Contents
December 2015
A Breath of Frost
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
About the Author
Also by Alyxandra Harvey
December 2015
The Helios-Ra Academy had ruined Lucy for life. Although she had empathy for the students running drills in their regulation cargos, now she had to listen to them call her Ma’am. She’d just turned twenty-three. She didn’t feel like a ma’am. She barely felt like a grown-up. And every time it happened, she had the violent urge to run out and get something tattooed. Again.
It had been five years since she had to worry about school exams and yet she still felt vaguely concerned all through December. Lucy kept thinking she’d forgotten something important. She checked her pockets for stakes, her cell phone for messages, her sleeve for the hidden vial of Hypnos. Then she’d remember, again, that she didn’t have homework due or exams to study for. And it had been six years since the Battle of Violet Hill, but this many vampire hunters in the same room still made her faintly itchy.
“They can smell fear, you know,” Hunter told her, amused. Her blond hair was in a tight ponytail and she looked terrifyingly efficient, as usual. The floor was polished to a sword-bright shine under her combat boots.
“Shut it, Wild,” Lucy returned, just as amused. Still, she couldn’t suppress a shiver.
“Tell me again how you can relax in your farmhouse full of delinquent Helios-Ra students and vampires and yet this place gives you the creeps?” Hunter asked.
“I sweated blood running laps in this evil gym,” Lucy replied. “Besides, uniforms give me hives. You know that. Where’s the creativity?”
“It was banned after you went through all the gym lockers and decorated everyone’s stakes and school T-shirts with rhinestones.”
“I was expressing myself. It’s healthy.” The school board had considered it vandalism. Whatever.
“You’re getting more and more like your mom,” Hunter said.
“I know. Scary, right?” Lucy’s mother had somehow forced both the academy and the vampires in town to send her their teens for art therapy. She maintained they all experienced too much violence at the Blood Moon Battle of Violet Hill. She prescribed art for healing, and lots of it. For a while, there were as many poetry, collage, and meditation classes as there were fight drills and night patrols.
“What’s scary?” Quinn interrupted in his customary drawl. “My incredible good looks?”
“Your incredible ego, you mean,” Lucy shot back, grinning.
He just pulled her hair, grinning back. Hunter slanted him a glance when he turned to her. “Don’t you dare kiss me in front of the class.”
“I haven’t even said hello yet.”
“I know that look on your face.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that a dare?”
“I will knock you on your butt.”
“You’re going to do that anyway,” he remarked drily.
A smile broke through her stern expression. It was quick and bright, the kind she reserved entirely for Quinn. She moved away, her cheeks slightly pink. Quinn looked smug. Well, smugger than usual.
The gym smelled like floor cleaner, sweat, and the cedar branches Lucy had dragged inside in an attempt to lend the space some holiday cheer. It was packed with students in various stages of Christmas-exam stress. There was more than one pair of reddened, sleepless eyes. But no matter how much studying there was left to do for the last few exams, no one was willing to miss seeing Hunter Wild, agent and teacher at the academy, wipe the floor with her vampire fiancée, Quinn Drake. Not even Lucy, and she saw it all the time.
“Where’s Nicholas?” Quinn asked her, as Hunter stepped up to talk to the crowd. A hush fell over her audience when they noticed Quinn standing there, pale as mistletoe berries.
“We figured one vampire was enough for them to handle,” Lucy said. “Not to mention one Drake brother.” She rolled her eyes. At least three of the girls in the front row were already whispering behind their hands. When Quinn winked at them, they started giggling.
Lucy shook her head. “The Drake brothers, making girls stupid since 2002.” The eldest of the brothers, Sebastian, had turned sixteen in 2002, and changed into a vampire, as all Drakes did. Even without the famous vampire pheromones, they were dangerous.
“Please. I was born pretty.”
And they knew it.
Lucy nudged him with her elbow. “Just try not to embarrass yourself.”
Hunter finished explaining the point of the exercise, which was to demonstrate just how fast and deadly a vampire could be. And just how sneaky a Helios-Ra agent could be. Quinn sauntered forward and bowed theatrically.
