She stared at her gloves. Many mornings, she woke with deep creases on her face from sleeping with her cheek on the leather seams, but it was worth it to stay safe. For years, her mother had let her sleep without gloves, and out of habit, she sometimes removed them in her sleep, but she’d kept them on all night for the past three weeks.
Moving over to her washbasin, she removed her gloves and carefully washed her hands and face. Staring at her reflection in the mirror, tears rose in her eyes and she swiped them away with the backs of her hands.
Slayers didn’t cry. Especially not at the death of a vampire. But the one she’d met tonight hadn’t deserved death, and she was sure that if he’d talked to her father, it would have helped. She couldn’t tell her father what she’d learned without revealing that she’d been out on patrol.
She put her gloves back on, brushed and braided her hair, then climbed into bed. She double-checked that her stake was in position, even though she no longer felt sure she could use it. She tried to sleep, but instead tossed and turned, haunted by images of the vampire’s violent and unnecessary death.
A huge vampire tore into Lucette’s throat.
She gasped as she woke with a start, and reached under her pillow for her stake. Just a dream.
She sat and backed up against her headboard to assess any imminent danger. The gloves must have twisted in her sleep, because they were caught between her hand and the stake, pinching the skin on her finger. This wasn’t the first time it had happened.
She listened to the darkness of her room. Something had woken her, but the room was quiet. After a few moments, her eyes focused in the dark, and she felt confident she was alone. She let out her breath and fought to slow her rapidly beating heart.
Calmer, she looked down at her hand, and her heart raced again. Her stake. She was holding her stake with a bare hand. One glove lay on the floor next to her bed. She’d removed it in her sleep, and that pinch she’d felt . . .
Panting, she dropped the stake and tried not to panic. Her stakes were all carefully sanded, not a rough spot on them, so it should be impossible for her to get a splinter, even without the added protection of the gloves. She closed her eyes tightly, trying not to think about the pinch, the pinch that had now turned into a sting. Which stake had she put under her pillow? The same one she’d banged on the stone wall in anger and grief? Had it cracked?
Not wanting to use her bare hand to light a candle, she walked to the curtains and used her other hand—still gloved—to pull them back. Moonlight streamed in and she slowly lifted her finger into the light.
A small sliver of wood stuck out of the end of her finger, surrounded by blood. A tiny drop fell to the floor—a small, dark blotch on the pale stone.
“No!”
She staggered back, hoping this was still part of a dream, that she was really still tucked into her bed, still wearing her gloves. Hoping she hadn’t cracked one of her stakes. Hoping that cracked stake wasn’t the one she’d tucked under her pillow.
Trembling, she stepped back to the window. This was no time to lack courage. As much as she wanted to get back into bed and pretend this hadn’t happened, it had, and she had to see if the consequences were as disastrous as she imagined. She looked down into the courtyard. There was no movement, but that wasn’t unusual for this time of night. She tried to spot something, even a shadow of a guard, but saw nothing.
She headed for her door, slowly opened it, and gasped. The royal guards and slayers assigned to her bedroom had all collapsed. She shook one and shouted, “Wake up!” She knelt beside another guard and turned his head around. “Wake up, please, wake up!” The guard did not move.
Lucette ran down the halls toward her father’s bedroom, gasping for air. The guard in front of her father’s door was collapsed on the floor, asleep. She pushed the sleeping guard aside to open her father’s door and ran to his bedside. “Wake up, Dad! Please, wake up!” She shook him, but he slept soundly. She slumped to the carpet beside his bed in a heap and began sobbing.
It had happened. Everyone in the kingdom was asleep except her . . . and any vampires who might have escaped the slayers’ stakes.
Creeping back to her bedroom, she kept alert to any sound or movement, but heard none. Never before had she heard the castle so silent. Typically, someone—one of the servants, a guard, a slayer—was moving about.
After retrieving a stake from her room, she returned to her father’s bedside. As she watched her father in his sleep, guilt plowed through her at how she’d resented his attempts to keep this from happening. Her curse had been the thorn in her parents’ relationship, and it hadn’t helped that she’d almost always sided with her mother. Lucette stared at her pricked finger. She’d blown everything.
If every citizen of Xandra was sleeping, so too was her mother’s entire household, nearly six hours away by carriage and completely vulnerable, with no one to protect them. Wiping away tears, Lucette walked to the end of her father’s bed and readied herself to defend him from whatever might come in the night. She knew full well that not every vampire was as timid and well-meaning as the one she’d talked to earlier that evening. And even if she couldn’t protect both her parents, given their different locations, tonight she would do her best to protect one.
The next night, Lucette bolted upright from her slumber. She spun her head around to find herself in her father’s office, lying on a sofa in the middle of the room and dressed in a white lace gown she’d never have put on without a fight. Her hair was down and brushed out, the curls fluffy and soft.
But worse than being dressed in a way she’d never have agreed to, she realized she was not alone in the room. Her father was slumped over his desk, and six or seven of his advisers, plus several guards and slayers, lay about, having clearly fallen asleep on their feet.
