“She didn’t understand the thirst. I’m surprised she didn’t turn Hel-Blar.” I could understand the thirst, at least. Mine was sharper than anyone else’s in my family. I touched my fangs with the tip of my tongue. Something occurred to me. “That’s why,” I realized. “My extra fangs, my need for so much more blood. It’s Viola’s thirst, not just mine.”
“Aye.” Gwyneth nodded. “She latched on to you proper on the night of your birthday. The same night she changed.”
I thought about the prophecy again. Dragon by dragon defeated. I’d assumed it referred to my mother and me at the coronation, or at least the dragon that had tried to roast me the first time I’d fled the castle. But now I wondered if it was actually about Viola and me, about our bloodlines, our battle.
I felt a moment of annoyance for the cryptic nature of prophecies. Then I remembered that this particular one had been spoken by a crazy old woman high on mushroom tea, and I was amazed we had even this much to work with. Madame Veronique had kept it secret all this time. She’d helped me survive so the rest of the prophecy wouldn’t blow up in her face.
Unseat the dragon before her time, and increase ninefold her crimes.
I watched the logs in the fire shift, sending up sparks. It came down to love and power. Viola wanted both. So I’d have to use them to lure her out, to force her to confront me. To evict her completely. “If we work together, I think we can beat her,” I said to Gwyneth. “You could be free.”
She smiled humorlessly. “I don’t deserve to be free.”
“You made a mistake,” I said. “That’s not the same thing as what Viola did. She murdered an entire castle full of people! And you already paid for it with your life.”
“That’s not all she did,” Gwyneth murmured, her braids falling forward to screen her expression. She pulled small round stones out of a pouch at her belt and rolled them in her palm. “That was just the beginning.”
“Is that why Madame Veronique fears her?”
“She wasn’t blameless, that one.”
No kidding. Madame Veronique had kept secrets from all of us. Not to mention she’d set an assassin on me. “She hid all of this from me, from my whole family. She pretended she knew nothing about the prophecy, nothing about magic.”
“Of course she did,” Gwyneth said, the stones clacking in her hand. “The more you think about a spirit such as Viola, the more you speak her name you feed her with magic, and the stronger she becomes. Then the better able she is to find you. Veronique never wanted to be taken by surprise again, so she sought out soothsayers in every century.”
“Even if I get my body back, will Viola always be inside me?”
“Hard to know.” There were little daisies in Gwyneth’s matted hair. I’d never noticed before.
“Would she make me crazy if she was stuck inside my head?”
Gwyneth shrugged. “Maybe.”
“That’s the opposite of helpful,” I said, annoyed. “If you feel so guilty about everything, help me.” I shot to my feet, pacing the small confines of the cave. “Can you at least tell me why the crown freed her so completely?”
“Magic.”
“I figured that out for myself, thanks.” I kept pacing, avoiding the flickering shadow of Viola, snarling at me, dried blood on her chin.
“The crown is just a symbol. It worked as a talisman because Viola forced it to; there was no actual magic in it to begin with. It was just the magic already in her, finding a trigger.”
I paced by Viola again, noticing the bats near the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if they were real or not. Only her eyes and the pendant around her neck were in sharp focus, glittering. “What about the pendant?” I asked. “It’s clearly magical. It activated Viola’s spell, and it trapped you here. So if I destroy it, will Viola be destroyed too?”
“Finally, you ask the right question.”
“Oh my God,” I snapped. “What is it with witches and riddles? If you knew something, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“That’s not the way it works,” Gwyneth said, unrepentant. “You needed to see what you saw and do what you did to have the strength to do what must be done.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great.”
She grinned. It was fleeting and rusty, as if she’d forgotten how. “Besides, I didn’t know you, did I? Not really. I didn’t know if you were strong enough. And every time one of her hosts fails, she goes on a rampage.” She touched her scar again.
“Host? You make it sound like a dinner party,” I muttered. “For the psychotic undead.” I stopped pacing. “Why are you helping me now?” I still didn’t know if she could actually be trusted. She’d been right when she said we didn’t really know each other. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. It was one of Dad’s favorite sayings.
