The goldenrod brushed my shoulders and I slapped it out of the way. Nicholas didn’t speak, just pulled me up against him, holding me pressed to his chest, his face buried in my wind-tangled hair. I stroked his back, the muscles cool and hard even through his shirt.
“What is it?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything but you,” he said hoarsely. Even though I’d known him most of my life, had seen him fall out of trees and trip over his own feet when we were growing up, even though we’d played countless pranks and honed our sarcasm on each other, he could still make me melt. And that still took me by surprise sometimes.
When he finally looked at me, his features were calm but fierce in their stillness. He was suddenly all predator, that beauty sharpened and deadly. I shivered, not afraid of him but afraid for him. There was something stark in his gray eyes, glinting in the moonlight.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Apocalypse, disaster, blah blah blah. I feel like we’re constantly living out a season ender of Buffy.”
“With any luck this won’t be that bad.”
“Notice your luck lately?” I asked. “A hundred rabbit’s-foot charms wouldn’t help you.” Not that I’d ever do that. I happen to like bunnies and cutting off their feet is barbaric.
“True. You know, you could’ve been attacked by the same vampire that got Kieran last night,” he said, and I knew that wasn’t what he was really upset about. “What if it was an ambush?”
“It was,” I snorted. “But I handled it. Solange didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what? Wait, she was there?”
I stepped back. It was hard to think when he was standing that close to me. Embarrassing but true. “Hell yeah, she was there. I Tasered her.”
He blinked. “You used a stun gun on my baby sister?”
“Right after she tried to eat Kieran and then have me for dessert.”
Nicholas just blinked at me again. It was rare that I could surprise him into speechlessness. He lowered himself slowly down to the ground as if he were suddenly an old man too weak to stand. The weeds and grass swallowed him up. “She could have killed you.”
I sat too. “But she didn’t. And she didn’t want to, that much was obvious.”
“Still.”
“Yeah. Still.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t say anything,” he added tightly. “And I just went with her to see Kieran.”
“He’s okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. Except they broke up.”
“They broke up?” I reached for my phone. No voice mails except the one Nicholas had sent earlier and no texts. I switched it on. The dial tone chirped in my ear. “It’s not broken.” I scowled. “She didn’t even call me! Is she all right? Does she need ice cream?” Not that she really ate anymore, but some rituals were sacred.
“She used her pheromones,” he said, his fangs poking out. “She compelled me to back off and leave her alone. She’s getting stronger, Lucy.”
I stared at him. “Again? She did that to you again?” Just last week she’d forced him to kick me out of the farm house because I’d mouthed off about the annoyingly mysterious Constantine.
Nicholas just sat there looking shell-shocked and hurt. Fury sizzled inside me. It was bad enough she’d attacked me, but now she was messing with my boyfriend.
And that just would not do.
Fury turned to rage, burning like an ember inside my chest.
Nicholas winced. “You’re mad.”
“You think?”
“No, I mean you’re mad.” He licked his lips.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I took a few deep breaths, and added a few Om Namah Shivayas for good measure. When Nicholas stopped looking like he was in pain, I let out one last long breath. It went to mist in the cold air, like dragon’s breath, which was apt as I felt angry enough to breathe fire.
Oops. Another deep breath.
“We have to tell your parents,” I said when I was calm enough to unclench my fists. “We can’t keep covering for her. Not now.” A part of me felt like a traitor. My job as best friend was to cover for Solange. But we were in way over our heads. We couldn’t save her from herself without help.
And fast.
“I know,” he said, sounding just as conflicted. “But she saved me tonight too.”
I went cold. “What?”
“London was attacked. I got caught by a Huntsman, and he would have had me too, if it weren’t for her. They’re worse than Helios-Ra hunters.”
“Are you okay?” I catalogued the mud and grass stains on his clothes, the tear in his shirt collar, the blood I hadn’t noticed on the cuff of his left sleeve.
“I’m fine,” he assured me.
“You and I know her better than anyone else. What do you think she’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s what scares me.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. We don’t have much time as it is.” He handed me a set of car keys.
I frowned at them. “Aren’t those mine?”
“Yeah. Duncan got your car from the garage and fixed it himself. It’s parked on the road outside your school.”
I smiled brightly. “I love your brother.”
“Hey, now.”
“It’s okay, I love you more.”
“Good, because he said not to drive it in the rain. Once he’s done with Aunt Ruby’s Mustang and the Blood Moon stuff, he’ll fix it up right.” His hands closed around my elbows and lifted me right off the ground.
I squeaked. Then flushed. “I never made that sound,” I informed him loftily, as he pulled me over to sit in his lap. “And hi.”
“Hi.” He grinned crookedly, brushing his hand along my jaw and into the hair at the nape of my neck. “I’m calling a time-out on all the worrying.”
I linked my hands together around his neck. “Okay.”
“The Blood Moon starts soon.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I know.” I didn’t want to admit how weird I felt about not being able to contact him or Solange or their brothers. Or any of the Drakes for that matter. I even missed their dogs.
