I was still holding the rock defensively, waiting to see who would move first. The vampire streaked up the stairs so quickly I barely saw her move. The knight pulled his sword from him scabbard and I stumbled back.
“I am a man of honor,” he informed me coldly.
“Good, go kill a dragon or something,” I suggested. “Like right now.”
He nodded curtly. I released the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. It startled me. I could breathe here, I could stand in sunlight, but I still had fangs. Viola’s head made no sense.
I waited until the others had cleared out, all except the Hel-Blar and the little girl who was still huddled with her head under her arms, before inching up the steps. I kept close to the wall, hearing the sounds of fighting, the clang of swords, a woman’s shout of warning. Through one of the narrow windows I saw the dragon fly by so close, the air from his wings ruffled my hair. His blue scales flashed like lapis lazuli.
I avoided the great hall, where the scarred woman appeared to be flinging coals from the fire at everyone. The dried lavender stalks on the ground smoldered fragrantly. A hawk resting on a wooden perch let out a piercing cry of alarm. I darted under the wooden stairs before anyone could look over and see me there. There were two knights up on the landing, standing in front of an arched oak door. Two more stood staggered on the steps. The hawk broke free and circled over the smoky hall, crying.
Under the stairs where I was hiding, there was another door. This one was smaller and unguarded. Thick dust lay on the ground in front of it. When I tested the handle, it was unlocked. I slipped inside.
Into a swarm of bats.
Chapter 5
Lucy
Sunday night
I slid into the driver’s seat and fishtailed my way through a U-turn. Kieran and Solange were out of sight now, long since vanished into the forest bordering the campus. I cut through the field, following their footsteps. Snow and clumps of grass churned under the tires. I pulled to a stop at the edge of the trees, ducking out to stand up while still inside the car. I balanced on the edge of the seat, peering into the woods.
“Kieran!” I called out, reaching for a stake. I listened intently but I couldn’t hear running or screaming or even regular night sounds. The snow muffled everything, making it too bright and too silent. My heart pounded in my ears. I was sure the teachers at the academy would tell me not to abandon the getaway car. But they wouldn’t want me to abandon a fellow hunter either.
A quick glance behind me showed the empty field. Whatever the students and concert-goers were doing now, it wasn’t sneaking up behind us. That would have to be good enough for now. Still torn, I jumped out.
I followed the footsteps under the tall red pine, the back of my neck prickling. It was creepy in here, far away from everything and everyone with nothing but the clouds of my frozen breath for company. The tip of my nose was numb and my fingers were cramping with cold. Ice crackled in the trees as the wind shifted. Wet snow and icy rain drifted down in veils, sliding down the back of my neck. I crept deeper into the forest, eyes straining for any movement. Moonlight slid between bare branches.
A twig snapped up ahead.
I froze, another stake clenched in my fist. “Kieran?”
“Solange, wait,” I heard him say. His voice was low and urgent. I broke into a run, suddenly oblivious to the eerie silence of a forest filled with vampires. I found them past a grove of stunted birch trees. Solange wasn’t alone.
“Get away from her,” Kieran barked at the tall vampire at her side. He had dark hair and a quiet smirk, as if everything amused him. But there was something under the smirk, something deadly.
The elusive Constantine.
“Come back with me.” Kieran took another step toward her. “We’ll figure it out.”
Solange smiled. There was still blood on her dress. Her eyes were so blue they looked like sapphire beads. “I’m not lost,” she said sweetly. “So there’s nothing to figure out.” She leaned in close, as if she was about to kiss him. She stopped a breath away from his mouth. “Go away,” she said instead.
Kieran flinched. He didn’t say anything but the muscles in his neck strained as he fought the compulsion. He turned slowly on one foot to walk away, his back exposed. I jumped into the clearing, stake ready. Constantine shifted.
I threw the stake.
“Kieran, duck!” I hollered. He dropped to the ground just as it whistled over his head. Constantine snarled, pivoting. He knocked the stake aside, at the same time shielding Solange. Fury twisted her porcelain-doll features. If I’d had time, I would have shivered.
