Blood Moon (30 page)

Help me!

But they didn’t hear me. They just heard
her.

They didn’t see me. They saw
her.

Even the bats drifted away.

I panicked, thrashing about inside my own head. I felt her annoyance.
Hush, little girl. You’ll spoil it for me.

Stop it! Leave them alone!

She sighed, as if I was bothering her. I wanted to stake her so badly my hand twitched. I felt her inner glare.

“We shall retire,” she said. “You may see my family out. They are banned from the camp until I say otherwise.” She smiled sweetly. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Constantine! Can you hear me?

But he was talking to the guards and didn’t even glance my way. Their numbers had tripled now that I wore the crown. When Viola walked to the Drake tent, hundreds of eyes tracked our every movement, some impressed, some vengeful. Isabeau struggled to stop her dogs from attacking us. They snapped their teeth at me, spittle flying.

Inside the tent, Viola reclined my body into a chair. “I need blood.” We were alone in the tent. Viola felt the tip of my fangs with her tongue. “Lovely. You never did use these properly.”

Why are you doing this to me?

“Quiet. I have to think.”

I don’t know what she did, but it was like a heavy iron-studded oak door shutting in my face, separating us even farther. I could see what she did, hear her thoughts, but I couldn’t voice my own. I was trapped in a stone tower. Panic was like rat’s feet, soft and insidious.

Marigold and Spencer burst into the tent. “So it’s true?” Marigold asked, dropping into a chair and swinging her feet. “Crossed over to the dark side, did you?”

“What?” Viola asked coldly.

Marigold grinned. “You became the man, Sol. You’re a bleeding queen.” She shook her head with mock pity. “And I had such high hopes for you.”

“Yes,” Viola replied mildly. “Didn’t we all?”

“Camp’s all abuzz,” Marigold informed her cheerfully. “Your mam must be right pissed.”

She had no idea.

I could only imagine what my family must be thinking. I was living it and I didn’t know what to think. I guess I should be grateful I’d compelled so many guards not to hurt them, while I still could. I just wanted them to know I hadn’t betrayed them. Wanted them to know I’d meant what I’d said about finding Nicholas. Where was Isabeau? Did she realize there was magic involved?

Marigold frowned. “Are you crying?”

Viola wiped her eye roughly. “
Stop it
,” she hissed at me quietly.

The tent door wavered, interrupting us by letting in more
torchlight and sounds of conversations. A guard I didn’t recognize stalked in, dragging someone behind him.

Lucy.

There was blood on her clothes and bruises darkening her skin. The guard shook her roughly when she tried to bite him. He cuffed her and she stumbled, landing on the rug. She looked up, holding her split lip. She blinked at Viola.

“Are you wearing a
crown
?” she blurted out.

Viola glanced at her. “I’m queen, haven’t you heard?”

“You’re mental,” Lucy said. “Solange! Seriously?”

Viola felt a flare of fury at being called names. She hated it even more that Lucy didn’t cower. She didn’t realize that Lucy never cowered, ever, and especially not to me, her best friend.

Her best friend. God, Viola could do anything to her. She could get right under Lucy’s defenses.

I wondered briefly if I could stake myself on the sword lying across the arms of an empty chair.

I’ll kill her before you reach the chair
, Viola warned me.

I retreated, terrified at what might happen to Lucy. Lucy noticed Marigold and Spencer. She frowned at Spencer. “I know you.”

“I don’t think so,” Spencer said.

“No, I know I recognize you from somewhere. A photo, maybe?”

While they talked, I tried to find a way around the door, tried to pick the metaphorical lock or use myself as a psychic battering ram.

Viola looked between the two of them, frowning. She arched an eyebrow at Marigold and Spencer. “Leave us.”

“Well, listen to herself,” Marigold muttered.

“Wait!” Lucy turned toward them but the guard knocked her back down before she could get up. “My friend
Jenna from school
is in the woods south of here, wounded.”

