Christabel
When I woke up, the man was still blue.
Which didn’t make sense at all.
But neither did the way everything was smearing together like a wet oil painting, or the antique gold quality to the light, thick with dust motes. Even the floor underneath my palms was faded wood, like something you’d find in a pioneer cabin, especially with the iron woodstove and kettle in the corner.
Clearly I’d read so much historical fiction I’d made myself crazy.
Except I couldn’t think of a single historical time period, or even a novel for that matter, with blue-skinned people.
And really, instead of running through the index of literary trivia in my head (Jane Eyre, red room; Crime and Punishment, yellow as an unlucky color …), I should have been focusing on the fact that someone had drugged me and kidnapped me. Nothing else explained the hallucinations or the weird white powder. I wondered again, horrified, if it were anthrax. Wasn’t that supposed to be a white powder? But who the hell roamed tiny hick towns dosing unsuspecting girls with anthrax? And didn’t it have something to do with cows?
I recited some of Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman” to calm myself. “ ‘They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead, But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed; Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side! There was death at every window—’ ”
Nope, definitely not calming right now.
I fumbled for my cell phone, dialing 911 before my eyes focused enough to see that I didn’t have a signal. Of course.
I would have cried but my head hurt like the very devil. That line sounded vaguely familiar, like it was from an old book. Pride and Prejudice, maybe. That was comforting. Less comforting was that I couldn’t remember which book it was from. I always remembered stuff like that. I was proud of my reserve of literary and historical details, even if it hadn’t proven particularly useful so far. It certainly hadn’t saved me from getting abducted.
I shut my eyes again, hearing movement. Fear made me feel fuzzy and blurry inside, as if I were filled with air instead of blood and bone. I clamped my jaws down on a mew of panic when footsteps sounded. My eyelids fluttered, trying to open even as I forced them to stay closed. It didn’t make the fear any less acidic in my mouth; I hurt all over with the need to see. But I wanted to be left alone even more. I hoped, vainly, that if the blue man thought I was still unconscious, he’d leave. Then I could figure out how to escape.
“You needn’t bother,” he said softly, much closer than I’d thought he was. “I can hear your pulse, child, and I know you’re awake.”
I didn’t know what to do. He might be testing me, just to see if I was conscious yet. I smelled something like wet earth. It was impossible not to think about dank, dark dungeons. My chest burned as I tried not to gasp or scream or give myself away.
“You’ll want to breathe,” he added calmly, as if he were offering me tea and crumpets. “If you don’t want to swoon.”
I opened my eyes, but only because he used the word “swoon.” It was old-fashioned, out of a Victorian novel.
He wasn’t.
He wore a cream-colored linen shirt, old jeans, and a wampum belt that he must have stolen from some museum. His hair was long and brown and tied back with a piece of rawhide. He might have been handsome, if he weren’t a psychopath.
And very faintly blue.
Also, we were in a one-room cabin with wooden walls shrunken with age. There were shelves of old bottles and a layer of dust as thick as icing on a cake. I rubbed my eyes, even though moving my arms felt like lifting bricks and boulders wrapped in wet cement. No amount of retina friction changed the fact that he was blue. And his eyes were really bloodshot.
He crouched down in front of me. I scrabbled backward so fast I hit my head on the wall.
“What do you want?” I croaked, my throat so tight with fear it felt like I’d been eating knives.
“You’re safe, Lucky. We’re not planning to hurt you.”
“I’m not Lucy.”
He smiled a little. “We know your car.”
I’d been right to hate Lucy’s car. Her parents hadn’t been paranoid with their curfew. Now it was too late to tell them I was glad they took me in. Too late to decide if I wanted to be a poet or a tattoo artist. If I wanted to go to college right away or travel and see London and France and Prague first. Too late to see my mother sober.
Like hell.
I didn’t think; I just bolted into motion. My stomach went one way and my head felt like it went in the opposite direction. I wasn’t about to let dizziness or fatigue stop me. I was going to reach that door and then I was going to run down the street, screaming at the top of my lungs until someone stopped to help me.
I didn’t even make it halfway across the room.
The man was suddenly in front of me. I careened right into him, bruising the tip of my nose on his collarbone. I noticed a scar, long and old enough to look like puckered satin.
