“It’s just the change,” he said. “You’re overtired. It’s normal.”
The yawn was so big it made my eyes water.
“Are you sure?”
I wasn’t awake long enough to hear his reassurance.
CHAPTER 14
Lucy
“What the bloody hell do you mean Solange went to see Veronique? And Natasha?” Everyone took a healthy step back out of range of Helena’s fury. “I specifically said she wasn’t to leave the house.”
Liam sat in his chair and grimly drank a brandy. Hyacinth’s pug was sniffing under the front door and whining. I shifted from foot to foot. The thick miasma of anger and pheromones was starting to make even me light-headed. Liam reached out for his wife’s hand.
“They’ll be all right,” he said darkly. I’d never heard his voice have that particular tone and kind of hoped I’d never hear it again. It made the hairs on the back of my neck shiver.
“Why’d Lady Natasha set a bounty in the first place?” Nicholas asked hotly.
“There’s a rumor going around,” Sebastian explained. “That Solange really is going to take Lady Natasha’s crown as soon as she changes.”
We stared at him, all sorts of horrible scenarios unfolding in the spaces between us.
“But Solange would hate that,” I said.
“But Lady Natasha would never want to be anything else,” Helena said. “So she’ll never understand that, or trust it. Also, she knows Montmartre is courting Solange, in his own twisted fashion. Even though they haven’t been together for a long time, she doesn’t share well.” She glanced at the window. “Where the bloody hell is Hyacinth? It’ll be dawn soon.”
“Bruno has his boys out looking for her.”
“I should be with them.” Sebastian was standing stiffly in the corner, glowering.
“No.” Helena narrowed her eyes in his direction.
“Mom.”
“I said no, Sebastian. You’ve done enough tonight.”
“What about London?” Nicholas asked. “She’s the one who came to get Solange.”
Liam sighed. “She’s a royalist, like the rest of that side of the family. But I have to believe she didn’t know about the danger.”
“There’s more.” Geoffrey tapped his pen on the cover of a leather-bound book. His hair stuck up everywhere; he’d been raking his hand through it constantly since he got here. Liam tilted his head back and briefly closed his eyes.
“Of course there is.”
“I’ve finished analyzing the Hypnos sample.”
Liam straightened, his eyes flaring like hot silver.
“Tell me.”
“Several zombie drugs, as we’d assumed,” Geoffrey said.
“And?”
His expression was hard. He didn’t look like a slightly distracted scientist anymore, or like the handsome intellectual who attracted all the divorced women in town.
“It’s ancient blood. Ancient enough to be Enheduanna.”
The silence fell like a hammer through a glass window. I blinked.
“Who’s Enheduanna?” I whispered to Nicholas. No one was speaking. It was kind of creepy, actually. “Hello?”
“An ancient.” Geoffrey was the one to answer me, though he didn’t glance my way. The fire crackled softly, falling to embers in the grate. “The oldest vampire still alive.”
“Oh. Um, and?”
“And her blood has magical effects. Like Hypnos, it takes away your will.”
“I remember.” I stifled a shiver.
“On vampires too, not just on humans.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “Oh!”
“Indeed,” Geoffrey agreed drily. “And now it’s in the hands of the Helios-Ra.”
“Who are only marginally better than Lady Natasha or her tribes.” Helena’s black braid lifted into the air as she whirled to kick the leg of a spindly Queen Anne chair. It splintered loudly.
“That was my mother’s,” Liam murmured.
“This is bad,” Nicholas said to me. “The thing about vampires, of any kind, is that we’re supposedly immune to each other’s pheromones. It’s what’s stopped us from wiping each other out entirely with clan wars.”
“But not anymore,” I whispered.
“Not anymore.”
“How did they even get it?” Sebastian asked.
“I can assure you I plan on asking Hart that myself,” Liam said through his teeth. “He’s on his way here.”
“Here?” Sebastian gaped at him. “You’re not serious.”
“He was amenable.”
“Amenable to staking each and every one of us in our own home,” Sebastian muttered.
“No, we’re safest here and we outnumber him. I allowed him only a single companion.”
“And a bucket of Hypnos powder.”
“Sebastian,” Helena snapped. “Your father knows what he’s doing.”
Liam smiled.
“I’ll remind you of that, love.”
Nicholas sat down, shaking his head.
“So, the head of the Helios-Ra is coming here for tea, they have Hypnos at their disposal, Solange is possibly in the hands of the vampire queen who set the bounty on her head, and we can’t find Aunt Hyacinth. That about cover it?” He looked suddenly young and overwhelmed, like the Nicholas I’d known before he turned. I touched his shoulder. Before I could think of a single helpful thing to say, Liam’s cell phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He glanced at the display.
“Bruno.” He and Helena exchanged a grim look. “Hart’s here, and Hope.” They looked at us.
“Lucy and Nicholas, upstairs.”
“Mom!”
“But—”
“Now,” Liam insisted. “Lucy, the presence of a human girl will not help our cause at the moment. And Nicholas, you can barely stand.”
He was rather wobbly on his feet. Dawn must be filling the garden on the other side of the drapes. We shuffled upstairs, reluctant but obedient.