“Penance, I suppose. And you’ve lasted this long. Maybe it’s enough.”
“Gee, thanks.” I sighed. “I don’t suppose you know where the stupid pendant is hidden?”
“It’s not hidden at all. Viola wears it here at all times.”
I paused, narrowing my eyes. “That’s way too easy.”
“It would be, yes. If that was the end of it. But you’ll need to find a way to lure her out.”
“And then?”
“And then you get the pendant from her and smash it.” Gwyneth cast the stones she’d been holding, reading their pattern and trying to decipher the future. I’d seen Isabeau do something similar, and Lucy’s mom read my tarot cards every year on my birthday. Well, she hadn’t read them this year, for obvious reasons. One stupid, vague prophecy at a time.
“Can I win?” I asked, seeing nothing but painted lines like sticks. The smoke from the fire made my eyes burn.
“You can.” I couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t smile back. “I say you can, not that you will.”
“You really have to work on your pep talks.”
She gathered up her painted stones, dropping them back into a leather pouch. “Do you think you can make her find you?”
“Yes.” I smiled grimly as the phantom bats screeched in the corner. “I know exactly what to do.”
I was barely at the gatehouse when another memory hit.
1199
The caves were dark and damp and smelled like iron. Water streamed down the walls, icy and uncomfortable. But she was safe. No one would think to look for her here. Only the bats dared enter, mostly because they’d been sleeping here by the hundreds long before she’d ever stumbled out of Bornebow Hall covered in blood. They caught in her hair and bit at her hands but she barely noticed. She tried to stay awake but couldn’t. The day weighed heavily on her and she carried it in her breast like the hot coal they used in trials to prove innocence. It burned her because she was guilty.
It hardly mattered. The guilt didn’t carry her through the sickness— only thoughts of Tristan could do that. He hadn’t come for her. He didn’t know she was here. He might never know if she couldn’t find her way out. So she fed on deer and wolves and the thieves who hid in the woods until she was strong enough.
Vertigo slammed through me and I had to hold onto the stones for support. Luckily the gatehouse guard was holding his head and retching behind a barrel. I crept past him, wincing at the bloody bruise on his temple.
“Sorry,” I whispered, ducking into the outer bailey. The moon made the long expanses of grass silvery and sharp. I stayed pressed against the inside of the wall, considering my options. I didn’t need to get right inside the castle. I just needed a spot that I could defend from the knights until Viola was pissed off enough to seek me out.
Which shouldn’t be a problem.
Since she already knew I was here.
Viola looked down at her gown, the fine silk wet with blood. She could still taste it on her tongue, sliding hotly down her parched throat. It should have made her sick.
Instead, it made her feel invincible.
She understood everything now. Her father’s nighttime habits, her mother
’s illness. Her own impossible lineage.
She could barely see the bodies at her feet, drained dry. Everything was too sharp, too bright.
Too red.
I clenched my jaw, my fangs aching against the stabbing thirst. She was making me believe I was starving, that I was turning into a papery husk. I hadn’t fed in nights and Viola was forcing me to relive the feast she had made of innocent bodies.
She wanted me to feel her madness, her confusion, her fear.
But I’d also felt something else from her.
Love.
I knew the key to luring her out. Constantine.
Chapter 18
Isabeau
Wednesday night
Running through the woods with a pack of dogs at my heels usually made me happy.
It made me feel free and wild and part of the mysteries, a true handmaiden to the Hounds. It was invigorating and grounding. Necessary. But too slow. Frustrated, I pushed harder. Pine boughs slapped at me. Magda ran beside me, slapping back at them. Snow shivered in the air behind us. The dogs lowered their heads and flattened their ears, streaking between the trees. Even as fast as we were, we’d never make it in time.
“I hate your boyfriend,” Magda snapped as more snow fell on her head.