He sighed. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
His hands were on my elbows, trying to steady me. I risked a glance. Bad idea. He had way too many teeth. And some of them seemed to be getting longer. And sharper. If they got any sharper I’d start hearing the Jaws theme song in my head. I blinked, telling myself not to panic and not to get distracted. I’d probably activated the last of the drug in my system by running, and that plus the adrenaline pumping suddenly through me was making me hallucinate. It sounded very scientific and logical.
It still felt like gibbering, mind-numbing terror, though.
I opened my mouth to scream and lifted my foot to kick.
“Don’t.”
Something about the way he spoke, about his strange smell, made my mouth snap shut. I felt light-headed again. I actually leaned toward him. That couldn’t be a good thing. I knew I was terrified, but it didn’t seem to bother me. I felt kind of sleepy and languid, like I’d just had a really long, hot bath.
“You should know not to run when faced with a vampire, Lucky.”
Vampire. I giggled. Then I blinked, as shocked by that as by anything else that had happened to me tonight. I never giggled.
“Vampires don’t exist,” I told him. Even my tongue felt weird in my mouth, like it was swollen. “I feel funny.”
“Pheromones. It will fade.” He frowned. “There’s no use pretending you don’t know about us. We know about you.”
My head felt too heavy and it lolled back, exposing my neck. He licked his lips.
“You’re as reckless as they say.” His voice was soft, hungry.
“Huh?” I sounded like my mother after too much gin. That thought alone cut through the peach-fuzz, overexposed feel of everything around me. It was like being dunked in cold water. I even shivered. Then I clenched my fists, digging my nails into the palms of my hands, clearing the pain in my head. The smell of wet earth intensified. I gagged.
His eyes weren’t just bloodshot; they practically glowed. They were mesmerizing, like sunlight hitting rubies. I dug my nails harder into my palms with enough force that they drew blood. I felt the sting when sweat ran into the cuts. It pushed a little more of the fog away.
Which just left more room for the swamp smell.
The man didn’t seem to notice. He just inhaled deeper, as if tantalizing cookies were coming right out of the oven. “You’re bleeding.”
Something about the way he said it made me jerk backward, but he was still holding me in place. His fingers didn’t move at all, just encircled my arms like steel chains. I knew I’d have bruises later. Assuming there was a later.
“It smells … wait.” He stopped and frowned. “You smell … wrong.”
“That’s not me, asshat, that’s you.” There. That was more like me. I clenched my hands tighter.
“Stop,” he said, nearly as a plea. He sniffed again. “There’s only the barest trace of the Drakes on you. That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense? Hello? You’re blue! And a kidnapper! And dude, you should see a dentist.”
“You keep to this deception?” He sounded mildly surprised. “Even now?”
“What deception? I told you, I’m not Lucy.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then took my hand and forced my fingers to uncurl. My palm lay exposed, covered with tiny drops of blood like red glass beads. I tried to pull back but his hold tightened on my wrist.
“Stay still,” he added, and his eyes were beautiful again. He was carved out of pale marble, mysterious and primal. He made me think of hunters and arrows and deer broken in the woods. When he lowered his head and lapped at my blood, I made only a small mew of protest. “You don’t taste of them, either,” he said softly, his dangerous teeth stained red. “And you are not immune to me.”
“Why, are you sick? Or contagious or something?” I wondered out loud. Of course he was sick. He was tasting my blood. “Oh God,” I said. In my head it sounded sharp and derisive but it came out dreamy and floaty. “Is this some weird vampire cult? Is that why you think I’m Lucy?” I concentrated on that instead of the fact that I was letting him run his tongue along my other palm. “Look, I know she’s into those books and movies and stuff, but she’s not nuts. She wouldn’t fall for this, either. She knows vampires aren’t real.”
He actually blanched, which was weird considering his color. “You’re really not her.”
“I’m really not.”
He dropped my hands so fast, I felt the muscles in my shoulders snap.
“That is a problem,” he said darkly. He was still between me and the door, which suddenly opened. I hadn’t heard anyone approaching and I barely heard anyone now. Her feet didn’t make a sound. If I hadn’t been looking at the door, I wouldn’t have known she was even there. I stumbled back a step.
“Saga,” he said, which I assumed was her name. She had long red hair, which should have clashed with her pale blue skin but somehow didn’t. Her eyes were gray, almost glittering. She wore a black skirt with a ragged hem and a kind of silver breastplate-corset, molded to her chest and engraved with spirals and vine motifs. She looked like a pirate, except she was barefoot. And her teeth were just as sharp as the wooden stakes and jeweled daggers strapped all over her body. She even had a cutlass on her belt.