More or less.
Mom says my temper isn’t my only karmic baggage. I have this thing about taking orders, no matter how well meant. And though I completely understood why it might be best to remain out of sight, it hardly followed that I should sit alone in Solange’s room and not know what was going on. Just because they shouldn’t see me didn’t mean I shouldn’t see them.
“Lucy?” Nicholas whispered, stopping when he realized I wasn’t following. “What are you doing?”
In point of fact I was lying on my stomach at the top of the curving staircase. From this vantage I could see the front door. I couldn’t see into the living room, but I heard Helena ask Sebastian if he wanted to retire and his emphatic refusal. He was newly turned—it had only been a few years, after all—but I wouldn’t have left either if I were him. No matter how exhausted I was.
I wondered again where Solange was. And if she was okay.
“They can hear your heartbeat, you know.” Nicholas stretched out next to me.
“Hey, I’m upstairs. Technically I’m not breaking the rules.” I slid him a sidelong glance. “Can they really hear my exact location?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. He was very close. I could feel the cool length of his body pressing against mine. His eyes were very pale, his teeth very sharp. If I was immune to his pheromones, then why did I find him so annoyingly attractive?
A knock sounded at the front door. The dogs barreled into the foyer, growling. Mrs. Brown barked from behind Hyacinth’s bedroom door. Bruno escorted the heads of Helios-Ra inside, his expression implacable and hard. He considered the Drakes his own family, and Solange an honorary niece.
“Hart and Hope,” I muttered. “If you’re going to name your kids like that, of course they’re going to think they live in a comic book.” Although I had to admit Hart was handsome, practically debonair. His hair was threaded with silver and rakishly messy. “Okay, he’s totally got that yummy secret agent thing going on.”
Nicholas scowled at me. I di
dn’t have to turn my head to look at him to feel his eyes burning.
Hope was short, barely five feet tall, with a cheerful face and a ponytail swinging from the crown of her head. She wore jeans and a thick leather belt hung with stakes under her long sweater, and sandals. Somehow I hadn’t expected her to be so perky, in her strappy silver sandals.
“They’re going in,” I whispered.
“I can see that,” Nicholas muttered. His nose twitched.
“You look like a demented bunny,” I told him. “What are you doing?”
“You switched to lemon shampoo.”
I blinked, thought back to my morning shower, which felt like years ago. He was right. His hands were clenched, but his voice was soft and husky. He turned his head away, was close enough that his hair brushed my cheek.
“Smells good.”
CHAPTER 15
Solange
I only woke up because I had a mouthful of mud and a lump of hard dirt as a pillow.
“Ow.” I sat up, blinking blearily. “What the hell, you guys?”
“Shh,” Connor hissed at me, his hand covering my mouth. “We’re not alone.” I could barely hear him, he was speaking so softly. I couldn’t hear heartbeats or frightened porcupines or twigs snapping under combat boots, but I knew the rest of my brothers could. He drew a sun in the dirt at our feet. I could barely make out the shape in the moonlight falling through the branches. Not just vampires then.
Helios-Ra.
The wind was warm, persistent. The crickets had stopped singing, no doubt sensing predators in every corner of the forest. This was our forest, damn it. The Helios-Ra had no business here.
Shadows flitted between the trees, making an unearthly sigh of displaced air. A vampire screamed and turned to dust, billowing between the leaves. A wooden Helios-Ra stake bit the maple tree behind her as she crumbled. Someone screeched. Connor leaped into the fray before I could stop him. Marcus was fighting, and Quinn, of course, who couldn’t be kept from a good fight no matter the circumstances. Logan crouched between me and the worst of it, Duncan was farther behind, guarding our back. It was standard formation, one my mother drilled into us along with our ABCs and why we mustn’t tell anyone our parents had fangs and drank blood instead of coffee. For my mother to have been truly proud, we should have had the high ground.
We didn’t.
In fact, we weren’t even all accounted for. “Where’s London?” I asked.
“She took off,” Logan answered grimly. “She ran off down some tunnel while you were napping.”
“And you didn’t go after her?”
“Little busy for a temper tantrum.”
“She probably feels bad about dragging me to court.”
“Too busy for that, too. She’ll be fine,” he added. “And anyway, she mentioned something about doing some recon of her own. The royal guard should have been there to protect you if you were such an honored guest. She wants to know what’s going on.”
“Everything’s a sad- ass mess, is what’s going on,” I muttered. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”
I didn’t even know how far away from the farm we were, having slept through a good part of the journey. We could be half an hour away or three hours. The stars were faint above us, visible only when there was a particularly violent gust of wind. I studied their patterns, as much as I was able. The moon hung low.
“Nearly dawn,” I muttered at Logan. “We have to get out of here.”
“You think?” he muttered back, using that tone reserved for only the most annoying of little sisters. I rose to my feet, feeling as if I were moving through water. I was that tired, with my eyes burning and my throat clenched against a yawn. Logan glared at me.
“Get back down.”
I shook my head. “We’re outnumbered.”