Spencer paused, paled. And then he was out of the tent before Viola could even remark.

Lucy!

Lucy looked up, peering at me closely, as if something didn’t make sense, as if she saw more than the others. Viola didn’t like it. Rage bubbled inside her, but she smiled prettily at the guard. “Could you get rid of her?”

“Certainly.”

Lucy pulled a long silver chain and medallion out of her pocket. “Solange, damn it, at least hear me out. Someone’s trying to frame you for murder.”

“On second thought.” Viola rose with all the deadly grace of a predator. “Let me.”

Chapter 29
Lucy

Saturday night, 10:30 p.m.

I didn’t believe Solange attacked Libby, even when I found her medallion, but I also couldn’t have imagined that she’d break from her family and set herself up as some kind of rebel queen. She hadn’t been human for a few months, but I’d never thought of her as
inhuman
until now.

She looked weird.

She hauled me to my feet. I tried to fight her, but she was stronger. She dragged me through the camp. I’d wanted to see the Blood Moon up close, but certainly not like this.

“Solange, what the hell?” I snapped, trying to make myself as heavy as possible. My parents taught me to go limp if I was ever arrested in a protest. “Ow!”

“Walk or get thrown.”

We passed rows of ornate tents, vampires talking, arguing, some even packing up to go home. Everyone’s gaze was drawn to her, like a magnet. She preened.

“Where’s your mom? The others?”

“Banned.” I halted in shock, and she hauled me along roughly, impatiently. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You kicked them out?”

“I had to.”

“You really are crazy.”

“This way I can find Nicholas,” she said smoothly. “Isn’t that what you want?”

I stumbled along beside her, trying to find my best friend in the lithe, hard girl with the sickly sweet smile. She may as well have been a different person. No one stopped us as she took me past guards and rows of motorcycles, past more guards and over a stream. I couldn’t keep up. I was panting, sweat burning into my eyes. When she stopped I felt a trickle of fear. She just smiled again, like a little girl.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, looking around frantically for a makeshift weapon.

“Get rid of yet another problem.”

She was reaching for me when the voice speared between us.

“Get the hell away from her.”

“Nicholas!” I was so happy to hear his rough, angry voice, I could have cried. “You’re alive!” I wanted to throw myself at him, but Solange had me by the throat. I struggled even though I knew it was useless. Nicholas’s eyes looked like a winter storm, all fog and black ice. He stalked toward us.

“Ah, the prodigal son returns.”

“I mean it, Solange,” he said, his jaw clenching. “Get off her.
Now.
” He moved so fast I just saw a blur of pale skin and furious eyes, and then he was right in front of us. He was covered in blood and gashes, his shirt torn, ugly burns on the side of his neck. He reached for me.

Solange tightened her grip.

I would have squeaked but I had no breath left to make even the smallest sound.

Nicholas froze. It would be easy for her to snap my neck. I knew it, Solange knew it, Nicholas knew it.

Instead, she lowered her head and licked the blood trickling from the cut on my hairline.

“Solange, gross!” I flinched and tried to kick her since my legs were about the only thing I could move.

“She’ll die if I so much as get a splinter,” Solange warned him calmly, almost sadly. “I don’t want to, Nicholas, so don’t force my hand.”

“Let her go,” Nicholas ground out. “Solange, she’s your best friend. More than that, she’s like your sister.”

She shifted so I was held up against a tree by the pale spear of her arm. “A lot’s changed since you’ve been gone,” she said. “I just need you to listen for a moment.”

He jerked a hand through his muddy, dirty hair. I ached to touch him, to kiss him. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m listening. Christ.”

“I’m the queen now, Nicholas.”

“Which explains why you’re wearing a crown.” He sounded
exhausted. His hands were trembling. When he finally looked at me, he could only stare at the blood on my forehead.

“I need to know that you’re loyal to me.”