“Are you going to save my honor?” Lucy heard him whisper in Hunter’s ear. “When one of your overly eager students tries to stake me again?”
“Depends entirely on their technique.”
He laughed. “I love you.”
“I’m still going to kick your ass.”
Quinn was stronger and faster, so fast that at times he seemed to teleport. He avoided strikes in a lethal dance. But he was cocky, and it was in one of these smug, smirking moments that Hunter managed to dose him with a face full of Hypnos powder. For the purposes of the demonstration, it was simple icing sugar. The hypnotizing effects of the drug were so powerful that they robbed the victim of the ability to defy orders of any kind.
The thought of having her defiance taken away made Lucy distinctly queasy.
Hunter dropped low, sweeping out her leg. It hit Quinn across the back of the knees, knocking him off his feet. The applause was thunderous, shaking the rafters. His smile was self-deprecating as Hunter helped pull him to his feet. He didn’t need assistance, of course. She was making a point. Lucy hoped it was strong enough to survive the sea of violent adrenaline currently electrifying the air.
Quinn left soon after. For all of Lucy’s continued attempts to foster—and flat-out force—vampire-hunter relations, it still wasn’t particularly wise for him to linger on campus, even with official permission. The last time he’d come for a drill, one of the students had attacked him. She was now living at Lucy’s farmhouse. With several other adolescents, both human and vampires, all with anger-management issues.
“I’ll give you a lift home,” Hunter offered a few hours later, her breath fogging in the cold air. It was dinnertime and already winter-dark. Lucy’s car was sputtering in the guest parking lot again, deathly allergic to the cold.
“I’m going to have to call Duncan again,” she said mournfully. The yellow car was her favorite, and Nicholas’s brother had already made it last several years past possible and straight into miracle status. She glanced at the thick night pressing in. “And thanks,” she added, climbing into Hunter’s shiny, perfectly capable SUV. “I can’t leave them alone too long after dark.”
Hunter knew exactly what she meant. “How’s the halfway house going now? After the Mary Walker incident?”
Keeping violent paranormal teens in the same house was a delicate balancing act, at best. Sometimes it was like juggling half a dozen rare, antique plates. Sometimes the plates fell.
Mary Walker hadn’t just fallen, she’d shattered spectacularly to sharp, deadly pieces, slicing into everyone as she fell.
Lucy still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. Mary was getting better, listening more, instead of just railing about vampires all the time. She’d stopped wiping the doorknob to her room with holy water. But then one night she booby-trapped the entire farmhouse, killed two young vampires, and set the kitchen on fire. A few hours later, Isabeau arrived with some kind of complicated magic spell to shield the entire farmhouse. A few days later
, Mary’s car was eventually fished out of the lake, with her body still in it.
“We’ll get there,” Lucy said, refusing to give up. “I just wish they’d stop calling it Last Chance farm. Even though they’re not wrong. After Mary, who knows how long this will last? I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I mean, a degree in Social Work can only go so far.”
“If anyone can make it work, you can. Just watch your back.”
Lucy snorted. “Helena comes by about once a week to put the fear into everyone. She made Kali sweat last week, and you know how hard it is to make a vampire sweat.” Nicholas and Quinn’s mother was notorious.
Hunter pulled out onto the snowy street. “Heard from Solange yet?”
“Not yet. She should be here already. It’s nearly Solstice.” Lucy, Nicholas, Solange, and Kieran had a tradition to meet every year in in Violet Hill for the winter solstice, no matter where else they happened to be living. Solange had been traveling the world for years, but she always made it back. She was cutting it close this time though. “How are the wedding plans?”
“If I hear the word ‘tulle’ one more time, I’m getting married in my pink cargos,” Hunter said.
Lucy grinned. “I can add rhinestones to your stake for you. You know, make it fancy.”
“Don’t tempt me.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think we might elope.”
“Do it.”