“You didn’t have to come,” I reminded her, leaping over a fallen tree. Charlemagne sailed over it, tight at my side. His tongue lolled out in a happy canine smile. The pack on my back bounced against my shoulder blades, filled with ritual gear.
“Like I’m going to leave you alone with the Drakes,” Magda shot back. The moonlight caught on the daggers at her belt and the chainmail sewn into my tunic over my heart. “After what happened last time.”
And by that, she meant the time I’d brought one of them home with me. Logan had snuck under my defenses with his old-world courtesy and quick grin, and now he was an initiated member of our tribe. Something that never failed to infuriate Magda, on principle, if nothing else. She didn’t share well. It was another ten minutes before we broke out of the forest and along a deserted road. Headlights flashed as a Jeep sped up behind us.
Logan.
Magda called him something rude under her breath before yanking the back door open. Charlemagne leaped in after her. “Suivez,” I ordered the other dogs who had stopped running and were barking from the shadows.
Logan reached over to push my door open and I climbed in. His hair falling over his pale forehead and the lace at his cuffs did nothing to detract from his grim expression. His smile though, when he saw me, was gentle. I didn’t have time to smile back; he’d already slammed his foot on the pedal. I held tightly onto the door handle as the vehicle sped down the road. I knew it was faster than running, and more efficient than the carriages I remembered, but I still preferred the carriages. They didn’t make me feel trapped.
I held on tighter, my fangs poking out from under my top lip. Hounds didn’t generally bother retracting their fangs since we lived in secrecy and had no need or desire to blend into society, even vampire society. They feared our extra set of teeth. I’d caught more than one vampire sniffing me back at the camp, to make sure I wasn’t Hel-Blar.
Logan glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. They were grass green even in the dim glow from the lights on the dash. I still wasn’t sure how he could read me so well but he didn’t say anything, only pushed a button and the window slid open. Cold cedar-and-snow-scented air made the bone beads in my hair clatter. I could see the shadows of the dogs chasing us on either side. Charlemagne pushed his head out my window from the backseat.
“Are you sure about this?” Magda asked, as she’d asked me on the hour every hour since I’d made my offer. It didn’t matter that Logan was sitting right next to me.
“Oui,” I replied. “Bien sur.” I wasn’t acting as the handmaiden to Kala, the Hounds’ Shamanka in this; just as Magda wasn’t acting as my guard or ritual sister, but as my friend.
“Thank you,” Logan murmured. “We have to try.”
I reached out, interlacing my fingers through his. “There was too much magic unleashed the day Solange took the crown, and that is no coincidence. Else it would have happened when your mother was crowned too.”
We crested a hill and at the bottom another car was set off the road, the front dented around a fence post. The lights were still on and beyond them, Solange lay on the ground tied up with rope. Around her stood Kieran, Lucy, Quinn, and Connor. A tall man with black hair and a vicious smile broke out of the trees, flinging stakes. One of them narrowly avoided Lucy’s cheek, and only because Quinn kicked her feet out from under her, dropping her like a stone. She pushed to her hands and knees, scrambling to grab a crossbow before it was crushed under various boots.
“Constantine,” Logan spat, slamming on the brakes and screeching to a halt. I could hear the approach of the dogs on the other side of the hill.
“And Hel-Blar,” Magda added. “On your left.”
On the other side of the street, Hel-Blar shuffled in our direction, reeking of mushrooms and mildew. Charlemagne growled, despite his training. He knew danger and it made his hackles rise. “Non,” I told him sharply. It was too risky for any of the dogs to attack the Hel-Blar and they were all carefully trained to avoid them, by their smell and the sound of their clacking jaws. I whistled to forbid them from attacking. They were on the other side of the hill, but they’d still be able to hear me.
“Shit,” Logan swore. “Incoming!” he yelled to the others.
“Not again,” Lucy said, whirling to face them. Her first crossbow bolt caught the closest one in the chest, right through the heart. He crumbled into pieces and disintegrated. His companions scuttled through his ashes, snarling and undaunted. They smelled blood and battle and Solange’s pheromones. They’d never stop coming.