He shrugged out of his jacket, pulling something out of the inside pocket. I was confused at first; it wasn’t a stake or a dagger or a weapon of any kind.
“It’s a CD,” he said, giving it to me. “I made you a mix. For when we’re apart.” I knew if he’d still been human he would have been blushing. Back then I would have teased him mercilessly about it. But now I just wanted the CD.
“You made me a mix?” I was dangerously close to simpering. I straightened my spine. “Thanks,” I added. “What’s on it?”
“Listen to it and find out.” His thumb brushed over my mouth. “I kind of miss you already,” he said softly, leaning in to nip at my lower lip.
I nipped back, and the kiss fell with dizzying speed into need and want until even the back of my knees tingled. He kissed me as if we had all the time in the world, as if it weren’t cold outside, as if winter weren’t coming, or the dawn, or any of the dangers that waited for us outside this field. I kissed him back as if he were right, as if there were only the two of us, as if the only worry we had were my curfew. He fell back, bringing me with him. We reclined in our own little world of grass and clover with only the stars to see us. Kissing him was addictive; it was breath and blood and chocolate.
And then reality came crashing down around us.
“Hey, vamp lover, we know you’re out there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I lifted my head, recognizing Ben’s voice. I was still sprawled on Nicholas. “They followed me?”
He shifted so I was sitting on the ground and he was in a crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet.
“Go away!” I yelled, jumping up.
“We’re just doing our duty,” Jody shouted back. I could make out her outline by the cedars, if I squinted. “You know, killing vampires instead of kissing them.”
I turned on one heel
and glared at her. “Bite me, Jody.”
Nicholas stood slowly, unfurling like deadly smoke. I knew what they saw: pale skin, gleaming eyes, sharp fangs. I just saw someone worth protecting.
“I mean it, you guys,” I added fiercely. “Back off.”
The first stake would have caught me in the shoulder if Nicholas hadn’t shoved me out of the way.
“Hey! Watch it!” If punching other students was against school policy, I was pretty sure we weren’t allowed to stake them either. And I’d dropped my CD and nearly stepped on it. Now I was really cranky.
“Friends of yours?” Nicholas asked drily.
“Yeah, they’re thinking of making me prom queen,” I shot back. I stepped in front of him to shield him. He cursed and nudged me back, trying to block me.
“Stop it.”
“You stop it!”
I tripped him. Then he hooked his leg behind my knees and dropped me. I flailed and landed on a lump of wilted wildflowers. I scowled at him. So much for romance.
“Excuse me, but they can’t stake me,” I reminded him. “It’s illegal. And it would get them expelled.” They seemed the type to care about that.
“They can still hurt you,” Nicholas insisted stubbornly.
“Yeah, but they can kill you. So stop being a hero.”
“You first,” he snorted. “Can I hurt them just a little?”
I sighed, thinking of treaties and detention. “Probably not.” I had stakes but they were useless right now. “Wait,” I said, smiling slowly. I still had pepper eggs in the pouch at my belt. They looked like silly putty but they were filled with cayenne pepper. The blue one was full of Hypnos powder, but I wasn’t about to waste it on a few idiots. Hunter gave me the casings, but Marcus helped me make the mixture to put inside. It was a Helios-Ra invention based on some old ninja weapon, but Marcus was already working on a new recipe. He was the brother who worked with Uncle Geoffrey the most, so he had access to supplies the rest didn’t have.
I hurled one, still grinning. It exploded and one of the students, Ben I thought, yelled.
“Ha,” I said. “That’ll teach you to bully me.”
“Nice shot.” Nicholas approved.
“Thanks. Go home now.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously. They won’t stop until you’re gone. I can handle them,” I reminded him.
“But—” He paused, tilting his head slightly. His nostrils flared.
And then he cursed, very softly. Too softly.
I swallowed nervously. “What now?”
“Not sure.” He took my hand and we ran, hunched over in the tall grass. We stopped under a tall maple tree. Nicholas scaled it quickly while I waited on the ground, keeping an eye on the bullies still throwing out taunts. Nicholas dropped beside me so suddenly I jumped a foot in the air. I was swinging my fist before it registered that it was just him. He bent back just enough that I missed his nose.
“Bounty hunters,” he replied grimly.
I frowned. “But there’s no bounty on the Drakes anymore,” I said. “Right? So why are there vampires after you now?”
“These aren’t vampires.”
“They’re not?”
“No, they’re vampire hunters.”
I goggled. “What?”
He nodded sharply. “Loners. Huntsmen, like the ones who attacked London. Apparently not everyone wants to toe the Helios Ra line. Some hunt on their own. No rules.”
“Well, shit.” Not that I loved rules, but I loved them more than vampire hunters without any restrictions or treaties.
“Pretty much,” Nicholas agreed.
I craned my head, searching through the undergrowth. “I can’t see them.”
“They usually wear trophy necklaces of vampire fangs.”
“That’s gross.”
He sniffed the air. “I think there’s two, maybe three.” He cursed. “Same ones that got London. Son of a bitch.”
“Can we beat them?”
“Probably not.”
