Blood Moon (3 page)

“I’m not a princess.” I rolled my eyes. “And the last guy who gave me a tiara wore it through his chest.”

“You
are
a princess,” he said sharply, ignoring my reference to Montmartre’s untimely end by my mother’s hand. And mine. I’d been the one to shove the tiara but had needed Mom’s strength to get it through his heart. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s vampire bride. “You might wish otherwise, but lying to yourself won’t change the facts. You should be proud, love.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me. But he didn’t get it. The fact that I was a princess had nearly killed Aunt Hyacinth, had Lucy thrown in a dungeon, had assassins tracking my mother. And my being a vampire had nearly killed Kieran.

I wanted to call Lucy to see how Kieran was, but there was no cell-phone coverage whatsoever this deep into the mountain forests. I wouldn’t know until well after sunset tomorrow. The worry dimmed the fire of the blood in my system, the sweet metallic taste on my tongue. We made it to the outskirts of the camp as the mist
rose off the river and trailed between the pine trees. A guard nodded to us once and let us pass.

The field that usually hosted wildflowers and bumblebees now bristled with huge canvas tents and swarms of vampires wearing such an odd combination of historical costumes it was as if we’d stumbled onto a circus. In private and for formal vampire occasions we tended to revert back to the clothing of our bloodchange. Even this close to dawn with the mists thick around our ankles and the call of the first birds in the treetops, I could see Victorian bustles, Celtic tattoos, medieval tunics, a 1920s beaded flapper dress, a woman dressed like a very pale Marie Antoinette.

A dog barked from the caves set back into the mountains. The Hounds slept there, and the rest of us had canvas tents like the kind I imagined littered medieval jousting tournaments. There were few humans allowed, mostly personal guards and bloodslaves who traveled with specific tribes. I couldn’t stand the word “bloodslave,” but Constantine only laughed and called me colonial when I mentioned it. He hadn’t met Lucy yet. She’d punch him right in the nose if he called her a bloodslave.

Still, for all its flaws, there was a sharp, delicate beauty to the encampment, like a honed sword. It was silver and filigrees and handcrafted art. And it was blood and death and teeth. No amount of silks and velvets could hide the undercurrents. There were secrets here, and hunger and passionate affairs and bitter feuds. It was like living in a boiling iron cauldron set over a raging fire.

Sometimes the steam had to escape or the whole pot would explode.

Like right now.

I don’t know who started it. I only saw a vampire, his blond-white hair straight and pale as moonlight, on the path where it branches into a crossroad. He was from the Joiik family, one of the oldest vampire lineages on the Raktapa Council. Coming from the other direction was a vampire I didn’t recognize, dressed in a prim tweed skirt and a white blouse. She spat out a curse and launched at his head, fangs flashing.

She never made contact.

A crossbow bolt split the air and cleaved her heart, turning her to ash. A second bolt caught the Joiik, because he’d reached for his weapon. If he’d stayed still and trusted the Blood Moon secret guard to protect him, he wouldn’t have been hit. Now he was dust.

It happened so fast, I barely had time to squeak. Constantine gripped my elbow, fingers digging painfully into my skin. He was holding me back, protecting me. And I was suddenly remembering that hundreds of years ago, Blood Moons were places of trials by combat and executions.

“Don’t move,” he murmured.

There were vampire tribes here from all over the world, each with its own customs and traditions and histories. Not to mention feuds. It took a special kind of guard to keep order in a place like this; a guard no one had ever seen and couldn’t accurately describe. Even Madame Veronique, who was nearly a thousand years old, couldn’t tell us who they were or even what they looked like. We only knew some of them must be human since the crossbow bolts apparently came during the day as well. They kept to the trees and
the shadows, constantly circling, constantly watching. No one was exempt from their justice. Not princess, not council; only the queen.

The back of my neck prickled. “Are they gone?”