“You wouldn’t be mad? Not to be there?” The headlights made the falling snow look like shooting stars. “More to the point, you don’t think Helena would pull my spleen out through my nose?”
“Nah, she likes you. And she hates parties. Liam might pout though. He loves weddings.”
Hunter smiled brightly. “Still—” She stopped suddenly, hitting the brakes.
Lucy grabbed onto the dash. “What are you— Oh.” There were mangled bushes and the glint of metal in one of the birch trees on the side of the road. Something swung between the high branches. Footprints muddled the soft snow underneath.
Hunter calmly checked the stakes, Hypnos, and daggers on a weapons belt she pulled from the backseat, before handing it to Lucy. Lucy caught the stench of a Hel-Blar the moment she opened the door. “Yeah, that’s not good.”
She couldn’t tell if it was still in the area. It might have left already, or it might be lurking behind the pine-and-cedar shadows. Hel-Blar were feral vampires, with mottled blue skin like old bruises, and every tooth a fang. Their saliva was enough to turn anyone into a Hel-Blar, human or vampire.
Lucy and Hunter fanned out with an ease borne of practice. This wasn’t the first time they’d taken on a Hel-Blar, nor would it be the last. Though if there were more than one, running away would be the smarter option. And it was one they never even considered. You didn’t survive the Drake brothers by being mild-mannered. There was a wildness in them equal to any monster that lurked in the mountains of Violet Hill.
Lucy lifted her crossbow, which was always in her backpack. Something snapped in the snow. A steel claw trap had snapped its jagged jaws together an inch away from her foot. She caught Hunter’s eye and nodded to the trap. She nodded back grimly, stepping more gingerly through the bushes. A cold creaking sounded above them.
“God, it’s like a horror movie,” Lucy muttered. Adrenaline flooded through her, as familiar as old flannel. She looked up. “Noah!”
She knew the young vampire currently swinging in loops of paracord above their heads, blood dripping steadily from the raw gashes on his arms and neck. He was one of her boarders. His fangs glistened in the frigid beam of Hunter’s flashlight. Noah moaned, struggling weakly.
“I’ll cover you,” Hunter said to Lucy, assessing the shadows.
“I’m getting you down,” Lucy told Noah. “Try not to fall on your face.”
She had to take off her mittens to work the carabiners locking the paracords together. The metal froze her fingers and made them clumsy. “Who did this to you?” she asked, pulling as hard as she could, until she was using her entire body weight to unscrew the twist lock. She swung, feeling more like a monkey than a storybook ninja to the rescue. “Hel-Blar aren’t this sophisticated.”
“Wasn’t Hel-Blar,” he said. “But I can smell them.”
“Yeah, hard to miss.”
“Hurry,” Hunter said sharply.
Lucy swung harder until the metal finally gave in and budged. After that it was a matter of opening the carabiner fully so Noah could wriggle free of the tangled cords. He dropped to the ground, landing hard. Lucy followed, coming up out of her crouch just as a Hel-Blar lunged from the cedars.
Hunter blinded him with her flashlight and then staked him through the heart, quick and clinical. He crumbled to ashes. The rotting-mushroom stagnant pond stench intensified.
“Two more,” Hunter warned them.
Lucy stood in front of Noah, who was using the birch tree to prop himself up. He might have said something about being saved by girls, but he wasn’t that brave. Also, he was bleeding all over himself.
The Hel-Blar crashed through the undergrowth, clacking their jaws. “I thought we got rid of most of these guys,” Lucy muttered, lifting her crossbow.
“There are a few nests in the mountains that we just can’t get at,” Hunter replied, throwing a stake. It bit through his chest but didn’t quite pierce the heart. Her follow-up roundhouse kick took care of that. Lucy released her crossbow bolt. It would have hit true if Noah hadn’t slumped over, knocking her elbow. The bolt went wide. The Hel-Blar sprang at her, vicious fangs gnashing together in anticipation. He grabbed her hair as she stumbled, Noah collapsing in a moaning, apologetic heap behind her. Lucy knew she couldn’t fight the strength of the Hel-Blar’s mottled fingers so she swung out and twisted so that she suddenly was standing next to him, instead of being pulled toward his fetid mouth. She jerked her arm back, the holster under her sleeve releasing a stake with deadly and forceful accuracy.