“Not the first time,” he grunted, ramming a stake into the heart of a vampire Connor flipped toward him. A hiss, a burst of dust.
“I can smell her,” someone interrupted, excitement thrumming through his voice. I had no desire whatsoever to meet the owner of that voice. The moon continued to drop behind the horizon. I dove toward Logan, coming up at his side. I yanked stakes out of his back holster.
“Stay down, damn it.”
“She’s mine.” One of the vampires caught my scent and turned sharply away from where he’d been beating Duncan to a pulp. The vampire looked around, distracted. “Solange? I’m here for you, my love.”
“If he starts spouting poetry I’m staking him myself,” I promised through my teeth. Duncan rolled toward us, a deep gash bleeding profusely on his head. Blood matted his hair to the side of his face. Logan’s nostrils flared.
“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” he muttered.
“Bastard’s stronger than he looks,” Duncan muttered back as I propped him up against a tree. I swallowed against the gag reflex when his blood oozed over my fingers.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “It’s healing already.”
The sounds of battle came closer.
Too close.
I heard the snap of a twig. And then Marcus roaring. Not a twig. His arm.
I threw one of my stakes. It didn’t hit the vampire’s heart but she did stumble back, hissing. Marcus hid himself in the bushes, cradling his injured arm. Quinn laughed even though he was fighting off a vampire and a Helios-Ra agent who were also fighting each other. Fists thudded into flesh. Blood splattered through the air. The darkness was fading slowly to the gray light of predawn, glinting off night-vision equipment. I sat back on my heels, stomach clenching.
“Logan,” I said. “There’s too many of them.”
“We’re fine,” he insisted.
“Are not,” I insisted right back. “You guys have to get out of here.”
“We’re trying,” Duncan grunted.
“I mean right now. Without me.”
“Forget it.”
“We have you surrounded,” a voice announced over some kind of scratchy amplifier. Quinn blinked, midpunch.
“Cops?”
“Worse,” the vampire currently ducking hissed. “Helios-Ra.”
“Damn it all to hell, they’re not even being subtle about it.”
“We only want the girl, not the bounty,” the amplified voice shouted out. “We’re willing to let the rest of you go.”
“Bite me,” Quinn suggested.
“And me,” his new friend agreed.
The sun was hovering on the edge of the horizon. I could see it in my brothers’ faces. A fine sweat beaded Logan’s forehead, and vampire body temperature was generally much lower than human temperature. To see one sweat was rare. Very rare. His face looked drawn too, nearly gray with fatigue. Duncan’s hand shook as he shoved himself to his feet.
We could probably fight our way through the others. After all, they’d have to seek cover soon, just as we would. But even if we did get through them with minor damage, we still had to get through the Helios-Ra, who could lie out in the bright sunlight and just wait for my brothers to sicken and die. My choices were narrowing drastically. I knew what I had to do. I also knew that each and every one of my pig- headed brothers was faster than me. I couldn’t hope to outrun them.
But I could take them by surprise.
I let them mutter among themselves, let Logan pull me to my feet. The other vampires scattered, like earwigs under a shifted stone. The leaves barely trembled at their passing. Quinn and Marcus closed in and Connor moved toward us through the undergrowth. An arrow whistled between the trees and hit him in the shoulder. He jerked back, clutching at his bloody arm.
“I’m all right,” he told us, jaw clenched in pain.
“A warning shot,” an agent called out. “Next time we hit the heart.”
My brothers were scowling at each other, dragging Connor to safety.
Now or never.
If I thought about it too long I might wimp out.
Now
.
I eased away from Duncan, who was half– turned away to prop up Connor. Only Logan blocked me and he wasn’t expecting me to knee him in the kidney and then leapfrog over him as he doubled over.
So that was exactly what I did.
A rain of Helios-Ra arrows flew over me, biting the ground behind me like the ramparts of a castle fort. They protected me from my brothers, who had to halt their forward charge, if only for a moment.
“Your word,” I yelled, running even though my legs felt like lead and my lungs burned. “Your word my brothers go free.”
“Take her.”
They swarmed around me like beetles. I jerked away, all instinct and thrumming adrenaline. They were faceless, eye goggles obscuring their features, and black vests, black pants, black boots.
The sun crested the horizon, dripping softly between the leaves.
“Run, you idiots!” I hollered at my brothers as my arms were seized. I knew they didn’t really have any other option. The sun was now bleeding through the trees. They wouldn’t even be able to make it home. They’d have to use one of the caves or the secret safe houses, and by house, I really meant hole in the ground.
“Got her.”
“This is her?” one of the agents said as they began to march me through the forest. A few of his companions were hobbling, one was being carried. “She’s just a kid.”
I knew what he saw: a fifteen- year-old girl in a muddy slip dress and scratches all over her arms from running through the woods. His companion shrugged.
“Bounty’s the same. And anyway, come her birthday she’ll be a monster like the rest of them.”
“The Drakes are all right,” someone else muttered. “They’re on the Raktapa Council, at least. Now, would you stop your damn gossip and hurry the hell up?”
I was so tired I could barely see straight. I shuffled my feet, hardly having the energy to lift them off the ground.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m tired.”