Blood Moon (31 page)

But now I wasn’t so sure.

No needle or antiseptic or plastic blood bag held such menace, such hunger.

Solange shoved my frock coat off my shoulder, revealing my slip dress, which was really meant to be a nightgown. It was sleeveless, and goosebumps marched from wrist to collarbone as the snow began to fall again. It caught in my eyelashes, making prisms of colors when I looked at Nicholas’s pale skin, his gleaming fangs. I shivered, from cold or fear, I couldn’t say. Likely both.

He lifted my arm gently to his mouth, and for a brief moment I thought he’d use the leverage of our position to somehow free me from Solange’s grasp.

He didn’t.

He just ran his lips over the vulnerable crook of my elbow, back and forth, soft as moth wings, until I felt every snowflake sizzle on my exposed skin, every tree root and acorn under my knees, even the smell of cedars as it tickled my nostrils. I was exposed, like a bare electrical wire. My teeth chattered.

Nicholas’s eyes were like gray fog on the ocean, the kind that sinks ships and leads people off cliff sides. It wasn’t pretty or magical; it was deadly.

But he was still Nicholas; he had to be.

He licked at the blood pebbling over the numerous scratches and scrapes I’d already sustained. His mouth was gentle, completely at odds with the burning angle of my shoulder and the smug sinister shadow of Solange falling over me. The snow was starting to stick, making the forest too soft and too bright.

When the bite of fangs sunk sharply into my skin, I couldn’t help but make a small strangled sound. It hurt, but only briefly. Nicholas ran his tongue over the cut, then sucked gently until blood welled into his mouth. I felt him swallow, felt the brush of cold air on the small cuts, the pressure of his mouth when he bent to drink again.

I felt lightheaded even though I knew, logically, that he’d barely drunk enough to notice the loss. I’d bled more the time my grandma’s psychotic cat bit me.

“There,” he said to Solange, wiping a small drop off his lower lip. “I’m with you, but Lucy?” He sounded dark, and baleful. “Lucy’s
mine
.”

Epilogue
Kieran

Saturday night, 11:00 p.m.

If Solange wasn’t trying to get herself killed, Lucy was.

I was beginning to think that all of my training wasn’t actually about killing vampires anymore, it was about saving my girlfriend and her best friend from themselves. And it was a full-time job.

Though technically, Solange was my ex-girlfriend now.

But that didn’t sound right, and it sure as hell didn’t feel right either, even if it had seemed inevitable that night on my front porch. I could still feel the shape of her under my hands, see the look on her face and the delicate treachery of her fangs when I kissed her.

I didn’t know what my dad would think about Solange and me. Treaty or not, hunters and vampires didn’t date. And they sure as hell didn’t fall in love.

Until the Drakes.

Now even Hunter had fallen, for Quinn, of all vampires. It effectively made us both traitors or revolutionary heroes, depending on who you asked. I didn’t want to be a traitor; I didn’t even want to be a hero.

I just wanted Solange back.

But first I had to find Lucy and rescue her, despite the fact that I knew damned well she’d hate the term “rescue.” The GPS flashed another warning, and I checked my position one last time before slipping it into my pocket. I headed deeper into the woods. Thank God she wasn’t in the Blood Moon camp. I’d never get her out of there. As it was, I should probably call Hunter for backup. Eric wouldn’t come, not for a vampire. He was better about my new friends than the others, but he wasn’t quite to the point of helping me save one.

It didn’t matter. There wasn’t any time anyway.

Because if the GPS tag was activated, it meant only one thing: Lucy was in trouble. And so was Nicholas. Because the only reason he wouldn’t save her himself was if he couldn’t.

I had no idea what kind of situation I was heading into. I had stakes on my belt, Hypnos powder secured up my sleeve, and nose plugs around my neck. I always had nose plugs with me, ever since I’d realized I couldn’t fully trust Solange anymore. I put them on and kept off the trail, trying not to crack twigs under my boots and give myself away. Vampire hearing had me at a disadvantage, but I was used to that. I was used to a lot of things now.