Constantine tugged her away, and they shot between the trees like pale stars. I’d thought for sure Constantine would have gone for my throat. Still, I didn’t want to hang around for him to change his mind.
“Gotta go.” I jerked Kieran to his feet. Solange’s pheromones made his eyes look a little glassy, but at least the compulsion was moving him in the direction I wanted him to go.
“I lost her,” he said, barely above a whisper as we ran toward the car. He was a silhouette in the piercing headlights. I couldn’t see his expression. He slammed his hand onto the hood of the SUV. His breath became short gasps of white clouds in the frigid air. “I lost her,” he repeated, bleakly.
“We can’t stay here,” I said. He just stood there, looking broken.” Kieran!” I tried to sound like a teacher back at the school. He blinked at me once. I flicked snow at him. “Snap out of it.”
He shook his head suddenly, as if he was dislodging the dark thoughts that clung to him like water. “You’re right.” He slid into the driver’s seat before I could wonder if he was in any condition to drive. He seemed okay, except for the set of his jaw and shoulders. There was blood on his sleeve. I didn’t ask whose it was. I dialed Connor’s cell phone as Kieran pulled back onto the road. He was the brother most likely to be connected.
“We know,” Connor said right away. “Hart’s on the phone with Dad.”
“You know? About Solange?”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Chloe just sent me video.”
“Shit, Connor. There’s video?”
“Security camera. I gotta go,” he said, before hanging up. “Mom’s going nuclear.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Your uncle’s on the phone with Solange’s dad,” I told Kieran. “There was video. How the hell did it get uploaded so fast?”
“There are Helios-Ra cameras all over town,” he answered tightly, hitting the accelerator. “I’ve got to talk to my uncle. Now.”
“I get that,” I said grabbing the door when the SUV slid a few feet. “Can you not get us killed first?”
The drive was far too slow and far too fast. Snow and trees and pavement blurred into one. I kept sneaking Kieran looks. His hands were knuckle-white around the steering wheel. I couldn’t process the fact that whatever happened to Solange was now happening publicly. Between the Huntsmen, the Helios-Ra, and the Blood Moon guard, she was going to get herself killed before we could save her.
Hunter was waiting for us in the parking lot. “There’s video,” she said.
“We know,” Kieran told her curtly, rolling down his window. “And we caught the live show.”
“That’s not all.” She held onto the SUV before he could drive off. “They brought the vic here. If she dies . . .”
“I know what happens,” Kieran said. “I have to go, Hunter.”
He drove off before she could say anything else. She watched him for a long silent moment then turned away, sighing.
“He chased her into the woods,” I told her. “But she was faster.”
“If that student they brought in dies, the Drakes will have broken the treaty.”
My breath froze, along with the rest of me. “But it’s not her fault.” I was more sure of that than ever before. That sweet-voiced porcelain doll with blood on her clothes wasn’t Solange. No one and nothing would convince me otherwise.
Hunter looked
sympathetic. “You know that won’t matter to the League. Not now. Hart’s already made an announcement that the treaty holds until further notice, but he won’t be able to hold everyone back. Not on this.”
We headed toward the dorm and went straight inside to Hunter and Chloe’s room. Chloe turned in her desk chair. Her curly dark hair exploded out of a scrunchie that was slipping free and there were empty soda cans littered around her. Jenna sat on the edge of one of the beds.
“Nice misdirection with the party-girl yell,” she said.
“How did you guys find the video so fast?” I asked, shrugging out of my coat.
“Hunter bugged Theo’s desk in the infirmary,” Chloe said.
Hunter just shrugged unrepentantly. “I think we’ve all spent way too much time in there. And every time, some big secret bites us in the ass. I’m sick of it.”
“They’re going to make action figures of her,” Jenna predicted. “The Hunter doll, complete with pink cargo pants, stakes, and microchips.”
