Christabel
“What?” I squeaked. “What? What the hell?”
When they turned and those strange eyes were focused on me alone, I suddenly remembered that being ignored by drugged-up psychopaths was a good thing. “Uh,” I stammered. “Never mind.”
Saga sighed. Her hair was just red enough against her blue skin to be distracting, nearly the exact hues of sunset over the ocean. “I’ll see to them.”
She paused long enough for Aidan to kiss her so thoroughly and so hotly that I looked away. Old people making out. Hadn’t I suffered enough?
She stalked away, trailing a ragged hem and the smell of wet earth and crushed leaves under a hint of lavender and rum. Aidan watched her go, smiling a little before turning his attention to me. I was casting wild glances around, trying to figure out how to escape.
“You’ll never outrun us,” Aidan said. “But you don’t believe that, do you? Look around, Christabel. There’s nowhere to go.”
It was an old building, suited to candles and kettles. The walls were gray with age and there was a wooden sign hanging from a broken chain reading “Apothecary.” The road was packed dirt, with more buildings across the way. There was a general store, a saloon, and a few houses with sagging fences around kitchen gardens. A post ran along the porches, to tie up horses. All that was missing was a stagecoach.
I’d been kidnapped, drugged, and dumped in an old western movie?
I grabbed my head. “Where am I?”
“Frontier town, been here for three centuries at least,” Aidan answered. “It was abandoned after the Gold Rush. That was something to see, I don’t mind telling you.” He sounded oddly nostalgic, as if he really had been here over a hundred years ago.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Just an hour or so.”
This was the weirdest kidnapping ever. I searched for hidden cameras. “Is this a TV show? Like, some historical practical joke thing?”
“No, Christabel.”
I rubbed my arms for warmth. The rain was turning to snow. “Then what? Because I don’t believe in vampires.”
“You will,” he said calmly. “But until then, take a good look. Nothing but mountains behind those buildings, and everywhere else is forest. If you make a run for it, you’ll be lost for hours—days even. You’re more likely to get eaten by a cougar than you are to find your way back to town.” His lips twitched bleakly. “And there are other monsters out there, worse than us, as you’ve seen. You don’t want to go up against a Hel-Blar alone. So do yourself a favor and stay put.”
“Is that what that thing was?”
He nodded. “Aye, the worst of the worst.”
“I don’t understand,” I said finally. “Are you waiting for a ransom?” I didn’t know if I should tell him that my mother was in rehab and my uncle was far from rich. Unless they wanted a ransom of homemade pickles and free snow removal, Uncle Stuart wasn’t solvent enough for a million dollars in unmarked bills, or whatever it was kidnappers in movies usually demanded.
“No. We don’t want money.”
“Then what?”
“It’s politics. We want a seat on the council. We want to be recognized and buy safety for our kin.”
I had no idea what any of that meant but I nodded anyway. “None of my family is in politics.”
“No, but the Drakes are,” he said. “Royalty, aren’t they?”
If Nicholas was a prince, I guarantee Lucy would have teased him about it mercilessly. And I had a hard time picturing Connor wearing a crown. Carrying a ray gun, sure, but not a crown. But it was probably bad form to correct your abductor. I wondered whether he’d let me go if I threw up on him. I shivered, crossing my arms tighter over my chest. My jacket was barely keeping out the cold, but I felt better out here. Less like a prisoner. I’d take hypothermia over being locked up.
I should probably pretend he wasn’t insane. Keep him talking. Isn’t that what they did in stories? I was so going to have to read more spy novels when I got out of here; historical fiction and poetry just weren’t helping me enough right now.
“Why are you kind of … blue?” I asked. Because obviously it wasn’t a hallucination. Maybe it was some type of gang tattoo.
“Hel-Blar are different from the other vampires,” he explained. He was wearing a beaded leather pouch around his neck. “Any vampire can become one of them, if they’re starved long enough or are infected. The blue is a side effect of too much blood after not enough.”
I swallowed. “Oh.” I didn’t ask about his teeth. Clearly he had an insane dentist in this insane ghost town.
He smiled, even though I hadn’t mentioned it out loud. “The teeth help us feed. The deeper the starvation, the more teeth. Another side effect.”
I so didn’t want the details. I smiled weakly and edged away.
“This would’ve been much easier if you’d been Lucky.”
I froze, narrowing my eyes. “You stay away from her.”
He shrugged pragmatically. “Can’t.” He took a small cheroot cigar out of his pocket and lit the end. The smoke curled lazily into the cold air. He slanted me a glance. “You’re getting nervous again. I can hear your heart flinging itself around in your chest.”
I tried to take a deep breath.
“You’re safe,” he said. “The Drakes will buy you back, and eventually we’ll let them.”
My breath clogged in my throat. The Drakes barely knew me.
“Shame this place was left to rot,” he said conversationally. “It sure was something, even before the gold diggers came and panned the streams. Fool’s gold mostly, and some shiny stones, nothing worth all the fuss. But no one wanted to believe it.” The tip of his cigar glowed red for a moment. “Even before the town, this place was beautiful. Reminds me of home.”
“Home?” I asked. “Where’s that?” That seemed like information a cop might want later.