One of the guards had bumped his head on the edge of a table and cut his forehead. A trickle of blood ran down his face, but his breathing was steady.
If they knew they were going to fall asleep when the sun set, why hadn’t they prepared and gone to bed? She shook her head, realizing her father must have found her collapsed beside his bed this morning, a stake in her hand.
A stake. If she was the only one awake, she needed weapons She stepped over an adviser and knelt next to a sleeping slayer. She confiscated his quivers of arrows and stakes, but didn’t see his crossbow anywhere. No matter, she’d find one.
Feeling slightly more secure, yet somewhat silly with her hair flowing and the leather straps of the quivers across her white gown, she stepped over to make sure her father wasn’t hurt. Under his hand was a half-written note. They’d clearly mistimed the sunset—maybe because they had completely blocked all the windows in the room with large boards.
She carefully pulled out the note, and then chided herself for the care she’d taken to pull it away slowly and silently. It wasn’t as if she could wake him.
His note told her he loved her, how devastated he was that he hadn’t been able to prevent the curse from falling, and that her primary concern should be to keep herself safe and not worry about him or anyone else.
That was one request she couldn’t fulfill, especially since she knew vampires were targeting her family. There was nothing she could do about her mother, but she would make sure her father’s neck stayed unbitten.
His note also talked of a plan to ensure her safety, but that he needed one more day to prepare. She decided not to think about that part. Her father’s last plan, that glass room in the tower, had been a monstrous disaster, but surely he’d learned from that mistake.
After cleaning the cut on the guard’s head and bandaging it as best she could, Lucette opened the door to her father’s office to peek into the hall. A mouse scurried across the floor and she jumped. Clearly the curse only affected the humans of the kingdom—not that the mice were likely to help her fight off vampires—but it was good to know.
She took out a stake and gripped it in her hand. The smooth wood felt goo
d without gloves, more secure, more like a weapon. And now, well, who cared if she got a splinter? That damage was done.
Her first goal was to change into a more practical outfit, so she started down the hall toward her bedchamber. Halfway there, she heard a thump behind her. She stopped short and spun, stake raised.
A tall vampire with greasy, shaggy brown hair had leaped up to the corridor from the main hall below. He had blood on his chin.
“Excellent. Someone’s awake.” He licked his lips. “Drinking from sleeping creatures makes me drowsy. Your blood will be much perkier.” He strode forward slowly and confidently.
The vampire nodded toward her stake, a smirk on his face. “Don’t point that thing at me unless you know how to use it.” His underestimation of her abilities rankled her, but she quickly realized that she could use it to her advantage.
She let her arm shake. “P-p-please, d-d-don’t k-kill me.”
He laughed, stepping forward and walking around her in a tight circle. “I don’t want to kill you, I just want a little nibble. You’ve not been bitten before, have you?”
She shook her head, lowering her chin a little to look up with pouty eyes, but kept her gaze trained on him, snapping her head around as he moved. Maintaining a look of terror was not difficult.
“Don’t worry, darling,” he said.“The first bite never kills. Sometimes two can, if enough venom is transferred.” He reached out one of his long fingers and trailed it along the side of her neck.
Lucette had had enough.
She leaped up and landed a kick squarely in the center of his chest. Her dress tore and the fabric streamed around her as she spun to plant another kick to his head before he recovered.
In a blink, he landed on the other side of her, and caught the fabric of her dress, pulling her close.
“My goodness,” he said. “You are a surprise. I imagine your blood will be even tastier than I expected. Sweet, yes, but it seems you might be a little spicy, too.” His breath heated her neck as he held her stake arm tightly behind her back. However, the vampire left Lucette’s other arm free, so she transferred the stake to that hand.
“Oh, please, no!” She tried to sound even more scared than she was as she raised her stake and slammed it into him from behind, careful to pull it back out.
The vampire staggered back. Lucette hadn’t had enough leverage to plunge the stake deep enough to kill. It would take a second strike.
His expression darkened. “Now, that wasn’t very nice.” He reached around to try to cover the wound in his back.
Even injured, the vampire was bigger and stronger and faster than she, and Lucette wasn’t confident she could take him down. Her only advantage was that he didn’t seem to be a trained fighter.
“Why are you here?” she asked, backing away and glancing over her shoulder to see if there was a sleeping slayer nearby who might have anything she could use as a weapon.
“Thirsty,” he said, tracing his tongue over his fangs.
“I thought vampires didn’t drink human blood.”
He shrugged. “I have a vice. Sue me.” He was keeping his distance, as if unsure of his odds against her. He narrowed his eyes and the yellow flecks flared. “Plus, I’m getting paid.”
“Leave and I won’t kill you,” she said.
“Try, and I’ll rip your throat out.”
Enough of this. She’d wasted too much time and energy on this vampire. Others might be attacking people all over the kingdom. It was time to take him down, but after her first experience killing a vampire, she wasn’t sure she could kill again. Not unless her life, or that of someone she loved, was directly in danger. She leaped and planted the stake in his shoulder.