“I need to dreamwalk,” I said, despite the danger all around us.
“What, here?” Magda asked. “Now?” She whipped out one of her daggers. “Little busy.”
“I still need to get into Solange’s mind. And for that, I need to be touching her and she won’t let me do that until we get the collar on her. But I never got Lucy’s blood for immunity.” I withdrew the copper collar Logan’s brothers and Christabel had stolen from the Hel-Blar.
Made of beaten copper and glimmering like trapped firelight, it was smooth and simple and curved like a half-moon. The collar was powerful, and even after Kala and I had both examined it thoroughly, we still weren’t entirely sure how it worked. I was taking a risk by using a magical item that might not be dependable, and judging by the foul look Magda shot me, she realized it too.
“You don’t need my blood,” Lucy piped up. “You’ve got me.”
I grabbed her wrist. “Then let’s go.”
Magda gave a twisted, screeching kind of laugh and leaped at the Hel-Blar. Logan followed, distinctly less enthusiastic, but then I’d seen rabid dogs with less enthusiasm for violence than Magda. “Guys!” he shouted at his brothers. “A little help here?”
But they couldn’t help him. They couldn’t even help themselves.
Because Solange was awake now.
She lifted her head, pupils flaring, the whites of her eyes bleeding out in red rivers. The twins stumbled, cursing. “Let me go,” she said softly.
“Don’t!” Lucy shouted.
But it was too late for warnings and they wouldn’t have done any good regardless.
“Let me go,” Solange demanded again. “Now.”
Logan was safe from Solange’s pheromones but he was also too busy fighting off Hel-Blar. I felt the pull of her power as well. Charlemagne moved across me, leaning his considerable weight across my knees to stop me from getting closer. Luckily, I was still far enough away to retain some sovereignty over myself.
“Take my nose plugs—” Lucy stopped. “Damn it, I gave them to Christabel.”
They might have helped but they weren’t a perfect shield. I swayed toward Solange but at least my feet stayed rooted. Between Charlem
agne and my own magic, I could buy myself a few more moments. The twins weren’t so lucky. Quinn was already slicing through the thick ropes that bound her. Sweat dampened his hair as he struggled uselessly to fight the compulsion. Connor kneeled next to him and snapped the handcuffs apart. Constantine was trying to get to her and Kieran was just as determined to stop him. The twins stood, hovering beside their sister, straining on invisible leashes.
The Hel-Blar continued to advance.
Solange rose to her feet, like something out of the fairy stories my nursemaid told me when I was a child. Her hair was black as coal, her lips red as blood. Even her dress floated around her as if compelled.
Constantine backhanded Kieran and sent him sailing over our heads. I ducked before his boot could graze my temple but kept running, dragging Lucy behind me. She made a small strangled sound of surprise. Quinn and Connor moved to block Solange. I’d have to get through them to get to her.
“Can you take them?” Lucy asked. “Without killing them?”
“Oui.”
“Without them killing you?”
“I am not so easy to kill.” I handed her the copper collar, which she looped over her wrist like a large bracelet so that she could keep a grip on her crossbow. Her eyes widened suddenly and I knew Constantine must be behind me. Charlemagne was already leaping at him. Constantine dodged, but only barely. He had vampire speed, the kind that comes from being ancient. If he reached Solange before we did, we wouldn’t be able to start the ritual. And Logan’s brothers might die.
I spun on my heel to face him. My dogs raced down the street toward us, leaping the fences and skirting around trees. Constantine went low and I leaped high, avoiding his strike. I landed with a stake in each hand, braids and beads rattling like bones.
“We just want safe passage,” Constantine said. His accent was vaguely British, clipped but charming.
Charming didn’t work on me.
I didn’t waste time with idle talk, only threw one of my stakes. He danced out of the way but not quickly enough to avoid it entirely. It sliced through his side, under his arm, as he turned. His blood stung the air, hot and metallic.