Blood Moon (20 page)

“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

Constantine 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.

“Moon Guard don’t concern themselves with renegades outside
the encampment borders. They won’t come after us here. They won’t even bother with us unless we try to go back. It’s as if we don’t exist to them anymore.”

I swallowed. “What about my family?”

“What about them?”

“Will they be punished? For what I did?”

He shook his head. “Doubt it.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“No one’s been exiled in my lifetime, love. We’re breaking new ground.” He reached for a bottle of blood from one of the lace-covered coolers. He lifted one in a toast. “To us.”

I didn’t drink when he offered the bottle. My throat felt too tight. “I don’t know what to do,” I said again.
Drink.

“Enjoy,” he suggested. The bottle swung negligently from his fingers, like a hypnotist’s watch. When he offered again, I drank deeply. “What else can you do?”

I could go back to the farmhouse. Bruno or one of my parents was probably already there waiting for me. But I didn’t want to go home. And maybe that was okay. Certainly, my family would be safer for it. As they proved nightly.

Unsurprisingly, my mother was the first one to find us.

She marched into the Bower wearing swords instead of the pearls I imagined normal mothers wore. She looked so angry, if she’d had Isabeau’s magic, I’d have worried her braid would turn into a hangman’s noose with Constantine’s name on it. Her furious glare snapped onto him as soon as she saw I was unharmed.

I stepped in front of him to shield him. “Mom.”

I could tell it was a struggle for her to shift her gaze. It softened to sparks instead of outright nuclear war. She hugged me so tightly the hilt of the dagger strapped across her chest left an imprint on my neck. “Solange, are you all right?” I nodded and tried to disentangle myself. She tightened her grip. “Come back to the farmhouse. We’ll figure out what to do.”

Don’t let them take us. They’ll lock us away. They think you’re a monster.

“She can figure it out for herself,” Constantine said.

Mom actually hissed. “You stay away from my daughter.”

“Mom, he saved my life!”

“Which is why he isn’t a pile of ashes as we speak,” she said between her teeth. “I’m grateful.” She glanced pointedly at Constantine. “Which is why you’re not dead.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I insisted.

“Solange, you don’t understand.”

Right there.

Without even meaning to, Mom set me off again. I could feel the blood I’d ingested smolder inside me. Guilt and worry sizzled into irritation.

“I understand
fine
,” I snapped. “I’m sixteen, not stupid!”

She frowned. “I never said you were.” Her frown turned to a scowl when she looked at Constantine. “He smells wrong.”

I tugged my hand out of hers and folded my arms across my chest. “I trust him.”

“That’s what scares me.”

I turned slightly toward Constantine. “I’m sorry. We’re kind of an insular family. And Mom’s chronically suspicious.”

“I’m also your queen,” Mom cut in. “So leave my daughter alone.”

“That’s for her to decide, surely,” Constantine replied smoothly, as if he wasn’t inches from a pointy death. He’d never met my mother.

You should be queen, Solange. Then you’ll never be at anyone’s mercy ever again.

I was suddenly embarrassed by my mom, which was marginally better than being terrified by the growing strength of the girl’s voice inside my head. I knew Lucy was mortified by her hippie first name, by protests and group hugs in front of city hall and the way her dad insisted on stopping the car to leave a tobacco offering every time he saw a turtle. I’d yet to feel that squirming humiliation. Mom was fierce and kick-ass. But she was also bossy and demanding.

Stifling.

“Mom, stop it,” I said sharply. “You can’t control everything that happens to me.”

“I can damn well try. I’m your
mother.
” The moonlight reflected on the pommel of the sword on her back. “Remember when we thought Logan was dead to a Hound spell? I can’t go through that again. I won’t. Come back home with me. We can talk about it there.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“Solange. This isn’t a game. I’m worried about you. And so’s your father.”

“Very worried actually,” Dad said tightly.

I stared at him over Mom’s shoulder as she whirled to face him.

A vampire I’d never seen before had a knife to Dad’s throat and a stake dimpling his shirt, right over his heart. Dad’s head was tilted back, his neck muscles straining, his fangs gleaming. Beside him, Logan, Quinn, Duncan, and Sebastian were in the same danger, forced on their knees in the snow with weapons aimed at their hearts.

Mom’s sword flashed. Logan made a strange
“urp”
sound when the stake pierced through his shirt, drawing blood. Mom froze.

“Stop it!” I shouted. The bats hissed and screeched above us. Logan’s eyes were wild. Dad was tensed to fight, but blood bloomed on each of my brother’s shirts, in the same place.

“You heard the princess,” Constantine said, stepping forward. “Release them.” The guards stepped back as one so suddenly Logan and Quinn pitched forward. Sebastian was on his feet, a stake in each hand before they’d even landed in the dirt.

“Behind me!” Dad shouted, keeping his body between the guards and his sons. But the guards didn’t move; they only glanced at Constantine for order.

I looked at him too. “What the hell is going on?”

“Forgive me.” He bowed slightly to me, as if we were in a ballroom instead of the woods. “I have men loyal to me. They must have come as soon as they heard I’d been exiled.”

Adrenaline and blood, fear and anger, made my hands shake. My gums ached around my fangs. “Oh.”
He understands us. He’ll protect us.