He dove for her neck, flaring his fangs, but she dodged to the side and he struck his head on the wall beside her. He slumped down, rubbing his head and bleeding onto the floor from that wound and the two she’d inflicted. Vampires could heal quickly, but it would certainly take him hours to fully recover.
While he was down, she tore strips off her ripped dress and used the fabric to tightly bind his arms behind his back, then his legs.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he slurred.
“What does it look like?” she answered. “Consider yourself under arrest for trespassing.”
He moaned as she tipped him onto his front and tore another strip of fabric to join his bound arms and legs together. Notwithstanding his vampire strength, his confinement—combined with his wounds—would keep him from inflicting any further damage for a while.
She wasn’t sure what she’d do with him when he broke his bonds, and she secretly hoped he’d find a way to escape. If he were found in the morning, he’d be staked by a slayer, if sunlight from one of the windows didn’t get to him first.
Satisfied that he was secure, she changed into her slayer uniform, hidden in a secret compartment in her wardrobe, and raced back to her father’s office. The palace seemed vampire-free, except for her bound catch slumped over in the hall, so she approached her father and placed a kiss on his forehead. Taking his pad of paper and a quill pen, she wrote him a quick note.
Dear Dad,
Don’t worry about me. I’m okay, and know how to protect myself. Keep yourself and everyone else in the kingdom safe. Please, don’t stay out in the open at night. Barricade yourselves in your bedrooms and block the windows. I’ll guard the halls.
Love,
Lucette
P.S. Please ask Mom to come back. I’ll feel better knowing you’re at least both under one roof.
She felt torn about that last request, but if the vampires were targeting her family, it wouldn’t be long before they found the queen at the estate in the country.
Lucette reread her note, sealed it, and then, after locking her father’s door, she left to make sure the corridors were empty.
Hours later, Lucette had patrolled the palace and found most doors blocked by furniture and most windows covered by boards. But more than one of the barricades appeared breached. So much for hoping the rest of the night would stay quiet. Apparently her bound friend upstairs wouldn’t be the only vampire she’d encounter on her first full night alone.
A window smashed upstairs.
Lucette’s heart raced. If she couldn’t bring herself to kill one vampire, what was she going to do surrounded by many? From the sounds of it, she’d find out the answer to that question very soon.
Hiding felt cowardly, and she felt bad for the guards and slayers in the halls—she hadn’t been able to drag them all into hiding spots before this ruckus started—but now she needed to save herself.
Should she head up or down? Hearing another crash upstairs, she chose down and raced to the stairs at the back of the palace, which led to the maze of corridors and storage rooms in the cellar. Because of her sheltered upbringing, she’d rarely been down there.
She heard the thump of footsteps upstairs. More vampires had broken in, and she had at least four hours before sunrise.
In the first room, she found bins of potatoes, carrots, turnips, and other root vegetables, but nowhere to hide. No place where she felt confident she couldn’t be found.
Voices shouted upstairs, and it sounded like chaos up there. How many of the exposed palace staff were being bitten right now? She shivered.
She checked the next room. It was incredibly dark and she blinked her eyes to see. In the far corner was a steel box, the size of a storage space. She lifted its hinged lid and her hopes lifted, too.
Coal.
She could dig herself down into the coal and, as a bonus, it might mask her scent. The voices and footsteps drew nearer. At least one vampire had decided to check the basement.
She climbed into the coal bin, carefully shut the lid, and buried herself as deep as she could. Dust clogged her lungs and stung her eyes, but she choked back the urge to cough or sneeze. She didn’t move. It might take three vampire bites to die, but she didn’t want to risk even one. And it sounded like there were many more than
three bloodsucking monsters in the palace.
As much as she hoped the vampires wouldn’t find her, she really hoped someone else would in the morning. The thought of waking in here tomorrow night, after sleeping in coal for a whole day, was too horrible to imagine.
The next night, Lucette’s eyes snapped open. She wasn’t in the coal bin, but the air around her felt tight and stale. Wherever she was, it was dark. She tried to sit, but her head struck something hard before she was fully upright. She explored with her hands and, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she started to make out shapes through the hard, cold surface enclosing her. Whatever surrounded her was transparent. Realization struck her—she was in a glass box.
Exploring its surface, she found a few small holes, then ran her hands down her body and discovered she was dressed in another frilly gown. Her hair was loose. She touched her lips; they were sticky. Lipstick.
She realized that not only was she now trapped in a glass box, she might have been lying there all day, too. A horrible thought flashed through her mind: if she’d been lying there all day, dressed up, had anyone been watching her sleep? It almost felt as if she’d been on display. She shuddered.
Lucette kept feeling around her until her left hand struck what felt like a button. She pressed it and gas lights sparked to life. When she saw where she was, her breaths became shallow as if huge weights were crushing down on her. She was back up in the tower.
Past her feet, she could see the cell where her father had trapped her on her birthday. The glass box she lay in was outside the glass cell and directly against it perpendicularly. And this near-coffin was most likely made of enchanted, unbreakable fairy glass.
Sleeping Beauty: Vampire Slayer Page 11