I cleared my head and concentrated on where I was going. A
distracted hunter didn’t last long. And at least, despite everything, I was still a hunter. I could rely on that, on the training a hundred years of tradition had afforded me. Even if I did use it for rather less than traditional reasons.

The forest was cold, hung with frost and a thin dusting of snow. Thick pine boughs muffled the last moments of the night into an eerie silence. Dawn wasn’t far off; there was already a slight pink tinge to the light. Another weapon at my disposal, even if I couldn’t hang it off my belt. I ran for nearly twenty minutes before I saw signs of habitation: a scrap of lace caught on a thorny branch, a lantern half-buried in snow, and finally an empty wine bottle in a decorative metal cage hung with rubies.

Also, a vampire.

She dropped out of the tree above me, landing quietly. She didn’t say a word, didn’t even bother with the trademark vampiric smirk upon finding a lone hunter in the woods. She just attacked, launched into a feral deadly dance that blurred the colors of her dress and shook the bare branches around us. I didn’t have time to fight.

And I didn’t have time to lose either.

She cracked her elbow into my stomach before I could dodge her. I doubled over, cursing on a strangled gasp. I used the momentum of my stumble to drop to the ground and roll to the side. I came up, kicking out to catch her ankles with my steel-toe boots. She hissed in pain. It was the only moment I was likely to get. As she staggered, I released the Hypnos from the casing under my cuff. White powder exploded in a cloud right in her face. Before she
could react, the hypnotic powder was entering her bloodstream, seeping into her pores. Her pale eyes dilated, her lips lifted off angry fangs.

“Stop,” I ordered, pushing to my feet. Dried leaves and pine needles clung to my clothes. “Go home.”

She snarled at me, the violence of it contradicting her blond curls and angelic face. I’d long ago stopped believing angelic faces, since the small and pretty Hope killed my father.

I could have ordered this vampire to do anything at all and she would have obeyed. She would have fallen on a stake for me, or even lain down to suntan if I’d asked it of her. But I had no idea who she was. She could be under the protection of a treaty, or belong to some foreign vampire dignitary. A Huntsman would have killed her regardless and wouldn’t have considered any other option. I wasn’t a Huntsman.

She tumbled away and I pushed between cedar trees, emerging in a strange sort of outdoor living room hung with lanterns and crowded with velvet sofas. A river glittered between Persian rugs. And under a willow tree hung with candles and ribbons, Lucy knelt on the frost-encrusted ground between Solange and Nicholas.

Even at a distance, something wasn’t right.

As I ran toward them, Solange glanced up. When she saw me, she jerked once, as if she’d been stabbed. She shoved Lucy forward so that she sprawled over the roots. Then she turned and vanished between the trees, her hair streaming behind her, her skin moon-pale.

“Sol, wait!” Ice and frozen mud cracked under my boots.

“What’s going on?” I asked Nicholas. He shouldn’t be here, not if Lucy’s GPS tag had been activated.

Unless he was the problem.

I stopped, stake in my hand. I catalogued what little information I could in the second it took for Lucy to stand up, looking befuddled. Blood trickled down her bare arm, and there were leaves in her hair. Solange had taken off toward the encampment. There were vampires in the woods, closing in. Nicholas looked as if he’d had the crap kicked out of him.

And he was wiping blood off his lip.

Shit.

I grabbed Lucy’s hand and yanked her away, even as I shot the last of my Hypnos at Nicholas. He was already leaping up into the tree, out of range. He hissed down at us, candlelight flashing off his fangs and pale eyes. Lucy stared up at him.

“Nicholas?”

I tugged harder on her hand. “Lucy, we need to get out of here.”

She tripped over a root and then dug in her heels. “Nicholas Drake,” she whispered. “Stop it. Stop it now.” It was as close to begging as I’d ever heard her. “Please.”

