Only Constantine understood. I didn’t scare him. And lately, I scared everyone, even Lucy.
Because she’s human. They don’t understand you, not like I do.
“What is it?” Constantine asked.
I realized I was rubbing my ear. My hand dropped. “Nothing.” This voice seemed different, like it was not my own anymore.
“Are there other side effects if you drink from the vein?” I asked. “Ones that I don’t know about?”
“Being strong, healthy. Nothing you can’t handle, love.”
Everyone else wanted to keep me safe, and I appreciated it, don’t get me wrong, but Constantine just wanted to make me powerful. His death wouldn’t be on my hands; I wouldn’t have to carry the burden that at any time he could be staked just for knowing me or for trying to protect me. He trusted I could take care of myself. There was something seductive in that. Well, for me anyway.
Besides, being with Constantine stopped me from obsessing over Kieran.
I missed him already. I could feel the grief howling inside my chest, like a wolf on the tundra. And I already knew I’d be checking the tree for messages even as I told myself I shouldn’t. He’d taken on the League, and his entire belief system, to be with me.
And then I’d tried to eat him.
Girlfriend of the Year, that’s me.
“You look positively maudlin,” Constantine said, slipping his arm over my shoulders. It sent a tickle through my throat. He leaned down so that his mouth was very close to my ear. “What you need is distraction. And I have just the thing, love.”
I knew exactly what Lucy would have done. She would have scoffed at what was an obvious line, would have elbowed him in the stomach and flounced away, secure in her disdain. That was, no doubt, the smart thing to do.
But she’d never met Constantine.
She didn’t know the way his dark voice sent shivers over the back of my neck, the way he was impossibly beautiful, all dark colors and romantic shadows.
And I was tired of doing the smart, responsible thing.
I wanted to have fun. Uncomplicated, unpolitical fun.
I smiled back at him, leaning in closer. “Let’s go.”
It was like a fairy tale.
And for once, not the kind where someone wanted to eat my heart.
The meadow was circled with willow trees, and a narrow creek cut through one side, edged with silver pebbles and frost. The grass was flattened under several thick Persian rugs in ruby reds and ink blues, all piled over each other. Candles burned in iron lanterns dangling from the trees and in standing candelabras. A table spanned the narrowest part of the river, and there were several chairs on either side, moth-eaten brocade armchairs with scarred armrests and cobwebbed feet. There were several chests and benches and thick incense smoke hanging like scented mist.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. It was like all the best parts of a storybook. If Constantine had traded in his jacket for a suit of armor I wouldn’t even have blinked. In fact, I felt as if I should be wearing velvet and lace-trimmed butterfly sleeves. Something in me sighed. I couldn’t tell if it was me or the strange inner voice I couldn’t seem to silence.
“This isn’t Chandramaa territory,” Constantine warned me as the other vampires turned to stare at us. “We’re on the other side of the boundaries here.”
Vampires lounged, drinking from old-fashioned wine bottles. A bloodslave sat on an overstuffed cushion with a smile of welcome. I looked away.
“Princess,” a girl about my age said in a thick Irish accent. She wore a long skirt with raggedy tulle at the hem and a tight, faded T-shirt. Her feet were bare, her toes painted turquoise and resting across the legs of another vampire with blond dreads. “You finally broke free of the gilded cage. Fight the man, Drake, even if you’re the man.”
“Marigold is our little anarchist,” Constantine drawled affectionately. “Don’t let her scare you away.”
Marigold grinned at me. I couldn’t help but grin back. It was hard not to like a girl with a name like Marigold who wore a candy ring on a chain as a necklace. Constantine’s hand smoothed down my shoulder, resting on my lower back. It was distracting, as if all of my nerve endings congregated under his palm and sparked. I had to force myself to concentrate on what he was saying.
“That’s Toby and Elijah, and, over there, Ianthe. There are others lurking about.” Toby abandoned a purple velvet couch, which Constantine led me to. “I don’t know that one; he’s new.”
The guy with dreads smiled easily. “I’m Spencer.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar. When I stared at him, he added, “Hunter’s friend.”