“I was born in Upper Canada in 1633 as a Huron. We called ourselves Wendat. We were Attignawantan, the Bear People.” He showed me the bear claw hanging next to the leather pouch. “I was turned one night in the woods, 1661 I think it was. Can’t be sure now. Wasn’t even sure then. I woke up in a bear cave past midwinter. Wouldn’t have made it through the madness without that bear’s blood.” He held out his hand wryly, admiring his dusky blue veins and pale, moth-white skin. “Nearly didn’t.”
I was terrified, no doubt about it, but Aidan hadn’t made a single threatening move, not since he’d dosed with me with that white powder. He was talking to me as if I were his little sister. Even my adrenaline was confused.
“I still follow the ways of my tribe as best I can—the feast songs and the proper way to build a longhouse and how to honor the dead. The same way we’d hoped Lucky would learn our ways and become a link between the tribes. She could have carried the wampum to the Blood Moon.”
He was losing me again. But the talk of his life, like something out of a historical novel, was soothing to me. I actually wanted to ask him questions, which was probably ludicrous under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help myself.
“What did you eat?” It was what I always wondered. What kinds of food did Henry the Eighth eat, or Joan of Arc, or Coleridge? Did they eat cucumber salads and drink lemonade? Did they put honey on their toast? I’d have driven my teachers to distraction with these questions if I’d ever let myself talk as much as I’d wanted to in class. But people remembered the girl who asked if Byron really drank vinegar to lose weight.
Aidan looked briefly taken aback before his brow furrowed, as if he was trying to remember. Crazy people who thought they were vampires freaked me out, but crazy people who thought it was 1661 I could gladly get along with. And after what I’d seen him do, I had no trouble picturing him running through the cedars with a musket.
“We ate mostly biscuits and venison when I was a lad, and boiled peas. Tea on Sundays when there was any, after the British came. Before that we grew corn and squash and hunted and fished the lakes.” He licked his lips. “But now, blood.”
Oops, shouldn’t have asked about food.
“What about clothes?” I asked quickly, before he could go back to talking about vampires. “What did you wear?”
“The most beautifully beaded deerskin, soft as butter. And moccasins. Later, after most of the Wendat fell, I lived near the towns for a while, but I never could get used to a roof over my head. And no one could get used to me,” he added drily. “Some can pass for humans. Not the Hel-Blar, and not us. We have to give up everything. Saga sailed with Grace O’Malley,” he said, the lines around his oddly pale eyes crinkling. “She was an Irish pirate, chatted with Queen Elizabeth,” he explained when I looked confused. “But eventually the sun can reach anywhere on a ship—the brig is no exception.”
Pirates and Bear People. Even captured, I was actually itching for pen and paper so I could take notes.
I was as crazy as he was.
He came back to the present with a sigh. He glanced at the sky. “You’d best get inside. We’ve things to do.”
I went inside because I didn’t know what else to do. The glass bottles on the shelves rattled as I crossed the room. How was I going to get out of here?
“Christabel.”
I was standing in the middle of the room now, trying not to hyperventilate. And hearing voices. “Great,” I muttered.
“Pssst, Christa, damn it, come on.”
It took a good long minute for me to register the voice.
“Connor?” I turned, feeling unsteady. “Is it the drugs again? Or are you really there?”
He was crawling through the window, dust coating his hair and shirt. I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life.
But then the door opened and Aidan was there, snarling.
“Run!” I yelled. “Connor, run!”
He ran, but idiotically he ran toward me not away. He was between Aidan and me before I could say anything else. They both had stakes in their hands.
Wait. Connor carried stakes, too? Was everyone in Violet Hill insane?
“Christa, get out of here,” Connor said quietly. “I’ll find you. Just run.”
“No,” Aidan said. “If she runs, she’ll die.”
“Mountain lions,” I told Connor.
“He knows that’s not what I mean,” Aidan said. “If you run, we’ll release the Hel-Blar. They obey us.”
Connor went pale, even paler than he usually was. And now I was actually wondering if he was pale because he spent too much time at his computer or for entirely different reasons.
“And they have Christabel’s scent.”
“You bastard.” Connor went for Aidan’s throat. Aidan was faster. Which made sense if you believed he’d died in 1661 and had spent centuries roaming the continent.
Crap. Did I actually believe he’d died in 1661 and had spent centuries roaming the continent?
Never mind that. He was about to shove a piece of wood into the chest of a guy I kind of liked despite myself. But what the hell was I supposed to do about it? I didn’t know how to fight. I knew iambic pentameter and all the verses of “The Highwayman.” I did have good taste in shoes, though. The steel toes of my combat boots could splinter wood. And maybe bones.
I tried to kick Aidan, but it was surprisingly difficult to aim properly when two guys were fighting. Especially when they sometimes moved so fast that they blurred around the edges. I really wanted to believe that was a side effect of the drugs. I kicked again. Aidan grunted.
“Sorry,” I muttered, since he hadn’t tied me up in the trunk of my car or killed me horribly when he could have. “But stop trying to kill him.”
Someone’s elbow caught me in the sternum and I flew backward, crashing into a shelf. Dozens of bottles tumbled to the ground and rolled in every direction. A few broke into sharp pieces. I clutched my stomach. Connor ran to my side. He almost looked like he had fangs. His eyes were so blue, it hurt to look at them.
“Christabel, are you okay?” He was slurring his words. He glanced at the window and cursed. I looked, too, half expecting more of those blue creatures to be scrabbling through the window. All I saw was a lightening in the sky, a touch of gold in the east. It was comforting.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
He looked like he was in pain. “Dawn.”