The light changed quality, burned from pink to gold. Nicholas swung into the next tree, and then we heard him land on the ground and take off, running away from the dawn, away from Lucy. She tried to follow, but I wouldn’t let her.

She was shivering, shrugging back into her frock coat as I forced her to move. We ran between the trees without talking as the sun rose, throwing darts of light between the branches. Ice gleamed.
Birds sang from the canopy. I wouldn’t let us stop until we were well away from the encampment and any surrounding underground safe houses. We could almost see the road from here and my car parked haphazardly in the bushes. Lucy braced her hands on her knees and bent over, panting.

“Kieran, how did you find us?” she finally asked.

“You were tagged.”

She blinked at me, confused. “What? I know my dad threatened to microchip me, but I think I would have noticed if he’d actually done it.”

“Nicholas tagged you.”

She straightened slowly. “How do you know that?”

“We worked it out as a fail-safe.” I checked her coat and found the small tag under her collar. I pulled it out and showed it to her. “He activated it about a half hour ago.” I watched her reaction warily, assuming she’d be furious. Lucy tended to punch people in the face when she was furious. Instead she beamed at me.

“That’s sneaky and awesome,” she said, wiping a tear out of one eye even as she giggled. “And it means Nicholas never really meant to hurt me. He was saving me from Solange.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said as we pushed through the last of the undergrowth and climbed into my car. “What the hell happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” she said bleakly.

“He didn’t look good.”

“I know. Shit!” She interrupted herself, eyes wide. “Jenna! We have to find Jenna!” She scrambled to get out of the car. “She was
with me when Solange’s guard ambushed us. They left her in the woods. Spencer said he’d go after her.”

“Spencer?” I echoed. “Hunter’s friend?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay, hold on, before you go charging back out there.” I flipped open my cell phone and hit speed dial. Hunter answered on the first ring.

“I’ve got Jenna,” she said in lieu of a greeting.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s embarrassed, and she’ll have a hell of a headache for the next few days, but she’s fine.” I nodded at Lucy so she’d know Jenna was safe. She slid back into the car, looking relieved and exhausted. “Spencer called me to come get her at the gate,” Hunter was saying. “I think Lucy’s in trouble,” she added. “Jenna said they were chasing vampires. We can’t get ahold of her.”

“Lucy’s with me; she’s fine,” I assured her.

Hunter gave a loud sigh of relief. “Okay. Good. Damn, tonight sucked.”

“Talked to Quinn?”

“Yeah. Nicholas is back and Solange just made herself queen.”

“Shit,” I said, before hanging up. The Solange I fell in love with had shoved a tiara through a vampire’s chest rather than claim it as her own.

“There’s something wrong with her, Kieran,” Lucy said quietly.

“We knew that already.”

“No, this is different. It’s like she’s not really herself. I can’t
explain it.” She rubbed her stomach as if it hurt. “I can just feel it, you know? I could barely recognize her.”

“So what do we do?”

“We save her,” she said, as if I were an idiot. “We save them both.”

She wasn’t wrong. Nicholas might not be missing any longer, but he didn’t look safe either. “And how exactly are we going to do that?” I scrubbed my face wearily. Lucy always had ideas, even if they were generally dangerous and reckless.

“I have no idea.”

And that scared me most of all.

Acknowledgments

As always I want to thank everyone at Walker & Company and Bloomsbury Books for all of their hard work and their incredible support of the Drake Chronicles. I am truly grateful.

Thanks to Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency.

Thanks to Jessica Kelly for all the book photography and to Adam Simpson for indispensable Web help.

Thanks to my husband, who brings me dinner when I’m on a deadline and knows what to do when confronted with Crazy Face (cue
Pride and Prejudice
, back away slowly).

And a second extra thanks to Walker for moving up the publication date of
Bleeding Hearts
so that the readers could get it sooner!

And as always, thanks to my readers, without whom none of this would be possible!