He’d been turned by one of the doctors at the Helios-Ra Academy after being infected with Hel-Blar saliva in the infirmary. He might be a vampire now, but he still looked like a surfer. And his friend Hunter was dating my brother. Neither of us mentioned any of the above.
“What is this place?” I asked, sitting down. A broken cushion spring poked me in the hip.
“We call it the Bower,” Marigold explained. “When we get tired of the bleeding royalists—no offense—and the Chandramaa breathing down our necks, we come here.”
“Think of it as an exchange of ideas and customs,” Constantine added smoothly. “A safe place. The people here have traveled far to be a part of the Blood Moon. Marigold is from County Clare, Elijah is from Morocco.”
“We don’t know where Toby’s from,” Marigold said, grinning. “He doesn’t speak a lick of English.”
“I’m Solange,” I introduced myself, although Marigold had already outed me as a princess.
“You are dhampir,” Ianthe said in a thick Greek accent. I blinked at her matter-of-fact tone. “Vampire father and human mother, yes?”
“Originally, yes.”
She shrugged. “It is not so uncommon.” The ancient families of the Raktapa Council usually garnered respect or suspicion, usually both.
“Oh.” I could have kissed her. I was common. I grinned. Constantine chuckled.
“I told you, you’re hopelessly colonial. There are lineages far rarer than yours in the world.”
“Watch out for Sarabeth though,” Marigold said. “She’s a right nasty piece of work. Easy to recognize too, with those goat legs.”
I blinked. “Sarabeth has goat legs?”
“Yeah and if you stare, she’ll kick you with them.” She rubbed her knee. “Hurts like a bitch.”
Ianthe nodded. “Very rare, the Baobhan-Sith.”
“And don’t offer her whiskey because she’s Scottish and you think she’ll like it. That pisses her off too. Just ask Jude.” Marigold rolled her eyes. “Never mind her, we’ve bigger problems, apparently.”
“What?” I wondered.
“One of ours has gone missing, likely dead,” Elijah said softly. “A vampire.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “Even with the Chandramaa around?”
“This wasn’t a vampire dispute,” Ianthe explained. “It was a human kill.”
Elijah spat. “Hunters.”
I felt my eyes widen. I tried not to look at Spencer and give him away. “Helios-Ra?”
“We don’t know that,” Jude interjected. “Could’ve been anyone.”
“Huntsmen, Helios-Ra, they’re all the same. Human.”
I swallowed. “But how do you know it wasn’t another vampire?”
“Smell of human all over the bloody murder site, wasn’t there?” Elijah looked at me speculatively. “This conversation’s too gory for a pretty girl like you.” He had no idea I’d just watched a Huntsman commit suicide. He smiled at me, fangs poking out from under his top lip.
Pheromones. Oops. I shifted closer to Constantine.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” I said to him softly, as Spencer and Ianthe argued over whether or not vampires were intrinsically magical. Ianthe said they performed magic, while Spencer said they were magic. Elijah said he didn’t believe in magic and could we please discuss the va
mpire penal codes instead.
“You’re very welcome.” Constantine bent his head toward me as bats filled the sky over us. “You can make your own destiny, Solange. You just have to look a little farther than your front door.”
I could love this Bower. Everyone looked so comfortable, drinking blood out of wine bottles and talking. Even Spencer sprawled with Marigold, drinking from a glass.
I shook my head. “How are you so well-adjusted?” I asked Spencer. “You’ve only been a vampire for what, a month?”
He shrugged. “Better than the alternative. Besides, I can still surf at night.” He winked at Marigold. “And there are perks.”
She winked and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go explore those perks, shall we, boyo?”
They vanished into the quiet, cold forest. It wasn’t long before the others wandered away as well, Ianthe with the giggling bloodslave. Some of the candles guttered out and the shadows wrapped around me like a thick shawl. Frost glittered on the willow leaves.