“I heard him get a call about a vic outside one of the college dorms. The League has hidden cameras throughout Violet Hill, near the bars and college mostly,” Chloe explained to me, while I wiped my damp palms on my jeans. “So I hacked in.”
“Show me,” I said quietly, even though I’d just seen it for myself.
The four of us stared at the screen as Chloe played the video clip. The light came from a streetlamp and some sort of night-vision lens. It made the shadows fluid, the light a strange acidic green. It was like watching a horror movie when you didn’t want to see what would happen next but you couldn’t help yourself. Chloe cut to a clip of the victim being brought in to the infirmary. There was no mistaking the spiky hair and the paint-splattered jeans. The clip cut off abruptly.
“They cut my feed,” Chloe admitted, disgruntled. “I hate that.”
I sank onto Hunter’s bed. “Is that public access to the League?
“No.”
“There’s something really weird going on,” I told them. “I just can’t seem to figure it out. I’m not even sure where to start. So what’s our next step?” I asked Hunter hopefully. She was the straight-A vampire hunter student, she had six plans going before most of us had finished breakfast. “Logan thought magic was involved that last time I talked to him.”
“What about Isabeau?” Hunter asked. “What did she say?”
“He’s asking her now. But she’s out of range so it might take some time. Plus, you know, a Hound. Not exactly chatty.”
“We need Spencer,” Hunter said finally. “Magic is his speciality.”
Jenna snorted. “Specialty if you pretend that spell he tried last year didn’t make him smell like cheese for a month.”
“Plus, he’s barred from the grounds,” Chloe added. “Some idiot might try to stake him.”
“We’ll just have to meet him off campus,” I said. “Do your hacker thing and get a hold of him.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “It’s called a phone. No hacking required.” She blinked at me when I stood up. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the library.”
They all stared at me. Chloe shook her head. “Okay, that I wasn’t expecting.”
Jenna went with me. I let her since I was babysitting her because of her injuries, and she probably thought she was babysitting me because I now had a rep for being a little crazy. “Shouldn’t you be in bed or something?” I asked her.
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”
“You’re a charming patient. I can’t imagine why Theo didn’t want to keep you longer for observation.”
She grinned. “Please. I heard he had to physically lock you out.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Campus was quiet and cold, with thousands of stars burning overhead. It was the kind of night Nicholas and I usually spent counting falling stars. I wondered what he was doing right now. Was he safe? Did he know Solange had just broken a hard-won treaty that had been in place since before we were even born? Did he care? He had to care. Because every Helios-Ra agent who wasn’t on board with Hart’s progressive attitude would be coming for the Drakes now. Not to mention, Huntsmen who had no affiliations to begin with.
And as a student at the Helios-Ra Academy, I was suddenly on the wrong side of the fence.
I kicked a pebble into the pond, accidentally scaring the sleepy swan. He squawked and burst into flight, scattering feathers. Jenna and I both squawked back and threw a stake at it. He dive-bombed us, insulted.
“Oops,” I said as we caught our breath. “I guess we’re a little tense.”
“You think?” Jenna slid me a suspicious sidelong glance. “You’re not going to start ohm-ing, are you?”
“Mom claims it helps.”
“Let me guess. Your mom eats a lot of tofu, doesn’t she?”
“You have no idea.”
We crossed the lawn toward the buildings clustered in the center of the campus and surrounded with security lights. “You know, you don’t exactly seem like the library type. Tyson would be so proud.”
“I have to start somewhere,” I grumbled. “Much as I’d like to just punch everyone in the face until this all makes sense, that seems like a lot of work.”
The library was nearly empty. We only had a half hour until curfew and since we didn’t have exams or essays due this week, everyone was pretty much anywhere else. The light was soft and the wooden study tables gleamed.
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” Jenna asked as we wandered in the back stacks.
