“Stay here,” he added. He and his brothers were gone in a blur of pale skin and pale eyes before we could answer.
“Yeah, right,” I said anyway, knowing he’d hear me.
Hunter suddenly had a stake in one hand and a dagger in the other hand. She didn’t even dignify their order with a response, just started running. The stench didn’t hit us until we rounded the cliff side. Quinn was clinging to the exposed roots and tall grasses, dirt raining down. He grabbed the blue-skinned vampire by the ankle and tossed him down to his brothers, waiting below. Nicholas staked him, ashes billowing around their ankles.
From the dark cave beside us, Hunter and I heard a yelp, followed by a shriek.
“What the hell, man?” a guy bellowed.
“Another one,” Hunter said. We both advanced toward the mouth of the cave. Hunter broke a light stick she pulled from her bag and tossed it inside. The green acidic glow made me think of aliens and sci-fi movies.
And then there wasn’t time to think at all.
A Hel-Blar had a couple cornered in the back of the cave, fish bones and broken glass around their feet. In such a cramped, humid space, the odors were nearly visible—slimy rotting mushrooms and the scum on old water, the kind not even insects will visit. A girl clutched her shirt closed with one hand and hyperventilated. The guy was trying to look brave, but when he saw the blood on his arm, his eyes rolled back in his head. At least it didn’t look like teeth marks. The way his shirt was torn, he’d probably been thrown into the cave wall.
“Keep it together,” Hunter barked in that military-school voice of hers. His back straightened before he consciously thought of it. The Hel-Blar snapped his teeth together, all of them wickedly pointed and as sharp as needles. He wore an odd, twisted copper collar around his neck. Since when did Hel-Blar accessorize?
“What is that thing?” the girl squeaked.
“Just a drunk raver kid, all dressed up,” Hunter answered. “Stay where you are,” she snapped when they stumbled forward. The Hel-Blar snarled.
I picked up a handful of pebbles and threw one at his head. It bounced off his temple and he whipped his head around. I just grinned, showing all my teeth like any good predator, and threw another rock. I kept throwing them until he snarled again, saliva dripping on his chin—and leaped for me.
Okay, so the plan worked better in theory.
Because no matter how prepared I was, or how many times I’d had a vampire leaping at my face, some facts remained the same. They were faster than me. Always.
“Duck!” Hunter yelled as I stumbled back. I went down, hitting my knee hard. Pain bloomed. I’d have a wicked bruise by morning.
You know, if I didn’t get eaten.
Hunter threw her stake with the kind of ease and accuracy one might expect from a straight-A student at a vampire-hunter high school.
Thank God.
The momentum of the stake biting into his chest stopped the Hel-Blar in his tracks. He flew off his feet, clutching at the wound. Thick blood oozed between his fingers. The stake had done enough damage to slow him down but it hadn’t penetrated through his rib cage into the fleshy heart underneath. So he wasn’t dead.
Yet.
I took advantage of his pained yowling and threw myself forward with my own stake. I thrust it into the wound next to Hunter’s stake. Then I leaned back and used the heel of my boot like a hammer to shove it through clothing, skin, and in between bones. Hunter jumped over his decomposing body to usher the couple away. The Hel-Blar disintegrated into dust and a pile of mushroom-scented clothes.
I crab-walked backward to the cave mouth and then pushed to my feet, panting. Nicholas dropped down from the cliff edge in front of me. I screamed before I could stop myself, choking on adrenaline as he rose out of his crouch.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded, coughing. My body was trying to sort through all the stimuli and was momentarily stunned. “I’m fine,” I finally managed to croak.
“What was that?” the girl asked shrilly. “It was, like, some monster, did you see that? Where did he go?”
“We scared him off,” Hunter assured her.
“That thing was not human,” the guy insisted.
I made my expression calm and unimpressed. “You’re drunk,” I said. “You’re seeing things.”
He rubbed his face. “Uh …”
His girlfriend pulled him backward. “Can we go? I want to go. Now.”