“Pass me the bottle, would you?” Constantine asked, pulling a clean wooden cup out of a basket next to the sofa. I was handing him the bottle when it broke in my hand, glass shards dropping to the carpet. One of them dug into the pad of my thumb and stuck there. Blood and wine dripped down my arm. My fangs lengthened.
Constantine didn’t say a word, just brushed the rest of the glass off my leg and then pulled the sliver out. Blood immediately trickled out of the cut. His eyes flared, the blues and purples of a summer twilight. His fangs gleamed as he leaned into me, crowding me back against the velvet sofa. I didn’t stop him. He was so close, pressing me into the cushions. I didn’t know if he was going to kiss me.
And then he just lifted my hand to his mouth, slowly. He still didn’t speak, didn’t look away, just closed his mouth over my wound. He sucked at the blood. I blushed but I didn’t pull away. The cut stopped bleeding; it was so small a nick that I could feel it healing already. Constantine dragged his lips over my inner wrist, pressing such a soft, hungry kiss over my blue veins that I nearly sighed.
Then he rose and walked away, leaving me lying on a couch in the middle of the forest, feeling more like the princess in a fairy story than I ever had before.
Constantine was right.
I needed to take control of my own destiny.
And Isabeau was the only person I knew who might be able to help me. She also knew what it was like to have a prophecy hanging over your head. Of course, hers had said she’d hook up with one of my brothers and she’d done just that. My prophecy was slightly more sinister.
At least, that’s what I assumed.
No one actually knew the exact words of the stupid thing. They’d been muttered one night by a crazy lady in sixteenth-century Scotland. Someone must have overheard her, since the story had spread, but no one had ever written it down. ’Cause that would be, you know, helpful.
Instead, my very existence was bandied about like a vampire bogeyman to scare monarchs and rebels alike. And I was starting to worry that the vampire lore might be right. So I’d do what Dad had always taught us to do when we were scared or confused: I’d get more information.
We’d never believed in magic before, and because of that, and the fact that we’d been expelled from court for so many centuries, we didn’t know as much as we could. But maybe I could fix that. And show my family that I wasn’t made of sugar and moonbeams.
Because after a moment on a velvet sofa with Constantine I felt wicked, made of pepper and fire and wine.
Leave it. You can’t trust magic. But you can trust me.
And there was that voice. I shuddered. I really needed answers.
I finally tracked down Isabeau at the camp outskirts, on the path toward the mountain caves where the Hound delegation was staying. The tattoos and scars on her arms and neck were visible in the flickering torchlight. So were the other three vampires standing in a half-moon around her.
They had no idea what she could do to them.
Aside from my mother, Isabeau was the best fighter I’d ever seen. She was quick and vicious and could work magic to confound you. But she couldn’t do any of that here, not in the Chandramaa’s territory. They circled her, snarling. I couldn’t help but compare them to Marigold and Spencer and even Toby, who hadn’t said a single word.
“We hear you’ve got double fangs, like the Host.”
Isabeau stiffened. “I have never belonged to Montmartre.” She put a hand on her wolfhound’s neck when he growled. “Non, Charlemagne. Attend.”
I rushed forward, flashing my triple set of fangs on purpose for the first time.
It felt good.
The vampires froze, staring at me. “Princess.”
I leaned closer, smiling savagely. “Go away.”
Their pupils dilated and they nodded mechanically.
“And be grateful I don’t make you bark like a dog,” I added.
“Yes, princess.”
They wandered away, looking confused.
Isabeau tilted her head consideringly. “This is new, n’est-ce pas?”
I nodded. “Kind of. Can I talk to you?”
“Bien sûr.”
“In private?”
“Yes, come this way.” I followed her away from the camp, toward the caves. The hundred tiny sounds of the tribes coexisting trickled away under the wind and the smell of approaching snow. I could hear dogs padding toward us and a drum from somewhere deep in the mountain. We stopped on an outcropping, high enough to see the stars over the treetops. I felt nervous, but in a good way. Like I might actually have control over my own future.