“Not really,” I admitted. I pulled out books on magic, ghosts, and vampires. It didn’t take long before the pile grew to eye level. I was trying to figure out how to carry them all when Jenna checked her cell. “Chloe finally reached Spencer. He’ll meet you at 2:00 a.m. tomorrow. Hunter says you know where.” I knew exactly where she meant. As the only two hunter students currently dating vampires, we knew the best and most private routes to the borders of the campus. Jenna blinked at the teetering pile. “Enough books there, Hamilton?”
“I can guarantee at least half of these are wrong.” I pointed to a slim volume with Raktapa Council: Amrita, Drakes and Joiik embossed in gold lettering. “Especially that one.”
Jenna helped me cart them to the librarian, who looked briefly impressed at the sheer weight, and then out the back stairwell to the shortcut leading to the dorms. It was a better shortcut when it wasn’t blocked by three idiots in dire need of anger management classes.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jody asked, the security lights glinting off the metal clamps holding a row of stakes neatly to her belt. She reached out and shoved my arms so that my jacket and my books tumbled to the ground.
“God, could you stop being such a cliché?” I scowled, already out of my limited store of patience. “You’re cranky and macho. I get it already. Now, get out of my way because I have real, actual problems that are more important than your need for therapy.”
“Jenna, walk away,” Jody said, ignoring me.
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“We’re giving you a chance to redeem yourself,” Ben explained, glaring at me. “To stand with us instead of the vampire lover.” He was built like a truck.
Jenna looked at Jody’s third friend incredulously. “Samuel, seriously? You’re smarter than this.”
“I thought you were too,” he replied softly. He was lean and dark-haired and looked like what I imagined an assassin would: deadly and quiet. He tossed the local Violet Hill newspaper at our feet. The headlines were lurid: Missing person cases triple and Dracula copycat killer on the loose.
“Your precious Drakes broke the treaty,” Jody said to me. “Just like we knew they would. Monsters don’t know the meaning of honor. And you need to pay, just like them.”
“She’s not a Drake, asshat,” Jenna pointed out.
“Yeah,” I said. “So go pick on one of them if you’re so tough. In fact, ask for Helena.”
>
“Not while you’re still here and able to betray all of our secrets,” Jody argued. “God knows what you’re telling the Drakes.”
“I have the blueprints to the school,” I mocked her. “Because this is a James Bond movie. Get a grip.”
She shoved me in the shoulder. I hissed through my teeth.
Jenna swore and stepped between us. “Jody, let it go.”
“Jenna, I’ll meet you back at the dorms,” I said. “You don’t need this shit.”
She snorted. “As if.”
“You’re choosing her again?” Jody snapped. “A vampire lover over your own unit? Over your duty to protect the town?”
“I’m choosing a friend over a bunch of bullies,” Jenna corrected her with a sharp smile. “I don’t like bullies.”
Jody just smiled as Ben and Samuel shifted beside her, ready to fight. “Then it’s time you realized she’s not welcome here. And neither are you if you side with her. She’ll only drag you down.”
“Oh, right, like you’ll help her be a better person,” I said. “And she’s recovering from a head wound, so don’t be such a bitch.”
“And you heard Hart,” Jenna shot back, refusing to acknowledge the bandage she still wore under her ponytail. “The treaty is still in effect.”
“Hart’s not here.”
Jenna blocked Jody’s sudden swing and retaliated with an elbow to her stomach. When Ben lunged at me, I threw a book at his head.
“Leave Jenna out of this,” I added, going straight for Jody while Ben clutched his head, swearing. She stumbled back instinctively, too used to people cowering away from her. I stood between her and Jenna.
So she punched me instead.
I punched her back.
Right now, my mother was reciting her nightly mala bead prayers to cleanse me of my violent tendencies.
Not enough chanting in the world, Mom.
“Jody, whatever little story you’re playing out right now, I’m not interested. I have people who need my help. So take up a hobby or something and get the hell out of my face.” Which hurt and already felt as if it was swelling. Pain from my aching cheek made my eyes water. Jenna and Samuel stared each other down warily.