suddenly nervous. I glanced at the other end of the alley. I shifted from one foot to the other.
“Treaties, bah. All I see is one little girl, all alone.”
“Then you’re not looking close enough,” Kieran said from the rooftop, just as he aimed his flashlight at them. It only blinded them momentarily, but it was just long enough that I could launch into a run. Kieran kept pace with me, jumping from roof to roof. A shingle slid and crashed to the ground behind me. I ran as fast as I could, trying not to slide in the snow and ice. My leg muscles twitched, my lungs burned, and still I ran. I could hear them behind me. They were faster than I was and could have caught up easily enough. They were playing with me.
Aunt Hyacinth told me a story once about organized hunts in the nineteenth century when she was turned. Vampires would use terrified humans instead of a fox. The fear and the adrenaline made blood sweeter.
The hell I was going to be their fox.
Which was a great theory I had no idea how to put into practice.
My throat was dry from gasping, and sweat gathered under my jacket. I forced my legs to keep moving. Dirt rained down from Kieran’s boots. A gutter broke and he stumbled, nearly falling. He swung above me like a human pendulum. I glanced up, and the tiny break in focus made me slip on a patch of frost and snow. I crashed into a metal gate. It was locked. I couldn’t get th
rough, and I couldn’t reach Kieran to help him. His flashlight was on the ground, the beam slicing across the toe of my boots when I spun around. The fence dug into my shoulder blades. Miniature dust devils of snow and discarded chocolate bar wrappers skittered into the corner. I lifted my crossbow, hand trembling slightly in the cold.
There was just enough light to see the vampires strolling around the corner, blocking the only exit. Kieran cursed and dropped from the edge of the roof, where he’d been clutching a broken gutter. He landed hard and limped to my side, a stake in each scratched and bleeding hand.
He was a good fighter. And I had good aim. But these vampires were old, I could tell that right away. And that meant we were no match for them, training or not. And I was covered in blood, maddening them. And I’d run away, which I knew I wasn’t supposed to do. It only made vampires more eager to chase you. But sometimes, standing still was simply not an option.
Speaking of options.
We had none.
I could tell Kieran agreed. His face was grim, his shoulder cutting across mine in an effort to shield me. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I opened my mouth and screamed.
I didn’t just scream, I shrieked and screeched and caterwauled. This wasn’t a damsel-in-distress scream for help. This was every decibel of noise my lungs and vocal cords could possibly muster.
Vampires needed a certain amount of secrecy, even these who clearly weren’t following the rules. The Blood Moon attendees were strictly forbidden from feeding in town. There was a blood supply available in the encampment and some of the older tribes traveled with their own human donors. So the ones who decided to troll through Violet Hill thought they could get away with it.
“Shut her up,” the woman snapped. She flinched when I made my voice even higher-pitched.
And I still had my crossbow. I fired a bolt, still yelling. It caught her right under her collarbone. She hissed in pain and surprise. Next to her, the man jerked in surprise, then his eyes narrowed furiously.
Oops.
One day I might learn not to seriously piss off vampires.
Today was clearly not that day.
Kieran flung his stake. It grazed the man’s throat, drawing enough blood to splatter the air. I coughed, drew a deep breath and kept on screaming.
A light switched on at the other end of the alley.
“What the hell’s going on out here?” an old man bellowed grumpily. “It’s the middle of the damn night. I’m calling the cops. Damn kids.” He slammed his window shut.
The screaming, combined with the GPS in Kieran’s phone, had some of our team charging up the alley behind us. Hunter used a Dumpster on the other side of the gate to climb up, aiming her own crossbow. Eric and Chloe came up behind the vampires.
Crossbow bolts and arrows flew through the alley. One of them nearly got Hunter in the thigh. She leaped off the Dumpster, landing in the shadows. The vampires, wounded and annoyed, scaled the brick wall and vanished over the rooftops. I stopped shrieking. The silence thrummed around us. My throat was raw.
Kieran rubbed his ears. “Is there blood? Am I blind?”
“Don’t you mean deaf?” I croaked.
“No.” He half smiled. “You scream louder than mere ear damage.” He nudged me, like two comrades-at-arms in a war movie. “Nice moves, Hamilton.”
“You two scared the crap out of me,” Hunter muttered from the other side of the fence.
“And what the hell’s that smell?” Chloe added. “Gross.”
“We better get out of here,” Kieran said. “League’s on the way. You know how they get when there are students around.”
“And we saw a Huntsman not far from here,” Connoly added.
“Crap. Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
NICHOLAS
“Is it true?”
The voice was so soft I barely heard it. It was coming from behind a hole in the cave wall, fitted with iron bars. It must open up into another crevice like the one I was lodged in. I sat with my back to the rock where I could keep an eye on a portion of the main lab.
“Are you really one of the Drakes?”