Constantine’s violet eyes flickered back and forth. “Never, but the danger’s past I think.”

A Joiik woman with long blond braids rushed to the ashes under the leather tunic, marked with a Thor’s hammer design. She keened loudly, brokenly. The sounds made the back of my throat hurt.

Constantine’s hand nudged me and we moved backward, out of the way. “Best get you home,” he said.

We weren’t far when Bruno stepped in front of me. “The Chandramaa guard?”

I nodded mutely.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded again. “Yes.”

He gave Constantine a long, hard look. Bruno looked just like the old biker he was: bald, covered in tattoos, and burly as an oak tree. Nothing intimidated him. He scowled at me. “Lass, do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

They knew about Kieran. And if they knew about him, then he must be in serious condition. I hadn’t meant to drink so near his jugular. He was dying. The guy who’d saved my life was dying. My
boyfriend
was dying. “I—”

“Your parents are worried sick,” Bruno continued, oblivious to my inner nervous breakdown. “This isn’t the time to be breaking
curfew.” He spoke softly into his walkie-talkie, then pointed to the blue tent painted with the Drake silver dragon and the Latin motto underneath: “
Nox noctis, nostra domina
,” which translated roughly to “Night, our mistress.”

“On with ye,” Bruno directed.

I turned to Constantine, slightly embarrassed that I was being treated like a naughty child. I was a vampire princess, as everyone insisted on reminding me. So shouldn’t I have a little power over my own life? I bristled. Constantine winked as if he knew what I was thinking, as if it was our own private joke.

Dawn hadn’t arrived yet but the darkness was going gray, glinting on silver paint on the tents and on the gold banners. I felt like water, uncontainable, soft, and everywhere at once, as if even my skin couldn’t hold me in. My eyelids fluttered, closed. Constantine took a step closer, and Bruno elbowed him back.

“I’ve got her,” he said, his Scottish brogue thicker than usual. He picked me up and carried me into the family tent muttering, “Bloody English.”

Chapter 3
NICHOLAS

We were cutting it close.

We would have gone back to the farmhouse but dawn was unfolding and we were already in the mountains, running from the smoke and rubble of a collapsed ghost town and a breed of vampire we’d had no idea even existed. Quinn and Connor were slowing down, each holding up Lucy’s cousin Christabel, who was dragging her feet so heavily she left a trail in the dirt. She’d been a vampire for barely a week, and she was already embroiled in politics and assassinations. I’d been a vampire for a year and a half now, and I wasn’t much better equipped. My boots felt as if they were weighed down with rocks. I nearly tripped on a tree root.

Quinn glanced at me. “Gonna make it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I answered. “Though what’s the point? Mom’s going to kill us anyway.”

“True.”

“If that thing doesn’t kill us first,” I added when the stench of rot and mushrooms hit us. Cracking twigs and clacking jaws followed.
Hel-Blar
weren’t exactly subtle. They didn’t so much hunt as attack, but what they lacked in finesse they made up for in numbers and sheer savagery.

And the three streaming between the pine trees and down the hill toward us weren’t tired like we were. They hadn’t been fighting all night. They were drawn out of their nests by the smell of blood and battle. I didn’t know if they’d followed us from the ghost town, but it seemed unlikely. They probably caught wind of the fire and fight, and bad luck had them stumbling on us.

“Shit,” I muttered. “You guys better run.”

Quinn snorted. “We’re not leaving you alone, you idiot.”

“Christa’s barely able to stand,” I argued. “And she doesn’t have any battle training, so get out of here already.”

Christabel propped herself up on Connor’s shoulder. “I’m fine,” she said thickly, too sleepy to enunciate. “Give me a stake.”

“You’re lisping,” I pointed out.

“So maybe I have a lisp,” she insisted. “It’s rude of you to make fun of me.”

I exchanged a glance with Connor. “Definitely related to Lucy,” we said in unison.