They wandered away, back toward the fires and the people. Hunter let out a breath. “That was way too close,” she said, taking out her cell phone. “I’m calling it in.”
Nicholas pulled me against his side. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “We dusted him,” I said, a little proudly.
“I—” He cut himself off abruptly. He, Quinn, and Connor all whirled back toward the cliff.
“Coming around the back,” Quinn said so softly I barely heard him. Hunter hurried to hang up her phone, but they were already moving out like some vampiric fan. We had to run to catch up again.
“So not fair,” Hunter muttered. “I work out all the damn time and he’s still faster.”
“I know,” I agreed, huffing. “Sucks.” I wasn’t even as fast as Hunter. For one thing, I still couldn’t run and talk at the same time.
The moonlight made the Hel-Blar look strangely beautiful, as if she were made of opals and lapis lazuli. Nothing could make the smell beautiful, though.
Before Nicholas and the others could cross the rocky peninsula to reach her, two figures dropped from the hill above. The guy kicked the Hel-Blar in the neck with his steel-toed boot, ivory lace fluttering from his cuffs when he put a hand out to steady his landing. The girl followed, landing with her arm outstretched, stake plunging into the Hel-Blar’s chest. Ashes drifted down and disappeared into the lake.
Nicholas’s older brother Logan and his girlfriend, Isabeau, grinned at each other.
“Heads up,” Hunter said suddenly. We followed her gaze. At the top of the cliff was another Hel-Blar and Isabeau’s giant gray wolfhound, Charlemagne. They were both snarling.
“Merde,” Isabeau said when the Hel-Blar approached her beloved dog. “I will kill him.”
She was running toward the hillside when a strange sound ululated from the woods. It was a cross between one of those old-fashioned hunting horns and a broken flute. It was haunting but sharp enough that I wondered if there was blood coming out of my ears. We all winced, especially the vampires, with their sensitive hearing. Quinn swore, in extreme detail.
The Hel-Blar screeched, clutching his ears. Then he looked around, as if he was frightened.
I’d never seen a Hel-Blar frightened like that before.
It didn’t bode well.
He snapped his teeth before running away from us, from the dog, and from the unprotected students laughing on the beach.
That was something else Hel-Blar never did: run away from food. And that’s what we were to them.
“What the damn hell was that?” Quinn demanded.
We looked at one another, bewildered.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Hunter said. “I thought Hel-Blar were all about the mindless feeding.”
“So did I,” Nicholas muttered. “I hate it when they change the rules. And why are they all wearing those collars?”
“Attend-moi,” Isabeau called up to Charlemagne. He waited patiently at the top of the cliff.
“Isabeau!” I exclaimed. “You’re back.”
She wiped her stake clean in the sand and smiled her rare, reserved smile. “Oui.” Her French accent was just as thick and she still wore the same kind of tunic dress, with the chain mail work over her heart. Bone beads dangled in her hair. “I have been here for a week now.”
“A week?”
“Solange asked for me to come.”
“Oh.” I was not going to be one of those jealous best friends too insecure and stupid to share. I was evolved and I did yoga and I w
as better than that, damn it.
Nope.
Hurt pinpricked through me. A hard lump of dread was forming in my belly, as if I’d swallowed a peach pit. In a certain kind of story, I’d grow a tree from my belly and peaches would fall out of my mouth when I spoke.
Instead, I just felt like I was going to be sick.
I tried to keep my smile firmly in place. “Oh,” I said again.
Nicholas stepped toward me but I took a step back. I didn’t want sympathy. It was mortifying. Logan just looked at me for a long moment before slinging his arm over my shoulders. “Come on, Lucy, tell me whose nose you broke this week.”
“No one’s. Maybe yours right now,” I grumbled. “I didn’t know you were back, either.” I’d missed him too, with his frock coats and wicked smiles. He wore a bone bead like Isabeau wore in her hair, but on a leather thong around his wrist. He’d been staying with Isabeau’s people, the Cwn Mamau, getting to know their ways since he’d been initiated into their tribe. Isabeau was a Shamanka’s handmaiden and knew all about the magical aspects of being a vampire, the stuff the Drakes had never really believed in until Solange turned sixteen. I liked her. It’s not that I didn’t want Solange hanging out with her. I just didn’t want to be left out. And this was just further proof that I wasn’t an honorary Drake anymore.