The Hel-Blar disintegrated into the snow. Lucy blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Just once, I’d like a normal night.”
Hunter just wiped the ashes off her stake. Lucy crouched down next to Noah, who was trying to claw his way up the tree trunk and back into a standing position. “Holy water,” she said grimly as his flesh blistered around his wounds. “It’ll hurt like hell but you’ll heal,” she assured him. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know,” he said, fury burning red veins into his pale pupils. “Some goddamn hunter.”
Lucy nodded to Hunter mildly. “Well, that goddamn hunter just saved your undead life.” She hauled him up. “And she’s giving you a ride home because I’m not carrying you, so shut it.”
Hunter was too busy examining the remains of the elaborate vampire trap with narrowed eyes to worry about a vampiric temper tantrum. “This isn’t a Helios-Ra trap.” She circled the tree carefully. She paused, noticing a rough symbol cut into the tree. It was no more than three lines meant to represent a stake. “It’s that new underground anti-vampire group,” she said. “Whitethorn.”
Lucy exhaled. “Well, crap.”
* * *
Her sister would have told her to go for the heart.
Knowing how difficult it was to successfully push a stake through a vampire’s heart, especially when that vampire was conscious, Aggie chose a different approach.
Plus, a staking would get her expelled. And she was already on probation. Again.
She pressed against a tree, trying to ignore her numb toes. At least December in New York had coffee on every corner and diner windows fogged with steam. There might be coffee in Violet Hill but it was probably made with chicory root and anyway, she was miles away from town with nothing but snow, trees, and more snow. All this fresh air was unnatural.
Almost as unnatural as sharing space with a vampire.
She knew he was coming. She could feel it. Her heart sped up even as she told it not to. It always did that. Callahan was on his way back home; it was Sunday night after all, and Sunday nights were family night. W
ell, they called it family night but Aggie knew a mandatory curfew when she was on the receiving end of one.
She kept her breaths shallow so they wouldn’t mist in the frigid air and give away her position. Yen had once hidden in a garbage dumpster to cover her scent so she could stake a vampire feeding off the homeless guys living in Central Park. A little frostbite was nothing. She had two stakes, Hypnos powder in her cuff, and a steel needle-stake in a holster under her sleeve. She was ready. She’d get him this time.
“Not again.”
Aggie whirled, stake stabbing the air. She narrowly avoided her best friend’s heart and pulled a muscle in her arm for her trouble. “Shit, Paige,” she snapped. “I could have killed you.”
Paige didn’t look particularly concerned. She crunched through the last of her bit of her candy cane. Her fire-engine red hair was in two braids, woven through with silver tinsel. No one did Christmas spirit quite like Paige. “Who are we not-killing tonight?” She slid Aggie a glance, then rolled her eyes. “Never mind. As if I have to ask. Your nose is going to run if you stay out here much longer.”
Aggie shoved Paige down into one of the bushes and reclaimed her position behind the tree. “Snow down my neck!” Paige gasped. “Snow down my neck!”
“Serves you right. Keep an eye on that part of the forest, would you?”
Paige sighed. “Don’t you ever get bored of this?”
“It’s what we do. We’re hunters. And anyway, Agent Wild said we have to be prepared to fight in any weather.”
“Yeah, she’s also dating one of the Drake brothers. I’d much rather be doing that.”
“Whatever, so she’s not perfect.” The Drake brothers were unfairly hot. There was no sense in denying the obvious. “She has more vampire kills than anyone else at the academy. She’d have taken Callahan out by now.”
“You know, this obsession of yours is bordering on a bad teen movie crush.”
“Shut up,” Aggie said, kicking snow at her.
“I’m just saying—”
“No, I mean, shut up. He’s coming.”
The Longest Night Page 1