I slid closer to the gap. A female vampire with long brown curls matted with blood and cracked lips bent into view. They weren’t giving her enough blood, if any. I tried not to think about what would happen when the sun went down tomorrow and I woke up with a newborn’s thirst. It was nearly two years since my change, and that wasn’t nearly long enough to get by on a mouthful of blood.
“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s true.”
“You’re young, boy.” Her accent sounded Greek. “Is the other dhampir your sister?”
“Do you mean Solange?” I asked. She nodded. “Then yes.”
She was trembling all over, lightly, like an aspen leaf. Pain had made marks in her face, which was dark with dirt and streaks of burned skin, as if she’d been doused in bleach. No, not bleach. Holy water. I cursed, softly.
“You might survive, then,” she said. “If they need you.” She huddled into herself.
“Better pray they don’t need you and let you die,” another voice said. There was someone else in the cell with her, a man with cuts on his face, crusted with blood and accented with bruises. He was human. He was human, he was locked up, and the vampire hadn’t eaten him, even though she was clearly in dire need of blood.
“You’re … human.”
“Figured that out, did you?” he said, disgusted.
A clatter of iron chains and a thin wailing scream cut us off. We froze.
“Keep your head down,” the man snapped. “Get out of the light.”
I slid closer to the gap, deeper into the dank shadows.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked when no one came to the gates for us.
“Hell,” he shot back. His jaw bristled with gray whiskers. I could smell the sweat on him. “They’ve brought half a dozen vampires here. Some are still chained up, others are dust.”
“But why? What do they want?”
“Who knows? They like pain. They don’t like vampires.”
“But half of them are vampires.”
“Better to serve the devil than burn in hell,” he said, sounding exhausted. “Whatever they’re looking for with all their tests and torturing, they haven’t told me.”
“Why are you here? You’re human.”
“They take our bodies and dump them in town. Took a woman just tonight. I don’t know why. At first I assumed I was just food, though Ianthe here has very politely held back.”
“I wouldn’t eat you, Lee,” the vampire said with weary amusement. “You know that. You smell terrible.”
Lee’s smile was brief. When he looked at me, it died. “I hope you’re stronger than you look.”
“I hope so too.”
There were too many sounds: iron chains, Hunters talking, victims sobbing or trying to claw their way out, rats scurrying, water dripping. I leaned my head back, covering my head with my arms, but the screaming pierced through, was so broken, it was jagged and hot in my ears. I stood up and went to the bars. The woman hanging from the bars was weeping soundlessly through seizures of pain. Frankenstein stood near her with an expression of detached curiosity, a metal device full of spikes in his hand, dripping blood.
“If you pierce around the heart but not quite through it, you get the most interesting reaction,” he was saying to one of the guards.
“Stop it!” I yelled when he lifted the device again and the vampire shivered and begged. “Leave her alone!”
Frankenstein turned slowly toward me. “I’ll stop,” he said pleasantly. “Provided you’re willing to take her place.”
The vampire woman hung like meat. Her eyes were nearly dead. Even if the rest of her survived, she’d go mad. Fear was metallic and bitter in my mouth, like pennies in vinegar.
“Deal.”
Chapter 18
Solange
Late Monday night
Consta
ntine took me to the Bower. The bats followed us the entire way though their numbers thinned a bit. I stumbled along, Constantine’s hand gripping mine tightly as I tripped over roots and was generally the exact opposite of a graceful vampire with excellent night vision.
I was a little busy freaking out.
One of Lady Natasha’s handmaidens tried to stake me. I’d just been exiled from the Blood Moon where my mother’s right to the throne would be ritualized later this week under the full moon. I was persona non grata, to be staked on sight. I was hearing voices.
And it wasn’t even midnight yet.
I wanted to call Lucy, but this was too dangerous for her. I wanted to call Kieran, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to turn the clock back and stay inside the family tent so the Furies never saw me and none of this even happened.
Instead, I sat on a dusty brocade sofa under a wreath of bats. We were alone, snow falling lightly between the branches. I smelled pine and cedar and ice and the burning wicks of candles in tin lanterns. Ice glimmered here and there, dripping off evergreen boughs and iron candelabras. It was haunting and beautiful, but I barely noticed.
“What am I going to do?”
“Whatever you want, love,” Constantine answered, smiling gently as he sprawled in a chair with the carved feet of a lion. He looked utterly comfortable and unconcerned that he’d been marked for Chandramaa execution.
“They just tried to kill you,” I felt compelled to remind him.
He shrugged one shoulder. “We’re safe here.”
“You can’t know that.” I rubbed my palms on my knees. Vampires rarely sweat. Our body temperature didn’t even approach lukewarm unless we’d just drunk a lot of blood and it was running at full tilt through our systems. Still, I was anxious enough that my hands felt damp. A hundred thousand thoughts crowded in the black space of my mind, like stars on a clear night. And they were just as difficult to catch. “I didn’t even know we could be exiled,” I said. Even though the Drakes had been exiled from royal court for centuries, this was different.