“I want to know more about the prophecy,” I said. “About me.” Snow drifted between us, melting when it touched the stones. Charlemagne barked and tried to bite the flakes out of the air. “Is there any way to magically see the prophecy? Or hear it? Logan told me you did that with one of the paintings in the royal caves. You made him see the moment it was painted.”
She frowned. “I suppose there must be.”
“But you don’t know how?”
She looked intrigued. “I can think of a few spells that might help, but not as clearly as you might like. And it would take some time for me to gather the ingredients. Two weeks at least.”
“I don’t have two weeks!” I said pleadingly. “Isn’t there another spell?”
“I suppose we could ask Kala,” she said. “She can do it.”
“She can?” I said eagerly.
“I say she can, not that she will.”
“Can we ask her now? Please?”
She blinked at my impatience. “I suppose so.”
I spun on my heel and darted into the nearest cave. She didn’t follow. I poked my head back out. “Well?”
She was smiling. “That cave leads nowhere.” She pointed to another cave farther down. “This way.”
If these were only the Hounds’ temporary caves I could only imagine how incredible their permanent space was. The walls were studded with torches, and the entrance was already painted with reddish ocher and decorated with dog bones hung with beads. Logan told me that after a dog died (of natural causes), their bones were turned into holy objects. I remembered finding a dogs-paw death mark, which we’d thought meant that Logan was dead.
A dozen dogs greeted us with wagging tails and the odd growl. Isabeau made a sharp hand movement and the growls died. We climbed down farther into the labyrinthine caves, into the smell of wet rock and incense. Tattooed Hounds with bone beads in their hair went still and silent at our arrival. Even the drumbeat stopped before I could see who was playing it.
Isabeau kept walking, looking the most comfortable I’d ever seen her, inside the quiet mountain with dogs crowding at her knees. She led us down rough-hewn steps into a deep crevice hung with beads. We had to squeeze into the damp darkness, rock scraping my shoulders and my hands until they bled. Then the crevice opened abruptly into another cave, lit with a single candle burning in a tin lantern dangling from the ceiling.
A woman I assumed was Kala, the Hounds’ Shamanka, waited for us on a fur pelt, a painted drum in her lap. Her hair was long and braided, and hung with so many bone beads that she clacked and clattered when she moved. Blue spirals were tattooed on the left side of her face and all the way down her arm. It was the same color blue of the dog-and-knot-work tattoo Isabeau had on her arm and the fleur-de-lis, on the side of her neck.
“Finally,” Kala said. “You’ve come.”
I blinked, startled. “You were expecting me?”
Isabeau smiled gently. “It’s difficult to surprise Kala.”
“Sit!” Kala barked at me. I was sitting on furs before I’d even registered the command. Isabeau slipped away before I could ask her to stay. Kala bared her fangs at me in what I hoped was a smile. “You’ve come to see, have you, my girl?”
I nodded. “To see the prophecy.”
She cackled. There was no other word for it. “Hope for you yet, then.” She shook a seed rattle hung with dog teeth before I could ask her what she meant by that. The sound bounced off the walls and reverberated off my bones. Even my fangs felt as if they were vibrating inside my head. With her other hand she used a fan of cedar branches to waft smoke from a small fire set in a circle of white stones. I coughed and my eyes burned. The smoke was thick and green and tasted odd, coppery. She chanted in a language I didn’t recognize until I felt dizzy and disoriented. The smoke clung to my hair, to my eyelashes, inside my nostrils. The chanting and the rattling stopped abruptly, and the silence was so sudden I flinched.
Kala reached over just as suddenly, and drilled the tip of her index finger very hard into the spot between my eyes. “See.”
Everything went black.
Chapter 9
NICHOLAS
“What happened to you?” Marcus asked when I ducked into the barn that doubled as Uncle Geoffrey’s laboratory. Acres of scrupulously clean tables gleamed under track lighting. There were microscopes, an ultrasound machine, even an X-ray machine, not to mention shelves of machinery whose purposes were unknown to me. Marcus stood in front of a row of test tubes filled with blood. He wore a white lab coat and his hair was disheveled, as if he’d been running his hand through it.
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