I was afraid of that. “Bullies and murderers,” I said. “Not our best date, Drake.”
He snorted. “Not our worst either.” Then he kissed me quickly, fiercely. “Just stay low.”
I grabbed his sleeve as he turned away. “Not so fast.”
“No time to argue, Lucy.”
“Then don’t argue,” I shot back. “You just said we can’t take them.”
“So?”
“So, don’t be dumb. I like you better undead than dead.” I made a fist on his sleeve and dug my heels in the dirt to keep him from bolting heroically. “I can distract them while you run.”
His fangs poked out of his gums. “No.”
I just raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes.”
“They’re getting closer. From the east, from behind those cedars, I think.”
I pressed on. “So I’ll throw the rest of my eggs at them while you take off in the opposite direction.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. But the fact is, I’m not in danger. You are. So don’t piss me off, Nicky.”
He nearly grinned. I could see his lips twitching. “Don’t push it, Lucky.”
I let go of his shirt and filled my hands with my last two eggs. “Ready?”
“Not quite.”
He whirled me around and bent me backward over his arm, kissing me until I felt too hot to be inside my skin. “I’ll see you after the Blood Moon.”
And then he was gone.
I had to remind myself that it was only for a few weeks and it was stupid to feel like crying.
Better to kick some ass.
I waited until I was sure Nicholas was well away before I shouted, “Vampire!”
When the first bounty hunter charged out of the bushes, a pepper egg hit him square on the forehead. He sneezed and cursed, blindly throwing a stake in my direction. I had to dive out of the way. I landed hard, spitting dandelions and mud out of my mouth.
The next one was smarter, not leaving the cover of leaves and darkness. The moonlight showed barely a glimpse of a tooth necklace and then nothing at all. I crawled through the brush, being poked by dried grass, tickled by dried Queen Anne’s lace, and pinched by burrs. “Just once I’d like to go out without someone flinging stakes about,” I muttered, crawling faster. “I’m going to get a complex at this rate.” I stopped behind a half-naked dogwood, using it for as much cover as I could.
“He went south!” I called out, knowing Nicholas had gone north.
“No,” Jody shouted. “He went west!”
Since she was wrong and actually helping to add to the confusion that would protect Nicholas, I didn’t throw my last pepper egg at her.
Even though I really wanted to.
“We’re Helios-Ra,” I shouted, not wanting them to start hunting us too.
There was a loud sigh from the bounty hunter still in the bushes. “Then go home, children.”
I might have bristled at that if I didn’t want to get out of here as much as they wanted us to. I peeked out slowly. “Don’t shoot!”
The bounty hunter I’d attacked was still rubbing his eyes. “Get out of here before you really piss me off.”
I ran. So did the others.
“This isn’t over,” Jody hissed as we burst out of the woods and back onto the campus lawns.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, shut up.”
Chapter 8
Solange
No matter how well I hid, Constantine always seemed to find me.
He was leaning against a huge boulder that had fallen off the mountain over a century ago. It was soft with moss and lichen. His eyes were violet, even in the darkness. “There you are, princess.”
“Hi.” He made me feel like I was ten years old and a thousand years old at the same time. It was confusing.
“What’s the matter here?” He pushed away from the rock and approached me slowly, languidly, as if the air were honey. “You’ve been crying.”
> I didn’t say anything.
“That bad?” he pressed.
“My cousin nearly died. I had a fight with my best friend. I … almost attacked her.”
“And did she deserve it?”
“She used a stun gun on me.”
“She deserved it, then,” he said dismissively. He was close enough that I could see the flecks of gray in his irises and my own face reflected in his pupils. I looked pale and pathetic.
I lifted my chin. “And I broke up with my boyfriend.”
He looked almost satisfied. I must have imagined that. All he said in a husky voice was, “The human boy?”
For some reason I didn’t like hearing Kieran referred to as a boy. “He’s a hunter.”
“Worse and worse.”
I frowned. “Could you not gloat?”
His smile was quick and unapologetic. “Why mourn the inevitable? A vampire princess and a vampire hunter. The basic mathematics of it was flawed, pet.”
I thought of Lucy and Nicholas and Quinn and Hunter. “I don’t believe that.”
But he’s right, you know. You have to be careful. You have to be strong.
He shrugged one shoulder. “And yet you’ve broken up with him.”
“Not because he’s a hunter.” Because he was human. I didn’t want Constantine to be right. And I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to think or wonder or worry. I just wanted it to stop. But it wasn’t.
It was getting worse.
I couldn’t pretend otherwise, not anymore. Not to myself, anyway. I’d go on pretending to my family for as long as I possibly could. They spent enough time worrying about me as it was. And I certainly couldn’t admit to them that it gave me a kind of rush to use my pheromones, to know I was powerful all by myself, without the sword of the Drake name.
But the truth was, it made me feel like more than the overprotected, prophesied daughter born to a royal family. More than the girl other vampires only wanted for politics or greed or delusions of rare vampire babies. I liked that feeling. I liked knowing I could keep people away without lifting a hand, without a weapon of any kind, without even the help of my infamous brothers.