“Aidan, is this her?” Her voice belonged to a queen, but her eyes belonged to the forest, or a badger’s den. In fact, a long hood hung down her back, edged with fur. I was starting to feel dizzy again. I was scared and confused and I just wanted to wake up from this drug-induced nightmare. I opened my mouth to let out the loudest, most bloodcurdling, glass-shattering shriek I could muster. I had barely begun when she spoke.
“Avast.”
Her steely voice made the scream die painfully in my throat. Her silver eyes were like pins inserted into delicate butterfly wings; I might as well have been a specimen tacked to a velvet board for her collection.
“You have to know no one would hear you,” she said. “You are most strange. I would expect someone under the protection of the Drakes to be quick-witted.”
She’d just called me stupid. “Hey.”
“That’s the thing,” Aidan interrupted. “She’s not Lucky Hamilton.”
Saga’s pale, flower-fairy face burned with rage, but the fury came and went so fast it could have been a trick of the faint light from the single oil lamp. “Who are you then, lass?” she asked.
“Christabel.”
“And what are you to the Drakes?” She was ominous, violent, like a sudden mudslide sweeping away half a town’s oldest houses.
“Nothing.” I thought of Connor and Nicholas and wondered just what the hell they were into.
“That is unfortunate.”
It suddenly felt unfortunate. Very unfortunate.
“She knows Lucky. I think they’re kin.”
“Is this about drugs?” I asked lamely, remembering the jar in Lucy’s hallway last night. I looked around, eyes uncomfortably wide as I fought an inexplicable surge of fatigue. I searched but couldn’t see any drug paraphernalia, not that I actually knew what it would look like. My mother was strictly into liquor. But if this were a drug lab, surely I’d be able to tell?
“She was driving Lucy’s car,” Aidan explained apologetically.
“Son of a bitch.”
While they stared at each other, I took the opportunity to dart out the open door. I nearly broke my ankle avoiding a rotten floorboard. When I leaped off the porch onto the dirt road, I should have kept running for my life—mountain lions, forest snows, and my utter lack of direction be damned. But I couldn’t move. I could only stare as a creature shuffled out onto the deserted street.
He was a deeper, more vibrant blue than Aidan and Saga, and he had even more teeth. When the wind shifted I got a mouthful of his smell: not just mushrooms but rotting mushrooms, not just damp but stagnant swamp. I gagged. Something about the way he moved made my hands clench and sweat soak the back of my shirt. He didn’t say anything, just licked his lips. His eyes caught the faint light from the moon when the clouds parted. He inhaled deeply and snapped his jaws again, saliva dripping from his teeth.
Then he came at me, snarling.
And I knew I couldn’t outrun him.
I tried anyway.
I whirled, trying to get back to the relative safety of the porch and the broken house and the slightly less crazy, less blue people inside.
I didn’t make it.
He grabbed my hand, yanking me backward as I was running forward. My shoulder jerked painfully. I screamed. I was locked in place, twisted unnaturally, and he was trying to lick my hand.
Gross.
And weird.
I pulled harder, feeling sharp, sudden fear in every part of my body—my head, my knees, my spleen, and, most of all, my stinging hands.
And then Aidan was there, faster, stronger, and crazier. He grabbed the blue man’s wrist and broke it, snapping it as easily as if it were a dry twig. The man howled. Something howled back in response from behind one of the buildings, and it wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t animal or human. And it wasn’t alone.
“One of the whelps got loose, did it?” Aidan said, his hands suddenly full of slender, sharpened sticks. No, not sticks. Stakes. One caught the man in the neck and, as he jerked back, another caught him in the chest. Aidan used the heel of his hand to shove the stake through skin and flesh and bone. My stomach threatened to turn inside out.
But it had to wait while my brain threatened the same thing, because the creature clutched at his chest, gurgling in pain before he crumbled into ashes. He looked like soot and crushed embers in the dirt. My vision wavered and my shoulder ached. I trembled all over. Aidan kept me in place, his hand on my wrist. I prayed he wouldn’t break it, too.
The howling continued, louder, more high-pitched, as frantic as disembodied howling could get. Saga marched out to the edge of the porch and blew a wooden whistle.
The howling ceased, as sharp in its silence as it had been in its clamor.