Thinking about that made me kind of nauseous.
I texted Solange.
You’re meeting me tomorrow night. 9 pm. Oak tree.
We met at the oak tree only when we wanted to be certain of privacy. That tree had heard more stories about cute boys, mean boys, and parental interference than anything else on the planet. It was on Drake property, so it would be safe enough, and I’d take Gandhi to protect me on the car ride over to appease my parents.
“We tracked those three from the woods,” Isabeau was telling the others. “And one who tried to eat a dog.”
I could just imagine what Isabeau had done. Dogs were sacred to her tribe. Cwn Mamau meant “Hounds of the Mother.” There probably weren’t even ashes left.
“They must be getting desperate,” Hunter remarked grimly. “I’ll put an anonymous call in to get the cops to bust up the party. It’s obviously not safe here.”
“I’ll wait with you,” Quinn said.
“Take my motorcycle.” Connor tossed him the keys. “I’ll catch a ride with Nicholas.”
I nodded. “I’ll get Christabel.”
I ran to the edge of the water by the farthest bonfire. I knew she’d be there, away from the crowds and as close to the lake as she could be without actually being in it.
“We have to go,” I said.
She turned. “Oh. Okay.” She frowned at me. “You look weird. Did you and Nicholas have a fight or something?”
“No, but someone called the cops on the party and I’d rather be out of here before they show up.”
“Good plan.” She grabbed her knapsack and followed me. I stopped to warn Nathan about the cops. He scrambled for his stuff and by the time we’d climbed the steps to the parking lot, we could see the frantic whispering travel from fire to fire. Nicholas and Connor were waiting for us in the Jeep. Nicholas was on his cell phone. I hopped into the car and pulled out before Christabel’s door properly closed.
Chapter 6
Connor
“What the hell was that?” I asked, flipping my laptop open. I’d rescued it from the motorcycle pack before Quinn took off with Hunter. He hadn’t even bothered to tease me about it, which just proved how much the Hel-Blar had rattled us. Hel-Blar didn’t back down, ever. And they didn’t cower. Ever.
So much for a night on the beach with Lucy’s pretty cousin.
Nicholas glanced at me, hitting the accelerator. “Are you Googling whistles?”
“I’m Googling every damn thing I can think of,” I muttered, typing quickly. “Because that was just weird.”
“I don’t think they sell magic whistles on eBay.”
I snorted. “You’d be surprised.”
“Damn it, Lucy,” Nicholas muttered suddenly. “She’s going way too fast.”
I looked at him incredulously. “Dude.” Nicholas was notorious for driving too fast. He’d crashed his tricycle when he was five years old, trying to drag-race Quinn.
“Well, she is,” he insisted. “How are we supposed to protect her?”
The fields and orchards of Violet Hill gave way to thick forests of pine and oak. The shadows blurred. One blurred differently than the others.
“On the right,” I said, rolling my window down. We were going fast enough that the sky looked full of shooting stars. It was too fast to differentiate scents; it was all pine and mountain-fresh wind. No hint of mushrooms. A howl shivered between the trees.
“Probably that wolf,” Nicholas said.
“Probably.” I went back to my laptop. The Internet connection flickered off and then came back on. While I liked the solitude of living in the middle of nowhere, the Wi-Fi sucked. “I need to boost—”
And then Nicholas hit the brake so hard, my computer flew into the dashboard.
“Hey!” I yelled, grabbing it before it bounced back and kneecapped me. “This thing’s expensive.”
Nicholas swore under his breath. I looked up. I knew he didn’t care about my computer, not enough to swear like that.
The shadow we’d seen at the edge of the trees was in the middle of the road, wearing the remains of a ragged dress, mud, and not much else. She was hunched over and snarling, trying to shield her unnatural red eyes from the glare of the headlights.