I reached for a stake as the
Hel-Blar
descended. “Just go, damn it.”

“I’ll stay,” Quinn said, his hands full of stakes. “Connor, you take Christa and go.”

“Too late,” Connor snapped. He hauled Christabel over his
shoulder and scaled the nearest tree, depositing her in the crook of a huge willow branch. He handed her a stake. “Don’t fall on this.”

“What?” she asked, befuddled. It was like that for the newborn vampires. Dawn made them stupid.

“
I’ll come to thee by moonlight
,” Connor said, quoting her favorite poem. “
Though hell should bar the way.
” He kissed her quickly. “And don’t fall out,” he added.

“Don’t die,” she replied sleepily.

“Dude,” Quinn grinned. “Did you just recite poetry?”

“Shut it,” Connor shot back amiably. He dropped down to the ground just as the
Hel-Blar
reached us. We automatically circled the tree, protecting Christabel. She lay in the cup of branches in her military jacket and combat boots, her long reddish hair trailing between the silvery willow branches.

The weight of the approaching sunrise fought with a surge of adrenaline in my system. It felt like I’d been awake for days, drinking gallons of coffee. Quinn let out a holler and leaped on the closest
Hel-Blar
, attacking before he could be attacked. He’d always been that way. Luckily, he was a good fighter and his hands were covered with ash before Connor finished cursing at him. I took out the next vampire with my last stake.

A second wave of
Hel-Blar
came snarling through the woods. When it became apparent that we were about to be dangerously outnumbered, I did the only thing I could do.

I ran.

I didn’t give my brothers a chance to stop me, just drove my stake into the chest of the
Hel-Blar
blocking me, then leapfrogged
over him as he crumbled to ash. Quinn gave a shout when he realized what I was doing, but it was too late. The two
Hel-Blar
closest to Quinn and Connor stayed where they were, gnashing their teeth—but the others changed their course.

Because if there was one thing besides blood that a vampire,
Hel-Blar
or otherwise, couldn’t resist, it was the chase.

The
Hel-Blar
pursued me because they couldn’t
not
chase me. Some of us could chain the predator, even if it hurt like hell, but the
Hel-Blar
were feral to begin with. Self-control was not among their attributes. And prey that ran away was all the sweeter. It awoke something primal inside us all, even my dad, who was the most civilized of us.

I ran fast enough that for a while I left behind the stagnant pond stench, trading it for pine needles and frost.

But it didn’t last.

Dawn was too close, and I was too slow. I couldn’t run anymore, not with any kind of real speed. When the trees stopped blurring around me, I stopped altogether. Better to preserve my faltering strength for battle. At least the
Hel-Blar
were far enough away from Quinn, Connor, and Christabel. I stood my ground at the edge of a patch of frostbitten grass, under a tree glittering with gold-dust lichen. The ground was liberally strewn with broken branches. They would have to do as makeshift stakes if worse came to worst.

And in our family, lately, worse
always
came to worst.

Case in point, the
Hel-Blar
currently closing in on me. There were at least five that I could see. At the clacking of jaws, I raised my stake.

The first
Hel-Blar
leaped at my throat, maddened with thirst. He was clumsy with need, which gave me the chance to dodge out of the way and spin around to stake him from behind. Ash settled on the grass at my feet. The second
Hel-Blar
wasn’t nearly as animal in his thirst, and there was a gleam of intelligence in his bloodshot eyes. It was like that with some of them: they were present and clever enough to be conscious in their feeding.

Not good.

Saliva spattered over my boot.

Not good at all.

I jerked back, using the tree to stabilize me so I could kick out with force. The
Hel-Blar
hissed as my heel caught him in the sternum. He stumbled back against another vampire, and they both staggered. The third darted around their flailing limbs, snarling. I couldn’t see the fourth at all.

I jabbed forward with a branch, but he reared back up, snapping it out of my hand. I grabbed another branch but only managed to stab him in the collarbone.