“My loyalties?” he shot back. There was a stake in his hand and a kind of mad serenity in his expression. “Are you kidding? After everything that’s happened? After what I just went through?”

“What
did
you go through?” I asked.

He still wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I got away, that’s what matters. They thought they broke me.”

“I need to know,” Solange insisted. “I need to be sure you’re on my side.”

“Then be sure.”

“I’m not just a princess anymore.”

“You’re an assh—” I managed to hiss out before she pushed harder with her thumb, and my trachea threatened to explode. I struggled not to pass out as black spots danced at the edges of my vision, then faded. My eyes rolled back in my head.

And then Nicholas was all fangs and fury. He attacked so fast I had no warning, wasn’t even sure my eyes could register motion that quickly.

But he still wasn’t quicker than Solange.

“Stop!”

A stake bit into the tree beside me, so close that a splinter grazed my cheek. It was a small scratch barely noticeable, but it bled. And the coppery scent of blood made the battle all the more fierce, all the more vicious. I could barely make out what was going on, and couldn’t jump in with a stake of my own since I might
accidentally stake my own boyfriend. Or my best friend. And every time I moved, even an inch, Solange was there, shoving me back.

And then Nicholas brought his arm down with enough force to break her wrist. I heard the snap of the bones even as she released me so abruptly I choked and dropped to my knees. I hauled air into my bruised throat. My lungs felt as if they’d turned to paper.

Solange hissed in pain, cracking her wrist back into position. It might hurt but it wasn’t enough to stop her. I was pushing to my knees and Nicholas was reaching for me when she struck again. She kicked Nicholas in the chest with her boot. He staggered just out of reach, for barely a moment. She yanked my arm behind my back, hard enough that I yelled.

“An eye for an eye,” she said. “I’ll snap her bones and call it justice.”

Nicholas shrugged.

He
shrugged
.

I gaped at him. “She’s mine, broken or not,” he said darkly.

I felt like throwing up.

Solange was silent for a long moment. My elbow was bending the wrong way, shooting pain up my arm like rusty iron nails. Her fingers were so tight around my wrist that there were bruises already forming. It hurt enough that tears burned my eyelids if I so much as breathed too deeply against her hold. Rocks and tree roots dug into my knees.

Then she smiled. “Yes, I can smell the darkness in you,” she murmured.

“Can you?” His expression, his stance, the leashed violence in his smile; it was all wrong.

“Yes, and if you give into it, prove yourself to me, then you can come back to the camp. Lucy goes free.”

I really wanted to poke her in the eye with a sharp stick. Better yet, right in the heart, the undead cow.

She raised an eyebrow at Nicholas. “She’s your bloodslave, and yet I don’t smell her blood on you.”

Nicholas just folded his arms, as if the fight had never happened, as if this were all very normal, as if he weren’t bruised and battered. As if it didn’t hurt me just to look at him. “Yeah. So?”

Suddenly I didn’t know who I wanted to poke more.

“So, I believe you’ll drink her blood, right here and right now if you want to keep your claim on her. Otherwise, I’ll think you’re playing me, brother.”

I went cold. “You’re not serious.” I tried to jerk away again, but it was no use. Every muscle in my arm screeched. I tried to catch Nicholas’s eye, but he still wouldn’t look at me. He stepped closer. “Nicholas,
don’t
.”

When he finally looked at me, fear whispered through me, insidious and soft, making my bones watery.

We’d lost Solange. And now Nicholas wasn’t acting like himself. Was he drugged on her pheromones? Had she compelled him? Where had he been all this time? What had happened to him? He’d just broken her bones to protect me, but now I had to wonder,
for the first time, if it was vampire possessiveness playing out, not love. Nothing made sense anymore.

Nicholas had never drunk my blood before. He’d never had to. He was the one who was always worried about what it might mean. But it had never really bothered me. I wasn’t lying when I told Jenna it was like donating at the blood bank.