“Hit the high beams,” I said.
The light turned into spears of brightness that would have made even my eyes water. We might not be as sensitive as the Hel-Blar, but our pupils weren’t made for light either. Her blue skin was like crushed blueberries, her teeth needle-sharp. There was blood on her chin, running down her throat where the light glinted off a metal collar.
“Should I run her over?” Nicholas asked, bewildered.
I was just as confused. She wasn’t attacking. And she was too skinny to be a threat, but she was also covered in blood. She’d kill someone before the week was out, that was a certainty. The Hel-Blar weren’t just feral, they were crazy.
But we weren’t assassins.
Mostly.
And then she did something else Hel-Blar never did.
She ignored us.
She ignored two Drake brothers—the hell I was going to refer to us as princes—and stared at the tree line, cringing.
“Something is scarier to her than her hunger,” I muttered.
“That is not good,” Nicholas muttered back, hitting speed-dial on his phone. I heard Lucy on the other end.
“You all right?” Nicholas asked.
“Yes,” I heard clearly.
“Then drive, don’t look back. Just drive!” He hung up before she could reply.
A woman stood in the cedars, barefoot but wearing a leather vest covered in weapons. One of them looked like a cutlass from here. She was pale blue, like a sheen of watercolor paint, not dark-bruise blue like the Hel-Blar. Her skin was chalky but her veins were so prominent it was like she’d been painted in woad like an ancient Pict or the guys from the Braveheart movie.
But she had a lot of teeth, even from here.
The Hel-Blar woman, still cringing, clutched at her collar, her nails leaving jagged, bloody welts behind.
Nicholas turned at the clicking of my keyboard. “Are you kidding? You’re online now?”
“Well, do you know what the hell’s going on?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” I clicked through some of my private files but I wasn’t even sure what I was searching for. His phone rang in his pocket. We both knew it was Lucy without having to look. He switched off the ringer. She’d kill him for that later.
But we had bigger problems than Lucy’s mean right hook.
The vampire in the woods lifted a wooden miniature flute-style whistle and blew it once. It was t
he same sound we’d heard at the beach. Nicholas and I exchanged a grim glance.
The Hel-Blar shrieked. The sound was animal in its pain and it lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. I expected electricity to arc from the collar, but it didn’t. Something else was happening to her, and whatever it was, it was painful.
Another whistle. She ran toward it, instead of away, bowing her head.
“What the f—?” The door cut Nicholas off, slamming shut behind him as he followed.
“Shit, Nick, don’t go out there alone!” I scrambled out after him.
He was in front of the lights when the first knife cut into the hood of the Jeep. He jerked back and froze. Another knife hit the passenger door by my elbow.
“Not yet.” The woman laughed, her red hair streaming behind her when she whirled and vanished into the forest. We hadn’t even reached the other side of the road when the sound of clacking jaws skittered around us like hungry insects.
Hel-Blar. They rushed at us, stinking of mushrooms and death, fueled by a vicious need that could never be appeased. There were three of them—and none of them wore collars. There was also no whistle to call them off.
“Well, shit,” I said reaching for a stake. I slid over the headlight, landing in front of Nicholas. We turned without another word so we were back to back.
Quinn liked to tease me because I watched so many sci-fi movies and read fantasy novels about quests and good against evil. Was it any wonder when a casual trip to the beach turned into this? They weren’t fantasy novels to me, just an extension of my regular life. And at least in my books, good always won.
Well, mostly always.
A huge Hel-Blar, bloated on blood, rushed at me. He was tall enough that he clipped me on the ear with his fist before he was even in range of my side kick. I could have dropped to the ground but it would have left Nicholas open. My ear rang uncomfortably. Teeth clacked, way too close for comfort. I kicked again and caught him in the sternum. He stumbled back a step but didn’t fall. It gave me just enough time to throw my stake. It didn’t quite pierce his heart, so he just fell to his knees, wheezing and cursing.
Bleeding Hearts Page 5
